Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

by Michelle Tea

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself,” Angel instructed. “You’re going to need your health and your strength.”

  “My nana read my heart when I was in her trailer,” Sophie admitted, knowing the truth of the tickle she’d felt. “I could feel it.”

  “That’s good,” Angel said. “It’s good that you know when it’s happening. That’s the first step to being able to protect yourself. Most people can’t feel anything. They are so up in their minds”—Angel tapped her temple—“they can’t feel what is happening to their hearts.”

  Sophie ran her finger around the edges of the now-empty jar, sucking the last of the paste. She regarded the coat on her arm hungrily.

  “Leave it,” Angel ordered. “Who knows what poisons you got? The salt will draw the posion out and the honey will keep the wound clean so it won’t be infected. And the other paste is coffee and basil and marjoram. It should heal you. Now, we have to get started.”

  “What are you going to teach me?” Sophie asked. She arranged herself so that her posture reflected that of an eager, obedient student.

  “First, protection. You need to learn to hide your heart. Then you’ll need to gain control of your power, so you don’t accidentally go invading someone’s heart and feeling all their feelings when you don’t want to. And you need to get stronger. If you’re as big of a deal as you’re supposed to be, you should be able to break through my wall. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  IN THE DARK shed that felt like a magical clubhouse—that was, Sophie realized, a sort of magic clubhouse—Sophie and Angel worked into the night, the candles burning low, sometimes sputtering out and filling the small room with waxy smoke. With Angel’s smooth voice to guide her Sophie went deep into herself and found her own bedrock, as if she were a planet with a molten, iron core. Sophie never knew she possessed such hardness.

  At first it was a sort of lava rock, rough and curling, dotted with holes. “Too porous,” Angel said, her own eyes closed. “I can get right through. Plus, it’s like, absorbent or something. Here, feel this.” Angel thought of her mother, the curandera, and a liquid, warm affection surged through her body and leached into Sophie.

  “Oh!” Sophie said. “You love your mother so much!” That’s what it feels like, Sophie thought. To have a mother you just wholly and simply love. Sophie felt a sad, flat envy. Angel felt it, too.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. She lifted a bundle of dry, greenish sticks and twigs and dipped them into a candle, igniting it. She blew out the flames until a fragrant smoke fogged the little shed. “Let’s start over. You’re looking for hard stuff,” Angel repeated. “The hardest you can find. Mine is iron. Use that as a guide.”

  Inside herself, Sophie went down, down, past the porous lava rock that seemed to smash like china as she tunneled through. She went deeper. She felt the iron, and recognized its lightly textured surface from her contact with Angel. But Sophie knew she could go even deeper. She seemed to be entering a place that had never seen light, a place perhaps older than light. There was something there to grab, though it didn’t feel like a thing as much as a place. She tried it anyway. She pulled it up and around her insides like a cloak. It was impossibly heavy, but Sophie could move it. She was scared as she felt it stretch across her feelings. Was she going to obliterate herself? The sensation of it, the incredible weight, felt like it could block herself off from her very own self, if such a thing was possible. Was it? Sophie was trembling, half from the effort of lifting the material, half from fear. What was this stuff? What if it cut her off from other people? What if it cut her off from the world?

  “Yes!” Angel said, excited. “Yes, that, that whatever it is! What is it? Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t know,” Sophie said. She was completely covered by the shield now. And she felt herself without change, her feelings still there, all of them, her fear and excitement, her affection for Angel, the dull thump of envy for her mother-love an echo in her heart. Sophie observed the symphony of her emotions. “Can you read me?” she asked. “Anything? I’m having so many feelings!”

  Sophie could feel a sort of numb pressure, Angel peeking in on her. Sophie didn’t even try to repel her; her shield, brought up from some other place, made it simply impossible for Angel to get in.

  “Nothing, I can’t get any read off you at all. That thing, your material—” Angel marveled at it, touching its edges with her heart and mind. “It’s like from outer space or something. Mine is just earth minerals, I think. This is, like—I feel like if I touch it too much it’s going to suck me into it, make me a part of your wall.” Angel pulled back with a shiver. “It’s scary. Good job. Not only can I not read you, I don’t want to.”

