by Ka Newborrn
Full speed resumed and the trees crumbled to ash and scattered away. She gripped the burnt neck of the viola, wild eyes glued upon the fast approaching, white hot spectacle of light. Calves tensed, biceps curled and the sky cleaved into folds, revealing unseen lengths as she soared through the heart of the center.
Cascading waterfalls and bluebell voices marked the sides of the most startling structure that she had ever imagined. Cast completely from ice, it coiled upwards beyond her range of vision. Spires clustered with glass marbles marked the leaded tower windows.
An obelisk marked the entrance, surrounded on all sides by a moat. Ester stood agape, clutching at the tattered rags where her beautiful dress had once been.
The drawbridge lowered slowly. She dropped the viola at her feet and proceeded. Hot tears falling with terror and the realization that he had gone too far, Bela clung desperately to the remnants of the flat note and slid backwards through the cracks of the chasm.
Enchantment clasped Ester’s hand and escorted her through a mirrored gallery to a tower parlor heaped with spools of thread, multicolored beads and a spinning wheel. Ester sat before the wheel and spun with determined persistence until her fingers were stiff and blistered and a handsomely beaded gown lay finished in her lap.
Peeling off the rags and slipping on the gown, she discovered a staircase in the corner. At the top was a room with a panorama of floor length windows and a lavishly set table heaped with fish, olives, figs, cheese, and gold and garnet wines.
She wiped her mouth with a crisp linen napkin and saw that the staircase continued. At the top was an exquisitely furnished parlor covered from floor to infinity with hardbound books.
Ester nestled herself against a downy pile of feather pillows and touched the surface of the gold leafed vellum binding, breathing in the subtle leather fragrance.
Patterns of light fused the edge of the pages and illuminated the passages, showing her the light inside darkness. The laughter inside bitterness. The beauty inside hideousness. The love inside hatred.
She closed her eyes and allowed the vision to comfort her. When she opened her eyes, the furnishings had melted away, leaving behind a clear perspective and a lumbering blanket of knowledge that wrapped its warmth around her.
✽✽✽
Bela opened his eyes to the dilapidated apartment atop the defunct dry cleaners at 13th Street, sat upright in bed and watched as his vision trailed forty-five degrees behind his body. The ceiling was in front of his face, the bathroom door was below his feet, and the floor, still wavering with the pulse of his altered reality, had somehow shifted behind his upright head.
Cold sweat rolled down his temples and pooled in the folds of his ears. When the nausea came, he stood up quickly and inched across the ceiling for support, tentatively stepping through the open bathroom door in the center of the floor.
The toilet jutted out like a panhandle in the wall in front of him as stood on top of the window panes. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his tattered smoking jacket and coughed as layers of soot dredged up from the surface and wafted into the air. He crawled back inside the bed laying flush to the front wall and curled up in fetal position until everything shifted back to its rightful place.
The diverse perfumes of South Philadelphia seasoned the air with the lot of their myriad spices as he walked outside and passed the pretzel and hot dog vending trucks. He screwed his eyes shut, pulled his scarf over his nose and tried in vain to ignore his sour stomach.
He headed north on Broad Street past the pumpkin vendors outside of Green’s Market and the carriage drivers heading into Olde City. He passed a homeless man rocking back and forth on top of the steam grates at Lombard Street. Transgender prostitutes whistled at him as he continued on to Locust Street and arrived back at the Academy of Music.
A mouse scampered by as he gazed up at the imposing brownstone façade. He pulled the door handles, but they were locked. He turned up his collar and placed his hand into his pocket, feeling the cold, glass surface of his pocket watch. He pulled it out and ran a finger over the crack that cleaved the crystal into halves, hands stuck at midnight.
Sinking down onto the urine scented steps, he stared into the cold, soulless recesses where the gaslights once glowed and tried to figure out what had happened. He wondered if she made it back out and if she would ever come out again.
