Bone Music (12 page)

“I know the doors,” Lisa said. “I saw them from the hallway. One of them is Heaven. The other one is Hell.”

“People go inside, and they don’t ever come out.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Lisa said. “I heard a story once, and then I had a dream.”

“They don’t ever come out,” the bluesman sang.

Lisa wanted to argue with him, but she knew it wasn’t any use. He wouldn’t believe her, and no one would believe her, and she hardly believed herself when she heard herself try to contradict him. But how could she help but disagree? In her dream she’d heard Robert Johnson singing Judgment Day, and she knew the Gates of Heaven and Hell will open wide one day. And she knew from seeing Robert Johnson, too, because every solitary thing about him spoke of damnation and redemption, and how could both those things be on one man if the doors of Heaven and Hell don’t swing both ways?

Lisa heard a sound behind her and whirled around to see the teenagers crowding in around them, watching Lisa and the bluesman. “What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at them, glaring especially at the awful teenage girls who’d screamed outside her window.

No one answered. The bluesman behind her let his song drift away, but he kept playing his guitar — now the melody grew complex, and the rhythm drove hard and beautiful like thunder echoing among the tenements.

“I hate you,” Lisa said, still glaring at the girls. “I hate you hate you hate you.”

The dark girl laughed. The light girl repeated Lisa’s words back at her in a high, squeaky voice, taunting her. “Hate you hate you hate you!” the girl said. And then she laughed, too.

And Lisa got so mad.

So mad!

“You stop that, you awful, you, you —”

“. . . .you, you —”

That was when Lisa lost her temper.

It wasn’t good, losing her temper. Losing her temper got Lisa into awful trouble.

As she howled with rage and pushed herself off the ground; lurched toward the girls and caught the dark one by the ankle.

Pushed against the ground with every bit of strength she had in her legs —

And pushed the dark girl off her feet, onto the ground.

“I hate you!” she shouted, lunging forward to wrap her hands around the dark girl’s throat and squeezed as someone screamed and the dark girl’s hands flailed uselessly at Lisa, trying to batter her away, but Lisa didn’t care, not a bit, she was brave and she was strong even if she was a baby, and nothing any girl could do would ever hurt her, Lisa wouldn’t let it hurt —

As a boy started shouting from the far edge of the crowd. “Run!” he shouted. “Run, run, the police are coming!”

And the light girl reached under Lisa’s arms to pull her away from the dark one still flailing as Lisa tried to strangle her; and Lisa didn’t let go so easy, she whipped ‘round in the light girl’s arms to try to claw her eyes out, but the light girl was too fast for her, she flung Lisa away, away into the air tiny angry blood-hungry baby Lisa flew high through the air until she slammed into the trunk of a tree —

It got confusing after that.

Lisa saw the girls crying in each other’s arms, and she saw the teenagers running away, but she never heard the music stop. Maybe it never did stop. She thought she could hear it as she saw the Park Police enter the clearing, but how could that be? The bluesman was gone, and if he’d been there the police would have had words for him. Maybe they would have arrested him, even; they sure looked mad enough to arrest somebody when they saw the bonfire burning high enough to singe the leaves and branches up above them.

If they’d heard him the way Lisa heard him, they surely would have gone looking for him.

But they didn’t hear, and they didn’t look, and as they shoveled dirt into the fire the music began to fade. It ended when they pounded out the embers.

“We need to find the kids who did this,” one of the policemen said.

His partner snorted derisively.

“They’re miles away by now,” he said. “Long gone.”

Lisa wasn’t gone. She wanted to stand up and say so, but she knew she didn’t dare.

“They’re always gone,” the first cop said. “Damned hoodlums.”

His partner sighed. “Just kids dancing, Pete,” he said. “You ought to keep it in perspective.”

The first cop swore. “Kids my ass,” he said. “This is New York.” He stepped away from the dead fire, stooped to peer into the woods. “They could’ve set the park on fire,” he said. For a moment he seemed to look right at Lisa, and she thought for certain he’d found her. But then someone screamed somewhere east of them, and the policeman turned to look in that direction.

“What do you think that was?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out,” the first cop said. He pushed through the thicket toward the east; his partner followed a moment behind him.

