Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

by Michelle Tea

  Beside them two birds soared to the dirt, their wings high, their beaks stuffed. Quickly they spat onto the ground.

  “I’ve got rock salt from the big pile,” said the one, his words twisted with the terrible taste of the salt. Sophie had never seen a pigeon spit before, and watched with interest as the bird spat and spat again, its tough little bird-tongue sticking out from its beak.

  “That’s enough,” Livia scolded. “Thank you very much.” The bird waddled away, an agitated sound like an endless sneeze coughing from its beak. The other bird dropped its offering.

  “Salt packets,” it explained proudly. “From the McDonald’s on the parkway.” The small paper packets sat in the moonlight.

  “Very good,” Livia praised. “Both of you, well done.” The second pigeon waddled back into the flock, indistinguishable.

  “Sophie,” Livia said, “you must eat the rock salt now, please. You will feel better.”

  “The mermaid gave me salt,” Sophie said.

  “Yes, that salt saved your life, dear. That is a powerful salt. But this will help.”

  “Help what?” Sophie said, tossing the gravelly salt into her mouth. The searing sharpness soothed her. She sucked on it like a piece of candy.

  “When you experience the darkness, it takes a toll. A very real toll. On your mind and your body. The salt is purifying. It’s healing. You will need to take in a lot of salt, Sophie, after what you’ve seen. You’ve seen the—the—well, I’m not sure what to call it. The darkness? The, the evil?”

  “Hell?” Arthur suggested. “I mean, it sounds like hell to me.”

  Sophie imagined all the words and images she knew to represent that place, hell. What she had seen contained all the despair, all the violence and eternity of those pictures of wailing humans and creepy demons, but worse, because words and pictures weren’t feelings. No matter how hard a writer or painter would try to make someone feel the pain of such a place, they could never come close. Only the mermaid could, and Sophie, and the conduit of the talisman, and the water, the charged and salty water, with all its contaminants.

  “You must take lots of salt,” Livia said. “To heal yourself. So that you may remember without becoming sick.”

  “But—that?” Confused, Sophie tried to make sense of too much. “I’m going to do something about that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Livia nodded, which, Sophie noticed was a different motion than her regular constant head-bobbing. It was deeper, with a stronger purpose. “You will train for it, with the mermaid and with others, but—yes, Sophie You are going to take that, all of that, into your body. And from your body it will be released. Here.” The bird tore open the McDonald’s salt packet with her beak and waggled it at the girl. Sophie took it from the bird’s tiny mouth and poured it onto her tongue.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “What if I don’t want to do it?” Sophie asked. It felt like worrying a cut, poking a loose tooth with her tongue. Maybe she didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Oh, you will,” Livia insisted.

  “But, what if I don’t?”

  “Impossible,” chimed in Arthur.

  “No, I can! Like I can just be all, No, sorry you guys, sorry mermaid, peace out, and take off. I can never come to this creek again. I can leave Chelsea, even. I can run away.”

  “No, no, you can’t!” Livia’s melodious voice sounded anxious. “It just never, ever would occur like that. You are the one. We’ve all been waiting, longer than I can understand. You will do it.”

  “It’s a done deal, kid,” Arthur seconded. “It’s as if it already happened. You won’t go nowhere. You’re one of us.”

  “So,” Sophie said, not exactly glumly, but with very little cheer. “I’m going to feel everyone’s pain and eat a bunch of salt.”

  “Well, ultimately, yes.” Livia nodded. “But so much is going to happen between now and then.”

  * * *

  SOPHIE SAT WITH the birds late into the night. The flock of them clustered around her. Some hopped into her lap and cooed, not unlike purring cats. Sophie felt like a bizarre Snow White. She half expected a happy creek rat to join their gathering, or a pompous sea gull or goofy raccoon. She petted the pigeons’ feathers and found they enjoyed being scratched deeply on their necks, like dogs or cats. “Ooooh, that feels good,” said a bird hunkered on her thigh. All of the birds spoke in the most calming of voices, the sound of the first drift of sleep as it washes over you. Even Arthur, rankled and crotchety, had a voice that lulled, even as it shared tales of injury and battle.

  “There are some you can trust and others who mean you harm,” Livia said solemnly.