✽✽✽
“I need to see some ID,” the bartender at the North Philadelphia tavern said as Bela laid down his scarf and gloves and removed his overcoat. She scratched her scaly elbows and belched quietly. Bela slapped his driver’s license onto the bar and hunkered down onto a stool.
The bartender picked up the license, extended her right arm and widened her eyes to make out the birthdate. Satisfied, she slapped a napkin down in front of Bela. “What’ll it be?” she asked with a twinge of impatience.
“A Yuengling Black & Tan, please.” Bela smiled like an annoying gnat. He paused as the bartender scratched her red, greasy ponytail and turned her back to retrieve a glass from the wall.
“History in the making,” Bela baited hopefully.
She filled the glass from the draft and placed it in front of Bela. “Huh?” she grunted.
“What do you think is the beer capital of the United States?” Bela continued, bolstered by the nibble.
“I don’t know, Milwaukee?” the bartender said. Her eyes settled on a group of new customers walking through the door. Bela exhaled incredulously.
“Pottsville, Pennsylvania,” he spat. “The Yuengling Brewery of Pottsville, Pennsylvania is the oldest brewery in the United States!” He shook his head. “And you didn’t know that! You call yourself a Pennsylvanian?”
The bartender ignored Bela, scratched at the elastic waistband of her pants and slapped napkins down in front of the new customers.
✽✽✽
He stroked the wool of his scarf and watched the snow falling from the view of the open doorway. A group of middle school girls waited for the bus across the street. They screeched and hollered as they scooped their mittened hands into the accumulating drifts and threw snowballs at each other, being careful to avoid their smoothly straightened, freshly oiled braids out of respect for each other.
He fixated on a serene one in a red dress coat. Three braids fastened with white barrettes poked out from beneath her matching acrylic hat. He stood up from the barstool and walked out the door.
Lurking at the edge of the bus stop, he fished in his pockets for a dollar bill before approaching the group. “Pick a number between one and one hundred!” he called out cheerfully, holding the bill above his head with both hands.
“Five! Sixteen! Forty-three!” the girls screamed gaily, rubbing their runny noses with their mittens and jumping up and down with excitement. A tall, spindly girl with a gapped overbite jumped up and nearly grasped the bill from Bela’s fingers. A shorter, cornrowed girl with wide hips and stout legs punched her in the stomach. The tall girl drew back, whimpering.
“Sixty-six?” the serene one inquired, pausing briefly to wipe her nose. She sniffed and listened while the other girls continued to guess.
“Seventy-two! Ninety-four! A hundred and twelve!” the girls shrieked, whooping with laughter.
“That ain’t no number between one and a hundred, you dumb ass,” the cornrowed girl snorted.
He approached the serene one carefully. “What’s your name?” he asked, smiling casually. “Hazel,” she responded. Her voice was barely audible over the shrieking of her friends.
Bela traced the bill across her eyes, around her head and down the bridge of her nose before dropping it firmly into the palm of her mittened hand.
✽✽✽
“What were you guys playing just now?” Bela asked her when he visited the bus stop the following week.
"Cleopatra Jones," she said, fingering the champagne pearl that he had given her.
“Oh?” He clasped his fingers. “How do you play that?”
�
�We wear capes and drive to crime scenes in a silver Corvette and have phones in our cars and mow the bad guys down with karate chops and laser guns. Then when they’re dead we dress up in flower jeans and go to the skating rink,” she explained politely.
“Fascinating. Who are the bad guys, the principal? The landlord?”
Hazel shrugged her shoulders and continued to look at the pearl.
“Which skating rink do you go to?” he pressed.
“It’s pretend.” She glanced distractedly at her boots.
“Do you wear your uniform skirt when you play?” he inquired.
“Mostly jeans,” she said, playing with the pearl.
Bela glanced at the three braids poking out from beneath her red acrylic hat. “What does your hair look unbraided?”
Hazel was bored. “I dunno."
