Your Body is Changing (21 page)

Right now they were holding open Henry’s mouth and sticking their fingers in it. Even though he was not in favor of an orgy he worried about driving them away with his Cheetos breath.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“Who cares? You have like a snake tongue!” said Magna Mater.

Henry was worried because he was slobbering in front of everybody. “I do not have a snake tongue,” he tried to articulate. The inside of his mouth tasted like Cheetos and fingers. He began to gag, and the women took their fingers out of his mouth and passed around a towel.

“I do not have a snake tongue,” Henry said more clearly.

“Dude, you should like never be ashamed of your snake tongue,” said Carlotta.

“You’re trying to blow my mind with your witch tricks,” said Henry.

“I have no idea where you’re getting this. What is it with you and witches?”

“We’re just like normal college dropouts, dude.”

“We’ve read some books.”

“Some novels, some dictionaries of symbolism, no biggie.”

“He just doesn’t know how real women act in the real world, poor thing.”

“Alabama is number something in education. Something bad.”

“Are you telling us you didn’t know you have a snake tongue?”

“It’s not a snake tongue,” said Henry. “It just looks like that because I didn’t take care of it after an owl made me bite it in two.”

“An owl is a messenger from the Other World,” said Magna Mater.

“A snake is a symbol of wisdom,” said Carlotta.

“I believe the owl is also a symbol of wisdom,” said Daisychain. “What was that movie with a little owl in it? It was so cute.” She knelt with a wine bottle clenched between her bare knees, pulling on the cork. Magna Mater was opening a bag of large red plastic cups.

This was just the way orgies of sensual pleasure usually started!

“A goat is the symbol of earthly pleasure, the gateway to wisdom, the chthonic penetration. Who wants some wine?”

“Alcoholic wine?” said Henry.

“Yes, sweetie.”

“No thank you, it’s against my religion.”

“Are you a Christian, Henry?” said Daisychain.

“Yes.”

“If Jesus was alive today…”

“He is alive today.”

“I so respect what you’re saying. Anyway, if He was alive today He would so be into Greenpeace. He would be, like, leading the protests so beauty products don’t get tested on rabbits and everything? I so respect Jesus as a person.”

“Jesus drank wine,” said Carlotta.

“They have scientifically proved that the wine Jesus drank in olden times was what we now call grape juice,” said Henry.

“According to you the Bible’s always right, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, the Bible doesn’t say grape juice. It says wine. The way I remember it you can’t turn around in the Bible without catching Jesus chug-a-lugging a big old bottle of wine.”

“Ephesians 5:18 says ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’”

“Huh. It says be not drunk. It doesn’t say don’t drink. And anyway, if wine was just grape juice back then, how come they tell you not to get drunk on it?”

“I just don’t want any, okay?”

The girls shared the bottle of wine and kept making Henry stick out his tongue so they could look at it. Then they got silly and showed him their tongues, which had become dark blue with wine. They fell asleep before there could be any orgies of sensual pleasure.

“I’m afraid something’s happened to Taylor.”

“Huh?” Henry woke up with one side of his face sticking to a vinyl yoga mat. He pulled loose and rolled over. Carlotta balanced on her haunches, looking at him. She shook him a little.

“Hey. Taylor never came back,” she whispered.

“Mm,” he said.

“Come on and help me look for him.”

They left Magna Mater propped against the wall, mouth open and snoring loud, Daisychain asleep in a tangle with Little Bit, her new best friend, and in a way their embrace looked innocent and cute and in another way like a devilish horror.

It didn’t take Henry and Carlotta long to find the TGI Friday’s where Taylor had said he was going. There was one orphaned Honda Civic in the parking lot and no signs of life. They put their hands and eyes up to the dim restaurant windows, saw glasses lined upside down along the bar, half-sparkling in the half-light, chairs leg-up and vulnerable on the empty tables.

“Now what?” said Henry.

“Who knows? He enjoys being difficult.”

She walked across the parking lot with her hands on her hips, looking back and forth as if Taylor might pop up from the flat asphalt. Henry followed her.

