Magdalena

(originally published in Salsa Nocturna) In a couple of hours, Magdalena will walk out of a forest and into a field. I've imaginedthe moment so many times now. One of her spaghetti straps'll be hanging down hershoulder and she'll still be carrying the machete with her. She won't be smiling. Face soserious you'd wonder if she'll ever smile again. But she will walk out into that field andfar, far away, and leave the terrible past behind her."So you're saying you still think about her?" Big Cane breaks into my imaginings.Probably because he's bored. We've been floating amidst the manicured bushes in front ofthis library for two days now, waiting, watching, watching, waiting. Not glamorous at all,this ghost hunting work."Every mothafuckin' day, B. Well, okay, not every single one. But many. And especiallyas today started coming up.""This was when you were still alive that you knew her?" His enormity demands healways be looking down at whoever he's speaking to, but otherwise, Big Cane is the leastcondescending white person I've ever met, dead or alive. When he looks at me, I believehe really does see me, not some cavewoman cartoon he caught on TV in whatevercentury he lived in, not some pitiful, overweight, punk rock colored chick that needssaving. It's something in his eyes."Yeah. This boarding school I went to." I always pause there. Don't ask me why. "Fortroubled teens."I hope I'm right about Cane, because I've told him more about my life than I've ever toldanyone else ever. He has a way of just prying stuff out of me, probably because he reallydoesn't try, just makes his little noises and occasionally sews together sentences and thenI get to babbling. Which I swear is really unlike me, except when it's not. That particulargrunt means, "I see" with an added connotation of "What are you gonna do about it,then?" We spend a lot of time together, me and Cane.I shrug and move my neck in circles to ease the soreness of so much of the same. "I don'tknow if Imma do anything, yet. There's something to be said for letting go.""Hm." Amen.At the coffee shop across the street, life bumbles along its insanely dull daily routine.We're in Riverdale, a gushy suburban corner of the Bronx and not a damn interestingthing has happened here since 1947. Probably not true: a few night clubs and assortedshenanigan holes are scattered around on Broadway, not far away, but this block righthere? Duller than death. You'd never guess there're three parasite phantoms poised tofeed on an entire room full of pediatric souls in the daycare center behind the coffee shop."Oh, look, that same mom with the two kids from yesterday," Big Cane points out."Mm." I'm getting to be more like him with each passing day of this insane stake out.Good thing I like him."'Cept she's a little later today.""Indeed." Kill me now.Cane adjusts his position, stretches those gigantic arms forward and then up above hishead. "So…I think you should do something." A rare declaration of opinion from theancient giant.I frown. "Suggestions?""Nope.""Great."*Magdalena strolled into fifth period English class late and chewing gum one chilly Fridayafternoon, and slid into the seat next to mine. She wore a purple dress and you could tellshe had those kind of breasts that just lay there against her chest and that she didn't give afuck what people thought about that. Halfway through the class she slid a folded up sheetof lined paper onto my desk with a drawing of a penis riding a mule, its grotesquely hairynutsack straddling the saddle like fat little legs. I tried to suppress a cackle, caught somesaliva in my windpipe and erupted into a coughing fit.When I recovered and Mr. Davis stopped glaring at me, I drew devil horns on the donkeyand a backpack on the penis with a little baby penis poking its head out, papoose style.That was the first time I saw Magdalena smile. It exploded like the tearing of twotectonic plates across her face; transformed her in seconds from a snarling teenager to abright little girl. Her two front teeth were huge and one laid slightly on top of the otherlike it was trying to hold it back from picking a fight with the world. Then shedisappeared the smile, perhaps never to be seen again, and concentrated on drawing themama penis and her mule.*"I think it's time," I say, more because I'm bored than any real reason.Big Cane shakes his big head. "Not yet.""Soon?"A nod and the slightest of smiles."How will we know?" I'm not usually this impatient but Magdalena's big moment israpidly approaching, and it's drenching my thought process with a swirl of gruesomeimages. Not the walking out the forest ones. Other, uglier scenes, that I'd rather not thinkabout. “The Council gonna send us a message or something?”Cane lets out a gentle chortle and rubs his big fingers into his eyes. “Council ain’t tellin’us shit except come to XYZ location, wait and move when it’s time to move. Theparasites been holed up in there for two days, gathering strength while the kids come andgo. And you and me are the eyes and ears of the Council right now, Krys. That’s it.”