by Mav Skye
“Why was he so interested in me?”
“Well, your father was The Werewolf Rapist. There were plenty of those who believed he could truly shapeshift. Maybe Doctor Morgan was one of them.”
Chloe sat back on the couch, surprised, speechless. Tanya leaned forward and took Chloe’s hand. “Doctor Morgan tried to convince your mother to abort. She was older, way past the point of bearing children—over fifty. But Ionia would have none of that. There was an odd turn of phrase she told Doctor Morgan and I that day she declared she was going to keep you. It was so odd, and I don’t know to this day what it means.”
“What did she say?” asked Chloe.
Tanya said, ‘The dancing beast tricks the eyes, but not the heart.’”
Without thinking, the words fell from Chloe’s lips. “Uktena.”
Tanya’s eyebrows raised. “The horned serpent.”
Chloe nodded, a shiver snaking down her spine. It was as if her mother was the beast itself, beautiful and filled with wonder, but she also contained an illness. She bore the sadness of the world in her heart and it would later poison her mind.
Diana said, “With your mother’s legendary creatures and your father’s shapeshifting ability, perhaps you could be an entirely different creature altogether, Chloe Sevenstars.”
Chloe raised her eyebrows at Diana. “I thought you said your daughter was the writer in the family.”
Diana grinned. “That’s the version I would like to believe in.”
Chloe shook her head. “Why?”
Diana leaned back in her chair, an expression of joy on her face and a soft smile on her lips. “Just imagine. I can see the title now: The Werewolf’s Daughter.”
Dance! whispered Mama Nola.
The sound of blowing noses filled the room, and the women looked at each other and smiled through the tears.
Wes said, “I’ll make some coffee.”
He left the room, and they heard the comforting sounds of cabinet doors opening and running water.
Tanya said, “The crying started shortly after we found out she was pregnant with you. She would sit at the kitchen table and cry and cry. And when I would ask her what was wrong she’d say, ‘Uktena.’ I didn’t know what to do or what was happening. I thought it was the pregnancy.”
Chloe remembered the crying spells her Etsi would have. The only one who could console her was Joey.
Tanya continued, “When she was six months pregnant, I came home early one day and found her dressed as a clown, dancing away in the living room. I asked her what she was doing, and she said it was time for Mr. Jingles’ performance. I asked her who Mr. Jingles was, and she said, ‘I am.’ She gave me this wild animal crazy look, and that’s when I began to worry.”
Chloe said, “I don’t understand.”
Tanya took her hand. “I don’t know why she started doing this. I brought it up to Doctor Morgan, and he said it was a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He had thought that being older, the stress the pregnancy brought on her body along with the hormones had something to do with it. He said it would go away as soon as she had you. But it didn’t go away. It got worse.”
“Oh,” said Chloe. She didn’t know what to think about this new insight into her Etsi. Was she responsible for her mother’s behavior?
As if she could read Chloe’s mind, Tanya said, “It wasn’t your fault. At first, I thought Doctor Morgan was right, that it was brought on by hormones, but then, I started suspecting that it was an early onset of dementia.”
Wes brought out three cups of hot coffee and handed them out to the women, then went to check on the kids.
Tanya sipped her coffee. “After you were born, she stopped crying. As far as I knew, she wasn’t dressing up anymore. I passed my bar exam. The law firm where I had interned hired me the day after.” Tanya smiled. “Those were the best days of my life back then. To work at a job I loved, then come home and hold you and see your mother’s face lit up like a firefly every time you smiled or cooed.” She gazed at Chloe lovingly, and Chloe smiled back.
“She went back to work at the chocolate factory two years after you were born. The schedule worked well between us. I would spend the evenings with you, and she’d take care of you during the day. And then, one afternoon I came home early and heard you crying. I had a bad feeling about it, so instead of coming through the front door, I walked around to the back and looked through your bedroom window.
