Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (28 page)

“I have?” Sophie didn't want to talk about herself, she was fully sick of thinking about herself. She would rather engage the Dola in existential debates that made her feel smart. “Isn't it my destiny then, to get off track with my destiny?”

The Dola opened her eyes and rolled them. “Yes. It is your destiny to have done this. And it is my destiny to come here and bring you back to your destiny.”

“You want me to go back to Hennie's, don't you?” Sophie sulked, fighting back a rain of tears. Every time the Dola spoke it was an injury upon her heart. The muscle grew heavier with every word, a solid rock in her chest.

“Yes.” The Dola nodded Laurie LeClair's head. “You were meant
to learn more from that woman. You need to go back to her.”

“Is she ever going to put time back on?” Sophie whined. “Is she waiting for me to come back or something?”

The Dola shrugged. “I don't know, time doesn't have a destiny. It's time. I know nothing about it.”

“And if I don't go back to Hennie's what happens? You keep hanging around?”

The Dola nodded. “Yes. I will be around you always.”

“That's going to be really weird,” Sophie pouted. “It's going to be really weird to have Laurie LeClair just hanging around all the time. Especially when the time spell is broken and that baby starts crying.” They both turned back to look at the frozen child. A fly had landed on her cheek. Were flies magic? How come they got to buzz around? “Livia, will you make sure bugs aren't crawling on that baby?”

“Oh, of course.” Livia set about to brushing the baby off with her feathers, cooing all the while.

“If you're just hanging around like Laurie LeClair,” Sophie continued, “being creepy, people are going to call the cops or something. Or someone who knows Laurie will take her to the hospital. Then what are you gonna do?”

“Then I jump into another's body,” the Dola said, simply.

“Really.”

“Oh, yes. It can go on for all eternity. If I am forced to leave Laurie, I am thinking I will occupy your mother.”

“No!” Sophie cried.

“Yes. She is very weakened; she would be easy to slip into.”

“You are really evil,” Sophie spat. “I don't know how you can live with yourself.”

“It helps that there is no such thing as evil,” the Dola said. “If I believed in it, I would probably have a hard time.”

“I thought there was evil,” Sophie said. “I thought my grandmother was evil.”

“The concept of evil serves its purpose for humans,” the Dola granted. “But where I exist, there is no such thing. There is only destiny.”

“Well, I wish you would go back there,” Sophie grumbled.

“If you return to your destiny, I will,” the Dola said. “I would love a day off. I was haunting Laurie in the form of her drug dealer earlier this week. She was going to let that child die, and that is not their destiny. After she'd salted her, she was meant to bring her to the hospital, and instead she did her drugs and fell into a stupor. I was very concerned she wouldn't respond to my haunting, and that the child would die.”

“And then what?” Sophie asked. “You'd haunt her forever?”

“No, the child would,” the Dola explained. “She would become a
Naw
, a spirit cast out of their bodies against their destiny. It would have been tragic for everyone. Naws are eternally unhappy, and Laurie would have been driven mad. So, good work last week. Now this week, I have you.”

Inside her home, Sophie checked in on her sleeping mom. Andrea snored a light snore, undisturbed by the drama in the backyard.
Satisfied, Sophie made a cup of instant soup and sat at her kitchen table eating it, having a staring contest with the Dola out the window. As the sun slid across the sky, Sophie periodically returned to the yard to move the little girl into a shady place. “This is crazy,” Sophie said.

“Yes,” the Dola agreed.

Sophie went back into her house and grabbed her magic pouch from her mother's purse and returned to the yard. The Dola watched her, solemnly. Occasionally the being said, “You should return to Hennie,” and the words ran down Sophie's spine, pure guilt. She ignored it.

Sophie stuffed her hand into the pouch. How was she supposed to know what grainy grain or sharp rock or smooth rock or sandy sand or pigeon bone was the magic ingredient she needed? She let her hand hang open inside the bag, and felt it pulled toward something. The grainy bits. She harvested them from the bag, felt the pile of it cool and heavy in her hand. Did she need fire? Hennie had used fire. Andrea didn't smoke, there were never any matches around. Supposedly Sophie was able to just make things with her mind; surely fire, so elemental, would be simple. And it was. A tuft of flames ignited on a patch of dirt in her backyard. Sophie quickly yanked a few dry sprouts of weeds that hung too close. She took a breath. The pigeons stirred.

