Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 (10 page)

Ambassadors of Ice, we went among the spring, summer and autumn corners of the world, spreading chilly whispers of false portent.

"In truth,” she said to me one day, her voice crisp as the first frost, “I need only one of you."

When the pale sun slipped below the horizon, I lowered Adriet's body into his shallow grave. With the love only a sister can feel I stroked his pale hair, leaned forward to brush my lips against his—and, so close, I saw the faint stain of green nestled in the corners of his mouth. I pressed my nose against him, breathed in softly, and smelt a tang reminiscent of my poison chamber.

"I see."

My Tower started life as a tree, one of the godtrees worshiped by summer-dwellers for the girth of its trunk, the wide spread of its branches, and the thick vibrancy of its green leaves.

Mother froze it, as she froze all things in her path.

I fell sick upon touching its frozen sap, but my unusual heritage granted me immunity to things that would kill a true being of warmth; with time I grew well again. It was my first encounter with poison. I cut chinks of the sap, stored them in a jar, used them to help Mother conquer those who rebelled. Then, as Ambassador of Ice, I encountered molten and gaseous poisons, and hoarded them also; and when I grew to understand and love warm things, I wondered if any of their poisons would harm Mother's subjects.

Adriet visited me often, flying on wings of ice to see me, and we spent many hours in my poison chamber. “What does this do?” he would ask, and I would reply with such-and-such detail I had learnt from my experiments.

Of course he noticed when my experiments increasingly concerned ice things. The gentle-grim curve of his pale lips told me his approval.

The snowdrops whispered, alarmed by the tone of my voice, but constrained by Mother's intent. She still needed me, even if she had ordered her floral subjects to dispose of my brother.

"And this will poison the snowdrops?” he asked, holding up a glass vial filled with liquid the green of spring's first leaves.

I lay on a wooden couch, my white body clothed in half-frozen vines, and toyed with the frond stretching between my dress and Adriet's identical one. “Yes,” I said, “but it requires an anchor in the ground, a living thing whose power will spread the poison far and wide."

The vial clutched in his hand, he walked back to me and tugged on the vine, drawing me to him. “Would it harm us?"

"No.” I curled a twist of his snowy hair around my finger.

"I think I know of an ... opportunity,” he said, weighing his words carefully, like a squirrel hopping cautiously from one thin branch to another. “They cannot kill me, even if Mother thinks otherwise."

Before I could voice my confusion, he pulled me closer.

I packed the earth around his body, flattened it atop him, and when he was covered I stepped back, smiling, and watched the snowdrops wilt.

"Mother,” I whispered to the wind, knowing it would carry my message to her white ears, “I hope you are afraid. We have only just begun."

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Jodi Lynn Villers

I'm just here with my mother, but the guest book scares me off the bed so I have to sleep on the floor next to her: Seventy-two hours of you know what, one page says. Recipe for romance, another says, light the fire, steam shower, music, and then make love under the skylights (PS—we left a copy of our wedding CD for everyone to enjoy). These are fresh sheets, my mother says above me. No one has had sex on these; they're clean.

I'm more afraid of the other pages in the book, but I don't want her to know. The religious guest entries are what scare me to the floor: God had a plan, and He brought us together. This inn is blessed. Jesus humbled me and now I will spend the rest of my life lifting Him higher. I can't imagine having dedication to faith, the kind that consumes and never lets go. Don't be stubborn, my mother says. Get up here.

I went to a private high school where we had to go to chapel every day. That was where I was first told to eat the wafer, the body of Christ, drink the wine, the blood of Christ. I wasn't hungry or thirsty, so I wanted to sit back down, but the thin cracker was placed on my tongue, the cup was brought to my lips. After chapel that first day of school, I chewed gum in history class to get the flesh taste out of my mouth and looked around at the other students; they all had blood dripping from the corners of their lips, right onto the notes they took.

Do you pray? I ask my mother in the dark. Sometimes, she says. When things get real tough.

