Taltos

Twenty-three

“MONA, WAKE UP.”

She heard the swamp before she actually saw it. She heard the bullfrogs crying, and the night birds, and the sound of water all around her, murky, still, yet still moving somewhere, in a rusted pipe perhaps, or against the side of a skiff, she didn’t know. They had stopped. This must be the landing.

The dream had been the strangest yet. She had had to pass an examination, and she that passed would rule the world, so Mona had to answer every question. From every field the questions had come, on science, mathematics, history, the computer she so loved, the stocks and bonds, the meaning of life, and that had been the hardest part, because she’d felt so alive that she could not begin to justify it. You know, you just know that it is magnificent to be alive. Had she scored the perfect one hundred percent? Would she rule the world?

“Wake up, Mona!” Mary Jane whispered.

Mary Jane couldn’t see that Mona’s eyes were open. Mona was looking through the glass window at the swamp, at the ragged, tilting trees, sickly and strung with moss, at the vines snarled like ropes around the huge old cypresses. Out there in the light of the moon she could see patches of water through the covering of still duckweed, and the knees of the cypress trees, so many dangerous spikes sticking up all around the thick trunks of the old trees. And black things, little black things flying in the night. Could be roaches, but don’t think about it!

Her back ached. As she tried to sit forward, she felt heavy and achy all over, and wanting more milk. They’d stopped twice for milk, and she wanted more. They had cartons and cartons in the ice chest, best to get to the house. Then drink it.

“Come on, honey, you get out and wait for me right here, and I’m going to hide this car where nobody’s likely to see it.”

“Hide this car, this enormous car?”

Mary Jane opened the door and helped her out, and then stood back, obviously horrified again looking at her, and trying not to show it. The light came from inside the car on Mary Jane’s face.

“Lord, Mona Mayfair, what if you die?”

Mona grasped Mary Jane’s wrist as she stood up, her feet squarely planted on the soft earth thick with dredged white shells, glowing beneath her. There went the pier, out into the dark.

“Stop saying that, Mary Jane, but I’ll give you some thing to think about, just in case it happens,” said Mona. She tried to lift the sack of groceries from the floor, but she could not bend down that far.

Mary Jane had just lighted the lantern. She turned around and the light went up into her eyes, making her ghastly. It shone on the weathered shack behind her and on the few feet of dilapidated pier, and on the tendrils of moss that hung down from the dead-looking branches right above her.

God, there were so many flying things in the dark.

“Mona Mayfair, your cheekbones are sticking right out of your face!” said Mary Jane. “I swear to God, I can see your teeth through the skin around your mouth.”

“Oh, stop it, you’re being crazy. It’s the light. You look like a ghost yourself.” Whoa, she felt horrible. Weak, and full of aching. Even her feet ached.

“And you wouldn’t believe the color of your skin, my God, you look like somebody sunk in a bath of milk of magnesia.”

“I’m okay. I can’t lift this stuff.”

“I’ll get it, you rest there against that tree, that’s the tree I told you about, the cypress tree, oldest one in these parts, you see this was the pond out here, the little pond???? You know??? Where the family would go rowing??? Here, take the lantern, the handle doesn’t get hot.”

“It looks dangerous. In the western movies, they are always throwing a lantern like that into the barn where the hero has been trapped by the bad guys. It breaks and sets the barn on fire every time. I don’t like it.”

“Well, nobody’s going to do that out here,” shouted Mary Jane over her shoulder, as she moved one sack after another, plunking them down on the shells. “And there isn’t any hay, besides, and if there was, it would be soggy.”

The headlights of the car bored into the swamp, deep into the endless forest of trunks, thick and thin, and the wild broken palmetto and jagged banana. The water breathed and sighed and trickled again, for all its stagnant stench and motionlessness.

“Jesus Christ, this is a wild place,” Mona whispered, but in a way she loved it. She loved even the coolness of the air here, languid and soft, not moving with a breeze, but nevertheless stirred, perhaps by the water.

Mary Jane let the heavy ice chest drop.

“No, lookie, get over to one side, and when I get in the car and turn it around like to go back out, you look yonder where the light shines and you’ll see Fontevrault!”

