Psychopomp: A Novella Page 4

  From her room, she could hear the angel shuffling across dusty floorboards in the attic. She could hear the sad melodies he coaxed from the forgotten piano beneath the eaves. Did he play the piano? They were beautiful melodies that haunted her sleep. He was miserable and self-pitying, she imagined, after what her sister had done to him. He watched the girls with lightless eyes.

  But only Claire knew he existed. And she knew she was the one he’d been watching for.

  So one night she answered the beckoning of his songs. She climbed out of bed and moved down the shadowy hall outside her room, hypnotized and near tears with the sweetness of the piano notes. These familiar strains were embedded so deep within her memory they never left her completely, even when all the other memories slipped away.

  Soon, she faced the attic door. It was the only door in the building forbidden to the girls, but Claire had to see the angel with her own eyes. When her sister had sent him away, Claire had feared she’d never see him again.

  “What are you doing out of bed?”

  With a small gasp, Claire turned at the teasing voice. She narrowed her eyes. Ethan leaned against the wall a few steps behind her. He was seventeen, confident and capable of melting a heart. And he had captured many hearts. It was easy with that rakish, crooked smile and those velvety brown eyes. His hair was black, worn just a touch too long. He crossed the institute grounds with a long-legged gait, excited whispers trailing after him.

  Claire had never whispered about him. She was so quiet all the girls ignored her, and she had no one to whisper with. She’d followed Ethan with her light brown eyes because he was the only boy she knew, besides the angel, but she’d never thought he’d notice her.

  “I thought I heard something,” she said to the headmistress’s son. Her voice cracked because she hardly ever spoke. She cleared her throat so she would be ready for the next words.

  Ethan grinned. “You should go back to sleep or I’ll tell you were wandering around afterhours.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m not a patient here. I don’t have to follow the rules.”

  “Whose room were you in just now? She obviously wasn’t following the rules.”

  He shrugged, eyes gleaming with silent laughter. He didn’t care if a girl got in trouble because of him. He didn’t care if they got transferred to Rueville, and a good number of them did after he stopped seeing them. Claire had watched it all.

  Eyeing him distrustfully, she edged past him and slipped back into her room. She breathed with anger, pacing the floor. Another night lost. Ethan had ruined her chance, and she didn’t know where she’d found the courage to speak so forcefully to him.

  The next day, she sat by her window, half-heartedly working on one of the coloring books Ms. Gilsig collected for the girls. She could see all the way to Rueville, but it wasn’t much of a view. Beyond the rails and arching magnet roads, everything was dust.

  Below, Ethan strode across the green, artificial turf. Then he disappeared into the music building. Just moments before, Claire had spied a girl going in there. She’d seen this before. They would stay in there an hour or more, or maybe only a few minutes. When they emerged, separately, they would both look satisfied in a strange way. The girl would appear more confident and Ethan’s swagger would be more pronounced.

  Today, Ethan looked up, and it seemed he met her eyes through the glass.

  Claire leaned away from the window and wondered how he managed. He wasn’t supposed to socialize with the girls—at least not in that manner. Most days he never looked at them, not even the ones he met in the music building; Claire knew this because she watched him obsessively. So why would those girls bother with him when he gave them such scant, scattered attention? Other than good looks, what did he have to offer?

  Her thoughts trailed away, as they often did when it got too difficult to focus. What, she wondered dreamily, did she have to offer the angel? She had always adored him, even when he’d loved her sister.

  She adored him even more now that her sister had broken his heart.

  7. la muerte

  I stood in line all day, dust streaked with sweat on my skin. I got drawn and shuffled home, but I forgot to look for the yellow eyes.

  We were in the living room. Blanca was trying to get the baby to crawl and Pell was painting her nails before work. I’d found an old sewing pattern in the library some time ago and now absorbed myself in trying to decipher the lines on the thin pages. It was a map that had nothing to do with land or sea. The creases were torn and bits of the soft paper crumbled off in my hands.

  Verm and Harkin burst through the door, one after the other. Harkin wedged it shut. All of us looked up in surprise.

  “What’s going on?” I asked nervously. “It’s too early. You only just left.”

  Pell stood up, casting a wary glance at me. “Where’s Anden?”

  Verm looked at me rather than her, resting a heavy hand on my shoulder. He spoke in a gentle voice. “Anden’s not coming back. There was a rogue wave not long after we left and he went overboard. I tried to save him, but the water was too rough.”

  “But—”

  “It happens.”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  He tried to put his arms around me, but I ducked out of the way. His false sympathy was one thing I couldn’t stomach. Blindly I ran from the house, skittering down alleys until I reached the docks. Shouts and insults and rude laughter assaulted my ears from every direction.

  I stopped running and took a deep breath. I didn’t know where to go, but I didn’t want to go back home.

  After walking for a few minutes, I came to the cart of an old woman whose name I’d never known. She’d been selling little fish empanadas for as long as I could remember. From a few feet away, I watched as she wrapped an empanada in wax paper for a customer. The movements of her knobby brown hands were slow but practiced.

