Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

  “Puke.” Fancy watched Ilan play touch football, watched him run down the other boys on his dangerously quick legs. “He asked about me?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You never seemed interested in boys.”

  “I’m not.”

  Madda nodded wisely. “That’s what I told him. I guess he listened. Otherwise he’d’ve been trying to talk to you all last year.”

  Kit, who had been listening to this exchange with some interest, sang, “Fancy’s got a boyfriend!”

  “Shut up, you.” Fancy elbowed her sister, her face burning and not because of the sun.

  “Fancy and Ilan sitting in a—”

  “Shut it.”

  “Both of you shut it,” said Madda, “and eat.”

  “Madda,” Kit said after some time, “will our wishes really come true?”

  “Yes,” said Madda with zero enthusiasm. It was as though Kit had asked whether the sun would set that night. “Wishes aren’t everything, you know,” she continued. “The worst thing you can do is rest all your hopes on a wish. A granted wish doesn’t equal a perfect life. My great-aunt Mary once wished for a child. She had been trying and trying, but she just couldn’t get pregnant. No one knew why. So she came here and asked Cherry, and the next month Mary was pregnant. But when she gave birth, the baby was dead.

  “Mary cried and cried about it. She wouldn’t stop crying. And one day, while she was cursing Cherry for giving her a baby just to have it die on her, Mary’s tears turned to cherries. They rolled down her face and onto the floor, a flood of them, and spelled out the words ‘You asked for this.’”

  Madda regarded her daughters, who were listening silently. “It’s okay to wish for things, but wishes are fragile, and the world we live in is very hard.”

  After they finished eating, Madda shooed her daughters away from the safety of their picnic table. “Y’all go on and mingle.”

  “With these losers?”

  “Don’t start with me today, Christianne. You can either come table-hopping with me, or you can mingle by yourselves. Choose.”

  “By ourselves,” said the sisters in unison.

  Madda smiled at them. “Good choice.”

  The sisters wandered away, hand in hand. They stayed in the shadow of the forest circling the glade until they found an empty picnic table out of Madda’s sight.

  Fancy kept Kit entertained with the bubble solution she’d brought along in her pocket. Projected in the clear, fragile bubbles she blew were images of genteel Madda body-slamming all the mean, unyielding women not worth the polish on her little toe. When the stereo began to play “Kung Fu Fighting,” Madda stopped body-slamming the women and began to drop-kick them instead. The sisters found this hilarious.

  “What’re y’all laughing at?”

  The bubbles burst. A line of kids stood before their table, eyeing the sisters.

  The tall, no-neck boy who’d spoken stepped forward. “If my daddy was a murderer, I wouldn’t sit around laughing all day.”

  “Maybe they’re too ignorant to know any better.” This from a girl as dark and treacherous as black ice. “We’re taking up a collection for y’all, you know.”

  “For what?” said Kit breezily, even though her hands had clenched into fists.

  “So y’all can go to the hospital and get neutered. The last thing the world needs is the two of y’all breeding more murderers.”

  Fancy said such things to Kit all the time, but hearing it from a stranger made her want to run out and have a baby right now. How dare they tell her she shouldn’t have babies?

  “First of all,” said Kit slowly, taking time to look everyone in the eye, “girls get spayed, not neutered. And second of all, the last thing the world needs is y’all breeding more victims.”

  “I’m a victim?” said the boy. He leaned over the table and got in Kit’s face. The whites of his eyes were as yellow and sour as the pit stains on his shirt. “You think you can take me? You got your daddy’s blood in you?” When he opened his mouth again, Kit reached across the table and grabbed his tongue between her fingernails and yanked on it.

  His head slammed to the table, allowing Kit to brace her other hand on his face while she pulled and pulled. “Quite a lot of his blood, actually,” said Kit as the other kids backed away. “The curiosity I get from my mother, though. You know what I’m curious about?” she asked the squealing boy in her grip. “I’m curious about how hard I’d have to pull to rip your tongue out of your fucking face.”

  Fancy slapped at Kit’s hands, but Kit shrugged her off. “Lemme alone. It’s playtime.”

