Lullaby

Chapter 17

Helen walks up with a wineglass in her hand, just a glimpse of red in the bottom, the glass almost empty.

And Mona says, «Where'd you get that?»

«My drink?» Helen says. She's wearing a thick coat made of some fur in different shades of brown with white on each tip. It's open in the front with a powder-blue suit underneath. She sips the last of the wine and says, «I got it off the bar. Over there, next to the bowl of oranges and that little brass statue.»

And Mona digs both hands into her own red and black dreadlocks and squeezes the top of her head. She says, «That's the altar. » She points to the empty glass and says, «You just drank my sacrifice toThe Goddess. »

Helen presses the empty glass into Mona's hand and says, «Well, how about you get The Goddess another sacrifice, but make it a double this time.»

We're in Mona's apartment, where all the furniture is pushed out onto a little patio behind sliding glass doors and covered with a blue plastic tarp. All that's left is the empty living room with a little room branching off one side where the dinette set should be. The walls and shag carpet are beige. The bowl of oranges and the brass statue of somebody Hindu, dancing, they're on the fireplace mantel with yellow daisies and pink carnations scattered around them. The light switches are taped over with masking tape so you can't use them. Instead, Mona's got some flat rocks on the floor with candles set on them, purple and white candles, some lit, some not. In the fireplace, instead of a fire, more candles are burning. Strands of white smoke drift up from little cones of brown incense set on the flat rocks with the candles.

The only real light is when Mona opens the refrigerator or the microwave oven.

Through the walls come horses screaming and cannon fire. Either a brave, stubborn southern belle is trying to keep the Union army from burning the apartment next door, or somebody's television is too loud.

Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. Then gunshots and tires squealing, sounds we have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf.

These drama-holics. These peace-ophobics.

With her black fingernails, Mona takes the empty wineglass, the lip smeared with Helen's pink lipstick, and she walks away barefoot, wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe into the kitchen.

The doorbell rings.

Mona crosses back through the living room. Putting another glass of red wine on the mantel, she says, «Do not embarrass me in front of my coven,» and she opens the door.

On the doorstep is a short woman wearing glasses with thick frames of black plastic. The woman's wearing oven mitts and holding a covered casserole dish in front of her.

I brought a deli take-out box of three-bean salad. Helen brought pasta from Chez Chef.

The glasses woman scrapes her clogs on the doormat. She looks at Helen and me and says, «Mulberry, you have guests.»

And Mona conks herself in the temple with the heel of her hand and says, «That's me she means. That's my Wiccan name, I mean. Mulberry.» She says, «Sparrow, this is Mr. Streator.»

And Sparrow nods.

And Mona says, «And this is my boss—»

«Chinchilla,» Helen says.

The microwave oven starts beeping, and Mona leads Sparrow into the kitchen. Helen goes to the mantel and takes a drink from the glass of wine.

The doorbell rings. And Mona calls from the kitchen for us to answer it.

This time, it's a kid with long blond hair and a red goatee, wearing gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He's carrying a Crock-Pot with a brown-glass lid. Something sticky and brown has boiled up around the lip, and the underside of the glass lid is fogged with condensation. He steps inside the door and hands the Crock-Pot to me. He kicks off tennis shoes and pulls the sweatshirt off over his head, his hair flying everywhere. He lays the shirt on top of the Crock-Pot in my hands and lifts his leg to pull first one leg then the other leg out of his sweatpants. He puts the pants in my arms, and he's standing here, hands on his hips, dick-and-balls naked.

Helen pulls the front of her coat shut and throws back the last of the wine.

The Crock-Pot is heavy and hot with the smell of brown sugar and either tofu or the dirty gray sweatpants.

And Mona says, «Oyster!» and she's standing beside us. She takes the clothes and the Crock-Pot from me, saying, «Oyster, this is Mr. Streator.» She says, «Everybody, this is my boyfriend, Oyster.»

And the kid shakes the hair off his eyes and looks at me. He says, «Mulberry thinks you have a culling poem.» His dick tapers to a dribbling pink stalactite of wrinkled foreskin. A silver ring pierces the tip.

