And Doro had been trying to duplicate the happy accident of her birth ever since. She had known him for three hundred years now, had borne him thirty-seven children through his various incarnations. None of her children had proved to be especially long-lived. Those who might have been were tortured, unstable people. They committed suicide. The rest lived normal spans and died natural deaths. Emma had seen to that last. She had not been able to keep track of her many grandchildren, but her children she had protected. From the beginning of her relationship with Doro, she had warned him that if he murdered even one of her children, she would bear him no more.
At first Doro had valued her and her new strain too much to punish her for her “arrogance.” Later, as he became accustomed to her, to the idea of her immortality, he began to value her as more than just a breeder. She became a companion to him, a wife to whom he always returned. Both he and she married other people from time to time, but such matings were temporary.
For a while, Emma even believed in his race-building dream. But as he allowed her to know more of his methods of fulfilling that dream, her enthusiasm waned. No dream was worth the things he did to people.
It was his casually murderous attitude that finally caused her to tire of him, about two centuries into their relationship. She had turned away from him in disgust when he murdered a young woman who had borne him the three children he had demanded of her. For Emma, it had finally been too much.
But, by then, Doro had been a part of her life for too long, had become too important to her. She could not simply walk away from him, even if he had been willing to let her. She needed him, but she no longer wanted him. And she no longer wanted to be one of his people, supporting his butchery. There was only one escape, and she began preparing herself to take it. She began preparing herself to die.
And Doro, startled, alarmed, began to mend his ways somewhat. He gave her his word that he would no longer kill breeders who became useless to him. Then he asked her to live. He came to her, finally, as one human being to another, and asked her not to leave him. She hadn’t left him. He had never commanded her again.
“Will you take the mother and child, Em?”
“Yes. You know I will. Poor things.”
“Not so poor if I’m successful.”
She made a sound of disgust.
He smiled. “I’ll be seeing you more often, too, with the girl living next door.”
“Well, that’s something.” She reached out and took one of Doro’s hands between her own, observing the contrast. His was smooth and soft. The hand of a young man who had clearly never done any manual labor. Her hands were claws, hard, skinny, with veins and tendons prominent. She began to fill her hands out, smooth them, straighten the long fingers until the hands were those of a young woman, attractive in themselves but incongruous on the ends of withered, ancient arms.
“I wish the child were a boy instead of a girl,” she said. “I’m afraid she isn’t going to like me much for a while. At least not until she’s old enough to see you clearly.”
“I didn’t want a boy,” he said. “I’ve had trouble with boys in … in the special role I want her to fill.”
“Oh.” She wondered how many boy children he had slaughtered as a result of his trouble.
“I wanted a girl, and I wanted her to be one of the youngest of her generation of actives. Both those factors will help keep her in line. She’ll be less likely to rebel against my plans for her.”
“I think you underestimate young girls,” said Emma. She had filled out her arms, rounding them, making them slender rather than skinny. Now she raised a hand to her face. She passed her fingers over her forehead and down her cheek. The flesh became smooth and flawless as she went on speaking. “Although, for this girl’s own sake, I hope you’re not underestimating her.”
Doro watched her with the interest he had always shown when she reshaped herself. “I can’t understand why you spend so much of your time as an old woman,” he said.
She cleared her throat. “I am an old woman.” She spoke now in a quiet, youthful contralto. “And most people are only too glad to leave an ugly old woman alone.”
He touched the newly smooth skin of her face, his expression concerned. “You need this project, Em. Even though you don’t want it. I’ve left you alone too long.”
“Not really.” She smiled. “I’ve finally written the trilogy of novels that I was planning when we lived together last. History. My story. The critics marveled at my realism. My work is powerful, compelling. I’m a born storyteller.”
He laughed. “Hurry and finish reshaping yourself and I’ll give you some more material.”
PART ONE
Chapter One
Mary
I was in my bedroom reading a novel when somebody came banging on the door really loud, like the police. I thought it was the police until I got up, looked out the window, and saw one of Rina’s johns standing there. I wouldn’t have bothered to answer, but the fool was kicking at the door like he wanted to break it in. I went to the kitchen and got one of our small cast-iron skillets—the size just big enough to hold two eggs. Then I went to the door. The stupid bastard was drunk.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “Where’s Rina? Tell Rina I wanna see her.”
“Rina’s not here, man. Come back around five this evening.”
He swayed a little, stared down at me. “I said tell Rina I wanna see her.”
“And I said she’s not here!” I would have shut the door in his face, but I knew he’d just start kicking it again unless he managed to understand what I was saying.
“Not here?”
“You got it.”
“Well.” He narrowed his eyes a little and sort of peered at me. “How about you?”
“Not me, man.” I started to shut the door. I hate these scenes, really. The idiot shoved me and the door out of his way and came on in. That’s what I get for being short and skinny. Ninety-eight pounds. At nineteen, I looked thirteen. Guys got the wrong idea.
