Twisted Elizabeth

"Lizzy, mija, ven aca, come here."

Mommy always speaks Spanish when she has too many tall drinks. Mommy is still in her underclothes, black but with stains and the robe with flowers that feels nice when you touch it. Her face is falling off, yesterday's face, like a snake, because she says 'I need to put on my face.' I don't like her old face; it looks sad, and dirty.

"Si, Mami."

"Don' espeak espanish, mija; we are in estados...the Yankees, they theenk you are a estreet rat."

"Yes, Mommy."

Mommy takes her hand. They get tangled with the bedsheet that goes across the doorway. She says the bad Spanish words. Then we are in the brick hallway. The hallway is good because Mommy has help to walk. The bricks in the school books are red, always red. But these are not bricks from the school books. Some are red, but many kinds of red, and yellow, and grey. Some are rough, some are smooth. Lizzy likes to run her fingers along those bricks. Mommy does too, when she drinks the tall drinks.

"Where are we going, Mommy?"

"The estage, mija, to see your Papi."

Papa has been busy. Before, he wrote and wrote. Lizzy loved hearing the tap, tap, zing of the typewriter. He wrote about a mailman and a housewife, and a pitcher and a dancer. And people would come and some would dress up and pretend on the stage and other people would dress up and watch. Mommy was always on the stage. She got to play the housewife and the dancer and one time a nun. She was funny as a nun. The ones that watch aren't supposed to make noises though, the ones in the red fuzzy seats, except sometimes it is okay to make noises: sad noises, surprised noises, laugh noises, and then Papa smiles, but they can't see him smile because he is behind the fancy curtain.

But Papa doesn't write now, he pulled out the red fuzzy seats and tossed them in a big pile, like leaves in fall for the kids in the schoolbooks. Now the theater is full of fabrics. But they aren't bricks, they are like shirts and dresses but like carpets too. They are wrapped up like a giant thimble. But you aren't supposed to play with them. Papa watches them 'for a buncha-no-good-Micks.' I don't know what is 'Micks' but they are mean and bad, my Dad told us so when he drinks from the tall bottles.

"Are you ready to see your Papi, mija?" Mommy is sad. Even more sad.

"Yes, Mommy."

We go down the stairs and around to where the ropes and switches are. Mommy pulls back the big red curtain and Papa is there. He is playing with the door in the floor, but he uses a rope so he doesn't fall in. It's like a magic trick. He floats, and even floats while he is asleep. I can float sometimes too, but Lizzie can't. Sometimes she gets mad when I do because she is sad that she can't. She can't disappear like me either, but she tried one time and Mommy hit her because she was scared.

"Mommy, why is Papa doing that!? He floats like Mary. Mama, make him stop." Lizzie is crying, but I don't cry. I am more brave but that's okay because Lizzie is more pretty like Mommy.

"He esleeps. He stays asleep for a long, long, time, mija."

"Like Rip van Winkle?"

"Si, mija." Mommy is crying again now, and her old face is coming off. Lizzie is scared. She is crying too.

"How can Papa sleep like that Mama? His face looks hurt."

"Si, mija. They hurt him. They hurt your Papi."

"The no-good-Micks? I don't like them."

"Worse than the Micks. The puto Yankees." Mommy spits. "They want Lucy; they want idiota cowboys and espace ships. Them and their estupido radio pictures." Mama spits again. She only spits when she is really really mad. Sometimes Papa makes her spit too, but mostly the Yankees.

Papa has a big paper hanging over his tummy. It's Papa's paper but I can't read yet. I can almost read but I can't read yet. Lizzie can't read yet more.

"Mama, what does Papa's paper say?"

"You wouldn't understand, mija."

"Yes I will, Papa says I'm almost a big girl."

"It says, 'My Writing Transcends Death. The Writing is ALL That Matters.'"

"I don't understand, Mommy." Lizzie doesn't know, but I think I know. Papa says that Shakesbeard is from a long, long, long time ago. But Papa still reads his stories to us from his special books. We aren't supposed to touch those books because they are fragile which means they are special books. Lizzie never touches them because she is scared but I touch them sometimes even though Lizzie gets upset.

