Her muscles go slack and an uncapped medicine container drops from her hand. It rolls away, empty.
As her breathing grows shallow, I can't be still any longer. I reach my hand down and touch her cheek. Her eyelids only flutter and death—a black, caustic cloud of it, churns over us. She wants to die. She wants it like I do, but her desire cuts into my nerves. The faces of her children hang in the ether.
I cannot let her die.
I think of the little ones, who don't even realize she cares yet, and how they will be herded away, heartbroken and incomplete. I think of Carly taking up with the Boy, or any boy she can find, just so she isn't taken by the system. I think of the Fat Woman, running into the black forest of death, hiding from herself and her life, instead of being brave enough to face it. She's not brave enough. The bravery has drained out of her, along with the hope. That’s when it all becomes clear. If she had hope again, just hope, she could change all of this.
I can give her that.
I thrust my hand between the bones of the ribs around my stomach, digging for my heart. It jumps when I touch it. I have no idea what I will do once I get it out, but I wrap my fingers around it and pull. I can't nudge it a centimeter. The thing is stuck, rooted. I pull harder and yelp at the sensation. It's as if I'm trying to turn myself inside out with a fork. My heart may as well be a loose tooth, attached by a stubborn nerve, and each tug sends a sting of pain rippling through me.
She is only skimming the air for breath. Her red lips bloom to violet petals. I could die and she could live, a bargain for us both, but when I try again, whatever invisible cord attaching my gift to me, won't come free.
A howl is in the bottom of my throat as her violet lips become a blue bruise. We are both doomed if I fail. She will pass and I will remain, trapped in this dead, gray, skin-clothing forever. I reach deeper, trying to force my claws around the back of my heart, digging to sever the thing loose. There is nothing holding it in place, yet it won't move and she is draining away at my feet. My howls escape.
But the pounding of wings, beating through the air overhead, drowns it out. A shadow races over the roof slats of the lean-to.
"BACK AWAY!" A voice startles the grip I have on my heart. I look up to see the brutal face of a gargoyle, with globes that bulge from eye sockets, too small to hold them. The mouth is caught in a snarl, baring razor teeth. I let go of my heart and skitter backward, as commanded.
The gargoyle jumps forward, his massive feet beating the rooftop like a horrible base drum. He grabs the Fat Woman by her ankle and gives her a violent yank. Her hair trails like listless tentacles. He tugs her out from under the lean-to, toward him and away from me.
"She's dying!” I scream.
"MINE!" He thunders. His nostrils, hard knots of skin beneath the bulges of his eyes, swell and puff with energy, as if he's waiting for me to challenge him. I'm too scared to even move. He gives the fat woman another ruthless jerk, this time by her hair, back toward him. When he seems sure I'm not going to dispute his claim, his eyes flicker down to the fat woman's face. She is pale as the belly of a clam. While the gargoyle's features are that of morbidly shaped stones, the mortar around them seems to soften, and the gargoyle drops to his knees.
"You do not go," he whispers to the dying woman. "Not before you live. This is your gift."
He reaches for his neck, as if he must grip it to release a sob, but instead, his hand slides into a camouflaged flap of skin. I am mesmerized. He withdraws a beating heart, small as a chicken gizzard, the ash dripping from it like dust. It is as gray as mine, but as he tenderly lowers the organ toward the woman, it begins pumping so hard that it jumps in his fist, as if it is a fish in the air and she is the water.
But she is still only a puddle at his massive feet. The gargoyle draws in a deep breath, closes his eyes, and presses his heart into her chest. The organ sinks into her, as if she has a flap too. He withdraws his empty hand. If stone could relax, if it could soften, then that is how the gargoyle appears, as he tips his face toward the sky.
A flash, a blaze of lightening, moves out of the dark sky from nowhere. It is a shooting star aimed from a rifle or a current pulsing down an electrical line, something violent and emerging from invisibility. It explodes when it hits him.
The gargoyle is lost in the shower of light and sparks, a phoenix, an explosion. I scuttle even further backward, amazed, awed, and scared to death that I will be burned alive too. And then the light is gone.
