When My Heart Was Wicked Read online

  “Oh, Lacy. You aren’t like her.” She continues to hug me; she rocks me back and forth. But Anna must be forgetting how it was at first when I came to live with her and my dad. Like mother, like daughter. I have had to work hard at becoming someone good. I have had to reinvent myself. But I know that other me is still in there somewhere, just waiting for my mother to crack me open and set her free.

  By the time Cheyenne comes to pick me up, I feel like I might throw up. I should have known she’d be back for me one day, this woman who doesn’t know how to be my mother. I remember the time she burned my wrist because I was asking too many questions. Another time she tied me to a tree so I couldn’t wander away. I have so many memories of hurting at the hand of this woman who has a way of getting inside me, of making the pain rise to my skin so I just want to tear myself apart, so that sometimes I had to cut my skin open to let the pain out. But I haven’t done that in a long time.

  I have packed light: some sweaters and a blanket, my dried herbs packed in tissue, a sleep sachet, my dad’s guitar, and the box containing my mermaid’s eye and a feather from an egret who followed me home from school for three days straight. Also silver calligraphy ink Anna bought me at a store in Berkeley that displays fairy houses with intricate gardens and tree houses and gnomes and friendly mice. And I pack Mr. Murm, of course, in his little kitty carrier.

  “Oh no,” Cheyenne says the minute she sees the carrier. “No cats. No way.”

  “What? Mr. Murm is my best friend. He’s all I have.” I hate her. She takes everything away.

  “Lacy, don’t be dramatic. You have me, for God’s sake. And it doesn’t matter anyway. You’re not bringing that cat.”

  “Please.” My eyes pool again for about the millionth time and I bite my lip and I know I sound desperate. “Please, Mom.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m allergic. I’m sorry, but it’s impossible.”

  I look to Anna, but what can she say? “I’ll take care of him, honey. You can visit whenever you like.”

  She doesn’t see the way my mother’s eyes cut at her the moment she calls me honey. Note to Anna: Don’t be counting on that visit.

  Cheyenne’s car looks so clean that it should probably still have that new car smell, except it seems saturated in Bad Apple perfume. It’s like she sprayed it right into the upholstery. I don’t even want to know what she did to land herself a new car. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she stole it. Until yesterday, Cheyenne had been MIA for three years. After a year, my dad’s attorney let us know she was in prison for extortion but a year later told us she’d been released, and we were all waiting for some sign that she was watching us again — burn marks on the lawn or wax butterflies on the doorstep. But nothing happened and I had started to relax. Stupid me.

  We pass through the little towns on 99 peppered between the orchards and farmlands. Tiny towns with penny candy shops, fruit stands, and greasy-spoon diners. I wish we could stop at one of them the way Anna and my dad liked to do. Whenever we traveled, we would stop at the diners, try the milk shakes or the key lime pie. We would strike up conversations with the locals, learn where to go in town to find a snake charmer or a fairy garden or a great big ball of twine.

  But those days are over.

  Cheyenne’s music is sad and gritty, old country songs I remember from long ago. She taps the wheel and sings along. Her voice is sweet and clear. There was a time when I loved listening to my mother sing. I’d forgotten how much I once loved it. I close my eyes and listen. But now I try to imagine it’s Anna singing beside me instead.

  It’s almost working when my mother turns down the music and clears her throat. “You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?” she asks. I open my eyes and see a lit-up burger joint ahead.

  “No,” I say. “I eat meat.”

  But Cheyenne keeps driving, right past the diner. “Good,” she says. “I know that woman is a vegetarian. I don’t want you trying to act like you’re her. You’re better than that.”

  “That woman has a name,” I say. “Her name is Anna.”

  “Whatever.” After a moment she says, “Just remember who your mother is. I am inside of you. I am your blood, your bones. You can’t escape that.”

  What am I supposed to say to that? I say nothing. We drive in silence the rest of the way to Sacramento. I pull out individual strands of my hair and twist them around my fingers like dark rings.

