“Yes, what I did. You know it was me. You’d told me our minds were powerful. You’d told me that they could move mountains. So that night when he died, I’d been lying in bed, imagining him dead. I saw it in my mind, and I wanted it so much that I made it come true.” I study her expression. Her eyes are wide. “I thought you knew that.”
“Lacy,” my mom laughs, a surprised laugh, free of bitterness. “You can’t kill a baby by not wanting it. If you could, everyone would be an only child.”
“But how do you know? I thought it, and I wanted it, and then he died.”
“If anything, you saw what was already true. Lacy, the baby was already dead. I would have told you before if I knew you blamed yourself. He’d been lost to us for days. I went to the doctor earlier that week, and they hadn’t been able to find a heartbeat. They offered me a D&C, which is a kind of surgery, or said I could just wait and miscarry on my own. I decided to wait, have him at home.” She looks at me for a minute, then tries to pour herself a fresh glass of wine, but I’ve drained the bottle. She takes my glass from me, takes a sip.
“You aren’t going to feel good tomorrow,” she says.
“It’s okay,” I say. A feeling washes over me. For years I’ve carried this inside. But it wasn’t my fault. The baby was already dead. It changes everything. It means that I’m not such a monster. That maybe I’m no monster at all.
I still cast a horrible spell on Drake. Maybe it caused the accident, and maybe it too was only a coincidence.
I lean my head back on the love seat. Everything is soft edges. The tip of the roof meets the night sky, and the waning moon is a sliver. My eyes begin to drop, and everything spins a little above me. But it isn’t bad. I listen to the sound of Cheyenne humming a little, her sweet voice. Sometimes I can’t remember what it is about her I don’t like.
When I wake up, my head hurts and my mouth is a little cottony. I take my tincture of willow bark to the kitchen and drop some in a cup of cold water, and I drink it, knowing it will help my headache. Then I make myself a cup of nettle tea to sip. My eyes want to shut, but I’m not going to let a little hangover get in the way of my day. I’ve been wrong all this time; I’m not a monster, and Anna is coming this morning with Mr. Murm. I wash my hair, brush my teeth, and put on some of my old clothes.
“Don’t you look sparkly clean,” Cheyenne says when I come to her room to say good-bye. I guess the spell of us getting along has broken. “Anna’s little good girl. Her little Pollyanna.”
“Please don’t,” I say, and surprisingly, she stops. She holds her hand out and turns her head. “Have fun,” she says.
“Will you be okay?”
“I’m sure I can take care of myself for a couple of hours.”
“You aren’t going to —”
“Lacy, we’ve been over this. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I just needed to calm down a bit.”
I look at her. Maybe I shouldn’t leave. But I can’t babysit her for the rest of my life. “Be good,” I tell her.
“Yes, Miss Polly,” she says.
Anna arrives at ten sharp, the low grumbling sound of our Volkswagen bus announcing her arrival before she’s in sight. I unexpectedly tear up at the noise. In another lifetime, it was the sound of my dad arriving home from work.
In case my mom is watching through the window (and she is, of course), I do not bound over to the bus like an excited puppy. I slowly rise from the chair on the porch and walk down the steps. But Anna is not thinking. She jumps from the bus, runs up, and hugs me. “Lacy, oh my gosh, you’re taller, why did you do that to your hair — I can’t believe it’s only been a month; you look so grown-up!”
I have to disentangle myself from her arms. “You brought Mr. Murm?” I ask.
“Yes!” Anna says cheerfully, but her face falls. I have already disappointed her. She had expected happy-go-lucky Lacy, not the fierce bird I have once again become. But I remember what I learned last night. The knowledge glows within me. Anyway, I don’t want to be a fierce bird today. At least I’m not wearing any eyeliner. “He’s in his carrier. Let’s drive somewhere, and then we can let him out.”
I direct her to McKinley Park. In the meantime, I hold Mr. Murm’s carrier on my lap and whisper at him through the holes. “Hello, Mr. Mr.,” I say. “I have missed you so.” But Mr. Murm, instead of murming or meowing and nuzzling his black body close to the side of the cage, hisses and retreats to the far corner. From there he regards me with wide frightened eyes. It must be because he’s not used to the carrier. We usually only use it to take him to the vet.
