by Cutter, Leah
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Twyla said, snorting. But her brothers were right. She’d miss them, and her mom and dad, and her friends.
“Back to work, human,” Franklin said in a robot voice.
“Yeah,” Twyla said, standing. “’bout time I got out of this stinking pit.”
“You came in here—”
“We didn’t ask you to come in—”
Twyla left the protests of her brothers behind and walked back to her room. She still didn’t see how Tai Chi was supposed to give her this sense of warmth and belonging—the real things she’d miss if she didn’t come back.
* * *
Twyla knew better than to kneel in front of her locker at school. Particularly when the halls were crowded, there was too much noise and too many smells to detect a threat before it was too late. With her arms full of books, looking down, she didn’t see the face of the girl who suddenly shoved her off balance into her own locker. Twyla felt the other girl’s bony knees just under her shoulders and the hand that shoved her head farther down. When Twyla jerked back all she saw was the back of the girl: another black girl, with her hair shaved close to her head and dyed bleach blond.
However, Twyla had her scent. It didn’t matter where the bitch went. Twyla could find her.
“Hey, girl.”
Twyla pushed herself up and glared at her friend Marcila, who took a step backwards “Whoa, who got up on the wrong side of the palace?”
“Not this princess,” Twyla said, forcing herself to smile.
“So what’s the beef?”
“Dad giving me grief,” Twyla said. “Can’t help it he’s a thief. Stealing that happiness for his own. Causing that anguish to be sown.”
“All right, you,” Marcila said. “See you after class?”
“I gotta get home,” Twyla lied. She shook her head. “Dad’s really on the warpath right now.”
“He learn about that fight with Lil G?”
“Naw. Grades.” She hefted her books tighter to her chest.
Normally, Twyla would have invited Marcila with her, and maybe Janice and Nora. She was too worried that her dad was right, that a fight would bring the change too close.
However, it was either fight or be pounded on. Someone had taken advantage of Twyla’s distraction today. Tomorrow they’d shove her down the stairs even when she was looking.
Dad didn’t understand that high school was the jungle now.
Twyla didn’t start her hunt until after school had let out. She texted Mom and Franklin to let them know she was going to Nora’s house after school. If they called there, Nora knew enough to tell them Twyla had just left. Twyla had done the same for her.
When Twyla scented her prey heading down the street, she smiled. At least the bitch understood the rules: no fighting on school grounds or someplace where people could see. No glass or weapons—it was merely a fight, not a death match. And while friends were okay, tag teaming wasn’t.
Twyla caught up with the blonde under the railroad bridge. No security cameras and no cars to drive by. The air stank of urine. Graffiti in every color of the rainbow brightened the gray, rusted girders.
“So bitch, you think you’re tough?” The blonde came out all swagger. Her friends stayed on the embankment, watching silently.
Twyla smelled her fear and desperation. She had to win this fight as much as Twyla did. “Bitch, I am so much tougher than you. I ain’t even gonna break a nail,” she said.
“I’m gonna break much more than a nail, honey,” the blonde said, almost friendly. “Like your face. Oh wait, that’s already broken.”
“I just see you flapping your jaw all the way over there,” Twyla said, affecting a yawn. Her hackles had already risen and she fought to keep her tone bored, to keep the snarl out of her voice.
Twyla had one rule—she never threw the first punch. Dad could smell a lie. All Twyla’s fights started as self-defense.
Fortunately, the blonde didn’t need any more goading. With a roar she came at Twyla, both arms out, hands like claws.
Twyla shoved the blonde’s hands to the side with a sold arm block, then kicked, hard. She stopped for a moment, surprised by herself. The Tai Chi really had helped.
Unfortunately, the blonde didn’t stop. She came at Twyla again, who couldn’t get her feet under her. She got shoved to the ground, the other girl quickly landing on top of her.
The blonde’s friends cheered. Twyla ignored the lame punch that knocked into her shoulder; instead, she wrapped both her hands around her opponent’s head and pulled down at the same time she shoved herself up.