And Helen gives me a look, smiling but with her teeth clenched.

This kid, Oyster, grabs the terry-cloth lapels of Mona's bathrobe and says, «Jeez, you have a lot of clothes on.» He leans into her and kisses her over the Crock-Pot.

«We do ritual nudity,» Mona says, looking at the floor. She blushes and motions with the Crock-Pot, saying, «Oyster? This is Mrs. Boyle, who I work for.»

The details about Oyster are his hair, it looks shattered, the way a pine tree looks struck by lightning, splintered blond and standing up in every direction. He's got one of those young bodies. The arms and legs look segmented, big with muscles, then narrow at the joints, the knees and elbows and waist.

Helen holds out her hand, and Oyster takes it, saying, «A peridot ring …»

Standing there naked and young, he lifts Helen's hand all the way to his face. Standing there all tan and muscled, he looks from her ring, down the length of her arm, to her eyes and says, «A stone this passionate would overpower most people.» And he kisses it.

«We do ritual nudity,» Mona says, «but you don't have to. I mean you really don't have to.» She nods toward the kitchen and says, «Oyster, come help me for a little.»

And going, Oyster looks at me and says, «Clothing is dishonesty in its purest form.» He smiles with just half his mouth, winks, and says, «Nice tie, Dad.»

And I'm counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 …

After Mona's gone into the kitchen, Helen turns to me and says, «I can't believe you told another person.»

She means Nash.

It wasn't as if I had a choice. Besides, no copies of the poem are available. I told him I burned mine, and I've burned every copy I found in print. He doesn't know about Helen Hoover Boyle or Mona Sabbat. There's no way he can use the information.

Okay, so there are still a few dozen copies in public libraries. Maybe we can track them down and eliminate page 27 while we hunt for the original source material.

«The Book of Shadows,» Helen says.

The grimoire, as witches call it. The book of spells. All the power in the world.

The doorbell rings, and the next man drops his baggy shorts and peels off his T-shirt and tells us his name is Hedgehog. The details about Hedgehog include the empty skin shaking on his arms and chest and ass. His curly black pubic hair matches the couple of hairs stuck to my palm after we shake hands.

Helen's hands draw up inside the cuffs of her coat sleeves, and she goes to the mantel, takes an orange from the altar, and starts to peel it.

A man named Badger with a real parrot on one shoulder arrives. A woman named Clematis arrives. A Lobelia arrives. A Bluebird rings the doorbell. Then a Possum. Then someone named Lentils arrives, or someone brings lentils, it's not clear which. Helen drinks another sacrifice. Mona comes out of the kitchen with Oyster, but without her bathrobe.

What's left is a pile of dirty clothes inside the front door, and Helen and I are the only ones still dressed. Deep in the pile a phone rings, and Sparrow digs it out. Wearing just her black-framed glasses, her breasts hanging as she leans over the pile, Sparrow answers the phone, «Dormer, Dingus and Diggs, Attorneys-at-Law …» She says, «Describe the rash, please.»

It takes a minute to recognize Mona from just her head and the pile of chains around her neck. You don't want to get caught looking anywhere else, but her pubic hair is shaved. From straight on, her thighs are two perfect parentheses with her shaved V between them. From the side, her breasts seem to reach out, trying to touch people with her pink nipples. From behind, the small of her back splits into her two solid buttocks, and I'm counting 4, counting 5, counting 6 …

Oyster's carrying a white deli take-out carton.

A woman named Honeysuckle in just a calico head wrap talks about her past lives.

And Helen says, «Doesn't reincarnation strike you as just another form of procrastination?»

I ask, when do we eat?

And Mona says, «Jeez, you sound just like my father.»

I ask Helen how she keeps from killing everybody here.

And she takes another glass of wine off the mantel, saying, «Anybody in this room, and it would be a mercy killing.» She drinks half and gives the rest to me.

The incense smells like jasmine, and everything in the room smells like the incense.

