Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

by Michelle Tea

“First, a toast.” Hennie held in her hand a great goblet sloshing with a deep, blue liquid. Sophie found one in her own hand as well. The liquid smelled like five hundred different smells, like the freshest burst of pure salt in your face while standing on the ocean shore; it smelled like a fat lilac blossom, the blossom a mosaic of tinier blossoms, its smell that faint, pastel smell that made her throat clutch. It smelled like a baby that had just been cleaned, been bathed and shampooed and laid down to sleep, the smell of the baby coming through the top of its head, through the warm hair fuzzing there, the liquid smelled like that. It smelled electric like pavement before a rain, and lush and round like a field of mown grass being heated in the sun. It smelled, thought Sophie, like the sun itself, a bright burst, and it smelled like the moon, cool and lingering, like a rich woman’s shoulders, and it smelled earthy in pockets, like the dirt that built the earth, like the heart of a cave. It tasted fruity and blue, like Caribbean waters, a smell that lapped at her, made her mouth water. Sophie wouldn’t have imagined that so many of these smells would strike her as good smells, or that together they would smell so magnificent, or that she would ever want to drink such a smell, but she did. She clinked her goblet with her aunt and let the potion wash through her mouth. “Wow,” she said.

  “I bottled this in 1628.” Hennie smiled. “It’s been getting better and better all these years. I knew the perfect occasion would come to pop it open.” She took a gulp and closed her eyes in reverence to the taste. “Congratulations, Sophie. You broke the time zagavory. You have done other zagavorys as well, small ones?”

  Sophie nodded. “I made fire, I made some glass break, I made my telephone explode, I made my mother pass out.” Sophie felt a swell of shame at the litany. None of it sounded very nice.

  “All you do, you must do,” Hennie said, noting the droop of her niece’s shoulders. “And you do well, and you learn to do better. All is good. Cheers.” She hefted her goblet and they clinked and drank again. “Now.” She placed her glass on the tabletop, beside heaps of grapes and split-open figs, rounds of cheese, peaches and nectarines with their chunky pits exposed, dishes of fragrant olives, oily bowls brimming with garlic. And the bread, so soft and warm it seemed living. Sophie tore the end from a baguette and a delicious steam wafted across her face. She thought of butter and butter was upon it, melting dreamily.

  “Thank you,” Sophie said. “For all of this.”

  “You deserve all, and more,” Hennie said. “You deserve magnificent send-off.”

  The soft bread felt suddenly hard as it passed through Sophie’s throat, she looked at Hennie, alarm bursting like fireworks across her face. She swallowed hard, so as not to choke. Hennie’s hand shot up, palm out, universal for stop.

  “You not talk this time. You listen. Drink, eat, listen.” Hennie snapped her fingers, and a shuffling of feet filled the room. Or paws. A German Shepherd came out from behind a tall shelf of dimly lit jars. Its eyes were bright and darting, alert to command, ready to obey. Its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth. It seemed both keenly intelligent and wholly dumb. Hennie patted its head, then looped her arm around its neck and gave it a squeeze. “This is Carl.”

  “My grandfather,” Sophie said.

  Hennie looked at Sophie critically. “Not sure to let you speak at all. Never know what you say, or do.”

  “I’ll be good,” Sophie promised, though she didn’t even know what that meant. Not when she’d just sneezed a spell onto her own mother and left her conked out on the kitchen floor.

  “You must. Otherwise, I put quiet zagavory on you,” Hennie threatened. She looked at Sophie, and looked away. They both knew that Sophie would be able to break out of whatever spell Hennie cast upon her. “Call your grandfather,” the woman said.

  “Papa?” Sophie called uncertainly. “Carl?”

  “Dog name is Carl,” Hennie said simply. “Dog respond to Carl.”

  “Carl!” Sophie called brightly, trying to insert some cheer into the moment. She clapped her hands together briskly. “C’mere, Carl! C’mere!”

  The dog’s tail wagged, responding to the excitement in Sophie’s voice. He loped around the table and came to her, panting. His big damp nose sniffed at her, and she petted the wiry fur of his head awkwardly. The animal quickly grew bored and edged over to the table, dragging a round of cheese to the floor with its teeth. He ate the cheese in large, wet-sounding chomps.

