by Fritz Leiber
"Yes, I do know how you mean," Rose admitted, looking away, "but really, it's all so horrible and disgusting and frightening. Oh, I don't see how you managed to stand it, Vi."
"I wasn't asked whether I wanted to," the other said shortly.
Rose said, "At least you got back at that horrible beast a little by telling your foster mother?"
Vi replied cynically, "She'd have been the last one to believe he would ever have had to rape me. She had her own evaluation of Sweet Fourteen.
"Now, come on, Rose, it's not so terrible," Vi continued, "or rather, yes, it was just that terrible, but it's all over now. It happened long – well, fairly long ago. As for the gays, they're mostly quite charming, or at least funny. The make-up boy I mentioned has breasts, for instance – cute little silicone ones. Of course the nipples are a little small."
"I don't believe that," Rose protested, clapping her fingers to her mouth to smother a nervous giggle.
"True, just the same," Vi settled back and her face got a tight little smile. "Besides," she said, breathing deeply, "I got my own back at my loving father, let me tell you, in my own sweet time and way. After–"
She broke off because there was a repetition of the whirring, rushing sound and again the black pane was jarred and rattled with no flash of white, as if a ragged portion of the night had launched itself down at it, only this time the sounds kept up – there was a frantic beating and loud rapid brushing at the pane and then a series of higher and higher pitched, skirling, inhuman cries.
And this time Rose clutched at once at Vi through the bright magenta flashes that had invaded her eyes.
Her twin clasped her protectively, saying, "There, there, Rose, it's all right. It's just a bird again, only this time it's somehow caught itself. My God, your heart is pounding. I'm looking over your shoulder straight at the windows and I can't see anything through them or in the space between them, except maybe a sort of black flashing. There, there, I'd better go and try to release the thing. No, let me go, Rose, it's the only way we can make the noise stop."
Terrified, palms pressed to her ears, Rose watched through slitted, lash-blurred eyes and purple floods as Vi went to the windows and stood before them, a slender blue figure against the big black square they made, turning sideways to thrust a shoulder through the narrow space between them and all that arm and her cropped blonde head and her other arm to the elbow. Between the torturing, skirling cries, which rose in volume, and the beating, which became still more frantic, she heard Vi give a sharp exclamation, then both cries and beatings were receding rapidly, the pitch of the former dropping, and then the sounds were cut off completely, almost abruptly.
In the shocking though very welcome silence that followed, Vi withdrew her upper body from the night and turned around and said, returning towards Rose, "It was a large black bird I didn't know, some kind of predatory hawk, I'd think, a raptor, though certainly not an eagle, perhaps a crow or raven. Its wing was caught under one of the bolt bars. While I was loosing it, it struck me twice with its beak, but–" (She lifted her hand towards her eyes and rotated it)
" – it didn't break the skin."
All this while Rose was staring at her as if hypnotized and without moving a muscle except that her hands dropped slowly away from her ears.
Vi seated herself on the day bed close beside her, between her and the window, and put her arms around the frozen form and pressed her chest against hers firmly and, turning her face sideways so their noses missed, kissed her upon the lips.
A distant foghorn sounded, a car turned a corner far below, a dove mourned, and then time began to move again.
Vi reached for the brandy bottle and the miniature goblet of the pony glass, saying, "After that fright you need another drink."
Rose said, as if still half in a dream, "That was the first time that we ever kissed. Identical twin sisters. Imagine that."
Vi said companionably, but with her voice a shade brisk, like that of a nurse, "Here, drink this down. You need it straight. No, all at once."
Rose complied, shuddering.
"That's a good girl," Vi said and kissed her quickly on the corner of the mouth.
After a moment Rose returned the kiss in the same way.
Vi left one arm lightly beside her twin's waist. Her other hand lay against Rose's knee. She asked, "During that ruckus did you have your synesthesia?"
"Yes, very badly," Rose replied, wincing in recollection. "I never had it quite as bad, in fact."
