Godmother (19 page)

I let the pain of it rip through my arms and into my blood. It moved into my back now, the burning, stretching from my shoulders and down my spine. It hurt, but it felt wonderful, too. I was using muscles I hadn't used since I'd been able to fly.

It flared up in me in a second: the desire to fly.

Sun streamed in through the window, reflecting onto the mirror in front of me. I glanced up, but I could not focus in. All I knew was the stretch of the cord, the scraping sound of it pulling back and forth.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a moment later the movement stopped. My body became solid again. I looked up. It was only then that I noticed the feathers drifting in the air, fluttering down to the floor. Mark's eyes met mine. The sound of the bike had stopped. The burning ran up and down my arms.

“It really is like you're flying, isn't it?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

George walked over then. “You have enough yet, Lil?” he asked, rubbing his hands together and then slapping Mark on the back. “I think you've tortured her sufficiently.”

I looked back at Mark, who just stared at me. “Good job,” he said. “You should work on those muscles, get them going. Come by anytime.”

WE WALKED
back up Eighth Avenue. Every cell in my body was alive and pulsing. I could feel my shoulders, still in that movement. I reached up my arms and stretched them back.

“Sore?” George asked.

“A little,” I said, dropping my arms to the side. “I was not expecting that today.”

It was a restless energy moving through me. The world was so bright. I was tired, I realized, of spending night after night in my apartment, watching television, eating, being alone, punishing myself.

“Sorry,” he said. “I hope that wasn't uncomfortable for you.” He was shy suddenly, unable to meet my eyes.

I looked at him, surprised. “No,” I said, touching his arm. “I loved it. Thank you.”

“I'm glad,” George asked. “Are you okay, though? You look like you're not feeling well.”

“Yes,” I said, turning back to him. But he was right; I didn't feel okay. I felt as if my arms and shoulders were on fire, as if I wanted to tear down the street, screaming at the top of my lungs.

George just looked at me, squinting his dark eyes, and then swerved to miss a tall young man elbowing past.

We walked up the blocks, silent. There was a gnawing inside me that was becoming a steady ache, and I kept hearing the scraping back and forth of wire and metal, feeling that pull in my back.

I watched an old man walk by, cradling a small dog in his arms. A young Asian couple were wrapped together like lettuce leaves, their arms around each other's waists and their hands touching. I wondered how they managed to move.

I shook my shoulders, stretched out my arms. The whole day seemed to have shifted over and tilted on its side. As we passed the Fashion Institute, a blond woman with her hands full of shopping bags rammed into me, one of her bags pressing into my thigh. I found myself reaching out and smacking it away as she passed.

George laughed. “I hate this part of town,” he said. “And we're not nearly in the worst of it. People everywhere. You can't even move.”

I did not want him to see how out of sorts I was. My shoulders ached no matter what I did. I extended my arms in front of me and pulled them back. I loosened the tension in my back, shook myself out.

A clump of feathers drifted into the air and fell around
us. One landed on George's cheek, and he brushed it off, barely noticing.

“You ever been inside the Garden, Lil?” he asked. The round dome of Madison Square Garden loomed up ahead. “My brother got comp tickets to a Rangers game last year, and we sat up in those boxes up top, these suites with couches and refrigerators. It felt like you could reach down and touch the ice from up there.”

“No,” I said. “I don't think I've done that.”

I shifted again and noticed more feathers popping into the air. My heart lurched after them.

“You like hockey?”

“I guess,” I said. One of the feathers landed in a woman's long dark hair. I was tempted to reach out and pluck it off. I had no idea what George was talking about.

“I love it. I'm not much of a sports guy, but I love hockey. We used to play as kids, my brother and I, when the lake behind our house froze over. Great times.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “Your brother and you.” I tried to hold my shoulders still, clench in my muscles, but my body was absolutely at odds with me.

“We had a lot of fun as kids,” he said. “I think about going back there now.”

“Back where?” One of my wings began to unfold.