“So we just wait ‘till some magical moment? How do we decide what to do?”"Look, you wanna talk about what you’re really talking about?" Cane says instead ofanswering. I hate that he can see right through me. I also love it, but right now I justbristle and shrug. I am, after all, still a teenager.Cane shrugs too and it looks like a mountain range going for a stroll. "Suit yourself."I let a moment or two pass, because I don't want to seem too anxious, and then say, "It'san anniversary thing. The day and hour she turns eighteen and... The day somethinghorrible happened to her, years ago." Cane nods and I say, "On her eleventh birthday,actually." I'm not sure why I added that detail; maybe I needed to see Cane flinch likethat, to know there was still some living, feeling thing under all those translucent layersof muscle and fat. But then I feel bad, because now the sadness in his eyes won't go awayand it's too late to go back. "Her father."Cane looks like he's been slapped and for what it's worth, a part of me is relieved. Younever know how someone, especially a man, is gonna react to information like that, and Iwas afraid he'd just go on being the big stoic impenetrable badass he always is and that Iwould hate him for it.Terrible, how far and wide the tentacles of a single act can spread.*I wasn't crying as Magdalena finished telling her story but I was definitely making stupidlittle sobby noises and frowning a whole lot. It was three am on the morning of hersixteenth birthday. We'd snuck out of our dorm and holed up in a little makeshift nestmade of stolen blankets and flickering candles in the cramped props room behind theauditorium. I hiccupped and sniffled but Magdalena just sat there calm as could be likeshe was talking ‘bout what she had for breakfast. Then she told me about the promiseshe'd made to herself. A covenant, she called it, fiddling idly with one of the silver spikessticking out of her lower lip. A covenant. Then she frowned.She still had babyfat on her face and her hair was tied back beneath a red bandana. I feltso big and solid next to her wispy little frame, but for the first time in maybe ever thatbigness didn't feel like a bad thing, an awkward thing, it just felt like what I was. I wishedin that moment that I could bottle the certainty in her eyes that made it so simple andobvious to just be me. Wished I could manufacture a lifetime supply for every moment astranger's gaze told me the opposite.*"It's time."I look up from my memories. Cane is poised like a giant tiger that's about to obliteratesome unknowing gazelle. The bastard's actually smiling about the magnificent asswhuppinghe's about to deliver and that's why me and Big C are peoples. Because I'msmiling, too. Life, death, struggle, whatever: It's complicated, laden with strife anddisagreements, regret, poisoned hearts and betrayals. We're all survivors of something.And nothing helps all that muck disappear into the ether, at least momentarily, like trulywailing on some deserving fool of a soul-sucking phantom.I don't know what silent cue Cane took from the universe to tell him our moment hadcome. He never gives me a straight answer when I try to ask; instinct I guess. A thing I'monly beginning to understand. Either way, like he says, he just knows.At a nodded signal, I pull my bow and arrow from my back and aim at the sky above thecoffee shop. Feels so good, so right to stretch my arms after so long sitting and waiting.Just right. I take an extra second to double check my aim, imagining the havoc I'm aboutto unleash. I don't really need to, but this is no time for arrogance. Children's lives are atstake.I release, feel the projectile erupt from my bow, stretch upwards in a glorious arc, cutthrough the late afternoon sky above the heads of a dozen oblivious passersby. It hangsthere for a solid second, as if unsure whether or not to give in to gravity, and thenplummets. The warhead at the end is a sharpened canister: the spiritual equivalent of ashock grenade. It won't do any real damage but should stun everybody enough to give usthe upper hand.Inside the building, fourteen kindergarteners stand in a tangled shadow web. They can'tsee it of course, can't see anything in their semi-comatose state, but those misty linesstretch between the three hunched over phantoms. The parasites are fully in some kind ofhellacious meditation, all bent on their soul-sucking ways. They're draining these kids oftheir life