The door slammed, the tires churned the gravel.

The big car backed up to the right, and the beams slid over the spindly phantom trees, and lo and behold, lo and behold, she saw it-enormous, and listing horribly in the light, its attic gable windows flashing and winking out as the car made its circle.

The night went dark, but what she had seen remained, a great black hulk against the sky, impossible. The house was falling.

She almost screamed, though why she wasn’t certain. They couldn’t be going to that house, not a house leaning like that, a crippled house. A house underwater was one thing, but a house like that? But even as the car drove away, with a small, healthy blast of white smoke, she saw that there were lights in this impossible ruin. She could see through the upstairs fanlight in the center of the porch, way back, deep inside, lights. And when the last sound of the car was gone, she thought for a moment that she heard something like the playing of a radio.

The lantern was bright enough, but this was country dark, pitch black. There was nothing but the lantern and that dim, glowing coal of light inside the collapsing mansion.

Dear God, Mary Jane doesn’t realize this damned place has keeled over in her absence! We’ve got to get Granny out, assuming that Granny has not already been unceremoniously dumped into the drink! And what drink, what slime! The smell was the greenest smell she had ever smelled, oh, but when she looked up, the sky was that glowing pink that it can be in the Louisiana night, and the disappearing trees stuck their futile little branches out to connect with each other, and the moss became translucent, veils and veils of moss. The birds, listen to the birds crying. The very topmost branches were thin and covered over with webs, silvery webs, were they spiders or silkworms?

“I do see the charm of this place,” she said. “If only that house wasn’t about to topple.”

Mama.

I’m here, Morrigan.

There was a sound on the road behind her. Christ, Mary Jane was running towards her, all alone in the dark. The least she could do was turn around and hold up the lantern. Her back ached now almost unbearably, and she wasn’t even lifting anything or trying to reach anything, just holding up this awfully heavy lantern.

And is this theory of evolution supposed to account for absolutely every species on the planet at this time? I mean, there is no secondary theory, perhaps, of spontaneous development?

She shook herself awake all over. Besides, she didn’t know the answer to that question. Truth was, evolution had never seemed logical to her. Science has reached a point where once again various kinds of beliefs, once condemned as metaphysical, are now entirely possible.

Mary Jane came right out of the blackness, running like a little girl, clasping her high-heeled shoes together in the fingers of her right hand. When she got to Mona, she stopped, bent over double, and caught her breath and then looked at Mona.

“Jesus Christ, Mona Mayfair,” she said with anxious gasps, her pretty face gleaming with a thin polish of sweat, “I’ve got to get you to that house pronto.”

“Your panty hose are split to pieces.”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Mary Jane. “I hate them.” She picked up the ice chest and started running down the pier. “Come on, Mona, hurry it up. You’re going to die on me right here.”

“Will you stop that? The baby can hear you!”

There was a loud noise, a splash. Mary Jane had heaved the ice chest into the boat. So that meant there was a boat. Mona tried to hurry across the creaky, splintery boards, but each step was excruciating for her. Then, quite suddenly, she felt the real thing, had to be. A pain like a whip wrapping around her back and her waist, or what was left of her waist. She stopped, biting down hard not to shout.

Mary Jane was running back to the boat already with her second load.

“I want to help,” said Mona, but she could barely get out the last word. She walked slowly to the edge of the pier, thinking she was glad she had on her flat slippers, though she couldn’t really remember thinking to put them on, and then she saw the wide shallow pirogue as Mary Jane put in the last of the sacks, and all the tumbling pillows and blankets.

“Now gimme that lantern and you stay right there till I back her up.”

“Mary Jane, I’m kind of, well, sort of, scared of the water? I mean I feel real clumsy, Mary Jane, I don’t know if I should climb into the boat.”

The pain flashed again. Mama, I love you, I’m afraid.

“Well, don’t be afraid, shut up!” said Mona.

“What did you say?” asked Mary Jane.

Mary Jane jumped in the big metal pirogue, grabbed the long stick that was somehow anchored to the side, and then backed up the boat with some quick dipping pushes. The lantern stood at the very front, like there was a little bench or something especially for it. All the stuff was behind her.