  Sophie drained her goblet, and it was instantly refilled, this time with a stronger essence of seaborne, salty breeze.

  “You like more ocean?” Hennie asked, and Sophie nodded. “I thought so. Never too late to play with ingredient. Me, I like the lilac best.” She took a sip, and sighed. “Sophie. Your story. You are ready?”

  “Yes.” The Dola twitched in her sleep. What, thought Sophie, does a Dola dream of?

  “Your mother, Kishka think she will be you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When your mother baby, Kishka think she is girl with power. Most magic girl. She almost kill your mother, with salt.”

  “That myth, that thing!” Sophie cried, excited to have a piece of the puzzle.

  “Yes,” Hennie said. “It is real, and it is tragic. Real that a girl will become powerful girl, and she will crave salt, and salt will make her strong, never hurt her, even as baby. Real, true myth. But, tragic, so many people want baby to be theirs.” She sipped her lilac potion. “Especially in this place, Chelsea. And more places like it, where people poor, confused, not knowing how to make better. They think, Oh, my baby magic, will save me, and they hurt, even kill baby.”

  Sophie pointed to Alize, asleep with her fingers in her mouth. “That happened to her,” Sophie whispered. “She did that. Laurie, not the Dola.”

  Hennie nodded. “Very sad, very scary. Happen to your own mother. After that, Kishka not love her.” She paused. “Maybe Kishka never love her. Maybe Kishka not able to love.”

  It made Sophie feel terrible to imagine her mother, a girl, unloved. “Did Kishka love her at least a little?” she asked desperately. “Did she at least pretend to?”

  Hennie sighed. “Kishka very cruel. She do zagavory on Andrea just to scare her, make her see things, send her nightmares. She call the Poludnica, make her faint in the summer always. She invite Naw to stay in Andrea’s room. If she could put Boginki in bathtub, she would. Very terrible.” Hennie petted Carl, sitting beside her, posture still and classic as a statue.

  “Andrea grows up, is bad girl. Always in trouble. With the cigarettes, with the alcohol. She run away with boy she love, he like the alcohol, too. Ronald. Is your father.”

  “Ronald.” Sophie turned her mind back to the information. “Ronald who works at the dump?” The man was a clown, a sad clown. “The drunk?”

  “Yes, Sophie.” Hennie nodded. “Ronald your father. Andrea quite young, too young, she become pregnant. Is very scared. Was very drunk when she allow herself to become pregnant, not thinking well. But, it happen.”

  Sophie tried to remember what she knew of Ronald. His face, dark from the sun. His eyes half-closed always. She wasn’t even sure how tall he was, as he was always stopped with liquor. He was an empty man. He was no one’s anything.

  “They talk of marrying, yah,” Hennie continued. “Kishka say no way never. She lay energy onto Andrea—all her rebellion gone. She sink zagavory on Andrea, kill a bit of spirit. Numb it. You go to dentist? You know they numb you with the needle?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Kishka do like that to your mother’s spirit. To her heart. She not have the joy to fight anymore—to fight for love, for herself. For Ronald.” Hennie’s face turned tender. “For you. “

  For a moment Sophie felt like Hennie could see all her secret loneliness, and the sensation of being known so deeply was too much. She stuck her head quickly into her goblet and felt the spray of the sea against her face.

  “Is there a zagavory on Ronald?” Sophie asked into her mug. The man was clearly under a terrible spe
ll.

  “No.” Hennie shook her head sadly. “Ronald just alcoholic. Ronald very sad. Kishka keep Andrea away from him, but she keep Ronald close, to watch him. Give him job, pay him good for teenage boy.” Hennie laughed a mean laugh. “She pay him same now, grown man. He don’t care. She buy him alcohol all the time.”

  It made Sophie want to cry. She thought of her mother, so cold to Ronald, indifferent. “And the zagavory on my mother, it makes her not care about Ronald?”

  “Yes, Sophie. Like I said, part of your mother’s heart is gone.”

  “Forever?” Sophie cried. “Can’t I remove the spell?”

  Hennie shook her head. “Some spell, the longer they happen, the more damage. For Andrea to be under spell so long, it not reversible. It hurt her spirit permanent.”