  I’m expecting some dank and smelly apartment or hotel room in the ghetto like the ones we’ve lived in before. Instead, Cheyenne drives to a part of town I’ve never been to. She points to the right.

  “That’s Sac State,” she says. “I might try to get in as a student in the fall.”

  “Really?” I say, and I almost laugh because the idea of her in school seems really bizarre. “And study what?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’s just something I’m thinking about. Maybe psychology.” While she shrugs, I think back to a psychologist I went to a few times when I first moved in with my dad and Anna. Her room was tidy and small, without degrees or books. Just an orange couch, a few nondescript paintings, and her desk. I liked her. When it was time for me to stop going, she told me I’d graduated and she gave me a diploma. I remember something she once said. “A lot of the crazies go into the field of psychology” was the gist of it.

  Still, I guess it would probably be good for Cheyenne to take a few classes at the college. Not that she ever follows through on anything. She’ll probably never enroll. In the dark, the college looks kind of spooky and empty; maybe that’s what attracted her in the first place. The light changes and we turn into a neighborhood with a sign that says RIVER PARK. A few blocks in, I feel transported to someplace far from the Sacramento I’ve always known. In the past we’ve lived in some dodgy parts of town where there’s graffiti everywhere and homeless people and kids on stolen bikes. Here, all the homes are lit with pretty porch lights and flags with sunflowers and storybook characters on them. Cheyenne pulls into the driveway of a big ranch-style house.

  “Home sweet home,” she says, cutting the engine.

  “Really?” I can’t help it. I’m skeptical. We’ve never lived anywhere this nice. “Do you share this place with other people?”

  “What do you mean? No, it’s all ours. Come inside.”

  “It’s nice,” I say, but I try to sound nonchalant. I don’t want her to get the impression that I actually want to be here. Not that it matters.

  Leaving all of my stuff in the trunk of the car, I follow Cheyenne up the steps. It’s dark. Cheyenne begins flipping light switches on, but the house still seems dark. It’s because of the walls. They’re painted bloodred.

  Dying plants droop in the corners. This woman can’t even take care of a fern; how is she going to take care of me? Leaves the color of rotting bananas litter the hardwood floor. Poor plants. I’ll be sure to water them in the morning and take them out into the sunshine.

  There are wax butterflies in picture frames, lining the mantel, hanging from the ceiling by string. I shudder, choking back the memories, the smell of honey-burned wings. I think about what Cheyenne said to me in the car. I am inside of you. You can’t escape. Even now I feel like it’s somehow true, like her spirit is trying to force its way into my body.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Cheyenne asks, eyeing me.

  “I’m not feeling so good. I feel like I might be sick.” I feel the ghosts of dead butterflies fluttering in my stomach, flitting in and out of the shifting stones.

  “There’s your bathroom through there if you’re going to yak,” Cheyenne says, pointing to a closed door. Anna would hold me. She would rub my hair and back until I felt better.

  “Okay.” I push open the door and kneel at the toilet. I spit once, and then it all comes out, my school cafeteria pork burrito with crispitos and chocolate milk. I gag a few times and spit some more until my stomach stops heaving. Then I wipe my mouth and stand up. There’s a toothbrush on the counter and I use it; my rea
l one is still in the trunk of the car. I’m okay, I tell myself. It was only nerves.

  When I was younger, I sometimes felt like she could control me. Even when she wasn’t around. I would say things aloud, then wonder what they meant, where the words had come from. But I’m older now. She can’t get inside my head. I won’t let her.

  Blinking, I survey the bathroom. It’s sparse but clean. The walls are red, like the rest of the house. There’s a new bar of glycerin soap on the sink. I splash water on my face, then go out, the taste of my vomit still thick and sour on my tongue.

  “I put on some hot water for you. I remember you’ve always liked tea.”

  “Thank you.” I say. “That’s nice of you.”

  “Well, I’m your mother,” Cheyenne says, and she does her best to smile, but her smile looks cold; it doesn’t reach all the way up to her eyes. The eyes are the mirror to your soul, they say. If that’s true, Cheyenne’s soul is cold-blooded and dark.