The gargoyle's body is still there, although only a statue. There is no soul within the stone anymore. A statue is all that remains.
The fat woman stirs. I remain frozen, paralyzed, and petrified. She is slow to roll to her back, the deathly blue hue fading from her lips, her face turning back to the color of a baby piglet.
She is there so long, I wonder if she is damaged, until she scoots to a seated position. She sighs, grunts, and sways a little, massaging her cheeks in her palms and the back of her head, where the gargoyle had pulled her across the roof. Shaking her head, she looks up at the sky through the slats of the lean-to and takes a deep breath. The orange pill container lies close to her thumb and she scoops it up, turns it upside down. She sighs hard, her eyes glossy as they roll up to the sky and then she whips the container away.
"Thank you, God," she whispers with a small laugh. "I ain't dyin'. I kin do this."
She pushes herself to her feet and spots the gargoyle statue, the one that saved her. Her eyes travel from the statue to me, frozen like a statue, and back again. She turns in a circle once before she shakes her head and shrugs and then she heads, light as a stone grazing across awaves, to the stairs leading back down to her life.
***
When she's gone, I scoot closer to the statue.
"Hello?"
It doesn't move.
I brush my claw against it. Still nothing. The thing is cold concrete, not a spark of life hidden in its eyes. I tap on the smooth forehead. Its eyes are paralyzed in their upward roll, in the direction that the lightening came. All that is left of the frightening gargoyle is this chunk of stone, with a face that no matter how twisted and grotesque, stll manages to look nearly benevolent.
I think of emptying myself from this gargoyle form. I also think of the other fate I could choose, with any of the suitors that await me. What I will become, as the result of either choice, seems vast and empty. I sit back among the plants and the loneliness seeps in, even more than it had when I lay at the bottom of the water.
"Just come,” I hear a voice say. It's his voice. And I'm so startled and off guard by it that, for a moment, I think of when we were in my mother's house, standing on the stairs with our hands interlocked and we knew what we were about to do. I can't remember who said it, but one of us did, and the other one followed and we went up the attic stairs together, to lie beneath the window. But that time, we both knew we weren't going to the attic just to lie on the mattress and intertwine our hands and watch the leaves of the pear tree shiver in the wind. We knew we weren't going to just kiss. Whoever led the other up the stairs, it didn't matter. We both wanted to come.
The apartment roof door opens and slams shut. The glinting light from the stairs makes them both look like angels, as she spins out of his arms, laughing, and he chases after her.
"You know you want me," Ayla says and I can't help but gasp. It's so loud that she halts and turns, the boy turns with her, and they are both looking at me.
"Did you hear that?” Ayla asks.
He turns his face back to her and leans close to her cheek, "Nope."
She ducks away from him and walks toward me. "That's weird. That statue is just like the one on my roof."
"It's just Dawn's green house. You know...Carly's mom?" he says. "She's got all kinds of plants and statues stuffed in there."
I wonder if Ayla hears it in his voice, the tugging of the rug as he yanks it up, slowly, over her eyes. The other girl's name being swept under the fringe, with the edge of his lip. A kid named Carly...a kid tha
t was in his apartment only an hour ago, saying his name over and over again and inviting him to smell her. I hate him enough for both of them.
"There's two of them,” Ayla says, noticing the statue of the dead gargoyle.
"Yeah, Dawn’s into gargoyles, I guess.” He's focused more on her hair than on what she says, as he eases up behind her and snakes his hands around her waist. Oh, I remember that. The feeling of him crushed against my back, his warmth spread out against me. He'd hold me like he didn’t want me to ever get away, and I never, ever tried.
Ayla doesn't either. She turns to face him, the way I used to. The way probably ever girl in the world would, because his arms feel so reliable. She leans back, her pelvis locked against his, her hair dangling.
Then they kiss and my heart is just a jar of rocks. I want to reach out and yank Ayla away. I want to roar at the boy. I want this to stop before Ayla and Carly get hurt. Before either of them is wrapped in a paper robe, in a tiny sterile room, with a doctor, instead of him, between their knees.