"What color were the lights this time?"
"Violet. I never had so much violet before."
"Perhaps I am responsible for that," Vi joked with a chuckle. "My name, you know."
"Silly," Rose said indulgently, giving the hand that lay against her knee an affectionate squeeze. Then, more seriously, though still a shade dreamily, "I wonder if those were our real names from the start. Could be, you know. They're both flower names."
"Maybe," Vi said, "or maybe not. Maybe our real mother never had time to give us any."
"Do you suppose we're illegitimate?" Rose asked solemnly.
"I'd think so," Vi replied. "That's where most foster children come from."
"But maybe they were married," Rose said happily, her elbow pressing Vi's hand against her waist. "Maybe our father died early in the Vietnam War."
Vi said, frowning a little, "There's one thing bothers me about your synesthesia."
"What's that?"
"That I don't have a trace of it. Which is strange, seeing we have so many other twin identicalities."
Rose said consolingly, "You probably have some other equally distinguishing peculiarity or ability or trait to match my colored sounds thing. There's your ballet dancing – how about that? You're terribly graceful and strong and competent-fingered ... and brave too," she added, looking over Vi's shoulder at the black windows and remembering the slim blue fingers fearlessly thrust between them. "By comparison, I'm clumsy as a cow."
"No, a big floppy dog," Vi decided, running her fingers lazily into the pageboy bob and twice pushing the side of Rose's head – who sketched a bowwow comically and said, "That's right. And you're a kitty cat."
"But dancing and finger dexterity and all that are things that are learned," Vi said more seriously. "You could develop them too if you practiced and exercised instead of sitting inside all day making your indexes – and reading all night." She nodded towards the bookcase. "They're not like your synesthesia," she finished regretfully.
"You think that's so great?" Rose challenged lightly. "You should try it some time. But maybe you've got a mix-up on some other senses." She pulled away a moment to gesture at the thickest book on the table between the collie book ends – Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. "I remember the case of a girl there who heard odors as sounds. Or was it sounds as odors? I forget. Or maybe you've got absolute pitch or are double jointed or–"
"Oh, if you're using that book, anything goes," Vi asserted happily. "Maybe I've got supernumerary nipples, or a little hairless tail, like that noble European family – I haven't looked today. Or six fingers on each hand – no, five, I just counted. And then there was that woman who had a clitoris four inches long when stimulated."
"Vi, you're making that one up," Rose protested, seeming to flush, and looking aside.
"Oh, no, I'm not, as you know very well," Vi laughed, bringing her head around to look her twin straight in the eyes. "I thought so. Somehow that's the first thing everyone reads."
Rose squirmed.
Vi grew thoughtful, the distance coming back into her eyes. She mumbled, "I wonder if that would be the animus – a female with a penis? The grand hermaphrodite. Or would that be the anima? Or neither?" She looked behind her towards the night outside and said more clearly, "You know, Rose, when I was at that window with that bird, I had the strongest feeling of the presence of one of the archetypes."
"So did I too!" Rose blurted out tensely. "It was very scary, something beyond the flashing lights and p
ain."
Vi embraced Rose reassuringly, one hand upon her shoulder, the other on her cheek, pressing her other cheek against her own. "There, there," she breathed and Rose was comforted.
Vi gave them both a little more brandy and said, "Remember how you said you'd like to be some man's anima and torture him?"
Rose nodded. "Though I don't think any more that I'd be up to it."
"So? Well, I was once my foster father's anima. After he raped me I knew I was going to leave home for good, but I wanted to get my own back at him first – or should I say our own? I got ready to leave – money and clothes, an address in New York – and all the while I watched him like a hawk. For a while he held off from me. He was afraid, of course, he might have got me pregnant. He hadn't – I had my period a week later, though I took care not to let either of them know. A few nights after that he tried the same trick again – getting my foster mother dead drunk and all – but I was ready for him and I kicked him in the balls (I'd kept my shoes on) so that he squealed and fainted."