The change was close, so close. Twyla couldn’t stop the snarl. She snapped her teeth into the other girl’s ear, then shook her head, hard, tearing at the flesh. The cooper taste of blood flowed over Twyla’s tongue. She let go and tried to bite again, but the girl shoved her off, staggering to her feet.
Twyla heard the blonde’s friends exclaiming, yelling at her.
But none of them dared come any closer.
Twyla wiped the blood off her mouth, then made the mistake of putting her hands on the ground to push herself up.
She froze.
The change was only a hair’s breadth away. Twyla curled her fingers up from the ground then, forced herself to her feet. It was hard to stand upright. She wanted to stay on all fours, to howl out her victory, to chase away her enemy.
Twyla turned and shambled away. It took time before she figured out how her legs worked, before she could properly run.
Tears streamed down Twyla’s face. The need to change drove daggers into her gut. Her hands shook and she clenched them into fists, driving the nails into her palms.
Tomorrow at school everyone would know about the fight and how she’d run. More challenges would rise. Twyla wouldn’t be able to escape. She could already hear the cries of “Freak.”
When a car drove by too slowly, Twyla turned, darted into an alley, then made her way to Frank’s garage, where she could slip into the outside restroom. The stench nearly made Twyla turn around. As did the moldy green tile. But she had to get clean.
Then she looked at herself in the mirror.
Clean-ish?
Twyla could wash the blood and tears off her face, rinse her mouth out with the rust-tasting water. The florescent light above the mirror made her skin look ashen. She pulled her fingers through her hair but it was a wreck.
A laugh threatened to erupt when Twyla realized that she hadn’t, indeed, broken a nail. But she kept her lips pressed firmly together. That laugh could too easily turn into tears again.
Her shirt was ruined. Blood spray decorated the front, from her shoulder down to her chest.
Dad would know it wasn’t Twyla’s blood.
Shit, she was in so much trouble. Maybe she should change now. That way her missing shirt wouldn’t be questioned.
Twyla thought for a moment. If she changed, she knew now, there would be no going back. Not for a while. Not given how much trouble she was in.
Maybe it would be easier. Morris had said there was so much joy being a dog.
God, Twyla had never wanted to slip the leash so badly before. Even during the fight.
She watched in the mirror as her eyes changed hue, from dark brown to a golden color. The stench in the bathroom kicked up a notch: not just urine but the different males who had been here, the mother who’d changed her baby on the sink, the acrid chemicals that unsuccessfully tried to clean the bowl.
The light started to fade. Twyla wanted to be outside. She turned toward the door—and violently shoved herself back from the change. It took endless minutes to pull her human skin back over her body. She stood panting in the middle of the room, swallowing hard so she wouldn’t vomit, the taste of bile in her mouth. She shook harder than a drunk with the DTs. Her skin crawled with constant chills. Blood pounded at her temples.
She wouldn’t be able to stop the change the next time.
Still, Twyla found a brie
f smile as she brought up her human hands. “These, indeed,” she muttered as she unlocked the door and turned the handle.
The cleaner air calmed her stomach, settled the ache. Twyla knew she couldn’t resist it forever. Just long enough to say goodbye.
* * *
“You’ve been fighting.”
Twyla nodded. She’d come home and waited outside in the back garden, knowing that her Dad would find her soon enough.
“I have to go.”
Those weren’t the words she’d rehearsed, but they’d have to do. Twyla could barely keep her skin on, clawing to maintain her human form just a little longer.
“No, baby girl.” Dad came out of the house, wrapped his arms around her, and held her close. “You’re too young to make this choice. It gets better. Being human.”
Twyla found her teeth were chattering. She shook her head against her dad’s warm shoulder. “Not a choice,” she finally ground out. After another stuttering breath, she pushed herself away. “I’ve always felt divided. This, this change, this is the first time I’ve ever felt wholly me.”
Dad finally looked closely at Twyla. “You have to change now. I understand. But you can change back afterward.”
