Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  “Praise the Lord,” he said. “My sister and I have been praying for a ride. We have an engagement, you see. People waiting for her guitar to guide them.”

  He gestured toward the case, and she hoisted it a little higher. Sometimes not being able to speak came in handy.

  The woman wagged her finger at them. “Now, Fred suggested that we shouldn’t stop for you, but me, I trust that the spirit comes in all forms. Doesn’t it, Fred?”

  The man in the driver’s seat grimaced.

  “Dears,” the woman continued, “you look a little young to be traveling this way.”

  “Bess, my sister, she’s nineteen. I’m along with her because she’s mute.”

  “Oh my.” Shock rounded the woman’s eyes and mouth into perfect circles. “You know sign language, dear?”

  Blue gave Steve a stricken glance. “I’m afraid my sister isn’t . . . Well, she was blessed with a sense of music but not a lot more. Her doctor, he calls her a savant.”

  Where the hell had he gotten that from? She’d assumed everything to know about Steve could be read in his face, but that view was rapidly changing. Seamless lies, smooth and easy as melted chocolate.

  “Now that is a pity.”

  “Ma’am, we were supposed to have a ride, but the man who was to give it, he . . . He wasn’t appropriate.”

  The woman tutted some. The man coughed. “We need to go if you want to get to your sister’s. We’re already looking at midnight.”

  “Just a minute. Where are you children trying to go?”

  “Chicago, ma’am, but we’re grateful for any ride.”

  “Oooh!” The woman clapped her soft hands together. “I told you, Fred, I told you there was a reason to stop for them. We’re headed to Chicago, too!”

  And with that they were in the backseat of the minivan, Chicago-bound. Blue nestled into her seat, traded her boots for shoes, and tuned out the Christian pop on the radio.

  By the time Chicago grew near, Steve had cemented their credibility with the woman via evangelical wordplay. Blue had spent plenty of time on the road with Mama and Cass and Tish, but their games had consisted of collecting license plates and making truckers honk. She couldn’t have quoted anything from the Bible, aside from In the beginning. Steve, on the other hand, tossed off Bible verses effortlessly. It paid off when the woman insisted that they come to spend the night at her sister’s house.

  As she listened to Steve in the dark, Blue felt she knew his voice, only it wasn’t a boy she heard. From time to time, under the flicker of the highway lights, she heard not the scratching notes of adolescence, but the betrayal of a soft clear girl’s voice.

  Click. Click. Click. The sounds of the turn signal, the beat of the Christian pop. She touched Steve’s hand, ran her fingers over the almost hairless skin, the heat of the damp palm. He looked at her. I was blind, but now I see . . . Did that come from the Bible, too?

  The woman’s sister was an older, plainer version of her. Her house reeked of cinnamon potpourri. Her walls were covered with framed examples of embroidery—Bible verses, puppies, fir trees.

  She stared at them, Steve and Blue, as Cynthia spun their story, embellishing it with bits of her own creation. Blue had become a musical prodigy with the IQ of a toddler, Steve her devoted brother, protecting her from the forces of darkness. “You can see it in their faces, Ruth. Lambs, both of them.”

  The only thing Blue could see in Steve’s face was something she wasn’t sure either woman would appreciate.

  “Well, I don’t know. . . ,” the woman started at last.

  “Ruthie, look at them. You’ve got the space over the garage.”

  “Oh, Cyn, the heat’s not even on out there. And I’ve been storing all my old stuff . . .” She touched the cross she wore on a gold chain. Blue wondered idly what would happen if she touched it. Anything? Would she burst into flames? Would it?

  “Oh, okay. Fred, you’ll show them up? You’ll have to use the bathroom in here. And it’ll be cold—the space heater should help some. Cynthia says you’re good people. I hope you prove her right.”

  The space above the garage was cold, but it was also a room, with lacy curtains on the windows and wooden floors. Large sheets of canvas had been tossed over the floor and what appeared to be stacks of boxes in one corner. After stopping downstairs for the bathroom, Blue found Fred manning an electric pump, inflating an air mattress, while Steve watched.

