Chapter 22: The Pendant

22. The Pendant

The rain had returned and appeared every day for the next several, as summer was winding down, as the tropical storms and hurricanes tossed the towns of the Gulf Coast, and streamed up the Atlantic coast. We were a hundred miles inland, but the Gulf still laid down the truth of our weather.

Phyla had started sitting with me at meals, now that my reputation with Erika, Lindsey and Rebecca had been completely trashed by my heroics out by the river. But every time I tried to as something about Garish she would shake her head, and sometimes tap her finger on the side of her head, indicating that she want me to remember all this shit I was supposed to know from some past we had mysteriously shared. How can you remember yourself when you don’t really know yourself at all? Or is it the other way around. I just knew that I really adored Phyla and wanted to be with her minute of every day.

But security had tightened since Michele’s alleged escape attempt. We could feel it all around us, the way eyes stayed on all of us, and particularly on me. It sent a shiver down my bones when I walked the hall and cast careful glances overhead at the security cameras. More than before, there was an awareness that eyes behind those cameras, always watching me.

Each night Phyla and I would meet at the window and whisper good nights into the darkness, our breaths fogging the panes. There was something inside me that wanted to say, “I love you,” but perhaps it was too soon. It seemed that I had heard of relationships that were lost simply because one person had said those potent three words too soon.

When her time in solitary was completed Michele joined us, so our table became the “colored table,” although I wasn’t sure what color I was supposed to be. Grace, the one Asian-American girl had long-established with friendships with some of the other girls, and didn’t seem to be victim of the dividing line which Erika had created around everyone else.

What struck me most powerfully about our threesome was that we were a club of secrets. Not one of those clubs where we share secrets that no one else knew, but a club in which everyone in the group was keeping secrets from each other, and the weight of those secrets seemed to fall most heavily on me. From Michele I was keeping the secret of Phyla’s ears and her elfin heritage, as well as how deeply we had become involved in our love-making. From Phyla I kept the secret of what Michele’s past had been. After all, I had given my word, and it was not the kind of thing that she would want anyone else to know, a history of having been demeaned in the lowest form of sex slavery. It hurt to even imagine a world where there was no school and no love. Nothing but emptiness and sex with men who saw you not as an object of beauty, but as a target for their disdain, their hatred of an entire race. Michele was small and underdeveloped at age sixteen. She must have really been such a petite child when her time in the sex house began. If I had tried to tell her secret I would never be able to do it justice.

The irony of the whole situation, in this little club of ours, was that they were keeping just as many, or maybe even more from me. Michele had not really given me the full story of why someone wanted to kill her, or how she had ended up at Holshue House. And Phyla was holding back on my own past, this history that she said we had shared, but which she said I needed to remember for myself.

They both seemed to know much more about the house itself than I did. Michele had said that she was conversing with the ghosts, or at least the one that came to her room to visit her, and it was obvious that the ghosts knew much of what was going on. They could see us. They had been seeing people and events for more than a hundred and fifty years. They knew things even if they couldn’t fully interpret things.

And Phyla always seem to know more about the house and what was going on with the staff. She knew about the drugs in the desserts, and the books and in the book room, and how to time th cameras in the hallways. Almost as if she was a little assistant to the warden / principal.

Yet each day I fell more and more deeply in love with Phyla. Each morning, when I first saw her, my breath would catch at the sheer beauty of that face, that rich mahogany brown of her skin and the way her blonde-highlight curls bounced when she walked. Sometimes I would reach across the table for a moment in trace the way her hand curved in the joint between the index finger and the thumb, just to feel that beautiful skin. I wanted to touch her ears the way that I had during the wonderful naptime, but I knew it was far to intimate a gesture for the cafeteria. No one noticed my hand-touching except Michele, and she knew. She had already accepted us.

Once during that time she had pulled me off into the laundry room as we walked by for a quick kiss, and I let the memory of that float in my head for days. And at night I would touch myself remembering the feel of her breasts against mine. It was so little. It was never enough. But it was all I had.

By this time I had finished Jane Eyre. I couldn’t help but notice the parallel between Bertha, the mad woman in the attic, and our Maggie who was also mad and had been imprisoned in the top floor. I wondered about her often, wondering if she could see the darkness I now knew was Garish. As well as why the darkness was haunting her. This was something I shared with her, much as I shared the ghosts with Michele.

