The Treehuggers’ band is actually called Tree Hugging Hypocrisy, and even though he wasn’t an official member, my dad was like their mascot. He’d go to a lot of their shows dressed up in a chicken suit, and he’d dance. Anna says the first time they met, he was dressed in his chicken suit. She went up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped, and she said, “Don’t be alarmed. I’m a vegetarian.”
I wish I knew how to play. I take the guitar on my lap and strum a few chords. I know A, D, E, C, and G. I can play “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “This Land Is Your Land.” I can fingerpick “Happy Birthday.” There are pearl inlays on the fret board. He held it so gently in his large hands.
I make another cup of dandelion root tea and bring it to my mother in her room. I don’t want to disturb her, but as I set the cup on her nightstand, she reaches out from under her covers and grabs my wrist.
“Oh,” I say, jumping. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“I am always awake,” she says in her cryptic way. I know she isn’t always awake. It’s just one of the weird things she likes to say. “So” — she pulls me so that I’m sitting beside her on the bed — “how’s school going?”
“It’s fine,” I say, surprised that she’s taking an interest.
“Met any real boys yet?”
“A couple,” I say, missing the slam to Martin, thinking only of Drake.
“Darling.” She sits up and leans against a pillow, then takes a sip of the tea I gave her. I watch to see if it makes her sleepy and weird, like it does me, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect. Then again, she was already sleepy and weird. “I hope you don’t make the same mistakes I made.”
“Like what?” I am already skeptical.
“I got married too young. I married the wrong man. Be cool. Stay in school. Don’t lose your virginity to the first guy willing to hop in the sack with you.”
“Mom!” I am mortified. I can’t believe she is saying this to me.
“What? I’m just saying you should be careful. Men aren’t always what they seem.”
“Like Dad?” I ask only because I sense that she’s beating around the bush, and I want her to get to the point.
“Oh, I know you loved your father. And he was a good man, for the most part. But there are things about him you don’t know.”
“Please don’t tell me this,” I plead, and I shake my head slowly. I want to get up, walk away, but this is the kind of strange hypnotic power she has over me.
“Well, I think it’s only fair for you to know. He and I, we are the monsters who made you. It’s our blood coursing through you. You deserve to know what you are.”
“None of us are monsters.” I look down at her comforter and tears fall straight from my eyeballs; they don’t stream down my face at all. “My dad was not a monster.”
“I see.” She sounds smug and mean. “But you think I am one.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Now the tears pool in my eyes as I look at her, but her expression is as cold as the stone goddess in front of Myrna’s shop. “Please.”
“Your father was not the angel you think he was. He was abusive. He broke walls with his bare fists. Once he broke down the bathroom door to get in at me. I was hiding from him in there. From his rage.”
“No.”
“Darling,” she says, and her voice softens. “I’m only telling you this because I want you to be careful. I don’t want you to be weak like I was. Now stop crying and harden your heart.” She smiles. “You are Lacy Fin. You are a fierce bird; you eat men whole. You don’t let anyone push you around. Remember.”
I nod my head, only because I can’t wait to get out of her room. Finally she lets me go. She sinks back down under her covers, like a sea monster returning to her cave.
I try to write my history paper, but my mind keeps returning to the image of my dad breaking down the door. He did have a temper. Especially when it came to Cheyenne. I remember what felt like nightly rages at his house when I was very little, maybe six or seven. On the weekends I was with him, my mother would call for me on the phone, then ask to talk to him. He would already look angry as I passed him the phone. He’d take it reluctantly, narrowing his eyes as he said, “Hello?”
Then he’d be shouting into the phone, and I would cry behind a chair in the living room. Anna would continue knitting with a dark look over her face and ultimately he would hang up while Cheyenne was still talking. Then he’d pick up the phone again and slam it. Once, sometimes twice. Afterward he would apologize to me. He and I would go out for ice cream and he’d tell me he had a temper. He’d tell me my mother made him mad sometimes. I just remember licking at my pralines ’n’ cream and feeling mostly sorry for myself. I think I was too young back then for my life.