“You were dressed like a clown. She had painted your face half white, half black and put a headband with bunny ears on your head. Ionia was also dressed up as a clown. She wore the same makeup and bunny ears. She had this circus music playing. She clapped her hands and told you to dance, but you didn’t want to.”
Chloe closed her eyes. She could hear her mother’s words in her mind even now. Dance, dance, dance!
“Are you sure you want to hear any more of this, Chloe? You look upset.”
Chloe swallowed and nodded. The truth was that this was too much, but she had asked for it hadn’t she?
“This alone was disturbing to me. I didn’t like it. I realized that Ionia must be replaying something they had forced her to do back when she performed in that wild west show. Our mother told me about them dressing her up as the Clown Girl, but Mr. Jingles…this was a result from something far darker, far more ingrained in her psyche.”
Chloe asked, “What do you mean?”
“Mother only told me once. Buckskin Henry was obsessed with Ionia from a very young age. He spent evenings dressing her up as he pleased, forcing her to…perform.” Tanya paused, collected herself, then continued, “She told me that he would paint her face half white, half black with a zigzag down the middle. He’d pin back her hair and attach taxidermy bunny ears to the sides of her head with bobby pins and put her in striped pants with suspenders. He told Ionia that she wasn’t a little a girl anymore, but a demon boy named Jingles. When she was Jingles, she could do whatever came into her mind, granted that she obeyed the instructions that were told to her.
“Buckskin Henry knew there were souls even darker and sicker than his own. It was this particular market he tapped into with his monstrous sideshow creation he named, Jingles.
“Jingles fascinated the darkness just as much as Clown Girl dazzled the light. Between traveling and performances, Buckskin Henry sold Jingles to the highest bidder of the most privileged in exchange for favors that money can’t buy legally.”
Chloe said, “I can’t believe this.”
“I do,” said Diana.
“Trouble started when one of these privileged men was found bloody and butchered in his sheets. Your mother, still dressed as Jingles and covered in blood, claimed someone had entered the room through the window during the night. There was doubt that the little girl had the strength to cause the…amputations. It was chalked up to the numerous enemies the man had.
“But, a month later, it happened again. This time, the body wasn’t in the bedroom, it was scattered in the woods behind the hotel.”
“When it happened two more times, Buckskin Henry stopped selling her, and the murders stopped.”
“If this is true,” said Wes, “why didn’t she kill Buckskin Henry? He was worse to her than any of those men.”
“Stockholm syndrome,” Chloe said.
Tanya said, “Bingo.”
“What’s that?” asked Wes.
Diana said, “It’s when a victim starts relating and sympathizing with her captor or abuser—it’s a survival mechanism. It’s the route the brain takes to process what’s going on without shutting down.”
Wes spat out. “That’s fucking messed up.”
Tanya said, “That day when I looked through your bedroom window and saw the way you and she were dressed, and that you were crying and frightened, I knew I couldn’t leave you with her alone again.”
Chloe rubbed her eyes and sighed. “She wasn’t just dressed as Mr. Jingles. That’s too simple. You saw something else.” It wasn’t a question,
but more like a knowing.
What her Aunt said next startled her.
“She brought a hatchet from around her back and screamed at you to dance. I raced around through the back door, rushed into your bedroom and picked you up. As soon as your mother saw me, she dropped the hatchet and began crying.
“I left with the intention of never letting you go back.”
Chloe lifted her hands to her cheeks. “Oh.” Once again, she didn’t know how to feel or what to think. She could hear her mother’s voice in the back of her mind. Dance, dance, dance!
Diana interrupted, “I bet you were charged for kidnapping.”
Tanya took a long drink of her coffee and turned to Diana. “That’s exactly what they charged me with. I hadn’t thought of it as kidnapping. I was saving a little girl from my crazy sister. I honestly thought she would have harmed you, Chloe. Not because she didn’t love you—she did, more than anything, but because of her illness. After I had left with you, Ionia washed her face, put the costume away, and goodness knows where she hid the hatchet. She called the Police and told them I’d kidnapped her daughter. I didn’t get far on foot. They picked us up within hours.
