Where the Veil Is Thin

by Alana Joli Abbott

  The storyteller’s eyes fell upon Rosamaría then, and the old woman smiled at the love and awe that shone like beacons from the little one’s face. Her own spirit fluttered in mute anticipation, for it knew the spell that bound it to this world was fading fast.

  In a hushed and raspy voice, she intoned the glamour: “Once upon a time…”

  The breeze stilled, and the children shivered at the familiar magic.

  “…the son of an exiled courtier found himself betrayed by the woman he loved. Heartbroken, the young man fled Spain and came to Mexico, where he acquired a huge tract of land and a marvelous mansion. He frequented balls and parties of the most magnificent aristocrats of that country, and many a girl’s hand was offered to him in marriage.

  “None of them, of course, could compare with the lady who had betrayed him. Their beauty was drab in his eyes; their conversation, insipid and trite. So the young man, despondent, took to wandering his vast property for days, unable to forget, unable to move on.

  “Finally, in the lushest, densest part of high hills that were shrouded in mist, the young man discovered a magnolia tree upon which a thousand golden butterflies flitted like divine sparks. The tree was impossibly beautiful, its bark smooth and flawless, its leaves broad and perfectly shaped, its flowers worthy to be woven into a garland for the gods. And in its gentle swaying, its nearly balletic response to the mountain wind, the wanderer seemed to perceive an awareness, a vegetable mind of amazing kindness.

  “The young man dropped to his knees and regarded the tree, unable to speak, overcome by emotions that he could not name. In all his travels a more suitable being to be his wife had never met his eye. He knelt there, unmoving, for days, his entire soul yearning, reaching, striving to shrive the bonds of mortality and touch the fey intelligence he sensed within those festooned limbs.

  “And as he lost touch with the world willingly, caring only for a single whisper from the object of his love, he sensed a sort of tearing in the air about him. Instinctively he poured every ounce of his love and awe into that gap, trembling to the root of his being with the effort. With a sound like the soughing of the wind in a million boughs, the tree was transformed into a breathing lady fair, with hair as white as magnolia flowers; deep, dark forest-green eyes; and lovely golden-brown limbs.

  “The young man took her into his arms, then, and they both understood their destinies lay intertwined forever.”

  Doña Florestela’s breath grew short as she stopped her tale, happily-ever-afters dancing in her great-grandchildren’s heads. But the effort of telling the tale had drained her of vitality, and the old woman slumped with enervated surrender. The grown-ups shooed the children softly aside, gently taking the matriarch by her arms and leading her back to the Big House, where they laid her in her bed for the very last time.

  Late that evening, she passed away without another word. The children wept when they learned she had gone, and their parents could find no comforting words to ease their loss. Florestela’s passing had left them equally bereft. Compared to her absence, the freeze of ‘25 and hurricane of ‘33, both of which had pushed the family close to an oblivion from which they were only now recovering, seemed paltry setbacks. Without their matriarch, the Monteverde clan’s very warp and woof seemed likely to unravel.

  But Rosamaría did not shed a tear. Something was rising in her, a joyous urgency. They were all of them family tales, she realized with a shivering gasp. The girl rushed out into the orchard, a huge glass bowl in her arms. Though the others wept and moaned and whimpered, the little one’s heart was thrumming with a jubilant song, an ancient melody that burst from her heart and was joined by the voices of leaf and trunk and root. The stars seemed to dance in time to its waltzing, sparkling tune as she skipped to the river’s edge, certain of what had to be done.

  Back in the Big House, the great-grandchildren had gathered round her silent form, memories blurring their sight as her stories echoed in their souls. Suddenly a sweet forest scent compelled them all to turn their heads to see a smiling girl with white magnolias in a bowl. Ignoring grown-ups’ cries, Rosamaría rushed to the bed and with a laugh showered petals on the storyteller’s eyes.

  With a wondrous sound like the coming of spring, the woman burst into a swarm of golden butterflies.

