The Onion Girl (61 page)
Authors: Charles de Lint
So I spend my day walking around the slopes above and below the inn, my head trying to get me to think about a mess of things, but I won't let nothing settle. It's like doing time in the hole, back in county. I just got to shut me down for a whiles till I'm ready to deal.
Come the evening I have me some supper, then I sit in a corner, drinking tea and watching the freak show. Thing I notice straight off is, 'cept for a few of these little fairy gals, everybody's pretty much got them a long face and there ain't a whole lotta fun being had. I ask William 'bout it and that's when he explains what the name of the inn means. People come here down on their luck. I reckon that's why I fit in so well.
I stay in the common room until closing time, until everybody else is gone and it's just me and William, and then I don't ask him nothing, I just start in on cleaning up the tables, mopping down the floor. He tries to get me to lay off, but I look at him like I'm some kinda immigrant, don't speak the language.
“I can't hear you,” I tell him.
He tries a couple more times, but finally he lets me be.
So that's how the time passes for me, I can't tell you how long. More'n a few days, for sure, but less'n a couple of weeks. Everybody pretty much leaves me alone and I don't talk to no one 'cept William and we don't talk about nothing important. A couple of times I see one of them dog-faced boys, watching me from a corner, but I ain't killing nothing, and they don't push on me, so we don't got us a problem.
Then one night this handsome guy comes in, the kind of guy thinks he owns any place he's in. He's got him the dark hair pushed back from his forehead, the deep blue eyes with the longest lashes I seen on a man. Clean-shaven and dressed all in black. He orders himself a drink from the bar, then turns around and gives the room a good look-see, kinda smiling to himself until his gaze hits me where I'm sitting in my corner, minding my own business.
I look away, but it's too late. He's already coming in my direction.
“Ruefayel,” I hear William call after him, like he's warning him 'bout something, but I guess this Ruefayel just ignores it 'cause next thing you know I got him in my face, just a-standing over me.
“So you're back,” he says.
I look up. “Whatever I am, it ain't none of your business,” I tell him.
He's got him a chip on his shoulder, and I guess I'm spoiling for a fight, though I couldn't tell you why 'cept he rubs me wrong. Right from when he come in, I wanted to wipe that smirk off of his face. We're a bad combinationâyou don't need to be no genius to see that.
“I told you before,” he says. “We have unfinished business.”
I already knowed how he's got me mixed up with my sister, but I don't bother to set him straight. I can feel this need in me to let off some steamâI guess it's been building up a time now. I got way too much pressure pushing inside me, everything from dying and coming back when I didn't want to leave that welcoming light, to Pinky dying and staying dead and the whole confusing mess with my sister. And I ain't begun to touch on none of it yet.
“So why don't you finish it,” I tell him.
He slams his drink down on the table and starts to reach for me, but he's way too slow. So's William, who's coming out from behind the bar. Afore either of them can blink, I'm outta my seat, switchblade open in my hand. I slip around his side, grab his head with one hand, and lay the cutting edge of my knife against his throat.
“Go on,” I say and put a little pressure on the blade.
That knife of mine's honed like a straight razor. You drop a hair across the blade and it'll cut it right in two.
“Why don't you teach me a lesson,” I tell him.
It's funny. The whole time this is happening, it's like I'm two people.
One's got this bundle of anger and unfinished business suddenly
bursting outta her. She's ready to cut this moron's throat open and she ain't even going to blink when he's lying dead on the floor at her feet.
bursting outta her. She's ready to cut this moron's throat open and she ain't even going to blink when he's lying dead on the floor at her feet.
The other one's watching it all like it's happening to somebody else. She's thinking, this is exactly the kinda crap that made me the no-account piece of white trash I am today. The kinda gal who's happy when she's dying 'cause it means she don't have to deal with no more shit in her life. She don't have to make no payback for all the hurts and wrongs she's done 'cause she's going away into that warm and welcoming light, halle-fucking-luyah.
I give that Ruefayel a shove away and he goes stumbling, hits a table and falls to the floor. I stand there looking at him. I ain't got no more killing left in me, but I guess he don't know that. He just scurries back a few feet, then gets up and takes off.