"I know, esweet princess. Maybe when you are all grown up."

"Mama, is it okay if we leave now? Is it okay with Papa? I want flapjacks."

"Si, mija. It is okay."

"Can you make it like Papa makes it? Like Mickey?"

"Si, mija."

"Can you make one for Mary, too?"

"No mija. Mama is tired. No more about Mary. Okay?"

"Okay, Mama." Lizzie says, but then she whispers with her inside voice, “I will share with you, Mary.”

Fuck her. I learned that from Papa. And nastycunt. I learned it from when Mama is gone at night and Papa drinks from the tall drinks. Lizzie gets upset when I yell at Mama and call her Nastycunt nastycunt fuck-her nastycunt. Lizzie pulls her hair and cries and Mama gets scared.

Don't tattle.

Okay?

 Liz and Mary sit at the kitchen table. Scattered cereal blends with the gold speckle of the tabletop. Mary has hardly touched hers, but prefers it dry so there is no rush.

Grunts from the bedroom. Guttural, animal even.

Liz doesn't even notice anymore. She hums the musicals she heard from Papa's stage, at his side, him tousling her hair as he grins at his living art; Mami singing and gliding about the stage, drinking in all the energy of the cavernous space, and belting it back to the audience transformed. Liz hums now, hums the waning song of the flapping wings of a majestic Argentinian morpho, wings now tattered and torn, incapable of flight.

Liz hums and doesn't hear. Doesn't hear the thrash and struggle and obnoxious proud roars of the men who come and go, sometimes five in a day at certain times of the month, hardly any at other times. Most are human enough to not look at Liz as they pass through the beads. Some gaze and lurk. But Liz reads her books until the men pass through the beads. And then she hums and she doesn't hear anything.

But Mary hears. Mary hears everything. The flick of the lighter, the percolating, the sighs. Then the labored breathing, the shallow encouragement, the climax- one real, one scripted. Mary hears them now. The sinful noises an affront to the memory of the great playwright, Francis Merriam, and above the stage he built with his fingertips and a brilliant mind. The Writing is ALL that Matters.

The noises stop. The humming too. After some whispers, the man walks through the kitchen and gives a nervous, guilty nod and briskly departs, desperate to widen the distance between himself and his carnal weakness. 

"Mija. Come here, mija. Help Mami with her medicine. My bag, mija." Words are slurred and entirely unnecessary.

Liz comes to the disheveled bedside. Her mother's eyes loll and wander on the ceiling. Wine bottles cover each nightstand. Spoons and needles. She drops the needles into the wine bottles and sets them by the doorway. In the closet a splendid hatbox from Saks, edges worn through in spots. Inside a round black velvet handbag with crystal rhinestones on each end. Once frequented on Broadway in another lifetime. Liz opens it and brings it to the bed. The black goo in sandwich baggies blends oddly well with the black satin liner.

"Medicine, my little butterfly." Her eyes aren't open anymore.

No more needles. She spies one with a plunger in the ashtray, buried under white cigarette butts with red smudges.

"Mija?" Barely a whisper.

She brings it to the sink, pushing dishes away to make room, chipped porcelain cascades to the other basin. No counter space. Books are stacked everywhere from three separate libraries. Mary and Liz have different tastes but both read with voracious appetites for the written word. She sprinkles Ajax on the syringe and runs it under water, scrubbing the needle with a brillo pad. Bits of cereal hit her head and fall into the sink.

"Stop it."

It wasn't me.

"Stop it, Mary. You are always getting me in trouble."

What are you doing?

"You know. Mami needs it."

No. She needs something else.

"What?"

From that Gardner book. The private eye helps that sick actress. Remember? The one just like Mami.

"Mary, you know those detective books scare me. I always look away. What did he do?"

