The New Moon's Arms (16 page)

“‘Quiet here on this rock; sitting still and thinking,’”
I quoted. Bad bookworm habit of mine.

“
?‘
The Cayaba Fairmaid.’
?
”

“You know that story?” Evelyn had surprised me for the second time in five minutes.

“We did learn it in school,” she reminded me.

“Yes, I know. But most people seem to forget about it afterwards.”

“You know the one about the blue child?” she asked me.

“I kinda remember it, yeah.” Now she was a folklorist, too? She seemed more the ballet and art cinema type. “Old lady finds a blue devil baby in a hole, the baby tries to force her to do something, I forget what. Old lady throws the baby into the sea, thinking that will drown it.”

Evelyn nodded. “When the blue baby hits the water, it grows huge, turns into the devil woman of the sea who drags ships down. That’s what the baby had wanted the whole time; to reach the sea.”

Huh. That story had quite a different cast to it since my experiences of the past few days. Now I would be willing to bet that it was a fictionalized story of somebody else bucking up with a sea person.

“When I was young,” said Evelyn, “I used to wish that the oldtime stories were true.”

“You did? You never told me.”

“You would have laughed after me.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Yes. You would have. Your mouth hot now, and it was

hot then.”

I decided to make nice. “All right. Maybe I would have.” I was busting to talk to somebody about the sea people, and I hadn’t heard from Gene. I had been like that from since; when I learned something new, I had to tell somebody, anybody. But I had to lead Evelyn to this gently. “It’s interesting, you don’t find, that we have all these stories about devils living in the sea?”

She shrugged. “Sea kill plenty people in the history of Ca-yaba. It make sense the devil would live in the sea.”

Shit, how to get her to think this through? “You know the legend about Captain Carter?”

Her face brightened. “Yes. Such a beautiful love story.”

“I guess. Except the lovers throw themselves into the water and die.”

She kissed her teeth. “You have to have a litte romance, man. The story says they transformed.”

“They adapted to living in the sea.”

“I suppose you could think of it that way.” She looked out the window, checked her watch. I was losing her.

“When I was a girl,” I said, “I used to try to figure out how I could go and live with the dolphins.”

“Oh. Well, that’s different. If you were going to remain an oxygen breather, the rest is pretty easy.” She sat up straight, started counting off on her fingers: “Extra body fat like whales and seals have, to protect the organs from the cold.”

Check. Agway was fat as mud, just like his daddy, and the little blue girl. “What else?” I asked her.

She thought a little bit. “They would need broad ribcages.”

Check. “Why, though?”

“To make room for lungs with a lot of surface area; they’ll be going under the water for long periods, so they’d need to be able to hold extra oxygen in their lungs. And their lats and delts—these muscles here, in your upper back—would be hyperdeveloped, to help with swimming.”

“So their arms would change, too?” I couldn’t help coaching her just.

“They wouldn’t have to. But it would be nice if their limbs were relatively short. More streamlined for swimming. Oh! I just thought of another one!”

She was practically jigging in her seat. We used to compete in school for who could answer Teacher’s questions first.

She said, “This one would be really cool, okay? You know that webbing between the fingers and toes? Like Agway has? All humans have that in the womb. If our mermaid people never lost it, it would help them swim better.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Eyes! Really big eyes. It’s dark down there. Nictitating membranes would be
so
cool! Imagine being able to have your eyes closed
and
open at the same time! I don’t know what function those patches on the inner thighs would have, though…”

Her eyes opened wide. She put her hands to her mouth. “Oh, my God!” she blurted through her fingers.

“Courtice Plaza!” announced the bus driver. The bus clattered to a halt.

“This is my stop,” I said. “I pay you back the bus fare tomorrow, all right?” I stood up and headed for the door, my heart going
powpowpow
. Please. Please.

She grabbed her purse and ran to catch up. “I’m getting off with you,” she said. “You can’t just ups and leave me with this idea you put into my head.”

“What idea?” I chirruped at her over my shoulder. I stepped down off the bus stairs and right onto the broken shoe heel. Miracle I didn’t twist my ankle.

“Good night, ladies,” Renny called out.

