Chapter 16

1989

IT HAD BEEN A SUNDAYwhen Gloria came back. Luce was eight, and she and Gem had just gotten home from camping for a night not far from where they lived, where they'd slept in a small, musty tent in the middle of the ponderosa pine forest. They'd returned dirty, happy, tired, unpacking their extra Jiffy Pop and peanut butter, when there was a knock on the door. And there was Gloria. She unsettled Luce each time, this copy of her Gem but with longer hair, shinier clothes. This time, the first thing Luce saw, at eye level, was how her shirt was open in little slits between the buttons, revealing smiling mouths of skin. Gloria had a melon belly. They hadn't kept it a secret from Luce; she knew Gloria was her birth mother. But families are made not born, is what Gem always told her. Gloria visited on holidays, brought Luce new dresses or dolls or, one time when Luce was five, a crimping iron that Luce immediately used on the previous year's Barbie gift, singeing off all her hair.

But the way Gloria stood at the door this time was different. She had two big suitcases with her. And she was red-eyed. The sisters shooed Luce into her bedroom and whispered loudly on the other side of the door. Their voices thumped against the wooden doorframe, and though she could not hear any specifics, Luce went cold inside. Her mother was here to take her away.

In her room the shadows grew long. Luce picked briars from her socks, a pine needle from her hair. And when Gem and Gloria brought her out of her room and sat her down on the couch, Gloria handed her orange juice. It was in a wineglass, all wet, small beads of water rivering down, and didn't she know that was the wrong kind of cup for her, didn't she know to wipe down the glass because Luce didn't like her fingers sticky?

"I'm back," Gloria said, kneeling beside Luce.

"No thank you," Luce said, setting the juice on the coffee table. She wiped her fingers on her shorts, pleased with herself for remembering to say no thank you, and looked up at her Gem for a wink, but Gem was watching Gloria. The smell of the orange juice was wrong, too sweet, the pulp floaty like maggots.

"This is good, Goose," Gem said, smiling and nodding. "You are going to have a little sister or brother, isn't that exciting?" But Luce wasn't an idiot. Gem's face did not look excited.

So it went that Gloria moved in with Gem and Luce, shifting their perfect duo into a trio, and then, five months later, with the arrival of Roo they became four. Gem helped with the baby, showing Gloria easy things like how to make the right kind of peanut butter and banana sandwich, and the moves in cat's cradle. And Gloria told Gem that she should venture out more, meet a guy, preferably one with a rich, handsome brother, most definitely not one living in his mother's basement and crying on their second date, which was the kind of broken bird Gem naturally orbited toward saving. Luce sat on the lip of the tub while her mother curled Gem's hair, Gem making grossed-out faces back to Luce in the mirror. Gem shyly asking Luce how she looked in one of Gloria's dresses the night she went out on a date.

And that's where her memory of what comes next gets filled with static.

It wasn't a Christmas party, because there were big bouquets of roses on the table, but Luce swore there had been tinsel around—something shiny and splintered that was still all over the floor the next morning, after the axis of the world had tilted.

"You have to come home, you have to come home, you have to come home," Luce, eight, had chanted into the phone. Gem had promised her brand-new boyfriend, Frank LaJoy, oh la la, that she would go somewhere with him that weekend and would not be at Gloria's party that night, and Luce knew she was not supposed to be mad. But Gloria would not play Chinese checkers with Luce like Gem would, or read books about turtles, and sometimes it made Luce a little sick to her stomach when Gloria hugged her. Besides, Roo was upstairs in his crib, and it was Luce's job to watch him. She needed Gem to make it fun.

"I can't tonight, Goose," Gem said, her words soft across the phone line. She heard a low voice murmur in the background.

"Please please please," Luce said, hearing her mother's first guests arrive at the door. She had on her new blue dress with a yellow bow, and she needed Gem to see it. "You have to come home, and don't bring Frank," she whispered, wet and loud.

"I would love to, you know that." There was a pause then, more muffled murmuring, as if Gem were covering the phone with her hand. "Look, no promises, but maybe Frank and I can leave tomorrow instead. I'll try to come. Okay? And if I come, you have to give me a foot massage."

"Eeewww," Luce said.

"Come on, Goosepen," she said. "If I can come, I'll even bring ice cream if you promise me a foot massage. My dogs are barking." She heard the voice again in the background, loud. He wasn't nice. Luce wanted Gem all for herself.

