by Judy Croome
Chapter 4
Lulu (The Past)
“Et tu, Brutè? Then fall Caesar.”
‘You are the Spirit King’s beloved, Lulu,’ Sub-Prioress Dalia said, every night after the day I stabbed Taki. For years, she never missed a night. I waited, unable to sleep, until I heard those words and smelt the sweet scent of the white rose. Deep within me, another type of flower began to grow.
‘Help me pull the weeds out, Lulu,’ she said one morning, as she tended the Prioress’s rose garden, a hard job in the heat and dryness of a place where dust was the only profitable harvest.
‘I need Sub-Prioress Kapera’s advice on this,’ she would add. ‘Run and take this note to her, Lulu. No one else, mind. No one else.’
I darted through the holding camp corridors until I found Sub-Prioress Kapera. She flinched every time she took one of the notes from my alabaster hand.
‘Wait here,’ the elder Controller ordered. She managed never to actually look at me for my dancing eye, another physical malady for Pale Ones to bear along with all the others, scared her. ‘You can take my reply straight to Sub-Prioress Dalia.’ I waited, while she nibbled her pen, and scratched a few words. She folded the paper into a tight wad. ‘Don’t read it,’ she said, as she handed it over. ‘It’s not for you.’
She never called me by name, that one, never in all the years I ran back and forth between them. I took the note and almost sneered at her. She wanted to call me what the others do. Freak. The Levid’s Child. Witch. But she couldn’t do it to my face, for she feared my nature. So she never called me by name or by curse. That freed me to glare at her as she made the sign of the nova. I slammed the door behind me and forgot her as I rushed to return to Sub-Prioress Dalia.
• • •
Another time, seeking out Sub-Prioress Dalia to find out if I could do any more that day, I pushed the door to her room open without knocking.
She sat in a claw-foot tub, the chipped enamel a legacy of its faded elegance, her naked back towards me. Her mousy brown hair, wet with sweat, hung loose over her shoulders as she slapped a pungent mixture on her back with a bunch of dried buffalo-thorn branches. Sub-Prioress Kapera, a hint of self-righteousness in her stony face, stood sentinel at the foot of the tub.
‘Purge me with palm oil,’ I heard Sub-Prioress Dalia chant, as she scrubbed and scrubbed until the blood showed close under the skin. The deeper scratches were raw with blood and palm oil and sand she must have collected from the dried up river bed near the hedge where I hide.
‘I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ Cracked and hoarse, her voice didn’t sound like her own.
Her arm continued to pump over her shoulder, up and down, faster and faster.
‘Scrub harder, Dalia,’ Sub-Prioress Kapera goaded, and licked her lips as she kept her eyes on the other woman’s bleeding, swaying flesh.
As her chanting turned into sobbing, Dalia applied herself more vigorously. Water sloshed in the tub around her and lapped over the edge as she scoured herself harder and harder. I caught glimpses of a heavy white breast that shocked, even enthralled, me. I had never seen a woman’s breast before; nor had I guessed there was skin more pallid even than mine.
But where my skin was pale and translucent, with the ghostly look so common to Pale Ones, Dalia’s skin was a warm creamy-white. It called, beckoning me until my fingers tingled with the desire to touch that undulating white flesh and my mouth burned with the desire to suckle it, as I had never had the opportunity to nurse at my own mother’s breast.
The image of that heavy breast—so devout, so maternal—fascinated me. I wanted to bury myself in it; feed from it; let it nourish and nurture me the way the Great Mother suckled the child Spirit King, so the child gained its strength from her core, as clean as spring water, and as chaste. Frightened by the vision, overwhelmed by my thirsting, I ran. I ran away to the hedge of the spirits.
I took with me the sight and smells of Dalia scrubbing herself pure in the bathtub, on the day she became my beloved.
• • •
Months dragged by.
I lay alone and hungry in my bed after another day of unhappiness. Still Sub-Prioress Dalia came and, before she left me, I raised myself in my bed and laid my head there, on her bosom, where I had seen the naked softness, the glory of her white flesh, whiter even than mine.
‘Ah, Lulu,’ she said. I clenched my eyes tight. I didn’t want to see the rejection when it came. Instead, she murmured sweet words of love. ‘The Spirit King loves you, child,’ she said. ‘I promise he does.’ She rested her hand on my colourless curls and I dreamt they were a soft and sooty black under the tenderness of her touch.