Twyla just stared at him. Couldn’t he see that she had to do this, do this now, and not just for an hour or so, but maybe a year? “I’ll come back.”
“No, you won’t.”
Twyla hated how sad her dad looked. “I will,” she promised. “In a few years.”
“What am I going to tell your mother?”
“I’ve always been the wild one,” Twyla said with a shrug.
Dad laughed a little at that. “The boys were never as wild as you,” he said with a whisper. Then he straightened up and spread his hands wide. “It will always be safe for you here,” he promised.
Twyla didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted. But she had to ask. “If I come back—will you play with me?” She wanted to find the joy Morris had talked about, and to reassure her dad that it wasn’t always going to be about fighting.
“If you remember to come back. Yes.”
Twyla had never heard her dad’s voice sound so broken. She didn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. She couldn’t help him, though.
“I’ll remember.” Twyla thought about all the things she was leaving behind—opposable thumbs and a door to keep the night out, brothers she adored no matter how much of a pain in the ass they were being, parents who had always stood by her no matter how much trouble she got into.
Then Twyla lifted her head and let the scents of the night wash over her: the smell of the lake, the wet ground and rotting plants of her mother’s garden, the stinging scent of diesel from the trucks on the highway. Under all of those lay the quickening scent of the trail that called her name.
The change came on gently this time. Instead of the dog shape ripping its way out of her, it was like it had started to rain and Twyla’s human shape melted away. She didn’t remember the passage from upright to all fours, just that she finally, finally felt right. Everything expanded and the world took on a new shape that was already so familiar.
“You’ve some wolf in you.”
Twyla looked up at her human father. He still smelled like family and den and pack but he wasn’t the same as her. The difference made her nose twitch and she shook her head.
“Stick to the shadows while you’re in the city. Get out to the wild.”
Twyla nodded then gave a bark. It meant, “I love you.” It meant, “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry,” and “Good-bye.”
Then Twyla slipped out into the night, ten thousand adventures ahead of her.
Author’s Note
This story started in one direction and had to be turned, slightly. I think I wrote the first scene three times before I finally had something I was happy with. I also tried, twice, to write about Twyla learning the tea ceremony before moving onto Tai Chi. I realized that if this were a novel, the tea scene would have been important. As a short story, it wasn’t. I always knew where Twyla was going: From the very first word, I knew she couldn’t stay.
Golden Charms
Grandma Loretta was the only one with her own bedroom in the cramped house on Dauphine. When Jolene was five and asked why, Grandma Loretta just laughed and said, “Darling, I ain’t alone in there. There’s ghosts stacked up to the rafters.”
After that, whenever Jolene walked past the open door to Grandma Loretta’s room, her feet stuck to the scarred wooden floor and she tarried, peeking in, trying to see some ghosts for herself. All she ever saw was Grandma Loretta’s clean room. A thin bed lay along one wall, covered in a quilt made up of old flannel work shirts and baby blankets, the stitching not neat but zigzagging. In the far corner, next to the window overlooking the backyard, an old wooden rocking chair held vigil. Shelves covered in knickknacks and a big tallboy dresser took up the rest of the space.
But no ghosts.
Jolene’s sisters, Evelyn and Roberta, couldn’t see ghosts either, but because they were older, they’d heard the stories. They kept Jolene up half the night telling her about the wicked banker who drowned his lover then hung himself just down the block, who was always asking Grandma Loretta for forgiveness. Or the jockey who got caught throwing races and had been gunned down next door and wanted to run his last race over and over again.
They didn’t want to see ghosts. Said they was too scared. They were happy they didn’t have the gift, that they weren’t born with a veil.
It took all of Jolene’s courage and most of a week to step across the threshold of Grandma Loretta’s room to ask. It wasn’t that she wasn’t welcome. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. Grandma Loretta would tell her the truth. “Do I have the gift?” Jolene asked, her voice small in the tiny room. “Will I see ghosts sometime?” She didn’t know why she had to ask, just that she couldn’t stand not knowing any longer.