  “Check with Ruth. She must have sleeping bags somewhere. If not, she’ll have blankets. Those women like to be prepared. No sense in Armageddon leaving everyone cold.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pillows, too. No reason to suffer.”

  “Thank you, sir, for setting up the mattress. I don’t want to keep you from your own bed.”

  “I want to see that the heater’s working properly. Those things can be dangerous.” Fred plugged the mattress, grunted a little as he stood up, pump in hand.

  Steve left in search of pillows and blankets.

  Once he’d gone, Fred held out something, a small laminated rectangle. “I took the liberty of looking in your bag while your brother was asking for the pump downstairs. I know who you are, Blue Riley, and where you’re supposed to be living. I know your mind is plenty sharp. I can see it in your eyes. The only reason the women don’t is because it makes them feel good about themselves. I’m giving this back to you, but remember. Either of you take a single thing, do any harm, well, things will go bad for you.”

  No.

  What time was it? When they’d entered the car, it had been daylight. By the time they went to bed it would be after midnight. Two days gone. She’d have to leave as soon as she’d gotten some sleep. No harm to him, and some good for her.

  “I have pillows enough for an army.” Steve burst in, arms full. “Bess and I are much, much obliged to your family, sir.”

  Fred glanced at Steve, gave a quick nod. “You two be good up here. I expect they’ll have breakfast for you in the morning.”

  Once he left, Blue let out a long shuddering breath. Steve looked at her curiously as he dropped the bedding on the mattress. “Something wrong?”

  She shook her head. No reason to tell him about the license. They’d leave the next morning without letting on that they weren’t what Steve had said. No trouble at all.

  Steve went to bed in his clothes-jeans, T-shirt, oversized flannel. In the glow from the streetlamp outside, she studied the plush roundness of his chin, the sheen of his eyes as he looked at her, then away. Easy enough to leave things the way they were, easier, even, without a voice. The perfect excuse to say nothing.

  Except . . . Except what? The urge that led her to touch his cheek, to run one fingertip over the smoothness there, there weren’t words for that. Language was so clumsy at times like these, as she traced the comet’s tail of wet heat trailing from his eyes. She found his hand, touched it to the tears and shook her head.

  He shivered a little. “What . . .” Maybe he didn’t have words, either. Maybe some spaces couldn’t be filled by language. Born into the wrong family—she’d known other kids that way. Beck’s little brother, his head full of numbers while Beck and his dad debated the finer points of deer season over dinner. Susie Boucher, raised in a house of china figurines and pressed tablecloths, her blunt-cut hair held back with a green rubber band filched off a bunch of kale, standing in the rain for hours in waders and a straw hat, fishing.

  But what did it mean to be born into the wrong family and the wrong body? What could she possibly say about that?

  He drew a breath. “Sometimes I want to go home more than anything, you know? I want them to come looking for me, to say they’re sorry, that they want me back. Some nights, when I can’t sleep, if it’s cold and I haven’t found a good place to crash, that’s all I can think about.”

  She kept still, afraid even movement would stop his mouth.

  “It’s like I asked too much. Like, if I’d said I was a boy, then, maybe. But a gay bo
y? It . . . My mom couldn’t even talk to me. I saw this show on TV, about kids like me, and how their families had helped them, and I thought maybe mine would come around. I tried, I tried so hard. They said it was against God. Can you imagine, being told even God would turn his back on you? I didn’t know what else to do. I just left.”

  No one gets to tell you who you are. That lesson had come from Tish, not Mama, in a fight she never should have heard. “If I wanted someone to tell me who and what I should be, I would have stayed home. I’m a goddamn rainbow, Clary, and I get to show all my colors, even the shit ones,” she’d said.

  Mama had laughed. So had Tish, after a minute. Laughter, quick and sweet and sad. Then, “Tish, I love your colors, but I can’t keep along this road forever. There’s an end somewhere.”

