Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

  “Is it Daddy?” Fancy whispered.

  “Come on inside!” Madda yelled. “What’re y’all waiting on?”

  Kit wiped her face and hurried into the kitchen, the everything’s fine smile on her face sitting easily and naturally due to many years of practice. “Want me to set the table?”

  “You just sit over there and relax,” said Madda, setting Kit’s bag out of the way. “And tell us all about Huntsville.”

  “Oooh, sopaipillas!” exclaimed Kit, practically diving face-first into the basket.

  Fancy took one for herself, and the light, sweet smell took her back to the roof, to the meal she’d shared with Ilan—the meal and other things. Ilan hadn’t gone all the way with her on the roof, but he’d used his hands on her and taught her how to use her hands on him. He’d used that word “teach” as though his penis were an especially difficult trigonometry problem, like it would require years of lessons to master instead of . . . how long had he lasted . . . five minutes?

  But it had been a very educational five minutes.

  He could have gone all the way. After she’d rolled off him, she’d just lain on the rooftop spaghetti-legged and pleasure-dazed, so he could have done anything he’d wanted. Instead he’d rested his head on her breasts and made her laugh by singing the theme to Two and a Half Men in time with her heartbeat.

  “How was he?” Madda asked, startling Fancy, who thought she was talking to her.

  “I don’t know.”

  Fancy squeezed into Kit’s chair. “They didn’t let you see Daddy?”

  “We didn’t go to Huntsville. We went to Houston instead.”

  “Why?”

  “It felt wrong to go without Fancy.”

  Madda smirked. “You sure this wasn’t some elaborate scheme you cooked up just so you and Gabe could be alone all weekend?”

  “Me?” said Kit, oh so innocently. “Scheming?”

  “What exactly did you and Gabe get up to in Houston?”

  “Hardly anything, really.”

  Even Fancy had to laugh. Until she noticed Kit’s mask slip a little, enough to see the misery again. She squeezed Kit’s hand. It must have been hard for her to pass up a chance to see Daddy. For the first time Fancy felt bad for not going, felt as petty and childish as Ilan had accused her of being.

  “I’m so glad you girls are out there in the world getting involved,” Madda said. “At the beginning of the summer did you ever think you would be where you are now?”

  “No way.”

  “I’ve been very worried about y’all. But maybe I’m wrong to worry so much. You’re involved in the community. People talk about you in town. In a good way, for the most part.”

  “What do they say?” asked Kit.

  Madda grimaced. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you used to hate being around people, and now you’re driving across the state with a boy. And you”—she pinched Fancy’s cheek—“never even wanted a boyfriend, and I catch you and Ilan making out on the lawn.”

  Kit squealed. “What?”

  “I caught her red-handed with her hands down his pants.”

  “You did not,” Fancy told Madda sternly, with as much dignity as she was able. “It was just one hand.”

  * * *

  After dinner the sisters went into the inner room to get ready for their baths, the same as always, except that Kit wouldn’t undress in front of Fancy.

  “Why’re you acting so strange?” Fancy tossed her shorts and top on the bed. “All shy and unhappy?”

  Kit sighed and sat next to Fancy’s discarded clothes. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Madda, but me and Gabe broke up. I mean, he broke up with me after he did this.”

  She slowly removed her shirt. Fancy froze at the sight of her bruises. Her chest looked swollen and green, almost gangrenous.

  “He beat you?”

  “In his sleep. You know how he gets. Just . . . crazy. It was like he was trying to smash his fist through my heart. He kept saying that he wanted to live inside me. I said that to him once, that I wanted to crawl inside him. It’s like he was mocking me.”

  “I doubt it. He said the same thing to me in the shed. What a weirdo. How’d you get him to wake up?”

  “I kneed him in the balls.”

  “Good! Serves him right.”

  “He was so ashamed.” Fancy had never thought of misery as an active, ravenous thing, but it seemed to claw at her sister, to distort her so that she hardly seemed recognizable. “He said that he goes to church every day to pray about it, but it doesn’t work. He told me”—Kit’s breath caught as she tried and failed to choke back a flood of tears—“he said he can’t risk anything like that ever happening again. That he couldn’t stand hurting me again. He said we have to stay away from each other.”