‘Do you love me, Sub-Prioress Dalia?’ I dared to ask.
‘Yes,’ she sighed and, as an afterthought, added, ‘The Spirit King loves you too. He loves us all.’
I slept the sleep of the good that night.
• • •
With Dalia to love me, I began to hope.
‘You’re good for Luyando,’ I overheard the Prioress say to Dalia. She often used my full name. Lulu, she said, was too frivolous. ‘The poor child is calmer now; not so troublesome.’
I smiled, for Dalia’s love filled me with a purity that ate away at the rage skulking within me every time someone hated me without looking at who I was beneath my too-pale skin.
I kept busy. I helped Dalia with her chores. We would go into the small court and there, in a comfortable silence that spoke of love, we cleaned and dusted the dullness into the gleam of gold.
‘You must kneel and pay your respects to the Spirit-King,’ Dalia said, as she passed the small altar and made the age-old sign of the nova.
I refused, for my knees ached with too much unhappiness. Until, in that quiet corner where the sounds of the holding camp were distant with peace, the joy Dalia found in the nova of the Spirit King became my joy too. Sometimes, I knelt with her, touching without touching. And the shield of her goodness blanketed me, and there was no way I could tell where Dalia ended and Lulu began.
• • •
There came a Holy Day when, after the Prior with his charity toys had left, I saw Dalia run after Kapera, stopping the older woman with a tentative clasp on her arm. She asked her a question. Kapera shook her head. I saw her lips twist and frame the word, No! Dalia’s fingers tightened their grip; she pleaded; her body surged forward, iron filings to the magnet of Kapera, who angrily shrugged her off and walked away, leaving Dalia blinking hard and covering her mouth with two trembling hands.
That night, when Dalia brought me my white rose she said, as always, ‘The Spirit King loves you, child.’
I rested my head on her breast, and asked, as I asked every night, ‘Do you love me, Sub-Prioress Dalia?’ I smiled with anticipated pleasure, for each drop of Dalia’s love fed the fresh flower within my heart. This one bloomed in love, where before it bloomed in hatred.
That night, there was no answer and, as unexpectedly as it had blossomed, the flower of love wilted. I jerked away, but she stopped me. Clutched harder to that soft bosom, I choked for lack of air. But soon I didn’t care, for that night was special; that night was a night when miracles happened.
The sobs teemed in her chest until there were too many to contain. Her tears fell on my face, and on my head, but I forgot them, for that night Dalia, my Dalia, first said ‘I love you, I love you, I love you…’
The liturgy of love continued until it saturated my essence and leaked into my body. Alive, complete, my heart ached as love garlanded me with dreams. I threw off the covers and risked everything, for I knew that the Spirit King had answered my plea. He had sent me a friend; he had sent me a beloved. I put my arms around her, clumsy in my haste and my love, and I kissed her tears away.
When the notes between Dalia and Kapera stopped, I believed.
• • •
After I kissed Dalia, I drank from the fountain of her love. Each time I rested my head on the altar of her bosom, I found the strength to sa
y, ‘I love you.’
The words tinted me with a happiness that suffused my body, controlled it, so another Lulu resided inside my skin. One who didn’t care what others said when they saw her. One who smiled at them, smiled from within, from where my Dalia’s kisses, her soft words, soothed away the hurt and tamed the anger.
I learnt one miracle begets another. For soon, the holding camp girls no longer called me names. I was not The Freak to them, but Lulu. I even received a rare treat from the Prioress as a reward for good behaviour. I remember the crunchy sweetness of the Snacker—a chocolate-covered oat bar—that flooded my mouth as I took the first bite, and how all the girls in the holding camp laughed, their faces alight with understanding, as they watched me lick every smear of melted chocolate from my fingers.
There was never any love in Sub-Prioress Kapera, but she could not hurt me. She and the charity Prior, with his collection of used toys to make him virtuous, hated me with a fervour that perplexed me. They huddled together on the days he arrived to deliver his leftover kindness, and fell silent whenever I walked into the room. The Prior’s hands, his nails bitten down until the tips of his fingers shone red, patted and patted away at Sub-Prioress Kapera’s arm, her shoulder, anywhere he could reach. She leaned in towards him as I sidled past her to collect the box of toys he had brought. She whispered her hate to him and it pursued me as I left the room.