  There had been an end, just a few months later. End of Dry Gully. End of Tish’s husky voice complaining at the light in the morning, the way she ran her fingers through Blue’s hair, back and forth three times. End of the way life was supposed to be.

  Blue had never been alone, though. Never had any doubt that people loved her, even when she hated them. She followed the curve of Steve’s arm to where his hand was tightened into a ball. Slowly unworked the fingers and slipped her hand into his.

  The next morning everyone gathered at the bar in the kitchen. Ruth fried bacon on a giant skillet, while Cynthia twittered about them. Steve offered to help more than once. Each time the women turned him away, patting his back and thanking him.

  As Blue sat, a knot of anger grew inside. She couldn’t put her finger on what it fed on. Maybe it was from watching their smug, well-fed faces, watching Steve call Fred sir, talking politely with the women. So sweet, even though his own nice, religious parents drove him away. Weren’t these people the same?

  Too easy, said a little voice in her head. Fuck you, said a louder one. She swallowed both with an unchewed wad of bacon, none of it passing easily.

  “We were talking, earlier, before you came down, about a little plan Ruthie and I hatched.” Cynthia gave her a rosy smile. “Ruthie has a little prayer group, some adults, some young people like you, and we’d love for you to play for them. In exchange, you could stay here for the day, and then we could drive you to meet up with your church in the evening. Steve said it wouldn’t be any problem at all.”

  Blue glared at Steve. He gave her a pleading look. “She can’t really decide for herself,” he said. “I make all the decisions for us. It’s really nice of you to ask her, though. The answer is that we’d love to.”

  Blue pushed away from the table and left. Out the door, up the stairs to the garage, opening the top of her pack, pulling out the keepsake bag, touching each item in turn as the urge to ball up her fists and hit something faded. She put everything back.

  It didn’t take Steve long to come looking for her. “What’s the problem? I got us lunch and dinner and a warm place for the day. All we have to do is go to play some music.”

  She grabbed her notebook, writing in heavy lines.

  We? Me, you mean! I have to PLAY!!! You assumed I’d want to. Guess what? I don’t play church music.

  “You don’t have to. No one’s going to know what you play, not if you’re not singing the words. Play something pretty, it’ll be fine.”

  Something pretty? For a moment, she felt the way Tish had always looked: dark eyes, tattoo on her neck, lipstick the color of drying blood. Tish didn’t play pretty. She played real.

  Tish played the fiddle, though. Blue played Mama’s guitar, with fingers that were sore because she hadn’t played enough to harden them, without anything to boost the sound, with a limited repertoire. Maybe she was doomed to sound pretty.

  They’re fakes.

  Steve flinched. “They’re nice. They’re good people.”

  Fred knows we’re lying.

  She wanted to leave it at that. Steve looked as though he might cry, though.

  He knows. He even knows my real name. If I stay past midnight, she’ll hurt them.

  A soccer game of emotions bounced around Steve’s face, disbelief, and anger, and fear, and . . . want. He wanted something, and she was keeping him from it.

  “You’re just saying that. You don’t want to stay and you’re making things up. Maybe you even made up the whole story you told. Or maybe you’re nuts.”

  Maybe I should just leave then.

  She almost went back and underlined it a second time. All she had to do was pick up her bag and her guitar and walk out the door. At the moment, she felt she could hike all the way across the country, one step after another, faster and faster, Steve and everyone else left far behind.

  “No, you can’t. Please. If you go, they won’t believe me. I need you to stay. I don’t have any money, and I don’t have a place to go, and I need your help.” His face had gone blotchy, red spots around his eyes, on his cheeks, his eyelashes clumping from unshed tears.

  He needed her. She needed to keep moving, but he needed her, needed this one thing she could do for him. All she had to do was play. Steve would understand about leaving before midnight. It would work.

  She reluctantly nodded.

  She meant for it to work, but as the day wore on, she meant it less and less. She didn’t feel like a person to them—just an open square on their Good Christian Bingo card.