force. The kids'll live but they'll just be shells, no vitality. Failure to thrive, it'scalled in medical textbooks. The rest of their sad lives will be a failure to thrive. At leastthat's what would've happened. Instead, my warhead comes dancing out of the sky,swoops through all those layers of concrete and wire mesh and finds its mark smack inthe middle of the feeding.Cane and I burst out of our hiding place. People walk down the street like it's just anotherday in Riverdale, strolling, shopping, going about their business. We cut through them, asudden breeze against the flesh of the living, and push into the building. The arrow hasdone its job well; the parasites stumble every which way, their long interconnectingtentacles flapping in the air uselessly. The kids blink awake; a few start crying andrunning around in circles.I bring my bow down hard on the first parasite I pass, smashing it into the ground in apathetic ghostly heap. The next one is recovering some; it lurches up at me and I meet itwith a fist in the face. The thing crumples again and I move on, stepping gingerly overthe collapsing ghost web.*After Magdalena told me about her plan we sat quietly for a few minutes. This band shelikes, Culebra, screamed and wailed on a gritty little speaker box she brought and theonly other sound was us pulling on the joint, coughing occasionally. If it had been totallyquiet, no music, no smoking, nada? I think she would've been able to hear my heartsobbing. No tears came out, although Magdalena's story has pulled the floor out fromunder me. I just let the sadness become a sleeping snake, curled up inside me. I let it risein my chest, squeezing a little tighter with each puff of smoke.After a few minutes, Magdalena opened up that big smile once again. "The other part ofmy plan is this":""Tell me.""Every year until then," she said like she was coming to the end of a really corny ghoststory, "on my birthday, I will make love to a beautiful woman."I burst out laughing, but Magdalena had folded her smile back away. I stopped laughingand we just looked at each other across the candlelight.*"Go," Cane says. He has his own covenant, the protocols of manhood. He follows themreligiously and they don't allow him to put words to what's on his mind. But he doesn'thave to. A certain tremble erupts in those ghostly pupils and it tells me everything I needto know. "Go," he says again, but he's really saying Go, because it happened to me too.Because I survived and lived a long healthy life and so should she. Go.When I hesitate he nods towards the last writhing phantom and says "I got this" in a voiceso hoarse and serious I almost hug him. But that's not the move right now and I know it.The move is get out of here and find Magdalena. Fast. So that's what I do.*"Actually," I said when Magdalena put her pretty, uneven lips against my neck, "I likeboys." I still cringe when I think about it."Me too," Magdalena said between slurps.I was lying on my back. Lying perfectly still, because if I moved, the whole momentmight shatter. "I mean I'm not gay."Magdalena didn't say anything, just worked her mouth down my shoulders and along myarms.I didn't know whether I was relieved or disappointed when she stopped kissing my toesand nuzzled up on top of me like a kitten sleeping on a baby bear in one of those feelgoodpostcard photos. I mean, I was praying the whole time, to an entity I knew no namefor, and cringing too, and I suppose all my prayers and my shame and pleasure got mixedinto one sultry, complicated sludge that got sent up to Whomever and that was that.I said, "I thought you were going to make love to me," trying to make my voice neutral."I did," she said and I felt her smile against my chest.First, I felt sad, because maybe in her strange, broken world that's what making love was.No vaginas, no ins and outs, no gooey juices; just a whole mess of the gentlest kisses inthe world placed with the utmost care on each available body part and then a goodcuddle. I watched the top of her head rise and fall with each of my breaths. I had neverfelt so peaceful in all my life. Maybe that was what making love was in my strange,broken world too, and it was everyone else who had it wrong. I smiled and was grateful itwas too dark for her to see the tears sliding out of my eyes, down my face and onto thestolen blankets.