“Your art agrees,” Helena said. “And so do I. You’re going to invite her to the Equinox party?”
By way of answer, Xenia turned toward the street and her eyes narrowed. “She’s out early. Again.”
Helena followed her gaze. Meredith was out front, alone. Helena’s heart iced over. Was Meredith coming in by herself, to make sure Leo had given them the paperwork? Xenia would be so angry to find out that Helena already knew. A cold sweat broke out along Helena’s upper lip. She opened her mouth and tried to push the words out. They wouldn’t come. She reached for Xenia, who was walking toward the door. She grabbed the cotton of her dress. Xenia turned, a question on her face.
“Meredith. She—”
Outside, another woman stepped next to Meredith, and a second, then a third. One of them held up a sign. It was just a regular picket. Meredith must be keeping it up out of habit, right until the bitter end. Helena breathed out a long breath.
“Yes?” Xenia asked. “Meredith what?”
“She is picketing the store.”
Xenia pursed her lips. “I see that.” She studied her sister for a long moment, but whatever question was in her head never made it to her mouth. “And I’m sick of it. It’s time to act.”
“No!”
“Don’t worry,” Xenia said. “It’ll just be a little curse, something to make them uncomfortable while they’re out there. Might as well. They’ve spent plenty hours making our customers itchy over the years. And I’m feeling full of piss and vinegar this morning.”
Helena shook her head so hard that her reading glasses fell off their perch in her hair. “You know a curse always comes back to you.”
Claudette joined them in the main room, a jar of coriander in her hand. “I say curse ‘em.”
Xenia nodded approvingly. “It’s two against one, Helena. I’m tired of waiting for bad luck to come to us. I’m going to meet it head on.” She stepped to the door and tugged it open, a curious Claudette on her heels. She spoke three short words and flung them at the picketers.
Meredith may or may not have heard the words. If she did, she most certainly didn’t understand them. Yet, their power smacked her, and she hit back. Dropping her sign, she raced toward Xenia and shoved her backward. Meredith’s fellow picketers were too shocked to move, but Claudette caught Xenia before she hit the floor. The tattoo began to ink Claudette’s cheek before she had a chance to catch her breath. It was a quick and short piece, two intersecting lines.
A cross.
Xenia saw it and laughed.
The Catalain Book of Secrets: Casting a Curse
Justice is slow. Curses are not. To cast a curse, choose the single word that best describes the discomfort you want your target to feel. Choose that word carefully—inconvenience, frustration, pain, the like—as every spell you cast will come back to you threefold. Once you have the curse word, aim your eyes, mouth, and heart at the one you mean to curse, and whisper vomica pestis pestis. Follow that with the single word you have chosen.
It is done. Settle in for the backlash.
Chapter 7
The curse wasn’t instantly visible, but the next morning as Helena walked past Meredith outside Seven Daughters, she couldn’t ignore the cloudiness in Meredith’s right eye. It was milky, a skin of cotton over moist flesh. Seeing it made Helena’s stomach hurt, and she couldn’t stop glancing through the window throughout the day. Meredith kept blinking as she prowled the front sidewalk of the store, picket sign in hand. Helena didn’t know if the cloud was painful or just made it difficult for Meredith to see.
She recognized it as Xenia’s curse.
She turned away from the front of the store and spotted Claudette watching her. Helena stopped herself from startling, just.
“It’s freeing, you know?”
Helena’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment. When Claudette had arrived at work today, her entire face was covered in tattoos. Xenia’s cross over her cheek, a clever shading around her eyes that looked as if a mask was being pulled off, an outline of a bullet hole in her temple, the silhouette of a naked woman on stage on her opposite cheek. Helena had not been able to hide the gasp when she’d first spotted the new tattoos, but she thought she’d gotten better at hiding her recurring shock since then.
“I’ve always been worried about what people think about me,” Claudette continued. “Not anymore. It’s all out there.”
