Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

by Michelle Tea

  “You light this candle. You pray for clarity and protection.” Hennie gave Sophie a box of wooden matches. Of course Hennie wouldn’t have a damp pack of paper matches, or a plastic Bic like the ones Kishka lit her cigarettes from. Her matches were hardy little torches from another place and time. Sophie pulled the tip down the rough wooden wall, and the tang of sulfur filled the shop. She lit the candle, wondering who she was praying to. She recalled what Angel had said about lineage. Teresita, Gandhi, Jesus. Was it blasphemous to pray to Teresita and Jesus at the same time? She knew the nuns at school would think so. But the nuns would have a lot to say about Sophie hanging out with Hennie, an actual znakharka. Sophie hadn’t ever paid much mind to the nuns and wasn’t about to begin now. Hi, lineage, she thought inside her head. Please look out for me, okay? Please help me pay attention and not space out. She thought for a moment. Is that it? I don’t know. Thanks. She opened her eyes. Hennie, who’d been clutching at her own hands, reached out and clasped Sophie’s.

  “Sophie,” she said. Sophie flinched, but did not pull away her hands. It startled her to be touched by the woman. She realized she was still a little bit scared of her. Even though everyone had said she was good—and she was good, Sophie could feel it—she looked so much like a witch from a fairy tale, it was hard for Sophie not to think about Hennie pushing her into an oven when she wasn’t looking. Her nose even had a mole on it, for god’s sake. A mole sprouting a hair. If you did an internet search for witch, Hennie’s picture would pop up.

  “Sophie, when I say you are my niece, I mean, you are my niece. You are my blood. I wait to meet you a very long time.”

  “But—but I’ve come in here before!” Sophie exclaimed. “I bought hamburger meat and soda and butter. You have met me before. You could have—you could have met me then.”

  “It was not time,” Hennie said, simply. “Now is time you know all. There is much to know, I tell you everything. Much is bad. There are many bad things to know, I am sorry to tell you. But maybe good, too.” She tightened her grip on Sophie’s hand, giving it a squeeze. Hennie’s hands were cool and plump, like a mound of dough being chilled for cookies. Sophie squeezed back.

  “I am your aunt,” she said. She tugged a copper-colored necklace out from her blouse, a strand of thin links. For a moment Sophie anticipated sea glass, but it was an oval-shaped locket on the end of the chain. A disk of porcelain painted with faded roses was affixed to the metal. Hennie pulled it over her head, taking care not to knock off her head scarf. “Oh, my babushka,” she laughed. Hennie had a big laugh when she laughed, a big smile when she smiled. Sophie could see a missing tooth at the edge of the woman’s mouth. She held the locket in the palm of her hand and flicked it open to two tiny pictures of two tiny babies, one on each side, mirror images.

  “That’s me?” Sophie asked. She recognized the photo, her mother had copies of it stuffed into the plasticky photo albums. The joke was that Sophie, whose unruly head of hair taunted Andrea with its wildness, had been born bald as a marble. The nurses had to stick a pink bow on her head with a piece of Scotch tape. I don’t see what the big deal was anyway, who cares if I’m a boy or a girl, I was a baby! Sophie would grumble, slightly humiliated by having a bow taped to her head. In the photo on the other side of the locket, Sophie wore no such demeaning bow. In fact, she had hair on her head, a dark little cap. Sophie blinked and peered closer. The picture was small. The face was hers, but like she was wearing a wig, a baby toupee.

  “What’s this?” Sophie asked. She tapped the photo with a grubby fingernail. “How’d I get so hairy? That’s me, right?” She laughed a stilted laugh, like she was foolish. Her head was buzzing with questions. One thing at a time, she thought, trying to calm herself. She cleared her mind. The heat of the burning wax intensified the scent of the oil the curandera had dressed the candles with, and the smell of warm, white flowers was thick inside the room. She stared at Hennie. She still couldn’t trust this woman, but she trusted the pigeons and she trusted Angel. “Will you explain to me how you are my aunt? Why you have these pictures of me in a locket?”

  Hennie grabbed a couple of lumpy mugs that looked to be made from the mud of the earth. She filled them with a steaming beverage that tasted like the mud of the earth. Sophie made a blech face, sticking out her tongue, sputtering. “This tastes like dirt.”

