“You said the fence was to keep Hoadley out. This is the way it took to do so. Shirley.” Cally shifted her glance, seeing Shirley as almost unbearably golden, Amazonian, goddesslike, just as the lights of the night’s extemporized carousel were eye-throbbingly bright to her, the spiritous music as loud and clear as if a Wurlitzer thumped and ground a few feet away, in Shirley’s kitchen. She apprehended existence and essence so clearly, so intensely that even time seemed almost visible to her, she could almost hear its dopplering rhythm. “Shirley. You should never have said you have AIDS.”
Elspeth came and stood staring at her lover. If Shirley was a golden Amazon, Elspeth was a dark-eyed Gypsy, the colorful one, the mysterious wanderer, the perpetual stranger, a small presence but as vehemently, unaccountably eternal as Shirley.
Speaking to Elspeth’s look more than to Cally’s words, Shirley protested, “You know I can’t have AIDS! You know we both tested clean.” Therefore, if they had been faithful to each other since, logically Shirley could not have contracted the pestilence.
Elspeth didn’t answer, but Cally averred, knowing that logic had nothing to do with it, “You should never have said you did. Lately things people say have a way of coming true.” Cally stared out the window again. Speaking, like Shirley, to Elspeth’s silent fears, she said, “I’d go out and sleep in the barn, leave you two alone, if I had the nerve to get through that fence.”
Not even Elspeth expected it of her. She slept in Shirley’s spare bedroom, or watched out the window more than slept, and all night the plastic-pony, fence-post and firefly carousel kept up its impossible circling around the house. But sometime toward dawn Cally dozed, and come daylight, when she looked again, the firefly lights were gone, the music stilled, the fence motionless and in its accustomed place again, the plastic junkyard horses belly-stretched in full frozen career above their locust posts as always. The fence wire sagged broken or bent from the pressure of the mob, but no mark, no furrow, no weird circle showed on the turf of the yard.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day in the Perfect Rest Funeral Home’s mailbox was a letter addressed to Cally. Mark had to look at the return address to recognize it as coming from her mother, so rarely had he seen that elusive woman’s handwriting. Cally’s mother never wrote. Why this missive? It had to be about something serious, perhaps something she didn’t want Mark to overhear, or she would have phoned. Or something she didn’t want the kids to overhear? Concern for his offspring overrode Mark’s suspicions, and once he felt himself ennobled by a worthy emotion he was Mark the White Knight of Goodliness and Service to Mankind, he could not open someone else’s mail, even though in the grip of jealous spleen, as Mark the Beast, he had been about to do so.
Mark the Goodly reached a compromise with Mark the Beast, and snooped. He held the envelope up to the light. It contained a brief note, folded only once; therefore he was able to make out a few words: “Tammy … the doctor says …” And later, “quite concerned.” This from the woman who could scarcely be concerned about anything.
Mark put the letter in his pocket, phoned his mother and made arrangements for her to answer the funeral home calls, then instructed his telephone to forward them to her home. Then he strapped on his beeper, so she could summon him if necessary. All this so that he, the funeral director, could sally forth from his establishment. He would drop the business end of the beeper off at Wilmores’ on his way to find Cally.
By the time Mrs. Wilmore run away I was real worried about Joanie. She changed a lot after she done that mean trick to her mother. She didn’t have nothing to say to me, but she didn’t mind me hanging around either, which wasn’t no good. She didn’t seem to care about nothing. She didn’t hardly ever go out noplace except to them park meetings of hers. Not even to get stuff to eat she didn’t go out none. A lot of the time I come up the hill and found her just laying in that merry-go-round camp of hers, in the dark, with nothing to eat. I’d bring her stuff to eat. It reminded me of the way Joanie was that last year, except the old Joanie would’ve growled me. Ahira didn’t growl me none. That bothered me.
If I’d been thinking, I would’ve knowed she needed me, I would’ve told her I knowed she was Joanie. But I’d got in the habit of her being Ahira. Another thing was, she had me half scared of her since I seen what she done to her mother. So I just brought her food and left her be.