"That's gross," Luce said again, laughing. She tongued the empty gums where two top teeth were gone. "Roo will give you one."

Gem laughed. "Go have fun, Goose." She lowered her voice once more. "You have to try. Be nice to your mom. And your little brother. You promised me you'd try. Okay?"

The next hours were a blur of adults tottering around, the boring world of whatever they talked about. She remembers looking to the front door, waiting for Gem. Checking on the sleeping baby upstairs, his sweaty back, the way he crossed his ankles in his sleep. And the next thing she remembers is that it is late, and her mother tells her she must go to bed. But Gloria wanders off for a moment, called over by another party guest, and Luce slips out onto their small balcony through the sliding glass doors. Luce of the shadows, loose, unnoticed.

That's where it all changes. After she slips out into the darkness.

It is a clear night. The stars stretch across the sky like handfuls of sand. There are muffled bouts of laughter and the rumble of cars on a nearby road and voices coming from down the street, too. And then there's the sound of a click—a sound she knows so well—as someone flips the lock on the sliding glass door. Click. Someone pulls the curtain closed. They don't know she's out here. The click is the sound of being out on the balcony, alone.

There's no need to be afraid. She will look up at the stars until someone notices she's out here, and it will be a grand adventure, she thinks, and she will tell Gem all about it. She takes a few steps, but stops when she sees a woman standing on the farthest corner of the balcony. Her back is to Luce. She doesn't recognize this woman. She is even taller than her mother, and longer limbed, like some tree deep in a forest that people hike to see, like a tree glowing by some unknown light. She's wearing a long white jacket.

The woman turns to look at Luce. She is an elegant woman. Giant. Luce squints toward the woman—and that's how she sees that her face isn't a face so much as a shadow. Bone and shadow. Where the woman's head should be is a skull.

The skull has giant purple shadow holes for eyes. A long snout that reaches far past where a human face should end. The jaw is open. Inside are wide, yellow, cracked teeth. A cow's skull.

The white jacket's hood is up over her hair. She beckons Luce to come over.

Luce feels a flush as warm pee runs down her legs. The air is no longer cold. The cow-skull woman is full of heat. She waves again for Luce to come over. Luce knows, somehow—how?—that she has no choice. She takes a step, then a few. The cow-skull woman is looking right at her. She nods her skull. Luce is doing the right thing. There is sweat running into Luce's eyes. She rubs it with her trembling fingers.

The cow-skull woman seems to be growing taller as Luce approaches, and there, circling her body, diving and spinning, are flies. Hundreds of them. She raises her hand out toward Luce, her fingers long and very thin with short, chewed nails, and she's beckoning. Luce knows she wants her over there faster, sooner, and there's something else Luce understands too, as the cow-skull woman's nods grow deeper and more urgent, as her hands are calling her over faster and with more pull. The cow-skull woman isn't just beckoning to bring her closer, she needs something from her. Or is trying to give her something. Her arms are wildly circling, come closer, come closer. She's beckoning her away from something else. Something behind her.

It's that realization, suddenly, that whatever is behind her is worse than what is in front, that paralyzes her. There's this one last moment of her breath, fast, crazy, and then what is there to do? Luce buckles her knees and drops sideways to the ground. She falls with a thud onto the concrete balcony.

She will sleep, right at the feet of this cow-skull woman. Gem will lift her up, arms beneath her armpits. She will be here with ice cream and then hold Luce's limp body, and Luce will whimper this terrible nightmare into Gem's ear while Gem rubs her back.

Luce squeezes her eyes shut and counts one, two, three, four. She is counting, tensed, her head aching from where it hit, her dress cold with pee, waiting for the thing behind her to pounce. When she gets to ten, she squints one eye open. It is dark. She is on the balcony.

She can hear no music playing inside, no voices. She looks behind her, in front, but there is nobody else outside. There is not a cow-skull shadow where the elegant woman had been. She is alone.

She picks herself up off the ground. Her head is aching and her party dress is dirty. She wants to cry, feeling her chest getting fizzy, but then she stops.

Luce peeks over the edge of the balcony. Is the woman down there? There are a few lights in the parking lot, but she cannot see everything. She will not cry. But there is nothing. Dead leaves and the neighbor's trash and starlight shining on the known world.

