Queens of Wings & Storms

by Angela Sanders et al.

  Kasi had told me if I needed some breathing space, I was always welcome at her place, but I knew LeeAnne wasn’t someone who’d be happy hosting a long-term guest. I knew I was pretty much on my own.

  I’d been saving every single dime of extra money that came my way for the better part of three years. Every once in a while I’d turn the cash into a money order or load it into one of those pre-paid credit cards you can get at a kiosk at CVS. I kept the cards and the burner phone I’d bought at school. I knew there was a possibility that she might convince the headmaster that I was using drugs and force a locker search, so I kept most of my stash of plastic cash in the library, secreted between the pages of books no one had checked out in this century. There was always a chance that someone would stumble across them, but I figured it was low risk scenario. I had intended to use it to get my emancipated minor status.

  Even though I wanted to wait until summer break, it got so bad between Elle and me that I was ready to go early. And just before I took off, Elle went nuts on the dog for having an accident in the kitchen—on the tile floor, which was easy to clean up. Poor JoJo was cringing in the corner by the dishwasher, her body language totally submissive.

  “It was an accident, Elle,” I said as I picked the dog up. I could feel her trembling as I cuddled her. “You’re scaring JoJo.”

  Elle turned to me and her face was scary. “She’s got to learn,” she said. And that’s when I saw it. Elle was wearing one of the low-cut tank tops she favored to show off her fake tits. And suddenly I could see the tumor growing on her right breast. It looked like a tiny, angry red spider clutching the flesh just on the side of her nipple. The sight of it was so arresting that I stopped in the middle of what I was saying.

  “Elle,” I said.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “Elle, you need to get a mammogram right now,” I said. “Get an appointment for tomorrow.”

  She looked at me like I was crazy, and I felt crazy, but I also knew I was right and that what I was seeing was not a hallucination.

  Of course she was angry. Of course she thought I was playing some kind of evil game just to freak her out.

  “You’re just spiteful,” she said.

  “I’m serious Elle. I can see it.”

  I thought she might slap me, but she managed to stop herself. Probably because dad was supposed to come home for a few days, and it would be hard to explain a bruise to him. “Oh Roisin just walked into a door. Clumsy Roisin.”

  “I wish you had died,” she said, showing she could be spiteful too.

  “That makes two of us,” I said. “But really, you need to have your boob checked out. I know how fond you are of them.”

  With that zinger, I turned and stomped off to my bedroom.

  It was the weekend, so I slept late the next morning. When I finally got up, I saw that dad’s car was gone and so was Elle. I made myself lunch and fooled around on the computer, but I couldn’t settle. All I could think about was where Elle was and what she was going to find out.

  She finally came home around four. The moment she saw me she went into attack mode.

  “What did you do?” she shrieked, hitting me over the head with her Prada purse.

  “I covered my head with my hands thinking she looked like some sort of monster with her face all contorted by rage.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I yelled back. “What are you talking about?”

  My denial just made her angrier. Then I realized. The doctor.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “I have a tumor,” she said, anger abruptly melting away into something that sounded like defeat. “He did a biopsy right there.”

  And suddenly, I didn’t just see the tumor, I saw her fear. She was afraid she was going to die. And she was right. I could see death sitting on her shoulder.

  Her face crumpled. “It’s malignant.”

  I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if she would accept anything I said. On impulse, I moved to give her a hug and she recoiled. Fine, bitch, I thought, but I felt guilty about it. Later, I heard her calling my father from their bedroom. “Mastectomy” was the only word I could understand.

  According to an email Dad sent her and copied me on, he’d tried to rearrange his work schedule, but some sort of complication came up and he had to fly out the night before Elle’s operation. I was so horrified I called him. “Dad, you’ve got to be here for the operation.”

  He’d been exasperated. “The doctor thinks there’s a good chance the tumor is contained. She’s going to be out of it. I’ll be back by the time she’s in the recovery room.”

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  “I hardly think you know what’s best for Elle.”

  “I know she wants you here.”

  “I’ll bring her something nice,” he said. As if a piece of jewelry is something you want to celebrate your mastectomy. I wonder if they made a greeting card for that.

  Dad rang off with more insincere words and I went to the master bedroom and knocked. “Come in,” she said, and her voice sounded ragged. I knew she’d been crying.

  “Can I fix you something to eat?” I asked.

  “Not hungry,” she said.

  “Is there anyone you’d like me to call?” I cast around for the name of one of her trophy wife friends. “Marla? Simone?”

  She kind of snorted. “There isn’t anyone,” she said.

  “Then I guess you’re stuck with me.” She looked at me angrily.

  “Are you enjoying this?” she asked.

  I was horrified. “No,” I said, and I realized I really meant it. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” She didn’t really believe it, but she let it drop. “You want some garlic chicken and fried plantains from Versailles?” I asked, because I knew that was her favorite comfort food. She had said she wasn’t hungry, but I was hoping I could tempt her.