Click. Click. The pebbles on the glass. I stretch and rise from my sheets. My face reflects back at me from the window, and beyond it, dark street, bright beautiful boy. I wave to let him know I’ve heard. I climb out the window and drop from the fence to the grass below. Drake reaches for me and lifts me to my feet. Without a word, we head for the field.
This time he has brought a blanket and a bottle of white wine. He unscrews the top and pours the wine into Dixie cups and holds one out to me. I hesitate before taking the cup. Anna wouldn’t do it. She is good and pure. My mother would drink it down in one gulp. Or maybe she wouldn’t: “We Fins wouldn’t waste our spit.” So what? I am my own person. I drink it down.
It burns like stars ripping my throat apart and my body feels hot and sick. Drake is watching me. “Whoa,” he says. “Is it good? Do you want some more?”
“Sure,” I say. “Why not?” He fills my cup and I take a sip.
“Cheers,” Drake says, and he holds out his cup. I touch mine to his, and then I drink this cup too. It isn’t very good. It tastes like feet. I set the cup beside me on the grass like it’s a precious thing, not a paper cup of cheap wine from a bottle with a screw top. He sets his cup down too and leans into me, and I want to pause again, to feel the moment before the kiss, but he is too fast and his lips are on mine before I can take a breath.
His mouth is huge against mine, almost humorous. Hot giant mouth. I pull away to catch my breath, but he follows me and then he is on top of me. I don’t mind that. His body pressing mine against the earth. But it’s too fast. I like him on top of me, but I want it to stop there. A few kisses like this. And then I want us to recite fairy tales or go to sleep or something. Instead, he reaches up my shirt and it isn’t what I want, and his fingers are kind of hard like rubber erasers and they poke and grope at me. “Stop,” I say, but his mouth is covering mine and his hand is reaching into my pants. His fingers find their way into my underwear and then they are inside me. I gasp and push him off me.
He laughs, a cool metallic laugh. “Come on, Lacy,” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re a prick tease.” He pushes me back with his body, and his fingers reach farther inside, stretching me open. Above me the moon hides behind branches of a tree. And the branches are crisscrossed above me like a spiderweb, like a thatched roof, like a cage. A tear runs down my cheek. He reaches for the button on his jeans and I scurry out from under him, backward, until my back is against the trunk of a tree.
I put my head against my knees and cry. My necklace glows warm and I hold it in my hand.
Drake scoffs. “Pathetic,” I hear him say. “I should have known. You’re not different. You’re not dangerous. You’re pathetic. Fucking virgins, man. These head games you all play. Call me when you’re ready to cut the shit.” He stands and starts to walk away, leaving me rolled up like a ball, like a pile of trash.
“Wait,” I say, and he turns back to look at me. “Don’t be mad,” I plead. “I just wasn’t ready.” I sound like a baby. “I like you. I wasn’t trying to play with your head.”
He scoffs again. “Right. Like you didn’t know what you were doing. Strutting around school in your Catwoman outfits, acting like you think you’re better than everyone els
e. But you’re nothing, nothing but a little bitch. A waste of time.” He walks away, and I cry into my knees. Forget him; he’s an asshole. Only what if he’s right? Head games, cock tease, I’ve heard all this stuff before. I’ve heard men scream it about my mother, so loudly their voices shook the walls. And I know my mother dresses provocatively. Is that what I look like in the clothes Myrna made? An easy girl, a slut? I thought I was good, but what if it turns out I’m just as confused and damaged as she is?
I am capable of bad things. I know that. Moved by jealousy, I am capable of evil. When I was little, I wanted to go to Paris. I wanted my mother to myself, and I did bad things to make that happen. In the end, it didn’t even matter; she left me all alone. I wish I were a robot, incapable of emotion. The best thing would be to not let myself feel anything at all.
The next day, I dress for school in my old Chico clothes: a science camp T-shirt and the comfy sweats I used to wear to bed. In the hallway, Stacia Graham looks at me, and her eyes are questioning. Obviously, he hurt her too. I try to smile at her, but I think it comes out a frown.
