Dangerous Angels (6 page)

Witch Baby passed the Charlie Chaplin Theater that had been shut down a long time ago and was covered with graffiti now. The theater still had pictures of Charlie Chaplin on the walls, and they reminded Witch Baby of My Secret Agent Lover Man.

Someday me and My Secret will reopen this theater, she thought. And we’ll make our own movies together, movies that change things.

Witch Baby passed Canter’s, the all-night coffee shop, where a man with dirt-blackened feet and a cloak of rags sat on the sidewalk sniffing pancakes in the air. She only had fifty cents in her pocket, but she placed it carefully in his palm, then skated on past the rows of markets that sold fruits and vegetables, almonds and raisins, olive oil and honey. The markets were all closed for the night. So was the shop where Weetzie always bought vanilla and Vienna coffee beans. But next to the coffee bean shop was a window filled with strange things. There were cupids, monster heads, mermaids, Egyptian cats, jaguars with clocks in their
bellies, animal skulls; and lighting up all the rest was a lamp shaped like a globe of the world.

Witch Baby stood in front of the dust-streaked window, wondering why she had never noticed this place before. She stared at the globe, thinking of My Secret Agent Lover Man and the lamp he had told Weetzie about.

Then she opened the door and skated into a room cluttered with merry-go-round horses, broken china, bolts of glittery fabric, Persian carpets and many lamps. The lamps weren’t lit and the room was so dark that Witch Baby could hardly see. But she did notice a gold turban rising just above a low counter at the back of the store. A humming voice came from beneath the turban.

“Greetings. What have you come for?” The voice was like an insect buzzing toward Witch Baby and she saw a pair of slanted firefly eyes watching her. A tiny man stepped from behind the counter. He smelled of almonds and smoke.

“I want the globe lamp,” Witch Baby said.

The man shuffled closer. “My, my, I haven’t seen one of my own kind in ages. You’re certainly small enough and you have the eyes. But I wouldn’t have recognized you in those rolling boots. Is that what we’re wearing these days?” He looked down at his embroidered, pointed-toed slippers. “What have you come for?”

“The globe lamp,” Witch Baby repeated.

“I wouldn’t recommend the globe lamp. It’s not a traditional enough abode. On the other hand, you may not
want to be bothered with all those people rubbing the lid and whispering their wishes all the time. It gets tiresome, doesn’t it, this lamp business? They don’t understand that the really good wishes like world peace are just out of our league and those love wishes are such a risk. So the globe’s a fine disguise, I suppose. No one bothering you for happily ever after. I understand, believe me; that’s why I quit. The lamp business I’m in now is much less complicated.”

“What time are we upon and where do I belong?” Witch Baby asked.

“This is the time we’re upon.” He blinked three times, shuffled over to the window, drew back a black curtain and reached to touch the globe lamp. Suddenly it changed. Where there had been a painted sea, Witch Baby saw real water rippling. Where there had been painted continents, there were now forests, deserts and tiny, flickering cities. Witch Baby thought she heard a whisper of tears and moans, of gunshots and music.

The man unplugged the lamp, and it became dark and still. He carried it over to Witch Baby and placed it in her arms. Because she was so small, the lamp hid everything except for two hands with bitten fingernails and two skinny legs in black cowboy-boot roller skates.

“Where do I belong?”

“At home,” said the man. “At home in the globe.”

When Witch Baby peeked around the globe lamp to thank him, she found herself standing on the sidewalk in front of a deserted building. There was only dust and
shadow in the window, but somehow Witch Baby thought she saw the image of a tiny man reflected there. Skating home, she remembered the lights and whispers of the world.

It was late when Witch Baby returned to the cottage and tiptoed into the pink room that Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man shared. They lay in their bed asleep, surrounded by bass guitars, tiki heads, balloons, two surfboards, a unicycle, a home-movie camera and Rubber Chicken. My Secret Agent Lover Man was tossing and turning and grinding his teeth. Weetzie lay beside him with her blonde mop of hair and aqua feather nightie. She was trying to stroke the lines out of his face.

Witch Baby watched them for a while. Then she plugged in the globe lamp, took the article about the glowing blue ball out of her pocket, put it on My Secret Agent Lover Man’s chest and stepped back into the darkness.

Suddenly My Secret Agent Lover Man sat straight up in bed. He shone with sweat, blue in the globe-lamp light.

“What’s wrong, honey-honey?” Weetzie asked, sitting up beside him and taking him in her arms.

“I dreamed about them again.”

“The bodies…?”

“Exploding. The men with masks.”

“You’ll feel better when you start your next movie,” Weetzie said, rubbing his neck and shoulders and running her fingers through his hair. “You and our Witch Baby are just the same.”

My Secret Agent Lover Man turned and saw the globe lamp shining in a corner of the room.

“Weetz!” he said. “Where did you find it? What a slinkster-cool gift! It’s just like one I had when I was a kid.”