Oyster steps to the center of the room and holds the deli carton over his head and says, «Okay, who brought this abortion?»

It's my three-bean salad.

And Mona says, «Please, Oyster, don't.»

And holding the deli carton by its little wire handle, the handle pinched between just two fingers, Oyster says, «“Meat-free” means no meat. Now fess up. Who brought this?» The hair under his raised arm is bright orange. So is his other body hair, down below.

I say, it's just bean salad.

«With?» Oyster says, and jiggles the carton.

With nothing.

The room's so quiet you can hear the Battle of Gettysburg next door. You can hear the folk song guitar of somebody depressed in the apartment upstairs. An actor screams and a lion roars and bombs whistle down from the sky.

«With Worcestershire sauce in the dressing,» Oyster says. «That means anchovies. That means meat. That means cruelty and death.» He holds the carton in one hand and points at it with his other, saying, «This is going down the toilet where it belongs.»

And I'm counting 7, counting 8 …

Sparrow is giving everyone small round stones out of a basket she carries in one hand. She gives one to me. It's gray and cold, and she says, «Hold on to this, and tune to the vibration of its energy. This will put us all on the same vibration for the ritual.»

You hear the toilet flush.

The parrot on Badger's shoulder keeps twisting its head around and yanking out green feathers with its beak. Then the bird tilts its head back and gulps each feather in jerking, whiplash bites. Where the feathers are gone, plucked, the skin looks dimpled and raw. The man, Badger, has a folded towel thrown over his shoulder for the parrot to grip, and the towel is spotted down the back with yellowy bird shit. The bird yanks another feather and eats it.

Sparrow gives a stone to Helen, and she snaps it into her powder-blue handbag.

I take the wineglass from her and sip it. In the newspaper today, it says how the man at the elevator, the man I wished to death, he had three children, all under six years old. The cop I killed was supporting his elderly parents so they wouldn't be placed in a nursing home. He and his wife were foster parents. He coached Little League and soccer. The woman with the walkie-talkie, she was two weeks pregnant.

I drink more of the wine. It tastes like pink lipstick.

In the newspaper today is an ad that says:

Attention Owners of Dorsett Fine China

The ad copy says: «If you feel nauseated or lose bowel control after eating, please call the following number.»

To me, Oyster says, «Mulberry thinks you killed Dr. Sara, but I don't think you know jack shit.»

Mona reaches up to put another sacrifice on the mantel and Helen lifts the glass out of her fingers.

To me, Oyster says, «The only power of life and death you have is every time you order a hamburger at McDonald's.» His face stuck in my face, he says, «You just pay your filthy money, and somewhere else, the ax falls.»

And I'm counting 9, counting 10 …

Sparrow shows me a thick manual open in her hands. Inside are pictures of wands and iron pots. There are pictures of bells and quartz crystals, different colors and sizes of everything. There are black-handled knives, called athame. Sparrow says this so it rhymes with «whammy.» She shows me photos of herbs, bundled so you can use them to sprinkle purification water. She shows me amulets, polished to deflect negative energy. A white-handled ritual knife is called abolline.

Her breasts rest on the open catalog, covering half of each page.

Standing next to me, the muscles jumping in his neck, making fists with both hands, Oyster says, «Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.»

The body heat coming off him, he says, «In egg production, did you know all the male chicks are ground up alive and spread as fertilizer?»

Sparrow flips through her catalog and points at something, saying, «If you check around, you'll find we offer the best deals for ritual tools in the medium price range.»

The next sacrifice to The Goddess, I drink.

The one after that, Helen downs.

Oyster circles the room. He comes back to say, «Did you know that most pigs don't bleed to death in the few seconds before they're drowned in scalding, hundred-and-forty-degree water?»

The sacrifice after that, I get. The wine tastes like jasmine incense. The wine tastes like animal blood.

Helen takes the empty wineglass into the kitchen, and there's a flash of real light as she opens the refrigerator and takes out a jug of red wine.

And Oyster sticks his chin over my shoulder from behind and says, «Most cows don't die right away.» He says, «They put a snare around the cow's neck and drag it screaming through the slaughterhouse, cutting off the front and back legs while it's still alive.»