Those were the days my Dalia cried the most. My kisses were helpless against the storm of her tears. I wept with her. For her pain was my pain; her sorrow mine, and I protected her as best I could. I told her, over and over, how much I loved her, the Spirit King loved her, I loved her…
• • •
There was the day I walked past the small court, where Dalia and I spent so much time. I heard them arguing: Sub-Prioress Kapera, the charity Prior and Dalia.
‘Mind your own business, Sub-Prioress,’ the Prior said. ‘I made the vow of celibacy—I can break it.’
‘You break the Spirit King’s vow, not your own!’ Dalia cried.
I would not have Dalia unhappy, not amidst my own happiness. I did not walk past; I cracked open the door, and peered in to see Sub-Prioress Dalia, on her knees, in front of the altar. The other two faced her, their backs to the nova. They challenged her with a hatred that, in this quiet place, was obscene.
‘You’re jealous,’ he said to Dalia, and even from where I stood, I heard her gasp of pain. ‘Jealous because Kapera loves me.’
He slid his arm, his black-clad arm, around Sub-Prioress Kapera’s shoulders, black against the white of her pandita, black as the meanness of his spirit, and drew her next to his body. There was no end between his chuba and hers; they were a cruel reproachful figure, which knew no mercy.
Dalia pulled herself upright, with a simple dignity that made me aware of the kindred tears on my own face, as she said, ‘If I’m jealous, it’s no less an ezomo than yours.’
‘No less?’ Sub-Prioress Kapera snarled. She poked Dalia’s chest, poked those breasts that had succoured and saved me from the lonely hell the Kaperas of this world would have condemned me to. ‘You and the freak. Every night. That’s not breaking the Spirit King’s law?’
‘I spend a few hours giving the child some motherly cuddles and kisses. Where does it say in the Eden Book that loving a child is against the Spirit King’s law?’ Dalia said. ‘Cruelty is a human law. There’s no harm showing that poor child a mother’s love.’
‘A mother’s love!’ The Prior gave a bitter laugh. My hands clenched into fists as my hatred, absent for months, for years even, leapt into life again. ‘That’s not love,’ he said. ‘That’s consorting with a child marked by the Levid himself.’
I wanted to shout at him that it was love: a greater love than any he ever knew. But all that spewed out was the same rage that poured forth the day I earned the small round scar on my palm.
At the sound, they turned as one and stared as I clattered down the aisle. They were as frozen as the nova behind them; this one made of cold white porcelain, the emblematic coral bead aglow with the same fire fuelling my steps. I reached them and grabbed Sub-Prioress Kapera’s arm, the one that defiled Dalia’s breast.
In that smoky courthouse, redolent of herbs and incense, pandemonium erupted. The Prior snatched Kapera’s other arm and clawed at my face. I stepped back, back into Dalia’s arms, into the safety of my beloved’s arms.
The holy man was small, and weak, and Sub-Prioress Kapera was neither. As I released Kapera, he stumbled and pushed her away so she didn’t drag him down. She fell heavily and her head caught the end of a pitha. She lay inert, her pandita skewed from the force of her fall. Blood dribbled from her forehead, soaked invisibly into the black of her chuba, and her breath rattled out in a final, dying sigh.
Into the silence that followed, Dalia screamed and screamed and screamed. She stumbled to her knees beside the limp body of Kapera, and moaned, ‘My love, my love, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.’
‘I’m here,’ I said, and touched a hand lightly to her shoulder. She brushed it away, as one would brush away an irritating fly. With frantic hands, she stripped away Kapera’s pandita and began dabbing the sluggish blood from her face, all the while sobbing, ‘I love you, don’t leave me, I love you, love you, love you…’
The charity Prior turned to me, his face flushed, his breath heavy with panic and self-preservation. ‘You did this.’ He spat the accusation out, but my clenched fists told him I would not let him lie. ‘Disclose that you did it,’ he said. His flat, brown eyes followed me as I stooped beside Dalia to rest an arm around her shoulders and they held no love for either of us. ‘Or I’ll say Dalia did it.’