I stand.
They don't notice me. They remain locked in their kiss, his hands cupping her jaw as if her kiss is food. Yes, I remember that too.
I inch forward, out from beneath the fronds of an overhanging fern. I don't care if they look up, if they know I'm not a statue, if he even figures out it's me. I don't care. I might even want them to. His hands are sliding down her forearms and a bouquet of emotions rush up inside me. Hurt, anger, confusion, disappointment. And then the door to the stairs bursts open and a figure emerges from the shadows that stop me dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Selene stands in the doorframe, her breathing so labored that her chest rises and falls like a dribbling basketball. She holds onto the knob as if it is the only thing holding her up, but she shouts the word she came for, between breaths.
“Ayla!”
The Boy releases Ayla as if it was his name that was shouted. Ayla’s confused gaze wanders until it finds Selene.
“Come…home. Now,” her foster mother puffs. Ayla screws up her face in a sour, challenging smirk.
“What are you doing here?”
“I…know. I know…about him. Come home. Before you get...in…over your head.”
“I’m almost eighteen. I think I’d know if I’m over my head.”
“He was your dead friend’s…boyfriend…wasn’t he?” Selene bends over, one hand still on the door and the other on her thigh, still trying to catch her breathe. “The one that was…pregnant, right?”
Ayla’s mouth drops open, but only a smothered sound makes it out. The Boy looks off, over the ledge somewhere, as he jams his fists in his pockets. Ayla knots her arms on her chest.
“You are so rude,” Ayla snaps at Selene. “Why would you even say that? We lost Madeline. WE did. But it’s not his fault that she killed herself, and I can’t believe you’d come up here and say that to him, you selfish witch…”
But The Boy’s head drops on his chest and he says, “Yes it is. It is my fault.”
“No it’s not!” Ayla turns on him. “It was a mistake! Mistakes happen and it was Madeline that made the worst mistake.”
“He got her pregnant,” Selene says, her breathing finally returning to normal. Ayla glares at her.
“You think Maddy didn’t have anything to do with that?”
“Of course she did. But I’m not here for her. I’m here for you. To be sure you don’t make the same mistake.”
“Oh my God!” Ayla shrieks. Even in the dark, I see her skin flush a darker shade. The Boy’s chin is on his chest and he rolls his tongue in his mouth, but he doesn’t say a word. “You are so ridiculous! Go home. I’m almost an adult and I’ll be out of your hair in a few weeks anyway. Besides, I’m moving in with Adam.”
The Boy lifts his head and his mouth drops.
“You are?” he says, and Ayla nods once, even though her brow is still bent from battle. Selene tsks through her teeth.
“It’s a mistake,” she says.
“You don’t know anything.”
“Come home with me, Ayla.”
“No. I’m staying here with Adam.”
“Then I’ll send the police to come get you. You’re still my responsibility, until you’re eighteen.”
“Just go home, Ayla,” The Boy says. His voice is small and weak. He looks away again, across the roof, anywhere but at Selene. “I’ll help you move on your birthday, if you still want to.”
Ayla throws back her head like a wild mare, but she goes. She tears past Selene with a violent shove of her shoulder against the doorframe, but she never touches her foster mother. Selene stays put once Ayla is gone and gives The Boy another hard glance. He accidentally meets her eyes.
“Don’t do to her what you’ve already done to someone else,” Selene tells him. “Not to her. She’s my baby and I won’t have it. I’ve been keeping an eye out, and I’m going to keep on doing that. Don’t you try anything with her, you understand me?”
The Boy just stares at her and finally Selene tips her head, jaw out to him, before turning away and puffing back down the steps and out of his building.
***
I follow The Boy, after he leaves the roof, although I scale down the side of the brick and he walks down to his apartment. I am outside his window when the door opens and he flips on the light. He runs his hand through his hair, dumps his apartment key on the counter, and his cell phone rings.
“Hello?” I curl up my wings, hoping they don’t show through the window.
“Hey douchebag, how you been?” The voice on the other end is tiny, but familiar and audible. It’s Rodeo.