  Teena’s gram had gone to church every Sunday. When Mama had died, she’d taken Blue’s hand between her two warm withered ones and squeezed. “There’s no fairness to who comes and who goes,” she’d said, eyes tight on her. “Never is. Only thing to know is that you had a mama who loved you, and that she’s far away from suffering now. Only thing left to pain her is how her babies are, and we’ll show her that you’re surrounded by love.”

  She was the kind of church folk that Blue could understand. She would have had beautiful music inside her, Blue was sure of it. These women, theirs sounded as if it came through speakers that had been wrapped in blankets. She could hear dead air where the notes should have been, spaces that lengthened as they complained about someone’s daughter on welfare, about having to pick up the tab for her and the child she’d had without a husband, about her laziness in not getting a job with a local maid service. If they’d met Blue and Steve as runaways, if Steve hadn’t sounded one step away from being a minister himself, would they have ever taken them home?

  She didn’t think so.

  The cold bit into Blue the way only a damp sullen chill can. She zipped her coat up to her chin, pulled on the fingerless gloves. When the breeze blew hard against her, she longed for the missing fingers.

  It felt good to use her boots. A tidal feel, as if she were water and they were the moon. She kicked at pebbles as she moved, hitting them back and forth across the empty street. The neighborhood was silent. No kids playing outside. No cars driving by. Not even curtains parting so old ladies could give her the evil eye.

  She kept going. The street ended in a T, and she turned right, following the curb. Back home, roads meandered. They wiggled like the contents of the night crawler cups sold in every package store in rural Maine. Not so here. Straight lines, neat as graph paper.

  Another right, same old sights. Right, left, right, Blue’s feet thudding on the pavement, legs relaxing, getting into the groove. Maybe Cass was here, in one of the houses, sitting at a table, reaching for a phone.

  The smell drew her attention first. Burnt oranges, heat . . . She looked up.

  The woman stood beside the curb. Tan coat belted at the waist, blond hair blow-dried and hair-sprayed into that middle-aged do, the one worn by teachers and tellers and secretaries everywhere.

  The woman raised a hand as Blue neared. “Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?”

  Blue shrugged. No paper. No pen. No way to talk.

  The woman took a few steps toward her, near enough to show the pencil marks on her carefully made-up face. “It’s the kind of day perfect for moving on, don’t you think?”

  A snapping sound accompanied her w
ords, the click of a static charge. In the sunlight nothing glowed, but Blue could feel the heat of the sparks.

  She tapped at her wrist, pointed up at the sun, shook her head.

  The woman smiled, a you-should-have-done-better-on-your-exam smile. “Two days, Bluebird. You let him know your name. The clock rolls over at midnight. You’ll only have yourself to blame if you don’t leave on time. And what about the other one? Just because he doesn’t have your name yet doesn’t mean you’re not a danger to him.”

  Blue shook her head. Frustrated, she stomped her foot and grabbed at her throat. I want it back, she thought furiously.

  “Want? Who doesn’t want something, Bluebird?” So the woman could hear her thoughts. She shook her head. “‘Want’ is not ‘deserve.’ ‘Want’ isn’t even ‘need.’ I think it’s time for you to be figuring out how to move on.”

  The group that gathered that evening was mostly women like Ruth and Cynthia, with careful hair, rosy faces, soft hands and wedding rings, and little gold crosses hanging over snug sweaters. Everyone squeezed closer, talking loudly around her.

  “This is her, one of God’s little angels. And this”—Ruth put an arm around Steve—“this is her brother, who has devoted himself to caring for her. Just as sweet as sugar itself.”

  Steve smiled, even blushed a little. Blue knew his problem now: he wanted them all to like him the way his parents didn’t. To see him for who he knew himself to be. She hated him for it. He was using her to make himself seem special. So was Ruth.

  They wanted special, she’d give it to them. She knew exactly which song to play. She wasn’t anyone’s golden pass to goodness.

  But first, she had to sit through a meeting that droned on for an hour or so. She retreated deeper into the angry space in her head. If there were color to it, it would be red, like the crossroads woman’s dress, like the blood that had scabbed on her scratched-up hands. Like the pulse beating in her neck.