  “Angel,” Sophie said quickly. “Angel is good. She knows things. She gave me my necklace.”

  Livia bobbed her head affirmatively. “Yes, Angel is good. Hennie, too.”

  “Hennie? The old lady at the grocery store? The weird grocery store? She’s—good?”

  “She’s on your side,” Livia said. “She knows things. You can trust her.”

  “She looks like a witch,” Sophie said uneasily.

  “She is a witch,” Livia confirmed.

  “See?” Arthur snapped. Even his snapping was still sweet to the ear. “See what I mean about humans? Oh, she looks like a witch. What does that even mean? She’s old? She’s, what, she’s a fat lady? She wears a funny hat on her head, what, she’s got a big nose or something?”

  “I didn’t mean anything,” Sophie said quickly. “Her place is just sort of creepy is all.”

  “Creepy,” Arthur spat with a coo. “Why, it’s all dusty inside? Dust is of the earth. Feathers are of the earth, your skin is of the earth. All of it will be dust.” Arthur rose up on his feet, one good and one bad, and he stretched his wings grandly, beat them upon the air. “Never think you’re better than any other living thing.”

  “Arthur,” Livia chided.

  “Here, here,” some birds in the back cooed, clapping their wings against their bodies.

  “I have kept your story,” Arthur addressed Sophie. “Even when I haven’t felt sure it was the right thing. The right thing for pigeons. So I am here to help you, but you are not a pigeon.” Arthur stared his tiny orange eye into Sophie’s large brown one. “And my trust in you is not complete.”

  “Okay,” Sophie said.

  “Anyway,” Livia continued. “We’ve only been waiting hundreds of years to tell this girl these things, may I continue?”

  “Continue,” Arthur said, with one last, grandiose beat of his wing.

  “Hennie is a witch, and she will help you always. Angel—you knew that.”

  “My mother?” Sophie asked.

  Livia twitched. She bobbed her head at Arthur, at the others. The pigeon on Sophie’s thigh looked up at her briefly, and then buried her face into her feathers.

  “We are unsure,” Livia said, regret in her voice like a new harmony. “This is the thread of the story that has been tampered with. Even with all our watching and observing, we have not been able to say for certain. She is either to be trusted, or she means you terrible harm.” Sophie could detect sadness in the pigeon’s eye.

  “Okay,” Sophie said. She supposed she knew that already. “My grandmother?”

  “Kishka—” Livia began.

  “The worst!” Arthur shouted. “The absolute worst, most wicked woman in all of humanity. Oh, the pigeons she’s killed! With poisons, with her own hands! She has wiped out generations of our young! She’s even used a gun! She’s a cold-blooded murderer! Shooting at pigeons for fun, for a thrill! She’s a psychopath,” Arthur said darkly. “She’s evil to people, too.”

  “You cannot trust her,” Livia said simply.

  Arthur carried on. “She treats humans like pigeons, pigeons like humans, rats like humans, pigeons like rats, humans like rats. If it’s alive and it gets in her way, it’s all the same. A terrible woman, a monster.”

  “She does not have your best interest at heart,
” Livia said.

  “Really?” Sophie pushed skeptically at the birds. “Are you sure Kishka just isn’t—I mean, I know she is very bad to pigeons, and I know she is a cranky old lady, but—what did you call her, Arthur? The worst, most terrible—”

  “The absolute worst, most wicked woman in all of humanity!” Arthur proclaimed. “And no, it’s not just because of all she has done to hurt pigeons—though that would be enough! But she does not stop there. She means great harm to every living thing on this earth. She is barely of this earth, she comes from another place, a terrible place where everything awful in the world comes from.”

  “But—” Sophie wanted to debate the bird. Kishka? Kishka was not a warm woman, but she was not very different than most old women in Chelsea. Old women who had had hard lives, worked tough jobs, who had immigrated, had left a whole other life behind. All the losses they’d had in this world. It’s hard to be an old woman, with all the bad parts of life piling up on your old lady shoulders.

  “No buts,” Livia said sternly. Sternly, but softly. “It is important that you trust us. That you beware of her.”