  They lifted in a cloud to the high ceiling, and then streamed merrily down at Rosamaría, enveloping her as she laughed and laughed. Soon the startled adults and weeping children began to laugh as well.

  The butterflies swirled about Rosamaría for a time, singing for only her. And their song burrowed deep. And when they finally drifted into the night, the storyteller’s gift had settled within the girl to wait in soft, quiescent sleep.

  Till the following year, on the anniversary of the Miracle, when her cousins gathered round the magnolia tree, as if to hear the storyteller weave once more her tale.

  They all stared as Rosamaría walked to the rocking chair and settled in it with a smile. She paused for a moment, readying the spell, plucking softly at the weft that bound the tales together, bound their souls together. Then she closed her eyes and whispered:

  “Would you like to hear a story?”

  — SUMMER SKIN —

  by Zin E. Rocklyn

  I saw her on the D train and she looked like an auntie so I sat down next to her and started asking her questions, but she moved away.

  You see, I’ve got this thing with my skin and it’s been so long since I’ve been around family. I miss my family.

  We had all these remedies, all these bush baths and teas and draws that would cure you or make you shit or both and either way, I’d never felt so loved in my life.

  But this thing with my skin…

  It molts.

  But before that, it bubbles, inflames kind of. It doesn’t itch, but it’s rough, like the surface of a dried out clementine. It becomes extra sensitive, as if my nerves are sliced open and breathing, cresting the surface of my dermis and flirting with the air.

  It hurts.

  It wasn’t always so bad, but it seems like I’ve always had it.

  Started as a tiny, bumpy patch on the back of my knee when I was four. I’d fallen in the front yard and my mom swooped down and carried me into the house while I screamed myself breathless. Nothing was wrong with me; no broken bones, no deep cuts, just a little scrape on the hand that prevented my forehead from smacking into the pavement.

  And that little patch.

  My mom noticed when she bathed me that night in the normal concoctions that I’d hissed the moment I touched the hot water. The temperature didn’t bother me, it never bothered me, but my skin, it stung. It felt like it was being peeled away from me, from my body, and I hissed, then screamed and mom smacked my mouth, shutting me up, so she could turn me over.

  She cut it off, that patch of skin. Right there, in the bath.

  She took the small paring knife to it and slipped the layer right off, so quick, her wrist, that I barely felt it.

  The odd thing? There was no blood.

  There never is. There’s this viscous clear liquid instead. Plasma, it’s called, I think. I know I’m not supposed to, but I pick at it. I can’t help it. When I’m not staring, I’m picking. It’s fascinating. And repulsive.

  And it’s me.

  She gets up, but we’re between stops so there’s nowhere to go. The train is packed and the route all fucked up because there’s forever construction so there’s a lot of white people asking questions to the kindest, yet brownest people they can make eye contact with.

  People tell me I have a nice smile, but it doesn’t outshine my skin. Still, it would be nice to be asked. Not just about the trains, about anything, really. It would be nice to be noticed.

  She’s stuck in the midst of a Swedish family, all blond and milky, and the father looks like he wants to ask her where the fuck we’re going, but she’s got that look on her face, the look that says “leave me the fuck alone.”

  I stare at her until sh
e worms her way through the bodies towards the middle of the car. I stand, just to keep an eye on her, and a young pregnant woman slides into the empty seat, next to the one that her man had taken when my auntie had gotten up.

  Don’t think me presumptuous; I know she’s pregnant, I can smell it. It’s strong, like a pretty perfume amped by sweat. Her and her man, they smell alike, but he’s not hers. Not really.

  Anyway, my auntie, she’s made it to the doors on the other side, so when we pull into West 4th she doesn’t have time to look up and see me step off with her.

  She’s following most of the rerouted crowd for the F train and I’m following her. I’m kind of short and with the exception of my skin, I blend into the other black and brown faces, though we seem fewer and fewer these days at stops like this. No one notices my skin while rushing to another train or place or meeting, there’s never enough time, so I always find a little peace in the frantic rush. Stopping makes me nervous.