Of course I was still behind in class because English class had progressed, or descended, into Great Expectations. Once again no one had given me a book and when I asked Phyl told me that there were no copies in the book closet. I was pretty certain that Mr. Perkins didn’t care – he was just putting in the time to pull a paycheck, too tired and bored to care if we were learning anything or not. But of course he had also been there that night when Michele had been thrown into the river. It was possible to envision him wearing a hood and doing something like that. But of course no one talked anything about that night now, as if it hadn’t happened.

In history class we had progressed into the Civil War itself. Battles and death, and more people who were just trying to survive the whole thing while living their lives caught up in the crossfire. People whose crops were burned, whose homes were destroyed, whose sons had to die. Suffering to bring an end to the suffering of the slaves. Sin compounding sin, it seemed to me.

English class was done with Jayne Eyre and had moved into Great Expectations, but once again no one gave me a copy of the book, and Phyla said they were out of copies in the book room. I don’t think that Mr. Perkins really cared one way of the other. It was as if he was just putting in his time, something that I led me to appreciate Ms. Dickinson all the more. I had come to see there was a quiet intensity to her teaching, a passion that Mr. Perkins just didn’t have. It was during one of his droning talks about the character development in Great Expectations that something struck me. The people on the veranda that night as I walked back up to the porch in my wet, nearly transparent pajamas included most of the student body, Jeremy who might well have been on duty, Ms. Slanick of course, who has an apartment somewhere in a new addition at one of the end, and Mr. Perkins. What was one of the teachers doing there late at night? He seemed rather mousy to have been the one throwing someone into the river, but still it was something unexplained.

Since I didn’t have anything to read, Michele slipped me the copy of Huckleberry Finn that Phyla had slipped to her as she went into solitary confinement. It was an uncensored copy, meaning that it still contained the “N-word,” and the only copy in the house, the rest of having been purged along with other “unhealthy” books. In a quiet whisper she told me that someone had gotten her a copy of Beloved, which was another one of the banned books. Again she held onto more secrets of the house than I could ever magine knowing. It was like I was always the stupidest kid in the class, and that didn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. I seemed to be condemned to an indefinite sentence of ignorance.

The sameness of days was finally interrupted when Phyla pulled me aside after breakfast, pushing me back into the little alcove where there was a locked door to the kitchen, the one the staff never used. We only had a couple of minutes before we were due to be in history class, so there was a sense of urgency in the way she looked nervously over her shoulder to make sure we were alone. “Today, finally, today.”

“What?”

“The staff, they’re having a meeting, still trying to figure out this whole thing about Michele and how she ended up getting out. They’re actually going to give us little pieces of cheese cake with the diazepam, because they feel certain that none of us will be able to resist cheesecake.”

“And?”

“And it’s harder to blend into the other food, but we gotta find a way to not eat it - you work out something. Then five minutes into naptime come to my room. Just crack your door open, watch the camera and slip on over when it’s pointing the other way.”

“Okay …” I said, sounding dubious, but mostly because I hadn’t worked out a way to dispose of the cheesecake.

“Hey,” she grinned. “I’ll make it worth your while.” And then she leaned in for a quick peck on the lips before slipping out into the hallway on those light little steps of hers.

Through group, history and English all I could do was think about the afternoon, anticipation of being with my Phyla again after so many days, and concern about the whole process of sneaking without getting caught. Finally lunch came and as I sat there with my napkin in my lap the answer to avoiding the cheesecake came to me. Instead of eating it with a fork I picked up the whole piece, pretending that I couldn’t wait to devour it. I held it in my right hand while cupping my left hand below my right. Then, while pretending to chew with enthusiasm I let it slip out of my right hand, and let my left hand follow it to my lap, where the napkin awaited. Once it was there I carefully folded it into the napkin while still pretending to chew the last bites.

I stuffed the folded napkin into the waistband of the tights that I was wearing and immediately realized that it wasn’t such a good plan after all as I felt the cold wet of the cheesecake seeping through the napkin and against the skin of my abdomen. I looked over at Phyla who was sitting next to me at the table and she was laughing. It was a soft laugh, but still so genuine and enthusiastic.

Her own cheesecake seemed to have disappeared in some moment when I was concentrating on my own maneuvers. She winked at me. And then took her tray to the conveyor without saying another word. She hadn’t said a word throughout the meal about whether or not I was still to come to her room at naptime. Maybe she was leaving it up to me.

