Only Begotten Daughter (28 page)

“What are you talking about?”

A staccato burp issued from the bottle as Jesus yanked out the cork. “No more divinity, Julie.”

A disc of pepperoni came free in her mouth, the spices gnawing her tongue. No more divinity? Godhead gone?

She felt torn, fractured, as if God’s fingers were reaching into her soul, breaking it like an egg. True, she had never deduced what her powers were for, but they were still
hers,
and on those few times she had exercised them—the dead crab, Timothy’s eyes, the deliverance of Atlantic City—the rapture had lingered for days. “I’ve always been a deity,” she protested. “It’s who I
am.
”

“Then you’ll stay, right? Please stay.”

Stay, such a seductive word. But no. She wasn’t dead. “It’s who I am,” she echoed, “but I can do better.”

Jesus smiled, sniffing the impaled cork. “Spoken like my true sister. You’re very precious to me.”

“What do we use for glasses?”

Jesus pulled their scruffy ladles from the picnic basket. “When you die, I’ll get you a shingle with an early date.” He filled the ladles with Blue Nun. “I won’t have you in pain.” Resting his palm against her cheek, he raised his wine in a toast.
“L’chayim.”

“L’chayim.”

They clanked their ladles together and drank.

The city of Carcinoma was a byzantine metropolis strung along a chain of active volcanoes, a conglomeration of crooked ramparts and twisted spires, its innumerable government buildings so dark and amorphous they might have been clots of lava spewed from the craters. A full-scale eruption was in progress when the coach bearing Julie pulled through the main gate, its portals flanked by two titanic copies of the
Winged Victory,
their heads replaced by stone skulls. Sparks drifted through the central forum like fireflies; smoke blanketed the sky. Angels and demons stood on the cement pavement and marble stairways, jaws tilted upward, mouths open, catching hot cinders on their serpentine tongues: food from above, hadean manna.

Piloted by Anthrax, the coach rolled beyond the range of the eruption, gliding past street vendors displaying carts of vintage carrion, racing through a public garden whose plaques commemorated great moments in evil—the evolution of cholera, the Dred Scott decision, the slaughter of a hundred thousand Nanking civilians by the Japanese—and stopping before Wyvern’s palace. Julie stepped out, placing her ratty sneaker on the ash-speckled plaza. Fenced by iron spears, the palace suggested a kind of upended labyrinth supporting priapic towers and voluptuous balconies. An apelike angel leaned out of the guardhouse and, recognizing Anthrax, informed him that Lord Wyvern was doing his Sunday gardening.

“Hello, Andrew,” Julie called out as the demon directed her through a wooden trellis wrapped in vines resembling barbed wire. “I’ve come to visit.”

“Julie! What a superb surprise!” The devil was merrily pruning a tree laden with wormy mangoes. He waved his secateurs. “Welcome to Eden. Yes,
the
Eden. After the fall, we had it shipped down here.” Shooing Anthrax away, he fondled a fat tomato dangling from a spidery green plant. “To tell you the truth, I expected you much sooner.”

“I’ve been happy in hell,” Julie asserted. Breezes sinuated through the garden like small tornadoes, making the mangoes sway. The grass beneath her feet twitched with the maneuvers of ant battalions. “I’ve been useful.”

Wyvern guffawed, tipping his left horn in the general direction of Jesus’ cave. “Fifteen years running some ludicrous lemonade stand—you call that useful? Your brother was always something of a masochist, but
you,
I thought you had better sense.”

“I’m homesick. I want to go home.”

The devil angled his tail toward hell’s vault. “
I
won’t abide any more deities running around up there. You people are such wild cards.”

“Jesus told me your price.” She folded her arms across her sweatshirt in a posture of defiance. “I’m prepared to give it up.”

I’m not, she thought. It’s me. A person needs her heritage.

“Are you certain?” asked Wyvern.

Screw heritage. Screw divinity. “Uh-huh.”

“Look at the bright side—look at what you’re getting.” A huge grin bisected the devil’s leathery, crimson face. “The earth, a full life, no more huddled masses cluttering up your driveway …”

“Take it. Take my divinity.”

“It will hurt.”

Coldness climbed up Julie’s vertebrae, lodging against her neck like a guillotine blade. “I’m tough.”

“Stand still.” Wyvern’s left paw was suddenly aglow, each scale winking like a jewel. “Don’t move.”

There followed an obscene rendition of Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam,
the devil reaching toward her, index finger erect. The hot claw touched her sweatshirt, burned through the cotton, and kept moving, splitting her flesh like a surgeon’s knife.