Drake is already in English when I get there. I slide into my seat and glare at him, hoping he can feel my hatred through the back of his head. Instead, he leans over and says something to his friend Jacob, and Jacob looks at me and snorts a laugh. We hold each other’s gaze, and after a minute, Jacob opens his eyes wide and gapes at me, mocking. Drake peers at me sideways and then drops his head to his desk, cracking up. My necklace radiates its heat. I hate him. He is the world’s biggest asshole and I hate him.
I open my binder and find a blank piece of paper. On it I draw a picture of Drake, only he’s dismembered and blood is dripping from his eyes. I write the words without thinking: You’re treating girls like they’re nothing but dirt. And now for that you too must hurt. As I cast this simple spell, I bind you to your own dark hell.
When I’m done writing, I almost laugh. Stupid laughable girl, casting made-up spells to feel some sort of power. Drake was right. I am nothing, nothing but a little bitch. While Ms. Kesey lectures, I tear the paper into tiny strips, and when the bell rings, I deposit them in the trash can on my way out the door.
Crossing through the field to get home, I see Stacia Graham standing by the parking lot. When she sees me coming, she starts toward me.
“Hey,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I told you Drake’s an asshole, but you didn’t listen.”
“No, I know,” I say. “You were right.”
“Drake is telling people you slept with him. Just so you know.” She drops her gaze and starts plucking at her fingernails. She looks almost like a little kid.
“What a dick. I take it he did the same thing to you?”
She glances back up and her eyes are wet. “Yeah. I really wanted him to like me. I almost went all the way with him. But I decided I wasn’t ready. The next day at school I tried to apologize, but by then he’d already told everyone I was a slut.” She sits on the pavement and picks up a pebble. She rolls it around between her fingertips. “He’ll probably say that about you too.”
I sit quietly for a minute, anger boiling inside me. “We shouldn’t be the ones apologizing,” I finally say. “Anyway, who cares what all the kids at school think?” Stacia doesn’t say anything. We both know that we both care. “What a dick.”
“Did he tell you he was going to take you to San Francisco? And recite you a poem by Rimbaud? That poem isn’t even about a girl, it’s about the summer dawn. Sleazeball.”
I sit down on the pavement beside her. “So I guess he’ll just keep tormenting girls.”
“I’m sure we weren’t the first ones.”
I am silent for a minute, picturing the school halls filled with girls who snuck out in the night with Drake, who drank his cheap wine under a thatched sky and woke up the next morning with her pride or virginity gone, with quiet stares and whispers in the hallways. I imagine an army of girls, faceless and silent, roaming the halls like zombies in an old movie.
“We have to stop him,” I say.
Stacia snorts. “Right. I tried to stop you.”
“Is anyone at your house?” I ask.
“No, my parents are at work.”
“Can we go there?” Stacia shrugs and we cross back through the field toward Sac State.
Spells, old spells, rearrange themselves in my head. They come unbidden, dangerous and real. A little bit scary. Things my mother taught me, when I was so little. My little brain had no choice but to hold them, to stow them away. Now they come back, but they are jumbled; I’m not sure how to piece them together. Something tells me it doesn’t matter, that the magic will find its way.
I follow Stacia to one of the condominium complexes near the college. We enter the back porch through the carport. Stacia uses her key to unlock the sliding glass door.
The room we walk into is adjacent to the kitchen. There is a bowl of limes on the counter and a binding spell makes its way from the jumble to the tip of my brain. It doesn’t scare me. It makes me feel powerful. “Can we use one of these limes?” I ask and Stacia nods. “Where are your knives?” She opens a drawer without asking why and hands me a sharp paring knife. I cut the lime into quarters, leaving each quarter attached to the peel. “You don’t have a picture of Drake, do you?” I ask.
“I have last year’s yearbook.”
“Can we cut his picture out?”
“Like I care.” Stacia shrugs.
