The Rose and the Beast Read online

  She was wearing her kimono with the embroidered red roses, her hair in her face. Hipbones haunting through silk and flesh.

  You have opium eyes.

  Opium eyes. She closed her heavy lids over them, wanting to sleep.

  He photographed her as witch, priestess, fairy queen, garden. He photographed her at the ruins of the castle and on the peeling, mournful carousel and in the fountain.

  It’s like you’re from nowhere, Pop said. I like that. It’s like you live inside my head. I made you just the way I wanted you to be.

  Where am I from? she wondered. Maybe Pop was right. She was only in his head. But there had been something before.

  She had been adopted by a man and a woman who wanted beauty. The woman thought of champagne roses, rose champagne, perfume, and jewels, but she couldn’t have a child. The child they found was darker than they had hoped for but even more lavishly numinous. They had men take pictures of her right from the beginning. There were things that happened. Rev tried to think only of the leopard couches and velvet pillows, the feather boas and fox fur pelts, the flock of doves and the poodle with its forelock twisted into a unicorn horn, the hot lights that were, she hoped, bright enough to sear away the image of what was happening to her. She could not, though she tried, remember the face of the other girl who had been there once.

  Was the curse that she was born too beautiful? Had it caused her real parents to abandon her, fearful of the length of lash, the plush of lip in such a young face? Was it the reason the men with cameras had sucked away her soul in little sips, because any form that lovely must remain soulless so as not to stun them impotent? Was it what made Old-Woman-Heroin’s face split into a jealous leer as she beckoned Rev up to the attic and stabbed her with the needle that first time?

  Because she no longer had a car, she let Pop drive her around. He picked her up one night and took her to a small white villa. It belonged to an actress named Miss Charm. Pop led Rev upstairs, past the sleek smoky people drinking punch out of an aquarium and into a room that was painted to look like a shell. He told her to take off her dress and arranged her limbs on a big white bed, tied and slapped her arm, tucked the needle into the largest, least bruised vein. Then the three men climbed onto her while Pop hovered around them snapping shots. Rev did not cry out. She lay still. She let the opium be her soul. It was better than having a soul. It did not cry out, it did not writhe with pain.

  Get off of her, you fucks! a voice screamed like the soul Rev no longer had.

  The young woman had shorn black hair and pale skin.

  Get out of my house, she said.

  Oh chill, Charm.

  Leave now, she said.

  Want to join the party? one of the men said. I think she wants to join the party.

  Rev felt her empty insides trying to jump out of her as if to prove there was no soul there, nothing anyone had to be afraid of, nothing left for them to want to have. She felt her emptiness bitter and burning coming up from her throat. The other woman held up a small sharp kitchen knife and the men moved away.

  The pale woman helped Rev to the bathroom and wiped her face with a warm wet towel. Rev looked at her reflection in the mirror. She had shadows underneath her eyes as if her makeup had been put on upside down. But in spite of that, nothing had changed. She still bore the curse.

  You’re going to be okay, the woman was saying in a hard voice like: you have to be.

  Rev stared at her.

  I know, the woman said.

  She ran a bath for Rev and lit the candles that were arranged around the tub like torches along the ramparts of a castle. She filled the water with oils that smelled like the bark, leaves, and blossoms of trees from a sacred grove. The mirrors blurred with steam like a mystic fog so that Rev could not see her own image. She was thankful.

  While Rev bathed, the woman stripped off the sheets from the white bed and bleached and boiled them clean. She opened all the windows that looked out over the courtyard full of banana trees, Chinese magnolia, bird of paradise, and hibiscus flowers. She lit incense in sconces all around the room and played a tape of Tibetan monks chanting.

  Rev got out of the bath and dried herself off with the clean white towel the woman had left for her. She put on the heavy clean white robe that had been stolen from some fancy hotel and walked barefoot into the bedroom.

  Are you hungry? the woman asked.

  Rev shook her head.

  Do you want to sleep here tonight?

  Rev nodded. Sleep sleep sleep. That was what she wanted.