  Angel had Sophie cast the wall away and bring it back again and again, until Sophie wanted to pull out her hair with boredom. She wanted some talking animals or a fabulous creature, a myth or story or a piece of magic sea glass. Her wall came down and Angel read her discontent without even trying.

  “Get over it,” she said. “This is work. You’re going to, like, save the world or something.”

  “From what?” Sophie demanded. “What am I even going to do with all this crap?”

  “I’m not sure,” Angel said. “I don’t have that part of the story. I’m just here to help you with this.”

  Next, Angel helped Sophie master control of the impulse to eavesdrop on someone’s emotions. “You don’t want to keep getting sucked into everyone’s feelings,” Angel told her. “There are a lot of people who feel really, really bad.”

  Sophie remembered what it felt like to be Laurie LeClair, a dense, rotting misery. Or to feel her mother’s feelings toward her, so sad and angry and afraid. She wished she never felt that. “Okay, show me how to do it.”

  Sophie became very still, noting the cues of her body, making time feel slow so she could sense how it felt right before she got tugged into the whirlpool of another person. She noticed there was a tremor, the air taking the hint of a liquid shiver, as if all its water was gathering in a thin fog. She felt a part of herself open toward Angel, and could feel Angel opening in response. Normally all of this happened at a level that neither Sophie nor the object of her attentions could feel. She stepped a little closer, beginning to feel Angel.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  “You got it?” Angel asked.

  “Yeah, it’s like first the air, right, and then this feeling.” She put her hands on her heart.

  “Yeah, like magnets, I always think.”

  “Like warm, slow magnets,” Sophie agreed. It felt sort of nice at the start, but once you got inside the feelings it often wasn’t nice at all.

  “Just cut it right when you feel that. Pull yourself back in.”

  Sophie knew to do it. It happened in a snap, like elastic. She boomeranged back into herself, landing with a giggle. It all felt like some strange internal gymnastics, bouncing and flipping.

  “Now for the hard part.” Angel smiled, pushing her bangs behind her ears. “Crack my shield.”

  This took Sophie hours. They took many breaks, first so she could eat from a bowl of beans simmered with fat chipotle peppers. She wolfed it down without chewing, an animal. When she was sated Angel handed her a giant glass mug, water with bits of dried-up twigs floating inside it. “To keep you awake and focused.”

  Later they took breaks so that Sophie could catch her breath and steady herself, for it felt like walking up to a mountain and trying to push through it with your hands. Her body shook with the effort, her face red as if she had been running. Eventually, they stopped so that Sophie could cry, with frustration and exhaustion and an angry sort of boredom. She hated this. Maybe it wasn’t worth it to be so special and see talking birds and mermaids if you then had to do this, whatever this was, a sort of psychic pummeling, like trying to lift the earth itself onto your back. It felt impossible, and Sophie spun out in a tantrum, kicking and smacking the smooth, iron wall of Angel’s heart.

  “Hey
, hey!” Angel could feel the blind, emotional slaps upon her surface. “Let’s take a break.” And Sophie burst into tears,

  “I’m terrible at this!” she cried. “I can’t do it! No one could do it!”

  “You’re not terrible at it,” Angel said. “I’m just awesome at staying protected. It’s very hard to break in. It’s not going to be easy.”

  Sophie leaned against the rough wood wall of the shed with a sigh. She missed Ella, missed being a goon, just laughing, passing out, wasting time. What would she say if she spoke to her friend again? You know, I’ve just been chilling with a bunch of talking pigeons, hanging out in a shed with that chick Angel learning how to read her mind and shit. How’s the beach?

  Sophie took a glug of the herbal water and focused on focusing. I don’t want to let Angel down, she thought. Or the pigeons, or the mermaid. A terrible thought shook fresh tears from her eyes—what if they were all mistaken, and she wasn’t the girl they thought she was? Somewhere else in Chelsea the true girl slept, ignored by talking pigeons and Polish mermaids, and so humanity would never be saved, or whatever. Help me help me help me, Sophie repeated inside her head, though she didn’t know who she was talking to.