  Sophie shifted uncomfortably. It was true she felt a little scared of her grandmother, but everyone did. That didn’t make her evil. But there were things about Kishka, there always had been. She knew everything Kishka did—things that happened at home, at school, in her own head. Sophie had thought it was just something that grandmothers had, some special sense of their grandkids, because they were old and wise or something, but it was sort of weird. The cold feeling Sophie got when Kishka studied her like that. The way her perfume smelled, like nothing Sophie had ever smelled, lovely from a distance but close up—almost like a poison. Maybe she was just allergic?

  But there were also her nightmares of Kishka, where her grandmother morphed again and again into figures and creatures, strange monsters that followed Sophie and could see her always, Sophie could never hide. Kishka was evil in these dreams, and when Sophie awoke from them her room always felt thick, like the air had become spongy, and she would pinch herself to be sure the dream was gone, because she could still feel this monster version of her grandmother there inside the room with her. Sophie shuddered.

  “I don’t mean to scare you,” Livia said gently.

  “I’m not scared, exactly,” Sophie said. “I’m just—you know, this is all a little crazy. It’s a lot crazy. I don’t think I’m crazy, but you got to admit all this is pretty seriously crazy.”

  “Deciding you’re not crazy,” crowed Arthur, “is always a step in the right direction.”

  “I will consider the possibility that my grandmother is evil.”

  “You better consider it, kid. For all of our sake. Whatever stuff that mermaid showed you, that’s your grandma.”

  “And what about the mermaid? She’s good, right?”

  “Syrena is very good.” Livia nodded. “She has done you a wonderful favor, to come so far. You must take care to obey and respect her. She will teach you very much. Be kind to her. A little kindness goes far.”

  “And Ella? My best friend, Ella?”

  Livia was thoughtful. “It’s not that you can’t trust Ella,” she explained. “It will just take her a little while to understand.”

  “By a little while, she means years,” Arthur butted in. “Don’t sugar-coat it, Livia. The girl needs to know.”

  “People in their ignorance can often seem bad,” said Livia. “Ella will not be of help to you for years to come.”

  “Years?” Sophie asked. “This—thing—is going to take years?”

  Livia clucked, and the flock cooed behind her. “Oh, darling,” her lovely voice soothed. “This is going to take the rest of your life.”

  Chapter 12

  Sophie traced her steps through Chelsea, back toward home. In the dark of night Chelsea almost felt safe. It was people that made the city dangerous, and the people were mostly asleep. Sophie passed their houses, dingy colored; their concrete steps, cracked; junk in their front yard, sneakers dangling from the phone wires above. Towels and sheets hung where curtains should be. One home even had a beach towel for a front door; the nubby image of a dog on the shore hung limply from the frame in the breezeless night.

  Sophie walked and the pigeons came with her. Some had flown ahead to make sure everything was quiet at home, and a couple stayed with Sophie, riding on her shoulders. The rest flew to and fro, high in the sky above her. They were too heavy to fly slow or low— “What, do you think we’re hummingbirds?” Arthur asked—too short and cumbersome to waddle alongside her on the pavement. Sophie loved the movement of them high above. They swooped like bats, the fluted ones making their eerie, beautiful sound. She also loved the weight of the birds on her shoulders, the faint coo of their cooing so close to her ears.

  About a block from home, Arthur touched down on the pavement before her, his proud chest broad and tufted. Sophie marveled at his wing’s perfect peaks, the striations of feathers—even in the dim light Sophie could see the stripes and shading. His wings were were muscular and elegant at once. Why did people hate pigeons, Sophie wondered? They were more attractive than seagulls, and while many found the gulls a nuisance, no one tried to kill them. They were more nuanced and interesting than crows, and their noises far less abrasive than that caw-caw-cawing.

  Sophie had heard just about everyone call pigeons “rats with wings.” At the close of this most fantastical of nights Sophie wondered, what was so bad about rats? If a group of rats had come to her at the creek, standing upward on their hind legs to speak with her, a sweet, plump lady rat like Livia and a proud, showboating rat like Arthur—well, if that had happened Sophie figured she’d be walking home with rats on her shoulders, and happily. People didn’t look at the animals they claimed to hate, Sophie thought. They paid them no real attention, just agitation, and missed the ways they were as sweet as any other creature, were any other creature. They were dirty, and they scavenged for food, but in this way the pests—the pigeons, rats and cockroaches of Chelsea—were not so different from the people they shared the city with.