But when we get to the park and let him out of the carrier, he darts into some unknown corner of the bus. It’s a ’71, older than Anna herself, and it’s full of strange dark nooks. “Mr. Murm,” I call softly, but he won’t come out.
“I don’t understand,” Anna says. “He was fine for the drive. Something must have spooked him.” I know what we are both thinking. Something spooked him all right. It was me. I’m not out of this yet.
After feeding ducks at the park for a while, we decide to pick up sandwiches at the natural foods co-op, and then we drive back to the river. It’s another hot day, and Anna fans herself with her hand. “Here,” I say jokingly, putting my hand to Anna’s forehead.
“Lacy! Your hands are freezing!”
“I know. They’ve been that way since I got here.”
“Oh.” Anna looks at me strangely. “Have you been smoking again?”
“No.” I sound ruder than I mean to. “Why?”
“I don’t know, I’ve heard it’s bad for your circulation. It might explain why your hands are cold.”
“Well, I’m not smoking,” I say, and I resent having to say it. I feel like she should know me well enough. Even though I was getting drunk with my mother just last night. Even though, let’s face it, she doesn’t know me at all anymore. I don’t even know myself.
We eat our sandwiches and dip our feet in the water. I try to shake off my dark mood, but I can’t.
“Anna?” I finally say. “Was my dad ever abusive?”
“No!” She looks shocked, like I’ve just suggested he may have been an evil clown or a vampire. “Why would you think such a thing?” Before she even gets the question out, she’s already figured out the answer. “Oh, from Cheyenne, of course.”
“She says he used to punch through walls with his bare fists. She said he once knocked down the bathroom door to get in where she was hiding from him.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute and in the silence I hear the low quacking of ducks. “Well, Lacy … that’s actually true.”
The death march beats again in my head. Pathetic. Psycho. Little bitch. Waste of time.
“No,” I practically scream at her. She is doing this to me. She is taking my father away from me. I’ve finally figured out that I am like him and now it turns out he’s a monster. Just like Cheyenne said. I put my hands over my ears and begin to sob.
“Lacy, Lacy, you need to calm down and listen. It may be true, and I don’t know what you’re thinking. But let’s talk, okay? Can you calm down and hear me out?”
I sniff. I don’t know what she can say. He’s a monster and I’m a monster and our rage burns inside us like an awful drug. But I choke back my anger. “Okay,” I say, sounding pathetic.
“Okay. It’s true that your dad did those things. He told me about them. And I’m sure Cheyenne made herself sound like an innocent little victim. But when he broke down the door to the bathroom, it was because she was trying to kill herself.”
“What?” I pull my feet from the water.
“She’s done it before, Lacy. I don’t know how many times. I don’t know if she does it to get attention, or if she really wants to die, but she’s attempted suicide several times. On this particular occasion, she had taken a bunch of pain pills, and she called her friend Myrna, then locked herself in the bathroom. So Myrna called your dad, and he came right to the house. But he couldn’t get her out of the b
athroom to help her, so he knocked down the door.”
“He was trying to save her?”
“Yeah.” Anna looks at me like I’m a thing made of glass.
“What about the other times? When he punched his hand in the walls.”
The ducks flap their wings and rise from the water. “I don’t have as neat a story about that, honey. Your mom made him really mad sometimes. He punched through walls. That’s how he dealt with anger. It was scary when he did that, but he wasn’t hurting anyone but himself.” I bite at my fingernail. I guess it does make a certain amount of sense. It’s a crazy thing to do, but Cheyenne has a gift for making people crazy. I know that better than anyone.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?” Anna puts her arm around me.
“Yeah.” I snuggle in close to her, I let her hold me. It feels good. But I can’t let it feel too good. Tonight she’ll be going back to Chico, and I’ll be going back to the house with red walls and dead butterflies. The house of dying plants. And I’m starting to forget what Chico was like, and why I didn’t want to come to Sacramento in the first place. That’s probably what’s scaring me most of all.
