The Thread (16 page)

“Unity looking at itself,” the Jesus guy murmurs. “Not for itself, not a circle, but a spiral. So that they too may be one, just as you and I are.”

The Grandmother shakes her crooked finger at him. “Be quiet for a moment, you. She’s not interested in theology. She wants an
answer
.” She turns her shiny dark gaze back to me. “Child, here’s another metaphor—you and that lovely young man, Kirin.”

She smiles, as though that’s all she needs to say, but my expression must have made her relent, because she adds, “For years, there was you, and there was Kirin. The two of you living in the same building, standing next to each other in the elevator, getting on the bus together, sitting in the same classrooms. You were two separate things, not acting on each other in any way. And then something changed. Something connected the two of you. And when that happened, you both changed.”

I think about Kirin, about his narrow brown face, his smile, his laugh, his warm hands. I’m smiling just thinking about him. I don’t know how to fit him into the same world where Dad pays me his little visits, I’m not sure that I can—but whatever happens in the end, I do know that Kirin is the best thing that’s happened to me in a very long time.

“So Kirin and me,” I say slowly, “the way we are together, the way we’re friends, that’s somehow like . . . you?” I make a little triangle in the air, gesturing from the Grandmother to the young man to the spinning wheel.

The old lady shakes her head. “No, child. It’s not
like
me. It
is
me. The thing that connects you and Kirin, that’s the third thing I was talking about. It’s the Thread. And because of it, I am present. My Firstborn is present.”

“Okay.” I don’t understand, not really, but for this little space, I decide, I’m not going to worry about Dad or Ricky or Amir. I’m just going to sit here with these possibly insane people who smile at me with such kindness in their eyes. I feel a little the way you do when you’ve been walking down the street, your feet cold and wet, wind and sleet stinging your face, and then you step into a coffee shop, somewhere warm and dry where you can catch your breath. The Grandmother and this guy we’re calling Jesus, they don’t ask anything of me—and so just for now, I’m going to humor them. “So is Kirin the seed—or the dirt and sunshine and the rain?”

The Grandmother gives her creaky little chuckle. “I told you metaphors only go so far. But I’d say for you, he’s the dirt and sunshine and rain that’s breaking you open. And for him, it’s the other way around—you are the dirt and sunshine and rain. You might also say, though, that the Thread is a dance—and the partners keep changing places.”

She smiles at the shining line in her hand and then turns her smile to me. “You and your young man will change places again and again in your dance—you will find me in your own heart, you will see my Firstborn in Kirin’s face, and then around again you’ll go—but the Thread that connects you is always the Thread. And it will bring forth from your unity something new. A brand-new thing. That’s the task that faces you and Kirin.”

Her smile is just as gentle, but her words pull at me, make me shift my weight backward a little, away from the two of them with their smiles and their jokes and their metaphors. I should have known that sooner or later people always want something out of you. This little spot of warmth and rest is over now, I guess. “What are you talking about?” My voice comes out louder than I’d meant, almost like a bark. “Babies?” I make a face and laugh, but it’s not a nice laugh.

But the Grandmother just continues to smile at me. “Babies. Well, yes, child, that’s one way a certain kind of unity explodes—
bang!
—thrusting new life out into the future. But there are all sorts of ways for my Child to be born.

I shake my head. Suddenly, I’ve had enough of this. “That’s not why I came here today. I came because—I was supposed to ask you about Kirin’s brother. About Amir.”

Now, at last, the Grandmother’s smile fades, leaving behind dark lines of sadness around her mouth and eyes. “Yes. My child who died.”

“Face it, Mawmaw,” the Jesus guy says. “Your child always dies.” His voice is as sad as her face. “I should know.”

“Sweetheart,” she says to him, “oh my Beloved.” She sighs, then turns back to me. “The Mother and Child and the needle that pierces their hearts are also me. That too is an image of the Three-in-One. My Child goes out into the world, new and innocent and blameless—and again and again, my Child is slain. Again and again, the Mother’s heart is broken. That is the story of Amir. It’s Ayana’s story, too. She still lives, but her innocence was murdered.” She leans toward me, her face so full of sorrow and love that I can’t keep looking at her. “It is
your
story, child.”

Suddenly, I’m remembering last night, the touch of Dad’s hands, all the things I don’t let myself think about. “Then what’s the point?” The words feel like they’re going to choke me. “What good does it all do? Any of it?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” A tear rolls out of her eye and down her wrinkled cheek, but she smiles at me again. “New life is born even here.”