There was no time to respond. The door to the courthouse crashed open. The Prioress, and the rest of the holding camp, flooded in.
‘What happened?’ the Prioress asked as she knelt next to the two Controllers huddled on the floor. She lifted Sub-Prioress Kapera’s limp wrist, resting the tips of two fingers where there should have been a pulse.
‘Kapera is dead,’ she said and scowled at me as I stood over Dalia, her guardian or her comforter, I knew not which. The Prioress turned her gaze toward the holy man for answers, as he had known she would. ‘Who did this to her?’
There was a heartbeat when I nearly spoke the truth. I looked at the Prior. His lips shaped Dalia’s name: a wordless threat. Her shoulders shook beneath my arm and, unaware of her danger, she moaned for the loss of her lover. Her real love, which was never me, could never have been me. For hadn’t I always suspected that love for one such as I was a lie?
But I could not help myself. The urge to protect her was too strong and the flower of my love was not yet dead. I straightened, and stepped away from Dalia, who held the lifeless body of her ex-lover tight against her breast, her wet face covered in bloody stains. I ignored her, and the Prior, and stared straight at the Prioress. I willed her to believe; it was all too easy for her to believe.
‘I did it,’ I said. ‘I killed Sub-Prioress Kapera.’
I put on my idiot face and said nothing more, not even when the police arrived and subjected me to a harsh interrogation. No explanations were necessary. The truth would have been more difficult for them to accept than the lie. Almost as difficult as it was for me to accept Dalia’s silence when she let them take me away.
I did not look back.
I never saw her again. My beloved, my Dalia, whose betrayal lay not in loving another, but in never having loved me at all.
Chapter 5
Jamila (The Past)
“Fling away ambition.
By that sin fell the angels.”
The vision of a benevolent Spirit King stayed with Jamila. From the moment she first drew strength from it, gleaming above the old school gates, he became her beloved, her beacon, a candle to illuminate her deliverance from the obscurity of her life.
When her resolve trembled with doubt, she thought of the Spirit King’s pain. Forgotten by his people, betrayed by his
friends and sold into slavery as a sacrifice to save the tribe, the soundless scream etched on his death mask fortified her. She could bear whatever she had to, with the Spirit King at her side. To remind herself that he was always with her, she bought a wooden Spirit King necklace from the little shop at the local court.
She earned a meagre wage from the corner café where she worked on Saturdays. On the payday after she stared into the face of the Spirit King, she went straight to the court shop.
Prior Devin unlocked the small office safe and smiled at her eager shuffles. ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ he said, bemused by the determination in one so young. She had woken him from his rare afternoon sleep but he knew why she came straight from work: sometimes her father emptied her purse into his begging cup before she’d even changed into her house clothes. ‘This isn’t yours,’ her Papa said. ‘How must I feed the little ones when I haven’t got a job? Whatever you earn belongs to all of us.’
The Prior didn’t want her money. ‘I pay my way,’ Jamila insisted. ‘I’m not a charity case.’
They both knew she lied. Her mother, too ill from the coughing sickness to work and with a husband not good for anything but begging on a street corner, never had enough money to feed Jamila and her brothers. When Jamila’s wages from the café ran out, she went to the court for help. Understanding how her pride hurt her, the Prior took the coins, damp with her excitement, and handed over the pendant she wanted. Small as her thumb, its fine detail had the leopard skin coronet roughly imprinted around the Spirit King’s forehead, a coral plastic bead glued in the centre, a cheap replica of his divinity.
‘Thanks, Prior Devin.’ Her face and heart solemn, she slipped the pendant on its triple plastic string over her head. It hung low, for her neck—slender with youth—was too small. Jamila didn’t worry. She would grow into the wooden mask, and all it represented.
• • •
Five years later Jamila buried her mother in some dull, arid grave and worried about her younger siblings. She stroked her Spirit King-mask pendant, a perfect fit now she was older. She rubbed and rubbed the tiny coral bead and thought of Mama’s death and of what was left. Papa, his wife dead, didn’t even care enough to beg on the street corner. Three younger brothers, who all looked to her to replace their loss, and she, Jamila Anne Johnson: at nineteen years of age, what did she have to offer them?