EIGHT
I.
Lucie refused to tell Deena why the man on Blythe Drive deserved his punishment, other than repeating that he had hurt someone she knew. Deena noticed, however, that Lucie was extra cautious after the incident: she rarely went out alone, and when she did, she carried her knife and wore her most intimidating clothing. She carried herself with an air of royalty: chin up, back straight; when she looked at someone, she barely lowered her chin, only her eyes.
On a particularly hot afternoon, when the sun blazed so bright Alex had rolled all the blinds down and the house was dark, Lucie went outside alone. Deena watched her walk to the front entrance, a ray of hot light streaming into the house as she opened the door. Lucie looked like a salvage princess, wearing a long black skirt sweeping the floor and a frayed shirt with slices running across the back, un-strategically exposing pale skin. Her hair was flowing behind her, fluttering like black butterflies in the sunlight. She slipped on sunglasses and grabbed her purse from the floor before she closed the door behind her.
Deena didn’t like the feel of this. She smelled iron and pomegranate floating in the heavy air that churned through the house as Lucie left. Blood and passion.
Deena went to the window, opening a sliver of the blinds, and watched her sister. Lucie lifted a hand to her hair, each long finger covered with armor-like silver rings, flickering in the sun. A silver cuff wrapped around her wrist, thin chains dangling down. She was ready for battle, and Deena had the suspicious feeling that Lucie was headed towards Blythe Drive.
When I was fourteen, bangs framed my face and my hair was shoulder length and light brown. It grew long and black when I was pregnant, and I realized that it had become my shield. I read about the sacred qualities of hair: about Native Americans who cut their long hair when they were in mourning, how the Bible said a haircut was an offense to God. I read about women in East India whose hair went to their ankles, a shroud of dark beauty. In the Victorian ages, people traded locks of their hair, and they made art from the hair of the dead.
Auralia told me that pagans considered hair holy, and some people burned strands of their own hair in candle-fire to release their essence into the ether, drawing love or money or luck. She told me about the power of little braids, trapping and releasing the darkest of energies. I thought of the women in Waterhouse and Rossetti paintings, so glorious with their long locks, as if only love could ever hurt them.
I decided to let mine grow, and it grew fast until it settled a foot below my hips, where it refused to grow any longer. It was my dark shield, my armor, my screen. It held my tiaras, hid my wings when I didn’t feel like exposing them. And on the days when I longed for my baby, or my innocence, or my childhood, it was my mourning veil.
II.
Alex stirred in her bed; even her sheets were too oppressive in the stifling heat. She kicked them off, brushed her hair from her neck, and felt the tiny creases her pillow had made against her cheek. It was the middle of the day, but it might have well been night; her room was dark, with shadows dancing beneath the windows and under the door. Little veins of light bled into the room, and even that was too much; anything representing heat seemed like a personal insult to Alex.
Robert was at work, Deena was downstairs studying, and Lucie was doing God-knew-what in her room. But something had woken Alex. Downstairs, a door shut quietly, creaking with age. The front door. Alex listened to the footsteps that clicked down the side-drive, fading as they walked from the house down the street. She sat up. Reluctantly, she slipped out of bed and pulled on a light robe.
“Deena!” she called, heading downstairs slowly, grasping the banner for support in her half-sleep state.
“Yeah?” came the reply, laced with disguised worry.
“Who just left? Was that Lucie?”
Deena came out of the parlor and met Alex at the stairs.
“Did someone leave?” she asked, her eyes not meeting Alex’s.
“Oh come on, I heard her go and I was sleeping.”
Deena frowned.
“Does it matter if she left?”
Alex walked to the kitchen and sat down, weary, against the fridge where it was cool and damp.
“No. No, it doesn’t. I just wish she’d tell me when she left. Besides, it’s over a hundred degrees; she’ll roast.”
Alex rubbed her eyes.
“You two have been closer lately,” she remarked: something she didn’t like and didn’t know why.
“Yes.”
“She’ll never be like you. She isn’t religious and she broke more rules than you could imagine exist.”
“I’m not a child,” Deena said. “I know what she did. More than you do, maybe. Kids talked at school.”
“Still?”
“She’s like a legend,” Deena said, smiling.
“That’s not a good thing,” Alex frowned.
“Well, it’s all over now.”
Alex stretched her legs in front of her and sighed.
“Oh, Deena. I wish I were still young and naïve. Just be careful, ok? I don’t want her dragging you into her shit.”
Deena had never disrespected her step-mother before, and she didn’t want to now. But she rose from the table and left the room, leaving Alex alone with her resentment.