Grandma Loretta beckoned Jolene to come farther into the room. She stood the girl before her and gripped her face between bony hands, turning it this way and that in the late afternoon sunshine filtering through the windows. “Hmph,” Grandma Loretta said after a bit. “I might be seeing something in you. Tell me what you see,” she said, indicating the rest of her room.
Jolene bit her lip and looked around, feeling awkward and a little scared. She didn’t see anything. Nothing stood out in the room: It had a wood floor black and painted and scraped like all the others; it felt cozy and warm like the tiny kitchen where they all got under each other’s feet and ate together; it was welcoming like the front porch where Mama and Papa sat in the evenings, talking to the neighbors. When Jolene turned to tell all this to Grandma Loretta, she noticed a golden charm hanging around her neck, one she’d never seen before.
Without asking, Jolene crawled into Grandma Loretta’s lap, kneeling up on the hard wood of the chair. Grandma’s white shirt felt slick under her palms. She tried to pick up the tiny golden key but it kept slipping through her fingers, so she just patted her grandma’s neck, where the collar was open. “This. This is something.” Grandma’s skin felt worn soft with age, and the scent of her lily of the valley perfume rose up around Jolene.
“Oh, darling,” Grandma Loretta said, wrapping her arms around Jolene and rocking them both back and forth. “My darling dear.” The straw-stuffed cushion made a crinkling noise as they shifted back and forth, the only sound in the heavy afternoon air.
Jolene didn’t know what she’d said, but she knew it was important.
She also knew she’d made Grandma sad.
“Do I have the gift?” Jolene finally asked again.
“That you do. But y’all are gonna have to deal with the living, not the dead.”
* * *
Reverend Stevens was the next person Jolene met who wore a charm. He was a tall black man, gaunt and old, with rivers of wrinkles next to his eyes, his hair cropped short and all gray. He’d moved to New Orleans to be with his grandkids.
> Jolene saw the reverend’s charm when he stood outside greeting everyone coming in: It was shaped like a tiny keyboard. They learned during the service that Mr. John, their old choir director, was leaving, and Reverend Stevens was taking over. He played a beautiful introduction to the first hymn on the church’s organ: thrilling and solemn at the same time, music Jolene felt in her soul.
Reverend Stevens stood beside Reverend Jefferson outside, shaking hands and saying goodbye as people streamed out. More than one person told Reverend Stevens how wonderful his music was. Jolene waited while Grandma Loretta told him how happy she was that he’d come to the church, and then asked the question burning inside her. “Why are you a reverend? Why not just play music?”
Grandma Loretta tutted at her, but the reverend took Jolene’s small hand in both of his. “God called me first,” he said solemnly. “I’m happy doing both.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, child, asking the reverend that kind of question,” Grandma Loretta told Jolene, taking her hand and turning her aside as the reverends greeted the next person.
“He has a charm,” Jolene explained. “A tiny keyboard.”
Grandma Loretta was quiet for the first two blocks during their walk home. Then she called Jolene to her. They walked slowly behind the rest of the family so they could talk privately.
“Your gift must be to see the fate of the living,” Grandma Loretta told her. “But you shouldn’t tell the person what you see.”
Jolene nodded, trying to swallow over the lump she felt in her throat. “I’ll try,” she said. She couldn’t promise, though. The words had seemed to burst out of her. “So what does your key mean?” she asked.
“What did I just say about asking a person about their fate?” Grandma Loretta told her angrily.
“Please?” Jolene asked. She was really curious.
“Never you mind,” Grandma Loretta hushed her. “That’s my business with the ghosts.”
* * *
Jolene had just turned fifteen when she met Buddy, Roberta’s new boyfriend. He was as wide as the door to the house: If they had one of the shutters closed, he had to turn sideways to get in. A gold cap covered one of his front teeth and he wore a big gold necklace with a medallion that had his name scrolled across it. He had his hair done in tiny braids, front to back, all tied off.