“Okay. I need some string, a piece of paper, and a nail too,” I say, and Stacia raises her eyebrows at me, but she goes. When she comes back with everything, I find Drake’s student picture in the yearbook and tear it out. He looks so smug with his cat eyes. I don’t know how I ever thought he was cute. He looks like a boy who could hurt a girl. His eyes so smug and mean. I wrap the string tightly around the picture, concealing first his eyes, then his mouth.
Next I tear the piece of blank computer paper in half. One piece I put between two halves of the lime, and the other I set on the counter. I drive the nail through the lime, and I remember. I’ve done this spell before. Against my mother. So that she couldn’t hurt Anna and my dad. Well, good. I’m glad I did that. I ask Stacia for a jar.
“You’re a trip, Fin,” Stacia says, rummaging under the sink and coming up with an old peanut butter container. “Will this work as a jar?”
“It’s supposed to be glass, but this is better than nothing.” I drop the lime and the wrapped picture from the yearbook into the jar. “Now we write Drake’s name on this half of the paper, set it on fire, and let the ash fall into the jar.” This time Stacia doesn’t even raise her eyebrows as she finds a Sharpie, a lighter, and a metal bowl. She writes Drake MacLachan in dark bold print, then crumples the paper and lights it on fire. We watch as the flame moves from one edge of the crumpled ball toward the top, fanning higher until it is going to burn Stacia’s finger, and when she drops it into the metal bowl, I realize she has had practice lighting things on fire. Smoke billows out and bits of glowing ember consume the creases of the paper like growing things, red mushrooms in a sped-up video. Stacia dumps the ash into the peanut butter container.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Tonight we go to the school and bury it,” I tell her.
The school looks much different at night, when all the lights are turned out. It looks like an institution, a spooky place that might capture a girl’s soul. With our flashlights, we head to the cherry tree, the one where Olive and Drake and their friends hang out. If it were daytime, you would be able to see the bright pink blossoms, so pretty you know such a color couldn’t exist in a world without magic. We drop to our knees, and I feel the coolness of the earth through my sweatpants. I find a rock with a sharp edge and begin to dig, and when I abandon the rock, I use my strong gardener hands to pull the dirt in clumps. I try not to think of my father. Of all that death beneath the soil.
Stacia joins me in digging. “What is this supposed to do?” she asks for the fi
rst time.
“It’s a binding spell. It’s supposed to keep him from hurting other people,” I tell her. “It’s black magic, which I never use.” I catch myself in my own accidental lie. I never used to use black magic. But resurrection spells are black magic too. It’s my fault all those frogs died. And I don’t know what that weird spell I did today in the classroom was. “Anyway,” I shake my head to clear it. “This won’t hurt anyone. I don’t think it’s bad if you use it as protection.”
Stacia nods grimly. “I was hoping it would turn him into a toad. I was hoping he would lose the capacity to swallow. That he would drown in a mouthful of his own spit.” I feel a chill. Yes. I know what she means.
The moon, waning and low, peeks out behind a dark cloud and looks down at us, impervious and uncaring. I think of Artemis, the moon goddess, who killed a man just for seeing her naked, and the thought makes me feel powerful, strong. Maybe I am a descendant of the goddesses, and my mother too. Women of magic, fierce birds. Deities of the sea and sky. I clear my throat.
“Drake MacLachan,” I say, holding the jar to my chest, and I feel the magic rise up from the earth and move all around me. “I bind thee from causing harm.” A sudden wind sweeps up from nowhere, and I have to raise my voice to be heard. “Drake MacLachan, I bind thee from causing harm.” The third time, Stacia joins in. “Drake MacLachan, we bind thee from causing harm.” Our voices are strong in the night, and the wind carries our voices and our intentions to the farthest reaches of the school.
The cherry tree is dropping blossoms and littering the dirt with pink flowers and I feel powerful. Stacia looks at me, her spiky dark hair whipping her eyes. She twists her body so that her back is against the wind and her hair blows out behind her. “Shit,” she says, turning back to me, and suddenly the beam from a flashlight sweeps across the field.
When My Heart Was Wicked Page 9