  It is true that I’ve always liked tea, so she’s right about that. My friends think it’s weird, but teenagers in England drink it; at least I think they do. Anyway, my dad says he used to give it to me when I was a baby because I had colic, so I guess I just grew up used to the taste of it. I find it comforting.

  “I’ll give you a tour,” Cheyenne says. She doesn’t wait for me to say yes or no. “This is the living room, obviously. Over there’s the den.” She points. “Your room. My room. My bathroom is in there too, but you won’t need to go in there because you have your own bathroom.” I’ve never had my own bathroom before, not even at my dad’s and Anna’s house. “This is the kitchen. Are you coming?”

  Before following her, I look into my new bedroom. It is empty except for a mattress on the floor, a small dresser, and a pale orange butterfly with light blue spots hanging from the doorway. I’ll be taking that down.

  “Come on,” Cheyenne says, and I follow her through the kitchen. “This is the backyard.” She flicks on a porch light, illuminating a swimming pool, which is also lit from within. It is thick with mildew and debris. It looks more like a swamp than a pool, like an underwater shadow land where any number of murky creatures might lie in wait. Frogs croak beneath a line of rosebushes next to the fence. “And here’s that place I was telling you about, where you can grow a garden. And I got you a bike; you’ll need it to get to school. I’ll drive you the first day, of course.” I blink, surprised. She’s never driven me to school before, first day or not. “Let me get you that tea.”

  Before following her back inside, I walk to the garden area. She had said a little spot, but it is larger than I’d imagined. I kneel next to it, a kidney-shaped bed with upturned soil. I take a fistful of soil and it’s loamy and light. It’s perfect.

  Back in the kitchen, Cheyenne uncorks a bottle of her signature white wine with cherry blossoms on the bottle and takes a wineglass from a cupboard. “Here’s tea.” She hands me a mug with a few little balls or pods in a tea ball. “I’m going to change. I’ll be right back.”

  The tea is good, an unfamiliar flavor. It makes me sleepy. Cheyenne comes out of her bedroom in a kimono, her glossy hair spilling around her shoulders, and yes, now I can see why people say she’s beautiful. Maybe it’s just harder for me to see because I know her so well. She pours wine into her glass.

  “Cheers,” she says, and she clinks my cup. “Should we go sit in the backyard? It’s a nice night. We can talk, get to know each other again.”

  I study her, certain it’s a tactic. She’s never been this nice. Suddenly, my vision swims. The room seems to spin, and strange characters appear on the walls. Then they float from it, tall red demons with open mouths. I try to see them clearly, but when I focus, they drift like smoke to another part of the wall.

  “Whoa,” I say, blinking. “I guess I’m really tired.”

  “Are you okay?” She’s hovering over me. Is she smiling? I can’t focus on her face.

  “I think I’d better go lie down,” I say.

  “Well, first I need you to do me a favor.” Cheyenne takes her glass of wine to the screen door leading to the backyard. “Take out the kitchen trash. There’s chicken in there, and it’s going to start stinking.”

  “Okay,” I say as she goes through the back door and out into the night.

  “And lock the front door behind you,” she hollers after me.

  “Okay,” I say, and hear my own voice echoing, okay, okay, okay. My eyes are beginning to shut. My body is so tired. I don’t even know where she keeps the trash. Why doesn’t she take it out? I’m not the one who ate chicken. But there is no arguing with my mother. I learned this long ago.

  The trash is in the obvious spot, under the sink. I lift the yellow trash bag from the can. It’s heavy, like there are dishes at the bottom. Very smart, Mom. Break a dish and throw it into a weak plastic bag. I hold the bag from the bottom and carry it to the front door.