I shake my head as I watch him go. He ain't no different'n Del. Once you stand up to the likes of them, they just fold. The hard thing is standing up to yourselfâto what you end up becoming when you pay 'em back in the same coin they used on you.
I've put away my switchblade by the time William comes up.
“I'm sorry,” I tell him. “I shouldn't've done that.”
“Probably not,” he says. “But he's had something like that coming to him for a while now.”
“Still don't make it right.”
He nods. What's he going to say?
I got nothing more to say myself. I mumble something about needing some air and head out the door myself. I hear conversation start up again in the room when I leave it behind me and realize I never even heard it all go still.
Ruefayel's not out here waiting for me. There's nothing but the night. I walk outta the courtyard onto the side of the hill and sit me down on a stone to look out at them twilight woods going on into forever in the distance. And I start to get me thinking on my sister and me, and how we turned out so different. But that don't mean I can't change. I guess I got to do me a Forrest Gump. Make me some lemonade outta the lemons the world keeps handing me. It's such a load of crap, but I suppose there's something to be said for being able to wake up in the morning and not feeling ashamed of who you are, or what you done.
And I can start with keeping my word to Lizzie, that little gal I promised
to come back for at the trailer park where Del's living. I don't know what she's going to think 'bout what I got to offer her. She's expecting me to drive up in that big pink Caddy and take her away to a life that's full of easy living. But it ain't going to be like that.
to come back for at the trailer park where Del's living. I don't know what she's going to think 'bout what I got to offer her. She's expecting me to drive up in that big pink Caddy and take her away to a life that's full of easy living. But it ain't going to be like that.
I know how to make an honest livingâhell, I been doing it on the side for years with what I learned from Hector.
That's what I got to do now, full-time. That's what I got to teach Lizzie.
I don't know how she's going to take having to work for a living, but I guess there's only one way to find out. At least, we'll be starting out on the right foot, what with me not breaking my word and leaving her there to wait for me like I done for so long, waiting on my sister who never comeânot so's I knew, anyways.
All I had me was Pinky, god bless her, and she weren't much when it come to making an honest living.
Oh, Pinky.
I have me a hard cry then, the one I been holding back forever, it seems. Crying for her and me and how we went so wrong.
I'm out there a long time, long after the tears are gone.
I come back in after closing to help William clean up. We don't talk at all till we're finally done and we're sitting at a table, having us some tea. I find myself telling him the whole sorry story of my lifeâthat's twice I done it now in as many weeks, once with my sister and now with him.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he says when I get to the end.
“Yeah, but do they keep on making 'em the way I done?”
He nods. “Until they figure it out they do. Don't be so hard on yourself. You haven't had a whole lot of breaks.”
“I got no right to expect any kind of sympathy from nobody,” I tell him.
“You could start with giving yourself a little.”
“It don't work that way,” I say.
'Cept how the hell would I know? I always been too busy trying to work me an angleâthat is when I ain't just wallowing in depression like I done for way too many years back in L.A. afore I got me that job at the copy shop.
“You won't know until you try,” William says.
“I suppose. But if I can't forgive myselfâhow can I expect anybody else to?”
“Don't concentrate on that,” he says. “Instead, be the person you want to be. Take it a day at a time. Allow yourself some history of doing the right thing.”
“Start small.”
He nods.
We sit awhile longer, then I finish my tea. Time I was going.
“I was wondering if you could tell me how I can get home,” I say. “Back to the world that's on the other side of this one, I mean.”
He explains how the archways workâyou just have to focus on where you want to be on the other side and when you step through, that's where you'll be.
“Works the same way for coming back,” he tells me.
“I won't be coming back.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “I met me some old spirit in the woods told me when I leave the dreamlands this time, I ain't never getting back in again.”
He doesn't say anything for a long moment.
“I liked having you here,” he tells me then. “You made a good start on being that person you want to be.”
“'Cept for when I tried to cut the throat of one of your customers.”
“Except for that,” he agrees.
I stand up and go to shake his hand, but he gives me a hug instead. Funny thing. I got this whole issue with personal space, but I don't feel none of my usual anger and anxiety right now. I just hug him back. It's like grabbing a big piece of something comforting and real.
“Let's get your stuff,” he says.