Bela pulled out his cracked pocket watch, looked at it briefly and thrust it back into his overcoat. “Maybe you can wear it down sometime so I can see it,” he said, tightening his scarf around his neck.
Taken off guard, Hazel looked up from the pearl, pulled her red hat down over her ears and clutched the neck of her dress coat defensively. The bus clattered in the distance and snaked its way up the street.
“Definitely,” Bela grinned, rising to his feet. He fingered one of her plastic yellow barrettes and took a few steps backward before he turned around, covered his nose with his scarf and continued on foot down the street, growing smaller and smaller in the late-day sun.
✽✽✽
“You sure do look nice today,” he gurgled the following afternoon, taking a seat next to the girl as she waited for the bus. She winced and dangled her raffia bookbag between her knees.
He put his hands in his pockets and smiled. “Hazel. Do you know who your namesake is?”
“My what?”
“Your namesake,” he repeated, a bit louder and slower. “Don’t you know what a namesake is?”
“No.”
Bela feigned exasperation. “A namesake,” he continued with bloated authority, “is the name of the historically important figure or family member you were named for. “Are there any other Hazels in your family?”
“No.”
“Yes! Just as I suspected! Your namesake,” he announced triumphantly, “is Hazel Scott.”
Visibly unimpressed, Hazel stared at the tip of her shoe while Bela reeled in the catch. “Do you know who Hazel Scott was?”
“No.” Unfazed, Hazel shifted her weight against the bench, reached into the bookbag and took out a textbook.
Bela’s eyes blazed. “She was only one of the most prolific black actresses and musicians of the McCarthy Era. She was blacklisted by Hollywood for her political beliefs. Silly nilly, you must be sleeping during history class.” He wrapped his knuckles against his forehead and sighed audibly.
Hazel saw that Bela was misguided about the origin of her name and looked up from her textbook to set the matter straight. “My Gramma named me Hazel because she liked that TV show about the maid.”
Bela scoffed. “Unbelievable,” he puffed dismissively. “Your Gramma named you after a fictitious, white Hollywood old maid whose historical significance is next to nothing and trivial at best.”
The insult rolled off Hazel like an ocean wave. Bela’s smile disappeared as she stood up and scowled in his face. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, striding hurriedly towards the bus. “Your Momma named you after Dracula.”
“You know I was just teasing the other day about your name, right?" He dug his hands into a bag of Fritos and urged it towards her.
Hazel ignored the bag and continued to stare at the perfect blue diamond he had given her, holding it up to the sunlight.
“Let’s go to the Animation Film Festival today,” he said. “I sure do owe you one.”
“I don’t think so,” Hazel replied. “I’d have to ask my Gramma first, and she’s not home,” She rotated the gemstone in her fingers and stared at the prisms it cast over the snow.
“Where is she?” Bela asked.
“Work.” She scratched her scalp.
“Oh? Where’s that?” he asked, curiosity piqued.
“Hospital.” She stretched out her legs and watched as the prisms extended to her socks.
“Well, what time does she come home?” he pressed.
“Nine thirty.” She polished the diamond with the hem of her red dress coat, and held it out again towards the sun.
“Who watches you until nine thirty?” Bela held his breath.
“I take care of myself.”
He paused. “Of course you do,” he crowed, “an able-bodied, competent, intelligent girl like yourself. What do you do for dinner?”
Hazel sniffed. “She leaves it in the freezer. I put it in the microwave.”
“Let’s go out to eat instead. Do you like Moroccan food?”
“Like I said,” Hazel repeated, “I’d have to ask my Gramma first and she’d say no, unless it was a field trip with the church or something.”
“It’s settled, then. You go home and I’ll bring the Moroccan food to you, then maybe we could play Cleopatra Jones at your house until eight forty-five or so.”
Realization clasped a fist around the pit of Hazel’s stomach.
Bela placed his hands in his pockets and stared at her braids. “You know, like you were telling me before. The principal, the landlord?”