  Outside, the night is cool and the air feels fresh and clean. I find a Dumpster by the side of the driveway that says GARBAGE ONLY SOLAMENTE BASURA and try to lift the lid. It is heavy, I feel so weak, I am so tired. Yawning again, I lift the bag with my left hand and as I push on the Dumpster lid with my right, tiny shards of glass tear the bag. Suddenly glass pours out and cuts my chest. “Ow,” I say, heaving the bag into the Dumpster. Blood stains my shirt and blooms outward like a black rose. I should care; this should feel like a very big deal, only I’m just so tired. Too tired to find my mom and tell her, or clean up in the bathroom, or even change into a fresh shirt. Instead, I stagger like a drunk from an old Western back into the house, into my room with the creepy walls. My stomach hurts too. I peel off my wet shirt and collapse onto the mattress, pulling the folded blanket at the foot up over me. All night long I dream of butterfly eyes, cans rolling down the street, and garbage swirling in the wind.

  Certain memories of my old life, when I was a kid and Cheyenne was my mother, blur and bleed into one another. I’m not sure what I dreamed and what was real. I have these images in my head. Memories, dreams — whatever they are, they seem real. Then again, I dreamed for many nights as a little kid that a witch sat beside my bed as I slept. In that dream, I would wake up and she would be looking at me, not saying anything. She scared me. I never found out what she wanted. That felt real, but it had to be a dream, so maybe these other things were dreams too.

  The other things. I remember being in a field with my mom. There were cows in the field, and a tree. It was night, and she was digging a hole beneath the tree. Then she took thirteen black candles and placed them around the hole and started chanting.

  She lit the candles and drew me near.

  There was something in the hole she had dug. It looked slippery, and it moved, and it disgusted me. I turned away. She continued to chant, her voice rising in the night. She cut her hand with a knife, and her blood dripped to the dirt. The cows moved, strange dark objects. I was afraid of them too.

  But I must have dreamed all that. If she were capable of sorcery and voodoo magic, Cheyenne would have done bad things to Anna. She would never have let my dad leave her in the first place.

  “I asked you to lock up.” It is morning, and my mother is standing in the door frame of my new red bedroom. Sun streaks through the window, and the walls look less eerie than at night — the paint coverage is thin and I can see the white beneath the red.

  “I thought I did.” I struggle to remember. “I locked the front door. I took the trash out.”

  “I just went out to get the paper, and the front door was unlocked. The screen was wide open.”

  Cheyenne reads the paper? I rub my eyes.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say. “I thought I locked it.”

  “ ‘I thought’ doesn’t keep the bad guys out. Get up,” Cheyenne says. “We need to get you some new clothes for school.”

  I look down at my crumpled shirt on the floor beside my bed.

  “Wait,” I say, and Cheyenne pauses. I want to tell her about how the glass cut me
last night. But when I pull the blanket away from me like a tent and look down, everything looks normal. I pick up my shirt from the floor. There are no bloodstains, and no glass falls to the ground. Did I dream it? “Never mind,” I say. “I mean I thought … but never mind.”

  Cheyenne looks at me for a minute. “You okay?” she finally asks.

  “I think so.” She looks at me with one eyebrow raised, that look she always gives me that makes me feel like I’m crazy. “Sorry,” I say, although I don’t really know what it is I’m apologizing for.

  “Well,” she finally says. “Let’s get going before the shops fill.”

  I remember a party my mother once threw. It was late at night and mostly men, but there were women in gowns there too. Almost all of them at the party wore masks. Plume feathers and plastic dog and rabbit heads covering their faces. There was a devil with a shiny red face and a goatee — I kept my distance from him.

  The music was loud in our little apartment and I waited for the police to come and make everyone go home, but they never did, not on that night. There was a fishbowl of pills that looked like candy on the table. I wanted some of the candy, but a man in one of those feathered masks took me by the arm and explained that it would make me sick. The pills would make me hallucinate, he said, which meant I’d see things that weren’t there, like maybe monsters and giant snakes with big teeth.

  But I had watched my mother take a handful.

  After that I stayed right beside her, because I wanted to be there if she needed me. I would tell her the snakes and monsters weren’t real. I’d rub her head and make her a chain of paper dolls — a tiny one she could wear as a necklace or as a crown around her head.

  I waited for the police to come. At other parties, on other nights, they would be here by now.