“What are you talking about?” Weetzie asked. Then she turned, too, and saw the lamp. “Lanky Lizards!” she said. “I don’t know where it came from!”

Witch Baby wanted to jump onto the bed, throw back her arms and say, “I know!” But instead she just watched. My Secret Agent Lover Man, who didn’t look at all like Witch Baby now, stared as if he were hypnotized. Then he noticed the article, which had slipped into his lap.

“Two glowing blue globes,” he said, gazing from the piece of paper to the lamp. “I’m going to make a new movie, Weetz. One that really says something. Thank you for your inspiration, my magic slink!”

Before she could speak he took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

Witch Baby turned away. Although her walls were papered with other pieces of pain, although her eyes were globes, he had not recognized her gift. She did not belong here.

In the garden shed, behind a cobweb curtain, Witch Baby was playing her drums.

It was the drumming of flashing dinosaur rock gods and goddesses who sweat starlight, the drumming of tall, muscly witch doctors who can make animals dance, wounds heal, rain fall and flowers open. But it began in Witch Baby’s head and heart and came out through her small body and hands. Her only audience was a row of pictures she had taken of Raphael Chong Jah-Love.

Witch Baby had been in love with Raphael for as long as she could remember. His parents, Ping and Valentine, had known Weetzie even before she had met My Secret Agent Lover Man, and Raphael had played with Witch Baby and Cherokee since they were babies. Not only did Raphael look like powdered chocolate, but he smelled like it, too, and his eyes reminded Witch Baby of Hershey’s Kisses. His mother, Ping, dressed him in bright red, green and yellow and twisted his hair into dreadlocks. (“Cables to heaven,” said his father, Valentine, who had dreads too.)
Raphael, the Chinese-Rasta parrot boy, loved to paint, and he covered the walls of his room with waterfalls, stars, rainbows, suns, moons, birds, flowers and fish. As soon as Witch Baby had learned to walk, she had chased after him, spying and dreaming that someday they would roll in the mud, dance with paint on their feet and play music together while Cherokee Bat took photographs of them.

But Raphael never paid much attention to Witch Baby. Until the day he came into the garden shed and stood staring at her with his slanted chocolate-Kiss eyes.

Witch Baby stopped drumming with her hands, but her heart began to pound. She didn’t want Raphael to see the pictures of himself. “Go away!” she said.

He looked far into her pupils, then turned and left the shed. Witch Baby beat hard on the drums to keep her tears from coming.

Witch babies never cry, she told herself.

The next day Raphael came back to the shed. Witch Baby stopped drumming and snarled at him.

“How did you get so good?” he asked her.

“I taught myself.”

“You taught yourself! How?”

“I just hear it in my head and feel it in my hands.”

“But what got you started? What made you want to play?”

Witch Baby remembered the day My Secret Agent Lover Man had brought her the drum set. She had pretended she wasn’t interested because she was afraid that Cherokee
would try to use the drums too. Then she had hidden them in the garden shed, soundproofed the walls with foam and shag carpeting, put on her favorite records and taught herself to play. No one had ever heard her except for the flowerpots, the cobwebs, the pictures of Raphael and, now, Raphael himself.

“When I play drums I don’t need to bite or kick or break, steal Duck’s Fig Newtons or tear the hair off Cherokee’s Kachina Barbies,” Witch Baby whispered.

“Teach me,” Raphael said.

Witch Baby gnawed on the end of the drumstick.

“Teach me to play drums.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“There is a girl I know,” Raphael said, looking at Witch Baby. “And she would be very happy if I learned.”

Witch Baby couldn’t remember how to breathe. She wasn’t sure if you take air in through your nose and let it out through your mouth or the other way around. There was only one girl, she thought, who would be very happy if Raphael learned to play drums, so happy that her toes would uncurl and her heart would play music like a magic bongo drum.

Witch Baby looked down at the floor of the shed so her long eyelashes, that had a purple tint from the reflection of her eyes, fanned out across the top of her cheeks. She held the drumsticks out to Raphael.

From then on, Raphael came over all the time for his lessons. He wasn’t a very good drummer, but he looked
good, biting his lip, raising his eyebrows and moving his neck back and forth so his dreadlocks danced. For Witch Baby, the best part of the lessons was when she got to play for him. He recorded her on tape and never took his eyes off her. It was as if she were being seen by someone for the first time. She imagined that the music turned into stars and birds and fish, like the ones Raphael painted, and spun, floated, swam in the air around them.

One day Raphael asked Witch Baby if he could play a tape he had made of her drumming and follow along silently, gesturing as if he were really playing.

“That way I’ll feel like I’m as good as you, and I’ll be more brave when I play,” he said.

Witch Baby put on the tape and Raphael drummed along silently in the air.

