Chapter 7 #2
The prayers finished, I wrote out my baptismal vows, vows which I assumed had been made on my behalf when I’d been a baby, but were just as true now, dammit.
Once again, not really copasetic with Rabbi Mordechai’s current spin on the Almighty, but two thousand years of Jesus-believers couldn’t be completely wrong.
With every line, I felt more in control. Not better, really. The words hurt too much for that. But sharper. Focused. I murmured the words aloud as I wrote them.
“I reject Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth…”
As I wrote, I paid attention to my body. Was I writing the words correctly? Yes. Was I emitting any sort of foul smells or fluids? No. Other than the nausea, did I have any physical complaints? No.
Was there anything lurking behind my eyeballs, trying to talk to me?
I waited. No.
I. Was not. Possessed.
I was just me.
Fucked up, sure. Given to seriously dark and twisted thoughts that sometimes seemed like they took on a life of their own, oh yeah. But me.
Slowly, gradually, relief washed through me. I wasn’t corrupted. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t harboring something dark and sinister inside me against my will.
I was suffering from bad dreams, anxiety, disgusting thoughts and daydreams, and even a fucked-up kind of literary somnambulism brought on by my part-time job as a ninja warrior demon slayer, that was all. Everyone had to have a way to let off steam. Nighttime auto-writing seemed to be mine.
Ready at last, I set aside the notebook, then worked methodically to clean my room, pulling out new bedsheets to hang on the walls, bundling away the ones too ripped to hide much of anything.
I’d sew them up later. I couldn’t cover this mess with fabric alone, though.
Instead, I pulled out an industrial-sized tub of KILZ, then the smaller cans of plain white paint I kept under my bed.
I painted over the walls as quickly as I could, trying not to pass out in the process.
By the time the walls were a uniform white again, I was reeling despite the fans.
I stumbled to the door and pulled it open.
And jerked back just as quickly.
“Steve!”
“Yo…fuckkkk, what the hell.” Still wrapped in Mom’s afghan, he blearily peered past me at the now stark white room, blinking at the smell. His heavily fringed dark eyes swiveled around, not quite tracking. “You could kill yourself in here with all these fumes.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to stink up the whole house.” I slipped out and shut the door firmly behind me, hearing the lock snick closed. I had the keys in my pocket, and now that I was out of the room, I could smell the booze on him more easily. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m good, man.” He let me lead him back downstairs. “I’m off tonight. I got a job, I told you that, yeah?”
“You did,” I lied. That explained the shaving, anyway.
Despite my nickname for him, Deadbeat Steve really did try to put the function into functional alcoholic.
I had to give him credit for that. And between his work at various shit customer service and barback jobs and my hours at the deli, we survived, no matter how many cans of paint I had to buy. “You working tomorrow?”
“I think so.” He wandered back into the living room, and I saw the new bottle on the coffee table.
Where he got it, I had no idea. Booze seemed to show up in Steve’s world the way paint cans did in mine.
But I’d learned not to take a bottle away from him, the same way as I had with my mom.
They both would drink it ‘til it was gone, then eat everything in the house they could keep down. Then they’d go back to work.
I’d always wanted Mom to just be okay for a few more weeks, a month, a year—it was my ongoing mantra. All the way up until senior year, when she’d saved me the trouble of wondering how much longer she would last.
I did miss her, I realized suddenly, in the haze of the paint fumes. I’d needed her, and she had left me.
You know, Steve has a car. That could be helpful.
I blinked at the unexpected thought. Who gave a shit about Steve’s car?
My housemate yawned now, rubbing his eyes. “Your buddy Mordechai called me on my cell earlier. Said your phone was dead.”
I took it out and checked it. He was right. Fuck. “When?”
“Six?” He waved his hand. “Something like that. Where’s the remote?”
I left him to the television and retreated to the kitchen, still a little light-headed. My hands shaking for no good reason, I dialed Mordechai’s number. It was late, after ten o’clock, but he still picked up on the second ring.
“Delia, you’re okay.”
“I’m sorry, my phone keeps dying—”
“Your phone…” Mordechai’s voice trailed off, as if my words had caused him to remember something. He sighed heavily. “Yes. Of course. We should meet tomorrow if you’re not working.”
I perked up immediately. “I’m not. I’m off tomorrow.
” When he didn’t say anything right away, I pushed for more information.
“Did you get another call? Or is this about those photographs I saw?” I didn’t really care, as long as it was something new, different.
Anything to get me out of this house. Anything to keep me from coating my walls with disgusting pictures and curses, and now something beautiful and terrible and infinitely worse.
“Tomorrow night—seven o’clock is probably best. They close at nightfall, but we’ll be out by then.”
“Sure, no problem. Where?” “Close at nightfall” sounded promising, but the rabbi had been walking the streets of this neighborhood for far too long. He sometimes got his past screwed up with his present.
“Holy Angels Cemetery. Wear your amulet, if you would.”
Everything inside me froze into a clutch of—what? Fear, maybe. Excitement. Anticipation. But Holy Angels was on the other side of forever, easily a two-hour walk. “You want me to meet you there?” I asked. “Or are you getting a cab or something and want me to come with?”
“What? No, no.” Mordechai seemed distracted, like he’d forgotten he was talking to me on the phone. “Seven o’clock will be fine. It’s time. It’s long past time, really.” He blew out a hard breath. “You’ll come?”
“Of course, I—”
“Good. I…that’s good.”
“Mordechai, are you all right? Is this about the photos, and—um, those letters?”
“I’ll see you at seven, Delia.” He sighed again. “I’ll continue to pray over you, too, to keep you safe—”
“Oh, Rabbi Mordechai, you don’t have to do that,” I murmured in a rush, suddenly ashamed. But he continued as if he didn’t hear me.
“—until you can keep yourself safe. ‘He will save you from the fowler’s snare, and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with…’”
In a flash, shame morphed into anger, then indignation. I don’t need your stupid psalms, old man. Maybe I didn’t want to be safe. Maybe I wanted to lean in, not away. To see, to taste, to know.
A dark, curling lick of pleasure slithered along my belly, slipping up my spine. It was everything wrong and everything right and everything I wanted and feared—
I blinked hard, shaking myself back to the moment.
Only, I kept shaking. Trembling, really. Cold sweat dripped off my eyelashes. My face felt clammy, wrong.
“Mordechai,” I blurted, before I could change my mind. “I, um, I drew something you should know about, I think. Something on my—”
The line went dead.