Slice Of Cherry (10 page)

“Bitches,” Kit muttered.

Madda smacked her on the back of the head. “Why you wanna talk ugly on a day like today?”

“They got no call being mean to you,” said Kit, rubbing her head. “
You
never did anything. That’s why I hate stuff like this!”

“This ain’t a day to be hateful, Kit.” Madda tilted her head toward the sun. She looked less tired than usual, more like Kit on her bubbliest day, and Southern-belle pretty in her flowery sun hat. She’d spent her day off sleeping at night like a normal person, and it had done her a world of good. “We’re here to pay our respects to Cherry, and to think about how things’ve changed since the Civil War. Nothing else matters.”

The Cordelles claimed an empty table in the shade, the forest at their backs. They unpacked the food they’d made, not just for themselves, but for the other families. It was a custom to go to different tables and take a plate of whatever looked appetizing, but the generous array of food at their table was clearly being shunned. Fancy didn’t even want to think about what would happen when it was their turn to go table-hopping, how the experience might drive Kit to drown some rude person in a bowl of potato salad. Killing the old man had quieted the sisters’ inner murderers, but Fancy wasn’t sure how long it would last.

Kit didn’t look murderous just then, though; her face lit like a Fourth of July sparkler. “There’s Gabriel and Ilan!” she cried.

The brothers were way on the other side of the glade, in the midst of the touch footballers, waving at them.
Gabriel
was waving. Ilan just stared at Fancy and rolled up the sleeves of his black dress shirt, as if he intended to go to work on her.

Fancy harrumphed and picked a strawberry off Madda’s slice of cheesecake. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t, huh?” Madda gave her a sly look. “Ilan’s a nice boy.”

“You don’t know that,” Fancy said around a mouthful of strawberry.

“I
do
know that.” Madda scooted the slice of cheesecake closer to Fancy so they could share it more easily. “He used to deliver my lunch when I worked the day shift. Know what Ilan told me once? He told me he didn’t blame me for what Guthrie did to his family.” She smiled in Ilan’s direction. “If that’s not nice, what is?”

Fancy found herself interested, despite her better judgment. “Did y’all ever talk about what happened the night his dad—?”

Madda wiped cheesecake from Fancy’s mouth. “Only thing he wanted to talk about when he came around was
you
.”

Fancy laughed but then stopped when she noticed how hysterical she sounded. “Me?”

“He asked about you all the time,” said Madda, as though it was something to be proud of.

“Puke.” Fancy watched Ilan play touch football, watched him run down the other boys on his dangerously quick legs. “He asked about
me
?”

“Yes indeed.”

“You never told me that.”

“You never seemed interested in boys.”

“I’m
not
.”

Madda nodded wisely. “That’s what I told him. I guess he listened. Otherwise he’d’ve been trying to talk to you all last year.”

Kit, who had been listening to this exchange with some interest, sang, “Fancy’s got a boyfriend!”

“Shut up, you.” Fancy elbowed her sister, her face burning and not because of the sun.

“Fancy and Ilan sitting in a—”

“
Shut
it.”

“Both of you shut it,” said Madda, “and eat.”

“Madda,” Kit said after some time, “will our wishes really come true?”

“Yes,” said Madda with zero enthusiasm. It was as though Kit had asked whether the sun would set that night. “Wishes aren’t everything, you know,” she continued. “The worst thing you can do is rest all your hopes on a wish. A granted wish doesn’t equal a perfect life. My great-aunt Mary once wished for a child. She had been trying and trying, but she just couldn’t get pregnant. No one knew why. So she came here and asked Cherry, and the next month Mary was pregnant. But when she gave birth, the baby was dead.

“Mary cried and cried about it. She wouldn’t stop crying. And one day, while she was cursing Cherry for giving her a baby just to have it die on her, Mary’s tears turned to cherries. They rolled down her face and onto the floor, a flood of them, and spelled out the words ‘You asked for this.’”

Madda regarded her daughters, who were listening silently. “It’s okay to wish for things, but wishes are fragile, and the world we live in is very hard.”

After they finished eating, Madda shooed her daughters away from the safety of their picnic table. “Y’all go on and mingle.”

“With these losers?”

“Don’t start with me today, Christianne. You can either
come table-hopping with me, or you can mingle by yourselves. Choose.”