  It’s hot, but the F is running on a higher line so we get some breeze. Still too hot for my jacket, though.

  The sweat stings like hell.

  I hide by the Swedish family until the little girl notices and starts staring and the mother, the smooth cream that is her face tinges with a delightful smack of strawberry jam, and she says something in her native tongue because she’s so nervous she forgets the perfect English with which she’d asked questions and it sounds somewhat apologetic, so I smile at her and nod, accepting her daughter’s rudeness. It’s not the smile I get compliments on, it’s the kind that’s tight, kind of mean, expected of a Black girl with an attitude problem.

  I look down and see that I’ve begun oozing.

  Before I can start to blot, the train arrives.

  Me and Auntie step on through separate doors.

  Summer was the catalyst.

  Once the humidity set in, there was no controlling it. My skin would explode, hives turning into sores on top of blisters until every piece of clothing hurt.

  Before the buds of my breasts came in, my mother used to let me run around the house naked. Those were the summers mom would dress me in a smock on weekends and I’d lay down in the back seat of daddy’s car under a blanket until we pulled up in front of my aunties’ house in Canarsie.

  Usually at night. Always at night.

  I had seven aunties. They all lived together. No uncles. Mom’s family didn’t have any men until my dad. I supposedly had a brother, a twin, but he died before we were born. I had cousins, but I haven’t seen them since I started to bleed. I overheard my aunties and mom talking about sending them “home” the morning I woke up with a pain my belly and the sheets stuck to my bum when I was fourteen.

  They’d given me a special bath that day, a blue one, one that didn’t sting. They told me it was nothing to be ashamed of, that I was a woman now.

  And there’d be changes.

  I hardly felt any of them, these changes. Except my belly hurt a lot of the time and I was hungry. Constantly hungry.

  But my aunties kept me well-fed. With my cousins gone, I could eat their plates, plus some. So my mom left me there that summer.

  I never saw my mom or my dad again.

  There’s more room on the fake F train so hiding is a bit difficult, but my auntie doesn’t notice me anyway. I can’t lie; it hurts a little, but it won’t matter soon enough.

  The F follows the E until we get to Jay Street/Metrotech. There’s a mass exodus as the connections and corrections are mumbled through the PA, but it doesn’t include my auntie so I drift further down the car and sit next to the homeless man everyone is avoiding.

  He stinks, but I don’t mind. I have this thing where I can filter smells if I want to. It’s useful when traversing the tunnels.

  My auntie pulls out a book and my heart leaps with joy. I love books, always have. I love reading. My dad taught me when I was really young. I was the smartest kid in pre-K, so they say. I skipped a few grades, but then my condition spread and kids are mean and I started having this temper problem…

  The F is skipping a lot of stops, but Auntie doesn’t seem to mind. She’s casually paying attention as we roll past the elevated stations and I try to keep an eye on her and where we are. I know these boroughs fairly well, well enough to get back to where I need to be, but I don’t like feeling unmoored either.

  As we pull away from Neptune Avenue, she puts her book away—some crime novel, dog-eared and shitty—and stares out the plexiglass windows.

  She has beautiful, clear skin…

  Winter is the kindest to me. At that point, my skin is no longer oozing or blistering. Instead it becomes hardened, dry, flaky. Feels like a callus in some spots, horny bedsores in others.

  But the relief is palpable.

  It’s then I try to take oat baths, like my aunts taught me. It helps keep the new skin underneath healed so when my summer skin slips, it’s just a matter of peeling it away. Sometimes I get too eager and make new scars but—

  Oh, yeah, there are scars.

  They’re not so bad. It’s better than the condition.

  Anyway, Spring and Fall are my transitions, from relief to pain, pain to relief. But I’ve learned to live with it. There’s no cure so there’s no point to yearn for one.

  But there is a way to find respite, if only for a season.

  We get off at West 8th street and this butterfly lets loose in my belly because we’re close to the boardwalk and the aquarium and I haven’t been there in years. My dad used to take me—never mind. I keep lamenting the past when my present is gaining distance.