  “You’re better off.” Fancy got toilet paper from the bathroom and brought it to Kit. “Don’t cry over him. He was just a—”

  “I know you hate him,” Kit interrupted, sad and defeated. “But I don’t need to hear that right now.”

  “You don’t have to hear it from me.” She thought of the moonfruit. “We can go to his house, and you can hear it straight from his own mouth how he—”

  “Fancy.” Gabriel’s cross shone in Kit’s palm. She turned it this way and that as though it were a tiny gadget she had no idea how to operate. “Will you do something for me? Will you come to church with me?”

  “Church?”

  “I wanna pray for him. God would listen to a prayer for Gabe.”

  “Why do I have to listen?”

  Kit let go of the cross and reached for her sister. “Because I don’t have anybody else.”

  Fancy sat next to Kit and embraced her, careful of her sore chest. “Told you so,” she whispered.

  The next day, inside St. Teresa Cathedral, Kit and Fancy stood before a long, ornate altar full of candles. Fancy held on to Kit’s hand, feeling small inside the icy, echoing space. Even the altar outsized the sisters, burying them in flickering candlelight.

  Kit studied several of the unlit candles, a frown puckering her brow. “Which one of these candles are we supposed to light? Does it matter what row they’re on or—”

  “You’re asking me?” Fancy snorted. “I can’t even remember the last time we went to church.”

  “Big Mama’s funeral. That was the last time.” She lit a candle next to a statue of Mary, the only statue either of the girls recognized.

  Kit lowered herself onto the kneeling bench to pray, and then froze, eyes wide, hands knotted together. “I don’t know any prayers.” She looked panicked. “The only one I can remember is ‘Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat.’”

  “This is stupid.” Fancy looked around and spotted a couple of Blue Sisters chatting near the confessionals. “See them? Go ask them to pray for you.”

  Kit stood and rubbed her knees—the padding on the kneeling bench had worn thin. “You think they will?”

  “Der. It’s their job. Go on.”

  Kit put a Sacagawea dollar in the donation box before she approached the sisters, who, though on the small side, managed to loom like holy skyscrapers in their grayish-blue habits. The oldest-looking sister smiled a bright Pollyanna smile, like she thought the world was awesome. “You girls look lost. Can we help you with something?”

  Fancy had to poke Kit in the side to get her to speak. “Do you know Gabriel Turner?”

  “Yes,” said Sister Pollyanna somberly. “But we haven’t seen him in a while.”

  Kit shook her head as though shaking water out of her ears. “Gabe hasn’t been coming to church?”

  “Not for weeks.”

  “But he said he—” Kit grabbed her cross. Fancy thought she was going to yank it off, but she didn’t. Just squeezed it so hard the veins in the back of her hand began to visibly throb.

  “I think he wants to come, dear,” said Sister Pollyanna gently. “I see him ghosting about on the steps most days, but he never comes inside. N
ot anymore. No matter what we say to him.”

  “He’s a liar. Or he’s crazy. Or both.” Kit swallowed hard. “Either way, I was hoping you’d pray for him. Maybe you can help him. I don’t think I can.”

  “Of course we’ll pray for him. If you should see him—”

  “I won’t. Come on, Fancy.”

  The sisters fled outside and, joke of all cosmic jokes, ran into Gabriel on the cathedral steps.

  Kit froze as Gabriel joined her on the landing. His hair was in braids again, no longer wild and curling this way and that, but there was something wild in his eyes as he faced Kit. Fancy moved closer, fully prepared to kick him down the stairs if he tried anything.

  He said, “What’re you doing here?”

  “You don’t own church,” Kit snapped. “I can come here if I want.”

  “Gabriel!” Sister Pollyanna stood in the doorway behind them, oblivious to the tension between him and Kit. “We were just talking about you. Come on inside!”

  “I can’t.” He looked at Kit. “I want to, but—”

  “But I’m here? You don’t wanna occupy the same space as me? Fine. It’s all yours.” She walked behind him and kicked his butt so hard that he stumbled forward past Sister Pollyanna into the cathedral.