“How is Cheyenne doing?” Anna asks after a bit.
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Most days she just lies in bed.”
“Oh, Lacy. I wish I could take you home with me.” I say nothing. I think that is what I want too, but maybe it’s just not my destiny. To live in Chico and be a good little girl, practicing white magic and singing to the fairies. The truth is, the world’s a dark place, and it’s good to be tough, to be able to fight your way through it. Cheyenne can teach me that. That is, if she doesn’t kill herself first.
“It’s okay,” I finally say. “I’ve made some good friends here. And Sacramento’s okay. There are, like, art walks and festivals and stuff.”
“I did talk to your father’s lawyer again, after —”
“Oh, really? Let me guess. There’s nothing you can do?”
“Lacy, you seem so changed. Are you okay?” I look at Anna. She seems hurt, and maybe a little afraid. I want to tell her. I want to be like my dad, or the girl I used to be, but I still think I am losing myself. I don’t like this person I’ve become. My hands and my feet are so cold, I feel like the walking dead, like a ghost of the happy person I used to be. But I already know there’s nothing she can do to help me. She isn’t my real mom. Cheyenne is.
“I’m fine,” I say lightly. “It’s hot. And I’m a little worried about Cheyenne. I just have this bad feeling.”
“I understand. She’s your mother. But I wish you could disentangle yourself from her, just a little. You seem so wrapped up in her again.”
My eyes fill. “I’m trying,” I say before the sobs return.
But she is going to leave. She has to leave. And I am on my way home again. Home to my dark red walls, my dying plants, my fairy-tale dungeon where butterflies lie flat against wax slabs.
When we pull up to the house, I try to coax Mr. Murm from his spot in the bus. But he won’t come. I don’t know what I’ve done. Even my cat hates me. I say good-bye to Anna. She hugs me, but we both know something between us has been lost.
Climbing up the stairs to the porch, I get the awful feeling again that Cheyenne has done something to herself. I am going to find her with her wrists slashed, or her head slumped lifeless in the oven. But she’s in her bed, painting her fingernails the color of tar.
“How was Anna?” she asks mockingly.
“Fine.”
“Cat got your tongue?” I don’t know why she has to be mean.
“It was fine,” I say again. “We got sandwiches, we went to the river.”
“Mmmm, and what kind of sandwiches did you two little vegans get?”
“We’re not vegans,” I say before I can stop myself. It is the wrong thing to say. Pitting Anna and me together, we versus they, us versus you.
“I’m sorry. Vegetarians,” she sneers in a cruel whisper.
“Mom. What do you want me to say?”
“Say what you want to say. ‘I want to go live with my precious Anna? Oh, Mommy, please release me so I can be a pure being?’ You can pine all you want after your perfect little stepmom. It doesn’t matter. You belong to me, heart and soul.”
“Fine!” I leave her room and slam the door. In my own room, I pace, like an animal in a cage.
After a while, I go out the window and to Myrna’s shop. I need to talk to someone.
“She says I belong to her, heart and soul. What do you think that means?”
Myrna brings me a cup of tea. “I’d offer you sugar,” she says, “but I seem to have misplaced my sugar bowl.”
I fold my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll bring it back.”
“Keep it.” Myrna sits beside me at the monster table. “I know where they sell more.”
I reach for the tea and take a small sip. It is hot and good. Myrna watches me, and I lean toward her. “The thing is, I feel like my heart is not my own. I don’t even feel it beating. And feel my hands and feet. They’re so cold all the time.” Myrna reaches out with her own hand. It too feels like ice. I look at her. “What is she doing to us?”
Myrna sighs. “Did your mom ever tell you she and I have been friends since grade school?”
“No,” I say. “I can’t imagine Cheyenne as a kid.”