Her smile fills me with rage. “I don’t see any new life in Amir.” The words are like stones in my mouth. “He’s dead. Ayana’s still alive, like you say, but who knows what that—that
creep
did to her? Who knows how it’s changed her? What nightmares she’ll have for the rest of her life? As for me—” I can’t speak any more words; they’re lodged in my throat. But I have to face what I’ve always known: something inside me was murdered three years ago. Ever since then, I’m just a walking dead person, a zombie. I’m a stinking corpse lurching around, pretending to be alive, and there’s no way I’ll ever be able to let someone good and clean like Kirin close to me. My only hope is to just grow up, get away, live my zombie life, and keep all the dead stuff inside me hidden. And that means I can never let anyone close enough to see it, to
smell
it.

I lift my chin and set my shoulders, and I’m furious. If I have to be alone, fine. I can do it. But it’s not fair that little kids like Amir and Ayana have to go through this. It’s not
fair
. I scramble to my feet and look down at the old woman. “And you can’t stop it, can you? Because you’re
weak
. You sit there with your stupid spinning wheel, smiling and nodding and telling your silly little jokes—and meanwhile, babies are dying.”

She just looks back at me, steadily, but her eyes spill over with pain. She looks as though her heart is breaking.

“And even here,” the Jesus guy says softly. “Even here. Wait. Twist the strands together and wait.” He looks at the Grandmother, and now he sounds almost as though he’s singing. “I wait for the Life-Giver, my whole being waits. I wait for the Life-Giver’s word. I rest my hope in the Life-Giver’s work. I wait in you, Life-Giver, my Beloved.”

I throw up my hands. The hazelnut drops onto the floor, and the tiny, humming line inside my fingers is gone. Tears are streaming down my face. I don’t know if I want to hit him—or throw myself in his arms. I don’t know if I want to scream—or run away and hide forever.

Before I can do any of those things, there’s a thud behind us, out in the dark hallway. We turn our heads—and then Kirin jumps out of the shadows. His face is flushed, his eyes wide and dark, and he’s staring at the Jesus guy with something that looks like horror.

Then he turns to me. “What the hell, Callie? What’s
she
doing here?”

17

Kirin

After Callie left, Kirin and Safira had continued to sit at the kitchen table. The television on the counter was turned on, a talk show playing softly, but neither of them looked at it. Silence lay between them, heavy and awkward.

Then Ayana snorted in her sleep, and Safira giggled. “She sounds like the little pigs on my grandfather’s farm in Mexico.”

Kirin grinned and felt himself relax a little. But he could not stop thinking about Richard. “Do you really think there’s a group of guys doing this? Richard and others?” Part of him, he knew,
wanted
it to be Richard who had taken Ayana. Better him than . . .

But he refused to complete the thought.

Safira’s forehead wrinkled as she thought about his question. “No,” she said finally, “I do not think this. But I think many things—and I know nothing.” She ran her fingers up and down Ayana’s back, up and down. The tenderness of her hand soothed Kirin as much as it must have the little girl’s dreams. “But maybe,” Safira continued, “Richard meant that the thing that made him what he is—that thing is in many people. He is not the only one. Other children, other men and women, they have all been hurt like him. And then they turn around and hurt children themselves, people who are smaller. People who are little and weak, so that they can feel stronger.”

Kirin looked around Safira’s bright kitchen. His eyes lingered on the geraniums that grew on the windowsill, and he breathed in the scents of her cooking: chicken and spices and cookies. Sitting here, safe and warm, it was hard to believe that evil was real. “Why would anyone want to hurt someone like Ayana?” he asked. “Someone so . . .
sweet
?”

Safira’s smile was sad. “We all start out sweet like Ayana. Even Richard did. Even that terrible father. We all have a child inside us.” She laid her cheek against Ayana’s head. “The Holy Child is born in all our hearts.”

“So what happens? Why do people end up evil?”

“The child is hurt. Like Ayana was hurt, like little Ricky was hurt. Sometimes the child is killed. Like the Christ Child was. And then . . .” Her voice trailed away, and she sighed. “Then, sometimes we get angry. We are so angry we turn crazy. We’re like an animal that wants only to bite.”

Kirin looked at Ayana’s round little head resting so sweetly against her mother’s breast. “Is she like that? Will she be like that?”

Safira squeezed her eyes tight for a moment. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “But I am.” She opened her eyes and met Kirin’s. “Inside, I am like that.”

Kirin studied Safira’s face, but he didn’t see anger there, only pain—pain and a tired-looking peace.

“And then what happens?” he asked. “Do we always end up . . . hurting other people? All because—all because we’re so hurt and angry?”