A soft evening breeze was blowing. There was the overpowering ice cream smell of frangipani blossoms from somewhere, and the sky had that look of evening turning into night; like someone had poured black ink into blueing and was stirring it.

Courtice Plaza was in front of us; a small, three-storey shopping centre built around a courtyard. The designer said he’d had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in mind when he constructed it. Looked more like one of those Escher drawings, with staircases leading every which way. Confused the eye. I could never remember which level the cambio was on, and which set of stairs would lead me to it. I hobbled up to the plaza. A woman with matted hair and tattered clothing sat on the grass verge. She was barefoot. The bottoms of her feet were black horns of callous. She spied us.

“Please, lady, do,” she said to me. “Beg you little money. I ain’t eat from morning.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any.” It was the God’s truth. I didn’t have one red cent.

“Please, lady,” she said again.

“Here.” Evelyn gave the woman a bill.

“Thank you, lady. Bless you.”

We went on. I stopped and dithered around a bit, looking from one entrance to the other. Evelyn dithered right alongside me.

“That little boy,” she said. “It would be incredible.”

“What would?”

“It’s just possible; an isolated archipelago like this. An evolutionary branch…”

This sort of looked like the entrance I wanted. I began up the stairs. Evelyn followed.

“It worked for Darwin,” she said. “The finches, you know?”

“The library archives are full of reported sightings of mermaids off Cayaba,” I said. “Newspaper clippings, people’s diaries from long ago.”

We passed a fancy women’s clothing store. It was lit in screaming pink and yellow neon. The skirt on the mannequin in the window was so short that even though she was plastic, I felt embarrassed for her.

Time was, I could have gotten away with a skirt like that.

We rounded the corner, and there was the food court, and the cambio. I made for it. Evelyn stood beside me while I punched in the numbers. She was almost vibrating, she was so excited. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you?” she said. “About the child, I mean.”

“I don’t know, I just suspect. Could be wishful thinking.” Nothing in the chequing account. “But I think I bucked up another one like him when I was a little girl.”

“You lie!” Wide-eyed, she grabbed my arm. “When? Where? Did you talk to it? How come you never said?”

I stopped and looked at her. “At school, you mean? To whom?”

“To your friends,” she replied. Then, “Oh.”

I didn’t have to tell her that she and I hadn’t yet met when it had happened. All is fair in war. “Anyway. I was there last night when they brought his parents out of the water. I saw the daddy. He had the same adaptations as Agway.” I tried a cash advance on my credit card. It laughed in my face. I didn’t even bother to check my savings account. It had always been a joke. Savings accounts were for people with something left over to save. I took a deep breath. “Evelyn?”

“Yes?”

“Can you possibly lend me the money to take the waterbus back home, please?” The words hurt coming out of my mouth, like spitting out glass.

“Oh! Yes. Of course.” She dug in her purse and I looked away, ashamed.

“Wait a minute,” said Evelyn. Her hand was still in her purse. “Where you said your car was?”

I sighed. “At the mall by the medical centre.”

“So how you plan to get to your house when you reach Dolorosse?”

“Walk.” In my high heels, one of them broken. Over the rocky ground.

“And how long that will take, Chas… Calamity?”

I shrugged. “An hour, maybe.” More like two, and massive blisters on my feet, shoes on or off.

“No, that won’t do.” She snapped her purse shut, linked her arm through mine. “Come along.” She began walking me back through the mall.

“What? Come where?”

“Why are you walking like that?”

“I broke my shoe. Evelyn, I have to get home.”

“And I will take you home. Let me just see if Samuel’s finished work yet.” She pulled a phone out of her purse, hit speed dial.

“Samuel? Hello, my love. Surprised you’re at home at all. No, I’m at Courtice Plaza. I’m with a friend. No, I…” She giggled. “After you know I don’t have eyes for anyone but you. Listen; you can come and get us? Me and my old school friend Calamity. We have to take her home to Dolorosse.”

I knew that tone so well. Had heard it a million times in the school cafeteria as Evelyn organized her posse to do just what she wanted them to. I pulled my arm out of hers. “You don’t have to take me anywhere. Just lend me the waterbus fare. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” I had no idea how I was going to do that, but never mind.