  Sophie thought about her mother—overwhelmed and overworked, neglectful. Not there, Sophie realized. Some crucial part of her mother had never been there. She felt a flare of rage at the injustice. “What about you?” Sophie demanded. “With all your good magic, what good is your good magic if you can’t undo a spell like that! Why didn’t you help her?”

  “Oh, I did,” Hennie said wearily. “I did what I could. I think I ease it, some. For you and for your mother. Could be worse, my belief. But, yes. Still bad.” There were tears sparkling in the corner of Hennie’s eyes. They stayed there, shining like diamonds, while Sophie’s liquefied and slid down her face. “Once Kishka know your mother having baby, she make her power very strong. She know magic skip generation. She want magic baby for herself.”

  “She knew I would be magic?” Sophie nervously chugged her oceany drink, then watched the elixir rise back to the top of her glass. You can’t nervously eat magic food, Sophie thought. It just keeps replenishing itself. She put her goblet down and fiddled with a snarl instead.

  “Well, love. Yah, Kishka know you come now. But there surprise for Kishka, for everyone. You not alone, love. You have sister. Twin sister. You come together. You come, and only one is magic baby.”

  Sophie reached for her goblet with a compulsive hand, and buried her nose in the cup of it so she would not have to face Hennie. A sister. Her heart was racing. A twin? Twins were magic. Even regular, non-Odmieńce humans thought there was something uncanny about twins, something extraordinary. Sophie thought of television shows she’d watched, where one twin would sense another twin’s feelings. The thought both charmed and scared Sophie. Had she been feeling her twin’s feelings and thinking them her own? How could she be so connected to another and not know it? Was there a hole inside her where her twin had been pulled away? Sophie often felt lonely, but it seemed to her, living in Chelsea, that most everyone did.

  “What, what is her name?” Sophie brought her face out of the goblet. “My sister.” I have a sister.

  Hennie shook her head. “She have no name.”

  “Everyone has a name.”

  “She have no name.”

  “Is she dead?” Sophie was suddenly struck by a million possibilities. Where was she? Why was she taken? Was she drowned in the creek by Polish Boginki?

  “She alive.” Hennie nodded. “When you babies first born, Kishka enraged! She think she know everything, she so mad to not know something like two baby instead of one. Something simple, many witch could see. Kishka not thinking, though. Now, both you baby, which is magic baby? Huh? How does Kishka know?”

  “Couldn’t we both be magic?” Sophie asked hopefully. A magic sister! To play spells with, to have a forever best friend, a magic one of her own blood.

  “No, only one girl magic girl, that certain. Kishka feed you both salt, see how you take it. Very scary moment. I here, in my workshop, I in deep trance, I inside baby you and your baby sister. Like how you go into hearts? Sad to do it to baby, baby so defenseless, feel very wrong. I light so many candle after, I do many spells to be pure, to align with the good. But, I do it for good, Sophie. I have your sister eat the salt. I have her eat so much she almost sicken. I try to take the toxin out of her, is complicated magic, like, like, surgery in operating room. I so scared I kill baby.” Hennie shudders with the memory, her tears finally trickling from the corners of her eyes. “And all the while, I in you too. I stop you from eating salt. And you want so much salt! And your little baby will, so strong! No doubt you are the one, Sophia. Even in you as little baby, you like, like bucking bronco!” Hennie laughed, full of affection for her niece. Sophie was stunned. Hennie was inside her heart as a baby. Hennie knew her so well, and in a way Sophie could not understand. She could not understand what she meant to Hennie, and she was humbled by it.

  “It work,” Hennie said, her voice a mixture of sadness and relief, pride and regret. “It work well. Baby not die. I stay with baby long time. I keep purifying. Kishka believe she the one, Kishka take the baby. She tell Andrea baby wicked, evil, spelled. She tell Kishka baby sick from alcohol in the belly. Kishka tell Andrea all sort of thing but it doesn’t matter, Andrea so broken now, Andrea has no fight. She let Kishka take baby. She never even ask what happen.”

  “She let Kishka take my sister.” My sister, my sister. Sophie was shocked at how she had so recently had no one, no sister at all, and now an allegiance burned sharply inside her.

  “Oh, Sophie. Try not to be mad at Andrea. This—all this so crazy, yah? What would you do? Try to understand Andrea.”