“Man, you better get out of here,” I warned him. “Come back at five. Rina’s the whore, not me.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to learn.” He stared at me. “What’s that you got in your hand?”
I didn’t say anything else. I had done my bit for nonviolence.
“I said what the hell you got in your—”
He lunged toward me. I side-stepped him and bashed his stupid head in. I left him lying where he fell, got my purse, and went out. Let Rina or Emma see to him.
I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to get away from the house. I had a headache, and every now and then I would hear voices—a word, a scream, somebody crying. Hear them inside my head. Doro said that meant I was close to my change, my transition. Doro said that was good. I wished I could give him some of the pain and the craziness of it and let him see how good it was. I felt like hell all the time, and he came around grinning.
I walked over to Maple Avenue and there was a bus coming. A Los Angeles bus. On impulse, I got on. Not that there was anything for me in LA. There wasn’t anything for me anywhere except maybe wherever Doro was. If I was lucky, when Rina and Emma found that idiot lying in our living room, they would call Doro. They called him whenever they thought I was about to blow. The way things were now, I was always about to blow.
I got off the bus in downtown L.A. and went to a drugstore. I didn’t remember until I was inside that the only money I had was bus fare. So I slipped a bottle of aspirin into my purse and walked out with it. Doro told me a few years ago that he’d beat the hell out of me if I ever got picked up for stealing. I had been stealing since I was seven years old, and I had never been caught. I used to steal presents for Rina back when I was still trying to pretend it meant something that she was my mother. Anyway, now I knew what I was going to do in L.A. I was going “shopping.”
I didn’t try very hard, but I got a few things. Got a nice little Sony portable radio—one of the tiny ones. I just walked out of
a discount store with it while the salesman who had been showing it to me went to stop some kid from pulling down a display of plastic dishes. Got some perfume. I didn’t like the way it smelled though, so I threw it away. I took four aspirins and my headache kind of dulled down a little. I got a blouse and a halter and some junky costume jewelry. I threw the jewelry away, too, after I got a better look at it. Trash. And I got a couple of paperbacks. Always some books. If I didn’t have anything to read, I’d really go crazy.
On my way back to Forsyth, somebody screamed bloody murder inside my head. Along with that, I felt I was being hit in the face. Sometimes I got things mixed up, I couldn’t tell what was really happening to me and what I was picking up accidentally from other people’s minds. This time, I was getting onto a bus when it happened, and I just froze. I had enough control to hold myself there, to not scream or fall on the ground from the beating I felt like I was taking. But you don’t stop half on and half off a bus at Seventh and Broadway at five in the evening. You could get killed.
I wasn’t exactly trampled. I just kept getting shoved out of the way. Somebody shoved me away from the door of the bus. Other people pushed me out of their way. I couldn’t react. All I could do was hang on, wait it out.
And then it was over. I was barely able to get on the bus before it pulled away. I had to stand up all the way to Forsyth. I did my best to knock a couple of people down when I got off.
I didn’t want to go home. Even if Rina and Emma had called Doro, he couldn’t have gotten there yet. I didn’t want to hear Rina’s mouth. But then I started to wonder about the john—how bad I had hurt him, if maybe he was dead. I decided to go home to see.
There was nothing else to do, anyway. Forsyth is a dead town. Rich people, old people, mostly white people. Even the southwest side, where we lived, wasn’t a ghetto—or at least not a racial ghetto. It was full of poor bastards from any race you want to name—all working like hell to get out of there. Except us. Rina had been out, Doro told me, but she had come back. I never have thought my mother was very bright.
We lived in a corner house—Dell Street and Forsyth Avenue—so I walked home on the side of Dell Street opposite our house. I wanted to see if there were any police cars around the corner before I went in. If there had been any, I would have kept going. Doro would have gotten me out of any trouble I got into, I knew. But then he would have half killed me. It wasn’t worth it.
Rina and Emma were waiting for me. I wasn’t surprised. There was this little drama we had to go through.
Rina: Do you realize you could have killed that man! Do you want us to go to prison!
Emma: Can’t you think for once in your life? Why’d you leave him here? Why didn’t you at least—at least—come and get me? For God’s sake, girl …
Rina: What did you hit him for? Will you tell us that?
They hadn’t given me a chance to tell them anything.
Rina: He was just a harmless old guy. Hell, he wouldn’t have hurt—
Emma: Doro is on his way here now, Mary, and you’d better have a good reason for what you did.
And, finally, I got a word in. “It was either hit him or screw him.”
“Oh, Lord,” muttered Rina. “Can’t you talk decent even when Emma is here?”
“I talk as decent as you taught me, Momma! Besides, what do you want me to say? ‘Make love to him?’ I wouldn’t have loved it. And if he had managed to do it, I would have made sure I killed him.”
“You did enough,” said Emma. She was calming down.
“What did you do with him, anyway?” I asked.
