The Urban Fantasy Anthology Part 36

"The nuns taught the Palmer Method at my last school."

"Well, you must have been one of their best students. Now, penmanship is a genuine skill. And anyone with a skill is in a position to earn money! How would you like a job, Miss Makwinja?"

Tawana regarded the Princ.i.p.al with ill-concealed dismay. "A job? But I'm just...a kid."

"Oh, I don't mean to send you off to a nine-to-five, full-time place of employment. No, this would be a part-time job, but it would pay more than you would earn by babysitting. And you could work as much or as little as you like, if you do a good job."

"What would I have to do?"

"Just copy out the words of a letter with your clear, bold penmanship. We can have an audition for the job right now. Here is the text of the letter I want you to copy. And here is the stationery to write on. You should be able to fit the whole letter on a single page, if you use both sides of the paper. Don't rush. Make it as neat as your essay."

Tawana regarded the letterhead on the stationery:.

Holy Angels School of Nursing and Widwifery.

4217 Ralph Bunche Boulevard.

Kampala.

Uganda, East Africa.

"Here." Ms. McLeod placed a fat fountain pen on top of the Holy Angels stationery. "A real pen always makes a better impression than ballpoint."

Tawana began to copy the letter, neatly and accurately, including all its mistakes.

Dear friend in Christ's Name, I send you warm greeting hoping you are in a good-sounding health. I am so happy to write to you and I cry for your spiritual kindness to rescue me from this distressed moment.

I am Elesi Kuseliwa, a girl of 18 years old, and a first born in a family of 4 children. We are orphans.

I completed Ordinary level in 2003 and in 2004 I joined the above-mentioned school and took a course in midwifery. Unfortunately in October both our parents perished in a car accident on their way from church. We were left helpless in agony without any one to console or to take care of us. Life is difficult and unbearable.

This is my last and final year to complete my course of study. We study three terms a year and each term I am supposed to pay 450 UK pounds. The total fee for the year is 1350 pounds. I humbly request you to sympathize and become my sponsor so I may complete my course and to take my family responsibities, most importantly, paying school fees for my younger sisters.

Enclosed is a photocopy of my end of third term school report. I pray and await your kind and caring response.

Yours faithfully, Elisi Kuseliwa.

"Very good," said Ms. McLeod, when she had looked over the finished copy. "That took you just a little over fifteen minutes, which means that in an hour you should be able to make four copies just like this. Now I understand that girls your age can earn as much as two-fifty at babysitting. I'll do better than that. I'll pay four dollars an hour. Or one dollar for each letter you copy. Do we have a deal?"

What could Tawana say but yes.

Tawana still had one friend left from when she'd gone to Our Lady of Mercy, Patricia Brown. That was not her Somali name, of course. She'd become Patricia Brown when her mother died and she was adopted into the Brown family. She was a quiet, plodding bully of a girl, already two hundred pounds when Tawana had met her in fourth grade, and now lighting up the screen on the scale at 253. Tawana had won her friendship by patiently listening to Patricia's ceaseless complainings about her foster parents, her siblings, her teachers, and her cla.s.smates at Our Lady of Mercy, a skill she had learned from having sat still for Lucy's long whines and Grandpa's rants. In exchange for her nods and murmers Tawana was able to see shows on the Browns' tv that Tawana couldn't get at home. That is how Tawana (and Patricia as well) came to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At first the later afternoon reruns had been as hard to understand as if you arrived at a stranger's house in the middle of a complicated family quarrel that had been going on for years. You couldn't tell who was right and who was wrong. Or in this case who was the vampire and who wasn't. Buffy herself definitely wasn't, but she had her own superhuman powers. When she wanted to she could zap one of the vampires to the other side of the room with just a tap of her finger. Sometimes she would walk up to a vampire and start talking to him and then without a word of warning whack him through the heart with a wooden stake. But other times, confusingly, she would fall in love with some guy who would turn out to be a vampire, but that didn't stop their being in love.

Patricia said there was a simple explanation. The vampires were able to confuse people by their good looks, and Buffy would eventually realize the mistake she was making with Spike and whack him just like the others. Tawana was not so sure. Spike might be a vampire but he seemed to really love Buffy. Also, he looked a lot like Mr. Forbush, with the same bleached hair and thin face and sarcastic smile. Though, as Patricia had pointed out, what did that have to do with anything! It was all just a story like Days of Our Lives, only more so since it was about vampires and vampires are only make-believe. Tawana did not tell Patricia about the real vampires in Malawi. Everything that she had learned about the White Man was between her and Rev. Gospel Blount.