Well, the actress, she was sick like Mami, and needed poppies with the needle, just like Mami. And the dick, that's the funny thing they call the private eye-

Liz giggles.

-he came in her room when she was passed out from the poppies, like Mami, and he gave her something special to fix it. Special medicine. And it doesn't cost any money. Just a secret cure!

"Don't tease, Mary, it's not funny."

No teasing! Cross my heart. It will cure her. She will not be sleepy or hurting anymore.

Liz turns and looks at Mary, still holding the wet syringe. "You swear?"

Cross my heart and hope to die. Die die die.

"What is the secret?"

Air! Just air.

Liz stamps her foot and ruffles her brow.

Honest.

"I told you not to tease me."

I'm not, Lizzie, the air, it cleans the blood. It gets all the bad stuff out. Mami will not be sick anymore.

Liz turns back to the sink. She sets down the syringe and starts washing dishes. Mary never helps with them and Mami allows her to get away with not helping. But Mary is so smart. So very smart and remembers everything from the books they read together. Once a week from the library. Liz picks one week, Mary the next. If it worked for the private dick in Mary's book then it could work now. Mami needs help!

She sighs. Shoulders drop. "Ok, we will do it. Promise me it will make Mami better."

Promise.

"What do I do?"

Just pull the handle back.

Liz holds the syringe above her head to fill up with the better air higher up.

"Hurry, mija," Mami murmurs, her chest barely rising. "Medicina, mi mariposa."

When Liz enters through the beads, her mother offers her arm. A slender belt comes out of the kit and is cinched down on her winnowed and bruised lower bicep, a belt once elegant but now frayed with settings for precious stones no longer present, a fitting tie-off. Liz hovers the needle over the cluster of track-marks, bypassing the rough deep purple injection sights for the fresher red ones. Her aim is precise, her fingers find the right angle and depth seemingly on their own.

Mami lets out a deep sigh with the poke in anticipation of the euphoria that comes next. Liz wavers, her thumb on the plunger. She looks across the bed. Mary nods slowly, somberly.

“Hacerlo pequeña perra. ¡Ahora! ¡Rápido!” Mami seethes, her eyes shoot open to expose the blood-red spider webs colonizing her sclera.

Do it! Do it now!

Liz’s nose crinkles like the snout of a rottweiler. The curt orders of Mary and Mami give her license to depress the plunger free of complicity. She presses down hard, a brief resistance and then the vein submits. The belt is released.

Mami lets out no noise but of air sucking vainly down her throat. She claws at her chest, rending her robe and exposing a breast. She grabs at the syringe and yanks it sideways, ripping open the vein. Blood seeps down the arm as pink foam dribbles from her agape mouth.

Tremors start down her legs and arms, her fingers curl and seize like a dying bumblebee. She mimics another gasp but no air comes in. She is still, save for her lips moving about like a beached guppy’s that doesn’t know it is dead yet. A shallow exhale. A curtsy for the final showing of a traditional Greek tragedy.

Liz looks on, curious, feeling nothing but the pang of guilt for not experiencing the trepidation that such an event calls for. Mary stifles a grin.

“You lied.”

No, I didn’t. She is not sick anymore. She is better now.

Silence the retort. Neither looks at the other but keeps a downward gaze at the thing that used to be Mami.

With Papa, she was a talented actress, a graceful dancer, with a voice that could awe a crowd and make us dream in the little bed we shared.

“Yes, I still remember.”

Without Papa, she is a spick whore junky spewing her gutter Spanish and making us both fools. We did this for Papa. For us. For the stage actress Josephina Vidal in all her wonder. You knew, Liz, you knew, but you needed me to make it okay and I could not do it alone.

Liz watches little bubbles in the froth form and expire as it rolls down her mother’s cheek.

You knew, Liz.

She looks down at what once was the revered Argentinian actress. Liz’s head drops and she closes her eyes, covering them with her hands. Her fingers trace along her brow and forehead, running back along her hair. She grabs her Minnie Mouse bow, pulls it off, and shakes out her ponytail.