Helena nodded. She saw where Claudette’s affliction was easier on her in some ways than it was on those who accidentally touched her. Leo had stopped by the store last night during close and brushed against Claudette on his way to the kitchen. To his naked-faced horror, a perfect 50s pin-up etched itself onto Claudette’s bicep, black and white except for the red rosebud lips. He’d grown so pale that Helena had been worried he’d fall over. Xenia had laughed. Claudette seemed almost proud.
Helena wondered if Claudette had simply found a new layer to hide behind.
“I’m happy you’re here,” Helena told Claudette. She didn’t know what else to say. Returning to the kitchen, she cooked throughout the day, letting Claudette work the counter. Xenia hummed as she sewed, likely thinking of Cleo. When the day ended, and Xenia drove her back to the Queen Anne, Helena realized she had never done less work and been more tired in her life.
She was washing the supper dishes when she cried out.
Xenia was leaning into the fridge, putting away the leftover hotdish. She dropped it in alarm, and the glass container fell to the floor, shattering. “What is it?”
Helena slumped over the sink, her left arm clutched to her chest.
“What’s wrong?” When Helena didn’t answer, couldn’t, Xenia called for an ambulance. They let her ride alongside Helena, caressing her hair as they stabbed a needle in the back of her hand and checked her blood pressure and temperature.
Helena’s pain ebbed before they arrived at the hospital. Xenia didn’t stop stroking her sister’s hair, but her face relaxed. Her relief turned itself inside out when Helena removed her shirt in the curtained treatment room and revealed the puckered black-and-yellow bruising that circled her left breast like a storm cloud before disappearing into her armpit. Helena yanked the hospital gown over the injury, but it was too late.
Xenia’s voice was dry and tight. “What happened?”
Helena wouldn’t meet her eyes. There was no more hiding, not here in the antiseptic lights, but she still tried. “It’s been there a while. I must have fallen out of bed one night.”
“On your tit?” Xenia asked.
Helena shrugged. Xenia rushed in and gathered her into a hug. She had to be coaxed into releasing her sister when the doctor arrived.
He was young, too young to be dissecting grown women for a living. “I’m Dr. Carter.”
Helena recited her symptoms—six months’ worth of pain and bruising extending from her left breast to her armpit, culminating in the excruciating attack of agony when she’d been washing dishes—and removed her gown for him. His face revealed nothing.
“Does this hurt?” Dr. Carter pressed at the edges of the bruises, so softly that the skin barely ruckled. Helena winced. Tears leaked out her eyes.
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ll be as gentle as possible. Normally with these symptoms I’d order a mammogram, but given the level of pain, I’m going to send you for an MRI.”
“Mammogram?” Xenia asked, her voice high.
“It’s cancer,” Helena said with quiet certainty. She kept her eyes on the floor, but humiliation was written across her face. It was out, no longer her secret to protect. She felt like she’d failed somehow.
Xenia put her arm on her sister’s right shoulder. “You don’t know that.”
Helena didn’t argue.
“That’s what we’d like to rule out.” Dr. Carter wrote as he spoke. He left the room, and a nurse returned to begin the gamut of tests.
Helena’s breast cancer was diagnosed in less than three hours.
Because of the aggre
ssiveness of the cancer, a double mastectomy was recommended. Helena agreed, numb to her very core. Her surgery was scheduled within the week. The prognosis was mixed. Ursula hurried home. Velda rushed to the hospital, as did Leo and Artemis, and Helena’s nieces, Jasmine and Katrine, and Jasmine’s daughter Tara.
With her family and friends gathered around, Helena conceded that she’d known about the cancer for a while. It had felt like heartache. She was ashamed that she’d allowed it into her body and so had lived with it like a stranger.
She chose to introduce herself to her cancer right before her oncologist removed it. She’d come to understand that it was a stumbling child grown too fast, unaware how much damage it was doing. She met it, apologized to it, loved and cradled it, and released it.
It had been a part of her for so long that she wondered if she could survive without it.
Then, she was wheeled into surgery.
