(then choose another duty and know my favour, for those who serve will be blessed beyond dreaming)
(ask, and you shall receive)
Like . . . what?
(let me show you)
My brain peeled open.
There’s this dream Mom has sometimes, and in it, Clark is an adult: tall, handsome, able to talk in complete sentences. They have a long, satisfying conversation in which he answers all her questions—he tells her he’s happy, tells her he’s always understood what we were saying to him, that he knows why we did the things we did and that he doesn’t blame us for anything. He tells her he loves her, always has, always will.
It’s a beautiful dream, and it obviously means a lot to her, but I’ve never had anything like it, and I never expect to. Which makes me sort of sad, considering I’m Clark’s mother—what the hell does that say about me, in the end? After all, it’s a hope, not a lie; it might even turn out to be true, eventually. One day.
And . . . here it was, at long last. Close enough to touch, or be touched by.
Like a memory of the future, a history-to-be: I saw days blur into years, like frames in film—the sudden breakthrough, Clark’s speech and social skills exploding, years of delay caught up on overnight. I saw Simon promoted at his job, rich yet unchanged, still the same man who’d persuaded me to marry him by making it impossible to believe he’d ever leave. Rows of books, all with my name on them. Myself on stage, reading aloud to massive audiences, utterly pain-free. My mom, bragging proudly about me; people telling me what a difference my writing had made to their lives, how much I matt
ered to them. And then Clark onstage, too, performing, singing, his music spilling out of him, touching the world. Saying I love you, Mommy, with perfect clarity, perfect eye contact. I’ve always loved you—this is for you, because of you, all of it. Thank you, for my life.
But—no.
I put my hands to my eyes, felt the tears pouring down. Felt myself tense, suddenly head-to-toe rigid.
That’s not my son.
Because sure, She could show me something like him, maybe even give me something like him, like what he might have been—but it would be forever a fake, nothing but a doll, made from dreams and dead flowers. And I won’t let you back in, not for that, I thought. Not if it means I’m responsible for everything you’ll do after, sitting on a throne made from the bones of other people’s kids—whoever you think is useless—to save yourself from being forgotten.
All gods who receive homage are cruel, Zora Neale Hurston once said, and, Christ, wasn’t that still true, like it always had been. All gods dispense suffering without reason, otherwise they would not be worshipped. . . .
But what is equally true, today as it was then, in that one second, is this: that I will always want to earn what I get, however much it hurts; that I want it because it hurts, because pain gives life a point, and without it life isn’t even death, just . . . nothingness. And I will always want my son to be who he is, not how I’d like him, because it works both ways or not at all. Because if I’m not me, then who the hell am I?
I may not love myself, I thought, but I do know myself. And you—don’t.
All of this I flung back at Her, Lady Midday, in far less time than it took to write it down. Which may be why the pause She took before replying lasted longer than almost anything that had gone before.
(but i can make you . . . better)
(if)
Yes, of course. If.
Small gods tempt, like Safie’s Dédé said; they take what’s already ours then offer it back to us at twice the price, bountiful and cruel at the same time, for no good reason. The sort of gods whose attention brings inspiration inseparable from torment. And if we see too much, if we feel too deeply, are exalted, are set apart—we will never be comfortable, only blessed.
Which means the best they can do for us . . . the closest they can ever come to doing “good,” as the Peacock Angel supposedly does . . . is to force us to make our own distinctions between right and wrong. To discover what we truly value, by asking for it as payment.
It was over, then. I knew it; She knew it. But She didn’t like it.
Reality slipped, stuttered and jerked like film caught half-on and half-off its sprockets; pain smashed into me and I went down, clinging to the projector stand, struggling to hold myself upright, with smoke in my once more useless eyes. Unable to see anything except for Her, still searing bright and impossibly tall, her molten sword hefted in one taloned hand. Rising, slowly, up over me.
(do—your—WORK), She told me, Lady Midday. And I coughed out something I knew She’d know was a laugh, even if nobody else could have recognized it.
“Oh, I’m gonna,” I told Her, this time out loud, voice raw. “But it’s gonna be my work, not yours. And whether or not it’s worth it? You don’t get to say.”
The rising sword paused, as if surprised at last. Maybe nobody really had said no to Her before, or never as firmly as this.
(you wish to matter), She reminded me. (my chosen stand apart. for others, nothing—but for my chosen, special favour)
“Special like how, exactly? Like Special Ed-type special?” I laughed again, choking. “Lady, I’ve been like that my entire life—just like Clark.” I hauled myself up far as I could, determined to go out standing. “So I don’t want anything, not from you. Take it all back, and everything else, too, while you’re at it. From now on, my work will be to make sure no one ever remembers you again.”