I sat on the edge of my bed through the first minutes of naptime, shivering and I couldn’t tell if it was anticipation or fear. I knew that I needed to wait for the house to quiet, for the diazepam to take effect on the other girls. When I finally did move it was a leap for the door, like I couldn’t get there fast enough, or as if the speed would give me stealth. I had taken off my shoes and had been hoping for those fast silent footfalls that Phyla seemed to do so easily. At the door I cracked it open slowly and looked up at the camera. I saw the lens pointing at my door and then it made its move to the next location. I counted to ten, giving it time to face the wall across the hall, and then slipped out my door closing quietly behind me and on into Phyla’s room. She had left the door ajar.

She was sitting, waiting on the edge of the bed, wearing a white blouse with blue trim around the yoke and sleeves. Her jeans were faded to almost white with slits cut in the thighs showing more of her beautiful skin. There were no words as I closed the door behind me and sat down next to her. Only kisses. Soft and gentle at first, and then more urgent, my lips wanting to inhale her very essence through her mouth, pulling her tongue into me. My breathing became rushed, shortened, as my heart pounded its way up into my ears.

Remembering the time before I reached up and touched her ears, tracing their point, squeezing their softness. “My bra,” she said into my cheek in a breathy whisper.

 I reached behind her and up into her blouse and released the clasp on her bra at the exact same time as she did the same to mine. The moment of relief as my breasts dropped a little and reached out for her came rushing through me while I knew she was feeling the same. We peeled our shirts off over our heads, after I had paused long enough to undo the top three buttons of mine. Chest to chest, skin to skin, sliding over one another.

Her mouth found my nipple, nibbling and pulling at it with her teeth as I arched my back pushing myself towards her. And then her mouth was back on mine, her tongue finding its way into me as she pushed me back onto the bed. With legs intertwined we began the urgent motion, each of our privates rubbing the other’s thigh, hard and fast. Within a few minutes we climaxed together, and then, after lying breathless in each other’s arms for only a couple of minutes, we started again until we had achieved a second one, softer and warmer than the first.

We stopped, and she looked into my eyes with those deep brown eyes that reminded me of a fawn I had seen up close in the woods at some time in one of my lives. “Gesama,” she said. The syllables seemed to hang suspended in the air – almost as if I could see them floating there. It was all she wanted to say at that moment.

“The me before the spider?” Even though I knew that was who it was, who I was, a me I didn’t remember but somehow knew had been there.

She nodded, her eyes blinking closed to hide the pain of something. “You have to remember. Sometime soon you have to remember. Remember who you were, what we were.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” I asked rolling back from her.

“No. You have to remember for yourself. They are your memories. I can talk about us, but if you don’t remember then it’s no good.”

“And you can’t use your elven magic,” and as I said this I danced my fingers in the air above my head, “to make me remember?”

She shook her head again. “My magic isn’t that powerful. Just some tricks with plants like you saw that night with Michele and the river. You are the one who has the real … it’s you … I mean … You’re just going to have to remember, but I believe that all of those memories are in there. They lived inside you, even when you were a spider.”

I thought back to my time when my spider self, Gesama, lived under the microwave. I remembered climbing over crumbs to get to a fruit fly caught in a little web, and the smell of the food that the family cooked, the sound of voices over breakfast, and feeling some kind of connection to Allison and her cherry Pop Tarts. But everything before being a spider was a blank.

Phyla’s thoughts had gone elsewhere. “Speaking of Michele, what is this thing you have going now?”

I shook myself from the stupor of trying to remember and the post-orgasmic bliss, “What?”

“The two of you are different now, like you’re sharing some kind of secret, and …”

I remembered my promise to Michele, that afternoon up in her room. We hadn’t really spoken of it with each other about any of it since then. Maybe because we just hadn’t had the chance. Maybe because it seemed like something too dark to bring out into the common areas of the house. “It’s nothing,” was all I said. “After all, I did save her life. I mean, we saved her life. You did as much as me. I could never have pulled her out on my own, without that vine.”

“I know all of that. But there’s something more. You look at each other, and …”

I remembered the pain in Michele’s face as she told me, but the revelation that she had been literally a slave, bought and sold, was too big a secret to tell even Phyla. Then too, I remembered that she had spoken to the ghosts. “It’s nothing. I mean, we talked about the ghosts …” And then I realized that I had screwed up because no one besides Ms. Slanick was to know of our secret meeting in Michele’s room.