I shake my head. “I don't need none of thatâ'specially not that shotgun.” I take the switchblade outta my pocket and try to give it to him. “I won't be needing this neither.”
But he won't take it.
“Just because you're turning over a new leaf,” he says, “doesn't mean there won't be those who'll try to take advantage of you. You could still need that. Remember, there's no shame in fighting back when the cause is right.”
“What cause would that be?” I ask.
“The one that allows people the freedom of being who they want to be. There are those who'll do anything to rob us of that freedomâthat's something that doesn't change no matter what world you're in. We can't ever let them win.”
“So you're condoning violence?”
He shakes his head. “No. But we have the right to defend ourselves when violence is done to us.”
This just confuses me.
“Don't that make us no better'n them?” I ask.
“Turning the other cheek only lets them win.”
“Yeah, but I thought a good person was supposed to learn to forgive.”
“You have to be alive to be able to forgive,” he tells me.
I take that thought with me, back to the world on the other side of this one.
NEWFORD, AUGUST
I guess I thought that when
the paralysis finally eased up, my life would go back to normal again, but it doesn't work that way. Though I get the feeling back in my arm and leg, it's still all pins and needles a lot of the time and I don't have any real strength or coordination in them at all.
the paralysis finally eased up, my life would go back to normal again, but it doesn't work that way. Though I get the feeling back in my arm and leg, it's still all pins and needles a lot of the time and I don't have any real strength or coordination in them at all.
The best thing was when the cast came off my arm. I went from completely helpless to suddenly being able to do all those things we take for granted: feed myself, comb my hair, just being able to pick something up. Sometimes I hold a pencil and roll it back and forth between my thumb and fingersâjust for the pleasure of being able to do it. But I haven't tried to draw yet.
I do get to sit in a wheelchair, though. I got them to remove the footrest on the left so that I can move myself by using the wheel with my good arm and kind of steer with my foot on the floor for extra leverage. I move at a snail's pace, and I get tired really easily, but I can't begin to explain what it means to be mobile again, even in this limited capacity.
My right leg doesn't seem to be regaining its strength the way my therapist was hoping, but we're working on it, every day.
My right leg doesn't seem to be regaining its strength the way my therapist was hoping, but we're working on it, every day.
I still get the headaches, but they're not nearly as frequent, and I've stopped losing little pieces of time, though I doubt that I'll ever recover anything out of those black holes in my memory from before. That weird imbalance between logic and intuition has continued as well. I just can't seem to deal with numbers at all, no matter how simple.
Of course my bruising's all gone and I've got about an inch of hair on the right side of my head where all I had was stubble. I've stubbornly refused to cut the rest of my hair to match the new growth. I don't care what it looks like. I have this illogical idea that if I cut the rest of my hair, I'll be giving something up. Not the hair itself, but something inside me.
I can't explain what, or why I feel that way. I just do.
Wendy says it looks funky, god bless her.
We're living in the professor's house nowâSophie and me. I tried to talk her out of it, but she just looked at me and said, “And you're going to stop me, how?”
At least she's still getting some work done. She's using the old studio that Isabelle and I once shared in the refurbished greenhouse out back. We called it the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio in honor of the professor's grumpy housekeeper, Olaf Goonasekara. Sophie and I are still calling it that now, but not when Goon's around. He's cranky enough as it is without our giving him something to really complain about.
It's because of Goon that I'm grateful Sophie's staying here with me. It's not like he's mean to me or anything, and we have lots of visitors coming by, but if it was just me and Goon and his unrelenting gloominess, I think I'd go mad. The professor is usually so wrapped up in one project or another that sometimes we don't see him for the whole day, so without Sophie, it would have been just Goon and me most of the time.
When I asked the professor once how he's put up with Goon's bad temper for all these years, he just gave me a blank look. Either he really doesn't see it, or they've been together for so long it simply doesn't register anymore.
It's not that far from the professor's rambling Tudor-styled house in the old quarter of Lower Crowsea to the rehab center, so most mornings during the week Sophie just pushes me there in my wheelchair. Evenings
I spend with friends and often Sophie will go outâespecially if Daniel comes by. In the afternoons, I watch Sophie paint.