“Come on now, honey, just step into it, quick-like, yeah, that’s right, both feet.”

“Oh God, we’re going to drown.”

“Now, darlin’, that’s plain silly, this water isn’t six feet deep here! We’ll get filthy, but we won’t drown.”

“I could easily drown in six feet of water,” said Mona. “And the house, Mary Jane, look at the house.”

“What about it?”

The world mercifully ceased to rock and roll. Mona was hurting Mary Jane’s hand, probably. And now Mary Jane had to let go. Okay, easy! Mary Jane had both hands on the pole, and they were moving away from the pier.

“But, Mary Jane, look, Mary Jane,” said Mona.

“Yeah, that’s it, honey, we don’t go but fifty feet, you just stand still, real still. This is a big, steady pirogue. Nothing’s going to make it tip. You can kneel down if you want, or even sit down, but at this point I would not recommend the bother.”

“The house, Mary Jane, the house, it’s tilted to one side.”

“Darlin’, it’s been like that for fifty years.”

“I knew you’d say that. But what if it sinks, Mary Jane! God, I can’t stand the sight of it! It’s horrible, something that big tilting like that, it’s like …”

Another flash of pain, small and mean and deep, for all its quickness.

“Well, stop looking at it!” Mary Jane said. “You will not believe this, but I myself, with a compass and a piece of glass, have actually measured the angle of the tilt, and it is less than five degrees. It’s just all the columns make those vertical lines and look like they’re about to fall over.”

She lifted the pole, and the flat-bottomed boat slipped forward fast on its own momentum. The dreamy night closed all around them, leafy and soft, vines trailing down from the boughs of a listing tree that looked as if it might fall too.

Mary Jane dug the pole in again and shoved hard, sending the boat flying towards the immense shadow looming over them.

“Oh my God, is that the front door?”

“Well, it’s off the hinges now, if that’s what you mean, but that’s where we’re headed. Honey, I’m going to take you right up to the staircase inside. We’re going to tie this boat right there like always.”

They had reached the porch. Mona put her hands over her mouth, wanting to cover her eyes, but knowing she’d fall if she did. She stared straight up at the wild vines tangled above them. Everywhere she looked she saw thorns. Must have been roses once, and maybe would be again. And there, look, blossoms glowing in the dark, that was wisteria. She loved wisteria.

Why don’t the big columns just fall, and had she ever seen columns so wide? God, she’d never, when looking at all those sketches, ever dreamed the house was on this scale, yes, it was, absolutely Greek Revival grandeur. But then she’d never actually known anyone who really lived here, at least not a person who could remember.

The beading of the porch ceiling was rotted out, and a hideous dark hole gaped above that could just harbor a giant python, or what about a whole nest of roaches? Maybe the frogs ate the roaches. The frogs were singing and singing, a lovely sound, very strong and loud compared to the more gentle sound of garden cicadas.

“Mary Jane, there are no roaches here, are there?”

“Roaches! Darlin’, there are moccasins out here, and cottonmouth snakes, and alligators now, lots of them. My cats eat the roaches.”

They slid through the front door, and suddenly the hallway opened up, enormous, filled with the fragrance of the wet soaked plaster and the glue from the peeling wallpaper, and the wood itself, perhaps, oh, there were too many smells of rot and the swamp, and living things, and the rippling water which cast its eerie light all over the walls and the ceiling, ripples upon ripples of light, you could get drugged by it.

Suddenly she pictured Ophelia floating away on her stream, with the flowers in her hair.

But look. You could see through the big doors into a ruined parlor and, where the light danced on the wall there, the sodden remnant of a drapery, so dark now from the water it had drunk up that the color was no longer visible. Paper hung down in loose garlands from the ceiling.

The little boat struck the stairs with a bump. Mona reached out and grabbed the railing, sure it would wobble and fall, but it didn’t. And a good thing, too, because another pain came round her middle and bit deep into her back. She had to hold her breath.

“Mary Jane, we’ve got to hurry.”

“You’re telling me. Mona Mayfair, I’m so scared right now.”

“Don’t be. Be brave. Morrigan needs you.”