  “Come, sit with me,” Hennie said. She was reclining on the floor, on a pillow stuffed with straw. Beside her was a fireplace, alive with a glowing orange fire. Sophie knew there hadn’t been a fireplace when she’d arrived at Hennie’s. She was also fairly certain that outside of the shop Chelsea was in the throes of an insufferable heat wave. To drink a hot drink before a roaring fire was insane, but Hennie’s shop felt cozy. “I make like winter in here, sometime,” the woman explained. “I miss my old land. I am winter witch. I feel most powerful when there is snow, and cold.” She regarded her niece as she settled down into a puffy hay pillow, folding her legs beneath her. “You, I think, are summer witch. You are most powerful now. Kishka too, is summer witch. When she was a girl like you, maybe little older, in Poland, she run around with Poludnica. Nasty girls. Very beautiful, like Kishka. Poludnica wear pretty dresses and walk around fields where farmers work, make them sick with heat and sun, make them crazy even, sometimes.”

  “Were they were, like, a gang?” Sophie asked. “A Polish girl gang?” The thought sounded sort of cool.

  “No, no girl gang, not real girls. Poludnica are, how to explain— ghosts? Not real. Magical girls. Their magic bad, like Kishka.”

  “Is Kishka a znakharka?”

  “Yes, dearie. Bad znakharka.”

  “Did she learn magic from the… Poludnica?” The heavy Polish words felt cumbersome in Sophie’s mouth.

  “No,” Hennie laughed. “Poludnica probably learn from your grandmother. She is much more powerful. She was, how you say, slumming, running around with the Poludnica. She being rebellious. They are small magic, but mean magic. But, Kishka is summer znakharka, big magic. As are you.”

  Sophie listened to Hennie talk about Kishka as a young girl, in Poland. Hadn’t Kishka come over as a baby? Who was Kishka’s mother? Why didn’t Sophie know anything about her family? In Hennie’s eyes she saw a shard of Kishka’s blue; in the hair beneath her babushka, a streak of Kishka’s yellow. “Are you my grandmother’s sister?” she asked, and Hennie nodded.

  “Yes, we are sisters, and enemies. We hold opposite magic. We do not speak.”

  “Does my mother know? That you are her aunt?”

  “Yes, Andrea knows me. I loved Andrea very much. A little baby, I watch over her. I babysit when Kishka and Carl go dancing.” Hennie sighed. “Those were nice time. Kishka very beautiful, more so than the Poludnica. With red lipstick, and she make her eyebrows like so,” Hennie moved her finger in an arc above her eye. “She wear such good dresses. But still, she have her powers always, she run with the bad ghosts, she become mora very young, she leave her body and fly around. That’s mora, ones that fly. She do it without out the flying herbs, without zagavory.”

  “I don’t know what you’re taking about.” Sophie was overwhelmed.

  “Zagavory is magic spells. But Kishka need nothing to fly. We were children, she just leave body, she fly around, she come to America, she come back to Poland. Whatever she like. In the morning, she tell me wild story, and I believe.”

  “Who is older, you or Kishka?”

  “We are same,” Hennie said. Sophie was shocked.

  “I know, you shocked,” Hennie said. Sophie quickly drew up her shield around her emotions. “No, no, I do not read you, dumpling. I know you shocked because every person shocked. Also, your mouth hung very open. Kishka look very younger than me, no?”

  It was true that Hennie looked like a very old woman, her face folded with wrinkles, while Kishka, though old, had a spry youthfulness about her. Her skin was tighter, it caught light and hurled it back at you—a miracle really, considering how much the old woman smok
ed.

  “One of her powers,” Hennie said, with a tone of acceptance. “She has the glamours, I do not. But still, I look good when you think. How old am I to you?”

  Sophie hated these questions. There would be an insult buried in whatever answer she gave.

  “No, for true, please tell me. I throw away my vanity long time ago.” Hennie smiled, and the dark space where a tooth once was seemed to wink from the cave of her mouth.

  “I don’t know, my grandmother is, what, fifty? So you must be, too? But I guess I would think seventy.”

  “You are very good,” Hennie smiled, nodding. “You could feel a seven. I think I am seven hundred years old.”