Myrna laughs, a dry thin laugh, like a cough. “She was a very stoic child. I remember one time some of us kids were hanging out in an empty lot. A boy had found a baby rattlesnake, and he was trying to scare us with it. But your mom, she just reached out her palm. The boy had the snake by its neck so it couldn’t bite, but when your mom put her palm out, the snake slithered right onto her hand and stayed there, like it was just waiting to see what would happen next. So then everyone started daring your mom, saying there must be something she was afraid of. She insisted there was nothing. And then this one kid, Joey Riordan, says, ‘What about being buried alive?’ And do you know what your mom said? She goes, ‘Get me a shovel, I’ll dig the hole myself.’ ”
I have to laugh. “That sounds like my mom.”
“Of course, it was too hard for her to dig the hole by herself, so we all helped. And eventually, there was this deep hole in the ground, and there was nothing left for your mom to do but climb in. And she did it.”
“And they buried her?”
“They did, yes.”
I swallow. “How did she get out?”
“Well, it took a while. We left her there. It was a terrible thing to do, but our moms were expecting us for dinner and Joey said it didn’t really count unless she was in there for at least an hour. He said he’d come back and get her after dinner. But one thing led to another, and he had to wait until his parents were asleep to sneak out and dig her up.”
“Was she okay?”
“I wasn’t there, and I asked Joey about it later, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. But the next morning, she was there at the bus stop, all clean and showered, her hair braided. Her eyes, though, looked flat … almost like bus tokens. Unseeing, you know? I don’t think she was ever the same after that.”
“That’s when she started doing crazy things?” I bite my lip, feeling sorry for her. Not for the Cheyenne I know, but for that little girl at the bus stop. For how she must have felt that day. And for that little girl under the earth. What did she think about? What did she go through?
“It seems like it started right around that time. Her eyes stayed flat like that for years. No depth, no feeling, and she started acting like she couldn’t feel anything. I mean, physically, she could, but things the other kids said, or the things her parents made her do, none of it affected her anymore. Like she was a ghost in a human’s body. That was when I became interested in the macabre. I wanted to know what your mom knew. When I saw her at the bus stop that day, I felt like I was witnessing a miracle. All night I had dreamt of dirt and coffins, of choking, of dying. But your mom didn’t die. She lived. I h
ave no idea how. I’ve done research since — what she did is impossible, unless there was an air pocket, but even then, it’s so unlikely…. So maybe she died and came out on the other side. We’ve been friends ever since, not because we like each other so much, but because I witnessed her death and resurrection, and neither of us would ever see the world the same again.”
“Why did you give her all these clothes?” I finger the black rose necklace at my chest. “What do you owe her for?”
Myrna stands up, takes a package of cookies from a high counter, and opens them over the sink. “I love my husband,” she says, putting the cookies on a plate. “I’ve loved him since high school, when his family moved to California from Denmark. By the time we were seniors, I knew I was going to marry him. But there was a senior trip. Lars couldn’t go, and I figured, I’ll have my whole life to be tied down. So I had a little fling, and I got pregnant.” Myrna puts the plate of cookies on the table beside me and sits back down. I imagine it. She would have been only one year older than me.
“When I got home, I freaked out. I told your mom everything. I told Lars that I was pregnant too, but I never told him the baby wasn’t his. We decided to get an abortion. We were still young. But your mom knew. And every once in a while, she reminds me of that. If she told Lars, it would destroy us. He’s my life. So I give her what she wants. She doesn’t ask for much.”
“But that’s terrible! You’re supposed to be her friend. I can’t believe she’d blackmail you.”
“Can’t you?” A dark look crosses Myrna’s face. It is the look of a girl who has been hurt, a girl who has been stolen from.
“Why is your skin so cold? Why is mine? What did she mean when she said she owns me, heart and soul?”
Myrna reaches toward me and touches my rose necklace. “She asked me to make this for you,” she says. “It’s an old charm. It’s meant to capture your soul.”
I feel suddenly sick. I tear the charm from my neck, and the petals break off, turning papery and crisp like dead leaves. They fall to the table and I feel more grounded than I have in weeks. “It occurred to me that it might be a charm. But I thought it was a good one.”
When My Heart Was Wicked Page 14