  “What would I do?” Sophie flared. “I’d fight Kishka! I wouldn’t let her take my sister! I’d do anything! Anything I could, I’d make the biggest zagavory—”

  “Sophie, Andrea not have magic. Andrea have nothing. Kishka hurt Andrea Andrea’s whole life. Andrea, she was defenseless.”

  It could have been me, Sophie thought. Her mother just as easily would have let Kishka spirit her away, gone. Sophie felt cold at the thought, cold and small. She turned on Hennie.

  “You let her?” she accused. “You had a part in this! You let Kishka take my sister!”

  Hennie nodded, crying freely now. “Yes I did, child. It is what was meant to happen. One of you would go. One would stay. I did like Boginki, I make switch. So that you stay free. So that you grow powerful to do what you are meant to do.”

  “What am I meant to do, Hennie?”

  “All the sadness upon the humans is like a deep spell from the bad, the source Kishka takes her power from. Over time it grow and grow and grow, you know. Humans not used to be so sad. Everyone on the sad pills or happy pills. Everyone scared inside and no one know why. People fighting, people so mean, not used to be so. You will take it all, child. You will take it all out of everyone. You will make the world so different it will be as if you had recreated it.”

  “Me?” Sophie was sickened with dread.

  “Yes. There will be others, other girls. You will have help.”

  “Where are they?”

  “You will find each other when time is right. You are all growing, all training, all magic. Part human, so you can feel the zagavory of sadness yourself, it is in your heart. But magic, too. Magic you can find it and take it away.”

  “Hennie,” Sophie said. “Where is my sister?”

  “She is with Kishka.”

  Sophie remembered the plants, the wall of plants in the trailer, a fortress of greenery. The tiny hello.

  “In Kishka’s trailer,” Sophie said. “In the plants.”

  “Yes, child.”

  “Right there. She’s just right there, right here in Chelsea, at the dump, and no one is helping her?”

  “Sophia, the plants. They are so poison. Kishka raise her inside a poison garden, now the only air she know is air of poison flowers. Her air would kill anyone. She live inside it since two, three days old. She maybe poison now, herself.”

  “It wouldn’t kill me,” Sophie asserted, though she remembered the dizzying affect of being so close to the plants, the way her breath had turned leaden in her lungs. “I could do a zagavory, so could you— we—could take her—”

  “Take her where, Sophie? She does not breathe air
like we do. She cannot leave the plants. Our clean, healthy air is poison to her. She would die, love. And we would sicken from her closeness. She is a poison flower.”

  Sophie cried tears of frustration. “There’s nothing we can do?” she wailed. “I’m able to save the world and swim with mermaids and talk to pigeons but I can’t rescue my own sister?”

  “Just because many things are possible does not mean all is possible, Sophie.”

  “She has no name,” Sophie said.

  “No one has named her. She is like, little flower creature. Like little animal girl.”

  “Is she… happy?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Go inside her! See if she’s happy!”

  Hennie held a hand up in front of her. “No more go inside that child. That a promise I make to the good.”

  “Well I will, then.”

  “That fine, Sophie. You do as you will. But I ask you, you must focus on what is your duty here. It is bigger than you, than your sister, than me. You must not be distracted by this, this tragedy.”

  “Why did Kishka even want her?”

  “Kishka for bad. She enjoy humans being sad, being angry. Sad people easy to control, yah? She have power, it feel good to her. She make many people do her will. She want to make sure no good magic girl come and mess it up for her. So she make this flower jail.”

  “Why is she controlling people, does she take their money?”

  “Earthly wealth means nothing, any Odmieńce can make wealth, here—” Without even sounding her zawolanie, Hennie produced a giant bar of gold. She placed it on the table with a thunk, smooshing a stray grape.

  “Oh my god,” Sophie breathed. “That’s real? It’s not, like, counterfeit?”

  “Is real,” Hennie said.

  “Could I do that? Could I make, like dollars, like a big wad of cash?”

  “You do what you like, sure. Is not point of your power. Do as have to do. My point is, Kishka have such things, yah. Have own cave in Poland, full with jewels, with gold, what you say, wads of cash. Such things, who cares? You live so long with such power, you stop to care. But, Kishka care. Gives her much power over humans.”