The Catalain Book of Secrets: Overcoming Shame
Once upon a time, there was a woman so ashamed that she hadn’t chewed her food well enough that she allowed herself to quietly choke to death rather than interrupt dinner. The moral? Shame is deadly. It’s a slow-acting poison. We can administer it to others but it’s most dangerous when we swallow it ourselves. If you have accidentally ingested shame, you need to act quickly before it seeps into your bones. Do the following:
Write your shame down on a heart-shaped piece of paper.
Show the shame to one other person. Choose carefully. If you have friend or family that you trust, choose one of them. If you do not have someone close whom you can trust with this, choose an acquaintance or a stranger with a good heart. They are everywhere.
Accept whatever gift they give you in return for your secret. It may not look like a gift at first, but it will be. Thank them.
Smile, no matter how you feel. If you can force yourself to laugh, do so.
The bubble of shame is pierced. You will see immediate, positive change, but be gentle with yourself. You’ve peeled off rotten armor, and the world will feel raw for a bit.
Chapter 8
When Helena regained consciousness, she felt like she’d survived a shark attack. Barely. First one eye opened, then the other. She was afraid to move anything else. It took her vision a moment to unblur. The honey-colored spring sunlight trickled through the hospital curtains, the air smelling like orange juice and rubbing alcohol. Outside in the hall, the murmur of nurses and clatter of attendants provided a steady hum.
There was no avoiding it any longer, so she took inventory of her body. Her toes wiggled, and she could move her legs side to side. She had a catheter inserted and so had no sensation of a full bladder. Her stomach was queasy.
Her breasts were gone.
Her glorious, powerful, feminine breasts.
“Good afternoon.”
She whipped her head to the right. The room spun. The last thing she wanted to do was throw up, so she snapped her eyes closed until the room stopped moving. “Artemis?”
He stood next to her bed, clean as an ice cube, sparkling and smiling, his heart wide open. He nodded but didn’t speak. The unasked question fell between them like a fat toad on its back. Helena turned it over. “What are you doing here?”
He produced a bouquet of daisies and daffodils from behind his back. “Xenia stayed until the doctor promised you’d made it through surgery okay, but she had an emergency at the store that I couldn’t help with. I told her I would hang bedside in case you came out of your anesthesia early, at least until Velda or Jasmine or Katrine could arrive, so you awoke to a familiar face.”
Helena squeezed her eyes closed then open. She decided that in her new, breastless incarnation, she didn’t have the time or patience for confusion. “Are you dating my mother?”
A chuckle started in Artemis’ belly, and it rippled along his body until it squeezed through the crinkles in his eyes. When the laughter was gone, he grew as serious as a promise. “Velda and I are friends, always have been, nothing more or less.”
He cleared his throat and spoke clearly. “I think you’re the most beautiful creature on this earth, and I’ve never met a stronger heart. Also,” he added, “you smell like cinnamon.”
Helena peeked at her morphine drip. Was this one of the hallucinations the nurse had warned her about? Was she even awake? She might still be in surgery, under anesthesia. “I’m not up for this conversation right now.”
“I understand completely.” Artemis eased the flowers into a pitcher of water on the table next to her bed. He pulled a chair out from behind a curtain and then faced it toward the window. “I’ll be over here if you need me.”
***
It was Velda who proposed the boob funeral and hosted it the same day as Helena’s operation. Helena wanted nothing more than to be alone to tend to her body, which felt soft and yellow, like an uncooked yolk. She didn’t like all the worried eyes on her. She hated the plummet pace at which everything had happened. She wanted her old life back, her old body.
“I’m fine,” she croaked.
“You look tender on the outside,” Artemis agreed, “but you’re gonna be better than fine. Never doubt that.”
If Helena was surprised that Artemis was still here, she didn’t show it. Standing next to him were Katrine, then Xenia, Velda, Ursula, and Jasmine. Jasmine hadn’t allowed her daughter Tara to attend post-surgery. They all wore black and circled the hospital bed, careful for the drain tubes leaving the area where Helena’s breasts had been.
