“Is it a village of the Tuareg?” I asked with a shiny thirst for blood. It was the tribe I held responsible for killing my uncle.
My direct superior was a good motivator. He knew the answer I wanted. “Of course.”
I embarked on the raid with a knife and an unlit torch. I remember carrying the knife in my teeth, but that’s an emotional memory and not an actual one. I try to sift those out as well as I can, but there are exceptions, some more pleasurable than others.
When I see myself in that life, it’s mostly from the outside in. It feels to me as though, without the awareness of my memory, I wasn’t me yet. This was an ordinary person who would become me, and I look at him from a distance. Maybe that’s what I do to live with it. I contrast the scraggly, pimply, incapable exterior of that young man to the storm of ferocity and self-importance I know was going on inside his head.
My fellow raiders were like me, the youngest, the lowest, and the most expendable. We could be counted on to see in black and white and come back whole or not at all. We fanned out across the valley, ready to make war.
At some moonless hour of that night, roughly a quarter of our troop took a detour for water. My brother was put in charge of the splinter, and I went with him. We found the water, but afterward we couldn’t find our troop again. There were about twenty of us roving around in the dry scrub. I could tell my brother was flummoxed, but he didn’t want to show it. He was so susceptible to power it corrupted him instantly.
He gathered his group. “We’ll march directly to the village. I know where to go.”
He did seem to know where to go. There was only the suggestion of dawn when we first saw the village on the horizon. “We got here first,” my brother crowed. We came together for a moment to light our torches from a common flame. I remember the greedy eyes in the firelight. We all wanted to do our share of living.
The village was no more than a shadowy cluster of simple structures and thatched roofs. I could picture the enemy soldiers crouching inside, sinister. I put my torch to the dry roof of the first domicile I came to. The thatch was made to burn. I felt a jab of satisfaction as I watched the fire catch and spread. I made my knife ready for any man who would come out and confront me. I went on to the next hut and laid my torch. I heard screaming somewhere behind me, but my ears were muddled by my own roar and thrill.
By the third house, certain smells in my nose and sounds in my ears began to penetrate my thinking mind, burrowing in like worms. The fire had made a false, manic dawn, but now the sun endowed a true one. I could see the house directly in front of me. By rote I surged toward it with my torch and lit a clump of roof, but it didn’t take right away, as the others had. I went around back to try another spot, and I stumbled against a taut rope. I had visions of enemy traps, but as I stepped back I saw there were clothes hanging from it and from a line strung above. The wind lifted up and brushed the smoke away for a moment, and I could see it was a garden laced with clothing lines and small clothes drying in the gray air.
I went back around to the front of the house, confused and angry at the small clothes that hung on the line and the roof that sputtered and wouldn’t burn. The torch that seemed so brilliant in the dark looked weak and false as the sun came on more brightly. The wind blew the smoke away, and I saw that many of the gardens had clothing lines. They weren’t hiding soldiers; they were growing squashes and melons and drying laundry. Some of the gardens were already burning.
I didn’t know what to do then other than get the house to burn. I couldn’t have any other ideas. I confronted confusion with action. I lit the house from the bottom, a well-constructed wooden frame. Inadvertently I thought of the wooden frame we’d labored over for our house. I hurried around to the other side and found a scraggly fistful of roof to light. At last the fire took what I gave it, and the flames licked and popped. I thought I heard the sound of a baby’s cry from inside.
The fire took all right. I couldn’t tell if the emotion that filled me was horror or pride. I could barely move. I could barely force myself away from the blurring heat.
I saw the house as a head with wild, burning hair. The two windows were eyes, and the door was the mouth. To my astonishment the mouth opened and there was a person. It was a young person, a girl, wearing a nightgown.
When I think of it I try to picture her distantly, as the stranger she was then, and not as the girl I love. I change her a little in my memory; I know I do.
