by Lucky Simms
Her dreams went sideways with longing. She couldn’t do anything right or finished. She couldn’t throw a dream punch or drive a dream car. Her dream teeth fell out.
She’d lost weight, and not in a good way. Her jeans hung on her hipbones like shrouds on a hook. Her breasts swam in her floral cotton bras and she tried stuffing the bottoms with toilet paper, but it looked lumpy and lopsided no matter what, and she feared someone might find out and she’d be busted like a middle-schooler.
Her uncle asked her why she was back in her old room and as soon as she started to blurt out an answer his eyes went wide with horror and he backed away. She was a disaster.
She trudged through days like a sleepwalker, hoping vaguely she might find a bridge or a cliff to wander off of. But the chances never came. She had to live through it.
Standing at the counter of the donut shop, she saw Riddick on the opposite side of the street, passing out flyers. He didn’t even turn toward her, though she knew damn well he knew what she was feeling. He just walked on.
Before she really thought about it, she snapped her apron over her head and threw it on the counter. “Going to lunch!” she shouted to Ava who was counting off inventory in the cooler, and ran out the front door.
She ran to the end of the block, across the field, and toward the gate. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode in her chest and she was vaguely glad for that, for some other sensation than the one that filled her so relentlessly.
Noughton met her at the gate like he had been waiting for her.
“Madear!” he bellowed, all friendly. “Dear Madear! You’re so early! What’s going on?”
She held up her hands, “Noughton, I don’t want any trouble. I just came to see Billie.”
“Aw, that’s nice!” he nodded. “But she is working, as you know. You’ll have to come back later.”
“Um,” Madear said, and looked past him. She could make a run for it… She tried to step past him, but Noughton blocked her.
“Are you all right? You look worn out. Did you run here?”
“Noughton, just let me see her.”
“There’s no need to run, Madear.”
“Noughton, please.”
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “No, Madear. Not today.”
Madear wasn’t sure what to do. “Look,” she said plaintively, “I’m not trying to make trouble. I just… I think there’s been a mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“Yeah! A mistake. I gave you the wrong thing… Um. I will go ask Mame for the right thing. I will get it for you.”
Noughton shook his head. “Madear, no. I have what I wanted.”
“But,” she looked around, “Noughton, please!” Then she straightened. “Don’t make me talk to Mame.”
He rolled his eyes, but looked at her seriously. “Madear, didn’t you get what you asked for?” She shook her head. He clucked his tongue. “Oh, be honest, duckling, didn’t you get what you asked for?”
She shook her head again. “It didn’t work!”
“Is that because of me? Or because of you?”
“Please, Noughton!” she squealed desperately, then suddenly froze, her eyes glazed and her face turning slowly toward town again.
“No refunds!” Noughton sang gaily, walking back through the gate, leaving Madear hanging in space like an abandoned marionette. Long minutes passed before her eyes, unseen. Gradually she moved in slow motion, back across the field. Townies passed her and glanced back, concerned, as she moved in jerky, automated motions back to where she came from.
LIKE IT’S YOUR JOB, I SAID
Billie gnawed the inside of her lip and tried to look every around the porch and garden but at Mame. She had coffee between her hands in her lap. It was close to 11.
Since the carnival nights were late ones, Mame had let Billie sleep in, taking all the first garden chores for herself. It wasn’t so much really. She was well able to handle it without help.
They sat in the chairs. Mame looking at Billie. Billie looking far away from Mame.
“So how’s that cotton candy?” Mame finally asked.
Billie had forgotten her offhanded cover story. Now it seemed flimsy and embarrassing. She knew she was busted. She just wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do about it.
“I adore cotton candy. You should bring me some.”
Billie nodded silently.
“When Noughton was a boy I used to bring it to him, in the Right House. Just took it up to the porch and his mama let me in. How is Noughton, anyway?”
Billie shrugged.
“I should go up there tonight. I haven’t said hello to him in just a coon’s age. I heard he was here the other night.”
“He was?” Billie asked. “When?”
“Oh, at your party. You didn’t see him?”
Billie was not sure what to say. Mame could explode at any moment. She did not want to set her off.
“I think he may have left with something of mine. By mistake.”
Billie blinked.
“Have you seen it around?”
Billie gulped. “Seen what?”
Mame pressed her lips so thin they disappeared. “My Blood Mirror, Wilhelmina. You have seen it, haven’t you?”
Billie nodded reluctantly.
But she was distracted. As soon as Mame said the words, Billie could almost feel it under her fingers. She began to hum.
“Stop that!” Mame hissed. She looked shocked. “What have you done?”
Billie shook her head to clear it. “I-- I haven’t done anything… Just touched it. What does it do?” She flexed her hands, feeling remainders of the lightning that had danced through her fingertips. When it touched her, she felt everything come alive like a complex clockwork stage in her mind’s eye. She felt Gary’s effort to build the booth, and Noughton’s effort to carry the parcel to her, with something else besides… She felt connections. Everything was really so simple, like beads on a string. All connected, each to each. It seemed almost preposterous that she hadn’t seen it before.