But in the course of watching many episodes of Buffy and thinking them over and discussing them with other kids at Diversitas. Tawana developed a much broader understanding of the nature of vampires and the powers they possessed than you could get from an out-of-date movie like Dracula. Or even from reading books, though Tawana had never actually tried to do that. She was not much interested in books. Even their smell could get her feeling queasy.

The main thing to be learned was that here in America just the same as in Rev. Blount's native land of Malawi there were vampires everywhere. Most people had no idea who the vampires were, but a few special individuals like Buffy, or Tawana, could recognize a vampire from the kind of fire that would flash from their eyes, or by other subtle signs.

The vampires in Minneapolis were usually white, and tended to be on the thin side, and older, especially the men. And they would watch you when they thought you weren't looking. If you caught them at it, they would tilt their head backwards and pretend to be staring at the ceiling.

A lot of what people thought of as the drug problem was actually vampires. That was how they kept themselves out of the news. All the people who died from a so-called drug overdose? It was usually vampires.

Then one day in May toward the end of seventh grade Tawana developed a major insight into vampires that was all her own. She was in the Browns' living room with Patricia and her younger brother Michael watching a rerun of Buffy that they all had seen before. Patricia and Michael were sitting side by side in the glider, s.p.a.ced out on Michael's medication, and Tawana was sitting behind them, keeping the glider rocking real slow with her toe, the same as if they were the twins in their stroller. Instead of looking at the story on the tv Tawana's attention was fixed on the big statue of Jesus on the wall. There were silver spikes through his hands and feet, and his naked body was twisting around and his neck stretched up, trying to escape the crucifix. Tawana realized that Jesus looked exactly like one of the vampires when Buffy had pounded a wooden stake into him. Their skin was the same clouded white, the same expression on their faces, a kind of holy pain. Not only that but with Jesus, the same as with vampires, you might think you had killed him but then a day or two later he wasn't in the coffin where you thought. He was out on the street again, alive.

Jesus had been the first White Man!

Tawana kept rocking the two Brown children, and sneaking sideways glances at the crucifix, and wondering who in the world she could ever tell about her incredible insight, which kept making more and more sense.

The priests, the nuns, the missionaries! Hospitals and health clincs. The crucifixes in everybody's homes, just like the story of Moses when the Jews in Egypt marked their doors with blood to keep out the Angel of Death!

Everything was starting to connect. Here in America and there in Africa, for centuries and centuries, it was all the same ancient never-ending struggle of good against evil, human against vampire, Black against White.

On July 3, in preparation for the holidays, the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Cooperative once again changed its window display in the store that was never open underneath the All-Faiths Tabernacle. The old ENTERTAINMENT IS FUN-FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! sign wasn't taken down. Instead WAR was pasted over ENTERTAINMENT, and the mannikins who had been sitting around the imaginary living room watching Gene Kelly on tv had been dismembered, their detached limbs and white clothes scattered around a cemetery made of cardboard tombstones and spray-on cobwebs. A big flag rippled in a breeze supplied by a standing fan at the side of the window, while the hidden sound system played the Jimi Hendrix version of the "Star-Spangled Banner."

Tawana's first reaction, as for the earlier displays, was a perplexed indignation, a sense of having been personally violated without knowing exactly how. But now that she had become more adept at unriddling such conundrums the basic meaning of the display in the window slowly became clear like a face on tv emerging from the green and grey sprinkles of static. This was the cemetery that the vampires lived in, only they weren't home. The White Man was hunting for more victims. The limbs beside the gravestones were the remnants of some earlier feast.

It actually helped to know what the real situation was. When there is a definite danger it is possible to act. Tawana went round to the back of the building. The Arts Cooperative people always used their back door and kept their front door locked, and Rev. Blount did just the opposite. There was no doorbell, so Tawana knocked.

Mr. Forbush answered the inner door and stood behind the patched and sagging screen, blinking. "Yes?" he asked, stupid with sleep.

"Mr. Forbush, can I come in and talk with you?" When he seemed uncertain, she added, "It's about Rev. Blount, upstairs."

Tawana knew from Rev. Blount there were problems between the Arts Cooperative, who owned the building, and the Tabernacle, which was behind in its rent and taking its landlord to court for harra.s.sment and other reasons. And sure enough Mr. Forbush forgot his suspicions and invited Tawana inside.

