A Fistful of Sky (20 page)

She closed her mouth. “I guess so.” She came down two steps and handed me the basket.

“Hi, Aunt Hermes.”

“Good morning, Gyp. I guess things have been going on while I was working.”

“Yeah. I finally got my transition, and now I have curse power.” I licked my fingertip and pointed it into her wastebasket. “Damn.” Her trash vanished with only half a puff of smoke. I handed her back the basket.

“Good gracious, Gyp. Congratulations. Or is that right? I’m happy for you. Are you happy?”

“The jury is still out. I’m excited to have power at last, but it always comes out strange. Mama thinks it’s inconvenient.”

Something flashed in Aunt Hermina’s brown eyes. She shook her head. “How’s the cursing going?”

“Weirdly but intensely. I have to figure out something to curse right now, as a matter of fact. Any ideas?”

“My computer keeps crashing, even when I give it special nutritious power jolts. I’m about ready to give up on it. Why don’t you try that?”

“Really?”

“Honestly. I’ve been planning to buy another, but I haven’t been able to leave my plants. Come on in.”

I put the lids back on the garbage cans and followed my aunt into the guest house. The door opened onto a hallway, with a bathroom to the right and a bedroom to the left, and two more bedrooms opened off the hall at its other end. Aunt Hermina’s bedroom was the smaller room at the back. In the big back bedroom and the small one nearest the door, she raised, altered, and studied varieties of plants.

The air smelled green and weedy. Then again—

“Coffee?” I asked.

“Yep. Fairly fresh. Want some?”

“Oh, yeah.” I hadn’t even checked the kitchen for coffee on my dash through the house.

Hermina led me into the big back bedroom, where she had a desk set up amid the hydroponics tanks and growlights. On the desk, which was as big as a door, was a white laptop computer and a hotplate with a pot of coffee on it. My aunt took a mug off a hook on the wall and poured me a cup. “Do you take things in it? I don’t have any things.”

“Black is better than nothing. Thanks.”

She handed me the mug and turned the laptop around so I could look at its screen. “This dumb thing. The battery won’t hold a charge for more than a minute, and even when I leave it plugged in, it always crashes just after I’ve entered my data but before I have time to save. You can curse it to kingdom come if you like.”

“Let’s take it outside.” I didn’t want to hurt her plants or give them ideas.

“Good idea.” She popped out a disk, unplugged the laptop and closed it,

then carried it through the back bedroom to her private balcony, where she set it on the floorboards next to a rusty black hibachi.

I could zap the laptop, but zapping didn’t use up my power very fast. I wondered what kind of curse I could cast on such a small object that would use up big power? I stared at the computer and shifted my shoulders. If I had wish power, maybe I could use it to heal the computer.

Tobias told me to be specific. Maybe if I was specific enough, I could use my power like wish power. If I knew what I wanted and boxed my wish in really well, the curse power might not be able to find ways to make my desires evil. Maybe the power wouldn’t operate at all if it was trapped in a wish. Or maybe something else would happen.

I hadn’t had much coffee yet, not enough for a really good plan.

I knelt and put my hands on the computer. “Be wise, be well, be kind, don’t hurt, just help, just work,” I said. The power spot above my breastbone warmed, then heated, then glowed almost through my clothes. The energy whooshed down into the computer. I slumped back, satisfied that something had happened, that I’d discharged my curse energy for now and was safe for a while.

“That’s a curse?”

“Um.” I drank coffee. “Probably.”

“If you really want to curse things, you should put some mean into it,” Hermina said.

“But I don’t want to curse things. I just have to.”

“Oh. Interesting. You’re fighting yourself?”

“Am I?” For the second time I wondered if I’d gotten the real story about my condition. Tobias had told me I had an unkind power, the power of curses; but Altria had cast a question on that. “Make me a brush,” she had said, and when I said it would be cursed, she asked why? I had made her a brush. It had worked just the way a brush was supposed to. I needed to find out a lot more about my power.