“Illinois,” he said. “That's where we grew up, though our family is from New York, and we always had the business. Let's cross. She lives right there.” He pointed to a tall apartment building across the street. I looked around frantically for somewhere to hide. We were only a few blocks from my apartment, but I wouldn't make it till then.

I will be okay,
I thought. I just needed to be alone. To unclench my wings and stop the pain coursing through me.

We stood at the corner of Thirty-third and Eighth Avenue, staring out over the traffic at the post office across the street, with its long columns and leisurely sweep of steps. I could barely breathe. Sweat dripped from my hair and down my forehead. My other wing unclenched. Cars whizzed past. About a hundred yellow taxicabs with their lights blinking. The drone of the cars, the honking, the sounds and the yelling and the
whoooosh
as they zipped by over lanes and lanes of traffic …

I want to fly,
I thought then.
I have to fly.
My muscles were burning. My wings coming undone.

When the “walk” signal finally came on, we crossed the street and entered the building. It seemed to take hours for us to move from the front desk, where the doorman called up and announced our arrival, past the lines of mailboxes, to the elevators. Feathers were popping into the air in whole clumps. I could feel the tingle of air against my skin, rushing up my back. The tickle of feathers. The ache in my muscles, yearning for release.

George caught a feather in his palm and spread out his fingers. “Look,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “How strange.”

I nodded and clutched my stomach. A spurt of feathers leaped into the air, then began to drift slowly down.

“My God, Lil,” George said, peering in at me. “You don't look well at all.” He reached out to touch my shoulder.

“No!” I said, reeling back from him. He looked down at his palm and then back at me. He had touched a wing. I had felt his hand on the feathers and bone.

I looked at him, but the ache in my back was too strong for me to focus in.

“I think we need to take you to the hospital, Lil,” he said. He reached into his bag. I shut my eyes, and a steady line of white flared in front of me. My wings strained at my shirt. I was tensing my muscles so hard against them that I could feel them knot and pull, twist into circles and back out again.

I opened my eyes to see George, sheet white, his cell phone in his hands. “I'm calling an ambulance,” he said. “Right now.”

Just then the elevator doors opened and a small blond woman walked out carrying a gym bag.

“Please,” I said, terror bubbling up in me as I pushed into the elevator. I clutched my stomach. “Let's just go up there, okay? I feel nauseous, that's all.”

George stopped for a second, then snapped to attention, following me into the elevator and frantically pushing the button. “Only eight floors,” he said. “Hang on.”

We stood together, not talking, staring at the illuminated line of numbers on top of the door. I stepped back and felt a wing hit the wall behind me.

“Almost there, Lil,” George said, startling me. He was afraid to even look at me. Confused by the white feathers swirling in the air, all around us. I watched them land quietly on his black shirt, like snowflakes drifting down, and I felt my wings loosen more.

The doors opened finally, like an enormous sigh. George grabbed my hand, and we ran down the yellow hall, trailed by feathers and by the strange bony shapes pushing out
from my back, straining my shirt, which had already begun to tear.

The running seemed almost to be the final straw. I was in searing, unbearable pain. And yet this was the closest I'd come to flight in years. I felt the feathers unfurl and my feet strain to leave the ground….

George stopped and started banging on the door. I held on to the wall to steady myself. A moment later a young woman answered. I could not even see her, just the shape of her and the shapes of several people behind her, scattered about, but I could feel the shift from friendliness to horror, the people gathering around and crying out, and then George pulling me through a hall and into a bathroom.

“Leave!” I cried, twisting from his grasp and pushing him out of the room. The moment I slammed the door shut, I heard a terrible rip. My bandages and shirt finally gave way, and my wings sprawled out on either side of me. I held out my arms and shimmied from the shirt, then sunk to the floor. My wings were like two separate bodies dancing above me. I heard them wreaking havoc: Sweeping along a shelf filled with cosmetics, which tumbled to the floor. Pushing past the plastic shower curtain and slapping the tiled shower wall. I glanced up, reached up to make sure the door was locked.