I step out onto the balcony to look at the stars and have a cigarette. The smoke I blow out whirls above where heaven is supposed to be, always above. I wonder how bad things will have to get before I drop to my knees and place my palms together. I'd have to lose my car, I think. Or a limb. I rub my arm down to the elbow and stop, imagining a stump there. There are reasons to pray, I think, blowing smoke down through the balcony slats only to see it float back.

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Miriam Allred

Q:
Where can I get the big picture?

A: A big picture stands in a hospital with no more patients—a triptych, burnt, trisected air and grave-gapped ground, all hinged on hands, tipsy as scales. Under a magnifying glass, you see it is also a small picture; detail bubbles out, a feather-tatted rainbow, a sinner's foot slim as a fish, an angel's fingernail.

Left Panel

Q:
I've heard you have to give something up to grow up.

A: How often do you see a barefoot adult?

A: How many toes do you think grown-ups have inside those shoe-and-sock hooves they call feet?

A: It isn't five.

A: Do you believe in Santa Claus?

A: It isn't ten toes either.

A: Have you ever
seen
Santa Claus?

A: Yes, but you were a baby at the time. You don't remember.

The red suit always comes in climbing, sometimes like a man climbing a ladder, head up, and sometimes like an insect tight to the wall, head down so that his hair hangs in sheets across his face and his hot breath precedes him. He stops and the bars of your crib cross his face. His cheeks are jolly and his teeth flat white.

The red suit will give you anything you want, but he drives a hard bargain.

He wants your toes. Not quite yet, but before the candles blow on your fifteenth birthday. When they are ripe. Toes are never ripe. They leave the skin ripe-raw behind them. The skin soon smoothes over, careless as butter.

It's tragic what a baby will give up its toes for. A baby can't count past five or six. All those toes waving down there look like extras. A baby will laugh at its toes all day long. It will do things with them an adult would never do like suck on them or trade them for something it wants.

A baby doesn't know what it wants.

Q:
What did my Aunt Maggie trade her toes for?

A: Bottles. Not rubber-tipped baby bottles—glass bottles, adult bottles, those are what baby Maggie wanted.

Now Maggie is grown up, and she has all these bottles and she's minus her ring toe, the roast beef getter, and the one that came home, and she doesn't remember why.

There are only so many things you can put in bottles and only so many places you can stash them before bottles fill up as much of your life as bottles are capable of filling.

Next time you visit Aunt Maggie, look for them, the see-through, clear-enough-to-see.

She has stacked them in top-heavy towers that jostle and elbow out when she opens the cupboard to get you a cookie. She says, “Who wants a cookie?” (
You
, you want a cookie.) The cupboard door swings shut. It bulges apologetically—Bottles.

Does Maggie pour you a glass of milk? No, it's a bottle of milk.

What's underneath Maggie's chair? Bottles.

What happens when Maggie turns on the ceiling fan? Something skips out and up, catches the light, turns and tips it out. Falls.

Skip, catch, tip, crash. Bottles.

Why can't Maggie jump on her bed? It would break the bottles.

Your mother drops you off at Aunty's early. You call out, but she doesn't hear you. Someone is singing in the shower; the notes float strange and not-falling, different like shower spray is different from rain. A slip, a bump, a “Shit.” You call again, “Aunt Maggie!” She picks you up. She is wrapped in a towel, and you touch a bruise all squashy around her cheek. “Hey, it's okay then,” she says.

What did Maggie slip on in the shower? Bottles.

Q:
What does Santa Claus do with all those toes?

A: He keeps them in jars.

Aunt Maggie is dating a man named Dumas. She goes to his apartment when she is hot and can't turn on her fan. Maggie and Dumas lie on a mattress on the floor and watch the fan rock. “It's going to fall,” Maggie says. “It's not,” says Dumas. “The wobbles are illusionary."

The fan chops the air over their faces into shadows. Maggie and Dumas talk about things that would probably bore you. Sometimes they fall asleep while they're talking, maybe not because they're bored but because they work hard all day long. They fall asleep with their shoes still on.

This is Dumas's first apartment, and he just moved in. That's why the mattress is on the floor. The apartment greeted him with bare walls, cupboards bare, bare floor. But the ceiling and windows looked back at him, fanned and blinded, gratuitous, free.

