Sky Tongues (8 page)

taste
dog shit? Or used gum? Or spilled day-old orange juice? I rest my case….
   But that day our grass was green and as sweet as could be. It was the happiest day of my life and when I think about it, that fact remains true even now.
   I often wondered how I landed such an amazing partner to share my life with but whenever I gave voice to such ruminations, she always replied that she wondered the same thing.
   My Rabia, the mate of my soul.
58
   In the middle of the fourth season of Afterlife, Rabia announced that she was pregnant.
   “What? That’s not possible, babe. You must be mistaken.”
   “I’m not,” she said smiling gently, understanding how this could be such a shock to me. “See for yourself.”
   She stepped out of her jeans and lay on the bed, naked from the waist down. I sat beside her, examining her pelvic region. While I could see that the blood in her uterus was building up more than it had ever done before, I didn’t see anything else unusual. “You’re about to have a heavy period,” I said. “Gods, you scared me.”
   She shook her head emphatically. “No. Look here.” She pointed to a spot on her belly. I peered at the spot closely but still saw nothing. I looked up at her helplessly.
   “It’s an egg,” she explained. “A fertilized egg.”
   I started to wonder if she’d gone nuts overnight. “It can’t be, Rabia.”
“It is! You already know I’m late!”
   “Yeah, I know, but my clock isn’t…I mean, it couldn’t…”
   Smiling again, she said, “I think it must have been the position.”
   “But there’s no way you could actually
see
an egg. They’re microscopic.”
   “Gods, Sky! Will you just trust me? I know my body.”
   “Ok.” I stood up. “Then I guess we should get a pregnancy test or see a doctor or something, right?”
   Her smile widened into a grin. “I already bought the test. It’s in the bathroom. I wanted us to do it together.”
   We did and according the test, she was right. She was pregnant. And then we went to see a doctor and she was still right. She was
definitely
pregnant.
   I couldn’t believe it. At first, I was in too much shock to be either happy or unhappy, but I knew that as soon as the shock wore off, I was going to be flying high.
   I was going to be a mom! We were both going to be moms!
   It was truly a miracle.
59
   I watched our child grow inside my lover’s womb.
   It was both thrilling and terrifying, actually seeing it develop in there. One of the many advantages to having a see-through wife was that we could always tell how it was doing. If it turned itself around and became tangled in the umbilical cord, we would know right away. We could actually watch it moving around in there, predict when it was going to start kicking her, so I could jump right over and place my hand against her body.
   And soon enough, we didn’t have to call it ‘it’ anymore.
   We were having a son.
   How many parents can say they’ve looked into their own child’s eyes before it was even born? I can say that. I stared at him for hours and he stared back at me through the window of his mother’s belly. I watched his tiny body grow, and neither of us were disappointed when it became obvious that the little guy was developing tongues instead of fingers. But he didn’t inherit Rabia’s transparent skin and I couldn’t tell if she was saddened or relieved at the news that she was indeed, still a Uni.
   The bigger he became, the more I worried about Rabia.
   That is the disadvantage of a see-through wife.
   Her body was warping in ways I had never imagined possible. It was being stretched, pulled into unnatural positions. But she only laughed when I voiced my concern.
   “You’re so silly,” she’d say. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
   “They only say that because they can’t see what’s really happening.”
   She did her best to comfort me when I should have been comforting her, but she was always so much braver than I. When it came to her, fear could literally paralyze me.
   Even going to work became a chore for me. I wanted her to accompany me to the set every day because I couldn’t stand the thought of being away from her for 12 hours. She humored me as best she could but the fact remained that sitting in a television studio all day could be torturously boring. I know because I do it, but I still wanted her there and it pained me when she announced that she’d be staying home on any particular morning.
   I worked the same as always, putting everything out of my mind when the director yelled “Action”, but the moment he yelled “Cut,” I was on the phone with her.
   It was the longest, most wondrous nine months of my life, a beautiful and hellacious time.
   But, I’m sure most people would agree with me when I say that the best part about pregnancy is that it ends.
60
   Our son Crispin was born on the day after Christmas that year.
   He was a perfectly healthy little Mue with ten tongues and ten toes. Our lives would never be the same again.
61
    By the time season five rolled around, all of us were getting slightly weary of the show. We had other interests and we all, with the exception of David, had families now, and spending half your life away from your family can be excruciating.
   It was the last year of our contracts and Dove had announced that he wouldn’t be renewing his. We all understood, as he had had a huge career before the show, dozens of movies under his belt and he was tired of playing Woodrow, the tough but lovable angel boss.
   Lavinia, too, was thinking about leaving, for almost all of the same reasons. She’d already had to turn down several films because of her commitments to the show and I know she was quite unhappy about that.
   David, I think, was content just to have work at all and said he’d stick with the show until it had died of natural causes. Both Lucia and I were on the fence.
   There were already signs that we were becoming typecast. We were no longer being offered bad-guy parts, but if there was a heroic, squeaky-clean Good Samaritan type in a script, we were sure to get the call.
   Which really didn’t make much sense to any of us, as our characters, though angels, we not exactly an upstanding group.
   Dove played a grump, Lavinia played another grump, David played an immoral moron, Lucia played an immoral narcissist and I played a whining brat. Where exactly did the angelic part come in, other than the fact that we were angels?
   The whole thing baffled us all but that’s—as the saying goes—how the cookie crumbles. For the most part we stopped bothering to try to figure it out. Dove had put it best when he said, “These fucking assholes who don’t even bother watching the fucking show just hear the word ‘angels’ and think it’s
Its a Wonderful Life
with fucking swear words. Fucking cretins.”
   I thought about it long and hard, discussed it with Rabia and finally decided I would stay with the show for at least another season. Lucia decided the same thing and in the end, I’m glad we both did because neither Dove nor Lavinia left that year. They were both offered hefty pay raises and there was no more talk of being bored with their characters.
    “Bloody hell,” David said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
   Lucia and I couldn’t help but agree.
62
   Once Crispin was born, Rabia continued working on her dissertation and when it was completed she took a Uni-versity job teaching foreign languages to a student body of Unis.
   I was somewhat skeptical of this decision, wondering what kind of impression it would give our son when he became old enough to start asking questions.
   “What will he think? He’s not a Uni and neither am I.”
   “But,
I
am,” Rabia replied. “And he won’t
think,
he’ll
know
that his moms love
all
Mues.”
   “That’s my point. Why do you have to teach at a Uni-versity? Why not just a Mue-versity?”
   “Are you aware of how few Unis there really are in the world? Do you realize that in some countries we are still
hunted down and killed for study,
or even worse,
for our bodies to be displayed in a fucking museum?
Are you aware that some Unis are being held in
prison camps
right at this very moment, while others are
in cages
at some fucking
zoo
?”
   I could see I hit a nerve. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about all that. I apologize.”
   But, sorry didn’t cut it. Rabia stayed mad at me for days, even going so far as to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms and only speaking to me when it was about Crispin.
   After that, I never again questioned what she wanted to do in her professional life. Whatever it was, it was fine by me. And if our son had any questions about it when he was older, I intended to let Rabia do all the talking.