  She woke the next night. The woman was sitting at her bedside with a silver tray. She had made a meal of jasmine rice, coconut milk, fresh mint, and chiles. There were tall glasses of mineral water with slices of lime like green moons rising above clear bubbling pools. There was a glass bowl full of gardenias.

  Can you eat now? There was an expression on the woman’s face that seemed vaguely familiar. Rev thought of how her adopted mother’s face had looked when she would not get out of bed after something had happened with the photographer. No, it was not that. Maybe she was remembering another woman, before that one. A woman with eyes that were always wet.

  I thought I forgot her, Rev said. My real mother. You remind me of her.

  How?

  Because of your eyes now.

  What happened? Why was she crying?

  I used to think she gave me up because I was cursed.

  Cursed? the woman said.

  Rev looked down and pulled the blankets up over her heavy, satiny breasts.

  Blessed, said the woman. She was crying because you are blessed and because she had to give you up.

  The woman was wearing a white men’s T-shirt. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. Her cheekbones were almost equine. She had a few freckles over the bridge of her nose. Eat something now, she said.

  Rev found, strangely, that she was hungry. She ate the sweet and spicy, creamy minty rice and drank the fizzing lime-stung mineral water. She breathed the gardenias. She watched the woman’s eyes. They were like the eyes of old-time movie stars, always lambent, making the celluloid look slicked with water, lit with candles.

  You can stay here as long as you need to, the woman said.

  But I’m going to need…Rev began.

  If you need it I’ll get it for you. Until you decide you want to stop. I stopped.

  Rev nodded. Her hair fell forward over her face.

  If you need me I’ll be sleeping in the next room, said the woman.

  But this is your bed, said Rev.

  It’s yours for now.

  She stroked Rev’s hand.

  Rev slept for days and days. Sometimes she woke kicking her legs and feet until the comforter slid from the bed. Then she would feel someone covering her with satin and down again, touching her clammy forehead with dry, soft, gardenia-scented fingertips. Sometimes she woke shivering, sweating, quaking or parched. Always the hands would be there to warm or cool or still her, to hold a shimmering glass of water to her cracking lips.

  Sometimes Rev dreamed she was in a garden gathering flowers that bit at her hands with venemous mouths. She dreamed she was running from creatures who bared needles instead of teeth. One of them caught her and pierced her neck. She was falling falling down a spiral staircase into darkness. She was lying in a coffin that was a castle, suffocating under roses. A woman came and knelt beside her, to stitch up her wounds with a silver needle and golden thread.

  One night Rev heard, through the mother-of-pearl-painted walls, the soft, muffled animal sounds of someone crying. She got out of bed like a sleepwalker. The night was warm and soft on her bare skin. It clothed her like the robe the princess had dreamed of spinning when she found the old woman in the attic—a fabric of gold filigree lace. How many years the princess had dreamed of spinning such a garment. But there were never any spinning wheels to be found in the whole kingdom. And then, finally, when her chance had come to ornament her beauty the way she wished, for the imagined forbidd
en lover with the small high breasts and sweet, wet hair and gentle eyes, she had pricked herself and fallen into the death sleep.

  Perhaps it was what she deserved for wanting to make herself more beautiful. And for wanting what she could not have.

  Rev went out the bedroom door and into the hall. The house was dark and silent except for the sound of muffled weeping.

  In the room where the woman lay it was darker still. Rev found her way to the bed by sound and touch. Her hands caught onto something warm and curved and fragile-feeling. It was the woman’s hipbone jutting out from beneath the blankets.

  Why are you crying? Rev asked. Her hand slid down over the hipbone, across the woman’s taut abdomen working with sobs.

  The woman reached for a silk tassel and pulled the embroidered piano-shawl curtains back. Moonlight flooded the room. She handed Rev a small battered black-and-white photograph.

  Do you remember? the woman asked.

  Rev stared at the two naked young girls, one dark, one pale, curled on a leopard-skin sofa. Their hands and feet were shackled together. It was herself and the woman. That was why the eyes had looked familiar.

  My stepfather took this, the woman said.