“I already have like a hangover. You want to sit down for a minute?” She nodded toward a strip of grass, bordered by a cement curb, that separated the TGI Friday’s parking lot from a Blockbuster Video. “I just have to be near some grass, you know? There’s nothing but dead pavement in Birmingham. Come on, sit down on the grass with me.”

She sat down, breathed deep and sighed.

“You can literally feel your roots sinking into the earth. Your spiritual roots,” she said. She patted the grass. Henry sat down next to her.

“There, isn’t that nice?”

“I have allergies to lawn grass.”

“Poor baby.” She patted his hand.

Her hand was so soft and hot and smooth! Henry felt the blood running around in his head. He couldn’t think or swallow for a minute. Carlotta took her hand away from his and hugged her knees to her chest.

Henry looked at his hand. He could feel her handprint glowing on it.

“Are you an African American?” Henry said.

“Yes, sweetie, I’m black.”

“I thought so but I wasn’t sure.”

They found out that by a weird coincidence they both loved the old TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. They talked about their favorite episodes, especially the ones where nerdy Carlton got to transform himself through the power of singing, then Carlotta showed Henry a trick where she bit into a Wint-O-Green Lifesaver and it made a blue-green spark in her mouth. It was hard to see because the parking lot was pretty bright with artificial purplish light and Carlotta went through half a pack of Lifesavers before Henry saw the spark. They were laughing and giggling the whole time at the foolishness of their project and the monumental effort going into it. As the Lifesavers were consumed a certain amount of playful physical contact took place. It was discovered at last that if Henry made a kind of tunnel out of his hands, and pressed them to Carlotta’s face, and put his eyes to the dark tunnel he had made and then she bit down on her Wint-O-Green Lifesaver, he could indeed see the faint spark. To accomplish this, they had to be close—lying on their sides, in fact, face to face.

“Wow,” said Henry. “I saw it! I really saw it!” Then he said, “Ow!” and rolled onto his back, clutching his chest.

Carlotta sat up.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

Henry’s hand was wet. He held it up.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Oh my.”

Carlotta ripped open Henry’s robe.

“What’s the matter with your nipple?”

“It stings. That’s my bad chest. I got too much estrogen inside it.”

Carlotta bent close to Henry’s chest, looked at it and sniffed it. She dabbed at the wetness with her finger, sat up, smelled her finger, and put it in her mouth. Then she bent to examine him again.

“It’s not blood,” she said.

She flicked her tongue on Henry’s chest and sat up suddenly, wiping her mouth. “Oh, sweetie, I think you’re lactating.”

“What?” said Henry. He tried to sit up. She pushed him back down.

“Has this ever happened before?” Carlotta said.

“No.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“A little.”

She leaned down, pulled the hair back from her face and went to work sucking milk out of Henry’s nipple.

“Oh,” said Henry. “Oh, oh.”

“Is that better, sweetie?”

“I see sparks,” he said.

She lapped and gulped, making little sounds like mm, mm, mm, until the milk stopped coming. Then she lay down on her back next to Henry, gasping a little.

The Blockbuster was a glorious cube of light.

When Henry woke he thought it was the sun.

But it was still night. Carlotta slept beside him on the sliver of grass.

Henry felt the lump on his chest. His nipple was raw. He closed his robe. The wet patch had dried, leaving a sour stain.

Henry got up very quietly and walked over to the Blockbuster. He saw the Cokes and Skittles in rainbow rows, the DVD packages like the beautiful tiles of a mosaic, and the TVs hanging from the ceiling with nothing on their screens but a brilliant blue. The Blockbuster was so empty and perfect in its readiness, like the Bride of Christ. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

Henry reached inside his robe and touched his tender spot. He turned from the Blockbuster and looked at Carlotta sleeping on the grass.

A clattering arose and a raccoon dropped out of one of the dumpsters behind TGI Friday’s. It started off to the little wooded area behind the restaurant. Before it disappeared into the bushes it stopped, turned, took what looked to be a whole slice of birthday cake out of its mouth and held it in its tiny leathery hands. The raccoon stared right at Henry with glowing orange eyes like candlelight in a jack-o’lantern.