She was in a s.p.a.ce almost as jumbled and crazy as the shop window out front, with some of the walls torn down, and drywall part.i.tions painted to look like pictures, and rugs on top of rugs and piles of gigantic pillows and other piles of cardboard and plastic boxes and not much real furniture anywhere. Tawana had never been anywhere vampires lived, and this was nothing like she would have expected. She was fascinated, and a little dazed.

"What are you looking for?" Mr. Forbush asked. "The bathroom?"

"Are we by ourselves?" Tawana asked, running her fingers across the top of the gas stove as though it were a piano.

Before he could answer, the phone rang. All the tension inside of Tawana relaxed away like a puff of smoke. The ring of the phone was the sound of heaven answering her prayers. Mr. Forbush swiveled round in the pile of cushions he'd settle down on, reaching for a cell phone on top of the CD player that sat on the bare floor.

Tawana grabbed hold of the cast iron frying pan on the back burner of the stove, and before there was any answer to Mr. Forbush's "h.e.l.lo?" she had knocked him over the head. The first blow didn't kill him, or the second. But they were solid enough that he was never able to fight back. He groaned some and waved his arms, but that did nothing to keep Tawana from slaying him.

Outside, along the driveway, there was an old, old wooden fence that hadn't been painted for years. That provided the stake she needed. She didn't even have to sharpen the end of it. She drove it through his heart with the same frying pan she'd used to smash his head in. She was amazed at the amount of blood that spilled out into the pile of pillows. Perhaps he had been feasting through the night.

There was no use trying to mop the floor, no way to hide the body. But she did change out of her b.l.o.o.d.y clothes, and found a white dress that must have belonged to one of the mannikins. She wore that to go home in, with her own dirty clothes stuffed in a plastic bag from CVS.

Mr. Forbush's death received a good deal of attention on WCCO and the other news programs, and Rev. Blount was often on the tv to answer questions and deny reports. But no charges were every brought against him, or against any other suspect. However, it was not possible, after so much media attention, to deny that Minneapolis had a vampire problem just the same as Malawi. There were many who believed that Mr. Forbush had been a vampire, or at least had been a.s.sociating with vampires, on the principle that where there is smoke there is fire. It was discovered by a reporter on the Star that the Arts Cooperative was a legal fiction designed to help Mr. Forbush evade state and local taxes, that he was, in effect, the sole owner, having inherited the property after the bankruptcy of his father's mattress store and the man's subsequent suicide. It was rumored that the father's death might not have been a suicide, and that he had been the first victim of the vampires-or, alternatively, that he had been the first of the vampires.

None of these stories ever received official media attention, but they were circulated widely enough that the All-Faiths Pentecostal Tabernacle became a big success story in the Twin Cities' Somali-American community. Rev. Blount received a special award for his contributions to Interfaith Dialogue from the Neighborhood Development a.s.sociation, and even after the protests that followed the "Mall of America Ma.s.sacre" and the effort by the police to close down the Tabernacle, he was saluted as a local hero and a possible candidate for the State Senate.

Tawana was never to enjoy the same celebrity status, though as a member of All-Faiths' choir she had her share of the general good fortune, including her own brief moment of glory in the spotlight. It was during the NBC Special Report, The Vampires of Minnesota. She was in her red and white choir robes, standing outside the Tabernacle after a Sunday service. The camera had been pressed up to her face, close enough to kiss, and she'd stared right into it, no smile on her lips, completely serious, and said, "They said it could never happen here. They said it might happen somewhere primitive and backwards like Malawi, but never in Minneapolis."

Then she just lowered her eyes and turned her head sideways, and they started to roll the credits.

Gestella.

Susan Palwick.

Time's the problem. Time and arithmetic. You've known from the beginning that the numbers would cause trouble, but you were much younger then-much, much younger-and far less wise. And there's culture shock, too. Where you come from, it's okay for women to have wrinkles. Where you come from, youth's not the only commodity.

You met Jonathan back home. Call it a forest somewhere, near an Alp. Call it a village on the edge of the woods. Call it old. You weren't old, then: you were fourteen on two feet and a mere two years old on four, although already fully grown. Your kind are fully grown at two years, on four feet. And experienced: oh, yes. You knew how to howl at the moon. You knew what to do when somebody howled back. If your four-footed form hadn't been sterile, you'd have had litters by then-but it was, and on two feet, you'd been just smart enough, or lucky enough, to avoid continuing your line.