  Help her help her help her, Angel prayed in her mind to her great-great grandmother Teresita. I think she is like you, Angel spoke inside her heart. She thought of the woman who had helped free so many people from their enslavement, using her magic and her heart, her magic heart. I think Sophie has a magic heart, full of the good magic, the helping magic. Help her grow strong and sure inside it.

  The two looked at one another, Sophie wiping the tears from face, gathering herself and smearing herbs and salt on her cheek. “One more time?” Angel suggested. It turned into two more times, then twenty, then fifty. On the seventy-eighth try, Sophie walked through the thick, iron wall and into Angel’s heart. She could feel Angel rooting for her there, how anxious she was for the girl to succeed, how much she believed in her. How good was Angel’s heart, pulsing a giant Hooray! in Sophie’s direction. Angel’s smile was so big it could crack her face in two. “You did it! You did it!” Sophie luxuriated in the excellent sensation of being Angel Barrera, until a wave of motion struck her and she was back on the other side of the dark stone wall. “Now, get out!” They fell into a fit of exhausted, laughter that, once started, they had a terrible time stopping.

  “We’re done for now, but not forever,” Angel said, after they’d collected themselves. “You need to learn to stay there, even when someone is trying to kick you out.”

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Sophie said, not liking the thought of hanging out where she wasn’t wanted.

  “It’s what you’re meant to learn,” Angel said. “It’s what you already know. You just need to get really, really good at it.” She took a clean rag damped with something that smelled like the earth, and wiped Sophie’s hands. Her skin was cool and pale, the angry welts gone.

  “You did it!” Sophie cried with joy. Angel smirked and shrugged her shoulders, full of fake modesty.

  “Of course I did.”

  * * *

  ANGEL REFUSED TO send Sophie home with only a flock of pigeons as her protectors. “No offense,” she said to the flutter of them rising and falling around her head. Arthur swam a crazy backstroke in the air before them, looking Angel right in the eye.

  “Should trouble go down,” the bird began, “I am certain that the total of us, dive-bombing some chump’s head, is going to be a lot more effective than you trying to talk yourself out of a fight.”

  “Death from above!” another pigeon shouted, spinning toward the ground, then arcing up sharply, tumbling in a loop-de-loop.

  “Wow.” Sophie was impressed.

  “Well, if, um, trouble goes down I will be your man on the ground,” Angel offered. “Safety in numbers.”

  “Totally,” Giddy cooed, nestling into Angel’s shoulder. Roy settled onto Sophie’s, and they headed toward the square, turning down Heard Street, just short of the city’s center and all its late-night activity. Anyone out at this hour was up to no good, and anyone up to no good would head to Bellingham Square to find it. It did the trick of keeping the rest of town relatively safe and quiet until the sun came up, releasing hoodlum boys and girls into the streets.

  They walked down Heard Street, passing the house with the glut of lawn ornaments spilling across the lawn, then the vacant lot with overgrown weeds springing from the busted concrete, finally stopping at Sophie’s house, the dark green house with mismatched, chipped lion statues resting on either side of the stairs. It faced the dark rails of train tracks a block away.

  “This is where you live.” Angel looked around. She noticed the tracks. “Wrong side of the tracks,” she teased.

  “There isn’t any right side of the tracks in Chelsea,” Sophie teased back, but serious questions nagged her. “Angel, how did you know that I was coming?”

  “My mother told me,” she said. “She’d thought maybe you would come in her generation, and she prepared, and when you didn’t she taught me everything she could. I got hired at the dump as soon as I got old enough, and I’ve been waiting there for you.”

  “For how long? How did you know I would come there?”

  “I’ve been working for your grandmother for five years, since I was fifteen.” Angel shook her head. “And I’m not crazy. That’s how I know I got strong magic.”

  “But how did you know I would come?”

  “We knew you were Kishka’s granddaughter.”

  “How, how did you know that?”