Rose breathed, "My God."
Vi continued, "The next couple of days my foster mother kept asking him why he was walking bowlegged and bent over. He said it must be rheumatism inherited from his great grandfather, who'd fought in the Civil War.
"You'd have thought he'd have had enough by then, of course, but he kept trying – men are such fools, or rather they have an endless blind persistence when it comes to that. This time he changed his tactics. After he'd put my foster mother to sleep again, he presented me with a dozen red roses and a real diamond ring and the cutest black silk peekaboo panties and half-cup brassiere – he even had the right size.
"And this time he'd decided he had to get me drunk too because I was such a smart and worldly little bitch. I played along with it, pretending to get soused with him and promising him that just in a little while longer I'd model the brassiere and panties for him. He kept stumbling around after me in circles. The music throbbed, the lights were low, and every little while I'd dump a little whisky down my neck to make me smell as if I had been drinking.
"Eventually he passed out blotto flat on his face on the floor. I took what cash he had and what more he and his wife had around the house and brought down my bag – it was already packed – and then I hauled down his pants and greased my old toothbrush and rammed it up his ass, bristles first, all the way in."
Rose gasped, "My God. My God!"
"And then," Vi finished, "I scattered the dozen red roses over him and departed that place."
She took a deep breath and let it out. Rose sat frozen, as if in thought or shock.
Vi asked, "So how does it feel to have a twin sister who's a criminal, who rips off loose cash and sees that the men she disapproves of get buggered?"
Rose shook herself a little, smiled nervously, and said quickly, "Oh, no, it feels all right. It's just that my own foster father was so very different. He was very gentle, almost timid with me. I can't remember him ever touching me. He treated me like a little stranger princess. He read me fairy tales and books like Winnie the Pooh and The Borrowers and Little Women and, later on, Wuthering Heights. He had poor health and couldn't get good jobs. He would have liked to be a beatnik poet. I thought he was perfect until – but that came later on. No, it was from my foster mother that all the violence came, the things that frightened me and ruled my life."
"That figures," Vi said. "I mean, you said she was possessive and bossy?"
"She was more than that, Vi. She was the power and she was the law. She was almost – My first memory was of her leaning over my bed and smiling down at me fiercely like the sun, bare to the waist and with her arms and breasts thrust out to either side like Theda Bara, as if she were trying to imprint her personality on me. She called her breasts her wings."
"Jesus, how corny," Vi commented. "What a kook."
"I can see that now," Rose said. "She studied Zen and karate and shaved her legs and armpits with a straight-edge razor. She said the books my foster father read me were romantic crap and that he was trying to make me weak like him. She was always bawling him out for not being successful and showing more manhood."
"I'll bet," Vi said, "especially in bed."
"She fussed a lot about my health and keeping clean and not getting infected and not touching myself or letting anyone touch me. But she was always touching me herself for inspection or instruction, especially my private parts (she called them, but they were anything but private to her, you can believe me). She made me do her exercises with her. And she was always quick to give me slaps, which always made my foster father wince, although he never did anything to stop her. She said I needed reminders – it was Zen. But every once in a while she'd snatch me up and hug me fiercely, holding me high as if I were some sacrifice, or as if she were trying to inspire and terrorize me at the same time. I was plain scared to death of her. As soon as she came near, I'd tighten up."
Vi shook her head. "The things they do to us, one way or another."
"For a long while she scared me off other children. I made up an imaginary playmate, a little girl exactly like me except her mother was dead." Rose's eyes widened. "Oh, Vi, do you suppose I somehow knew I had an identical twin? Or that there's been telepathy between us?"
"Could be," Vi said thoughtfully, "but maybe most imaginary playmates are like that."
Rose continued, "But eventually I got to have a real girl for a pal, a black girl who was very slender and had narrow hands and long fingers like ours. I think she must have had Watusi blood. At first it was because she had a kitten. We'd play together on the way home. She loaned me Wonder Woman comics and Vampirella and Pantha."