I won’t cry out, she vowed. Won’t. Won’t.

Wyvern leaned in close and kissed her, his lips leeching on her cheek, his breath clawing her eyes. “Love your enemies, right?” he said.

The volcanoes snorted like minotaurs. They roared like hadean blast furnaces.

Now came his other fingers, now his whole brown and bristled paw, moving through skin and gristle, unbuckling her ribs as if they were the halves of an overcoat, driving deeper and deeper into her chest, searching, probing, and she knew this was pain,
pain,
the endless ripping, slashing, chopping hell of it. Within and without she bled; she felt the horrid warmth. Her teeth crashed together, a bite to grind perdition’s iron, red sparks flying from the friction, and still she kept silent, even when he continued to twist and dig as if his hand were a gravedigger’s spade, her chest a plot of earth.

After an infinity he found the thing, found her godhead and exhumed it, plucking it from its fleshy tomb and bearing it into the light of day.

Her divinity was a bird. It was a white glistery dove, now trapped in Wyvern’s paw. Blood crowned the bird’s head, glutinous fluids flecked its feathers—a perfect dove, wholly biblical, complete with an olive branch trailing from its tawny beak.

With his free hand Wyvern massaged her wound, plucking murderous germs from the weeping wreckage, making fresh tissue grow in the cavity, rank upon rank of robust cells.

“W-why that?” Groaning, drenched in pain, Julie pointed to the olive branch. Nausea spread through her stomach like a hemorrhage.

Wyvern opened his mouth. Oily saliva spilled over his leathery gums. He spoke.

Nothing—for already a palpable darkness was flooding her brain, giving Wyvern’s voice the harsh incoherence of wind, and she heard not his words but only old memories of his words.
Heal this blind boy. Save Atlantic City. Make a grand exit.
Heal a boy, save a city, fly to heaven: no, that was all over now, she realized—she would never again raise up crabs or give sight to the blind, no more cities delivered, no more flying, nothing but the fire in her chest and the oncoming night and her falling flesh, falling, falling—

N
O ECTOGENESIS MACHINE THIS
time. No immaculate glass birth canal, no steamy soap-scented laundry room, no soft crib with plastic geese circling overhead. Just nakedness and mud. Like worms determined to devour you, the mud seeks every opening, your nose, ears, mouth, vagina. The hot afternoon sun batters you, the mud sickens you, and, oh, how you want to rise. You cannot; even the thought of movement is exhausting. Pinned on your side, pasted to the world, you stare at the mud, naming the creatures that thrive amid the spartina grass and cat-o’-nine-tails: mosquito, gnat, garter snake, snapping turtle. God’s mistakes? Satan’s masterpieces? No, this is the modern age, 2012 in fact. Darwin’s dice throws.

The sinister buzzing something you named
dragonfly
lands on the soft yellow object you termed
lily.
The veined, translucent wings stop beating. The dragonfly’s intentions, you sense, are wicked. It will not pollinate the lily; it will rape the lily, rape it with all the ferocity of Wyvern ripping out the dove of your divinity.

You pour your strength into an upward surge, crying out as the effort echoes through your violated chest. Frosted with silt, chewing on your pain, you slog toward hard ground. A cornfield spreads before you, the frail stalks vibrant with sunlight, the ripe ears encapsulated like papooses. You run, the mud drying on your bare skin and flaking away. It’s not the corn you want, but the straw man who guards it. Your plan originates in a Universal Studios horror movie Roger Worth once made you watch, a B-picture in which the Invisible Man, cast out of society, naked, shivering transparently, steals a scarecrow’s clothing lest he die of exposure.

A preadolescent girl dresses the scarecrow, hitching up its pants with a strand of clothesline. Her T-shirt bears a deliriously happy clown and the inscription,
CIRCUS OF JOY
. She’s freckled, skinny, and gawky; except for your nudity, this whole scene might be an old
Saturday Evening Post
cover. You throw an arm across your breasts, another across your pubis. The girl’s mouth becomes an egg of astonishment, and you say, “What’s the matter, kid—never saw the goddess Venus before?”

“You’re from Venus?” she asks, impressed.

“Right.” You notice that the girl clutches a small, bald, alabaster doll—a Pro-Life Talking Embryo, according to its christening dress.

“You’re naked,” says the girl.

You drop your arms. “This is my spacesuit.”