She did not take her eyes off of Bela as she felt around for the leather straps of the raffia bookbag that dangled under the bench. “You want to play Cleopatra Jones at my house?”
“So it’s a date?” He waited, baring his grey teeth.
“So you can be one of the bad guys, right?” she added carefully, maintaining her steady gaze.
“If that’s what you want me to be,” Bela advanced, long fingers reaching towards her neck.
Hazel ran.
“Wait!” Bela leapt to his feet, “What about the bus? You forgot your…fuck!” he screamed as she hurled the diamond at his face and took off sprinting down Broad Street. It grazed his forehead as he reached out to catch. He watched in horror as it fumbled through his fingers, rolled into the street, and bounced off of the curb and into the gutter. He fell to his hands and knees and crouched down in the street, pressing an eye against the grate.
The horn of the oncoming bus blared menacingly and the driver yelled expletives. Bela scrambled to his feet to jump out of the way, brushing dirt from his overcoat in humiliation. Several yards ahead a wild-eyed Hazel was approaching the bus slowly, her right hand clasped tightly in the palm of a humorless looking police officer and her left with index finger pointed directly at Bela.
He squinted in the afternoon sun and tried to figure out what happened. Casting a final glance towards the gutter, he turned on his heels, jumped out of the line of traffic, and ran.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
1991
Calvin
He glared at his mother as she struggled to unload multiple SuperFresh grocery bags onto the kitchen island with one arm and push her falling sunglasses back on top of her head with the other.
"You promised to stop at Essene when you went into the city today!”
“I was running late, Cal. I wanted to beat traffic so I stopped up the road instead."
“But you promised!” he whined.
She grabbed a plastic gallon of milk and put it in the refrigerator. “I’ll go later this week.”
He rooted through the bags she had already deposited onto the kitchen table and pulled out a box of tea bags. “That’s Lipton,” he sniffed disdainfully.
“You told me to get tea.”
“I told you to get white tea.”
“What’s wrong with Lipton?”
“Lipton tea is fermented. White tea has more antioxidants because it’s closer to its natural state. I need my antioxidants!”
Jana placed a twelve pack of Diet Coke into the refrigerator. “There’s a bottle of Centrum vitamins in the medicine chest,” she
offered. “They have antioxidants.”
Calvin pushed the voices into the back of his head and spoke loudly through the din of their persistence. "Those are synthetic. I need biologically-active, food-state vitamins cultivated from organic yeast.”
Jana folded up the grocery bags and placed them in a drawer next to the kitchen sink. “I don’t know what you’ve done with my son," she joked, “but when you see him next, could you ask him to please take out the garbage?” She reached into her pocket for a cigarette, lit it and left the room.
After giving him an earful about the hypocrisy of former doctors who smoked cigarettes and took synthetic vitamins, they ordered him to cleanse himself immediately. So he ran upstairs to his room immediately and carefully dipped the soles of his shoes into a diluted bleach bath that he kept outside the door.
He stood at his stereo and placed the stylus at the edge of a record. Brian Eno’s Sky Saw billowed through the small attic bedroom. In the adjoining bathroom, he sprinkled rosemary and fir essential oils into the tub, turned the hot showerhead to full blast and closed the door. Steam filled the air as he sat on the edge of the tub and scrubbed his skin fastidiously with Jana’s hairbrush. When it was quite raw, he set the brush aside and alternately pinched his nostrils with his thumb and pinky finger while breathing in counts of twenty. Then he wrapped himself in a towel and laid down on his bed to listen to the music.
Thorns rooted at the needle of the record player and sprouted vines in his impressionable mind. They disappeared temporarily behind the rosemary fir mist and reappeared around his wrists and ankles. They bored into his ear and down the side of his neck. He bucked his head, but it jerked back down against the stronghold. He whimpered.
The scratchiness gave way to cold silk handkerchiefs that slid down from his torso until only a sensation of flesh remained. It breathed in as he breathed out, supported his back with unseen fingertips and eased him into an upright position.