“By ourselves,” said the sisters in unison.

Madda smiled at them. “Good choice.”

The sisters wandered away, hand in hand. They stayed in the shadow of the forest circling the glade until they found an empty picnic table out of Madda’s sight.

Fancy kept Kit entertained with the bubble solution she’d brought along in her pocket. Projected in the clear, fragile bubbles she blew were images of genteel Madda body-slamming all the mean, unyielding women not worth the polish on her little toe. When the stereo began to play “Kung Fu Fighting,” Madda stopped body-slamming the women and began to drop-kick them instead. The sisters found this hilarious.

“What’re y’all laughing at?”

The bubbles burst. A line of kids stood before their table, eyeing the sisters.

The tall, no-neck boy who’d spoken stepped forward. “If my daddy was a murderer, I wouldn’t sit around laughing all day.”

“Maybe they’re too ignorant to know any better.” This from a girl as dark and treacherous as black ice. “We’re taking up a collection for y’all, you know.”

“For what?” said Kit breezily, even though her hands had clenched into fists.

“So y’all can go to the hospital and get neutered. The last thing the world needs is the two of y’all breeding more murderers.”

Fancy said such things to Kit all the time, but hearing it from a stranger made her want to run out and have a baby right now. How dare they tell her she shouldn’t have babies?

“First of all,” said Kit slowly, taking time to look everyone in the eye, “girls get spayed, not neutered. And second of all, the last thing the world needs is
y’all
breeding more victims.”

“
I’m
a victim?” said the boy. He leaned over the table and got in Kit’s face. The whites of his eyes were as yellow and sour as the pit stains on his shirt. “You think you can take me? You got your daddy’s blood in you?” When he opened his mouth again, Kit reached across the table and grabbed his tongue between her fingernails and yanked on it.

His head slammed to the table, allowing Kit to brace her other hand on his face while she pulled and pulled. “Quite a lot of his blood, actually,” said Kit as the other kids backed away. “The curiosity I get from my mother, though. You know what I’m curious about?” she asked the squealing boy in her
grip. “I’m curious about how hard I’d have to pull to rip your tongue out of your fucking face.”

Fancy slapped at Kit’s hands, but Kit shrugged her off. “Lemme alone. It’s playtime.”

Gabriel approached the table. He was as fresh and cool as if he’d stepped down off a cloud. He certainly didn’t have pit stains. He reminded Fancy of the statues she’d seen in the happy place, golden and perfect. If she chopped his head off, he’d fit right in.
Oh, if only,
Fancy thought as he moved in on her sister, her hands itching for an ax.

“What game is this?” he asked lightly, as if he watched girls rip out people’s tongues every day.

Kit said, “This is called watch-a-young-punk-get-his-ass-kicked.”

“Ripping out a guy’s tongue doesn’t count as an ass-kicking.”

“No?” Not that Kit had managed the ripping part yet; she couldn’t seem to get a good enough grip.

“Maybe try,” Gabriel began. “I don’t know, actually kicking him in the ass?”

Kit thought about it; the boy squealing around her grip on his tongue didn’t seem to affect her concentration one
bit. Finally she climbed over the table, pulling the boy by the tongue to his feet. Then she spun him around and kicked his ass. The guy hit the ground, and his friends immediately circled him, protecting him. Kit faced them with her hands on her hips, smiling her poison-red smile. “Now what?”

“Now,” Gabriel answered, “you let him live with the shame of getting beat up by a girl.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking their side,” yelled the black-ice girl.

Gabriel looked at the crowd of kids and said calmly, “Y’all don’t have any reason to be mad at them. They didn’t do anything.”

The black-ice girl pointed at Kit. “She pulled Robert’s tongue out!”

“Tried to,” Gabriel reminded her, and then addressed the group. “But even if she had pulled it out, if you step on a rattlesnake and get bit, whose fault is that? Do I really need to tell you what it says in the Bible about loving your neighbors? Like it or not, the Cordelles are our neighbors, and if
I
can forgive and forget, that’s the very least y’all can do.”

The crowd slunk off, chastened, carrying their shamed friend with them.

“See?” Gabriel smiled at Kit. “You win, and no one gets dismembered.” He pulled out a wet wipe and cleaned her bloody hand.

“So . . . you
don’t
like dismembering?”