  Gabriel approached the table. He was as fresh and cool as if he’d stepped down off a cloud. He certainly didn’t have pit stains. He reminded Fancy of the statues she’d seen in the happy place, golden and perfect. If she chopped his head off, he’d fit right in. Oh, if only, Fancy thought as he moved in on her sister, her hands itching for an ax.

  “What game is this?” he asked lightly, as if he watched girls rip out people’s tongues every day.

  Kit said, “This is called watch-a-young-punk-get-his-ass-kicked.”

  “Ripping out a guy’s tongue doesn’t count as an ass-kicking.”

  “No?” Not that Kit had managed the ripping part yet; she couldn’t seem to get a good enough grip.

  “Maybe try,” Gabriel began. “I don’t know, actually kicking him in the ass?”

  Kit thought about it; the boy squealing around her grip on his tongue didn’t seem to affect her concentration one bit. Finally she climbed over the table, pulling the boy by the tongue to his feet. Then she spun him around and kicked his ass. The guy hit the ground, and his friends immediately circled him, protecting him. Kit faced them with her hands on her hips, smiling her poison-red smile. “Now what?”

  “Now,” Gabriel answered, “you let him live with the shame of getting beat up by a girl.”

  “I can’t believe you’re taking their side,” yelled the black-ice girl.

  Gabriel looked at the crowd of kids and said calmly, “Y’all don’t have any reason to be mad at them. They didn’t do anything.”

  The black-ice girl pointed at Kit. “She pulled Robert’s tongue out!”

  “Tried to,” Gabriel reminded her, and then addressed the group. “But even if she had pulled it out, if you step on a rattlesnake and get bit, whose fault is that? Do I really need to tell you what it says in the Bible about loving your neighbors? Like it or not, the Cordelles are our neighbors, and if I can forgive and forget, that’s the very least y’all can do.”

  The crowd slunk off, chastened, carrying their shamed friend with them.

  “See?” Gabriel smiled at Kit. “You win, and no one gets dismembered.” He pulled out a wet wipe and cleaned her bloody hand.

  “So . . . you don’t like dismembering?”

  “No.”

  “Evisceration?”

  “Not so much.” He laughed like he thought she was joking. “I’m a dull sorta guy.”

  “Yeah, kinda.” She didn’t seem alarmed that he had yet to let go of her hand, even though it was now spotlessly clean. “But that’s okay.”

  Someone rang a bell. A tiny bell with a hellishly bright peal that caused everyone in the glade to wince simultaneously. Someone shouted, “It’s time!”

  Fancy yanked her sister from Gabriel’s sanctimonious clutches and dragged her back to their picnic table to get their pink bottles.

  The bottle ceremony began soon after, and the whole mood changed. The dead moontree became the center of attention as everyone gathered around it. Porterenes brought out brightly colored glass bottles containing slips of paper with wishes scribbled on them, and tied them by the neck to the naked branches of the tree. People stood on stepladders or rode piggyback on each other’s shoulders to reach the highest limbs, and soon every branch was full of bottles flashing in the sunlight. The kids under fifteen stood well away from the crowd at the tree, watchi
ng closely and eager for the day it would be their turn.

  When the last bottle was hung, the tree looked as though a rainbow had crashed into it and become entangled. People crowded together around the tree, even crowded around the Cordelles, marveling at the tree’s sparkling beauty. In that moment Fancy didn’t hate everybody. A calm clarity settled over the world and made it simple and lovely. The wasp buzzing past her face had a fairy shimmer; the sun didn’t burn but rather fed her skin. She hummed with energy—everyone did—and no one seemed hateful, but rather like big-eyed children, regardless of age.

  The only sound was of dragonflies buzzing low in the grass and the distant scream of a hawk in the woods. A soft breeze tickled the bottles and set them swaying. The wind hooted over the bottle necks, low and mournful like a voice.

  “Fancy . . .”

  The voice didn’t surprise Fancy. It was almost as though she had been expecting it. No one else seemed to hear it, though. Not Madda. Not even Kit. She touched her sister’s shoulder, but Kit seemed half asleep, staring at the tree with the same awestruck contemplation as everyone else. Everyone was so still, asleep with open eyes. It felt like one of her dreams, like Fancy had stepped out of time, like the rules had all changed. The sensation wasn’t jarring; Fancy had always felt at home in her dreams.