“Put him in the hospital.” She shrugged. “Fractured skull.”
“They didn’t say anything at the hospital?”
“The way he smelled? I just shriveled myself up a little more and told them my grandson drank too much and fell on his head.”
I laughed. She used that little-old-lady act to get sympathy from strangers, or at least to throw them off guard. Most of the time when Doro wasn’t around, she was old and frail-looking. It was nothing but an act, though. I saw a guy try to snatch her purse once while she was hobbling down the street. She broke his arm.
“Was that guy really your grandson?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
I glanced at Rina with disgust. “You can’t find anybody but relatives to screw? God!”
“It’s none of your business.”
“I wouldn’t pretend to be so disgusted with the idea of incest if I were you, Mary.” Emma sort of bared her teeth at me. It wasn’t a smile. She and I didn’t get along most of the time. She thought she knew everything. And she thought Doro was her private property. I got up and went to my room.
Doro arrived the next day.
I remember once when I was about six years old I was sitting on his lap frowning up into his latest face. “Shouldn’t I call you ‘Daddy’?” I asked. Until then, I had called him Doro, like everybody else did.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said. And he smiled. “Later, you won’t like it.”
I didn’t understand, and I was a stubborn kid anyway. I called him “Daddy.” He didn’t seem to mind. But, of course, later, I didn’t like it. It still bothered me a little, and Doro and Emma both knew it. I had the feeling they laughed about it together.
Doro was a black man this time. That was a relief, because, the last couple of visits, he’d been white. He just walked into my bedroom early in the morning and sat down on my bed. That woke me up. All I saw was this big stranger sitting on the side of my bed.
“Say something,” I said quickly.
“It’s me,” he said.
I let go of the steak knife I slept with and sat up. “Can I kiss you, or are you going to jump me, too?”
He pulled back my blankets and ran his hand down the side of the bed next to the wall. Of course he found the steak knife. I kept it sheathed in the tight little handle you’re supposed to use to pick up the mattress. He threw it out the door. “Leave the knives and frying pans in the kitchen, where they belong,” he said.
“That guy was going to rape me, Doro.”
“You’re going to kill somebody.”
“Not unless I have to. If people leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”
He picked up a pair of jeans from the floor, where I had left them, and threw them in my face. “Get dressed,” he said. “I want to show you something. I want to make a point in a way that even you might understand.”
He got up and went out of the room.
I threw the jeans back on the floor and went to the closet for some clean ones. My head was aching already.
He drove me to the city jail. He parked outside the wall and just sat there.
“What now?” I asked.
“You tell me.”
“Doro, why did you bring me here?”
“As I said, to make a point.”
“What point? That if I’m not a good little girl, this is where I’ll wind up? God! Let’s get away from here.” Something was wrong with me. Or something was about to be wrong. Really wrong. I was picking up shadows of crazy emotions.
“Why should we go?” he asked.
“My head …!” I could feel myself losing control. “Doro, please. …” I screamed. I tried to hang on. Tried to just shut down, the way I had the day before. Freeze. But I was caught in a nightmare. The kind of nightmare where the walls are coming together on you and you can’t get out. The kind where you’re locked in some dark, narrow place and you can’t get out. The kind where you’re at a zoo locked up like the animals, and you can’t get out!
I had never been afraid of the dark. Not even when I was little. And I’d never been afraid of small, closed places. And the only place I had ever seen a room where the walls formed a vise was in a bad movie. But I screamed my head off outside that jail. I started flailing around, and Doro grabbed me to keep me from jumping out of the car. I almost made him have an accident, as he was trying to drive away.
/> Finally, when we were a good, long way from the jail, I calmed down. I sat bent over in the seat, holding my head.
“How long do you suppose you could stay even as sane as you are in the midst of a concentration of emotions like that?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“Most of the prisoners there aren’t half as bothered by their thoughts and fears as you were,” he said. “They don’t like where they are, but they can live with it. You can’t. Wouldn’t you rather even be raped than wind up in a place like this even for a short time?”
“You got any aspirin?” I asked. My head was throbbing so that I could hardly hear him. And for some stupid reason, I had left my new bottle of aspirin at home on my night table.
“In the glove compartment,” he said. “No water, though.”
I fumbled open the glove compartment, found the aspirin, and swallowed four. He was stopped for a red light, watching me.
“You’re going to get sick, doing that.”
“Thanks to you, I’m already sick.”
“You don’t listen, girl. I talk to you and you don’t listen. For your own good, I have to show you.”
“From now on, I’ll listen. Just tell me.” I sat back and waited for the aspirin to work. Then I realized that he wasn’t taking me home.
“Where are we going? You don’t have another treat for me, do you?”
“Yes. But not the way you mean.”
“What is it? Where are we going?”
“Here.”
We were on South Ocean Avenue, in the good part of Forsyth’s downtown shopping district. He was driving into the parking lot of Orman’s, one of the best stores in town.