  “Awww, Sophie.” Angel shifted uncomfortably. “I told you, I don’t know everything, I just know my part.”

  Sophie rushed at Angel and got in before she knew it, before she could yank her iron wall up around her. It felt so different inside Angel than it had earlier; Sophie marveled at how quickly a person’s feelings could change. The love was still there, Sophie knew it was true, and that Angel had goodness in her heart, but now there was fear and discomfort, a claustrophobic feeling inside her, like the walls of her own self were closing in on her. It was an icky feeling, and Sophie could feel that Angel didn’t like it, either. It was the feeling of a lie.

  “Stop it!” Angel yelled. Sophie could feel her pushing her out, the dense vibrations of the wall coming, but Sophie stayed. She went deeper. That’s how you stay, she thought. When they try to push you out, you go deeper. Sophie burrowed into Angel like a tick. “Ugh!” Angel twisted like there was an insect crawling up her back, just beyond her reach. It was true that many normal people had their psyches invaded all the time and didn’t even know it. But Angel was sensitive, attuned. Her walls were the strongest. She had never felt someone break inside and stay there. Her mother was probably powerful enough to do it, but she was too respectful. It felt terrible, like an ant had crawled into your brain, to feel this small, invading motion in your most tender parts. “Please!” she begged Sophie.

  Sophie had been on the edge of learning something more about the lie Angel had told her. There were waves of information, shimmers, she only had to catch them, braid them together into the truth. There was mother, her mother, and salt. A baby. A terrible sadness, a sacrifice. She pushed for more, but Angel’s anguish at Sophie’s invasion grew, until all Sophie felt was her feeling of violation, her despair at not being stronger, able to protect herself. Angel had never felt so unprotected. It was a frightening feeling. Though she’d known that Sophie possessed incredible magic, it was hard to match that knowledge with the easily frustrated, sometimes bratty girl she’d been tutoring. Sophie’s strength, her fierce perseverance, stunned her.

  When the understanding that she was hurting Angel became more painful than the feeling of being lied to, Sophie leapt back into herself, feeling the iron wall spring up behind her as she left. She was trying to pull her wall up that whole time, Sophie realized. She couldn’t do it. I’m stronger than her wall. And Sophie knew she had learned her final lesson, how to stay where she wasn�
�t wanted. That she had in fact known how all along, and even without Angel she would have figured it out, the way she had understood to pull back from Ronald and not enter his boozy, decrepit interior. The way she’d known she could send herself into Angel that day she first saw her at the dump. Was that yesterday? That was only yesterday.

  Angel sat on Sophie’s front steps. She looked broken from the experience, her head hung, her bangs clumped to the sides of her face—wet, Sophie noted. Angel was crying.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie rushed to say. Whatever had happened, whatever lie Angel had told, there certainly was a reason for it. Angel was good, had been only good to her, and Sophie had hurt her. “I’m so, so sorry Angel. I didn’t—” Sophie started to say she hadn’t meant to do it, but she had. And maybe she hadn’t meant to hurt Angel, but once she did, she’d stuck around a while. Why? Because she could. Because she was pissed at Angel’s lie and wanted to know the secret of it.

  “I don’t,” Sophie corrected herself. “I don’t like what happened. That I did that.” Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. There was something gross, Sophie thought, about crying while offering an apology. The tears gathered at the corners of Sophie’s eyes and dried there. Angel rubbed her wrist across her face and looked up at her student.

  “I can’t be mad at you,” Angel said. “You are more powerful than me. I’ve known that all along, it was just really intense to feel it.” She stood up. “I guess our work is done,” she said. “That was my last lesson for you, but you know it. How to stay when someone is trying to make you leave. You just go deeper. There is no end to how deep you can go. You can go so deep in a person, even a person fighting you, that they stop feeling you’re there, they think you’re gone.” Angel shook her head, still stunned from Sophie’s invasion. “I knew you were the one and everything, but damn,” she said. “You just kicked my ass. You’re really, really powerful Sophie. I thought it would take a lot longer to teach you what I know but, you got it. That’s it.”