  She glanced over at me with rheumy eyes. “Quién es? What are you doing standing over there?” she called in a voice like a dry breeze. Lifting a hand, she beckoned me. “Come closer. Ah, I recognize you.”

  “My brother’s dead,” I blurted. “He fell overboard and drowned.” It didn’t escape me that maybe Verm had been at least partially responsible for the accident.

  The woman’s wrinkled face wasn’t sympathetic. “It happens to most of them, sooner or later. The ocean has no mercy.”

  “I… I don’t think I’m sad.”

  “What good does sadness do? It won’t change nothing. He’ll still be dead and you’ll still be here.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Verdad. I been around a long time.” She reached for one of her empanadas and folded the wax paper around it. “Here you are, pobrecita.”

  The empanada was warm and fragrant in my hand. “Gracias.”

  She busied herself with empty baking sheets. “Bah. It fell apart in the oven. Couldn’t sell it anyway.”

  I thanked her again and meandered back toward the house. The empanada was warm and flavorful. I thought I might love that old woman.

  As I walked, I thought about how I would never see my brother again. For the first time, I knew it was possible to love someone you hate. There was no way to erase any of the things he’d done or made me do, but he was my brother. In his own way, he’d looked after us, and that was all any sister could have asked. Whatever grief I felt at his absence confused me, because there was also the absurd relief he was gone.

  I’d expected Verm to leave, but he was still at the house when I got back. Before I could say a word, he slapped me and told me never to run from him again.

  “You’re mine,” he said.

  I held my stinging face and wondered why he wanted me so bad.

  “You could be good for me, Mar,” he said that night, a whisper in the dark. The soft sound of his voice and the gentle caress of his callused fingertips stirred something tender in me. It was possible I’d misunderstood him al
l along and he was just a boy looking for love.

  I almost said his name. I almost told him I understood.

  “Don’t ever leave me,” he hissed, breaking the spell. “Ever.” His fingers stilled and dug into my skin, warning me.

  “I w-won’t,” I said, shrinking from him.

  I clung to that one moment of flawed affection, tortured by the scent of salt and sweat on my sheets. I needed to know why he thought I’d be good for him when he obviously wasn’t good for me.

  His gentle voice haunted me, following me into my dreams. I wanted desperately to believe in it, even just for a little while.

  8. la flor

  Now, when I gave plasma, it was as much about the credits as it was about staying away from Verm. Afterward, I walked the familiar, narrow streets that were strangely uncomfortable reminders of my life. There I’d sat in a stall with my father and watched him sell fish, the memory so brief and hazy it was barely a memory at all. There Anden had shoved me down during a game with other neighborhood children. There was the school, where I’d laughed with my friends.

  I evaluated the memories one by one, deciding whether or not they alone were strong enough to hold me here in the only place I’d ever known.

  A crooked fence with bits of trash stuck in the links came into view. I squeezed myself through a jagged hole on the far side. The old pool gaped before me, empty and cracked, grayed with ages of dirt and graffiti.

  Picking my way among the broken lounge chairs, I sat on the crumbling edge of the pool. My feet dangled over the edge. The weight of the darkening evening fell heavy upon me. The skin beneath my breasts was slick with sweat, but I shivered as the bottom of the pool turned black with shadow and pulled up my feet. There had never been any water in there as far as I’d ever known. I didn’t know how to swim and never would. Deep water scared me.

  I remembered learning, in school, about chunks of ice that had once floated on the edges of the world. Potential sources for drinking water, they’d melted before anyone could transport them economically.

  The thought of icebergs filled me with deep unease even though they didn’t exist anymore. In the old days most of the berg would have been underwater, a vast uncharted landscape, an inverted blue mountain, a submerged cathedral for ghosts. It scared me to think of all that ice just lurking beneath the surface, a frighteningly massive expanse hiding from view.

  But the underwater part, the eerily beautiful part you couldn’t see except in old photographs, was the part that melted fastest. And when it did, when the top was heavier than the bottom, the iceberg flipped over like a mythical, ungainly beast, creating waves that crashed in the cold sea. Once flipped, the berg would have looked like an entirely different piece of ice, displaying secret and heartbreaking shades of blue and green.

  I longed for change, for happiness, but by now I knew I had to create these things for myself. Nothing good would just happen to me. But the very idea of initiating change—leaving my home, my town, the people I knew—paralyzed me with fear. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’d lived in shit so long I’d gotten used to the smell of it. This was where I belonged. Submission was in my blood.

  Anden would have reminded me I didn’t know how to take care of myself. In a land rendered barren by drought and chemicals, I wouldn’t stand a chance on my own.

  On the way home, at the tail end of evening light, I spotted something unexpectedly green in the gloaming. Green, the rare color of life and nature. I rubbed my fists to clear my gritty eyes and blinked. The plant sprouted hesitantly from a crack in the asphalt beside someone’s rot-smelling trashcans. It was a delicate little blossom with a fragile gossamer spray at the center.

  I knew I should have left the little flower alone to grow, but I took the thin, slightly rubbery stem between my thumb and forefinger and plucked it. It felt like nothing beneath my careful fingertips. The leaves cradling the blossom like the palm of a hand were plastic-smooth.

