She screams, “You can’t see me! I’m not real! I’m not real!” Then whispers, “I’m the Maji Blanc.”
She slaps her hands in modesty, or shame, over her crotch, covering a miniature penis and deformed vagina. The penis resembles an infant’s pinky. The vagina is hooded, the labia fused, shaped like the petals of an orchid.
She screams, “You left the dream, you fool! Why? So you can say my body disgusts you? That I’m abnormal? It’s your death warrant!”
Because I understand what I am seeing, the left side of my brain overwhelms the drug-murked right side, and I tell the Maji Blanc,“You’re not abnormal.”
I am thinking: Growing up in the church had to be hell for a hermaphrodite.
Caribbean dawn, rain-forest wind. Black water floats a buoyant sun. Sun’s elliptic pushes Venus, Saturn, Jupiter into the failing darkness of the Southern Cross.
Sunrise rising illuminates the blue of an old morning sea.
Parrots scream from humid shadows.
Parrots.
Parrots… the noise I heard as I awoke. Their wild bickering pounded a timpani skin that was the back of my brain.
I sat. I stood. I was in a cell that smelled of water on rock. Mold and rodents. A spear of sunlight touched my face. I squinted at the room’s lone window. The opening was the size of a brick, slightly higher than my head.
I got up on tiptoes and looked out. I could see the stone facade of Toussaint’s chateau. Far below, the sea was cobalt blue. My cell, I realized, was built into the side of a hill, part of the foundation of the woman’s house.
How had I gotten here? I felt like a drunk sifting through images that had survived a blackout.
Ritchie and Clovis had dragged me into the cell. No surprise that they worked for the woman. They’d… hit me? Yes. Clovis had used the palm of his hand. Ritchie had used fists.
I touched my cheek, my jaw. Slight swelling; some tenderness. Not bad.
I moved into the light and inspected myself. They’d left me my running shoes and shorts, but my pockets were empty, and my watch was gone. The Rolex I’d owned for years, Ritchie had taken it.
What else?
There was something I had to remember. A conversation. A detail.
Finally, the memory returned, and it scared me that I could have possibly forgotten.
Toussaint had gone into a screaming fit. Said she was going to watch me die tonight.
I had to find a way to escape.
Using my hands, I began to explore the walls of the cell. Old stone. Dense, like granite. I went from wall to wall, searching for loose stone… then stopped.
I heard voices outside, coming closer. A woman’s voice, raspy from cigarettes and screaming.
I dropped to the floor and pretended to be unconscious. My cell door opened. Clovis and Ritchie again.
Toussaint yelled at the two men, telling them to stop punching me, stop waving that damn gun around, and put the knife away. I was conscious. That’s the way she wanted me to stay.
“Are you trying to kill him? Not until I tell you to!”
I waited until the two men moved away, then stood. I said, “Thank you, Isabelle,” hoping the familiarity would touch a chord. I was going to use her name whenever I got the chance. I’m confused, Isabelle… You may be right, Isabelle… Isabelle, I’d like to understand…
Killers dehumanize their victims to appease their own conscience. I wanted this killer to know that I was decidedly human.
Toussaint was under control now, dressed in her theatrical robes-purple and scarlet, decked with gold-the Midnight Star sapphire hanging from her neck. She was the all-powerful queen, two believers at her side, eager to do as they were told. But the orders Toussaint gave Clovis and Ritchie surprised them. Me, too.
“Go outside. Leave the door open for light, but none of your damn eavesdropping. You heard me!”
They’d brought a folding chair. The woman sat, her back to the door. She could see me. All I could see was her silhouette.
“Sit down,” she said. When I didn’t move, she yelled, “On the floor!”
I sat, then scooted a few feet to her right to change the angle of light, but also to create distance. It wasn’t the woman’s breath that stunk, it was a foul combination of musk and perfume. Overpowering. She lit another cheroot, the match flame illuminating wrinkles beneath her makeup, the heavy, hooded eyes, her nicotine-stained lips.
“You think you’re clever, don’t you? I knew your real name even before you arrived. And why you came here. Does that surprise you?”
I was looking at the woman’s distinctive forehead, her earlobes, hearing Shay’s voice tell me about her future mother-in-law’s six sisters-the one with a birth defect; the one the family didn’t discuss because she’d been institutionalized in France.
It pleased me that I remembered. The effects of the drug were fading, but I still had to concentrate to speak without slurring. I replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then you’re stupider than I’d hoped. You’ve also put me in a very awkward position.”
“I’m sorry, Isabelle.”
“You are not! What are your two little bitches going to say when they discover you’re missing? Now I have to invent an excuse to send them away. Or I could arrange for them to disappear, as well. But that’s not good business, is it? They’re like annuities-money and political favors I can cash when I want. Why hurt my own livestock? But I’ll hurt you if you don’t tell the truth.”
I said, “I have no reason to lie,” and nearly added, Isabelle, but didn’t. The woman was insane, not stupid.
“What did you mean when you said what you said?”
I replied, “Huh?” as if confused.
“You said I wasn’t abnormal! As if you know anything about it. You’re just another little man-coward trying to save his life. You think I’m disgusting. Well, it’s your kind who are disgusting! All of you-you’re nothing but breeding stock. With your adolescent flirtations and absurd charades. Perfume and lies-like flowers manipulating bees. Nothing but silly playacting. Behaving like animals!”
I was still feeling the effects of the Divinorium. There was nothing irrational about assigning the woman’s bitterness to a quirk of genetics. But I felt no sympathy. She did disgust me, but I had to win her over, or she’d kill me. Maybe Beryl and Senegal, too.
“I didn’t say you’re normal. I said you aren’t abnormal. I’m a biologist- you know that. Name a species-often there are three sexes, not two. Primates are omni-sexual as children. Boys experiment with boys, girls with girls. Some are born with omni-sexual bodies. The percentages are small, but statistically consistent.”
The woman’s anger wavered for a moment, displaced by curiosity. “You don’t think I know that? But why would you care?”
“Caring has nothing to do with it. I don’t get emotional about facts. Vertebrates produce a small number of intersex members.” I touched my neck, then said, “You scratched the hell out of me.”
Boom-she lost it again. “That wasn’t me, you fool!”
I said, “What?”
“The Maji Blanc scratched you. She inhabits my body. She’s a demon. And believe me, demons are as real as heaven and hell.”
I said, “It’s your hell, but it’s my neck,” then stood and went to the window to get air, carefully not turning my back on her.
“Your neck? As if anybody cared about your neck! Don’t you understand the power of purity?”
“You’re saying you do?”
“Yes. It’s why I raise orchids. Did you know some orchids are self-pollinating? They aren’t parasites like you people. They don’t feed on filth. No need for your grotesque inserting this into that. I bet you actually believe I came to your bed out of desire? Hilarious! God sends the Maji Blanc to punish you. To punish you for what you are, not what I am. I’m His servant.”
“His servant, huh?”
“In ways you can’t understand. I film people’s sickness. It gives me power-like air to an orchid. Money is the penance sinners pay for their sins. Now you stand there and pretend to understand me. You just want to ingratiate yourself because you’re afraid to die.”