  “It’s okay,” Kit told them as the nun gasped at the sight of Gabriel sprawled at her feet. “He’s the one who taught me the proper way to kick a—” Fancy pinched her arm. “Butt. The proper way to kick butt. Stop pinching me!”

  “Kit,” Fancy hissed. “Look at him.”

  Gabriel lay just past the threshold of the chapel doors, writhing and screaming. He kicked his legs against the floor, and one of his flailing hands touched one sister’s black-stocking-covered ankle. He snatched his hand away, hissing as if burned, and grabbed his head. The Blue Sisters came forward, their shin-length blue habits rustling as they dragged him into the building. Kit ran forward to help. Fancy was happy to have so many witnesses. Perhaps they could provide the testimony necessary to have Gabriel put away in a facility somewhere. He was obviously a basket case. Or sick. Or both.

  Sister Pollyanna examined Gabriel. “Is this what I think it is, Sister Judith?”

  Fancy noted the excited concern in the sisters’ eyes. “Only one way to be sure. I’ll fetch the holy water.”

  “Gabriel?” Sister Pollyanna knelt by his face and tried to force him to look at her, her eyes full of the calmness that comes from knowing that no matter what happens, you can just blame it on God. “It’s me, Sister Maggie. Assuming you still remember me. We haven’t seen you in church in months, you bad boy.”

  “You told me you came every Sunday,” Kit said, frowning at him. “Have you been lying to me about everything?”

  “Don’t blame him, child. He has a demon.”

  “A demon?” Kit brandished her switchblade, scanning Gabriel’s body as if it were something she could cut out.

  “Put that away, child,” said Sister Maggie. “That won’t help.”

  “Can you help him?”

  “I can if you stand back.” Sister Maggie didn’t wait for Kit to move, just pushed her into Fancy’s arms. Sister Judith came back with a clear vial full of water and knelt on Gabriel’s opposite side to help hold him steady.

  Fancy put her arm around Kit, wondering if she had been wrong about Gabriel. He didn’t look crazy; he looked like he was in pain—excruciating pain.

  Sister Maggie poured some of the holy water into Gabriel’s right ear and then began to speak the Lord’s Prayer into it. By the second recitation Gabriel was howling, and on the third a tiny gray blob began to swell from his left ear. The blob shot free and landed on Sister Judith, who let go of Gabriel’s head and grabbed it, holding it up like a newborn. It screamed like one, but it looked like the end result of a love affair between a man and a widemouthed bass, a shiny, wriggling thing with muddy eyes on either side of its head.

  “How marvelous!” cried Sister Judith, delighted. “I’ve always wanted to see one up close and personal!”

  The creature’s head exploded all over her.

  Sister Maggie laughed at the horrified expression on her fellow sister’s face. “Doesn’t get more personal than that.”

  Kit broke free of Fancy’s grip and ran to Gabriel; she put her arms around him. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess.” He held his hand over his bloody ear, as if to keep anything else from shooting out of it. “What was that thing?”

  “An imp,” said Sister Maggie brightly. “A young one.” She dabbed at Gabriel’s ear with a tissue she’d pulled from her pocket. “You’re lucky it was only about three months old. If it had grown any bigger, that would be your head sprayed across Sister Judith’s bosom. Imps transfer spawn into other hosts, usually by way of kisses.” She looked at Kit and shook the vial of holy water. “You’ll need this too.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the girlfriend? Been sharing kisses?”

  “And other stuff.”

  “Shut up, Fancy.” Kit exchanged an embarrassed look with Gabriel until Sister Maggie bent her forward and tilted her head to the left. “We use birth control.” As if Sister Maggie would be impressed by that.

  Sister Maggie poured the holy water into Kit’s right ear, but the brown ooze didn’t shoot from her left ear. It shot out of her nose and hit the floor with a splat. It wasn’t fully formed the way Gabriel’s imp had been; it was just a blob that sizzled and burned against the white cathedral tile.

  While Kit squealed and rubbed so vigorously at her nose it nearly detached from her face, Sister Maggie looked around the cathedral and sighed contentedly. “The power of Christ himself. Best birth control in the world.”