“What is a raccoon a symbol of, dear Lord? I’m sure it is something devilish—the devil makes a symbol out of just about every kind of animal, it seems like, according to those witches that You have seen fit to put me with. You have sent that raccoon to remind me to stay on track, probably, and not to be led astray by the sweet enticements of the devil. But I don’t think You can say me and Carlotta did anything wrong. I don’t think there’s a verse in the Bible about a man giving milk.”

One time a guest speaker had come to chapel to explain about the medical side of being crucified. His point had been to frame Christ’s purpose in a way that teenagers could relate to—drowning in your own fluids, birds eating your eyeball and flies laying eggs in your skin—and Henry indeed appreciated the inconveniences that Jesus had faced. But of all the things the speaker mentioned, one had stuck especially in Henry’s mind.

The speaker explained that the Bible is 100% compatible with logic and science, that, for example, when Christ sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane it was a perfectly normal physiological reaction to a situation of extreme anxiety and stress—as a matter of fact, people sweated blood all the time and today’s modern doctors didn’t think twice about it.

From then on Henry had been constantly concerned that he might start sweating blood. The closest he had come so far was the pork chop incident, when he had prayed every night that God would wipe clean the minds of his classmates and they would forget that he had picked up the pork chop with his fingers, and one night he had prayed so hard and wept and moaned so profusely that he had to keep going into the bathroom and examining himself in the mirror to make sure he was not sweating blood.

Now Henry was praying so hard that he was worried about sweating blood again. Or what if milk started spurting out? But he had to keep praying, no matter what, until he had an answer. Should he stay with the witches just long enough to convert them? And then when they were converted should he propose to Carlotta?

Why couldn’t Henry remember what Polly Finch looked like anymore? When he tried to see her he didn’t know if he was really seeing her or the actress who had portrayed her in the TV movie or maybe even Amy Middleton from the eleventh grade. She seemed watery, like a dream. And why would Jesus look like Luke from Gilmore Girls? That had bothered Henry from day one.

Henry went back and knelt over Carlotta to pray. “Dear Lord, please help me to save this lost soul. I believe she would come to You, Lord, and accept Your Grace, if You would help me figure out the right things to say. She is a real nice girl who unfortunately has got mixed up with some witches who claim they’re not witches. That’s probably how they tripped her up. I promise if You allow me to continue on with her we will keep the milk-sucking down to a minimum. If you could help me by getting rid of that extra estrogen You put inside me and sealing off my nipple, well I sure would appreciate it and it would make my life a whole lot easier. I’m also afraid that I’m just telling myself what I want to hear because I’m so full of semen. I can’t help but believe that You have burdened me in Your Wisdom with more than the normal amount of semen, and as you know, Lord, none has come out in a long time, according to Your wishes. Maybe it is a test of my devotion but I have to be honest, Lord, I don’t know if I can handle it. Can’t you please do something about all this semen? I’d like just enough to make a baby when the time comes and that’s it. As You tell us in Hebrews, ‘Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.’ Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that means that me and Carlotta could do any kind of perverted activity we could think of once we’re married and there wouldn’t be anything You could do about it. That would be awesome. I can’t see how it would make any difference whether I’m traveling with Carlotta or Brother Lampey. The only thing I’d have to do is get one of those witches to sweet-talk the desk man, so we could sneak Bumpy out of the room. Witches like cats. I could use Bumpy as a tool of conversion—think about it. You’re going to get me where I need to go, if I know You. Maybe You only put me together with Brother Lampey so he would lead me here to this very parking lot. Yes, that’s probably it. That was a good plan, Lord, and it worked great, like all Your plans, so I guess it’s no surprise. Nothing is a surprise to You, Lord. Sorry, I feel like I’m telling You stuff You already know.”

Suddenly a sprinkler blossomed from the grass, puffing out like a cobra and making a noise like a rattlesnake. A spray of cold water hit Henry and Carlotta like the sprinkling that Catholics did out of their little sprinkle sticks, or the dribbling baptisms that Episcopalians forced on helpless little babies with no sense of redemption. Carlotta squealed and rolled over and laughed. Henry laughed, too, and let the water keep hitting him with its shocking coldness. It wasn’t full immersion, it wasn’t even close, but he realized there was some holiness to it after all, maybe not much, but some.