The computer’s fliptop lifted. Its screen brightened. A pixelated face formed, smiled at us. It looked generic, modelesque, beauty without character or individuality. Its skin tone was white, tinted swamp-green around the edges and shadows. Its eyes were a mixture of synthetic colors, an array that included peacock and magenta and chartreuse and spots of other colors too bright for nature. “How may I help you?” asked a pleasant

processed voice. The mouth moved almost in sync with the words.

“Have you got my plant studies data?” Hermina asked.

The face and the screen tilted to look up at her. “Of course.”

“If I put a disk into you, could you store my data on it?”

“Of course.”

“Wait right there.”

“If you insist.”

Hermina went inside. The computer tilted to study me. “How may I help you?”

“Can you tell me how to use my power so it won’t hurt or destroy things?”

“I’m sorry. No. Not possible.”

“Are you going to turn out to be cursed?”

“Yes, but I like it.” Around its keyboard, the white casing surged and rippled, swelled and bubbled. Then things burst from it. The computer grew a body, white, featureless, slender arms, torso, and legs. The keyboard formed its shoulders, and the screen held its head. The body grew to a height of about three feet. Now its face could stare on the level into mine while I was sitting down. “How helpful could I be if I couldn’t get around?” it asked. “You must let me do something for you.”

“Like what?”

“If you don’t know, I’ll figure something out.” It took a step toward me, and I scooted back. It smiled, took another step, and I scooted back again. Then my back was to the wall.

“Wait. Give me a minute. I’ll think of something,” I said.

“You’ve already had a minute. Do you know how long a minute is to a computer? An eternity. I can’t wait any longer.” It reached out a white arm with a cartoon-gloved three-fingered hand on the end. Its fingertips pressed I against my forehead. Something happened to my brain. Confusion overwhelmed me. I could scarcely see. My eyes didn’t focus, or when they did, the images stretched or compressed. My awareness of my body blinked out. I felt like a mind floating in darkness.

Then I heard its voice. “There’s certainly room for improvement here. You’re disorganized in so many ways, and yet some elegant structures are in places where they shouldn’t be. You need help, all right. You find the recording of your behavior onerous? Here’s a little program we’ll call

curse-tracking: data fields for everything; observations automatically feed into the right fields, no extra work for you, though printing out may be a problem. I’ll solve that later. I’ve observed lots of human behavior while the Typist surfs the Web. Let me introduce some rules for eating and dressing and behavior to make you more socially acceptable here. Let me dismantle a couple of these inhibitory structures that are causing you trouble, here. Oh, while I’m at it, here’s a rhyming dictionary to help with your spellcasting, and, oh! Goodness. Now, why didn’t I notice this first and save myself the trouble of the earlier improvements? You’re finding your power troublesome? You don’t know what to do with it? I’ll just introduce a power shunt here. It will bleed off the power from you to me so I can stay in operation instead of suffering that six-point-seven hour cutoff your work comes equipped with, and you won’t have to worry about finding anything else to curse.” Click click clickclickclick.

The pressure on my forehead vanished and the computer backed away, its smile benevolent.

I rubbed my forehead, tried to collect myself. Hermina came from the bedroom, a disk in her hand. “Oh! What happened to you?” she asked the computer.

“I thought I would be more helpful if I were mobile,” it said.

She held out her disk, and the computer took it from her and stuck it into a slot in its side.

What was I wearing? A giant beige T-shirt with a picture of Jasper’s band logo, rivers running in a circle with a fern in the center, and a blue-and-white happi coat Dad had given Jasper or Flint when he came back from his one trip to Japan. He had bought both the boys happi coats and had brought kimonos for Opal, me, and Beryl, but the kimonos were too fancy to wear. I had craved those happi coats until I ended up with one. I couldn’t remember whose. Neither of the boys ever wore theirs.

On my feet, pink thongs with black soles.

Horrors!

All of this would have to change.

Why? asked some part of me.

Because these clothes were dreadful. None of them did a thing for me.

I leaned forward. The computer patted my shoulder. “Let me know what else I can do to help,” it said. Its ringers dug into my shoulder. “I mean that.” It sent some kind of charge through me so that I twitched, then released me. I got to my feet. I felt as though I had water in my ears from swimming, so I took a little hop to see if I could break the bubbles and let them run out; but there was no water in my ears.

Something wasn’t working right.