  These two girls. Only with each other were they young. They would take each other’s hands and run screaming through the night. No one could touch them, then. Dressed as ragged, raging boys; people were afraid of them. Devouring stolen roses and gardenias, stuffing their faces with petals. Rolling in the dirt, scratching so that their nails ached, filled with soil. The fair-skinned one would bind the other’s breasts, gently, gently, so they were hidden away in the flannel shirt. The dark-skinned one would wipe the powder and paint from the other’s face. They would trace each other’s initials with a razor blade on their palms and hold hands till their blood was one. These secret rampages were their own—they could look at each other anywhere, no matter what was happening around them—to them—and be free, be back, roaming, hollering, shrieking, untouched except by each other.

  Charm, Rev said. Miss Charm.

  I shouldn’t have asked you to stay, said Charm. I shouldn’t have made you remember.

  I’ll go then, Rev said. If you want.

  I don’t want you to go, Charm whispered. I’ve been waiting for you so long. Her voice reminded Rev of a piece of broken jewelry.

  I thought he had taken my soul, said Rev.

  I thought he took mine, too. But no one can. It’s just been sleeping.

  When Charm kissed her, Rev felt as if all the fierce blossoms were shuddering open. The castle was opening. She felt as if the other woman were breathing into her body something long lost and almost forgotten. It was, she knew, the only drug either of them would need now.

  WOLF

  They don’t believe me. They think I’m crazy. But let me tell you something it be a wicked wicked world out there if you didn’t already know.

  My mom and he were fighting and that was nothing new. And he was drinking, same old thing. But then I heard her mention me, how she knew what he was doing. And no fucking way was she going to sit around and let that happen. She was taking me away and he better not try to stop her. He said, no way, she couldn’t leave.

  That’s when I started getting scared for both of us, my mom and me. How the hell did she know about that? He would think for sure I told her. And then he’d do what he had promised he’d do every night he held me under the crush of his putrid skanky body.

  I knew I had to get out of there. I put all my stuff together as quick and quiet as possible—just some clothes, and this one stuffed lamb my mom gave me when I was little and my piggy-bank money that I’d been saving—and I climbed out the window of the condo. It was a hot night and I could smell my own sweat but it was different. I smelled the same old fear I’m used to but it was mixed with the night and the air and the moon and the trees and it was like freedom, that’s what I smelled on my skin.

  Same old boring boring story America can’t stop telling itself. What is this sicko fascination? Every book and movie practically has to have a little, right? But why do you think all those runaways are on the streets tearing up their veins with junk and selling themselves so they can sleep in the gutter? What do you think the alternative was at home?

  I booked because I am not a victim by nature. I had been planning on leaving, but I didn’t want to lose my mom and I knew the only way I could get her to leave him was if I told her what he did. That was out of the question, not only because of what he might do to me but what it would do to her.

  I knew I had to go back and help her, but I have to admit to you that at that moment I was scared shitless and it didn’t seem like the time to try any heroics. That’s when I knew I had to get to the desert because there was only one person I had in the world besides my mom.

  I really love my mom. You know we were like best friends and I didn’t even really need any other friend. She was so much fun to hang with. We cut each other’s hair and shared clothes. Her taste was kind of youngish and cute, but it worked because she looked pretty young. People thought we were sisters. She knew all the song lyrics and we sang along in the car. We both can’t carry a tune. Couldn’t? What else about her? It’s so hard to think of things sometimes, when you’re trying to describe somebody so someone else will know. But that’s the thing about it—no one can ever know. Basically you’re totally alone and the only person in the world who made me feel not completely that way was her because after all we were made of the same stuff. She used to say to me, Baby, I’ll always be with you. No matter what happens to me I’m still here. I believed her until he started coming into my room. Maybe she was still with me but I couldn’t be with her those times. It was like if I did then she’d hurt so bad I’d lose her forever.