She heard a whistle, a song… It faded in and out of her consciousness but it was there. Some sort of music, as though all the clockwork players were choreographed to the same song. It too was simple. She could feel it in her bones. Yet she couldn’t quite master the melody. It slipped away like a car radio going out of range.
And then she felt Riddick all over again, how the lightning fed through her and into him and back again in a bright, crackling feedback loop. She had never felt anything like that before. Her belly twinged and burned. She wanted that again...
Mame snatched her hands and examined them, twisting them, turning them over.
She squinted at Billie. “How did he get it?”
Billie shook her head as if to clear it, and the clockwork players and melody faded immediately. “Madear --”
“Pah! Of course! That twit.”
Billie bristled. “Well, she thought… I don’t know what she thought. But she gets frightened. I think Noughton tricked her or something like that…”
“Of course he tricked her,” Mame said dismissively. Billie blinked in surprise. “I’ve kept it from him for the last 25 years, and not because he didn’t ask, or know where it was. He knows precisely. And you know what - so does Madear.”
“Wait, what?” Billie reeled. Madear? She had never been blessed with discretion, and she had never kept a secret from Billie so far as she knew.
“You don’t remember, Billie. You don’t know.”
But she did know. She returned to the stage in her mind and presented the question to herself. What don’t I remember? Turning her mind toward the idea, she felt a door open. Beyond that door, the facts laid themselves out as though they were on a map.
“Billie?” came Mame’s voice, but she seemed to be receding so quickly. Billie tried to tell her to wait, that she just needed to see one important thing, and she left Mame behind.
Everything connected, each to each. She could whiz
through the memories one at a time, or she could slow down and really look at them like they were encased in amber. She could take them as a whole, swallow them like soup and absorb them.
The dogs, there had been nine of them. She’d had a kitten briefly but it perished in the talons of her owl. She’d cried miserably for days.
The animals weren’t at the carnival, they were in the garden aside a huge house. The Right House. At the time, that was where they all lived.
Mavis was called mother and she was sweet. She was just darling. She had a voice like honey. But in her eyes there was some sad realization. She held some immutable fact in her like a thorn, like a blade in her ribs.
Billie saw Mavis see Riddick, and saw her fit them together like puzzle pieces. Mavis saw the lighting go through them. She saw them altered. She watched Mavis curdle like milk, go all twisted and vain. Why not her? Why not ever Mavis?
She saw her taking in Lu Blue and Mame who was called Miracle with her eyes, watching their blood feed the mirror, watching their gazes feed each other. She knew what it took to make the mirror work, and how powerful that would make her, and Mavis opened wide with a rage and a hunger that made her as dangerous as anything.
She saw Lu Blue, crushed and bleeding in the rain. She saw Mavis.
And she saw Riddick.
She turned another swerving arc and came to a sudden stop. There was Mame. It was today. All the memories stretched around her and through her, and Mame knew them all. But she had never told.
“You have to bring it back to me, Billie,” Mame whispered, and Billie had to stop, had to listen. The force of Mame’s voice was a web that caught her up and held her still. “This is how you will be safe, how you’ve been safe all this time. Just forget again. Let me keep it here until we are all withered and lost to time. Let everyone forget our names.”
She reached out for Billie’s hand, and Billie felt the truth of all of it. It was settled. Like beads on a thread, each connected to each.
“Billie, let me keep you safe. Let me keep Riddick safe.”
“No, Mame, no,” Billie sighed, filled with both wonder and dread. She felt the beads on a string moving, sliding. She felt them like grains of sand shifting in a sack. Everything she had forgotten came back to her simply, all at once, and she wouldn’t be able to forget again. “I think it’s too late for that.”
“You think you know everything but you don’t,” Mame said. “It’s so easy to believe the mirror. And it’s so easy to believe that… feeling. That sensation that you’re a part of everything, and everything is so simple. But there’s more, Billie.”
Billie nodded slowly.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but there are… dark spots. Maybe it’s built into us, to keep us from seeing too much. Or maybe there are other things at work. But it is dangerous to think that you’re infallible. Mavis…”
“I know,” Billie said simply.
“No,” Mame shook her head sadly. “I don’t think you do. Mavis is different. She is dark, and I swear I never saw it. If I had known, it could have never happened that way. If the Blood Mirror saw everything, then I would have known. You see? I was foolish to think that life was so simple. And foolish not to see what was right before my eyes.
“You have to bring it back to me, Billie.”
Billie shook her head. “I can’t. It’s mine. I can feel it.”
Mame nodded slowly and looked out over the garden. Everything was now so lush, so nearly overgrown. If she didn’t tend and prune it every day, it would overrun everything. She had to keep it in order. Yet, for what? Everything grew even if she didn’t intervene. Maybe some of it would do better without her. And she couldn’t do this forever.
“All right,” she said finally, weariness pouring through her voice. “Let me show you. I won’t stand in your way, but let me show you how to use it and how to keep it safe.”