But then a flash of brightness catches her eye. She looks up, and there. The elegant woman. Luce can only see the bottom of her white jacket as she scales the wall. She is halfway bent, disappearing. She is climbing into the window upstairs. Into Roo's bedroom.

Luce begins yelling then, pounding on the glass door. She tries to open it again, but it's still locked. Her breath makes warm, wet ghosts on the glass. The elegant woman is inside her baby brother's room and it is her job to protect him and she is stuck here, she is on the balcony, she is pounding and yelling, and that's when her mother appears at the door, clicks it open.

Luce tears past her, up the stairs, the longest stairs in the world, the walls closing in around her, and she is soaked with pee and moving too slow. Finally, she makes it into Roo's room. He is alone. There is no cow-skull woman in his room. He is asleep. In his crib. His sweaty blond head. And that's when she hears her mother downstairs. She is making a sound Luce has never heard before. Luce walks slowly back down the stairs and into the kitchen, one foot, then the other, toe and then heel, sneaking, she realizes, softly and slowly. Tinsel scattered across the floors like shards of glass. The sound from the kitchen is all animal. Something hoarse and deep from inside a body. Gulp. Choke. Luce knows what she will see. Her mother, at the table, with a cow skull where her head should be.

She takes the last step into the kitchen. There is a Before and After for this moment. She is holding her breath.

There, at the table, is her mother. Just her mother, with her regular head.

Luce takes careful steps forward, arms out, but stops. She lowers her arms. Something is off. There's a smell in the air. The sound her mother is making. Her mouth. The shape of it.

"There's been an incident," Gloria says, though her voice is static. Without breath. There are shadows on the wall that look like ghosts. Now Gem needs to slide out and wrap her arms around Luce and Gloria, and they will find themselves as a perfect sandwich of love.

But Gloria's mouth is open. It is open into a big, long O, a wail, a scream. Her mother says, "Gem is hurt." Luce cinches her arms around herself. Gem is hurt. "No—fuck it," her mother says, her voice full of mucus and grit. "I'm not going to lie. It was not an incident, or an accident. He beat the shit out of her," Gloria says, her voice breaking, and Luce starts telling a story to herself to keep out the words her mother is saying. Once upon a time, there was a princess of bones. Her mother is still talking, "He used a wrench, hands around the neck," and Luce thinks of the princess with the whole kingdom to rule and nothing to help her but a cave full of bones. Gloria is saying "Caused a brain bleed." Luce imagines the blood traveling up over the mountains, through blizzards, into the cave of bones. She was inher cave when suddenly a mountain lion wandered in and wanted the cave for himself.

Gloria wipes her face with both hands, the black and blue trails of makeup that look like rivers smear all across her face like a painting, and Luce can see, even beneath the makeup, the flaming pink rings of her eyes. It scares her, all of it. Something confusing, something huge is building inside her chest. "I want ice cream," she says. "Gem was bringing it for me. Where is she?"

Gloria's face is wet all over and her shoulders are moving like someone is shaking her from behind. Luce doesn't understand, but also she does. "I want Gem, not you," she says. She brings her fist down on her mother's back. Nothing happens. Her mother's shoulders keep shaking, and so she keeps hitting.

"Stop it," Gloria whispers, suddenly sitting up. She stands up, raging, arms swinging wide as she gathers her keys, her purse, she is wiping her face with the palms of her hands. "If you hadn't demanded she come to the party, they never would have had that fight. This never would have happened." She looks Luce right in the eyes.

Luce's body is gone. It doesn't belong to her anymore.

Gloria stands. She steadies herself against the sink and then spins, kicking out as hard as she can, and her foot smashes into the wooden cupboards with a horrible click and the cupboard breaks into splinters and so do her mother's bones inside her big toe. There is screaming.

In the silence inside the scream, in the breath, a fly. Buzzing around the sink. Landing on a dirty plate. Rubbing its hands together, back and forth, back and forth.

She thought that night was the worst part. That nothing would ever be as terrible as the cow-skull woman, as terrifying as her mother undone.

But they hadn't even gotten to Gem yet.

To her most important person, head cracked open and staring all the way to Jupiter, never to return.

The worst part hadn't even started yet.

Luce was still here, inside the memory that was really just the on-ramp to sorrow, driving it over and over again.