Her hair was long and loose, and her face turned to mine with the strangest expression. She must have known what I had done. I stood in front of her burning house with a torch in my hand. The torch had gone out. It had been enough to destroy their home and take their lives, though it was nothing now. I could hear the baby crying behind her.
I wanted to get the girl out of there. I wanted her to run. She was as beautiful as a fawn. Her eyes were large and green, with orange flames sparking in them. I felt panic. Who was going to help her?
I had changed sides. I was horrified. I wanted to put the fire out. There was a baby who would die. Maybe her sister or brother. Was her mother in the house? You have to wake her up, I wanted to shout. I’ll help you.
I no longer seemed to know who had done this terrible thing, but she knew. The flames roared. The wind whipped them and spread them. They were dancing all around her.
“You’ve got to run!” I shouted.
Her eyes were puzzled and sorrowful but not fearful, darting, and crazy, as mine were. Her face was as calm as mine was contorted. I took a step to her, but the heat was uncrossable. Flames curled and spat between us.
She looked out at the burning houses and gardens of her neighbors and then at me. She turned her head and looked behind her into her burning house. I prayed she would step out, but she didn’t. I couldn’t imagine this would be the end of her. She stepped back in.
“Don’t go!” I cried to her.
The mouth of the house was empty again. Within seconds the structure heaved and caved, but the flames stayed and fed on.
“I am sorry,” I heard myself shouting to her. “I’m sorry.” I repeated the words in Aramaic, because I thought that was a language she might understand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I WAS NEARLY insensible on the march back to our camp, but I did look up long enough to observe heavy smoke on the horizon. I remembered, distantly, that we hadn’t rejoined the larger group, and as we got closer to the smoke I understood why. I was too numb to think or check my words.
“It was the wrong village,” I said.
Only my brother heard me. He must have seen what I saw and known what I knew as well as I did. “It wasn’t,” he said stonily.
At that moment my anguish was too overpowering for me to think about anything else. “It was.”
“It wasn’t,” he said again. I saw no guilt, no self-doubt, no regret. What I did see was wrath toward me, and I would have done better if I’d marked it and never said a word about that night again.
I HAVE WITNESSED many deaths and tragedies. I have caused a few since then. But I’ve never taken perfectly innocent lives again. I’ve never destroyed such beauty or felt so much shame. I try to keep my distance, but I still feel a sickness in my soul when I think of it, and the feeling doesn’t lessen over time.
The stench of burnt wood and tar and flesh in my nostrils was so thick I believe it took a permanent place there. The blur of gray smoke got in my eyes and altered my senses forever.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, 2006
“YOU’RE SUCH A doubter, Lefty. Just come.”
“I haven’t slept in two nights,” Lucy argued. “This place is a dump. I need to clean up.”
Marnie looked around their small dorm room. “You can’t clean it up without me, because then I might feel guilty. We’ll do it tomorrow. Come on. Jackie and Soo-mi are downstairs already. We have to celebrate.”
“What if I don’t feel like celebrating?” Lucy was in fact a doubter and a lefty, and she was also super
stitious about celebrating before she got her grades back. “What if Lawdry notices I turned in my paper two days late?”
Lucy’s resistance was barely a sigh in Marnie’s typhoon of will. “Here. Here are your shoes.” Marnie chucked them one flip-flop at a time. “Bring some money.”
“I have to pay for this thing I don’t want to do?”
“Twenty bucks. People pay for a lot of things they don’t want to do. The dentist. Wars in Iraq. Dead mice for Dana’s snake.”
“You aren’t making it sound any more inviting.” Lucy got her bag and put on shoes. Not the flip-flops Marnie threw at her. She had the energy for only small rebellions.
“Don’t worry about Lawdry. He loves you.” Marnie opened the door of their room and ushered Lucy out.
“No, he doesn’t.”
“I’m afraid he does.”
“Whose car are we taking?”
“Yours.”
“Oh, I see.”