It seems like things always go by opposites. Seemed like the less Ahira come out of her hole, the more all the Hoadley misfits come out of theirs. Of course a lot of them was healed and didn’t feel so bad or look so bad no more, except for the marks on the sides of their heads, but that didn’t matter. We was still misfits, and we knowed it. Being a misfit don’t depend on how you look. It depends on what the world has done to your insides. Only now, see, we was proud of them scars, the ones people could see and the ones nobody could see, because them scars had made us Ahira’s family. So instead of hiding ourselves away like we used to would, we was out on the streets all day, early in the morning even, just walking around Hoadley and sort of looking at it in the daylight like we wasn’t used to seeing it and hugging when we met up with each other and then walking with each other and smiling. It was like we owned the town. Hardly nobody else come out that didn’t have to, either because of us or because of them big black bugs all the time yelling like babies. We didn’t mind them bugs none. We even carried them around like pets and sweet-talked them black baby faces of theirs. Them bugs was kin to us, and we knowed it. Them bugs was misfits too. The girl who used to was bald wore a whole nest of them in her hair. She give them names and loved them like they was her children and kept them with her wherever. A lot of us done the same.
And when Ahira come down at dusk to the park, we wouldn’t just sort of creep out when we seed her to stand around like we used to. We would all be there waiting for her and sort of partying even though there wasn’t no drinks or nothing, and we’d yell hi when we seen her coming, and bunches of us would run to meet her and hug her. And when she would start to go away again, we wouldn’t let her go. We’d make her walk around Hoadley with us, and we’d sing stupid stuff and crack bad jokes, and a lot of us would walk in a big line with our arms around her shoulders and each other’s. I never done none of them things with Ahira because I thought they would make her mad, but I was glad when the others done it and it didn’t make her mad. I saw her eyes, her face, sometimes, and it looked like she wanted to cry. That was okay. People got a right to cry sometimes.
Like I said, I was worried about her, but I never would’ve guessed the crazy thing she would do.
The morning after one of them nights—a bunch of us and Ahira had walked clear out to Mine 28 and spray-painted “666” on the railroad bridge—the next morning early, before I had to go to the funeral home to work, I tromped up the old trolley line to Joanie’s place. I had a bunch of bananas and some jelly donuts and some sweet bologna for her. But as soon as I stepped in that hole the earth spirit had blowed in her merry-go-round house, I set that stuff down, because I knowed something was wrong.
I knowed it because I seen hard little glitters of glass all over the place. Then I seed Joanie. She was laying on the floor between some of them wooden horses. She wasn’t dead or even knocked out, cause I seed her eyes, hard and thin and glittery, like them pieces of glass. She was watching me the whole time, but didn’t move or say hi or nothing. And her eyes was looking out of dark stuff. And it was blood.
“Joanie,” I says, all shook up, not thinking about what I’m saying, “oh damn, Joanie, what’d you go and do to yourself?” I looked around and walked a few steps and grabbed her flashlight, turned it on so I could see her better. And her eyes was on me wide, and her mouth moving under strings of blood.
“Bar,” she’s sort of whispering, “How—who—how’d you know—”
I’d went and called her by her real name, see. But I ain’t worrying ’bout none of that. I’m worrying about her. I scrooched down beside her with the flas
hlight, and I can see she ain’t bleeding no more, she’d been laying there awhile, the blood drips on the floor beside her are dry, and it’s just sort of sticky on her face. But she’d cut her face all to a mess and busted her nose flat. She hadn’t hurt her hands; they was folded on top of her. She had herself laid out tidy as a corpse.
“Bar,” she’s saying, “how’d you know who I was?”
I ain’t paying attention. I can see now what she’d done. She’d broke them big mirrors in the middle of the merry-go-round, all of them. There was splatters of blood and sharp pieces of broken glass everywhere. And she must’ve done it with her head. She must’ve rammed her beautiful face right into them mirrors.