  “Okay.” Sophie sat, thinking about seven hundred. It was too large for her to grasp. She imagined seven hundred dollars—too much money, couldn’t grasp it. Seven hundred people. What was that, everyone in Chelsea? Seven hundred years. Sophie was thirteen. Seven hundred years was outer space, it was science fiction.

  “I am, how you say, blowing your mind? Yes. Sophie. We are not regular people, Kishka and I. We are Odmieńce. Magic creatures. First creatures on whole planet. Before humans, Odmieńce.”

  “So, you’re not human,” Sophie said flatly. She didn’t know why this was harder to swallow than grumpy mermaids or pigeons who spoke, but it was. Maybe because of what it implied.

  “No, not human, Sophie.”

  “Am I… I’m human, right?” Sophie wracked her brain for proof that she was human. She breathed air. But she breathed water too, didn’t she, that night? But that was a dream, a vision! But who brings back a lungful of water from a dream? She slept and ate, she cried tears, she got her period, and she was a human, a thirteen-year-old human girl. Who could read minds and talk to pigeons and stuff.

  “You are part human,” Hennie said. “And you are part Odmieńce. Kishka is all Odmieńce, your grandfather all human. Andrea half Odmieńce, half human. Your father, human. You, some and some. A little less every time.”

  “Wait!” Sophie felt insulted. “My mother is less human than me? Does she have power, too?”

  “It skip generation,” Hennie explained. “Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Kishka very angry. Wanted Andrea to have much power, Andrea have none. Kishka very cruel to your mother. Your mother, she run away. She come back with baby in her belly. That is you. She come back with a man, too. Your father.”

  “You knew my father?” Sophie felt awkward. She had come to rest in a certain feeling, the feeling of not having a father. It was hard to miss something she had never had, so she had decided it was no big whoop. Fathers were something that other people had. She had Andrea. She’d had Kishka. Now, she had Hennie. Hennie, and an entire mythology. She felt scared at the thought of having a father. It made her feel vulnerable, and embarrassed. Would she meet him? Would she be expected to cry, to have feelings? Would it be a sentimental reunion, like a cheesy television movie? Sophie loathed situations where she was expected to have a feeling. She feared she would have the wrong one, or have none at all, and then what?

  “I know your father,” Hennie said. Sophie noted the present tense. “But we talk of that later. So much to tell, Sophie. Are you okay?”

  Sophie nodded. The mug in her hand had gone cool. “Your drink,” Hennie said, “is whatever you like. What you like it to be?”

  Sophie looked down at the cup, confused. The liquid was dark in the dark earth color of its vessel. Watermelon juice? she thought, remembering the heat outside. But she realized it was a hot chocolate, hot chocolate with a twig of cinnamon and a striped peppermint stick inside it. Teeny puffs of marshmallow bobbed on top. It was the perfect winter drink. She took a chocolatey gulp. “Wow.”

  “Is nice to have fun with the magic, too,” Hennie said, nodding. “Can’t always be, Read minds, remove zagavory, cast zagavory, become mora, yadda yadda yadda.”

  Sophie closed her eyes and thought, Watermelon juice. She could smell the fresh, summery smell of the melon before her eyes were opened.

  “Sophie, your grandmother very bad.” Hennie’s eyes were intense, the play gone from them as quickly as it had come.

  “I know.” Sophie nodded. “Everyone has told me. The pigeons, Angel, they all think she’s the worst person in the whole world.”

  Hennie nodded. “She pretty bad. Always drawn to the bad magic, ever since tiny baby so long ago. Spending so long in the bad magic, it takes hold of you. Soon, no way to come back. Darkness claim you.”

  “What about you?”

  “I pure good.” Hennie smiled, and the pure good was in the smile, and it made Sophie smile, too. “Always good girl. Drive Kishka crazy. But good take hold too, good can claim you. Kishka and me, we sisters, but not sisters. Is different from human way. All Odmieńce related, descended from the first creatures, all Odmieńce are sister and brother. Because Kishka most bad and I most good, we were placed with humans together, side by side. The Boginki bring us. Boginki, how you say…” Hennie thought about it. “Fairies, maybe? Water fairies, from rivers? They steal human babies, they replace with Odmieńce. Me and Kishka, we placed with family in village outside Warsaw, so many years ago.”

  “What happened,” asked Sophie, “to the stolen babies?”

  Hennie looked sad. “The Boginki, they love human babies. They bring them into the river.”

  “Into the river?”

