The Gilda Stories (17 page)

The sounds unfurled like a tapestry above her head; her ears picked through the colors and pitch. The sound of the stride piano was a velvet background around which scampered the unmistakable squeal of a cornet. Gilda turned sharply toward the glorious sound, one she had not heard for over a decade. In New Orleans this cornet had entranced her. She wondered if this was a recording, but it was not. She remembered the player who refused to become immortalized by the recording process, choosing instead to carry his own legend.

Gilda's hunger abated as the piercing notes wrapped themselves around her body. It was in moments like these that oneness with the others returned. The web of music bound them through the ages, through the dark, until there was but a single future for them.

Gilda leaned into the music, letting it wash over her like a spray of water. Her hunger was not forgotten. For that moment, however, it was simply fed by the sound of the horn. The thinning blood inside her moved languidly, seduced by the tide of sound. Its abrupt ending left a piano tinkling randomly in the silence, then applause. They cheered in rhythm with the music, setting up a ritualistic pulse. Beneath it all Gilda heard a quiet sob so close that, for a moment, she thought she had made the sound herself. Above her, to the left at the corner of the building, a slightly open window was dark with a sadness that seeped out from under the curtains.

Gilda felt disoriented. Then her body was released from its stupor and spoke to her of its need. Her moment of euphoria was gone, and the fire of hunger ran through her veins. The muffled sobs reached not just her ears now, but all of her senses. A woman lay immobile, sunk deeply into her pillow. The smell of men's sex clung to her linen.

In the girl's head was a jumble of thoughts awash in resignation. Gilda rummaged through them, picking at each: the lost child, the need for companionship, shame, uncertainty about her status in this house. She felt young to Gilda, or at least young in knowledge.

There was little protection around her, simply guileless perseverance. But most amazing was that the woman was devoid of dreams. She had no fantasy or embellished aspirations on which to affix her daily life: today barely existed. She was lost in isolation. Gilda pushed into the room with her own thoughts infinitely more directed than those of the young woman. She massaged her spirit, loosened the bonds that wound tightly around the woman's chest to help her breathe easier, then dropped a veil of sleep over her.

Gilda entered the back door of the establishment and heard the patrons and business girls in the front parlor still praising the piano player and cornetist. She slipped stealthily into the deserted kitchen and up the back stairway. She followed her line of control, holding the young woman in sleep, and passed the closed doors of the corridor. Behind some of them she heard the grunts of impending and expended passion. Behind one she heard silence–no thoughts or dreams. She entered the darkened room and was stunned by the close air of defeat. The mirror was smudged, clothes were strewn carelessly, and the coverlet betrayed days of filth. It was a room in which no one really lived, not even the one who slept here.

The girl lay on her back, a mass of auburn curls plastered to her damp head. Her face was set in grimness, her fists clenched by her side as if prepared to do battle with a world she cared little for. Gilda peered into the creamy white features, wondering where along the short path this one had traveled she'd lost her ability to dream.

Even in the fearful hours of dawn, before Gilda could be certain there would be another night of life, dreams crept into her rest to stimulate her mind and heart. Gilda felt such sorrow at this diminished capacity for life, she had to restrain the impulse to shake her awake and preach to her of the need for dreams. Instead she held her in the sleep and pulled her into her arms. A small incision at the side of the neck. Blood seeping out slowly. It reminded her of the wounds she and her sisters suffered on their tiny hands as they'd wrenched the cotton from its stiff branches. Lines of blood covered them until the flesh was hardened by experience.

Gilda put her lips to the trickle of blood and turned it into a tide washing through her, making her heart pump faster. Her insistent suckling created a new pulse and filled her with new life. In return she offered dreams. She held the girl's body and mind tightly, letting the desire for future life flow through them both, a promising reverie of freedom and challenge. The woman absorbed Gilda's desire for family, for union with others like herself, for new experience. Through these she perceived a capacity for endless life and an open door of possibility.