I went and got her plastic milk jug she kept full of water, and I found a dishtowel or something, I don’t remember what, I was so fussed, and I come back and set beside her and started trying to wash the blood off her face without hurting her worse than she was already hurt.
“Joanie,” I says, “Joanie, are you all right?”
Then all of a sudden she pushed my hands away and set straight up, and when she yelled at me she sounded like the old Joanie. “Barry Beal, you are so dumb!” she yells. “Of course I’m not all right! I—” Right then I put my arms around her. I should’ve done it before. She snuggled up to my shoulder and started crying. I held her as comfortable as I could. And I wasn’t glad about what she’d gone and done to herself, but I was glad about one thing: I knowed right then that she needed me after all. Joanie needed me to love her.
“You’re so damn skinny,” I says. She felt like a baby bird I held once, shaking and all bones. “You ain’t been eating enough,” I says. She didn’t answer me. She was too busy bawling.
“God damn, that hurts!” she cusses between gulps.
“What does?” I let go a little, scared I had been hugging her too tight, I’d smashed her nose worse or something. Even her voice sounds more like the old Joanie, because her nose is smashed.
“Not you. The tears.”
“Tears is good for you.”
“They’re getting in the cuts,” she yells. She kept on crying anyways, until she was calmed down, and then she pulled away.
“I’ve made a real mess of your shirt,” she says, dull. She looked like she wanted to cry some more but she was too tired.
“You made a real mess of your face,” I says. I can see it better now it’s mostly washed. There was a lot of shallow cuts, and one cheek was sliced open pretty good. “We gotta get you to a doctor.”
“No.” She lays down on the floor again.
“Joanie—”
“No,” she says. “I hate it. Let it be.”
“I ain’t going to let it be. It’s getting all swole.” It was, too, especially around the eyes and lips. I started putting the cold water on it again to keep the swelling down. “What was wrong with it?” I says. “I thought it was real nice.”
She smiles, sort of stiff because her mouth is sore, and she says, “Barry, you’ll never change. How long have you known who I was?”
“A good while. Since that first night I was up here.”
“Lord. I wish you’d told me.”
I wished too now that I did, but I said, “I didn’t think you’d like it.”
“Maybe not,” she says, real low. “I was pretty stupid.”
We was quiet. I kept working at her face with the cold cloth.
“But maybe I needed it,” she says.
“Didn’t look to me like you needed me for nothing no more.”
“I need something. Maybe a brain transplant.” She started trying to tell me what was wrong. “It’s like—Bar, it’s like I’m two different people, and they each want different things. And then there’s all those—all those misfits together in one place, treating me as if I’m really special.…”
“Well, ain’t you?” I says.
“Sort of. I did what I had to do. I made myself into Ahira. Made a name for myself. Started something. I’m better than other misfits.” She sounded like she was making fun of herself. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Well, that’s okay,” I says.
“Yeah, sure. So you say.” She sounded dead tired. “Everything I do’s okay with you. It’s okay with them, too. They’re a lot like you, Bar. They’re sweet, gentle people. Most of them, anyway. I want them to—I want them to like me.”
“They do like you!”
“No. They like Ahira.”
And I’m staring at her, I didn’t understand, and all of a sudden, like it was inside her all the time but it just busted out, she was really upset. “They don’t know me! I might as well have a goddamn mask on. It’s just Ahira they like. Gorgeous Ahira. And all the time there’s a—a child inside me, crying and crying.…” She set up, and her hands were in the air, fluttering like doves.
“Huh?” I says again.
“She made me let her out.”
“Who?”
“Joan Musser! She made me smash the mask to let her out. I—I had Joan Musser hidden inside!” she yells. “Like in a dark place, a closet, a cellar, under my damn face, where they couldn’t see her, and she was screaming—” Joanie was shaking so bad, seemed like she shook them wooden horses all around us. “—all the time screaming and crying, like a child in the dark, crying ‘Please, please, like me, l-l-l-love me,’ and they’re sweet people, they just might have liked her even the way she was, and Ahira yelling no, no, dead thing, smelly thing, stay where you are, hateful, hateful—”
I tried to get hold of her to calm her down, but she scooted away from me under one of them wooden horses.