  “They drown them.” The story had been in Hennie for hundreds and hundreds of years but still, the thought of the human babies dying in the water, their fat and tiny fists flailing, their futile struggle, it brought her to tears. Hennie cried. She cried like the Boginki had cried so long ago in Poland, underneath the river, shaking the tiny babies, floating them in their hands, pulling their lifeless eyelids open, howling thunderous howls that pushed through the water like currents. “They do not know,” Hennie tried to explain. “Each time they believe the baby will live, be their little human friends. They are like children, the Boginki. They do things again and again and every time it is the same bad way. They are a little mad, from so long of this. A little crazy. But without the Boginki there would be no Odmieńce among the people. It is like strange system. We need Boginki.”

  “Do they still exist?” Sophie asked, scared.

  “Oh, yes. You meet Syrena, the mermaid?”

  “Yes.” Sophie nodded.

  “She have terrible Boginki problem in her river, she tell you. She is very concerned to return to Poland and have Boginki everywhere, and crying mothers on the riverbanks, police officers—this is her fear. Because now, less and less Odmieńce babies. Boginki just take the babies, no replacement babies. They are so bad.” Hennie shook her head, a sadness still on her face. “But so sweet, the Boginki. They only want love, the special kind of love you have with baby. Anyway.” Hennie pulled a fistful of straw from her pillow and tossed it into the dwindling fire. “I can make fire with mind,” she said. “I can make anything with mind, but then is like—what point is life? You do everything with mind all the time, is like having no life. Who cares? I get very, how you call it, depressed. So now, I do things. I put the straw in the fire, like a human would do. Then you feel straw, you hear crackle, smell good straw smell. It is nice, to work with the world in such a way. I want tea, I take the herbs, I measure them, I watch the water become hot on the fire, I smell the tea opening its smells. You know? Otherwise, I go, Tea! and I say my zawolanie, and poof, tea! But when life is too simple it feels wrong. Like talking. I can make you hear my English perfect. It would be a zagavory, a spell. Or, another zagavory—I just make you hear in mind what I think to you. I do this many years, hundreds, hundreds of years, never bothering to learn any language. Is why my English so bad. I not try. Now, I try. I save zagavory for emergency. Or for fun, like drink.” She gestured toward Sophie’s magical mug. “You want cookie?”

  Before Hennie could answer, a pile of cookies appeared on a hammered metal tray beside her. They smelled amazing. She touched one; it was warm from an oven, the chips g
ooey in the dough.

  “They are perfect chocolate chip cookies,” Hennie said.

  “Yes,” Sophie agreed, eating them. It made sense that Hennie, made of goodness, would bake a cookie that tasted like pure love. Sophie could feel that all her fear of the woman was gone. “Hennie, are you sure you’re not my grandmother?” she asked hopefully. “If I’m good and you’re good, how can Kishka be my grandmother? Did the Boginki mix me up maybe?”

  “Child, you might as well be my granddaughter. You might as well be my daughter, you are so close to my heart.” Hennie’s eyes looked like cookies in her face, warm and full of tenderness. “But is not how goes. Kishka have Andrea, Andrea have you. You part human, you raised with human love. You have many influences upon your heart. Kishka Odmieńce, she is only what she is meant to be, she is badness. It is how it is.” She looked hard at her niece. “All human, like you, have choices. Many choices. You could be bad, too, Sophia. But it is not your destiny, I think. Not what you wish for.”

  “No!” Sophie exclaimed, horrified at the thought that she could have a bit of Kishka’s badness waiting inside her, like a cell that could grow into a tumor. “I don’t want to be bad!”

  “Well, most humans don’t. But then—” She shrugged. “So many sadnesses pile up. Partly this is the curse. You will undo much such badness. And yes, you do have bigger ability for bad inside you, as Odmieńce.” Hennie smiled. “But you have bigger ability for good, also. Tremendously bigger. Human would say—supernatural. But that is only because human does not understand nature.”

  Hennie clapped her big, soft hands together. “I apologize. No time to—what say, philosophize? So much to tell, and you must go, you must. I can play with time, slow down some, but too much and Kishka will notice, it will draw her too us. I will hurry, now. I apologize for that, for all you must hear so quickly. To hear so quickly and then poof, I will push you out my door, I apologize for this. What else you like, what sweets?”