I spend with friends and often Sophie will go outâespecially if Daniel comes by. In the afternoons, I watch Sophie paint.
When I first asked Sophie to bring me back to the studio with her while she was working she was reluctant, thinking it would hurt too much for me to see her painting and not be able to do anything myself. But I love simply being in that environment, listening to her charcoal scratch on the canvas, the smell of the paints and turps when she's got the oils out. And though it's hard to explain, I get a real creative rush just being there.
See, sometimes when we're in there, I paint in my head. I don't mean that I imagine a painting. Rather I go through the whole process, sketches and value paintings, setting up my palette and brushes, the work on the piece itself. Or I might just work with ink washes and linework. I've nothing to show for the time I spend doing this, but that isn't the point. It's the doing of it. It feels so real and I can call these paintings and drawings back up in my head anytime I want to.
Sophie thinks I'm slightly mad, but then Sophie's always thought me slightly mad. She doesn't say anything, though. I guess she figures that she's not going to stomp on any bright spots I might be able to find in my life, no matter how preposterous they might seem.
Another bright spot in my life is Daniel, though because of his schedule, I don't get to see him nearly as much as either of us would like. That first date of ours was such a total disaster I'm surprised he ever wanted to see me again. I was already so depressed because of what happened with Raylene and losing the dreamlands and all that I was going to cancel, but Sophie and Wendy wouldn't let me. So I went ahead, but then the movie he brought over for us to watch in the rehab's common roomâ
The
Spitfire Grill
, which normally I would have lovedâjust had me sobbing at the end.
The
Spitfire Grill
, which normally I would have lovedâjust had me sobbing at the end.
“Bad choice, I guess,” Daniel said when I was finally able to stop crying. “Now that I think of it, you asked for something light and silly.”
I gave a little shake of my head. “No, it was a perfect movie. It was beautiful.”
“Beautiful, break your heart?”
“That, too.”
“I understand.”
I remember thinking, no, you don't, how can you? Except maybe he does. Maybe everybody recovering from a serious illness or accident goes away to places in their head that seem as real to them as the dreamlands did to me. Maybe they have experiences there that are just as traumatic as mine were. And maybe they still, nevertheless, miss being able to go back there.
But if I was less than enchanting company that first night, I guess he saw something he liked in me because he gave me this long soulful kiss after he'd wheeled me back to my room and got me into my bed, and we're still seeing each other, aren't we?
But I still don't know what it is that he does see in me and I don't want to ask.
I don't think I'm nearly as brave and cheerful as the crow girls made me out to be that night in May when I dreamed/saw them in my room back at the rehab. The one thing that's really come home to me with my recovering from this accident is just how angry and self-pitying and depressed I can get.
My emotional nerve ends seem to be a lot closer to the surface of my skin than they ever were before. Too often everything and anything is a big deal. It can be from the way my coffee tastes in the morning to the way Goon might look at me; everything's a major emotional experience.
It drives me crazy.
And talking about crazy, for a while I found myself wondering if all those experiences I had in the dreamlands were even real. If Sophie had been like she used to be, denying anything remotely magic, I'd probably have stopped believing that I ever went over into that otherworld. But she's changed. I get her to tell me about the doings in Mabon every morning when we're having our coffee and if I start to sound even a little bit doubtful about my own experiences over there, she's quick to set me straight. Now when I tease her about her faerie blood she just smiles.
And then there's Joe, who just is the dreamlands so far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter on what side of the borders you see him. Those crazy-wise eyes of his don't let you forget. And with even Wendy having been to that otherworld now, the dreamlands remain a big part of my
life, even if I can't visit them anymore. Or at least I won't be able to for a long, long time.
life, even if I can't visit them anymore. Or at least I won't be able to for a long, long time.
I hold on to the promise that the crow girls made me. Sometimes I take out the feathers they gave me and think about calling their names, but I know I'm not ready. I wouldn't be able to get very far in the dreamlands in my wheelchair.
But I think about those cathedral woods and Mabon all the time. I guess the best proof of how I couldn't escape them even if I wanted to was the night Toby came to visit me.