I’m free, Lisa thought. I’m saved.

She wasn’t wrong. If she’d got up that moment and hurried home to bed, nothing would have followed her, and maybe she could have had a normal life for a few more weeks before the world descended on her.

But she had to know who’d screamed, and she had to know why, and it wasn’t in her to run away just when things began to happen. She pushed herself up off the ground, stumbled across the clearing, and pushed into the thicket on the east —

And saw the Lady with the Sword.

Santa Barbara.

She stood in the clear place just beyond the thicket, waiting for Lisa. The moment Lisa saw her the Lady’s sword caught fire and lit the thicket bright as day.

Lisa saw the policemen in the firelight — the policemen and the girls and all the teenagers, too, everyone she’d seen that night except the bluesman: they were all hanging in the bows of a great tall oak, impaled upon the tree’s branches like flies run through by an entomologist’s nails.

“Santa,” Lisa said, and she fell to her knees and began to pray.

The Santa grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back up to her feet.

“Never pray to me, child,” the Lady said.

Lisa knew why. It wasn’t seemly, praying to a Santa. She felt terrified, mortified, as though she’d committed some unpardonable sin the Lady could never forgive. “I’m sorry, Santa,” she said. “I didn’t mean —”

The Lady held up a hand to silence her. “Hush, child,” she said, and then she gestured at the girls, the policemen, all the half-grown children writhing in the branches of the oak. “Look at them,” she said. “What do you see?”

Lisa didn’t want to answer, but she knew she had to. “I don’t see nothing,” Lisa said. “Just what they deserve.”

The Santa frowned.

“You need to learn, child,” she said. “You need to tame your rage.”

And then the Santa and the oak and the fire and the sword and the fire were gone, and the light was dark again, shadow-speckle dark as it ever gets in New York City, even up in Harlem. Lisa stood in a clearing surrounded by the dancers, the girls, the policemen — all of them still half-conscious writhing in their agonies.

The light girl and the dark girl lay at her feet; one of them groaned deliriously. When she saw them Lisa got an awful impulse to kick them both right in their faces.

She really did. She almost couldn’t stop herself. But she knew she had to, because that was the whole point of why the Lady came to her that night, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

So Lisa hobbled away from the clearing, out of the park and three blocks north till she got home, and all that way she didn’t hurt anybody, not anything, not even the bugs that skittered on the sidewalk as she approached them. But she couldn’t stop herself from thinking. And she couldn’t stop herself from wishing, or wanting. And oh how Lisa wanted to hurt those girls!

She surely surely did.

Lisa didn’t have much trouble getting to sleep once she got back up the fire escape and into bed. But even if she slept readily, she couldn’t sleep well: all that night she dreamed of the girls and the Lady and her sword and tiny tiny children trying to murder her. In her dream Lisa gave them all as good as she got, and better — she killed everyone who tried to kill her.

But no matter how many she killed there were always more, and as the dream wore on Lisa lost her taste for killing. She wanted to turn and run away; she wanted to wake up and scream for help; she wanted to fall on her knees and pray for salvation and the blessings of the Lord.

But she didn’t dare.

Not for a moment.

Because they were that close, and there were that many of them: so many she could never win, no matter how she fought.

Lisa was still dreaming that awful dream when her mother woke her early in the morning, before the sun came up. At first Lisa didn’t realize who it was or where she was, and she tried to bat her mother’s arms away the way she fought off all the ones that tried to kill her.

“I won’t let you hurt me,” Lisa shouted. “I won’t I won’t I swear I won’t.”

Her mother gasped.

“Lisa!” she shouted. “Child, what’s got into you?”

Lisa saw her mother, but she confused her waking with her dream. “I won’t let you kill me, Mama,” Lisa said. “Not even you, I swear!”

“Lisa!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Lisa, wake up!” Mama shouted. And then she stepped away. “What kind of a dream are you having, girl?”

As Lisa finally began to see the world around her. To smell the faint stink of her clean sheets; to feel the cool damp summer-morning breeze drifting through her open window.