“Morrigan!”

The light of the lantern shivered and moved up to the high second-floor ceiling. The wallpaper was covered with little bouquets, faded now so that only the white sketch of the bouquet remained, glowing in the dark. Great holes gaped in the plaster, but she could not see anything through them.

“The walls are brick, don’t you worry about a thing, every single wall, inside, out, brick, just like First Street.” Mary Jane was tying up the boat. Apparently they were beached on an actual step. They were steady now. Mona clung to the railing, as fearful of getting out as of staying in the little boat.

“Go on upstairs, I’ll bring the junk. Go up and straight back and say hello to Granny. Don’t worry about your shoes, I got plenty of dry shoes. I’ll bring everything.”

Cautiously, moaning a little, she reached over, took hold of the rail with both hands, and stepped up out of the boat, hoisting herself awkwardly until she found herself standing securely on the tread, with dry stairway ahead of her.

If it hadn’t been tilting, it would have felt perfectly secure, she thought. And quite suddenly she stood there, one hand on the railing, one on the soft, spongy plaster to her left, and looking up, she felt the house around her, felt its rot, its strength, its obdurate refusal to fall down into the devouring water.

It was a massive and sturdy thing, giving in only slowly, perhaps stopped at this pitch forever. But when she thought of the muck, she didn’t know why they weren’t both sucked right down now, like bad guys on the run in motion-picture quicksand.

“Go on up,” said Mary Jane, who had already hurled one sack up on the step above Mona. Crash, bang, slam. The girl was really moving.

Mona began to walk. Yes, firm, and amazingly dry by the time she reached the very top, dry as if the sun of the spring day had been fiercely hot, trapped in here, and bleaching the boards, look, yes, bleaching it as surely as if it were driftwood.

At last she stood on the second floor, estimating the angle to be less than five degrees, but that was plenty enough to drive you mad, and then she narrowed her eyes the better to see to the very end of the hallway. Another grand and lovely door with sidelights and fanlight, and electric bulbs strung on crisscrossing wire, hanging from the ceiling. Mosquito netting. Was that it? Lots and lots of it, and the soft electric light, nice and steady, shining through it.

She took several steps, clinging to the wall still, which did indeed feel hard and dry now, and then she heard a soft little laugh coming from the end of the hall, and as Mary Jane came up with the lantern in hand and set it down beside her sack at the top of the stairs, Mona saw a child standing in the far doorway.

It was a boy, very dark-skinned, with big inky eyes and soft black hair and a face like a small Hindu saint, peering out at her.

“Hey, you, Benjy, come help me here with all this. You gotta help me!” shouted Mary Jane.

The boy sauntered forward, and he wasn’t so little as he came closer. He was maybe almost as tall as Mona, which wasn’t saying much, of course, since Mona hadn’t broken five feet two yet, and might never.

He was one of those beautiful children with a great mysterious mingling of blood-African, Indian, Spanish, French, probably Mayfair. Mona wanted to touch him, touch his cheek and see if his skin really felt the way it looked, like very, very fine tanned leather. Something Mary Jane had said came back to her, about him selling himself downtown, and in a little burst of mysterious light, she saw purple-papered rooms, fringed lampshades, decadent gentlemen like Oncle Julien in white suits, and of all things, herself in the brass bed with this adorable boy!

Craziness. The pain stopped her again. She could have dropped in her tracks. But quite deliberately she picked up one foot and then the other. There were the cats, all right, good Lord, witches’ cats, big, long-tailed, furry, demon-eyed cats. There must have been five of them, darting along the walls.

The beautiful boy with the gleaming black hair carried two sacks of groceries down the hall ahead of her. It was even sort of clean here, as if he’d swept and mopped.

Her shoes were sopping wet. She was going to go down.

“That you, Mary Jane? Benjy, is that my girl? Mary Jane!”

“Coming, Granny, I’m coming, what are you doing, Granny?”

Mary Jane ran past her, holding the ice chest awkwardly, with her elbows flying out and her long flaxen hair swaying.

“Hey, there, Granny!” She disappeared around the bend. “What you doing now?”

“Eating graham crackers and cheese, you want some?”