“What about the ghosts? The ones that only you can see? You’re sharing secrets with someone, and when was this talk? Are the two of you now slipping off for secret rendezvouses?”

“No, but she …” and it felt like I was fighting a losing battle here. And I could hear the jealousy in Phyla’s voice.

Phyla was starting to cry, “If you could just remember … we are so much, so much more than just this.” She gestured down towards our legs that were still entwined at the knees. “And I gave up so much. I am just an elf who fell in love, who had to leave all my people to be with you. And it has been so lonely now without you.”

I was getting frightened, but I didn’t know quite of what. Was it a fear of being too deep in a relationship the foundations of which I couldn’t remember? Was it the fear that she was lying to me? Was it a fear that I loved our love-making too much?

Suddenly I thought of something else, something which she did seem to know about. “Can you at least tell me something of the darkness? The dark that you called Garish, that we saw the other day with when we were upstairs with Maggie? What is he?”

She bit her lower lip. Perhaps she thought I was changing the subject. “A gangler now, but he used to be …”

“What is a gangler? And what did he used to be?”

“A human - now he is … incomplete, more will than anything else. Once upon a time he was your boyfriend, a very possessive and controlling boyfriend … until me. But he’s obsessed. Maybe he thinks he can have you back, or thought like that. Now I think that all he wants is to harm you, to not let us be what we became … when …” Her crying intensified. “Please remember.”

“I’m not sure I want to, if I have to remember that.” I replied.

“And sometimes what you see, what you’re calling the darkness, it is actually the two of them. Garish and his best friend, Throttle. They travel together because they made the jump together. But up there that afternoon, that was just Garish.”

“And you saw him as a person?”

“I see shadows and recognize them by the shape of their shadows. That’s all. Because I remember everything. They nearly killed you and the spider was the only way we could protect you – the leap to the spider. But now I’m scared you’ve lost too much of yourself.”

I was shaking, feeling overwhelmed by all this stuff that I was supposed to be remembering, and learning that I was being pursued some kind of shadow creature who had nearly killed me. There’s nothing that I could say.

Phyla untangled herself the rest of the way and reached down into a cloth bag with shoulder straps. As she turned and stretched across the bed the expanse of that beautiful skin across her naked back, the ripple of her ribs, made me catch my breath. I wanted to touch, to stroke every inch of it, but the moment was all wrong.

From the bag she pulled a jade circle, about three inches across with a whole in one place where it could be worn as a pendant. When she turned it to face me I saw an etching in deep sienna brown, a beautiful ethereal woman with wings, a faint underline of breasts and circle of nipple showing that she was topless. Her lower half swathed in rippled fabric. Behind and around the brown of the figure was the pale green of the jade, with grey veins speaking of an unremembered history.

“What is it?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the angelic lady.

“It’s yours. I have been keeping it for you.”

“Is that an angel?”

Phyla shook her head. “No, it’s Eos, the goddess of dawn, your grandmother.” For the second time she thrust it at me.

My hand was shaking as I reached out to touch it. The moment I felt the coolness of the stone contacting the tips of my fingers, icy cold raced through my body. I saw that blue sea that I had seen once before when I first kissed Phyla, but now I was being pushed down into that sea. The salt water was stinging my mouth and my nose and I was drowning. Someone was pushing me down into the water and I was drowning. I could feel something in me fighting against it with every fiber of my being. My breath was being taken away and darkness was starting to envelope me.

I jerked my hand away and jumped from the bed, looking wild-eyed at Phyla, the room with its macramé wall hangings and little decorative bowls. How I not noticed those things before? Was I really in Holshue House or somewhere else? Feeling lost and confused and raced towards the door. Only as I pulled it open did I remember that I was topless. I grabbed my blouse and bra from the bed and went on out the door, holding the shirt to my chest for some bit of modesty. I hadn’t bothered to count the cameras, but moved in just a few strides to my own room where I threw myself down onto the bed.

That object, whatever it was, the beautiful etched jade amulet, it seemed that it did hold the secrets to the remembering that Phyla so desperately wanted me to achieve. But I wasn’t at all sure now that I wanted to remember any of what it might show. Could I love Phyla enough to want to face all of that for her? Or did I, as she seemed to believe, really need to do confront all of that for me? The spider part of Gesama, so naturally shy, said no.