  “Fast asleep,” Arthur said. “That mother of yours. I recognize her. She’s one of those who put dry rice out on the street ’cause they think our stomachs will explode.”

  “I know,” Sophie said. “I told her to stop.”

  “Tell her when I want to eat rice, I hit the dumpsters behind Comida Criolla and get the good stuff. We don’t like chomping on dry rice anymore than she does.”

  “Arthur,” Sophie said. “I’m probably not going to tell her about you guys.”

  “Why?” the bird challenged. “Ashamed to be seen with a flock of pigeons?”

  “Arthur,” Livia stepped in. “Leave Sophia alone. She can’t tell her mother about us, she’d never be believed and it would put her in danger. We don’t know that her mother isn’t an enemy.”

  “I’ll say she’s an enemy,” Arthur grumbled. “Listen, it’s not a coincidence that humans who put dry rice on their sidewalks tend to find a lot of bird doo on their cars.”

  “Arthur!” Livia trilled, and Sophie giggled. “You are coming very close to compromising your dignity.”

  “There is a lot of bird doo on my mom’s car,” Sophie said. She knew her mother deserved it for what she’d tried to do to the pigeons.

  “Now you know,” Arthur said with what would have been a wink, if pigeons could wink, which they can’t. But he dropped the subject, because Livia had said the magic word. Dignity was deeply important to the pigeons. In a world where they were persecuted, it was important that they retain their nobility and not stoop to retaliate in a manner that only degraded them and enforced the humans’ views.

  On the long block of Heard Street where Sophie lived, the houses were dark as the sky. But not Sophie’s. Through her window she could see the flash and glow of the television against the walls, like the Northern Lights, she thought, only not. Not like the Northern Lights at all. More like a television left on long into the night
, a television playing its shapes across the face of a sleeping single mother. There was nothing natural or mystical about it.

  Sophie surprised herself by kissing the face of the bird on her left shoulder before lifting her off. The bird cooed shyly, dipping her face into her feathers. “I washed my face today,” she assured Sophie. “But I don’t know how clean the water was. It’s hard to find clean water, you know. Angel leaves us rainwater baths on the tumbler shack roof, but aside from that, it’s puddles and the creek, and you know Chelsea is a very dirty city.”

  “Dirty cities have dirty pigeons,” Arthur quipped. “The problem is systemic.”

  “My name is Giddy,” the bashful pigeon introduced herself.

  “I’m Roy,” said the pigeon on Sophie’s other shoulder. “Giddy’s mate. Mind lifting me down? My wings will make a racket.”

  Sophie placed the birds side by side on the sidewalk. They yawned in unison.

  “It’s really past our bedtime,” Giddy apologized.

  “Mine, too,” Sophie said, and climbed the stairs to her home.

  Inside, she gently switched the television off. The sudden silence awoke her mother like a noise. “What?” she jumped from her prone position, struggling to sit up in her sleepy disorientation. Her eyes widened as she peered deeply into the room. Her curly hair rose and fell about her head like a disturbed sea. “Am I late? What time is it?”

  Sophie was pulled to feel her mother’s feelings right then, but she feared it would make her heart too sad. Andrea worked and worked and worked and even when she wasn’t working, even when she slept, her body was a clock ticking its way to her next shift, anxiety winding the gears.

  “No, Ma,” Sophie said softly. “You’ve been sleeping with the television on and it was keeping me awake. Why don’t you sleep in your bed?” She herded her mom into the bedroom as if she were a sleepy child. Andrea collapsed on the wide mattress with her shoes still on. Sophie plucked the laces from their bows and slid them to the floor. She climbed into bed with her mother. The fan from the living room spun back and forth, back and forth, filling the bedroom with moments of cool air. Sophie’s clothes were gummy from the dried creek water, but she was too tired to change into something better. Plus, the briny smell meant something different now, something new. She knew she’d be grateful in the morning, when she awoke and wondered if it all had been a dream, to feel the stiff salt of the mermaid’s cave on her t-shirt. She snuggled backward into her mother, who threw a sleeping arm across her shoulder. It was too hot to cuddle, but Sophie feared that forces more powerful than the humidity would soon make it difficult to seek comfort from her mom. As the sun began to rise Sophie slipped into sleep, the cooing of pigeons outside her window lulling her.