“No, not now, gimme a kiss, TV broken?”

“No, honey, just got sick of it. Benjy’s been writing down my songs as I sing them. Benjy.”

“Listen, Granny, I got to go, I got Mona Mayfair with me. I’ve got to take her up to the attic where it’s really warm and dry.”

“Yes, oh yes, please,” Mona whispered. She leant against the walls which tilted away from her. Why, you could lie right on a tilted wall like this, almost. Her feet throbbed, and the pain came again.

Mama, I am coming.

Hold on, sweetheart, one more flight of steps to climb. “You bring Mona Mayfair in here, you bring her.”

“No, Granny, not now!” Mary Jane came flying out of the room, big white skirts hitting the doorjamb, arms out to reach for Mona.

“Right on up, honey, right straight, come on around now.”

There was a rustling and a clatter, and just as Mary Jane turned Mona around and pointed her to the foot of the next stairs, Mona saw a tiny little woman come scuttling out of the back room, gray hair in long loose braids with ribbons on the end of them. She had a face like wrinkled cloth, with amazing jet black eyes, crinkled with seeming good humor.

“Got to hurry,” Mona said, moving as quickly as she could along the railing. “I’m getting sick from the tilt.”

“You’re sick from the baby!”

“You go on ahead, and turn on those lights,” shouted the old woman, clamping one amazingly strong and dry little hand to Mona’s arm. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this child was pregnant. God, this is Alicia’s girl, like to died when they cut off that sixth finger.”

“What? From me, you mean?” Mona turned to look into the little wrinkled face with the small lips pressed tight together as the woman nodded.

“You mean I had a sixth finger?” asked Mona.

“Sure did, honey, and you almost went to heaven when they put you under. Nobody ever told you that tale, about the nurse giving you the shot twice? About your heart nearly stopping dead, and how Evelyn came and saved you!”

Benjy rushed by, headed up the stairs, his bare feet sounding dusty on the bare wood.

“No, nobody ever told me! Oh God, the sixth finger.”

“But don’t you see, that will help!” declared Mary Jane. They were headed up now, and it only looked like one hundred steps to the light up there, and the thin figure of Benjy, who, having lighted the lights, was now making his slow, languid descent, though Mary Jane was already hollering at him.

Granny had stopped at the foot of the steps. Her white nightgown touched the soiled floor. Her black eyes were calculating, taking Mona’s measure. A Mayfair, all right, thought Mona.

“Get the blankets, the pillows, all that,” said Mary Jane. “Hurry up. And the milk, Benjy, get the milk.”

“Well, now, just wait a minute,” Granny shouted. “This girl looks like she doesn’t have time to be spending the night in that attic. She ought to go to the hospital right now. Where’s the truck? Your truck at the landing?”

“Never mind that, she’s going to have the baby here,” said Mary Jane.

“Mary Jane!” roared Granny. “God damn it, I can’t climb these steps on account of my hip.”

“Just go back to bed, Granny. Make Benjy hurry with that stuff. Benjy, I’m not going to pay you!!!!”

They continued up the attic steps, the air getting warmer as they ascended.

It was a huge space.

Same crisscross of electric lights she’d seen below, and look at the steamer trunks and the wardrobes tucked into every gable. Every gable except for one, which held the bed deep inside, and next to it, an oil lamp.

The bed was huge, built out of those dark, plain posts they used so much in the country, the canopy gone, and only the netting stretched over the top, veil after veil. The netting veiled the entrance to the gable. Mary Jane lifted it as Mona fell forward on the softest mattress.

Oh, it was all dry! It was. The feather comforter went poof all around her. Pillows and pillows. And the oil lamp, though it was treacherously close, made it into a little tent of sorts around her.

“Benjy! Get that ice chest now.”

“Chère, I just carry that ice chest to the back porch,” the boy said, or something like it, the accent clearly Cajun. Didn’t sound like the old woman at all. She just sounds like one of us, thought Mona, a little different maybe….

“Well, just go git it,” Mary Jane said.

The netting caught all the golden light, and made a beautiful solitary place of this big soft bed. Nice place to die, maybe better than in the stream with the flowers.