“I’m a person,” says the Pro-Life Talking Embryo. “
I
have thoughts and feelings.”

From under her Circus of Joy T-shirt the girl retrieves a little silver crucifix attached to a gold chain, thrusting it forward as if trying to demoralize a vampire. “You a heretic?” She releases the crucifix and lets it dangle; instead of Jesus, a Revelationist lamb is nailed to the cross. “You’d better not be a heretic, lady. The hunters, they’ll shoot you. Maybe worse.”

“Let me live,” says the embryo.

You wish you had your powers back so you could flatten this brat and her stupid doll with a snap of your fingers. Brushing her aside, you unbutton the scarecrow’s plaid flannel shirt. Circus of Joy—what’s that, the floor show at Caesar’s? Good news, if true. You might be near Atlantic City.

“Hey, that’s not
yours,
” the brat whines.

You put on the shirt. Tattered and smelling like tainted bologna, it reaches all the way to your knees—the girl’s father must be gigantic. “Where am I?”

“Tyler’s Farm.”

“In New Jersey?”

“Uh-huh.” The girl gives her embryo a quick kiss on the fontanel. “The Believers’ Republic of New Jersey.”

You remove the pants. To steal a scarecrow’s clothing, you realize, is to steal its flesh as well. New Jersey, hooray. Phoebe and Bix are near. Your chest pain tapers into a tolerable throb. “You mean state.”

“Republic,” the girl insists. “We’ve seceded.”

“Seceded? That’s crazy.”

“The Jersey secession.”

“
Seceded?
Like the Civil War?”

“I’ll get Dad. If you’re a heretic, he’ll blow you away.”

You form an instant image of Dad, a Moon-type Bigfoot with overalls and a shotgun. Lord, deliver us from the wrath of Dad. Swirling around, you rush madly through the labyrinthian cornfield. You’re thirty-eight but you’re fast, a former point guard for the Brigantine Tigerettes. Is Dad behind you already, getting you in his sights?

Heretic hunters, believers’ republics, Jersey secession …
secession?
Mortality, you sense, will be thornier than you’d ever imagined.

Breaking free of the cornfield, you come to a major highway. Candy wrappers and discarded seed packets cling to the signpost:
ROUTE
30. You cross the macadam and stick out your thumb. A river of trash—fliptop rings, empty motor oil cans, broken 7-Up bottles, outdated Republic of New Jersey license plates—fills the gully between road and shoulder. Automobiles whiz toward the ocean, ancient rusted hulks intermixed with more futuristic models sporting silver-plating and clear plastic domes. But of course: it’s 2012, isn’t it? While you were gone, the future arrived.

A pickup truck pulls over, its passenger door decorated with a smiling angel holding aloft a flaming sword. With your loose shirt and muddy face, you look like a victim of sexual assault, and you decide this will elicit either sympathy or a rapist who gauges you an easy mark. In your mind you rehearse a move Aunt Georgina taught you, a technique that leaves the attacker writhing on the ground clutching his testicles. But no, forget it—the driver, while male, is small, agitated, and cherubic. A tense Buddha, sportily dressed. “Heading for the city?” he asks quickly.

“Been out of the country,” you reply, nodding. “Fifteen years. Is the Atlantic Ocean still down this way?”

The driver forces a chuckle.

You climb in. “What do you carry in this thing?”

“Sinners,” the driver answers laconically, edging into the traffic. A small, silver, crucified lamb peers mournfully from beneath his blue blazer. “Been working for the Circus almost seven years now, hauling their sinners, and they
still
haven’t given me a free pass. They simply don’t appreciate their employees.” He studies you with soft, teddy-bear eyes. “You’re a real mess, ma’am. What happened? Run into some heretics?”

Remembering the farm girl’s hostility, you put two and two together. To prosper in contemporary New Jersey, one must stand unequivocally against heresy. “Yes,” you lie. “They beat me up.”

“What devils. Should I take you to New Jerusalem Memorial?”

“Leave me at Huron.” You recognize an old Tropicana billboard that now says,
THE CIRCUS OF JOY PRESENTS:
THY SWORD SHALL COMFORT ME,
COMING APRIL 11TH
. “I’ll walk home.”

“You should see a doctor, ma’am.”

“I’m fine.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t normally tell a total stranger this, but seeing as how you’ve got a score to settle …” The driver winks mischievously. “We’ll be dealing with a heretic tomorrow night—on our own, know what I mean? They just nabbed him in Somers Point. I heard it on the CB. Interested?”