It drops to the bed between her mother’s legs.

“Yes. I knew.

“And never call me Liz again. I am Elizabeth Merriam. None of this matters.”

 The 34th and Penn sign is spray-painted over with “Westie,” so those in the bellows of Hell’s Kitchen know where they really are. The station lies closed after a bombing by the Irish gang on an upstart dealer. But loose chains and rusty iron gates beckon those searching reprieve and sanctuary in the abandoned catacombs.

Elizabeth squirms her way through and down the crumbled steps. The token booth is splintered and smells of shit. Broken glass crunches under her careful steps. She kneels and slips a few healthy shards into her book bag and crawls under a turnstile.

Mary follows.

They look back, a habit developed from weeks of evading DSS, and in particular, a young quixotic social worker. But after agreeing to come to her office, then shredding her NYU degree before absconding with her purse, the only people the girls must worry about wear blue. Though as long as they keep to the shadows no one is missing them, so no one is searching for them either. 

Down more splintered tile, twisting away from the light. They hear the pop and flicker promising warmth. They see shadows rippling against the barren wall opposite the tracks. On the platform, three men are gathered before a barrel alight with trash, a modern rendering of Plato’s cave.

“Well hello, girly,” one says.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Elizabeth returns.

“By gawd, ‘gennlmen,’ she says, I’ll be fucked if I ain’t heard all now!” says another.

“Shut it, Samuel, er I’ll give ya the lickin of your life, tan yer hide blacker ‘an mine,” the third scowls. And no empty boast it seems to the girls. “Come get warm, young lady. Get some fire. The Chosin Frozen know. Boy do we know, gotta stay warm.” He speaks slow and baritone. Wears a thick olive-drab coat with denim patches scattered throughout like little shrapnel wounds. On the arm three yellow chevrons and a round-red patch with a black hourglass. He smiles an invitation before turning back to the flame and his meditations.

“Yeah, Sammy, shut it. That is no way to talk to a new friend. I’m Black Tom. This is Eugene, and unfortunately you already know this slob’s name.” Sam looks wounded but resigned and turns away to smirk to avoid Tom’s judging gaze. Tom is short and wiry. Cocksure.

“But..”

“Ah yes, I’m Black Tom but ain’t black like Gene, our resident war hero here.” Sam sulks. Gene stares at the fire. “I ran with some boys with another Tom, a redhead. So I became Black Tom even though I’m not Black Irish at all, but don’t tell the Westie boys our secret,” he winks. His eyes are hungry, the kind the girls saw on men walking through their kitchen to Mami’s bedroom.

She is trepidatious, and not without cause, but advances a sense of ease, that they belong. “Good evening, Tom, Samuel, Eugene. I am Elizabeth, Elizabeth Merriam,” she says as she moves to the fire.

Old Sam grunts, feels the scowls of his companions and goes silent.

“An honor to meet you, young Ms. Merriam. What a distinguished name,” Eugene says as he tips his watch cap.  Vibrations.

“Lizzie! My what a name,” Black Tom says.

“Not Lizzie,” they say back. Just above a whisper. Rumblings grow.

“What, girl?” he returns, showing teeth.

“Not Lizzie!”

His smile wraps around his nostrils as the barrel rattles on the concrete. Blaring lights and horn invade the sanctuary of wayward dregs.

“Not Lizzie, not Lizzie! No one calls me that!”

Sam squeals, matching the sound of the passing train.

“Whoa, easy girl, easy,” says Eugene.

Tom pushes past Sam and moves towards Elizabeth, fingers dancing. Hungry.

“Somethin’ I didn’t tell you, Tom,” Eugene says, overtaking the sound of the receding subway. He scoots Elizabeth behind his big green coat.

“Yeah?” Tom forgets his hunger for the new mystery before him.

“Mouser. Says he got new product in. Says it’ll drop you right on your ass. He’s givin’ samples out for one night as a runner.”

“Where?”

“32nd. Just down from...” Tom starts out before Eugene bothers to finish. Sam follows. Before running up the steps he whips around.

