I need to watch over her.
Let me help.
I don’t want your help. I can do it.
For days, she stayed in the bathroom with Solanum. He put food at the door and could hear her sniffing every bite. She wouldn’t drink anything he gave her, but he could hear her slurping at the faucet through the door.
The Alchemist thought, she will get over this. She will be normal again when all things pass.
* * *
Solanum came home from school when he was giving their neighbor, Mr. Johnson, a tonic that would extend his sessions of intercourse with Mrs. Johnson. The Alchemist had been providing this service and similar others to the neighborhood for quite some time, and when she was alive Sarah used the now dusty computer in the bedroom to sell his tonics and toxins to people all over the world. At present he only provided them to people who wrote to him or sent him checks. There were several packages piled up by the door that he had to remember to bring to the post office, but he kept forgetting.
Solanum glared at Mr. Johnson so obnoxiously the man started to tremble and almost dropped the tonic. The Alchemist crushed Mr. Johnson’s payment in his fist. Same time next week? he said to Mr. Johnson, who nodded and tipped his hat to an unresponsive Solanum.
When Mr. Johnson was gone, Solanum turned on the Alchemist. Why can’t you be a lawyer like Beth’s dad? she whined.
The Alchemist felt tense. Beth’s dad was the most boring man he’d ever had to interact with at rare school events that Solanum accidentally told him about. The man cared nothing for the property of bat entrails, for pity’s sake.
What’s so great about being a lawyer? he asked. I can turn trash into food. I can make light where there is shadow. I can bring the dead back to life! What lawyer does that?
She didn’t answer, but he heard the hiccup that preceded her sobs. Solanum, he said, then sighed and rubbed his face. He asked if she would like to assist him. She always used to, when she was younger, when she thought playing with bugs and rodent innards was fun.
She rubbed her eyes with her palms. They call us freaks, Dad.
Who does?
Everyone. And they’re right. They say you never leave the house and you’re a mad scientist who’s going to blow up the school.
The Alchemist frowned. That is patently untrue. I’m more than a scientist, I’m a—
You’re a freak and you made me one, too!
She ran up to her room and slammed the door. Then the Britney came. He caught some of the lyrics, something about being stronger than the day before. He scoffed and went into the bathroom to wash his face with cold water.
Some swan child, he thought. For all her intelligence, for all her compassion, Sarah never would have thought that by wishing their daughter resembled a swan she inadvertently wished her mean. Hadn’t Sarah known how aggressive and ornery those things were, for all their elegance, for all their grace?
He caught sight of the rubido bunched up in toilet paper in the middle of the wastebasket. Solanum’s rubido. He bent down and examined it. Smelled it. Exactly as he feared, it had fermented in her body. Yet, there was power in blood, even clotted, old and black. And there was so much power in this sample. It was half his, half Sarah’s. All sorts of love wrapped up in used cotton. He closed his eyes and fisted it, feeling inexplicably guilty, like he was doing something terribly wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.
There is nothing wrong with love, he told himself. Nothing wrong with love.
He carried it into the basement and put it in a pot of boiling water. There was still some of Solanum stained on his hand, and since blood rituals always needed a greater sacrifice than a simple cut, he thrust his hand into the boil and held it there until he almost passed out. He cried out to Sarah until the only red on his hand was his own bubbling tissue.
Just the citrine, the gold, remained elusive, he thought, hunched over, cradling his hand. Then she would come home.
* * *
Solanum frowned when she saw his bandaged hand.
You’ll have to help me, he told her. That only made her frown more, but she stiffly nodded.
He felt uncomfortable asking her to touch Sarah’s ashes, or the congealed blood, so he had her hold crystallized moth eyes up to a magnifying glass.
Find twenty of them shaped like triangles, he said. Ninety degrees if possible.
He handed her a thin piece of metal with a tipped edge so fine it was barely visible. He said, Carefully, and I mean carefully, make a hole through the middle after you find them. Gentle. Don’t crack them.
She worked quietly for a time, and he thought it nice. They were bonding.
She said, If you’re going to be a freak anyway, why don’t you make something that’ll make me pretty?
He looked at her, really looked at her. There was nothing overtly wrong with her skin or hair or eyes, so how could she not be pretty? But Solanum knew more about these things than he did, he supposed.
Alchemy doesn’t work that way, he said. You have to give something to get something. You know how it is.
She put the moth eyes down. It isn’t fair, she said. How come I don’t look like Mom?
He thought about how, when she announced her pregnancy, Sarah held his hand, even though his was covered in cat intestine, and told him not all magic was worth the sacrifice. It had just been some stray they’d tracked for hours and Sarah had cried over it even though she wasn’t a cat person. Her face was blank as she watched him hang it up, its head still together, its body little more than bloody strings, but her eyes had been soaking wet.
He’d wanted to cut off his toe that night, said it was worth a perfect delivery of a perfect baby, but she had said she wanted to leave it to chance. She should have let him cut off his toe.
He thought about Sarah’s soft hands, and he said, She was beautiful.
Oh. And I’m not? Solanum asked.
I didn’t say that.
You just did! And I don’t look like her so I’m ugly.