The last week of my pregnancy I started to crave peaches. They were all I wanted to eat. Auralia said it was because my baby was so sweet that she needed more sugar than most. Auralia was so good to me. In all the time I was at her home, I received only three letters from my mother, all worried and filled with advice, but I knew she was still angry. And then one day I thought, what if my daughter grew up and had a baby at age fourteen? How would I feel? But I didn’t have much time to think about it, because I felt a pain shoot through my belly and into my thighs, and I knew it was time. She was coming, and I had to let her go. I cried, both from the physical pain and the pain I felt growing, blossoming in my soul.
III.
Lucie walked to the bus station, too hot to walk all the way to Blythe Lane. She paid the fee, ignoring the strange looks from the passengers around her. She kept her head up high, and no one sat next to her, not even when the bus filled up and it was standing room only. The empty seat beside her remained so. She smiled. Her shield was burning strong, all around her, and no one could penetrate it – not even him. Not this time.
When she reached Blythe Drive, she shrugged off her memories. She fought to walk without feeling dizzy, and half-way to his house she sat down, overcome with heat. She pulled a tiny mirror from her purse, along with a stick of eye-liner. Lifting her sunglasses, she carefully applied thick lines to her waterline. Blinking furiously, Lucie studied herself in the mirror. She looked older than seventeen, twenty, maybe. The braid she had woven in her hair looked primal, like a warrior’s mark. She ran a hand under her shirt, feeling the glossy smoothness of her stretch marks. He had given her something beautiful – the only good that had come from his torture – and everyone around her had taken that away, leaving her with only the torment and nothing of the beauty.
Standing, Lucie pulled herself to her full height, which was impressive even without her heeled boots. She walked the rest of the way to the loathed house and up the front steps. She had a fleeting memory of hurrying down them three years ago – but she was a different person then. This was Lucie, the princess, the warrior, the butterfly. Not Lucie, the confused and shy little girl. She hesitated, then knocked. She only wanted to know one thing, then she could sleep better at night. The wife answered, smoking.
“You,” she said, her lip curling in disgust.
“Me,” Lucie said.
“He couldn’t walk for two days.”
“Sorry. Actually, I came to apologize,” Lucie said, the words tasting like iron on her tongue.
“He’s sleeping.”
Lucie stepped forward. The long rings on her fingers threw specks of light into the woman’s eyes.
“Wake him up,” Lucie said. “I want to apologize.”
The wife regarded Lucie for a moment, taking in the dark priestess before her.
“Alright,” she said nervously, “but if you try that shit again I’m calling the police.”
Lucie smiled grimly.
“Fair enough,” she said, and the door slammed in her face. It reopened a few moments later.
The man stood before her, his belly hanging out of his pants, chest naked. His wife stood behind him, rubbing his sweaty shoulders.
“My wife said you came to apologize,” said his all-too familiar voice.
“That’s right,” Lucie replied, her voice shaking. She quickly recovered.
“Say it,” he growled in a familiar tone.
“First, I want to ask you something,” Lucie said, baiting him, taking her time.
“What?”
“Do you have any children?”
The wife stepped forward, angry.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded, “coming to our house after you kicked my husband, asking personal questions, little bitch!
“I’m nothing but a bitch,” Lucie said carefully, watching the man’s face for any signs of recognition. There were none.
The wife glared.
“We ain’t got any children,” the man said. “My wife’s barren.”
He took pleasure in hurting others, even the people he loved, if he could love, Lucie decided. His wife was shaking with rage and regret. Well, most likely regret, Lucie thought, having married this devil. And no children to keep her company.
“Do you know who I am?” Lucie asked, the real reason for her visit.
“I admit you looked familiar the other day,” the man said, “but I can’t place you.”
Lucie smiled. He had never seen her smile.
“Oh, ok,” she said. “I was wondering, because you looked familiar to me, too. So we don’t know each other?”
The man peered closer. Lucie kept her eyes wide and her lips relaxed. Her hair blew in the breeze, silk strands spun from black clouds. She was taller, thinner, and much more mature than when she had lived at this house.
“Nope,” he decided, and furrowed his brow.
“Well then,” Lucie said, the taste of iron on her tongue again, “I’m so sorry I kicked you the other day.”
The wife nodded.
“Good. Apologize, you little bitch.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucie repeated, “I thought you were someone else.”
She waited, standing in front of the couple like a stubborn weed. The man looked genuinely confused. Could she have changed that much? Or had he wounded so many girls that he couldn’t keep them straight?
“I’m sorry you’re baron,” she whispered to the wife, not sorry at all.
The door slammed in her face. Lucie grinned, feeling safe for the first time in a long time. He didn’t recognize her. He wouldn’t come looking for her.
Not yet.