“Good. What’s going on?”
“Well, what the fuck, E? I come up to your room and Dern said you moved out. I know a lot went down with you, but Jesus…you should’ve said something. Was Madison really pregnant?”
The Boy sighs and the color drains from his forehead, his cheeks, his neck. He turns an awful shade of gray.
“Madeline. Her name was Madeline and yeah. She had an abortion,” he says.
“Whoa. And then she just went and offed herself? That’s a lot of shit.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Well...how’s everything else going? Where are you anyway?”
“Queens. Moved to be near Ayla.” My wing droops a little. I don’t know what use it is being vain when I’m not even alive anymore, but I had hoped he would say he came because of me somehow. I think of Truce and how he wanted to know what The Boy had done to me. I add this small thing to my list of all the things The Boy does to me even now, every day, by not thinking of me anymore.
“Ayla? That girl you used to see? Rhino butt? That one?”
The Boy grits his teeth. He says, “Ayla’s the one I took to Dern’s party.”
“Yeah, Rhino. Didn’t she dump you? You stalking her now?”
“She didn’t dump me,” The Boy says, but he stops in the kitchen to bang his fist methodically against the counter. “She moved and I started college.”
“Uh huh,” Rodeo’s doubt leaks through the phone. “Well, you moved up to the grade A class when you scored with Madeline. Don’t lose your footing now. Even if she was all emo, that girl was still caviar. I know a lot of crap happened, but don’t be going back to the Alpo, man.”
The Boy’s knuckles grow white as he grips the counter. “You know what, Chip? You don’t know shit.”
“What are you getting all hot about? I’m just trying to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you look like after all. Go a little younger, play ‘em some guitar, and you can snap up the hotties like a boss. I’m just trying to keep you from dumpster diving for your chicks is all.”
“Ayla’s not dumpster diving. She’s actually got a brain. You can have all the Maddy’s you want and you know what, man? You deserve ‘em.”
The Boy clicks off his phone and throws it down on the counter. He stomps down the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. I hear him retching inside. When h
e finally comes out, he wipes his mouth and grabs his phone again.
He paces as he dials, sighs, waits, while the phone rings on the other end.
Backward Baseball Cap answers on the second ring, “Hey buddy, how’s it going?”
“Just talked to Chip.”
“Oh yeah? What’d that butthead have to say?”
The Boy sucks in a breath and exhales like he’s giving up. “Nothing. The usual.”
“He wanted to know about Madeline?”
“Yup.”
“Nosey bastard.”
“He was trashing on Ayla too.”
“Lemme guess. Because she’s not as hot as Madeline?” Backward Baseball laughs a laugh that isn’t one. The Boy groans.
“That’s all he thinks there is to anything.”
“To be fair, wasn’t that exactly what you were thinking when you were with Mad?”
The Boy leans his head back, inhales.
“Yeah,” he says, defeated. “But I tried to feel more. At least I tried, when I found out she was…you know…knocked up.”
“That was a tough break,” Backward Baseball sympathizes on the other end.
“That’s why I told her to have the abortion,” The Boy pinch-rubs his eyes, crushing them beneath his fingers. “God, I never thought she’d go and kill herself. I figured she’d hate my guts and just walk away and be happy that we didn’t have the kid together.”
The Boy covers his face. He shudders, and makes a funny noise between a grunt and a sniffle that Backward Baseball must hear on the other end, because he says, “Damn, man, I feel for you. It should’ve gone the right way. There was no way of knowing she was going to be such a clinger. Or that she’d end up doing what she did.”
“No,” The Boy says. A tear slips out from under his crushed eyelids, but he levels his tone, so Backward Baseball won’t know he’s crying. “Never expected that. She kept wanting me to explain why I wasn’t into her, you know? And what was I supposed to tell her? It was just her body, all along? I thought that would send her over the edge. I tried to make it work, but I just don’t get how it works, dude. I mean, she was so into me, she was totally hot, and I just couldn’t make myself feel a damn thing for her.”
Mercy, A Gargoyle Story Page 12