And then I was on my knees, retching into the toilet and letting out huge, racking sobs that used up all the air in my lungs and left me gasping.

“Lil!” I heard. Banging on the door.

“I'm okay,” I gasped. “I'm okay!”

I fell back down and pressed my cheek to the tile floor.
I heard another crash as my wings somehow unhooked a shower tray filled with shampoo and bath salts.

And then, quiet. I closed my eyes and let everything fade out, concentrating only on my body, releasing the pain and relaxing every muscle. My wings fluttered frantically, then finally settled and stilled. My muscles unclenched. The searing pain began to fade down to a dull throb. I wanted to fly so badly, from such a deep, deep place, that I ached and moaned with it. But the immediate pain was gone. Then the unbearable desire to fly moved to someplace buried within me, tamped down, back in its place. My wings were out and open, slowly flapping to and fro. The tile was cold against my cheek. The relief flowing through me was almost overwhelming.

“Lil?” It was George, followed by more rapping on the door.

I didn't answer.
It's okay,
I thought,
everything is okay now.
My wings fanned back and forth. The air streamed through them, the feathers, and they were weightless. Beautiful. I smiled into the floor, allowed myself that moment of relief, the joy of release.
If every moment,
I thought,
could be like this.

“An ambulance is on its way,” George said through the door. “You'll be okay. Everything will be okay. Don't be scared.”

I sat straight up, not even wincing when my right wing smashed into the shower rod and the curtain came crashing down.

“A what?”

“I know you don't like doctors,” he said, his voice low, soothing. “But they'll take good care of you, I promise.”

I looked around wildly. I was in a small bathroom, no
windows, nothing. A pain came into my stomach and the back of my throat, beating behind my eyes.

I shook it off and stood up. With every ounce of strength I had, I concentrated and pulled my wings back in, ignored the ripping as they folded in like an accordion, feather by feather, and clamped down against my skin. Grinding my teeth, smashing my lips together, I focused in and made one last push, until my wings folded in and lay flat against my back.

I bent down and picked up my ripped shirt—a loose black shirt, in tatters. I looked around frantically for something else, seeing only a stack of towels. Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror, standing there with my breasts hanging down, my skin wrinkled and shining with sweat, my face panicked, afraid. I flipped the shirt around and slid into it so that it was open and ripped in the front but my back was covered. I pulled the shirt in on both sides. There was enough fabric to cover me, if I had a way to hook the material.

“Lil, are you okay in there?” George again, his voice high and tense.

“I'll be right out!” I said, trying to sound normal, forcing my voice to stay low and still.

I pulled open the medicine cabinet, then slammed it shut again. I surveyed the shelves, the pots filled with Q-tips and creams and cotton balls. No safety pins, nothing I could use. I leaned in and pulled the two sides closed as far as they would go and knotted them together. I looked in the mirror again, my wrinkled soft stomach visible but the shirt covering me, my breasts and—I turned to see—my back.

I looked around the room, and at last I noticed the
feathers everywhere, spread across the floor and the shelves, in the sink and tub. Panic moved through me as if it were a physical thing, and instantly I was on the floor again, gathering them with my hands, whole fists of them, almost crying out when they slipped from my grasp and back into the air.

“Lil!”

Under the sink I found a small broom and dustpan and grabbed at them, tried to sweep up as many feathers as possible and throw them in the toilet. They flew into the air and scattered onto the floor again. I dropped back onto the floor and swept desperately, keeping my hands on the piles. They seemed to be multiplying, growing. I grabbed at them, handful after handful, and pushed them underwater.

When I finally opened the door, George was practically beside himself. “My God,” he said. “I thought you were dying in there. Are you okay? What's going on?”

I watched him step back and look me over. A few people were lingering in the area; I could feel their eyes on me. I held a towel over my stomach.

“George,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I'm fine now. I was a little sick, that's all. Food poisoning, I think.”

He just stared at me.

“What happened to your shirt?”

From the street I heard sirens. I glanced back into the bathroom and saw feathers lying on the sink, on the floor, the toilet.