The pain came again, but this time she was so much more comfortable. What were you supposed to do? She’d read about it. Suck in your breath or something? She couldn’t remember. That was one subject she had not thoroughly researched. Jesus Christ, this was almost about to happen.

She grabbed Mary Jane’s hand. Mary Jane lay beside her, looking down into her face, wiping her forehead now with something soft and white, softer than a handkerchief.

“Yes, darlin’, I’m here, and it’s getting bigger and bigger, Mona, it’s just not, it’s …”

“It will be born,” Mona whispered. “It’s mine. It will be born, but if I die, you have to do it for me, you and Morrigan together.”

“What!”

“Make a bier of flowers for me-”

“Make a what?”

“Hush up, I’m telling you something that really matters.”

“Mary Jane!” Granny roared from the foot of the steps. “You come down here and help Benjy carry me up now, girl!”

“Make a raft, a raft, all full of flowers, you know,” Mona said. “Wisteria, roses, all those things growing outside, swamp irises …”

“Yeah, yeah, and then what!”

“Only make it fragile, real fragile, so that as I float away on it, it will slowly fall apart in the current, and I’ll go down into the water…. like Ophelia!”

“Yeah, okay, anything you say! Mona, I am scared now. I am really scared.”

“Then be a witch, ’cause there’s no changing anybody’s mind now, is there?”

Something broke! Just as if a hole had been poked through it. Christ, was she dead inside?

No, Mother, but I am coming. Please be ready to take my hand. I need you.

Mary Jane had drawn up on her knees, her hands slapped to the sides of her face.

“In the name of God!”

“Help it! Mary Jane! Help it!” screamed Mona.

Mary Jane shut her eyes tight and laid her hands on the mountain of Mona’s belly. The pain blinded Mona. She tried to see, to see the light in the netting, and to see Mary Jane’s squeezed-shut eyes, and feel her hands, and hear her whispering, but she couldn’t. She was falling. Down through the swamp trees with her hands up, trying to catch the branches.

“Granny, come help!” screamed Mary Jane.

And there came the rapid patter of the old woman’s feet!

“Benjy, get out!” the old woman screamed. “Go back downstairs, out, you hear me?”

Down, down through the swamps, the pain getting tighter and tighter. Jesus Christ, no wonder women hate this! No joke. This is horrible. God help me!

“Lord, Jesus Christ, Mary Jane,” Granny cried. “It’s a walking baby!”

“Granny, help me, take her hand, take it. Granny, you know what she is?”

“A walking baby, child. I’ve heard of them all my life, but never seen one. Jesus, child. When a walking baby was born out there in the swamps, to Ida Bell Mayfair, when I was a child, they said it stood taller than its mother as soon as it came walking out, and Grandpère Tobias went down there and chopped it up with an ax while the mother was laying there in the bed, screaming! Haven’t you never heard of the walking babies, child? In Santo Domingo they burned them!”

“No, not this baby!” wailed Mona. She groped in the dark, trying to open her eyes. Dear God, the pain. And suddenly a small slippery hand caught hers. Don’t die, Mama.

“Oh, Hail Mary, full of grace,” said Granny, and Mary Jane started the same prayer, only one line behind her, as if it were a reel. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is …”

“Look at me, Mama!” The whisper was right by her ear. “Look at me! Mama, I need you, help me, make me grow big, big, big.”

“Grow big!” cried the women, but their voices were a long way off. “Grow big! Hail Mary, full of grace, help her grow big.”

Mona laughed! That’s right, Mother of God, help my walking baby!

But she was falling down through the trees forever, and quite suddenly someone grabbed both her hands, yes, and she looked up through the sparkling green light and she saw her own face above her! Her very own face, pale and with the same freckles and the same green eyes, and the red hair tumbling down. Was it her own self, reaching down to stop her fall, to save her? That was her own smile!

“No, Mama, it’s me.” Both hands clasped her hands. “Look at me. It’s Morrigan.”

Slowly she opened her eyes. She gasped, trying to breathe, breathe against the weight, trying to lift her head, reach for her beautiful red hair, raise up high enough just to … just to hold her face, hold it, and … kiss her.