So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction

by Christopher Barzak

  Isis looked at it for a moment, but didn't shake. She felt no obligation to exchange pleasantries with a stranger. Especially one who came at you as if you already knew him. "Look like what?" she said instead. And before Rem could answer, she added, "Who the hell are you anyway?"

  He liked that she knew enough to cop a front, but she was an amateur. Hustlers and pimps would have been on to her from that first exchange. "Like a farm girl lost in the city," he said, and she made a face.

  "For your information, I'm from Columbus," said Isis, nose and eyebrows turned up. "Not farm country, I'd say. But that doesn't mean anything."

  "Strike two," said Rem.

  She nodded sarcastically. "I know, I know. I shouldn't tell you where I'm from, but it doesn't matter. You're not out to get me."

  He grinned sly and stayed that way. Jutted his chin out, very macho: "You up for something to eat?"

  "Famished," said Isis.

  "Rem," said Rem.

  "Isis," said Isis. "Nice to know you."

  He picked up one of her bags and said, "This way."

  ---

  They did not speak about the strangeness of their names. No explanation was necessary. Isis might look like one of the young ones who arrived without a clue about where they came from, but she had figured out enough on her own to realize she needed a new name.

  Rem was impressed. He considered her over the rim of his water glass. She was talking about a father, a mother, vague figures with ominous auras surrounding them. She didn't look beat up, but sometimes--most often--a person is broken and bruised inside, not out. He suspected inside. When she smiled, she didn't show her teeth.

  He could have remembered her, but he decided to let her tell him what she wanted, when she wanted.

  "So," said Isis. "It was nice meeting you and all, and thanks for the coffee, but I've gotta fly."

  "Where to?" said Rem.

  "Still have to figure that out." Isis raised her eyebrows and blew a strand of hair out of her face. "I need to find a place to crash. What about shelters? Are they cool here?"

  Rem shook his head. "I've got something better. You can squat where I live."

  Isis winced. "I don't know. I wouldn't want to impose. Plus we barely know each other. You could be a creepy serial killer for all I know." She arched one thin eyebrow in mock suspicion.

  "But you know better," said Rem. He held her stare.

  She nodded, then looked down into her cup to hide her smile. Their waitress approached, slapped their bill on the table and walked away. Rem dug into the pockets of his army jacket. A moment later he pulled out a few dollars to pay.

  "All right," said Isis. "I'll see what's up. No promises though."

  "Never any promises," said Rem.

  ---

  Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the doors and here are the people.

  Isis nodded as Rem introduced her to Lola and Meph. Even though she was scared, she forced a tight-lipped smile. Rem already felt good to her, and Lola appeared fairly normal--hair pinned up with blonde tendrils falling around her ears, black diamante glasses, denim jacket, knee-ripped jeans and worn-down kicks--but Meph was off center, just a little. He stood back from Isis by several feet, head lowered, hands stuffed in his pants pockets. His skin looked sweet and creamy, a caramel color. When she held her hand out to him, he jumped backward, almost losing his balance and falling. He caught the side of an empty pew, though, and pulled himself back up. As Meph grabbed hold of the pew, Isis noticed his hands were wrapped in dirty bandages, all the way up his fingers, like a mummy. She felt a hand on the small of her back. It was Rem's. His look told her, "Later."

  "This is Isis," Rem told the others. "She's going to crash with us for a while."

  "Hey, Isis," Lola smiled. "I like your name."

  The church was on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, backed up against an abandoned warehouse. "We tried getting in there, too," Rem told Isis. "But it was already claimed."

  "By who?"

  "Ghosts," said Rem. "There was a fire there. About ten years ago. The folks working on the third floor were trapped inside."

  The church had faded lettering above the arched front entry outside, which Rem said never to use. St. Peter and Paul's blah, blah, blah. The stained-glass windows were mostly still intact. Rocks or gunshots or fists had busted a few out, though. The pews still lined up straight across from each other; an aisle carpeted red stretched to the altar. The walls and ceiling were water-stained brown and yellow, molded over in dark corners. On the wall behind the altar, someone had spray-painted the words, "Orphyn Grove," in an almost calligraphic style. "Lola," said Rem. "She's good with graffiti."