  So Auntie, she’s not going to the aquarium or the boardwalk. She lives here, in the Luna Park Projects. She’s in the building right on West 8th, closest to that concrete park. There’s a lot of people outside, but none pay much attention to either one of us. The security door is broken so walking in a moment or two behind her is no big deal. The elevators are working and she steps on but no one else does so I put on my jacket and lift the light hood and step on and stick myself in the far corner away from her.

  She doesn’t seem to notice me or at the very least recognize me. I’m short and plump and I look like everyone else when my jacket is on so she has no reason to. She gets off on the 15th floor and I wait a few seconds before following her out. Her apartment is closer than I think and she’s almost got the door closed before I realize which one it is.

  I take a breath, raise a fist. Knock.

  I hear her suck her teeth—steups is what we call it—I hear her steups as she approaches the door, but then she opens it and I try on one of those smiles for size, the good smile, the smile that people like so much, but it doesn’t relax her.

  It does the opposite.

  Her eyebrows knit hard and she’s looking me up and down like she’s trying to figure me out and she sees my hands, my stupid fucking hands give me away because they’re bubbling up really bad and they’re oozing, too, so there’s no hiding it and my auntie, she sucks in a breath, a tiny little panicked breath and moves to close the door, but I stop it with my foot and everything goes black.

  My aunties taught me everything I know.

  I thought they knew everything.

  But they couldn’t control me.

  Turns out I had plenty to be ashamed of once I started to bleed. And my aunties, they tried. When the past failed them, they tried to learn me, but it was too late.

  Turns out they knew nothing at all.

  I come to in her small living room on a cracked leather couch set.

  Auntie’s laying on the love seat while I’m in the arm chair. She’s got a shiner that’s swelling before my eyes and her beautiful square jaw line is lumpy. Blood fights melanin as both discolour the surface.

  Her skin is still beautiful.

  Not a mark on it. No scarring, no acne.

  She’s got a high forehead like my first auntie, the oldest, but she favours the youngest the most, the last auntie, the one after my mom. Same burnt umber skin, same beady black eyes,
same pillowy lips. Even the slight arch in her thin, short eyebrows mocks the memory of my prettiest auntie. The nose is different though; hers is thinner, straighter, almost violent in its slope. I don’t like her nose.

  But I like everything else about her face and her skin so I sit up and smile at her until her eyelids flutter open and those beady eyes are staring back at me.

  I smile harder. Show all my teeth.

  Of all the other things my body has failed me with, my teeth remain pretty and white and big. Not sure why. Genetics, I suppose.

  Auntie sits up and by the look on her face, perhaps a little too fast. She touches her eye, then her jaw, then whimpers, tears brimming those bug eyes.

  “You okay?” I ask. My voice is rough, croaky. Before today on the train, it’d been a long time since I’d spoken.

  No need to when you’re ignored.

  I clear my throat. “Are you okay, Auntie?” Old habits kick in, remembering the licks received for addressing elders as if they were friends. The question is intrusive enough to catch a hard side-eye, but this is a new auntie. She wouldn’t do that.

  She blinks at me, five tears running down the slopes of her face, then says, “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Good! You have any squash?”

  Squash is my favourite. My dad made it best, but I’ve learned to live with substitutes.

  She frowns for a moment. “Y-yes. Yes, I do.”

  I knew it! I knew she was an auntie! There’s no accent but I know my aunties anywhere!

  “May I have a glass, please?” I ask patiently, though my excitement for the sweet, tangy drink is making my heart pound.

  Auntie stares at me for a long time, then nods slowly. She stands with some trouble, then shuffles her way towards the tiny kitchenette. I watch her giddily, practically climbing over the top of the chair to keep an eye on her movements. She pauses by the sink and pats her pockets, then looks around patiently. There’s a cell phone charger but its empty. Right next to it, she finds what she’s looking for, smashed to pieces.