  ‘No,” she said. “I’m not supposed to eat for twelve hours before the surgery.”

  I couldn’t believe they were going to do the operation on Sunday, but I guess her doctor didn’t mess around. “What time do we need to leave tomorrow?”

  “We have to be there at three,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”

  It took us almost an hour to do the paperwork for Elle’s check-in. I say “we,” because she kept excusing herself to go to the bathroom. She always peed a lot when she was nervous about something. She was sent to a prep room where she was told to take off all her clothes and put on a hospital gown. The nurses gave her some pressure socks and fetched a warming blanket when she complained it was cold. Nobody offered me a warming blanket and I’d begun to wish I’d at least brought a sweater. But outside it was eighty degrees.

  Elle looked so forlorn sitting on the bed that I reached out and took her hand. To my surprise, she let me. “Your father didn’t even text me,” she said. My heart sank.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. A nurse came in then with yet more paperwork. Elle signed a couple dozen more documents. You’d think that hospitals could figure out a way to just fill out forms once. And I had to sign paperwork too. “Will you be waiting?” one of the nurses asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Relationship?”

  “Daughter.” The word had just slipped out. But I wasn’t sure if “stepdaughter” had any standing and I didn’t want her to wake up all alone.

  After the nurse left, Elle’s anxiety level rose. “I know why they don’t want you to eat before they operate. You get so nervous you puke.”

  She really did look like she might puke. And her face was almost as white as the paper sheets on the bed. “In a couple of hours you’ll be an Amazon,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I told them to take both of them. I have the markers. They’re going to take my uterus too.”

  And then she started to cry for the first time since we’d arrived. “I’ll never be able to have children.” Personally, I didn’t see what the
big deal was, but I could tell she was broken-hearted about it. I patted her hand and tried to think of something to say. I then I saw Dai out of the corner of my eye, standing in the corridor, dressed in a white coat and blending in.

  “I’ll be right back, “ I said, then left the room. “May I have a word, doctor?” I asked Dai softly.

  “Of course Ms. Quinn.” He drew me to the side of the corridor where we could speak without being heard.

  “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  “She’s going to survive the surgery, but while in recovery, she’s going to crash.” He looked at the wall-mounted clock. “In seven hours, she’ll be dead.”

  I looked at him, absolutely horrified. “That can’t happen,” I said. “It’ll kill my father.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He and Elle are headed for divorce.”

  Now that Dai had said it out loud, I realized I already knew that. Even before I’d heard about Charisse, I knew that things weren’t going well between them. Seriously, who has to go out of town on business as much as he did?

  “There has to be something you can do,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “But there’s something you can do.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded again, fixing me with his silver-blue eyes. “You walked through the gates, Roisin. And then you came back. This is why.”

  “This what?”

  “To show people the way back when they leave too soon.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said, but even as I protested, I knew that wasn’t true.

  “It’s a lot like riding a bike,” Dai said, though I wondered if he’d ever ridden a bike in his life. “Once you’ve done it, your body remembers.”

  “I need to be in the operating room with her,” I said. He nodded in the direction of the nurse’s station where Elle’s doctor and the anesthesiologist were shooting the shit with the head nurse. I walked over to them. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Roisin Quinn. I need to be in the operating room with my mother.” I put a lot of emphasis on “need.”

  “No,” her doctor said.

  “I must insist,” I said, but clearly my attempt at a Jedi mind trick wasn’t working. I could hear Dai sigh and then he joined me. “Ms. Quinn, there you are.”

  I turned to him. “Doctor!”

  Dai smiled at me and then looked at Elle’s doctor. “Roisin needs to be attending her mother during the operation.”

  “Of course, doctor,” Elle’s doctor said. Then he turned to the head nurse. “Callie, see that Ms. Quinn is scrubbed up.”

  “Thank you doctor,” I said to Dai and threw my arms around him in a quick hug. Surprised, it took him a moment, but he hugged me back. I could feel the warmth of his skin through the lab coat he wore and the chill I’d felt since arriving melted. He felt so good. I caught Callie’s scandalized expression out of the corner of my eye but ignored her. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and practically ran down the corridor back to Elle.

  It was dark in the operating room except for lights focused on Elle’s torso. Her body had been draped so only her breasts were on display and I flashed to a memory of some science fiction movie I’d seen where female android parts were laid out just like that. The thought chilled me.

  She’d been fearful about the anesthetic. She’d never had surgery before, not even on her teeth, and the idea of being knocked out terrified her. Just before the mask when over her face, I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. I kept my hand on hers so that the minute she went under…I went with her.

  We ended up in a vast gray space where the floor—ground?—was the same color as the sky—ceiling?—and it was impossible to tell where the horizon was. It was warm and quiet, but somehow I found it ominous. I knew we were in the place Dai called “the realm beyond Between.”

  I heard a noise and turned around to see Elle curled up in a fetal position, whimpering with pain or fear or both. She didn’t seem to see or hear me as I approached. I felt rather than saw Dai appear beside me. At least he looked like Dai to me.