*This is where she said it would happen. I move quickly through a clearing; I'm just atranslucent flash in the darkening sky and then I'm gone, disappeared into the shadows ofthe forest.Perfect spot for a killing, really. There's no one around for miles; we're well away fromthe main road in a vast park in the murky nether region where Brooklyn becomes Queens.I glide forward on intuition mainly, because once I enter the woods it's anyone's guesswhere she might be. Maybe it's the beginning of Big Cane's magic being born in me too; Ifeel myself getting closer. Then I see her.I'm too late. Sort of. Magdalena's standing by a concrete opening in the forest floor,maybe the foundation of some building that never got built. It’s full of murky rainwaterthat looks like it’s been there for eons, all sludge and dead leaves and trash. Doesn'tmatter. What matters is the lifeless collection of limbs piled in the mulch at the edge ofthe pool. The ground is dark with blood and blood is splattered in a frantic design acrossMagdalena's white t-shirt and jeans. She's crying. Wipes a hand over her sweaty brow,slathering blood all across her face. She's still got the machete in one hand, and as I movetowards her, she places the tip of the blade against her belly and closes her eyes.This isn't how it's supposed to go. I admit I had no plan. But I thought maybe I'd make ithere before the deed was done. I'd figure out some way to prevent it but still cause thestupid guy enough holy terror to keep him from ever doing anything so foul ever again –maybe castration as a last resort – and then Madgalena would walk away, out into thefield and on into the rest of her life.I wrap around Madgalena, feel her shudder as my translucence covers her. She can't seeme; I'm only a memory, a whisper, but I'll be a whisper at the forefront of herconsciousness, I'll be memory enough to blot out all the seeping terror. She trembles, herbody still stiffened, ready to strike.I'm just new to the afterlife but I have some swagger to my magic. I squeeze tighter,throw all my spiritual strength into making my ethereal almost nothingness break throughinto that flesh and blood dimension. And Magdalena still stands there on the line,wavering slightly in the early evening breeze like some baby oak tree.It's a few minutes before I realize that whatever I'm doing isn't working. She'd thoughtthere would be some sense of relief, some triumph and closure after all that waiting andplotting. Instead there's just an emptiness so deep it infects me too: A total devastatingvoid. Magdalena lets out a sob and tightens her grip on the machete.I was a pretty devout atheist in life. That night in the prop dock was probably the oneprayer I could put my name to. Since I died I'm not so sure. Hard to deny that there'ssomething else out there when you are that something else. Cane, on the other hand, wasa true believer all through life and still hangs out in the back of some church inInglewood on Sunday mornings, smoking his hand rolled cigarettes and trying not to getmistaken for the Holy Spirit. He says every soul is like a tiny shard of glass that reflectsGod. He says when you're dead, you're just a soul, and the reflection is even stronger, notmuddled by all that flesh and blood and "'living people shit".'Right now, at this moment, I'm gonna go with Cane's view of the world, because it's thebiggest source of strength I can find. I'll be that super-magnified shard of divine light ifthat'll make some glimmer of hope filter through me into Magdalena's sad soul. I'll bethat. That emptiness keeps trying to overtake me, the sudden absence of life lying in acrumpled pile in front of us, the sudden absence of mission and fire in the girl I'msurrounding. My mind keeps trying to get distracted by the horror that just happened, butI force it back into focus.At first I think I'll imagine-up a beautiful future for Magdalena, one where she's peaceful,not haunted by today or that day eight years ago or anything else that's happened inbetween. But I need something more solid than a dreamy sunlit apartment and a warmcup of tea. Instead, I dig up a memory: The last week of my life, when every cell in mybody wanted so badly to live. Cancer won, but the imprint of that desire, that thirst forlife bubbles up inside me now and I let it overflow into Magdalena.I slide my arms down hers, ease along like a second skin across her. My whole being isvibrating with that memory, the lion's roar to live, and I let it vibrate from my core all theway through Magdalena and out into the forest around us.A minute passes, or maybe ten. I lose track. Lose track of my own trembling, transparentbody and all my joys and sorrows. Lose track of which is me and which is her or whetherit matters, which of us is teetering on the fine line between life and death. Both I suppose.And then Magdalena lets out a long, shaky breath and I know we've won. Death will haveto wait its turn for her. She lowers the machete, squats down and pushes the pile of limbsthat was her father into the green water. The last pale appendage disappears with agurgle. Magdalena stands and then walks out of the woods and into the field.