  I figured the only place I could go would be to the desert, so I got together all my money and went to the bus station and bought a ticket. On the ride I started getting the shakes real bad thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have left my mom alone like that and maybe I should go back but I was chickenshit, I guess. I leaned my head on the glass and it felt cool and when we got out of the city I started feeling a little better like I could breathe. L.A. isn’t really so bad as people think. I guess. I mean there are gangs at my school but they aren’t really active or violent except for the isolated incident. I have experienced one big earthquake in my life and it really didn’t bother me so much because I’d rather feel out of control at the mercy of nature than other ways, if you know what I mean. I just closed my eyes and let it ride itself out. I kind of wished he’d been on top of me then because it might have scared him and made him feel retribution was at hand, but I seriously doubt that. I don’t blame the earth for shaking because she is probably so sick of people fucking with her all the time—building things and poisoning her and that. L.A. is also known for the smog, but my mom said that when she was growing up it was way worse and that they had to have smog alerts all the time where they couldn’t do P.E. Now that part I would have liked because P.E. sucks. I’m not very athletic, maybe ’cause I smoke, and I hate getting undressed in front of some of those stupid bitches who like to see what kind of underwear you have on so they can dis you in yet another ingenious way. Anyway, my smoking is way worse for my lungs than the smog, so I don’t care about it too much. My mom hated that I smoke and she tried everything—tears and the patch and Nicorette and homeopathic remedies and trips to an acupuncturist, but finally she gave up.

  I was wanting a cigarette bad on that bus and thinking about how it would taste, better than the normal taste in my mouth, which I consider tainted by him, and how I can always weirdly breathe a lot better when I have one. My mom read somewhere that smokers smoke as a way to breathe more, so yoga is supposed to help, but that is one thing she couldn’t get me to try. My grandmother, I knew she wouldn’t mind the smoking—what could she say? My mom called her Barb the chimney. There is something so dry and brittle, so sort of flammable about her, you’d think it’d be dangerous for her to
light up like that.

  I liked the desert from when I visited there. I liked that it was hot and clean-feeling, and the sand and rocks and cactus didn’t make you think too much about love and if you had it or not. They kind of made your mind still, whereas L.A.—even the best parts, maybe especially the best parts, like flowering trees and neon signs and different kinds of ethnic food and music—made you feel agitated and like you were never really getting what you needed. Maybe L.A. had some untapped resources and hidden treasures that would make me feel full and happy and that I didn’t know about yet but I wasn’t dying to find them just then. If I had a choice I’d probably like to go to Bali or someplace like that where people are more natural and believe in art and dreams and color and love. Does any place like that exist? The main reason L.A. was okay was because that is where my mom was and anywhere she was I had decided to make my home.

  On the bus there was this boy with straight brown hair hanging in his pale freckled face. He looked really sad. I wanted to talk to him so much but of course I didn’t. I am freaked that if I get close to a boy he will somehow find out what happened to me—like it’s a scar he’ll see or a smell or something, a red flag—and he’ll hate me and go away. This boy kind of looked like maybe something had happened to him, too, but you can’t know for sure. Sometimes I’d think I’d see signs of it in people but then I wondered if I was just trying not to feel so alone. That sounds sick, I guess, trying to almost wish what I went through on someone else for company. But I don’t mean it that way. I don’t wish it on anyone, believe me, but if they’ve been there I would like to talk to them about it.

  The boy was writing furiously in a notebook, like maybe a journal, which I thought was cool. This journal now is the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. It’s the only good thing really that they’ve given me here.

  One of our assignments was to write about your perfect dream day. I wonder what this boy’s perfect dream day would be. Probably to get to fuck Pamela Lee or something. Unless he was really as cool as I hoped, in which case it would be to wake up in a bed full of cute kitties and puppies and eat a bowl full of chocolate chip cookies in milk and get on a plane and get to go to a warm, clean, safe place (the cats and dogs would arrive there later, not at all stressed from their journey) where you could swim in blue-crystal water all day naked without being afraid and you could lie in the sun and tell your best friend (who was also there) your funniest stories so that you both laughed so hard you thought you’d pop and at night you got to go to a restaurant full of balloons and candles and stuffed bears, like my birthdays when I was little, and eat mounds of ice cream after removing the circuses of tiny plastic animals from on top.