If Sophie was as powerful as everyone was acting, she should be able to do—or undo—any zagavory Hennie could do. She found the piece of herself that was her zawolanie and flexed it, let the perfect sound fly from her lips. She hurled the grainy grains into the fire,
extinguishing it. A glass bowl holding water for the pigeons cracked, wetting the dirt. Sophie heard the snap of her mother's water glass breaking on her nightstand inside the house. Laurie LeClair's baby burst into tears, flapping its arms against itself like a grounded bird. The pigeon's coos became alarmed as they dodged blind baby-stomps. She screamed and howled, waving her plastic shovel. The Dola turned to her with an annoyed sigh.

“Sophie!” Sophie could hear her mother shouting for her inside the house. The crazy racket, the strange electrical surge of time reactivated, had awoken her. The baby continued to cry. The Dola stared at it blankly.

“It's a baby,” Sophie snapped at her. “Just be sweet to it. Do Dolas have, like, no maternal instinct?”

“No, we don't,” the Dola said. “I actually don't even know what you mean by
maternal instinct
. That's a human thing. I'm more of a concept.” She walked to the baby and petted its head awkwardly. The child looked up at her mother and, not finding her, screamed louder.

“Sophie!” Andrea's head poked out the kitchen window, then was gone. Soon she was on the back porch, her puffy, sickly eyes widening at what she saw. Andrea's head teetered back and forth between her daughter and Laurie LeClair, with an occasional dip to take in Laurie LeClair's screaming baby. The pigeons, Sophie noted, had flown away. Time was running smoothly. Her zagavory had worked. She'd kept control of her zawolanie, and it had done less damage. Sophie would have liked to bask in this victory, but the ruckus in her backyard prevented it.

“I'm sorry—Laurie? Laurie LeClair?”

The Dola looked at Andrea blankly.

“Can't you just play along?” Sophie hissed. “Act normal?”

“I don't care about the consequences you will face in your life as a result of not following your destiny,” the Dola said. “As far as I'm concerned, the more problems for you, the better.” The Dola fixed its steely, empty stare on Andrea, who shuddered.

“Sophie, what is going on? What is she doing here?”

“Uh, I was out in the yard, and she passed by and we just started talking,” Sophie said dumbly. She could see her mother deciding whether to believe her. “I'm so
bored
with being grounded!” She affected a whine. “I just wanted someone to hang out with!”

“Really?” Andrea raised an eyebrow. “Laurie LeClair?” The baby continued to howl. Laurie stood motionless beside it, unaffected. “What are you on?” Andrea demanded of the girl. “Huh? What's wrong with your baby? Will you—do something, will you hold it or something? Sophie, really, what is going on!”

“I don't know!” Sophie sulked. The only strategy she could muster was embodying a bratty teenaged girl, which she supposed she was. “We were hanging out and she got weird!”

“Well, she's on drugs,” Andrea informed her daughter. It was extra easy to talk about Laurie like she wasn't there, because she wasn't. But when Andrea told the girl to take her baby and leave, the Dola responded.

“No,” she said.

“No?” Andrea repeated, shocked.

“No. I'm not leaving your yard.”

“You'll do what I say or else I'll call the police. And Child Services. I think I'll be calling them, regardless.”

The Dola shrugged. “I don't care,” it said. “Do what you want.”

“Sophie!” Andrea turned her agitation toward what she could control, her daughter. “Make her leave!”

“Sophie can't make me do anything,” the Dola said in its simple, honest voice. There was a bit of weariness to it. Sophie had to strain to hear what the Dola sounded like beneath the waves of dread and regret the voice provoked. The Dola didn't sound sad exactly, just resigned. It must be wearisome to walk around all your life telling people simple truths they didn't want to hear.

“I'm calling the police.” Andrea turned and stormed back into the house.

“If I am taken away, I'll jump into her.” The Dola nodded at the back door. There was no threat in its voice, just the calm reportage of facts.