“Genie, if you’re lying...”

“I ain’t.”

Tom leaves. Smiling his malicious smile, hungry again for the only thing tastier than sex and violence.

Elizabeth takes in the warmth now, wears it like a blanket. Eugene wraps her in his faded green coat.

“Rest, child.”

Elizabeth nods, begins to yawn, letting her defenses wain. “I told you, Mary, we would find someone. Our own Othello,” she mumbles. Drifting away.

The cold wakes her. Between deep winks she sees the dying embers through rusted openings at the base of the barrel. More rumblings. Eugene is asleep. She feels something. Something slithering, graceful and devious up her calf, passing to the inner thigh and up. It grabs her as the rumblings strengthen. A hand clasps around her mouth. Despite the crippling fear, or maybe because of it, she looks up, into the ravenous eyes of Black Tom. He sticks out his tongue and laps at the brackish air. “Morning, sweet Lizzie. Shhhh,” he whispers. The concrete is vibrating, but she doesn’t feel it for the shaking of dread in her legs.

Light ripples along the graffitied wall, accompanied by the blare of the conductor’s horn. Black Tom looks up. A violent collision jars his grip loose of Elizabeth. He leaves his feet in a blur of green and blue. He returns to earth with a sickening thud. Eugene drags Black Tom to the edge of the platform by the scruff of his neck. He digs his heels into the ground in vain, clawing at his tattered sweater to relieve the pressure on his throat. “Sonofabitch,” he croaks. Eugene throws him down onto the tracks. He recovers quickly, a man of a thousand fights, and draws out a blackjack from his jacket pocket. And explodes.

The train masticates little Tom Polanski, unhampered by his brief obstruction. Grinding, churning, greasing its wheels with the deconstructed parts of the violently departed.

Eugene stands inches from the edge, heaving like a spent long-distance runner. His pupils relax, looking out a thousand yards and beyond, to his youth in Memphis, and Korea. He shakes his head slow as he ponders it. Smiles a little smile, more reverential than insulting. The irony- if he killed that man in Tennessee he’d be lynched; killed him in Korea he’d be given a medal; kill him in the underbelly of Manhattan's Upper West Side and nobody gives a gotdamn. He smiles, then thinks better of it and stares at the wall, beyond it a thousand yards, to Chosin.

The train is gone. Eugene leaves his trance when he feels a tug on his field jacket. At first numb, he turns to see a small angel looking up at his ugliness with a love completely foreign to him. She is repeating nonsense. Some mantric white girl gibber jabber. But it’s soothing at that. Splotched and speckled with the bloody and visceral remains of Black Tom he holds Elizabeth’s tiny hand. And he smiles a little smile.

“What was you sayin’, young miss?” Eugene asks, tearing off a piece of day-old mandelbread and handing it to Elizabeth.

“When?” she says, chewing.

“When Thomas passed.” They are sleeping overnight in a public restroom. Two toilets are filled to the brim with shit. One light still flickers. Eugene’s hand shakes as he bites into the loaf.

“Oh,” she says between munches, her face mimicking a chipmunk, “Perdition catch my soul but I do love thee!”

“And what on earth is that, little angel?” His tremor worsens and Elizabeth can see droplets of sweat forming at his hairline, though she is frigid and bundled in his jacket.

“It is from the play, Othello, by Shakespeare,” munch, “‘Perdition catch my soul but I do love thee,’” munch, “You are my Othello, Eugene. My brave Moorish protector.”

Individual beads of sweat break and roll down his forehead. “Well that sounds fine, little girly, a step up from nigger by a mile.”

Elizabeth stops chewing, looks earnestly at Eugene until he is forced to face her gaze. “I will say this once, Eugene. Save for my sister, you are my only friend in this world. I have been forced to acquaint myself with many niggers, some colored, some Irish, and you are not one of them, Eugene. Never say that again. Never.”

His eyes go wide. “Well, little miss, you ain’t no delicate daisy, are you!?” And he smiles, despite the obvious pain he is in.