“I told them why I took you. They sent CPS to interview Ionia but found her sound of mind. She still had the job at the factory, and was seen fit to care for you.”
“She filed for a restraining order and pressed charges against me. My law firm supported me and they were able to get the judge to drop the charges in exchange for a no contact order. I agreed.”
“Ionia moved to the Misty Goose Trailer Court with you. She made sure that I would never be in your life.”
Tanya shook her head and squeezed Chloe’s hand. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you all those years. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through back then. How alone you must have felt. I tried Chloe, I tried—”
“Oh, Aunt Tanya,” Chloe embraced her, and they both shed tears.
Diana dabbed her tears away, occasionally blowing her nose.
Chloe said, “How on Earth did you get custody of me after she passed?”
Tanya said, “It’s the craziest thing. She had a will, and it didn’t say much, but in the will, she requested that if she should pass away that she wanted me to have custody of you. She revoked the court orders years before. Deep down, Ionia knew that I loved her and that I loved you. She must have realized at some point that she was ill.”
Chloe shook her head at the bizarreness of it all. “So, she was forced to dance as the Clown Girl at this wild west show and kill her own people with a hatchet.”
Tanya blotted her eyes with a tissue. “Yes.”
“And Buckskin Henry dressed her up privately to perform as Mr. Jingles, and pimped her as a prostitute.”
“I believe so, yes.”
Chloe said, “She must have dissociated.”
Tanya’s eyes went dark. “There’s more to your mother’s story.”
“Tell me,” said Chloe.
“Do you want to know? I’ve already said so much.”
“Of course, I do. I want to know everything.” And Chloe meant it.
“I want to know too,” said Diana.
Tanya looked to Diana, and then to Chloe, “What I will tell you next is extremely disturbing. Are you sure you’re ready for it?”
Chloe and Diana nodded.
“As you know, Ionia drew crowds in by the hundreds. Everyone wanted to see the beautiful girl clown that danced like an angel and killed like the devil.”
Chloe felt tears coming to her cheeks again.
Tanya said, “Mother would tell me how Ionia would weep uncontrollably for hours at a time and repeat, ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone.’”
Tanya sighed. “The other performers didn’t like Ionia. They called her a beast, a murderer, a wild animal. Our mother would soothe Ionia by telling her stories of the Uktena. She told Ionia that when she danced for the audience to pretend it was for her and nobody else. So, that is exactly what Ionia did. When Ionia danced, she pictured herself dancing in the clouds with her mother as her only spectator. When she murdered her people, it wasn’t her but the great Uktena inside her.”
Diana said, “It’s like a dark fairytale.”
Tanya’s face grew pale. “Indeed. A dark fairytale that your Etsi chose to end with fire.”
Chloe tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“One night, while dancing, it is said that she spun so quickly that her hands dripped water and her feet sparked with fire.”
Chloe sat up straight. “Wait. What?”
Diana pointed at Chloe. “Yeah, what she said.”
Tanya said, “That’s all the details my mother would give me. The sparks from her feet set flame to the hay on the ground. It wasn’t long before the tent caught fire.”
Diana and Chloe looked at each other. “It must have been a circus trick.”
“Your mother walked through the fire unharmed. Her family was outside the tent were the slaves were kept.
“Few inside the tent escaped—including Buckskin Henry.
“Attorneys from AIM, an Indian Advocacy group, sued for compensation for his slave performers. All of Henry’s property was confiscated and sold at auction to pay relocation expenses for the Native Americans he had enslaved. The families each moved to different places in the north, far from any of the people who had attended the shows. And far from each other, the idea was to leave all that pain behind and move to a place where they would not be recognized or victimized again. Our parents were sent here to the Pacific Northwest. They had me years later. Our mother told me the tales, and eventually, Ionia told me a few details herself. I guess in her old age, the past came back to her.”