Your logic is very flawed sometimes. The Alchemist made to rub his eye with his damaged and swore when it ached.
So now I’m flawed and I’m fat and ugly. She slammed her hands on the table, mixing the moth eyes she had drilled amongst the others. Several fell to the floor. She said, All you care about are your stupid gross bugs!
Solanum, you stop it right now! I didn’t say anything like that. He swore again when he involuntarily clenched his hands. He said, Maybe your mother was more beautiful than you, but only because she listened when other people spoke and didn’t put words in their mouth or listen to shit music all the damn time. If I could instantly transform you into someone good I’d give anything for it, believe me!
He regretted it, but he stood rigid and still when she started to cry, when she pushed herself off the stool with deliberate slowness and walked upstairs. The door closed gently behind her.
He wanted to go after her, but helplessness weighed him down. He didn’t know what incantation he could say to heal her, to bring them to convalescence, or what part of himself he could disconnect from his body to fix all worldly wounds.
* * *
Postpartum, the stethoscope men said at the checkup. You need to take it easy.
It feels overwhelming, Sarah said. All the time.
It’ll pass, they told her. Take these.
They gave Sarah pills that made her pass out and stare at walls. But she moved out of the bathroom. When he went in there for the first time in weeks the bathtub drain was clogged with excrement.
She needs to stay on them, the doctors said. Don’t miss a dose.
He hated the way the pills made her listless and content, a dense sort of happiness. He couldn’t see himself anymore in her, not in her eyes, not layered in her. She showed him the cesarean scar and said, You can touch it if you want to. This is where they took S
olanum out of me, and she sounded so pleased. She’ll spread wings. She’ll block out everything with her wings, you’ll see.
Baby Solanum had no wings, just fat little arms and a scrunched face. The pills, he thought, were not helping; they were making her delusional.
Where are you, he thought. And where am I in you? He could not see himself at the edges of her scar, or at her eyes, or when she craned her long neck and opened her mouth; there was none of him peeking out inside of her, just her tonsils, and darkness.
It was easy to replace some of the pills with his own: little amounts of ambergris and rat urine, his eyelashes, and the small white flakes of skin that fell off of Solanum. He replaced just the ones on top first because she would not let the bottle out of her sight for very long, and he had to wait until she was turned to the faucet to fill a glass of water.
They were supposed to work, of course they were supposed to work, but she had said, They’re not working, not like they used to.
Give it time, he said. Just give it time.
She took them all, his and the others he had not touched yet, in one big gulp that drowned the whole house.
* * *
It took him weeks with his bad hand to find and drill enough moth eyes. Solanum had barely spoken to him and he had not known what to say to her, so beyond putting food on the table and cleaning half-eaten plates he wouldn’t have known she lived there. She didn’t slam the doors anymore and if she listened to the Britney woman it must have been very quietly. He took careful notes in his notebook, writing and underlining depressed each day that went by without a sound from her.
He told himself that once Sarah was back everything would be OK. He told himself this every hour.
At least the alchemy was going well. The citrinitas eluded him but he was hopeful. He kept the blood in seal-tight tubes in the refrigerator and hollowed out the fluorescent tubes he had purchased when he had gotten Solanum’s tampons. The citrinitas would hold everything together and maintain the burn, he was sure.
He didn’t know Solanum was home until she started screaming. He had become so used to silence he feared the worst. He took the stairs two at a time and saw her, whole and sound, and thanked any god that was listening that she was OK.
What? he asked, testy and grateful.
Look, look! She was pointing at the television. A breaking news special was on. OUT OF CONTROL? it said. They were showing footage of a nonchalant bald woman wearing a tank top and sweat pants at a tattoo parlor, blandly looking through art.
The commentators said, From her sloppy appearance to her new ’do, has Britney lost her mind?
The Alchemist scratched his head. Is this the same Britney person you like? he asked. Maybe it wasn’t. This woman looked tangible, a far cry from the plasticine woman on the posters in Solanum’s room.
She nodded and said, She looks just like me, now. Solanum went up to the TV and traced her hand around the bald woman’s protruding belly.
Well, maybe, the Alchemist conceded. Except the hair.
Solanum smiled up at him and ran upstairs, giggling as she went. It had been so long since he had heard that noise that he followed her up the steps, mesmerized. In his bathroom, she picked up his electric razor and blew loose chin hairs away from the blades.
I can do alchemy, too, she said.
She put the razor to the top of her head and clicked it on. Sarah had bought him that razor. He watched, fascinated and lost, as she dragged it through her head in uneven, slow strokes. Long chunks of her hair fell on the floor. It was golden and fine, like silk.
Carefully, he took the razor from her hand and, even though she protested at first, he cut away the chunks she missed. She smiled up at him, really smiled, her teeth as white as Sarah’s.
Thank you, she said, shaking her head. I feel so light! She gave him a hug and held on for a long while.
It was less nerve-wracking to pocket her hair than her blood. She watched him curiously as he explained that she had the citrinitas in her all this time. Golden light wrapped up in thin, long strands. She smiled at that. He tentatively asked her if she wanted to help him and she nodded and followed him down into the basement.