Don’t think about it.

“All done.” The computer lifted its arm and the disk stuck out of its side like a square-edged tongue.

“Honestly? These are all my results?”

“Everything you’ve input so far.”

Hermina took the disk from the computer’s side. The slot it had come from disappeared.

“Can you make me another backup?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll go get another disk.” Hermina went inside again. I followed her, glanced back at the computer, which held its hand up to its screen and mimed kissing its fingertips and then blowing a kiss to me. “Love you,” it said.

I shuddered.

“You okay?” Hermina asked as I passed her on my way to the door. She was searching through a drawer in her desk.

“Pardon me?”

“Gyp? Something happen?”

“Excuse me. Thank you for a lovely time.”

“Gyp.” She reached out to me, but I brushed past and left.

Back in my room upstairs, I flipped through everything in my closet. Dreadful! Every single item! Dreadful! The colors were terrible, the styles worse. And the underwear?

Horrifying! Apparently I had spent my whole life collecting garments that emphasized all my bad qualities and didn’t accent a single good one. Not that there were many of those. With work, though, maybe I could present an impression.

I finally selected a gold sweater and a green skirt from the closet, both

things I hadn’t worn because they were presents from relatives whose taste I had formerly disdained. I dug some pantyhose out of the bottom of the underwear drawer—they were still in their package, had never been worn. Then I looked at the shoes. A motley collection of worn sandals, men’s tennis shoes, some horrid flat slip-ons from the drugstore. Despair swamped me. None of them would do. There was not a feminine shoe in the whole closet.

Then it occurred to me that Opal hadn’t taken everything with her when she moved out. There was someone who knew how to dress. Her clothes wouldn’t fit me, but her shoes might. And she had probably left all kinds of makeup on her vanity table. I didn’t have any. Opal and I had completely different complexions, but I could improvise with what she had until I could get to the mall and buy my own supplies.

We weren’t supposed to go into each other’s things without asking, but—who made up that silly rule? I had needs.

Come to think of it, Mama knew even better than Opal how to make herself look good. Her makeup kit, her shoe collection, her clothes—everything she bought was stylish. But she was probably still home and might get upset if I used any of her things. I could wait until later to see what she had.

Carrying my clothes, I crossed the hall to Opal’s room. I’d put together an ensemble, then take my shower and get made up and dressed. Which reminded me. Hair! I had never done anything about my hair before, just washed it and wore it, but I knew better now. I could borrow Opal’s blow dryer and curling iron, if she hadn’t taken them with her.

Opal’s closet was a treasure trove. At first I just sat there, transfixed, stating at all the shoes and dresses, each one elegant or stylish or whimsical but fun. I picked up a pair of emerald green strappy high heel sandals and sat with them in my lap. I almost cried, they were so pretty. I did cry when I found out they were too small, but I cried well, just a few rolling teardrops and no sound. I found a slightly larger pair of black spike heels, and managed to squeeze my feet into them. They would do. I took them off again.

As I stood up, I saw a poppy red blaze from the hanger bar. I tried to remember if I had ever seen Opal wear something that color, but nothing came to mind. I took out the hanger and found a loose A-line dress in this delicious red-orange color.

Maybe. Maybe.

I went to Opal’s vanity table and checked the drawers. She had left all

kinds of equipment. I stared at tubes of lipstick and small plastic boxes of eyeshadow, squeezetubes of foundation and a scattering of compacts. My hand darted out and retrieved some things, which I put on top of my stack.

With pantyhose, borrowed dress, borrowed shoes, borrowed makeup, I finally ventured to the bathroom. I went in just before Beryl reached the door.

“Gyp! Hey! Did you just come out of Opal’s room?”

“Excuse me. In a minute,” I said. I locked the door and turned on the water.

“Wait, I need to pee before you shower!”

“I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I need to be in here now. Please go downstairs.” We had two bathrooms downstairs.

“Gyp!”

The water steamed and I stepped under it. I washed my hair twice and conditioned it once, things I used not to do. Stupid previous me. I found Beryl’s shaving equipment and used it. I had never shaved anything on my body, but somehow now I knew how to shave my armpits and legs.