"I used to read those," Vi said. "Was Pantha the one who'd change into a black panther to destroy her parents and teachers and men who bothered her?"
"That's right. One dark afternoon we dared each other to go into a park we weren't ever supposed to. A storm was coming on but we kept daring each other to stay. It started to rain a little and we took shelter under some trees on a hilltop. Then thunder growled and the wind blew hard, tossing the leaves and branches, a siren started to wail down in the city, and we got this feeling that there were great dark wings over us. We both got very scared and held each other tight. And then it quieted down and we were touching each other.
"Oh God, Vi, to be touched with love! Not like my mother, as if you were something she owned and could handle exactly as she pleased, but something that's respected and understood and cherished."
"I know," Vi said softly, coming closer again, their hands lightly meeting. Rose went on, "For a while we were very happy, but what happened next, as you'd expect, was that my foster mother found out about our friendship. She was too smart to make it a racial thing – my foster father was very leftist in some ways – but that my little pal was light-fingered. She pretended to catch her stealing and called up her parents. There was a row and we were not allowed ever to see each other again. And then I found out that she'd also seen us touching and once kissing because she gave me an awful spanking, to teach me, she said never again to risk getting infected and that, although there was nothing wrong with black girls, they could never help me to be successful.
"And after that she seemed almost to be more worried about girls touching me than boys. Of course it all put me off other kids again and I read a lot and even tried to write poetry and stories myself. That brought my foster father and me quite close for a while. He still read to me and we even talked about writing and things, although my foster mother watched us like a hawk and kept ranting about success and the main chance and how we both would be better off in mental hospitals.
"But she couldn't object to my next girlfriend (who came three years later) because she was from a wealthy Northshore political Irish family (her father was a state senator) and wore very expensive clothes and was white of course. My foster mother even tried to get palsy with her at first. But Siobhan could be very snotty in a ladylike way.
"Siobhan always had l
ots of spending money. With that and her hauteur she got us into adult X-rated movies. Jane Fonda was our idol. We ate up Klute and Barbarella too. We romanced about becoming spacewomen and call girls. Under her snotty shell she was in many ways näive as I and lonely too. One of us would pretend to be Snow White and the other would wake her. It was together that we learned French kissing and to pet to climax. And once we smoked some marijuana she'd snitched from her brother. I was wildly happy, but also very scared too from time to time – I'd get that dark wings feeling. Vi, would you be mad at me if I had some more brandy?"
"Of course not, Rose," the other said. "I'll have some too. To tell the truth, I was more shaken up at the window than I let on."
"Why? What was it?" Rose demanded uneasily.
"At first the thing that was caught there seemed too big and yet somehow too insubstantial for a bird – as if it were a frantic invisible being in a cloak of bright black feathers."
"Oh God! But it was a bird?"
"It was a bird," Vi assured her. "Here's our drinks – ah, that's better. Now how did your mother manage to wreck things this time?"
"She went to Siobhan's father at his office (she told me this when she confronted me) and made a big scene there, accusing Siobhan of corrupting me sexually and getting me on drugs and threatening to go to the other political party and their newspaper if he ever let Siobhan see me again. Of course he denied everything, but actually she'd hit on just the right way to throw a scare into him. Siobhan was taken out of school and sent to one in the East, I think. At any rate I never saw or heard from her again.
"And then my foster mother headed home, breathing fire, and confronted me with my foster father there, telling him his Little Miss Innocent and Fairy Princess was nothing but a dirty little lesbian bitch and demanding that he whip me with her razor strap and when he wouldn't, jeering at him and telling him then he could watch her do it.
"Oh God, Vi, it was awful. He pleaded with her, or rather he kept repeating that he didn't think it was wise or right – things like that – but, oh God, Vi, he didn't even try to stop her and he didn't run away, he stayed."