“Or the Uktena claimed her as she always knew it would,” Chloe said, wiping away her tears. She wished there was a way to go back in time and comfort her Etsi amidst the dreadful darkness that consumed her.
Tanya smiled sadly, “That’s one way to put it.”
Chloe thought of the nursing infant that she had seen in her dreams of clown girl and the wild west show. “You said you weren’t born until after the move to the Pacific Northwest?”
“That’s right.” Tanya nodded.
Chloe said, “What about the baby?”
Tanya’s eyes grew dark. “How did you know about him?”
“I dreamed it.”
“You dreamed it?” Diana’s face held awe and wonder. When Chloe nodded affirmation, Diana exclaimed, “Well!”
Tanya tapped her fingers on her lap and shook her head before the name escaped her lips as a sigh. “Ohanzee.”
“What?” Chloe startled at the name. The name had come to her many times over the past few weeks. With her returning memories, she had associated the name with Joey’s face. It was what Mama Nola had called Joey.
“He was just a few months old. Buckskin Henry demanded Ohanzee to be dressed up and used as part of another circus act. The night of the fire was his first performance.” Tanya glanced down at her hands. A frown nestled on her face.
Diana sat on the edge of her chair. She asked the question that Chloe wanted to ask, but couldn’t. “Well, what happened to him?”
Tanya shook her head. “Little Ohanzee was lost in the fire. I’m positive that Ionia didn’t know, not then, but later…”
“That was Mama Nola’s nickname for Joey.” Chloe swallowed, but a large lump remained in her throat.
Tanya said, “Ionia never mentioned our little brother. Mother told me about him. She had said that Ionia had loved Ohanzee very much and spent hours singing to him when he fussed in the middle of the night. She would whisper to Ohanzee all the things that they would do together when he grew old enough to walk. His death must have devastated Ionia. I often wondered if your mother carried guilt for his death. I suspect she did. Perhaps Joey reminded Ionia of her little brother.”
Chloe lifted her mouth in fond smile. “Joey made her so happy.”
“You know what Ohanzee means, don’
t you, Chloe?”
Chloe met her Aunt’s eyes. “What?”
“Shadow.”
The smile froze on Chloe’s face—shadow. Had Joey been her Etsi’s shadow?
Dance, dance, dance, my Ohanzee!
Icy chills nipped down Chloe’s spine. She shoved the thought away. There were implications that she couldn’t handle right now, implications that Chloe refused to believe.
“Wow,” Diana wiped at her eyes. “You are the strangest neighbors I have ever had.”
All the women burst out laughing through their tears, lightening the room considerably.
Diana said, “I am employed by my daughter who writes true crime—”
“Oh yes,” Tanya nodded. “You’ve mentioned her name to me before. Janice, was it?”
“Janie,” said Diana. “Janie Anne Harper. Her books have been on the New York Times bestsellers list since her first book came out in 2006.”
Chloe sipped her coffee. “What book was that?”
Diana tapped her lip. “The first was called When They Lie, followed by Why They Kill, and How They Cheat. Random House released her latest this last summer called, What They Hide. People can’t get enough of crime.”
Chloe thought the titles sounded like books she’d like to read. The last title, What They Hide, made her think of Mr. Jingles. His vision popped up in her mind, and she diverted her attention, afraid she’d start seeing him again.
Diana said, “The reason I bring that up is that I research odds and ends for Janie. One thing I’ve learned is that to get answers you have to ask the right questions. And I have questions about what you both have shared with me about your pasts—two questions, actually.”
Tanya said, “What’s that?”
Diana leaned forward and placed her hands on her knees. “There’s still one thing I don’t understand, Tanya.”
Tanya nodded at the woman and sipped her coffee. “Ask away, Diana.”
Diana stood, placed her hands behind her back, and paced the living room once before stopping and turning toward Chloe and Tanya on the couch. “Chloe said that she had swung the hatchet and sank it into Mr. Jingles’ calf to the point where the clown had to yank it out.”