  "Why does she spell Orphyn that way?" Isis asked. "With a 'y' instead of an 'a'?"

  "We all do that," said Rem. "That's how we spell it. 'Cause we're not regular orphans. You know that."

  "You mean not straight," said Isis. Rem nodded.

  "Yeah. There are women and there are womyn. There are boys and there are bois. Girls and grrls. Same here. We're orphyns, not orphans."

  Isis shrugged.

  Rem shrugged her shrug off. "It helps sometimes," he said. "When you're feeling alone."

  Isis said, "Whatever works. But I've always been alone, except for my father."

  "Your mother?" asked Rem.

  "Long gone," said Isis. "I can still remember her face, though."

  "Good," said Rem. "Don't forget that."

  ---

  Rem showed Isis where she could crash. It was a small room in the basement, one of the old Sunday school rooms, with low wooden bookcases built along the perimeter of the walls. Except for dust, the shelves were empty. Isis beamed when she saw them. She wished she could have brought her books with her, but they would have only weighed her down in her flight. She told Rem as much.

  "You like to read?" Rem asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

  "I love to read," said Isis. "It's where things are best."

  "Yeah," he said. "I know what you mean. I wish sometimes I could live in books."

  "You can," Isis said. "At least for a little while."

  They stared at each other, not saying anything. Then Rem snapped their silence by telling Isis about Meph. "It's his hands," said Rem. "He can't touch people with them. They hurt people."

  "How do you mean, hurt?"

  "I mean, their skin might burn, or open up. Like deep cuts."

  "Are you for real?" said Isis.

  Rem narrowed his eyes and snorted. "Are you? Come on. You know you're not the only one."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Isis.

  "Yes you do. You know perfectly well. You're not weird here, Isis. You don't have to be afraid."

  She shook her head, though. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Over the next few days, Rem helped her get settled. They stole pieces of discarded carpet from the dumpster behind the remnant store, carried home furniture left out on sidewalks. A trip to the Salvation Army provided Isis with more clothes--nothing special, but warm and wearable, very practical: old sweaters and a jacket and pants. Rem gave her street pointers, who to talk to, who was a Nobody, how to avoid the cops. "What do you mean, a Nobody?" asked Isis.

  "You know," said Rem. "Nobodies. Stay away from them, or they'll make you a Nobody too."

  "Someone has been following us for a while," said Isis.

  Rem nodded. "He's a Nobody," he said, daring to look at the guy who stood on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, brandishing stares at each other like nine millimeters. "Best to stay away from him," said Rem, his face suddenly closing.

  "Why?" Isis asked.

  "He's straight," said Rem.

  "Straight?"

  "You know," said Rem. "Not Orphyned."

  Isis said, "There's more you're not saying, but that's alright. I'll leave it."

  "Good," said Rem. "Thanks for that."

  Before the end of the week, her room looked like a ro
om, like someone real and alive was living there. No longer a musty room in a church basement where children once sat, answering questions by rote: "Who made you?" said the Sunday school teacher. "God made me," they would repeat. Isis remembered that. She remembered how it had always felt wrong to her. Who made me? It was a tricky question. You wanted to say, God made me, and feel the truth of it. She tried. She tried to fake it even. But a dark guilt crowded her body whenever she pretended to those origins. Finally, after years of feeling wrong-souled, she had relented. "I don't know who made me," she had said to her image in her bedroom mirror. She had been eleven. She had cried, "I don't know who made me," and sobbing, melted to her knees, covering her face with her hands.

  It doesn't matter, she thought now. She didn't need to know where she came from anymore, what to believe. Only to believe in herself. Her mother had left her and her father years and years ago, when Isis was eight. She had packed while her husband was at the bar and told Isis to be good and go to sleep. She tucked her in. "Where are you going, Mommy?" Isis had asked.