Behind him is a naked girl named Starfish, who flips open a cell phone and says, «Dooley, Donner and Dunne, Attorneys-at-Law.» She says, «Tell me, what color is your fungus?»

Badger comes out of the bathroom, ducking to get his parrot through the doorway, a shred of paper stuck in his butt crack. Naked, his skin looks dimpled and raw. Plucked. If the bird sits on his shoulder while he sits on the toilet, I don't want to know.

And across the room is Mona.

Mulberry.

She's laughing with Honeysuckle. She's pinned her red and black dreadlocks up into a pile with just her little face sticking out the bottom. On her fingers are rings with heavy red-glass jewels. Around her neck, the carpet of silver chains comes down to a pile of amulets and pendants and charms on her breasts. Costume jewelry. A little girl playing dress-up. Barefoot.

She's the age my daughter would be, if I still had a daughter.

Helen stumbles back into the room. She pinches her tongue between two fingers and then goes around the room, using the two wet fingers to pinch out the cones of incense. She leans back against the fireplace mantel and lifts the glass of wine to her pink mouth. Over the glass, she watches the room. She watches Oyster circling me.

He's the age her son, Patrick, would be.

Helen's the age my wife would be, if I had a wife.

Oyster's the son she would have, if she had a son.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

This might be the life I had, if I had a life. My wife distant and drunk. My daughter exploring some crackpot cult. Embarrassed by us, her parents. Her boyfriend would be this hippie asshole, trying to pick a fight with me, her dad.

And maybe you can go back in time.

Maybe you can raise the dead. All the dead, past and present.

Maybe this is my second chance. This is exactly the way my life might have turned out.

Helen in her chinchilla coat is watching the parrot eat itself. She's watching Oyster.

And Mona's shouting, «Everybody. Everybody.» She's saying, «It's time to start the Invocation. So if we could just create the sacred space, we can get started.»

Next door, the Civil War veterans are limping home to sad music and Reconstruction.

With Oyster circling me, the rock in my fist is warm by now. And I'm counting 11, counting 12 …

Mona Sabbat has got to come with us. Someone without blood on her hands. Mona and Helen and me, and Oyster, the four of us will hit the road together. Just another dysfunctional family. A family vacation. The quest for an unholy grail.

With a hundred paper tigers to slay along the way. A hundred libraries to plunder. Books to disarm. The whole world to save from culling.

Lobelia says to Grenadine, «Did you read about those dead people in the paper? They say it's like Legionnaires' disease, but it looks like black magic, if you ask me.»

And with her arms spread, the plain brown hair under her arms showing, Mona is herding people into the center of the room.

Sparrow points at something in her catalog and says, «This is the minimum you'll need to get started.»

Oyster shakes the hair off his eyes and sticks his chin at me. He comes around to poke his index finger into my chest, poking it there, hard, pinned in the middle of my blue tie, and he says, «Listen, Dad.» Poking me, he says, «The only culling song you know is “Make mine medium-well done.” »

And I stop counting.

Fast as a muscle twitch, muscling Oyster back, I shove hard and slap the kid away, my hands loud against the kid's bare skin, everybody quiet and watching, and the culling song echoes through my head.

And I've killed again. Mona's boyfriend. Helen's son. Oyster stands there another moment, looking at me, the hair hanging over his eyes.

And the parrot falls off Badger's shoulder.

Oyster puts his hands up, fingers spread, and says, «Chill out, Dad,» and goes with Sparrow and everybody to look at the parrot, dead, at Badger's feet. Dead and plucked half naked. And Badger prods the bird with his sandal and says, «Plucky?»

I look at Helen.

My wife. In this new creepy way. Till death do us part.

And maybe, if you can kill someone, maybe you can bring them back.

And Helen's already looking at me, the smeared-pink glass in her hand. She shakes her face at me and says, «I didn't do it.» She holds up three fingers, her thumb and pinkie touching in front, and says, «Witch's honor. I swear.»