But it wasn't as if you hadn't had plenty of opportunities, enthusiastically taken. Jonathan liked that. A lot. Jonathan was older than you were: thirty-five, then. Jonathan loved f.u.c.king a girl who looked fourteen and acted older, who acted feral, who was feral for three to five days a month, centered on the full moon. Jonathan didn't mind the mess that went with it, either: all that fur, say, sprouting at one end of the process and shedding on the other, or the aches and pains from various joints pivoting, changing shape, redistributing weight, or your poor gums bleeding all the time from the monthly growth and recession of your fangs. "At least that's the only blood," he told you, sometime during that first year.

You remember this very clearly: you were roughly halfway through the four-to-two transition, and Jonathan was sitting next to you in bed, ma.s.saging your sore shoulder blades as you sipped mint tea with hands still nearly as clumsy as paws, hands like mittens. Jonathan had just filled two hot water bottles, one for your aching tailbone and one for your aching knees. Now you know he wanted to get you in shape for a major sportf.u.c.k-he loved s.e.x even more than usual, after you'd just changed back-but at the time, you thought he was a real prince, the kind of prince girls like you weren't supposed to be allowed to get, and a stab of pain shot through you at his words. "I didn't kill anything," you told him, your lower lip trembling. "I didn't even hunt."

"Gestella, darling, I know. That wasn't what I meant." He stroked your hair. He'd been feeding you raw meat during the four-foot phase, but not anything you'd killed yourself. He'd taught you to eat little pieces out of his hand, gently, without biting him. He'd taught you to wag your tail, and he was teaching you to chase a ball, because that's what good four-foots did where he came from. "I was talking about-"

"Normal women," you told him. "The ones who bleed so they can have babies. You shouldn't make fun of them. They're lucky." You like children and puppies; you're good with them, gentle. You know it's unwise for you to have any of your own, but you can't help but watch them, wistfully.

"I don't want kids," he says. "I had that operation. I told you."

"Are you sure it took?" you ask. You're still very young. You've never known anyone who's had an operation like that, and you're worried about whether Jonathan really understands your condition. Most people don't. Most people think all kinds of crazy things. Your condition isn't communicable, for instance, by biting or any other way, but it is hereditary, which is why it's good that you've been so smart and lucky, even if you're just fourteen.

Well, no, not fourteen anymore. It's about halfway through Jonathan's year of folklore research-he's already promised not to write you up for any of the journals, and keeps a.s.suring you he won't tell anybody, although later you'll realize that's for his protection, not yours-so that would make you, oh, seventeen or eighteen. Jonathan's still thirty-five. At the end of the year, when he flies you back to the United States with him so the two of you can get married, he'll be thirty-six. You'll be twenty-one on two feet, three years old on four.

Seven to one. That's the ratio. You've made sure Jonathan understands this. "Oh, sure," he says. "Just like for dogs. One year is seven human years. Everybody knows that. But how can it be a problem, darling, when we love each other so much?" And even though you aren't fourteen anymore, you're still young enough to believe him.

At first it's fun. The secret's a bond between you, a game. You speak in code. Jonathan splits your name in half, calling you Jessie on four feet and Stella on two. You're Stella to all his friends, and most of them don't even know that he has a dog one week a month. The two of you scrupulously avoid scheduling social commitments for the week of the full moon, but no one seems to notice the pattern, and if anyone does notice, no one cares. Occasionally someone you know sees Jessie, when you and Jonathan are out in the park playing with b.a.l.l.s, and Jonathan always says that he's taking care of his sister's dog while she's away on business. His sister travels a lot, he explains. Oh, no, Stella doesn't mind, but she's always been a bit nervous around dogs-even though Jessie's such a good dog-so she stays home during the walks.

Sometimes strangers come up, shyly. "What a beautiful dog!" they say. "What a big dog!" "What kind of dog is that?"

"A Husky-wolfhound cross," Jonathan says airily. Most people accept this. Most people know as much about dogs as dogs know about the s.p.a.ce shuttle.

Some people know better, though. Some people look at you, and frown a little, and say, "Looks like a wolf to me. Is she part wolf?"

"Could be," Jonathan always says with a shrug, his tone as breezy as ever. And he spins a little story about how his sister adopted you from the pound because you were the runt of the litter and no one else wanted you, and now look at you! No one would ever take you for a runt now! And the strangers smile and look encouraged and pat you on the head, because they like stories about dogs being rescued from the pound.

You sit and down and stay during these conversations; you do whatever Jonathan says. You wag your tail and c.o.c.k your head and act charming. You let people scratch you behind the ears. You're a good dog. The other dogs in the park, who know more about their own species than most people do, aren't fooled by any of this; you make them nervous, and they tend to avoid you, or to act supremely submissive if avoidance isn't possible. They grovel on their bellies, on their backs; they crawl away backwards, whining.