  "To get Daddy. I'll be right back."

  But her father returned later without her mother. Between the two of them, they figured out that they had been abandoned.

  At fifteen, Isis had quit school and started running drugs with her boyfriend, Howard, who was twenty-three, beautiful, and arrogant. When Howard was arrested for trafficking, Isis decided to leave him. She felt safe to leave him while he was locked up. Several months later, after waiting tables for tips only, she realized she had been leaving a lot of things and decided it might be a good idea to leave town as well. When she looked out at the streets, at the low buildings of the college campus, a place she'd never be except as a panhandler maybe, she thought she'd have better luck in a city. In a city, she could lose herself in the dark of its streets. No one cared who you were or what you did when there were too many people to keep track of.

  And now here was Lola, helping her to arrange things real nice. The rocking chair in the far corner, the rug cuttings thrown into a pyramid pattern on the floor. "But these walls," said Isis. "It'll be like living in a vanilla box."

  "Oh," said Lola. "That's no problem. What color are you thinking you'd like?"

  "Why? Do you know where we can pinch paint?"

  "No," said Lola. "We don't have to steal anything."

  "Blue," said Isis. "Midnight blue. Maybe some yellow and white to make some stars. That would be cool."

  Lola said, "Yeah, I like the way you think," grinning, and casually slid her hands over the white walls, continuing her banter. As she moved around the room's perimeter, the walls began to change from white to light blue, to deep midnight. "I've always loved celestial patterns," said Lola, circling the room once more, patting each wall with her fingertips. Yellow and white stars bloomed beneath her touch. When she was finished, she said, "Do you like?"

  Isis nodded, in awe of Lola's quiet magic. "Yes," she said. "It feels right."

  "Hurray me!" said Lola. "Meph is always complaining that our room never looks the same."

  "The two of you are together?"

  "Yeah," said Lola. "For a year now. We were both living under the Carson Street Bridge before that. Before we met Rem."

  "Ugh. That sucks. I mean, living under a bridge."

  "You do what you have to," said Lola. She crossed the room and stopped in the doorway. "If you need anymore help, just give me a shout out."

  "Thanks," said Isis, and Lola left. She had had a moment of wanting to reveal some of her secrets to the girl, but Lola hadn't seemed interested. Back when she was with Howard, when he had found out, he had made constant use of her. "My security alarm," he bragged to his cohorts. And when the police busted him, he had shouted into empty air, "You little bitch, you set me up!" Isis had been standing on a nearby rooftop, out of sight. After this she disappeared quickly, quietly, to another side of town, before leaving town altogether.

  ---

  When Isis arrived, it had been summer. But as she moved into the Orphyn Grove and became acclimated to her new home, weeks passed, and before she knew it, autumn had come to the city, changing the leaves from green to red and yellow, just as Lola had changed the white walls to a night sky. The wind held an earthy scent, sweet and smoky. Night came earlier. October's bittersweet lullaby whispered through the streets.

  In her basement room in the abandoned church, Isis shivered a little. She had enough blankets, but the cold seeped in and stayed the night. Rem "found" two small space heaters, but they had no electricity, so the next item to seek out, they all decided, was a generator, or maybe kerosene heaters. They needed heat. "What did you do last year?" Isis asked.

  "We burned wood in a barrel," said Rem. "But the smoke brought notice and, after a while, cops came to check it out. We had to split up and go to shelters for a few weeks. Some of the shelters make you call your parents or give them personal information. Busybodies, you know, trying to put you back where you're trying to get away from. We have to find another way this year."