On the way out on Route 53 toward Simeon the sun was sliding into the flat roof of a Bed Bath & Beyond. Marnie put on one of her brother Alexander’s terrible rap mixes and cranked it up while Jackie and Soo-mi started opening beers in the back. “Who is this person we’re going to?” Lucy asked over the din.
“Madame Esme,” Marnie said, studying her handwritten directions in the darkening car. “Two miles and turn onto Bishop Hill.”
“Don’t you two want to be sober for your twenty-dollar psychic reading with Madame Esme?” Lucy asked, glancing at Soo-mi’s face in the rearview mirror.
Soo-mi held up her Miller Lite. “Not particularly.”
“Is this really where we’re going?” Lucy asked, turning onto a gravel road dotted with trailers and rusting carcasses of trailers.
Marnie was trying to figure out addresses. “Do you see any numbers?” she asked. “We want Twenty-three thirty-two.”
“I think it’s that one.” Lucy motioned ahead to an aging mobile home surrounded by trellises woven through with roses. It might have had wheels once, but it didn’t look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. “Are those roses real or fake?” she asked.
Marnie squinted. “I think real.”
“I think fake,” Lucy said as she pulled into the driveway.
Madame Esme met them at the door. Lucy saw more or less what she expected to see. Long green robe. Hair piled up. Lots of rouge. Oversized gestures.
“Who goes first?” Madame Esme inquired.
“Marnie, you set this up. You go,” Jackie said.
“You three can sit in there.” Madame pointed to a tiny living room/kitchen. There were a painted wooden table and four mismatched chairs. “You follow me,” she said to Marnie.
We watched Marnie follow her through a door into a dim room pulsing with candlelight. Madame closed the door after them.
“What are we doing?” Lucy asked, sitting on a metal folding chair.
“Alicia Kliner said she’s supposed to be really amazing,” Soo-mi said in a whisper.
Lucy didn’t know what was potentially amazing in this. Her mother went to psychics every couple of years and was amazed when they said things like “You are at peace by the water. Books feed you. You cannot help but nurture.” Her mother was also amazed by polarity, chakras, foot massage, and many items featured on the Home Shopping Network. Lucy suspected she had a higher threshold for amazement.
LUCY WAS FINE with waiting until last for the great Madame Esme, but it was hard to keep herself awake. Especially after Marnie emerged with a look of bursting smugness but claimed she couldn’t talk about it until they had all finished their readings.
“Oh, come on.”
“I can’t. Seriously.”
“Who do you care about more, me or Madame Esme?”
“Don’t make me choose.”
Lucy shook her head and put it back down on the table.
At last Madame Esme emerged for the third time and let Jackie out the door. “I’m ready for you,” she said to Lucy.
Lucy yawned and approached. The small room was dark but for three fluttering candle flames on a card table. Two more folding chairs were pulled up to the table. As Lucy’s eyes adjusted, she saw the open shelves of clothing. Sweaters and piles of pants and a mound of socks. It was more than Lucy wanted to know, and it badly undercut the veneer of mystery. Along the wall was a twin bed with one pillow. There was a poster, but Lucy couldn’t make it out because it was mostly behind a shelf.
Madame Esme closed the door and sat. Lucy sat in the chair opposite. Esme closed her eyes and put out her hands facing upward. Lucy wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.
“Give me your hands,” Esme said.
Lucy did so awkwardly. Madame Esme’s hands were warm and clutched hers with surprising intensity. It was hard to tell with all the makeup, but sitting close and feeling her hands, Lucy sensed that Madame Esme wasn’t much older than she was. How had she found her way into this profession? Lucy wondered. It took a certain amount of nerve.
Esme closed her eyes and rocked back and forth. As for acting, Lucy decided, it was only so-so. This was what you got for twenty dollars. She tried to shut down another yawn.
Esme opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it again. She was quiet for an uncomfortably long time. Lucy strained to hear the voices of her friends on the other side of the door. “I’m seeing a flame, red lights, a lot of noise,” Esme finally said. “Is it a school?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. She knew she was tired and grumpy, but she didn’t feel like doing the work here.