  “Pop Pop?” Dad had told me Elle’s parents died in a car accident when she was ten and she’d been raised by her grandparents..

  I looked at Dai. His expression was loving. “I’m here Ellie.”

  “Pop Pop,” she said again, and reached out for a hug.

  I noticed how thin her arms were as she embraced the man she thought was her grandfather.. Had she been losing weight? I hadn’t noticed.

  Then, like a cut in a movie, what I saw shifted to a different scene. Now Elle had turned into a little girl kneeling with her head down as two adults stood over her. She was wearing a dress that was too small for her, and I suddenly understood that she’d grown up wearing hand-me-downs and that was why she had no love for my “thrifter” fashion. She was also on the chunky side of plump, with a bad case of cystic acne and braces.

  The whole trifecta of physical attributes that get a kid bullied, I thought. No wonder she was so fanatical about what she ate.

  I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but I could see their words coming out as red sparks. Every time one of the sparks hit Elle, she flinched. I looked around for Dai, but he’d disappeared. I walked towards the trio and the adults looked up. One was a hard-faced bottle blonde who was so thin the tendons on her arms stood out like steel cables. Her companion was a tall man with full, wet-looking lips, like he was wearing gloss. His eyes narrowed as he saw me.

  “Go away,” he said.

  “No.”

  Elle lifted her head. “Please don’t make them mad at me,” she said.

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” I said.

  The man laughed, spittle coming out of those fleshy red lips.

  “She’s just a stupid little cunt,” the woman said. And again, Elle flinched.

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  The woman bristled and puffed up like an angry bird. “Don’t you tell me what to do,” she said. “We’re her legal guardians.”

  “You don’t deserve her,” I said to them and to Elle I said, “Come on, we’re going home.”

  ‘Home?” she repeated, like it was a concept unfamiliar to her.

  I reached out my hand and she grabbed it like a lifeline, which in a way, I guess it was.

  “Let go of her,” the woman said.

  “No,” I said. The woman looked at the man and before I could turn, he walloped me on the side of the face with a fist that felt huge.

  So that was the dynamic, the woman was mean, and the guy was the mean and stupid muscle.

  It hurt, but I was pretty sure that nothing could permanently hurt me beyond the Between. I guess I was going to find out.

  I pulled Elle to her feet. She was wearing a hospital gown open at the back over scrub pants. She was barefoot. It wasn’t cold, but she was shivering.

  ‘She’s not going anywhere,” the woman said, and the guy raised his hand to hit me again.

  I turned to face him. “Don’t hit me again,” I said, and it wasn’t a request. To my surprise, he kind of scrabbled backwards, as if I’d zapped him with a taser.

  This made the woman turn on him and she screeched and battered him as Elle and I walked away.

  “You haven’t won,” the woman cackled. “He’ll find you. He’ll kill you.”

  He who, I wondered.

  We kept walking. I had no idea where I was going but eventually we came to what looked like a curtain of vines growing in the middle of nowhere. The Gate? I wondered, realizing there was only one way to find out. And wondering what would happen if I chose the wrong direction. Would we end up in hell?

  As we approached the green curtain, I could feel Elle tense up. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “I’m with you.”

  A debt must be paid

  Elle survived. Dad came home about a week after her operation, bearing gifts for both of us and full of tender words for her. The words sounded sincere, but if I looke
d at him in just the right way, I could see black spiders tumbling out of his mouth as he spoke. That visual made me pay close attention to the intention behind his words, and what I heard there, I didn’t like.

  Elle and I existed in kind of a truce and life went on in a seemingly normal way. But weird stuff was happening at school.

  I still hadn’t had the plastic surgery that Dr. Patel planned. Elle had relented, but I’d gotten a stubborn infection in one of the affected sections of my face and she wanted to wait until that was perfectly healed.

  As a result, I’d had to endure a fair amount of unwanted attention. I’d learned that the best way to deal with everyone’s morbid curiosity was to answer the questions I could and just ignore the others.

  When Zondra first approached me, I thought her attention was annoying, but benign. “Hey Zondra,” I said when I saw her hanging around my locker. She looked surprised.

  “You know my name?” I sighed. I really had been a mean girl back in the day and I felt like I was going to have to spend the rest of my life making amends for that.

  Of course I know your name,” I said. “We’ve had classes together since fourth grade. You did that book report on Maurice and His Educated Rodents which was my favorite book.

  “Mine too,” she said.

  “Great minds think alike.”

  I thought she might crack a smile at that, but instead, she just kept looking at me in a judgy kind of way. Okay, I thought. Nice talking to you. As I turned away, she suddenly blurted out, “Is it true you can see the future?

  Oh shit. I turned back. “No.” Normally, I would have left it at that, but something in her face told me that she hadn’t asked the question idly, so I relented. “I can’t see the future, but sometimes I can see things,” I admitted.

  “For real?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad things?” I flashed to my vision of the red spider on Elle’s breast.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Come outside with me. I need a smoke.”