  She liked the way his hair fell over his eyes, brown and floppy. The way he'd lift his right hand to push it away from his face. The way he moved smoothly across a room, never hesitating, unlike poor Meph, who often jerked and jigged his way from one point to another. Rem had an uncanny ability to understand her, and when she spoke he would listen. Really listen. He would hold her stare like he had the first day she met him, and her words seemed to flow in direct connection, without any loss of meaning. He rarely argued with her. Sometimes she wanted him to argue with her. Mostly because arguing was what she'd gotten used to. But here was Rem, listening without undermining her thoughts on her own life. And he never pried. On the streets, private knowledge remained sacred. You shared it at your own risk, and when someone opened up to you, it was a gift. An unexpected invitation to intimacy in a world where intimacy might be your undoing. "Never share your real name," Rem had told Isis. "Except for with the people who prove to be family."

  She had not told anyone her real name yet, not even Rem.

  She panhandled with Lola. She'd never done it before. She didn't like doing it. But she didn't have an address, so couldn't apply for jobs. She didn't have any money to bring herself up either, and even if she did, she was sixteen. A noncitizen. She couldn't rent a room even if she'd had all the money in the world.

  Meph and Rem played hunters; Isis and Lola, the gatherers. They would return sometimes with stereo equipment, and once a car, which was gone the next day. Isis didn't ask where they'd gotten it, or to where it had disappeared. None of my business, she told herself. Better to not know. Ask strangers for money and thank you, thank you, thank you. Tell them they have helped a poor soul.

  The money she and Lola collected went toward buying necessities. Food, clothing, blankets, a used futon mattress for Isis, who had been sleeping on carpet remnants for a month and a half. The money didn't go far, but they spread it as thin as possible. The money from Rem's and Meph's "finds" helped to buy two propane heaters, and a store of fuel. "No shelters this year," Rem told them. "This year we all stay together."

  Toward the end of October, Rem announced they were all going to a party. Lola clapped like a little girl and said, "Just in time, just in time. I thought I would die of boredom." Meph hugged her from behind, lacing his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.

  "Is it a Halloween party?" Isis asked.

  Rem said, "Something like that." He grinned but played coy.

  "What should we wear?" Isis asked. "I mean, is this a costume party?"

  "No," said Lola. "It's a come-as-you-are. That's the thing. That's the great thing about this party, Isis. Come as you are. Us? We don't need to dress up, right?"

  Isis nodded politely. She wasn't sure how to take their avoidance of her questions. It was just a party, she thought. What's the big deal? Why all the mystery?

  But mystery she was to Rem and Lola and Meph. Since she had moved into the Orphyn Grove, she had not revealed anything pers
onal about herself, except for a few remarks about an old boyfriend, drugs, her father, the missing mother, and how she liked to read. Nothing spectacularly intimate. Just the facts, thank you. In return, the others reserved their own private stories. They did not dole out friendship lightly, although they would come running to help Isis with even the smallest details of her new life.

  On the night of the party, they collected at the front of the church, near the altar, and together left from there. Rem led them through the city streets, through alleys and through the subway system. At various places--a bathroom on Lexington; a phone booth on Broadway; a bulletin board in a Laundromat--they found clues to the place to which they would next proceed. "Rave codes," Meph murmured to Isis in the laundromat. It was one of the few times he'd ever spoken directly to her; she turned to him and nodded appreciatively.

  They arrived at a building in the Warehouse District and climbed the steps of a docking platform, facing the riverside. The city gleamed on the other side of the river. An inverted image of yellow city lights glimmered on the slow oily surface of the water, the shadows of skyscrapers etched into the darkness. Music boomed on the other side of the warehouse door. Rem knocked. A slit slid open. Two eyes looked out. A hoarse voice said, "Password."

  Rem said, "Going home."

  The door opened and the man who stood behind it welcomed them inside. He was large everywhere, muscles ballooning his black T-shirt and jeans. He wore a goatee but he was bald on top, gleaming. He handed the four of them glow sticks on rope cords and told them to have a good time, to not cause trouble. "No problem, Mac Daddy," said Rem, and they filed past him.

  They came out into a large open area where once machinery of all sorts had hummed, producing tubing. Now the room was empty of industry. Now it was full up to its catwalks with people dancing to the beat of a trance-y techno, their glow sticks the main source of illumination. Isis asked, "Who are all of these people?"