“It feels like a school,” Esme said. “A lot of people rushing around, but you are alone.”
Lucy was ready for this. You feel alone in a crowd. You are shyer than people think. This was your basic psychic bait.
Madame Esme’s eyes were twitching under her lids, but they became still. Her expression changed.
“You aren’t alone. He is there with you.”
“Okay.” Lucy wondered if they were getting to the romantic wish-fulfillment part.
“He has been waiting for you. Not only now, but for a long time.” Esme was quiet for a while. The silence stretched out, and Lucy wondered if maybe that was it. But then Esme spoke again, and this time her voice was different, lower and more intense.
“You wouldn’t listen to him.”
“I’m sorry?” Lucy said politely.
“He was trying to tell you something. He needed you then. Why didn’t you listen?” The voice was higher now, and plaintive.
“Listen to who?” Lucy cleared her throat. “I’m not sure what you are talking about.”
“At the dance. The party. Something like that. I feel that you were scared. But still.” Esme was squeezing her hands a bit harder than Lucy liked.
Lucy didn’t especially want to know what Esme was talking about. Esme didn’t know what Esme was talking about. She was just fishing. Saying standard stuff and trying to get Lucy to bite on something.
“You should have listened.”
“To what?” Was a psychic supposed to be giving opinions?
“What he told you.” Esme’s voice was deeper and stranger. Her trance was getting more convincing. She was warmed up, obviously. Lucy had a sadistic impulse to kick her under the table. “Because he loved you.”
“Who loved me?” Psychics never named names. They waited for you to tell them.
“Daniel,” she said.
Lucy sat back. She made herself breathe. “Who?”
“Daniel.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. She sat up straight and felt the chair creak and reset. What did this woman know about her? Did she know them from school, somehow? Had Marnie somehow briefed her?
“Daniel wanted you to remember. He kissed you, and you did remember for a moment, didn’t you? But you ran away.”
Marnie couldn’t have told her that. No one could have. Lucy felt a wave of fear followed by a wave of nausea as her mind raced to find a rational explanation. She didn
’t want to say anything more. She wanted it to be over, but Esme had not finished with her.
“You said you’d try. When you were Constance you promised you’d remember, but you turned your back on yourself. You wouldn’t even try.”
Lucy felt tears burning in her eyes. Two years ago she’d packed that night away. She’d sealed it up carefully and tightly. How could anyone have known about it?
“He was lonely. You know that. And you are Sophia, his great love, and you said you’d try.”
“What am I supposed to try to remember?” Lucy asked. It was a voice she hardly recognized. It escaped from some part of her, she couldn’t tell where, airy and thin and hissing like a leak.
“You were supposed to remember . . . him.” Esme said it loudly and with indignation. “You were supposed to remember how you loved him. He said he would come back, and you promised you would remember him.”
Esme’s head was almost vibrating, and though she held Lucy’s hands, Lucy had the distinct feeling the rest of the girl’s body was going somewhere else.
“In the war. You took care of him. He couldn’t breathe. You knew he was dying. He didn’t want to leave you, but you said you would never forget. You forget and he remembers. He told you what he was. He trusted you. You know, don’t you?”
Lucy felt herself recoiling. She felt bitten and criticized. “I don’t know.” This girl had circumvented Lucy’s defenses.
“You know what he is. You understand.”
“I don’t. What is he?”
“Please. You are Sophia, and he needed you.”
“Stop! Who is Sophia? Why do you keep talking about her?” It’s what Daniel had done, too. It had scared her then as it did now.
“I’m talking about you.”
“No, you’re not. I’m Lucy,” she said hotly. She’d once seen a movie about a girl with a split-personality disorder. The way Esme talked, it was as though there were somebody else inside Lucy listening and even responding, and the thought of it terrified her.