“No.”

“Evisceration?”

“Not so much.” He laughed like he thought she was joking. “I’m a dull sorta guy.”

“Yeah, kinda.” She didn’t seem alarmed that he had yet to let go of her hand, even though it was now spotlessly clean. “But that’s okay.”

Someone rang a bell. A tiny bell with a hellishly bright peal that caused everyone in the glade to wince simultaneously. Someone shouted, “It’s time!”

Fancy yanked her sister from Gabriel’s sanctimonious clutches and dragged her back to their picnic table to get their pink bottles.

The bottle ceremony began soon after, and the whole mood changed. The dead moontree became the center of attention as everyone gathered around it. Porterenes brought out brightly colored glass bottles containing slips of paper with wishes scribbled on them, and tied them by the neck to the naked branches of
the tree. People stood on stepladders or rode piggyback on each other’s shoulders to reach the highest limbs, and soon every branch was full of bottles flashing in the sunlight. The kids under fifteen stood well away from the crowd at the tree, watching closely and eager for the day it would be their turn.

When the last bottle was hung, the tree looked as though a rainbow had crashed into it and become entangled. People crowded together around the tree, even crowded around the Cordelles, marveling at the tree’s sparkling beauty. In that moment Fancy didn’t hate everybody. A calm clarity settled over the world and made it simple and lovely. The wasp buzzing past her face had a fairy shimmer; the sun didn’t burn but rather fed her skin. She hummed with energy—everyone did—and no one seemed hateful, but rather like big-eyed children, regardless of age.

The only sound was of dragonflies buzzing low in the grass and the distant scream of a hawk in the woods. A soft breeze tickled the bottles and set them swaying. The wind hooted over the bottle necks, low and mournful like a voice.

“Fancy . . .”

The voice didn’t surprise Fancy. It was almost as though she had been expecting it. No one else seemed to hear it, though. Not
Madda. Not even Kit. She touched her sister’s shoulder, but Kit seemed half asleep, staring at the tree with the same awestruck contemplation as everyone else. Everyone was so still, asleep with open eyes. It felt like one of her dreams, like Fancy had stepped out of time, like the rules had all changed. The sensation wasn’t jarring; Fancy had always felt at home in her dreams.

“Fancy . . .”

The crowd parted, gliding away from Fancy as if on rollers, until she stood alone, her pinafore fluttering in the warm breeze. Even Kit had left her side. A glittering pink path materialized at Fancy’s feet, stretching narrowly across the green glade and disappearing into the woods.

“Come to me. . . .”

Fancy stepped onto the path, which clicked under her Mary Janes, and left everyone behind. She had a distant thought of whether this was how people disappeared from the world: They followed the path that came to them just to see where it led. It wasn’t horrifying, but exciting. To be called. To be chosen.

Fancy felt that inevitable tug as the dreamworld exerted its authority over her, entering the dark coolness of woods that didn’t feel like woods. She could have been anywhere or nowhere, alone in a way she’d never been before, perhaps on
the edge of the universe, where even the stars were strange.

The longer she walked, the darker and less defined things became, until the only clear thing was the glittering path. The more she walked, the more excited and sure she became that something singular and glorious awaited her.

In the darkness the path widened to form a pink circle that twinkled as though mixed with starlight. In the center stood a barefoot woman wrapped togalike in silver cloth. Her hair was wrapped in silver as well. She gleamed like a fallen star made flesh. Otherworldly . . . but familiar. Fancy knew that nose and those cheekbones. The woman looked the way Madda had when she was younger and less factory worn.

The woman held out her arms. “It’s been long since one of my own has seen me.”

“Miz Cherry?” Fancy had to fight an insane urge to curtsy.

Cherry shocked Fancy by taking her by the shoulders and kissing her cheek. Her touch was inhuman, cold and glassy like a porcelain doll, but after her initial flinch Fancy relaxed into her grandcestor’s embrace.

“You found me,” said Cherry. “I wondered if you had the strength to seek me out.” She had a strange accent Fancy couldn’t place—the
r
’s and
a
’s were all wrong.

“Ma’am,” Fancy began hesitantly, reluctant to contradict. “I
didn’t
seek you out. You called me.”

“And you came. You didn’t have to.” Cherry released her. “No one else did.”