“I think there are two ways we can go.” She shrugged. “In Mexico they talk always of two women—
La Llorona
and the Virgin of Guadalupe. We believe they were both like me.” She touched her glossy black hair, pointed to her own face with its short nose and broad cheekbones. “They were
indias
, women from the people who lived in Mexico before the white men came.
La Llorona
was raped by one of those men, taken to be his mistress—and then he killed the children she gave birth to. Now—says the story—when she walks through the streets of Mexico, she sees more of his children, children born of our country’s rape. She wants to kill them, to revenge herself against the man. To make him suffer as she has suffered. She has let the evil man steal not only her babies but her own soul. He took away the woman she was, and left in its place only a ghost. A hungry shadow who will never again know joy. If Ayana had not been returned to me, perhaps that would have been me. Even now . . .”

Safira’s lips drew back from her teeth, and her dark eyes flashed. Kirin recognized her fierce expression; it was the one his own mother wore so often. But then Safira looked down at Ayana and her face softened. He had never seen Mum look like that, like the pictures of Mary that hung in Anthony’s house. But if Amir had lived, maybe that would be the mother Kirin knew.

“Revenge is an endless circle.” Safira said. “It destroys and is never satisfied. It kills our own hearts.”

She shook her head, as though she were jiggling the dark thoughts out of her mind. “And then there is the way of the Virgin. That is another story, a different story. In this story, in the years after the
conquistadores
took our land, a farmer was walking in the mountains when suddenly a woman dressed in blue stood in front of him. She spoke to him in his own language, in Aztec, and she looked like one of his own people. She called him her son, and told him she was the Virgin who had given birth to the Savior of the world. The next time he saw her, she filled his cloak with flowers—and later, when he spilled out the flowers, her image was left on his cloak, proof that she was real.”

Safira smiled. “
La Llorona
is a ghost story we tell ourselves, a story we believe only on dark nights when we are walking along an empty street—but the story of the Virgin? That we
believe
. Because of her, the children of
indios
and
conquistadores
were no longer unwanted bastards. They became
La Raza
, a new people, something we are proud to be. Now my ancestors could worship Jesus Christ without losing their past, their own identity. The Virgin made another choice for them.”

Her words were not registering in Kirin’s mind anymore. Instead, his thoughts were snagged on her description of
La Llorona
, unable to move on. He sucked in a breath, leaned forward in his chair. “Safira?” He forced himself to say the words he didn’t want to say. “Do you think my mother could be like
La Llorona
? So—angry and hurt—that she would hurt other children?”

Safira’s face changed yet again, and her gaze flicked up at him and then away. “How can I know, Kirin? I do not know your mother.” She shifted in her chair, and something told Kirin that she had already had this thought.

His own thoughts made his stomach ache, and he searched for something to make the pain go away. “My grandmother—I don’t think she thinks my mother is like that. She says Mum is like Kali, the Hindu goddess. Not that Kali is much like the Virgin Mary.”
But at least no one says she’s evil. Not exactly.

Safira shrugged. “I do not know about this Kali. But you should trust your grandmother. Grandmothers are so often wiser than we are.” She lifted her head, and when her eyes met Kirin’s again, they were steady, her face calm. “Here is all I know, Kirin—we choose. We choose what we do with the pain. The Virgin Mary made a choice when she lost her child, a different choice from the one
La Llorona
made. And the Virgin of Guadalupe offered my people a new choice too—to make something new out of pain and rape. Out of death and loss. Jesus made that choice. And I make a choice.” She looked down again at Ayana’s head on her breast. “It could be easy to hate . . . to kill. Part of me would kill that man, that Richard, if he did this. I could do it with my bare hands. I have it in me. But every morning, every
second
, I choose something else. It takes everything in me to choose. But I keep choosing. I—”

Her voice broke off as her eyes shifted to the television on the counter. “Kirin, turn that up? Please.”

A news program had replaced the talk show. Kirin reached and fumbled with the little knobs on the old-fashioned TV set until he found the volume. Words suddenly blared into the quiet kitchen: “Thanks to a witness that came forward today, police now believe that a woman may have been the one who stole little Ayana Jackson from a playground last month.”

The loud words made Ayana jump and start to cry. Her mother stood up, jiggling her gently until she quieted. Something inside Kirin was twisting, tighter and tighter, like a hand reaching inside him and wringing him out, leaving him gasping for breath.

“The woman is described as being in her forties, with long dark hair,” the announcer was saying. “She may be of Indian or Middle Eastern descent.” A picture of Ayana appeared on the screen, and the voice continued, “Police are asking that anyone who saw this child with someone matching this description—or with anyone—contact them.” A phone number flashed across Ayana’s image. “If you saw anything or you think you know who this woman might be, please call this number.”

The announcer went on to other news. Safira’s eyes met Kirin’s. He knew he was shaking, knew she must see the fear on his face. Before she could say anything, though, the phone rang.

Bouncing Ayana on her hip, Safira picked up the phone. “Yes,” she said into it. “Yes, I just saw it on the television.” She listened for what seemed to Kirin a long time, and then she said, “No . . . no, I don’t know anyone like that. But . . .” Her eyes flew to Kirin, and she continued slowly, “But I will ask . . . people that I know.” She listened a moment longer, then said, “Thank you. Thank you for letting me know,” and hung up the phone. She turned to face Kirin. “That was the police.”