63
   One night when I got home from work, Rabia told me that someone had stopped by to see me but had refused to say who he was. Instantly, I thought,
Oh, gods! Stalker!
And tried to do the math in my head to see if it was time for psycho masturbation boy to be released from prison yet. When I concluded that it was still far too early, I asked Rabia to physically describe the person.
   “Male,” she said, bouncing Crispin on her knee. “Young, early twenties probably. A Skin. Really, the most gorgeous dolphin Skin I’ve ever seen. He was quite attractive actually.”
   My heart had stopped and my jaw hung open. Rabia couldn’t help but notice the expression and asked what was wrong.
   “It was Zion.”
   Her stare was empty. “Who?”
   “My fucking brother Zion!”
   “I didn’t know you have a brother.”
   “Well, I don’t. Not really. Not anymore. But I used to, a long time ago and obviously he thinks I still do. Why else would he be coming here?”
   Rabia was bewildered, but thankfully, not angry. She didn’t care that I had kept my family a secret from her as I had kept them a secret from everyone I’ve ever met after I left the carnival. She only cared that I was upset and after I told her the full story of my upbringing, she became upset as well.
   “Do you think he wants money?”
   “Probably. What else could the fucker want? To get all touchy-feely with his big sis? I fucking doubt it.”
   She agreed that that was probably not the motive and lacking another, we had to conclude that it was in fact money.
   “Well, fuck that,” I said. “Those people never gave me shit, so that’s exactly what they’ll get in return.”
   “Maybe he read about Crispin in the papers,” she suggested. “Maybe he wants a relationship with his nephew.”
   I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, maybe he’s acting on behalf of my parents, as a go-between for them.”
   “Why would that be? What could they want form you?”
   As it turned out, they wanted something big.
   They wanted my life.
64
   “What do you mean, ‘custody’?” I screamed into the phone at my lawyer. “How the fuck can they want custody? I haven’t seen them in almost fifteen years!”
   “My best guess, from what you’ve told me about them,” she replied calmly, “Is that it really has nothing to do with Crispin. I’m sure they only want custody of him so that you will then be forced to pay them an outrageous amount in child support. More than they’ve ever had in their lives.”
   “Well, that’s fucking nuts. It’s not going to happen.”
   “Of course it isn’t,” she said. “All this other nonsense about the laws forbidding two different breeds of Mues to…well, to
breed
, is just so much smoke and mirrors. It’s definitely the money they’re after.”
   As is my custom when I’m upset, I yelled the word “Fuck.” I yelled it approximately 70 times throughout the whole of that day. It didn’t matter how many times I was told to stop. I didn’t care who heard it. I didn’t care that it made my son flinch. After about the fiftieth time, he stopped flinching anyway.
   Those rotten, no-good, cock-sucking mother fuckers!
   How dare they? It wasn’t enough that they had tortured me all through my growing up years? They had to torture me some more? Of course they did. People like that don’t know what to do unless they’re torturing someone. If it wasn’t for that little amusement, they would just shrivel up and blow away in the slightest breeze. They
thrived
on making other people miserable. It was their sole purpose in life.
   But I had beaten them before just by living the life I led. By being happy. They say that’s the best revenge against abuse: to live a happy life. After all, that is the last thing abusers want. Their business is to break you, to make you more miserable than they themselves are. It is the only thing that makes
them
happy, regardless of how brief that happiness is.
   Not this time though.
   This time I would kill them with my bare tongues if I had to. No one would threaten my family and get away with it. They would seriously regret fucking with me, of that I was certain.
65
   A custody battle ensued, and they never even came to California. It was all done with lawyers, which disgusted me even more. I wanted them to come to me, wanted them to look in my eyes and to look in theirs. I wanted them to the hatred there, the complete lack of fear or anything even remotely resembling fear. Sadly, I never had that chance, because, just like most bullies, they were cowards. The whole thing turned into a joke as well, because they ended up bankrupting themselves in the process of trying to ruin my life. They were so certain they would win that they had spent their every last penny paying the most expensive and impressive lawyer they could find.
   What they didn’t take into account, quite stupidly, was the fact that the very money they were so interested in having could now pay for an entire fleet of the best lawyers money could buy. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that though, mostly because my regular attorney already charged an obscene amount and could handle the job quite aptly. She was a celebrity attorney after all and had already handled many such cases. She was one of the best and I was grateful to have her.
   It was almost disappointing, the way it had ended so anti-climatically. I had really wanted to rub their faces in the dirt, break more than just their bank account. I had wanted them to suffer profusely.
   Even dead was too good for them. I wanted them breathing, eaten alive by ticks, slowly, excruciatingly, until they went blind and insane with agony…
66
   My life had been taking quite a toll on my body.
   Though I had never done drugs or been much of a drinker, the amount of work I was doing was affecting my body almost as badly as years of drug abuse or alcoholism would have done. I started to feel dragged down, even when I’d had enough sleep. Fatigue was always with me. I became nauseous and plagued by headaches. When I started vomiting, I saw my doctor but even she was baffled as to what my symptoms could mean.
   I continued working, as always, but instead of spending any downtime joking around with the crew or goofing off with David, I took to just laying in my trailer until they were ready for me.
   My body ached. Just ached everywhere.
   Rabia insisted that the bullshit with my family had been the last straw, that my body had finally succumbed to the stress. But then I began losing weight and running a fever and neither of us thought it could be contributed to stress.
   I have no recollection as to what happened next but according to my wife, I’d stopped breathing while I slept. I was rushed to the L.A. County Hospital and put under close observation.
   When I woke up, the first thought in my head, before I even opened my eyes, was,
gods, my feet are killing me.
   