As she watched, he took the ash and the blood and mixed it with purified water into a thick paste. He rubbed it on the surface of the moth eyes until they were entirely covered. With a needle thinner than a pin, he asked Solanum to thread it with her hair and put the moth eyes on the strands, tying them off at equidistant points, until they were strung up like a necklace. He attached this string to the inside of a fluorescent light tube and covered the ends.
They watched as the moth eyes started to flicker and smoke, and the strand of Solanum’s hair shined. He explained that the eyes, the blood (he did not say whose), and hair would create an athanor, a self-feeding furnace to maintain temperature, but when the ash burned up it would explode and send out a signal, a beacon into the place Sarah remained, and she would see it and miss them and come back.
But what do you have to give up? she asked, bobbing her bald head up and down.
Remember what I said about moths flying into the sun?
She shrugged.
It mesmerized them, Solanum. They couldn’t look away. And as they flew up their eyes melted, but that was OK because they could still feel the wonderful heat.
Daddy, she said. Daddy.
He could feel her mood plummeting, so with a whoop, he picked Solanum up under her arms and lifted her, ignoring the sting in his bad hand.
I’m too heavy! she cried, but she laughed when he put her on his shoulders and wrapped her hands around his head.
The light from the tube was brighter than fluorescent, and it was hot, like a kiln. He told Solanum to close her eyes and just feel, but he kept his own eyes intent on the light. To make the magic work, the Alchemist had to keep his mind solely on his goal: he imagined Sarah’s ashes coming together, clumping and reforming. He remembered how cool her skin was when he lay next to her in bed and she would listen to his ramblings of color and creation and, when he talked too much that he could not turn himself off, she laid her hands over his eyes until all was blackness, and he could rest.
He imagined the ashes lightening from dark gray to a soft white, the color of her skin, and he remembered how Sarah dipped her head over her protruding stomach, her golden hair covering her face, her hand reaching out to take his and place it on her belly. Listen, she said. And feel. This is my magic. Swan magic, beautiful magic.
When he imagined the shell of her skin stretched out and pale, he thought of the blood running inside, filling up her veins, swirling mad in her heart until it moved on its own. He imagined a river of blood flowing within her, sealed up this time so that nothing inside of her could flow out, and she could contain him in her, and she could contain her little baby girl again.
And poor Solanum, who had a graceless neck and a mean, pinched face, but when she was happy could out-smile the mother she had only seen pictures of. Solanum, who —when she was five— dug up hundreds of pill bugs in the yard and kept them in glass jars because she insisted that they could be used in a happiness tonic to make the Alchemist smile (and, indeed, when she shook the bottle and whooped at the sound they made, they could). And when she was just born and opened her eyes and looked at him, those gray-blue muddled eyes, he had seen both Sarah and his daughter at once in her red face, looking at him with the same curious stare, and then Solanum had shut those eyes, balled her fists and wailed.
Daddy! Solanum cried, You’re going to drop me!
He grabbed onto her legs and held on tight. Solanum wrapped her arms around his head and burrowed herself into him. He struggled to imagine his wife while Solanum squirmed on his shoulders. And they were so much alike, how could he differentiate them in his head? So he thought of their golden hair, the strands that had wrapped around his hands when he slept, or the hair he bra
ided into two thick strands each morning for years, the hair that always smelled like warm cooking, and the golden strands he helped shear and used to string up moths’ eyes.
Oh, Daddy, Solanum said, it’s so beautiful. Can you see it? The light?
Solanum! Don’t look!
It’s so bright.
It was brighter than a Ferris wheel, brighter than a spotlight, or the sun. It blazed into him, a strange magic, and he fell to his knees. He tried so hard not to blink, but the tears falling to his cheeks burned him, and his eyes were drying out like the moth eyes had under the heat lamp. He wailed, and with one last cry to Solanum to please close her eyes, please be an obedient daughter, he bowed his head.
Solanum started laughing, Oh Dad, why aren’t you looking? It’s so lovely.
She slid off his shoulders, burning him and making him yelp when she moved across his skin. He could feel her standing in front of him, blocking the blaze, and he reached out and grabbed her to pull her close to him, but where he touched her she felt like flame.
The light went out as quickly as it had burst into being. He heard the smoke from the tube hiss to the ceiling, and he reached out again to touch Solanum. Instead of her skin he felt something cold and foreign, and when he opened his eyes he cried out.
He crawled around on his hands and knees. He put his hands on her cold feet and tried to burrow his face as far as he could into the unyielding metal of her body. Above him, Solanum’s arms were raised high, but they were not her arms, exactly. They were long and willowy, a grown woman’s arms, the kind that were long enough to cradle children and hush the eyes of their sleeping husband. They gleamed harsh gold, as did her smiling face that was hers, and not hers, but a face she had the potential to grow into, stunted into a golden mask. The belly spilling out under the stiff shirt was both his daughter and the home that cradled her. Sarah, he whispered. Solanum. How could he have imagined Solanum was anything but that beautiful bird Sarah so wished for and so resembled when she slept, her head craning away from her body?
The Ibex Girl of Qumran
Magic for Unlucky Girls Page 9