Sophie and I were in the greenhouse studio, talking while she cleaned her brushes, when we heard a tap-tap on the glass door and there he was. He doesn't like it in the World As It Isâ“Everything's too scary,” he tells meâbut he still visits from time to time. That first evening he brought me my sketchbook which he'd found in the Greatwood. When I flip through its pages, I
know
I was really there. I
know
I drew all those sketches from life, not from my imagination.
know
I was really there. I
know
I drew all those sketches from life, not from my imagination.
And it's not just me that knows it.
“That's Bo,” Wendy says the first time she looks through the sketchbook. She's pointing at a drawing I did of Nanabozho in the Greatwood.
“He was the other canid I met with Whiskey Jack on that mesa I told you about.”
I think it's so cool that she finally got a taste of the magic that Sophie's had for so long, and I had for a short time. And she didn't even have to dream herself over. She got to go there in her own body.
Sophie told me about what had been bothering Wendy, just before my sister and Pinky kidnapped me, and we've settled all that business now. The promise is, whichever one of us finally learns how to cross over on their own, she'll teach the others. We'll always be this little tribe of three small, fierce women.
Wendy might even be the one to go over first. She's been working on Joe, but he wants to wait until I'm better so that he can teach the three of us together. I've tried to convince him to go ahead and show the othersâwhy should they have to wait for me?âbut he stays firm.
I think he's nervous about the kind of trouble the three of us could get into over there so he's holding off as long as he can. He
knows
that if I become completely mobile again, there'll be no keeping us back.
knows
that if I become completely mobile again, there'll be no keeping us back.
I try talking to Daniel about all of this one night, late in the summer.
Sophie, Wendy, and Mona are in the house, playing some mad card game with the professorâone of those games he makes up and changes the rules of every few hands. Daniel and I opt for some time alone outside.
He wheels me out along the cobblestoned path behind the professor's house, which makes for a bumpy ride, but it's worth it for the little arbor it leads us to. The air is thick with the smell of flowers and cut grassâGoon was out with the lawn mower all afternoon, grumbling as he walked back and forth with it across the backyard. The sky is clear, full of stars that seem far brighter than they should in the middle of the city like this. But even the sounds of the city are muted tonight.
Daniel adjusts the wheelchair so that he can sit on the little iron bench but we can still hold hands.
“What if I told you that there really is a fairyland?” I say.
“I know you believe there is.”
“No, I'm not talking about my believing it or not. What if I told you I've been there? That one day, when I get well enough, I could maybe even take you there to see for yourself?”
He surprises me by not even batting an eye.
“If the chance comes up for me to see that Greatwood of yours,” he says, “I'm there.”
“You believe meâjust like that?”
“Why would you lie to me?” he asks.
I don't know where he was hiding all of my life, but I'm glad to have him in it now.
I pull him forward with my good arm until he's close enough to kiss. He's the first guy in forever that I can be close to and not feel myself shrinking away inside.
SEPTEMBER
By the official end of the summer, I can shuffle across a room with the aid of a walker. If my right arm wasn't so weak, I'd be using a pair of canes by now, but it can't support my weight on its own any more than my leg can.
On a Friday, the last one of the month, I'm doing my usual physical therapy at the rehab and Sophie's off running some errands and collecting
my mail. I still find it odd to be keeping the loft on Yoors Street. It makes no sense to me, but the professor insists on covering the rent, and arguing with him is like arguing with a wall. Once he makes up his mind about something like this, he simply doesn't listen to you.
my mail. I still find it odd to be keeping the loft on Yoors Street. It makes no sense to me, but the professor insists on covering the rent, and arguing with him is like arguing with a wall. Once he makes up his mind about something like this, he simply doesn't listen to you.
But it'll be ages before I can manage those stairs againâif ever. The best-case scenario seems to be that I'll regain a lot of use from both my arm and leg, but they'll never be strong again. I'll walk with a limp and probably won't be able to dance, or run, or go for my long rambling walks ever again.
I refuse to accept that, of course, but on my bad days, it weighs heavily on me. This turns into a bad dayâthough not because of my physical limitations.
“You got a letter from Geordie,” Sophie says when she picks me up at the rehab.
Geordie's good about writing, but it's been about three weeks since I last heard from him and that letter was uncharacteristically downbeat, though he never really came out and talked about anything specific that was bothering him.
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