Jonathan loves this. Jonathan loves it that you're the alpha with the other dogs-and, of course, he loves it that he's your alpha. Because that's another thing people don't understand about your condition: they think you're vicious, a ravening beast, a fanged monster from h.e.l.l. In fact, you're no more bloodthirsty than any dog not trained to mayhem. You haven't been trained to mayhem: you've been trained to chase b.a.l.l.s. You're a pack animal, an animal who craves hierarchy, and you, Jessie, are a one-man dog. Your man's Jonathan. You adore him. You'd do anything for him, even let strangers who wouldn't know a wolf from a wolfhound scratch you behind the ears.

The only fight you and Jonathan have, that first year in the States, is about the collar. Jonathan insists that Jessie wear a collar. "Otherwise," he says, "I could be fined." There are policemen in the park. Jessie needs a collar and an ID tag and rabies shots.

"Jessie," you say on two feet, "needs no such thing." You, Stella, are bristling as you say this, even though you don't have fur at the moment. "Jonathan," you tell him, "ID tags are for dogs who wander. Jessie will never leave your side, unless you throw a ball for her. And I'm not going to get rabies. All I eat is Alpo, not dead racc.o.o.ns: How am I going to get rabies?"

"It's the law," he says gently. "It's not worth the risk, Stella."

And then he comes and rubs your head and shoulders that way, the way you've never been able to resist, and soon the two of you are in bed having a lovely sportf.u.c.k, and somehow by the end of the evening, Jonathan's won. Well, of course he has: he's the alpha.

So the next time you're on four feet, Jonathan puts a strong chain choke collar and an ID tag around your neck, and then you go to the vet and get your shots. You don't like the vet's office much, because it smells of too much fear and pain, but the people there pat you and give you milk bones and tell you how beautiful you are, and the vet's hands are gentle and kind.

The vet likes dogs. She also knows wolves from wolfhounds. She looks at you, hard, and then looks at Jonathan. "A gray wolf?" she asks.

"I don't know," says Jonathan. "She could be a hybrid."

"She doesn't look like a hybrid to me." So Jonathan launches into his breezy story about how you were the runt of the litter at the pound: you wag your tail and lick the vet's hand and act utterly adoring.

The vet's not having any of it. She strokes your head; her hands are kind, but she smells disgusted. "Mr. Argent, gray wolves are endangered."

"At least one of her parents was a dog," Jonathan says. He's starting to sweat.

"Now, she doesn't look endangered, does she?"

"There are laws about keeping exotics as pets," the vet says. She's still stroking your head; you're still wagging your tail, but now you start to whine, because the vet smells angry and Jonathan smells afraid. "Especially endangered exotics."

"She's a dog," Jonathan says.

"If she's a dog," the vet says, "may I ask why you haven't had her spayed?"

Jonathan splutters. "Excuse me?"

"You got her from the pound. Do you know how animals wind up at the pound, Mr. Argent? They land there because people breed them and then don't want to take care of all those puppies or kittens. They land there-"

"We're here for a rabies shot," Jonathan says. "Can we get our rabies shot, please?"

"Mr. Argent, there are regulations about breeding endangered species-"

"I understand that," Jonathan says. "There are also regulations about rabies shots. If you don't give my dog her rabies shot-"

The vet shakes her head, but she gives you the rabies shot, and then Jonathan gets you out of there, fast. "b.i.t.c.h," he says on the way home. He's shaking. "Animal-rights fascist b.i.t.c.h! Who the h.e.l.l does she think she is?"

She thinks she's a vet. She thinks she's somebody who's supposed to take care of animals. You can't say any of this, because you're on four legs. You lie in the back seat of the car, on the special sheepskin cover Jonathan bought to protect the upholstery from your fur, and whine. You're scared. You liked the vet, but you're afraid of what she might do. She doesn't understand your condition; how could she?

The following week, after you're fully changed back, there's a knock at the door while Jonathan's at work. You put down your copy of Elle and pad, barefooted, over to the door. You open it to find a woman in uniform; a white truck with "Animal Control" written on it is parked in the driveway.

"Good morning," the officer says. "We've received a report that there may be an exotic animal on this property. May I come in, please?"

"Of course," you tell her. You let her in. You offer her coffee, which she doesn't want, and you tell her that there aren't any exotic animals here. You invite her to look around and see for herself.