Babies love blinds; they adore ceilings fans. Dumas doesn't. Particularly.

Q:
Couldn't Maggie keep toes in her bottles like Santa does?

A: She doesn't want to.

Q:
I've seen adults who have ten toes.

A: Try to ask questions.

A: Try to ask the adults—
Where did you get those toes? Whose are they? What did you give for them? What would you take?
Be careful, some people are toeless, and some are ruthless, and most are less than both.

A: The foot is like a fin, and toes a wave, uncountable and unaccounting. Try not to ask them to count. Try to ask something else.

Maggie hasn't seen Dumas's toes yet. She likes him, but she doesn't remember what she liked
first
. If she wants to keep breaking up with him on the table, she should do it soon, before his toes enter the picture.

A toe that is missing its neighbors is the most piteous creature—fishhook bone in fleshy sac, ridiculous nail like a flat, blind eye. Maggie doesn't know it yet, but she could never break up with a toe that looked at her like that.

Q:
What did I trade my toes for?

A: You don't know.

Center Panel

Q:
Will I be pretty when I grow up? Will I ever find love?

A: Will you have all your teeth?

A: Do you have all your teeth now?

A: Don't worry. They'll grow in and fall out and grow in again. They're already waiting to do this inside your skull.

Q:
Are three quarters a fair price for a tooth?

A: You can always change money into something else.

Q:
But I've been speculating.

A: Try not to speculate.

A: Didn't you know? No Tooth Fairy buys your teeth. You can't drive a hard bargain for them, even though you're older-wiser-sadder than a baby. You may be older, but no one is sadder than a baby. They cry all the time.

And no one wants your teeth. Teeth are ugly. They look like tombstones planted in a row, the colors gone rotten—yellow and gum-pink from granite and green. The incisors’ cutting edge and the molars’ grinding layer have a cheese grater pattern that's different for every tooth and every mouth. Like fingerprints, but not so swirly and cute—toothjagprints (you could call them).

But you'll never make the effort to find that out because teeth are ugly. No one wants them. Your parents buy them when they fall out because they love you. That's all.

They put each tooth in a plastic bag and throw it away. Or maybe in an envelope, licked and sealed and stowed in a drawer next to the obsolete typewriter with the skeletal keys. On the outside of the envelope, they write “Baby. Tooth.” Dentist parents write “Bicuspid L. Baby's.” Teeth have names, every one, but you might not care to find that out.

One of the first things Maggie and Dumas did together was help you carve a pumpkin. It was November second. They thought they could hide it from you now that Halloween had good and gone for the year, and pumpkins didn't need faces anymore. And they did.

Dumas burnt pumpkin seeds until they smelled like coffee. Maggie held your hand which held the knife which cut out squares of pumpkin flesh and toothed the jack-o'-lantern.

Maggie put a burnt seed in the pumpkin's mouth. “Look,” she said. “How's that for a tooth? Pomegranates,” she told you, “broken open, look like skulls with an excessive number of light bulb teeth.” That's the difference between vegetables and people: one has so many limbs and teeth and the other
only
so many.

The smoky seed stood in the pumpkin's mouth, superfluous, like a burnt-out candle. Both of you knew that on your pumpkin the
holes
were the teeth.

Q:
What happens to a pumpkin with teeth?

A: It goes rotten.

Q:
What happens when an animal loses its teeth?

A. It starves to death.

After your mother took you home, do you know what Dumas told Maggie? (If you had hidden under the table, you would.)

When Dumas was very little, he found a tooth under his mother's bed. It was large and rough on top and jagged at the bottom. He put it in his mouth and it tasted like a penny—sharp and organic.

The girls next door had told Dumas about the Tooth Fairy. He looked under his mother's pillow. There wasn't anything there. “The Tooth Fairy had screwed my mother,” Dumas told Maggie. “And I was concerned."

Little Dumas told his mother he'd found her tooth.

She denied it.

"Why should it be
mine
?” Dumas echoed her. He put it back in his mouth to try why. Again the taste of currency, bitter and unchanged.