  I stared, a slight revulsion tingeing my fascination. I’d never seen a real plant, just growing wherever it pleased. I’d seen the wilted fruits and vegetables the ambassadors sometimes delivered in splintery crates. But that wasn’t the same.

  Like bitter secrets, our crops grew in controlled environments. The massive greenhouse labs loomed at the far edge of Cizel, to the north. It had taken years and thousands had starved in the process, but now our food was removed from the things that made it unsafe to farm outdoors: chemical residue, dry soil, lack of water. Anyone with a yard composted to provide soil for the greenhouses. Nobody in Marshwick had a yard. All we had was pavement and the sea.

  Even if I left Marshwick and tended myself in isolation, I feared nothing could remove the poison from inside me.

  My eyes clouded with tears when it hit me how breathtaking and miraculous the little flower was. How anomalous, how repulsive. I felt so tender toward it for one fleeting moment.

  Then anger, powerful and sudden, overtook my whole body. I crushed the flower in my fist, but the satisfaction was weak. I grabbed the petals with the fingers of both hands and began tearing it apart.

  9. las lágrimas

  There was a party in Cizel, Verm told me. We were going to it.

  “You got us invited to a party?” I was confused.

  “No.” He looked at me scornfully. “But I know how to get information from people. Ain’t nobody gonna check for an invitation long as we’re dressed right.”

  “But—”

  “I know you don’t got nothing to wear. That red dress won’t work. So I got you this.”

  A scrap of fabric dangled from his hands. The dress was gold, glimmering. It plunged in the front and would skim the tops of my pallid, doughy thighs.

  I wished people would stop giving me dresses.

  Verm looked pleased, so I took it from him. “Why?” I said. “Why are we going to a party?”

  He shook his head at my stupidity. “How else am I supposed to get sponsors?”

  “For what?”

  A sound of exasperation escaped him. “Rich people will pay me to fish for them, Marlo. I can charge whatever I want. That’s how we’re gonna get out of this place. Don’t you want a better life?”

  I nodded.

  “Your brother tried to cheat me. He thought I didn’t know, but I did.” He paused for a moment, thinking, and then turned his eyes to me. “We could end up living in the mansions some day. We’d never be hungry.”

  Not the mansions, I thought to myself. Never the mansions.

  Though snatches of memories had come to me in dreams and nightmares, they were no clearer to me now. The room where I’d pulled the needle from my arm seemed cavernous in my mind. But I didn’t know how I’d gotten out.

  It seemed stupid to keep dwelling on it. Something horrible may have happened to me, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

  Later, I showed the dress to Blanca, but she could tell I wasn’t grateful.

  “You have to make an effort,” she informed me. “You have to show him why he should be with you instead of someone else. That means looking pretty and doing whatever he wants in bed, and not arguing with him. That’s the only way any man can love a woman, really.”

  “Oh.”

  Her advice seemed a sad and desperate way to get someone’s love. But she would know, I guessed, because she and Harkin had been together almost two years. She’d had boyfriends before him, too. I didn’t have any experience other than Verm, and I wasn’t sure that counted. If love was what he gave me, maybe I was better off without it.

  “Stay away from Harkin,” she warned suddenly. “He hasn’t been too interested in sex. I seen him looking at you.”

  “Qué?”

  She gave me a dry, weary look. “Don’t be stupid, Marlo.”

  I stared. I’d helped Blanca. I’d taken the baby so she could nap or wash up. I’d held that fattening little girl and wiped the snot from beneath her runny nose, and she’d looked at me with eyes that subtly changed color each month s
he got older. And in return Blanca warned me against making advances toward her boyfriend.

  “I’m not interested in him,” I said, “and I don’t want him coming near me.”

  Her face softened. “Yeah. We’ll see.”

  Verm came into my bed again that night. I guessed it would be a regular thing. He told me not to cry, so I didn’t. But sometimes I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I had to force the tears to stop.

  Every night, after he’d finished, I turned away and balanced on the edge of the bed so I wouldn’t have to touch his body. He didn’t seem to mind the space between us. In sleep he looked like a different person, a gentler person. It was the only time I could find something redeeming in his face.

  interim: una ala

  The hallway was empty and dark except for the night light near the stairs. His music called her. She opened the attic door and climbed the stairs to discover the angel who played for her.

  She hadn’t expected the attic to be so empty. She’d expected boxes and old furniture draped in sheets. There was only the upright piano, old and scratched. A big window facing the front of the house let in smoky blue city light.

  Claire saw the angel sitting at the bench, head bent obsessively over the keys. He was mostly bathed in shadow, only a few patches of white skin illuminated. He didn’t look up, but she knew that he knew she was there because he’d stopped playing.

  “That was beautiful,” Claire said. Her voice sounded better, she thought. As if she used it often.

  He raised his head, squinting at her. Her insides jumped at the sight of his chiseled cheekbones, acute jaw, and rectangular eyes beneath slashed eyebrows. His face was so sharp and arresting beneath the strands of lank black hair that fell across it. His only soft feature was his mouth, wide and lush. He didn’t use it to smile. That had stopped long ago.