When I did open my eyes, I saw a chubby nurse by my bed, checking my IV. “My feet are killing me,” I told her, but then realized it wasn’t my feet at all. My head hurt but my feet felt fine.
   The nurse called a doctor in and then I thought,
Jesus Christ, I can’t even finish a fucking cup of coffee in this place.
   “What?” I said.
   The doctor leaned over me, sticking a light in my eyes and telling me to follow his finger. I did, thinking,
I wonder what Marilyn is wearing right now.
   “Who?” I said.
   Both the doctor and the nurse ignored me. He began asking me questions about how I felt and what I remembered, while she fiddled with the medical equipment beside the bed. I answered the doctor’s questions and he kept nodding and I thought,
I wonder if she gives good head.
   “What?” I yelled trying to sit up. “
Who?”
   Now they exchanged a glance and the doctor asked if, to my knowledge, I have suffered a head injury. Did I remember if I fell down at all?
   “No,” I said.
   “No, you don’t remember?”
   “No, I didn’t fall down.”
   “Are you sure?”
   I thought I was sure, but was I? “Where is my wife?”
   “We sent her home,” the nurse said. “We didn’t think you would wake up tonight. Would you like me to call her for you?”
   “Yes,” I said immediately. Rabia could tell me what was going on. She always had the answers.
67
   
When Rabia entered the room, I thought,
Oh, thank gods!
But for some reason it felt like I thought it twice. Like I had two separate thoughts which had overlapped each other.
   “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” she asked, coming over to the bed.
   “Ok.” I did feel better when she kissed my forehead but only for an instant. Other than that, I felt like puking again.
   I thought,
Jesus, she looks awful!
   I frowned, looking at Rabia’s face. Now why did I think that? She looked beautiful. She
always
looked beautiful.
   “Did the doctor tell you anything yet?” she asked.
   “No. I don’t think he has a clue.”
   
That’s probably because he’s too busy hitting on anything with a vagina.
   
Now, why did I think that? I don’t even know the guy.
   
Maybe I should move her to a different hospital.
   I’m seriously gonna puke.
   
I swallowed hard. “I’m seriously gonna puke.”
   
Oh, fuck!
   Rabia jumped up and grabbed the plastic puke thingy that had been set on the table next to me. She stroked my hair while I threw up. I had to hand it to her. She didn’t look away or even grimace. She’s a real trooper, that girl.
   
Gods, this is making me want to puke myself. What’s wrong with her?
   I think my whole stomach is gonna come up.
   I’m going to find that little bastard and demand some answers!
   Please, just let me die now.
   Don’t let her see how worried you are.