  When Sister Judith tittered, Sister Maggie rolled her eyes.

  “I mean against imps.”

  Fancy sat in the backseat of Gabriel’s, or rather Ilan’s, Olds-mobile in the parking space down the street from the cathedral, glowering at Kit and Gabriel, who sat in the front shamelessly making out.

  “So all this bad stuff,” Kit was saying, between kisses, “the sleepwalking and trying to kill people, was because of the imp trying to spawn?”

  “I guess so,” said Gabriel. “I . . . oh no!” He slapped his head. I’m gone have to send Jessa to the Blue Sisters.”

  “The CPR girl?” said Kit. “Fancy said she saw you kissing her.”

  “Yeah.” Gabriel looked deeply embarrassed. “And Cici. And Madeline. And Alysha.”

  “Did you just go around kissing every girl in Portero?”

  “No, just those four,” said Gabriel quickly. “I hate that it was even one. And I oughta chop my hand off for hurting you the way I did.” Kit let him pull her back into his arms.

  “I’ll do it for you,” said Fancy, watching his offensive hand moving along her sister’s chest.

  They froze, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  “I’ll do it,” she repeated, “and not just for hitting my sister, but for being a liar. Sister Maggie said that imp was only three months old. You been sleepwalking for years.”

  “But not hurting anybody,” Kit said, her hand resting protectively over Gabriel’s hand, as if she thought Fancy had an ax in her pocket. “The way he hurt me, the way he tried to hurt you, that was the imp.”

  “You can’t blame every horribly horrific thing you’ve ever done on that imp, now can you?”

  Fancy noted the guilt in Gabriel’s eyes.

  “What’re you talking about?” Kit said, looking from one to the other. “What horribly horrific thing?”

  “Get out, Kit,” Fancy said, not looking at her sister. “Me and him need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Personal stuff between me and him,” snapped Fancy, irritated by Kit’s hesitation.

  Kit squeezed Gabriel’s hand and left the car, reluctantly.

  He turned to face Fancy. “I’m real sorry about the toolshed thing and—”

  “Don’t get nervous,” Fancy said. “The o
nly thing I want from you is the truth. Assuming you even know what that is anymore.”

  “Is this the part where you give me the moonfruit?”

  “Ilan told you about that.” Fancy would never have guessed they were the sort of brothers who talked and shared secrets.

  “He trusts me.” Gabriel sighed and looked away. “With certain things. Anyway, you don’t have to bother. I did it.”

  Fancy leaned forward. “You did what?”

  “I killed my pop.” The admission seemed to cost him, and it was a long time before he could speak again, his voice low and full of tears. “I killed him and then blamed it on Guthrie.”

  “Why?”

  “My pop . . . He touched me.” Gabriel shook his head, distancing himself from the words, even as he spoke them. “And I snapped.”

  “How did Mr. Turner’s arm get in our cellar? Did you plant it there?”

  “No. I don’t know how Guthrie got Pop’s arm. Unless he was following us when we hid the body.”

  “Ilan helped you cover it up.”

  “He’s been helping me outta jams for years.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  He told her, and Fancy smiled.

  “You’re not gone tell Kit, are you?”

  “You should be the one to tell her.”

  Gabriel looked relieved. “Thanks, Fancy. I will. Soon. I’m just waiting for the right moment. I hope she’ll take it the way you have.”

  “I hope she does too,” said Fancy, inwardly cavorting, but trying not to show it. “I’ll go get her.”

  Kit was a ways down the street, standing in a narrow clump of gory Annas growing outside a beauty parlor.

  “Sometimes a flower is just a flower,” Fancy said, after she’d caught up with her.

  “And sometimes a flower is a signpost of the living dead.” Kit stepped out of the flower bed and eyed her sister suspiciously. “What did y’all talk about?”

  “This and that. Life, love, all that stuff. And Dog Run.”

  “What about Dog Run?”

  “Well. They’re having the battle of the bands up there real soon. And since Ilan and Gabriel’s band is playing this year, and since you have this fantasy about us double-dating . . . Well . . . do you want to?”