“Did they get it all?” Katrine asked. Helena’s beautiful niece, Ursula’s daughter, squeezed her hand. Her green Catalain eyes were dusted with concern. She’d returned from London last fall and been in her own bubble since she’d been back. Helena’s scare had pulled her back toward the surface.
“I’m sure of it,” Xenia said, not giving her sister a chance to respond.
Velda grabbed the hands of the people near her and urged the rest of the circle to do the same. “She’s going to be okay. It doesn’t take a mindreader to see that,” she said, staring at Katrine. “Now, let’s focus. We have gathered here to pay our respects to what once was a beautiful pair of knockers.”
The group nodded. Tears rolled down Xenia’s cheeks.
“Lovely breasts, full like God intended and still riding high after fifty years on the planet.” Velda adjusted her hair. “Don’t think you ever thanked me for those.”
Helena’s eyes were closed. She was shaking.
“Is there something you want to say?” Xenia whispered to her sister.
Helena’s voice was rough. She knew she was talking to herself, but it felt good to have her family around to reflect it back to her. “Don’t say goodbye to me, all right? I’ve got my fight, and I’ve got my hips, and I’ve got my candy. Don’t count this old lady out.”
“Of course not!” The circle dropped hands and touched her feet and ankles and soft blonde hair, murmuring words of support and love.
“Those surgeons can’t touch any part of you that matters, Helena,” Artemis said. She believed it was the first time he had spoken her name, and it felt like balm on her skin. “Your spirit is stronger than ever. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Xenia beamed at the little man who had floated his chair into the sky tied to a bunch of red, blue, and yellow balloons.
“You’re not scared,” Katrine said in wonder. She smiled the smile of her youth, and it was like the sun rising.
Helena opened her eyes at the warmth of it. “I sure missed that grin. Now who brought me candy?”
“Candy?” Velda asked, shocked. “This isn’t a Girl Scout gathering. It’s a boob funeral.” She pulled out a bottle of brandy. They all were required to take a swallow, but before they did—Velda’s rules—they had to share something important that they’d lost.
“Well, I’ll go first, you ninnies,” Velda said. “I lost my husband. He was a bastard, but I’ve missed him every single day since then.”
“I lost my innocence
,” Ursula said. Her eyes locked on Velda. She’d barely had time to go home since her emergency return from the Cities.
Xenia was staring at Helena. “I lost my fear.”
“I almost lost the woman I love, and it took me fifty-five years to find her,” Artemis said. No one questioned him.
“I lost my way,” Katrine whispered. She took a swig of the fiery, tawny liquid and handed it to her sister.
“I…lost my balance.” Jasmine, Katrine’s sister, wet her lips with the brandy and shoved the bottle toward Xenia, who helped Helena to take a sip.
“That’s it,” Velda said, taking the bottle back and chuckling. “We’re a tribe now. A tribe of losers.” The words fell like warm rain and drew them all closer.
They stayed for another twenty minutes or so, talking about loss, the weather, and the store. Helena soon drifted off, and they all went home except for Xenia.
***
She was by her sister’s side when the young doctor entered the room. “How’s she doing?” he asked.
“Sleeping. Do you think you got all the cancer?”
“It’s too soon to know for sure, but the prognosis appears excellent. She may even be able to avoid chemotherapy.”
Xenia’s shoulders relaxed.
“You’re sure we still can’t talk you into the genetic testing? If we caught it early, we’d have more options.”
“No, thank you.” Xenia said.
***
Artemis visited Helena every day she was in the hospital. He gave her as much space as she needed but made sure she never felt alone. When she was well enough to sit up, he taught her how to play Bullshit and Euchre with the deck of red Bicycle cards he always carried in his front shirt pocket. He also brought her rich Belgian chocolate and creamy Italian white truffles, books, and news from the store. And every day, he told her how beautiful she was.
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