“Really?” Sophie asked. “So we'll be having this conversation, this same one, but you'll be in my house with me, you'll be my mother.”

“That's right.”

Not only was that horrible for all the obvious reasons, but the thought of seeing her mother all zombified, blank and flat, her self gone away, replaced with the monotonous Dola, gave Sophie terrible shivers.

“Oh, god, okay!” Sophie spat. “Ugh! I really hate you.”

The Dola shrugged. “People tell me that all the time, but I don't know what it feels like.” Beside it, Laurie LeClair's baby howled and screamed, whacking itself in the head with its shovel.

Inside the house, Andrea waited for the staticky telephone to connect her with the police department. With all the windows opened to the summer day, Laurie LeClair remained in full view. “Hello?” Andrea spoke into the phone.

Please, please, please, please
, Sophie chanted in her mind. Her hand stuffed in her pouch, her fist wrapped around a cool, jagged hunk of crystal. She willed the phone to die, pushing her energy into the piece of black plastic. It exploded in Andrea's hand.

“Shit!” Sophie jumped.

Andrea turned to her, staring at her empty palm where the phone once was. The thing lay in shards around her bare feet, the edges of the shards melted. “Why are you swearing!” Andrea scolded her daughter. “I don't understand what is happening. Sophie, is something happening?” Andrea sounded desperate, and scared. She touched her head. “I think I may still have my fever…”

“Ma, the heat wave is causing all these blackouts and stuff,” Sophie lied. “We're not really supposed to be using electricity if we can help it.” She wrapped her hand around Andrea's arm and made to guide her mother back toward the bedroom.

“Uh, uh, uh.” Andrea shook her head. “I'm not going anywhere until that druggie is out of the yard.” They both turned to look at Laurie LeClair, motionless as a sundial, aimed at them. Andrea
shuddered. “Do you see?” she hissed at Sophie. “Do you see what drugs will do to you?” It was truer than Andrea even knew. If it wasn't for drugs Laurie wouldn't have brought the Dola. Sophie imagined one of those antidrug commercials she'd seen on television—Laurie LeClair, all zombied out, possessed by a conceptual being.
This is your brain on drugs, inhabited by a Dola.

“Ma, please let me handle it,” Sophie said softly. She knew tone would be everything right now. Energy was contagious. If Sophie was all ruffled, Andrea would continue to be, and it would turn into a fight between them. The vibe was volatile, charged with the eyes of the Dola upon them. Sophie rounded her voice with compassion, and weighted it with maturity. “Let me walk her to her home, okay? Please don't call the cops.”

“Well, I can't now,” Andrea spat, kicking at a piece of phone with her foot, a battery melted to a chunk of plastic, bright, thin wires wrapped around it. “I can't believe we need a new phone. Sophie, you are not going to that girl's house!” Andrea's hands clutched at her hair, close to the scalp, a habit of hers when she was overwhelmed. Sophie could detect a low, painful sound. It made the house feel tragic around them. She looked out the window and saw the Dola's mouth moving, very slight, very quiet, almost soundless. The baby smacked her hands to her ears and wailed. Andrea pressed her thumb to the place between her eyes. “Oh, my
head
,” she moaned. “And that
baby
. It's so
wrong
. The cops would actually get her help, Sophie. That baby shouldn't be with a mother like that, she's already tried to kill it,
I don't understand how she's even on the streets.”

Sophie stuck her hand in her pouch, watching her mother watching Laurie LeClair, shaking her head, her lower lip bunched in her teeth. She slid her hand into her magic bag. The finest stuff, like a powder. Sophie knew what she needed, like the elements were bits of her own self. She pulled a pinch into her palm, and removed her hand. She pulled her zawolanie up inside her, but calmer, smaller. She didn't need the full strength of it, she was understanding. Sometimes a whisper would do the trick. Or a sneeze. She fake-sneezed her zawolanie into the palm of her hand, surprising Andrea with the sound. Andrea looked up and got a palmful of magic dust sneezed into her face. Sophie's mother's eyes grew heavy, she strained to keep them open, and as she tumbled to the floor Sophie saw them cross, rolling in her head like marbles.