“What?” Evelyn asked me. Into the phone, she said, “Hold on a minute, nuh?” She took the phone away from her mouth. “Calamity, we’re going to take you. All right? End of story.”

Anger was like a red mist in front of my eyes. She started to talk to Samuel again. I turned on my heel and walked away from her. Maybe a passer-by would lend me waterbus fare.

“Calamity!”

I ignored the sound of shoes tap-tapping behind me. I headed for one of the exits.

“Calamity!” She caught up to me, put her hand on my elbow. I yanked it out of her reach.

“No, Evelyn. You can’t order me about. You’re not queen of the schoolyard any more. You can’t always have your way. Go home to your beloved Samuel and leave me alone!” I could feel my eyes springing water. Somehow, the blurriness made the garish micro minis on the mannequins in the clothing store look even more shameful, if that were possible. I was to the steps, making my way down with that careful, crabways movement that old women in heels adopt. When had I become an old woman?

“Calamity. I’m sorry.”

I stopped. She was standing at the top of the stairs, cell phone dangling from one hand.

“Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry I was so awful to you.”

Good thing I was holding on to the bannister, or surprise would have pitched me down those stairs one time. “When?” I asked, milking it.

“Just now. I should have asked you if you wanted a lift. But Samuel says he’s willing to take you, and we—”

Her words were music. I wanted more. “When else?”

She drew herself up. “How you mean? I said I was sorry.”

“Not sorry enough.” I kept clanking down the stairs.

I heard her give a deep, shuddery breath. “Calamity, come back here! You stubborn as any mule, you know?”

I spat the words at her over my shoulder. “That’s a change. You used to say I was as
ugly
as a mule.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she screamed, her voice weepy.

I kept going.

“All right, then! Jesus. In school.”

I stood still a moment, puffing. It was work to walk
down
stairs nowadays. I used to run up stairs like I was ascending to heaven. And Cedric had just told me it was only going to get worse. “In school what?” I said.

“I was horrible to you in school, all right? I been thinking about it ever since I saw you the other night. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said all those awful things. I’m sorry I egged my friends on to make fun of you. I’m sorry I super-glued your locker shut.” She snuffled.

“I don’t know where your necklace went, Evelyn.”

She crossed her arms and looked away. “Huh. Well, I don’t know about that.”

“It was only a game we used to play, anyway! Sometimes I got lucky.”

“You told Mr. Baldwin where to find his calculator. You found Ahmed’s maths book behind the tennis court. You found Ulric’s tobacco pipe. But the one time your best friend asked you for help, you wouldn’t. I still don’t understand why. That was my favourite, my birthday necklace, with the moonstones.”

“You lost your necklace a few weeks after Mumma dis-

appeared.”

“So what?”

I sucked my teeth. “Think, nuh? My mother got lost at sea. What you suppose happened to her?”

“That she probably fell out of her boat somehow and, you know, drowned.”

If she’d even gone out to sea that night. “And what you think her body would have looked like if it had been found?”

“Bloating, necrosis, morbidity.” The doctor’s training had kicked in. “Extremities nibbled away by…oh.”

“Exactly. You think I wanted to find my mother’s body in that condition?” Or chopped to pieces? I thought. “So I stopped the finding game. Completely. And it went away. Even if it was only luck why I found things, I turned it
off
. I’m a blasted luck repellent, let me tell you.”

She was crying, the tears glowing neon, reflecting the stores’ lights. She had always been able to turn those tears on and off at will. She sniffed. “I was jealous of you, you know,” she said.

“What?” I took two steps back up the stairs.

“I was. So envious I hated you sometimes.”

“What the fuck did you have to be jealous of me for?”

“They let you climb trees. They bought you toy
trucks
. You know how bad I wanted a Johnny Lightning Plymouth Duster?”

She saw my blank look.

“Hot Wheels! The Plymouth Duster was acid green.”

“Ah.”

“And you could swear!”

“Not in front of Dadda. Mumma didn’t mind. She thought it was funny.”

“Both my parents minded. Ever had your mouth washed out with soap?”