“Promise me you will not say that of yourself ever, ever again.”

“I do so promise, young miss,” he answers with two fingers pointing skyward. “Scout’s honor.”

Elizabeth smiles and goes back to her bread. Eugene doubles over and bobs like an Orthodox Jew at the Wailing Wall. “Oh, girly. I am in a bad way. I have to get some medicine in me. I’ll be awhile. Stay put, be quiet, read dem books a yours. Don’t open this door for no one, ya hear?”

Munch. “I won’t, scout’s honor.”

Eugene leaves. Elizabeth burrows into his coat to shield herself from the intensifying cold.

The echoing pangs of strikes on metal awaken her. She is bewildered until the knocks become softer and she hears, “Hey girly, it’s ok, open up,” mumbled through the door. She stands and flips the bolt lock, steps back. Eugene shuffles through the gap, pauses, and rests his head on the door frame. “Hey girly,” he mumbles again. “Go back ta sleep.” Elizabeth gladly acquiesces, again curling under her safety blanket.

But her eyes soon crack open to the tearing of paper. Eugene squats over her book bag, ripping out handfuls of pages out of her father’s play. “Eugene no!” she screams.

“Shut up, Elizabeth!” his eyes are dead, like at the platform. “Go back ta sleep, girl, we need a far.” He has a rat’s nest piled in the sink. Spontaneous tears come from Elizabeth. “Quiet! We need the heat, Liz.” Holes in his green wool sweater expose deep parallel fissures of grey skin. His knees, likewise, are exposed against the concrete as he claws out more paper kindling. The tearing rips through Elizabeth’s very soul. She chokes on her tears and struggles to breathe. She pinches her eyes shut. Forces herself to fade away from what must be a nightmare, and sleeps.

But Mary awakes.

Eugene is propped against a corner next to the sink. Slower-burning rags were added to the fire, nearly dead now. Mary sees the script, what is left, cocks her head a degree off center and bends down, reaching into another pocket.

She stands over him, watching the intermittent rise of his shallow breaths. He is stirred by her presence, like when ghosts pass through and grip the hairs on your neck. He looks up, befuddled, pupils tight to expose bright white eyes. “That you, Elizabeth?” She is a bleak outline against the dim flickering lights behind.

“Not. Elizabeth.” Then her hand does the talking. Sleek, swift, like the nimble fingers of a Dickens’ street orphan. Eugene grabs his throat. Life pours out in pulses between his fingers. The confusion in his eyes, the frantic gaze, dissipates, replaced not with fear but resignation. He nods, or maybe it’s just his head drifting, shutting down. His watch is over. The Chosin Frozen knows. Funny. He smiles. Just a little.

Mary bends down and kisses his cheek, whispers, “I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss.” Dips her finger in his blood and writes his final scene in the mirror.

She awakes, gazing not at her reflection but at the drying blood concealing it. A hand grabs her shoulder and turns her. She sees Eugene and gasps. “Mary, No! No no no. It was just paper, just... he was our O, our protector.” He is ashen. Skin like a doll. Not real, just the continuation of her nightmare where she loses her only friend and her father’s memory in one night. Theater.

He betrayed us. He attacked Papa. His work. His life. The writing is all that matters. The writing is ALL that matters!

“But you did not have to kill him. He was my only friend.”

I am your only friend. Your blood. And I didn’t kill him.

“You did. Look at him.”

Look at your hand.

She looks. Horrified. In her hand a shard of glass, blood dripping, splattering on the floor. She sees, between the lines written in horror font, the blood on her own face. Behind her, gazing back, Mary. Clean except for the gore in her haughty smile. Elizabeth drops her improvised blade.

You had to do it. You know Othello was a tragedy. You know this was his end, his final scene. And it was brilliant. We honored him with a proper literary death. A step up from nigger by a mile.

“Never say that of him. My Othello. Never. Do you understand?”

Yes, sister.

They cover him with his field jacket and leave.