As the blood left her body the woman's psyche responded with a moment of terror, which Gilda used to further suffuse her dreams with urgency. She wrapped the fear around the edge of the dream, making it all the more compelling. Gilda did not stop taking the blood until she felt parts of her dream become the girl's own. The young woman began to cling to life and experience the urge to project into a future. Her mind filled with thoughts of the other women who lived and worked in the house—the smiles she had not acknowledged, the endearments and angry words yet to be shared.

Gilda pulled back, comfortable with rooting a dream inside this girl. She loosened her hold so that the young woman's breathing returned to normal, then backed away from the bed, looking down at the face full of expectation. The woman's fists were relaxed; she'd reached one hand up to cover her own small breast, where it rested as if giving assurance to a lover. The woman sighed, and Gilda slid the window open wider, slipped through, and silently dropped the two stories to the back alley. The sounds of Saturday nightlife continued to reverberate as she walked out to the street. She maintained a slow pace moving south then west to the edge of the city, enjoying the evening air and the memory of the girl's soft, pale skin. Her resurgent dreams cast a new glow on Gilda's life: in giving dreams she had recaptured her own.

Gilda gazed up at the bright, thinning moon and sniffed the clear air. The smell of open land was inviting as she left the confines of the city. It was the dreams Aurelia possessed that Gilda could not bare to disturb—her hopes for a life in the town she'd known since childhood, of the work she would do for others. These were the ties that held Aurelia to the earth, not the release from widowhood or open-ended adventure that Gilda represented. As much as she longed to have Aurelia at her side, she could never draw her away from her dreams.

Gilda thought about one of the evenings she sat with Sorel at his fireside. In talking of Eleanor and the mistaken decision he'd made, Sorel quoted Lao-Tsu:
The bright path seems dim; going forward seems like retreat; the easy way seems hard.
… It was Sorel's self-interested fear of going on without Eleanor that obscured what a bad choice it would be to bring her into their life. To live without Aurelia was the best that Gilda could do for both of them.

The next evening, standing on Aurelia's porch, she briefly remembered the woman with whom she'd exchanged in St. Louis the night before. The encounter had opened up new roads for her. She was anxious to move forward, certain she would find Bird soon and be able to share with her this fresh understanding of their life. When Aurelia answered her knock, Gilda tried to apologize with her eyes for leaving the night before, but Aurelia was wary.

“Let's go for our ride before the evening cools,” Gilda said. She took Aurelia's hand and smiled into her clouded face. Once they were in the car Aurelia was almost smiling too. The day before felt remote. Gilda drove slowly back through town and out onto the road leading west. When they reached the town limit she increased the car's speed. Soon they were both laughing out loud into the dust that rose from the grit of the road. Gilda turned off the engine at the edge of a rise overhanging a narrow valley, and they left the car to gaze at the green sloping down under the red roof of the setting sun. Gilda held Aurelia's hand again, sensing a need in both of them to quiet the uncertainty.

“What is it that makes you different from the others?” Aurelia asked in a fervid, youthful voice. Her dark face was placid, but her eyes looked pained and tentative. Gilda drew back from the shadow and turned Aurelia to face her.

Gilda's touch lightened on Aurelia's shoulders, but she did not want to take her hands away. Instead she smoothed the woolen coat where it fell over Aurelia's full breasts. She then traced the thick braid arcing Aurelia's face.

“Perhaps it's that I love no other… no other mortal in this world but you. That gives me a strength and clarity no one else can know.”

“Then you won't leave me?”

Gilda pulled Aurelia into her arms. She felt the tremble of tears in the young woman's lips pressed tight against her own cloak. It had been so many years since she had simply held anyone. Aurelia fit into the bend of her arm, under the curve of her breast, as if their bodies were cut from a pattern. Gilda's embrace tightened as she fought to find the clarity she'd just spoken of, the clarity she knew earlier.

“I'll go away as I said I must, but I'll never truly leave you. Your life is here, mine is not.”

“How can you be so certain of that? We've been happy!” Aurelia stumbled at the sound of the words she'd said to herself so often, hating the reality of them in the air.