“I’m all ugly inside!” she screamed.
I couldn’t think of nothing to do, so I patted the only part of her she was letting me reach, which was her leg. She had her face turned away. “Joanie,” I says to the back of her head, “you ain’t ugly. You’re talking ugly, I mean, have a look at me.”
“Shut up,” she says, crying.
“You come out of there and look at me once,” I says, and I keep at her till she done it. She looked at me fit to kill. And she looked like hell, her nose broke and her face cut and her eyes and mouth all swole and the eyes already turning black.
“Okay, so you’re ugly,” I says. “We can be ugly together.”
She almost laughed, and choked on it, and then she says, “You don’t understand.”
“That’s true.” Didn’t bother me none. It always tooken me a while to understand things. “Lean on me anyways?” I snuggled her up against my shoulder again, and she let me.
“I ain’t so smart,” I says. “If I would’ve been smart I would’ve knowed I love you. I would’ve never let you go off and leave me.”
“Huh?” She sounded tired.
“I love you, Joanie. Always did.”
She stayed quiet a long time, not moving, not looking at me. “That doesn’t help as much as you might think,” she says finally.
“It’s the best I can do.”
I just set there holding her, both of us on the floor of the merry-go-round with them wooden horses pawing at the air all around us, spooky looking because there ain’t much light in that place. They made me feel like I wanted to get out of there, and get Joanie out of there, even though she was letting me hold her, and I says to her, “Joanie, c’mon, let me get you to a doctor. There might be some glass still in them cuts.”
She moved her head a little without looking at me. I could just feel it against my shoulder, her shaking her head no.
“Joanie—”
“I don’t care,” she says.
“Look, I care.”
“Stuff it, Bar.” She set up and looked at me out of eyes that was just slits between black-and-blue swole-up lids, like she really was looking out of a mask. “You want to care about me.…” She broke off, and then she didn’t say what she meant to at first. She says, “Did my father drink himself to death yet?”
“Not yet,” I says, because I would’ve knowed if he did, because he would�
�ve come in the funeral home, I would’ve did a blanket for him if he was dead. Mussers was Protestants, sort of. But it was a weird question for Joanie to ask, because she would’ve knowed too. Everybody in Hoadley knowed everything. “How come?” I says.
“I want him to die,” Joanie says.
“Well, I guess he will soon enough, won’t he?” I says. Either drinking himself to death, or when she took down everybody in that town.
“I don’t want him just to die,” she says. “I want him to scream. I want him to shake and know he’s going to die and know why. I want him to shit his pants and hurt and die.”
I set there not looking at her beautiful, messed-up face, not looking at Ahira, just listening to her voice, just listening to Joanie. I could tell she hated her father a lot worse than I thought.
“I didn’t know you hated him so bad,” I says.
“I’m the rose that’s sick, Bar. And he made me sick.”
I didn’t remember about her poem, and I probably wouldn’t of understood even if I did. I thought she meant, like, the flu or something. “You ain’t feverish or nothing,” I says.
“You can’t see how I’m sick. Bar, I never told you. I never told anybody.” She ain’t looking at me while she talks, she’s just staring, and I begun to get a bad, crawly feeling about what she was going to say. “All those times my mother called me a whore, said I was a filthy sinner, said I was fornicating whenever her back was turned, whenever she was out of the house—it was true. Except it was him doing it to me. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
It was so awful I didn’t understand for a minute. And while I was setting there like a dummy she kept talking, just looking at the board floor and talking like there was a machine inside her making her talk. “I wasn’t any older than ten when he started. I know I wasn’t, because when I first got my period, I saw all this blood on my panties, nobody had explained it to me, the first thing I thought was that my father had hurt me.”
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