Then the door of the shed opened, and Cherokee came in, brushing cobwebs out of her way. She was wearing her white suede fringed minidress and her moccasins, and she had feathers and turquoise beads in her long pale hair. Standing in the dim shed, Cherokee glowed. Raphael looked up while he was drumming and his chocolate-Kiss eyes seemed to melt. Witch Baby glared at Cherokee through a snarl of hair and chewed her nails.

Cherokee Brat Bath Mat Bat, she thought. Clutch pig! Go away and leave us alone. You do not belong here.

But Cherokee was lost in the music and began to dance, stamping and whirling like a small blonde Indian. She left trails of light in the air, and Raphael watched as
if he were trying to paint pictures of her in his mind.

When the song was over, Cherokee went to Raphael and kissed him on the cheek.

“You are a slink-chunk, slam-dunk drummer, Raphael. I didn’t really care about you learning to play drums. I just wanted to see what you’d do for me—how hard you’d try to be my best friend. But you’ve turned into a love-drum, drum-love!”

“Cherokee,” he said softly.

She took his hand and they left the shed.

Witch Baby’s heart felt like a giant bee sting, like a bee had stung her inside where her heart was supposed to be. Every time she heard her own drumbeats echoing in her head, the sting swelled with poison. She threw herself against the drums, kicking and clawing until she was bruised and some of the drumskins were torn. Then she curled up on the floor of the shed, among the cobwebs that Cherokee had ruined, reminding herself that witch babies do not cry.

After that day Raphael Chong Jah-Love and Cherokee Bat became inseparable. They hiked up canyon trails, collected pebbles, looked for deer, built fires, had powwows, made papooses out of puppies and lay warming their bellies on rocks and chanting to the animals, trees, and earth, “You are all my relations,” the way My Secret Agent Lover Man’s friend Coyote had showed them. They painted on every surface they could find, including each other. They spent hours gazing at each other until their eyes were all
pupil and Cherokee’s looked as dark as Raphael’s. No one could get their attention.

Weetzie, My Secret Agent Lover Man, and Valentine and Ping Chong Jah-Love watched them.

“They are just babies still,” My Secret Agent Lover Man said. “How could they be so in love? They remind me of us.”

“If I had met you when I was little, I would have acted the same way,” Weetzie said.

“But it’s funny,” said Ping. “I always thought
Witch Baby
was secretly in love with Raphael.”

While Raphael and Cherokee fell in love, they forgot all about drums. Witch Baby stopped playing drums too. She pulled apart Cherokee’s Kachina Barbie dolls, scattering their limbs throughout the cottage and even sticking some parts in Brandy-Lynn’s Jell-O mold. She stole Duck’s Fig Newtons, made dresses out of Dirk’s best shirts and bit Weetzie’s fingers when Weetzie tried to serve her vegetables.

“Witch Baby! Stop that! Weetzie’s fingers are not carrots!” My Secret Agent Lover Man exclaimed, kissing Weetzie’s nibbled fingertips.

Witch Baby went around the cottage taking candid pictures of everyone looking their worst—My Secret Agent Lover Man with a hangover, Weetzie covered with paint and glue, Dirk and Duck arguing, Brandy-Lynn weeping into a martini, Cherokee and Raphael gobbling up the vegetarian lasagna Weetzie was saving for dinner.

Witch Baby was wild, snarled, tangled and angry. Everyone got more and more frustrated with her. When they tried to grab her, even for a hug, she would wriggle away, her body quick-slippery as a fish. She never cried, but she always wanted to cry. Finally, while she was watching Cherokee and Raphael running around the cottage in circles, whooping and flapping their feather-decorated arms, Witch Baby remembered something Cherokee had done to her when they were very young. Late at night she got out of her bed, took the toenail scissors she had hidden under her pillow, crept over to Cherokee’s tepee and snipped at Cherokee’s hair. She did not cut straight across, but chopped unevenly, and the ragged strands of hair fell like moonlight.

The next morning Witch Baby hid in the shed and waited. Then she heard a scream coming from the cottage. She felt as if someone had crammed a bean-cheese-hot-dog-pastrami burrito down her throat.

Witch Baby hid in the shed all day. When everyone was asleep she crept back into the cottage, went into the violet-and-aqua-tiled bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. She saw a messy nest of hair, a pale, skinny body, knobby, skinned knees and feet with curling toes.

No wonder Raphael doesn’t love me, Witch Baby thought. I am a baby witch.

She took the toenail scissors and began to chop at her own hair. Then she plugged in My Secret Agent Lover Man’s
razor, turned it on and listened to it buzz at her like a hungry metal animal.

When her scalp was completely bald, Witch Baby, with her deep-set, luminous, jacaranda-blossom-colored eyes, looked as if she had drifted down from some other planet.

But Witch Baby did not see her eerie, fairy, genie, moon-witch beauty, the beauty of twilight and rainstorms. “You’ll never belong to anyone,” she said to the bald girl in the mirror.