“You've needed me and I've needed to be with you, but our needs are changing. You have a world of things to do now. You won't be bound by widow's weeds much longer. There are others here waiting for you to emerge from mourning.”

“I haven't been in mourning. I've been with you!”

“There are still those waiting for me to find my way to them.”

“Who might they be?”

Gilda smiled at the edge of jealousy in Aurelia's voice.

“Someone with whom I've shared much history. We've needed time to pick our way through brambles and cities until we knew ourselves better.” Gilda stopped, uncertain what else she might say that would make sense.

“But why must you go?”

“The past does not lie down and decay like a dead animal, Aurelia. It waits for you to find it again and again.” She could not take this woman into her life. There would be others, more in need or with more knowledge, who would be her family. As much as she longed to end the loneliness, to find a partner as Sorel had done, this was not the time, nor was it best for Aurelia.

She held Aurelia as she looked out into the darkness spreading around them, hunting for Bird in the absence of light, seeking the strength to pull away from Aurelia. Gilda's body strained against Aurelia's, her head pounded. She pressed her lips gently to Aurelia's temple and the side of her face just at her ear. Gilda felt the woman's body yielding to her and forced herself away. Her gaze pierced the darkness, and her jaw clamped shut in concentration.

Aurelia looked up at Gilda, revealing a thrill of fear and excitement at the tiny orange flecks that glowed in her eyes. With each breath Gilda drew in the musky scent of wool and blood. Instead of returning her stare, Gilda closed her eyes tightly.

“What is it? What have I done? Please come back!” Aurelia pleaded as Gilda stepped away, holding Aurelia at arm's length. The wind rose up from the valley, riffling through their coats, cooling the air around them. Gilda heard the air moving in the grass and the rustling of animals in the brush as she searched for the strength to pull back from her desire. Then she heard Bird.

I
am here,
Bird said through the rustle of the trees.

Gilda released Aurelia's shoulders and finally looked at her. “I can't stay with you,” she said. “There are others to whom I belong. Others who will belong to me.”

“Why are you afraid?” Aurelia asked, certain that she recognized the feeling that had been with her too much in her past. Gilda could find no real answer. She said, “We cannot stay together, but neither of us is as alone as she thinks.”

She stopped speaking as she saw Aurelia draw inside herself. Gilda reached in, listening to Aurelia's thoughts, letting her sense hers—both her sadness and her newfound joy. When she looked into Aurelia's eyes she saw her confusion at the abundance of things running through her mind. Gilda willed her only to remember them for the future. Neither spoke during the ride back to Aurelia's house. The decision was made, and each of them sifted through its meaning for the years ahead.

The following weeks were spent packing and shipping boxes, making arrangements for the disposition of the farm through a St. Louis law firm. The new deed for Aurelia was notarized before the full moon rose again. John Freeman looked stunned when Gilda told him she was closing her house and going east, but beneath his surprise there lay a small sense of relief.

When Gilda could delay no longer, she sat down in her nearly empty farmhouse to make the final journal entry for this life. She then started a letter to Aurelia. Their last several meetings had been difficult. The strain of not talking about the change in their lives left both exhausted each time they were together, as if they lived through the final parting inside themselves repeatedly.

Tonight had been no different. All of the questions, save one, had been asked. The
why
had not been answered. But Aurelia had steeled herself against loss, curiosity, or failure.

As they stood before the door Aurelia spoke in a small voice. “You've said that if I should ever need you, you'll come for me, come to help me. Is this something you say simply to placate, to keep me from weeping and clutching at your cloak when you leave?”

Gilda was not certain how to respond, how to be reassuring without revealing the whole of her life.

“Because if it is, I'd rather know that now. I don't want to hold on to a dream of your devotion only to find myself a fool, abandoned.”

“Aurelia, I have great faith in your capability, your courage. I want your faith in me. I would not lie to you simply for my own comfort. You have dreams of things other than me. That's where I put my faith; that's where you'll put yours.”