She tried not to cry, but it wasn’t much use. She just couldn’t help herself, was all; she saw what she’d tried to do, and she saw the world, and she remembered her dream, and she knew an awful truth about herself — a truth so terrible she didn’t dare admit it even in her heart.

And so obvious she couldn’t deny it, no matter how she tried.

“I love you, Mama,” Lisa said, and she cried and cried. “I surely do.”

Things should have been so good after Lisa was born again. Emma and Lisa had everything, didn’t they? They had their lives, they had their living, they had their place in the world and the opportunity to make it good, and what else can a body ask from God?

We all get our moment in the sun. Emma knew that she and her girl could make the best of theirs.

But it didn’t work out. At all. What should have been a new life turned out to be a new kind of nightmare — and no matter how Emma wished she could wake from it, the nightmare went on and on, wearing her away.

It went bad right from the first night of Lisa’s new life. Emma woke that morning to find her daughter writhing against her dreams — still asleep but thrashing in bed, twisted in the bedclothes like a hanged man wrapped inside his noose. She said, “Lisa! Lisa, wake up, child, you’re having a nightmare!” but Lisa wouldn’t wake no matter what Emma said. And when Emma pressed against the girl’s shoulder Lisa struck her — hit Emma again and again with those tiny baby hands that were as powerful as the fists of a grown man but sharper and more piercing. Emma wanted to push the girl away and run for her life. But how could she do that? Lisa was her baby, for God’s sake! A mother can’t run away from her own child, not if she has a lick of decency.

So Emma leaned in close as the tiny baby battered her, and she said, “Lisa, Lisa, you’re having a bad dream!”

And Lisa said, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you kill you kill you,” and there was murder in the child’s tiny voice. And no regret at all.

“Lisa!”

“Kill you kill you kill you!”

Emma grabbed the girl by her wrists, and she tried to hold her still. It wasn’t much use; the baby was so strong her mother’s hands could not contain her.

“I won’t let you hurt me,” Lisa shouted. “I won’t I won’t I swear I won’t.”

“Lisa!” Emma shouted. “Child, what’s got into you?”

“I won’t let you kill me, Mama,” Lisa said. “Not even you, I swear!”

“Lisa!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Lisa, wake up!” Emma shouted. “What kind of a dream are you having, girl?”

And finally the girl began to wake, and as she woke she saw what she was doing — and the sight of it seemed to break her heart. She started crying, crying big long deep sobs so sad it made Emma ache to hear them, and Lord how she wished she were someplace else, anyplace else; how she wished she could go back to being an ordinary housekeeper who worked an ordinary job in an ordinary hospital; how she wished she could be an ordinary mother with an ordinary little girl who lived an ordinary life like all girls live, she really did, Emma just wished it’d never come to any of the things it came to, and for half a moment she wished she was dead and buried and her life was over so she didn’t have to face the awful life ahead of her —

“Time to wake up, baby,” Emma said. “We got to take you down to school.”

Lisa looked like she wanted to argue with that. For a moment Emma thought it was going to start all over again, the argument over whether or not Lisa was going to go to school — but it didn’t. Lisa held her tongue, and she did as Emma asked her to.

The day-care center was a Spanish place over on Lexington at 99th called Escuela Santa Angelica. Lisa knew enough Spanish to understand exactly what that meant, but she tried not to react to it anyway. What could she do, scream and carry on and stomp her feet? She didn’t want to do anything like that. Every time she thought about getting upset she thought about her dream, and her mama, and how she could’ve killed her mother if the dream was real. There was a moment as she rose out of her dream when Lisa’d thought she’d murdered her mama. Every time she thought about that she ached so bad she like to die.

Lisa loved her mother, even if the girl was something alive and dead and alive again who might as well have been a demon.

“This is your new school, Lisa,” Mama said. “I know you’ll like it here. It’s a special place! They teach special children, just like you, and they teach them very well.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Inside the day-care center everything was shabby and run down. There were dust-piles in the corners of the waiting room, behind the chairs. The floor looked like it hadn’t ever been mopped.

But Mama didn’t even seem to notice those things. “You’re going to learn so much,” she said. She sounded thrilled — excited out of all proportion to their circumstances. “I talked to these people yesterday. They’re wonderful.”