Billie stared at her through a squint, trying to see if she was sincere. But Mame held no dishonesty. Actually she seemed to have surrendered.
“You won’t keep it from me? Like you did with Noughton?”
Mame shook her head. “No. If it truly has spoken to you, then you belong to it as much as it belongs to you. I thought I could prevent it… but I see it’s too late. Let me show you how to get the best from it. How to do the best with it.”
Mame turned to Billie and held out her strong, old hands. Billie reluctantly slid her own hands into Mame’s, suspecting a trick, but as soon as they touched she could feel Mame’s sincerity. She looked at Billie with wet, deep brown eyes and a sense of weary resolve.
“You have to believe me. I thought this was best,” she said.
“I know,” Billie said.
“I thought you could have a normal life,” she said.
Billie shrugged. “No, apparently not,” she said with a small chuckle.
Mame sighed deeply, nodding. “I see that now. It would always come to this. But now that you know… You see why Noughton cannot have it.”
Billie nodded. She understood. Noughton was still a mystery. Though he was in the clockwork theater in her mind, he had another side. It was as though he kept himself facing her precisely so that she could not see what was behind him. What was he hiding? She could feel it was something of significance, even though she could not look at it directly. And Mavis… she was all darkness.. Her shadow loomed at the corner of Billie’s eye but no matter how fast she turned toward it, the shadow slipped to somewhere else.
“There’s so much…” she stammered, overwhelmed.
Mame squeezed her hands. “Yes, there is so, so much. But I will show you. And you will be… amazing. Better than any of us.”
Billie looked into her grandmother’s eyes and felt flooded with love and relief. She hadn’t realized how much she craved the shelter of her trust, but felt so happy to be back.
“Now,” Mame said sternly. “Go get ready. You’ll be late for work.”
WHEEL
The stones, all in a row, tumbling toward GAS FOOD LODGING and that damn red wheel over the hill. The night pulled up behind her like a blanket, and the winds with it. All connected.
Mavis took in the air, breathing deep a coolness that wasn’t as menacing as Florida, but still had an edge to it. It had knowledge. It couldn’t be fooled anymore.
It was nearly the same. What is five years? Just the blink of an eye. All those solar rotations, collapsing on each other, fallen behind her. The memories of each day are written in each tiny rock, each grain of sand. All the same.
Games, screaming, feats of strength, all the same.
Roger, poor Roger Dell where did his teeth go? He used to tow tractor tires from a rope held in his jaw.
And Noughton, that funny goat, oh Noughton.
The rain wasn’t rain yet but the air held the promise. Mavis stalked through the cutting grasses and pushed through huddled families. Either no one knew her anymore, or no one cared to look.
She walked behind the kiddie rides and Tilt A Whirl until she could see the midway, then blew a kiss at Gary. He saw her. Someone finally saw her. He snatched the kiss from the air and swallowed it whole.
She looked and looked, but could not find him. Something told her that as soon as she got it right, he just poofed away. So sneaky that one. So slipperly. Like an eel in a bucket.
But then she found him behind Polari’s bar, standing over a sack. She approached and he held a finger to his lips, Shhhhh, as the lightning threaded fast through the clouds. He pointed, and she looked. There she was, little Billie, running like a fool like there was somewhere to go. She held something in her arms, something silly. The carnies regarded her indulgently like you would a child with a tantrum. Poor thing.
And there was Moses, but so young. And there… was Riddick. After everything she had done to keep them apart, there he was, just as bold as you please.
“Noughton,” she said. “It’s me. What are you doing?” But she hardly needed to ask. She could see through th
e sack. She could see into it, hear its beating heart.
“Oh my brother, you found it for me!”
CRUMPLED AND SORTED
What would Mame do now?
Billie stood in front of the stone which was now slick and dark with rain. Her hair was falling into her face, and the wind raised goosebumps on her bare arms.
She held her jacket in one hand and her keys in the other. Squinting into the rain toward the gate she could still see Noughton, who had turned half away and was talking to someone.
She began to hum. Hum de dum, she thought. Something told her she knew what she needed to know. The facts were all crumpled together, and she just needed to focus, relax…. and let them sort themselves into order. Into wisdom.
What would Mame do… What had Mame done before?
She began to walk back to the gate. Noughton was headed back toward his office with a woman who looked -- wait. Who was that?
Billie knew. Knowing was a natural part of her, she found. She barely had to ask herself the question and the answer floated up to her from a depth. Just what she needed. Nothing more. She marvelled at how simple it was. All this had been inside her the whole time but somehow buried.
What else did she know? She felt there was no time to find out, but the question hung over her like a scent, flavoring all her thoughts. If this was easy, what else could she do? She had to find out. She needed to ask Mame. Everything led back to Mame. But first, she had to find her mother.
For that, she knew she needed Mame, but she needed Riddick even more.
THE VOICE
We connect. We touch. Even when we do not touch, we still have some secret thread between us.
Sometimes, we are so much light in that connection. Some of us are too bright to be too close. We burn. We steal the light from others.