He swallowed. “It’s my mother.” He felt tears rise in his eyes, and he blinked them back. “She’s the one who—” He had to swallow again before he could continue. “Who hurt Ayana.”

Safira shook her head. “We do not know that yet. The police say they do not know anything for sure.” She shifted Ayana to her other hip, then put her hand on Kirin’s shoulder.

“I think you should go after Callie.” Her fingers tightened. “Tell her what happened. Ask the Grandmother what we should do next.”

• • •

Kirin ran down the street, his mind full of images—Mum’s hand holding a knife, Ayana’s curly head, Safira’s sad expression, Callie’s face.
Easy to hate, easy to kill, long dark hair, of Indian descent, a woman with long dark hair, easy to kill.
The words looped through his mind.

If Mum was the one who hurt Ayana . . . ?

But if what Amir had told him was true, what would Mum do if she found out? Would she kill Poppy?

Easy to hate, easy to kill.

When he reached his building, Richard’s place on the sidewalk was empty. Kirin leapt up the cement stairs, shoved the door open, and went into the lobby. Still no sign of Callie. He pushed the elevator button, and then, too impatient to wait, he dove into the stairwell. He took the steps three at a time, up and up, until he reached the top floor.

After he yanked the door open, he had to stand still for a moment in the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw a faint blue light shining somewhere from the depths of the thirteenth floor. He followed the blue flicker down the hall.

When he reached the doorway that framed the odd light, he heard voices. He saw Callie sitting on the floor inside, and he took a quick step forward—but what he saw then made him freeze.

A half-naked woman sat cross-legged on the bare floor in front of Callie. She was waving her long, slender arms in the air. And she was blue.

“What the hell, Callie?” Kirin blinked, shut his eyes, but when he opened them again, he saw the same thing. “What’s
she
doing here?”

The woman had four arms. One hand brandished a glittering curved blade, another dripped with blood, and her other two hands were stretched out toward Callie. When the woman turned toward him, Kirin saw that in the center of her forehead, where her bindi should have been, was a third eyeball. It seemed to be looking in a different direction from the eye that was gazing at him, while her other eye was looking in yet another direction.

“Don’t be afraid.” When the woman spoke, Kirin glimpsed her red, wet tongue. Her voice was sweet but somehow terrible.

“Kirin?” Callie scrambled to her feet and came toward him.

Kirin reached out to her, but he could not take his eyes off the blue woman. Despite her extra eyeball, she was beautiful, maybe the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but her beauty was terrifying. Gold jewelry dripped from her arm, her feet, her ears, and around her waist. When she moved, all the chains and beads rattled, and he saw they weren’t gold after all.

They were bones. She wore a necklace of skulls, some of them tiny and pointed like a mouse’s or a bird’s, others bigger, longer, like a dog’s, maybe, and others bigger yet, rounder: human. Other bones hung from the belt around her waist, slender bunches that clacked against each other as she swayed toward him. He swallowed. They were finger bones. Human hands.

Callie moved closer to him and stared up into his face. “Kirin? What do you see?”

“He sees my Consort,” said a voice from the corner.

This new voice made the hairs stand up on Kirin’s arms. He tore his eyes away from the blue woman and turned to the corner of the room behind her, where he made out the shape of an enormous blue man.

“He sees Kali, the Devourer of Time,” said the deep voice. “He sees she who is the wave that moves through all the world. It is far more difficult to see the particle.”

“What does that mean?” Callie asked.

The blue man nodded his enormous head toward Kirin. “Ask him. He knows.”

Kirin wrapped his arms tight around himself. “Callie?” he whispered and pointed at the blue woman. “
That’s
the Grandmother?”

Callie gave Kirin a puzzled look. “No.” She looked at Kali and made a funny face. “That guy is Jesus, if you believe
them
.” She turned back toward the blue man. “
That’s
the Grandmother.”

“Callie.” Kirin knew his voice was as small and shaky as a little kid’s, but it was the best he could manage. “Callie, I don’t see a woman where you’re pointing. I see a man. A huge blue man. And the only other person I see in this room besides you and me is—Kali. The goddess.” He swallowed, made himself continue. “But you don’t see them? You see something different.”

Callie turned toward the blue man. “What’s happening? Why can’t he see you? Why does he see—whatever he’s seeing—instead of you?”

The man—Shiva, Kirin realized, Kali’s consort, the god Shiva—did not answer. He folded his arms and looked straight ahead, as though he had no intention of saying anything further, and his outline wavered. After a moment, all Kirin could see in the corner was a blue mist.