  “Fancy . . .”

  The crowd parted, gliding away from Fancy as if on rollers, until she stood alone, her pinafore fluttering in the warm breeze. Even Kit had left her side. A glittering pink path materialized at Fancy’s feet, stretching narrowly across the green glade and disappearing into the woods.

  “Come to me. . . .”

  Fancy stepped onto the path, which clicked under her Mary Janes, and left everyone behind. She had a distant thought of whether this was how people disappeared from the world: They followed the path that came to them just to see where it led. It wasn’t horrifying, but exciting. To be called. To be chosen.

  Fancy felt that inevitable tug as the dreamworld exerted its authority over her, entering the dark coolness of woods that didn’t feel like woods. She could have been anywhere or nowhere, alone in a way she’d never been before, perhaps on the edge of the universe, where even the stars were strange.

  The longer she walked, the darker and less defined things became, until the only clear thing was the glittering path. The more she walked, the more excited and sure she became that something singular and glorious awaited her.

  In the darkness the path widened to form a pink circle that twinkled as though mixed with starlight. In the center stood a barefoot woman wrapped togalike in silver cloth. Her hair was wrapped in silver as well. She gleamed like a fallen star made flesh. Otherworldly . . . but familiar. Fancy knew that nose and those cheekbones. The woman looked the way Madda had when she was younger and less factory worn.

  The woman held out her arms. “It’s been long since one of my own has seen me.”

  “Miz Cherry?” Fancy had to fight an insane urge to curtsy.

  Cherry shocked Fancy by taking her by the shoulders and kissing her cheek. Her touch was inhuman, cold and glassy like a porcelain doll, but after her initial flinch Fancy relaxed into her grandcestor’s embrace.

  “You found me,” said Cherry. “I wondered if you had the strength to seek me out.” She had a strange accent Fancy couldn’t place—the r’s and a’s were all wrong.

  “Ma’am,” Fancy began hesitantly, reluctant to contradict. “I didn’t seek you out. You called me.”

  “And you came. You didn’t have to.” Cherry released her. “No one else did.”

  Fancy scuffed her shoe on the path, feeling the burden of conversation.

  “Are you shy?”

  “I never do the talking.”

  “You should. People would listen.” She brushed the backs of her fingers against Fancy’s throat. Fancy felt a tingle, as though Cherry had soaked her fingers in menthol.

  “What is this place?”

  When Cherry smiled, she looked so much like Madda it was creepy. “What would you like it to be?”

  Fancy thought about it, and between one blink and the next she and Cherry were in the cellar.

  “I’m sorry.” Fancy chewed her finger, her words muffled and ashamed. “I don’t know why I chose here.”

  “Don’t you?” Cherry didn’t seem upset to find herself in the Bonesaw Killer’s lair. “You’re more in control here. Happier.”

  A moontree sprouted painlessly between Cherry and the cot, shooting up and then spreading quickly, like a beach umbrella. Unlike the moontree at Cherry Glade this one was alive. It had deep purple leaves and tight white buds like pursed mouths that would only open in the moonlight. Fancy was amazed that such a huge tree could fit in her small cellar, but somehow it did.

  “Now we’re both at home,” said Cherry, satisfied, descending gracefully to the floor. She patted the space beside her, and so Fancy sat next to her and marveled at the way Cherry glowed, even in the shade of the tree.

  “If you lie beneath a moontree, you’ll die in thirty days,” she added, quoting a well-known Porterene superstition. The moonflower buds hung quivering over Fancy’s head, like fat acid drops waiting to drip and burn her.

  “The reason people die in thirty days is cuz those flowers are poisonous.”

  Cherry reached up without looking and plucked one of the flower buds. “So are lies.” The plucked bud bloomed in Cherry’s hand, fragrant and intoxicating. And toxic. Cherry pressed the flower into Fancy’s hands.

  “I want to talk about what you wished for,” said Cherry. “And I want you to be honest.”

  “I want me and Kit and Madda to stay together. I don’t want anything to split us up.” The flower seemed to draw the words from her. “And I keep thinking, for that to happen me and Kit need to be able to get rid of people without getting caught. People like the old man.”

  “You already got rid of the old man. You won’t get caught.”

  “But it’s not just him. I’m thinking about the future, too. Kit and me, we are who we are. That won’t change. And then there’s Franken.”

  “You want to get rid of Franken?” Cherry said, disapprovingly. “You saved his life—that makes you responsible for him.”

  “I have been responsible. He’s still alive. So far. We decided to give him a lobotomy, but that might accidentally kill him. Or it might not work the way we need it to. I’d feel better if I had something more certain. Like a doorway to shove him through.”

  “If you want a door to open, all you need is a key.”

  “This?” She showed Cherry the silver Porterene key she always carried on her necklace.

  “That’s the wrong kind. For what you need you’ll have to go into the dark park.”

  “The dark park?” Fancy’s stomach dropped to her feet, and she wondered briefly if that was what evisceration felt like. “No way. I’m not going in the dark park.”

  “If you want to get rid of Franken without ‘getting rid’ of him, it’s the only way. I’ll help you as much as I’m able, because we’re kin. But if you want this, you’ll have to earn it.”

  Fancy remembered all the stories she’d heard about the dark park—hundreds of stories—about people who had entered it and were never seen again.

  “Maybe Kit and me should just be satisfied with a trip to the South Seas.”

  “You want to go to the South Seas. Not your sister.”

  “Kit likes what I like. And we like to do things together. She even made a wish for us to be together forever.”

  “Did she?” Cherry stood and crossed the room toward a kinetoscope exactly like the one in Fancy’s cellar. She knew it wasn’t her kinetoscope, though, because this one had the crank that hers was missing. Cherry waved Fancy over and cranked the kinetoscope, but instead of an image appearing on the screen, the image projected around them, so that Fancy felt like she was standing in the middle of a film. A film starring her sister, whose flickering, sepia image sat at their desk in the sleeping porch writi
ng “true love” in large red letters on a piece of paper. She even drew a heart around the words before putting the paper into her pink bottle.

  Fancy stood in shock as the image disappeared. Cherry had released the crank and simply watched her.

  “True love? She wasted a wish on true love?”

  “That’s what she wants.”

  “It is not! Besides, who’s there for her to fall in love with? Everybody in town hates us.”

  “They wouldn’t if you and Kit were less selfish. Gifts are meant to be shared.”

  “What gifts?”

  Cherry turned the crank again. The kinetoscope projected an image of Fancy and Kit giggling at the images in the bubbles of Madda fighting the mean women. The image vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived.

  “That’s no gift,” said Fancy. “Well . . . I guess having the sight is sort of a gift, but it’s mostly useless except for eavesdropping. Or make-believe.”

  “Because that’s all you use it for.” Cherry stroked the kinetoscope. “Finding the key will expand your ability.”

  “Which one? The sight or killing?”

  “Either one.”

  Fancy studied Cherry carefully, heart thumping. “You don’t mind? About us being killers?”

  “Why should I mind? I’m not your judge. I’m your kin—I only want you to be happy.”

  “Killing doesn’t make me—” Fancy rethought the wisdom of lying under the moontree. “Maybe it makes me a little happy. But Kit talked about having a hole inside her. I have it too.” Fancy hadn’t known that was true until she heard the words pouring out of her mouth. “And not even killing can really fill it.”

  “Maybe because you don’t use it to make others happy. A world of people could use your help.”

  “Helping people.” Fancy took out her bubble solution. “You sound like Kit.”

  “More than you do. Strange that two girls who swear they are the same person have so little in common.”

  “We are the same,” she said, filling the cellar with bubbles. “We share everything.”

  “Then why are you here without her?”

  Cherry extended her palm, and one of Fancy’s bubbles settled into it and expanded until it was so large, Fancy could no longer see Cherry behind it. Because Kit was inside it, wandering away from the bottle-filled moontree, stretching as if waking from a deep sleep. She looked around, confused, as if she’d lost something.