Little Bird of Heaven

  “In those years before Jesus entered my heart I was not one to judge others, I was not cruel or vindictive. After Zoe died—that way she did—I entered the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ and lived through a dark time, I was a heroin addict, my addiction was two hundred dollars a day, and more—yes I turned tricks and did not give a damn for my health. So stained with guilt as I was, that Zoe had died in that terrible way!” Jacky paused, breathing forcibly. I did not dare to look at Aaron Kruller who’d remained on his feet, near the window he’d had to shut. “I don’t mean that I brought Zoe to her killer, I don’t mean that. This man, that owned Chet’s, his name was Anton Csaba, he’d have met Zoe some other way if it had not been through me, I know that. Yet I was Anton’s friend first, as Anton was friends with many women. When Zoe moved in with me, we both started work at Chet’s. Anton had Zoe sing sometimes at the club, and we’d do a few lines of coke together, if guys provided it which they did. It was what everybody did. Damn hypocrite cops, those ‘detectives’ came to question me acting like nobody’d ever done coke or smoked dope, you see the bastards off-duty out on the Strip pretending like they’re undercover—bullshit. I’m ashamed to say, I liked it that Zoe was my girlfriend ‘cause she was damn glamorous, and singing in that band of hers, Zoe was real sexy. And Zoe was a good friend, like just doing drugs with, she’d look out for me, it can be dangerous, you need a trusted friend if something goes wrong. A man, you can’t trust…. There are people who say if you maintain your health, if you take vitamins, you can use heroin for the rest of your life if you don’t increase the dosage and your veins don’t collapse! Even now, I am ashamed to say that there is this craving in me. Zoe said, ‘Sex is for people who can’t score heroin.’” ‘Jacky laughed at this witty remark with no heed for how Aaron was staring at her. In another part of the residence there came a muffled thunderous noise as of footsteps on stairs in a cascading downward stream. Hastily Jacky added, ‘Of course—Zoe was not an ‘addict’—a ‘junkie’—not ever. And I was not, really. There’s men who provide women with drugs to take control of their souls but Zoe was too independent, she wanted her ‘career’ and she was fearful it would never come to her, at her age. Around this time, I’m embarrassed to say, I was jealous of Zoe sometimes because if there was a man Zoe wanted it would not matter who Zoe cast aside to get him. And Zoe got away with so much more than others of us could. If Zoe borrowed money for instance. A man would ‘forgive’ the loan, who would not ever forgive it for me. Anton Csaba was one of these. Zoe’s mistake was, she took Anton for granted. You would be inclined to do that if you met him, Anton was soft-spoken and never raised his voice. Because he was in love with Zoe, she thought he was in love with her, she made some mistakes with Anton. He’d promised Zoe certain things. Yet Zoe had this new man, this ‘music broker’ he called himself, some kind of ‘enter-prenner’ whose business was booking bands. How Zoe met him I don’t know for sure. I guess he’d heard her sing at Chet’s one night. Now, I knew that Anton could be dangerous, he had hurt women before, who’d betrayed him. It was Anton’s way of speech—he would use the word ‘betray.’ I should explain, Anton was a gentleman to look at. Anton had the ways of a gentleman. He’d been born in Budapest, he said. Which is in Hungry—in the real old part of Europe. Anton was a sharp dresser, he wore a sealskin coat and a fedora hat, and gloves made of skins of ‘unborn lambs.’ (Did you ever hear of—unborn lamb skins}) He drove just Caddies and Lincolns and never kept them more than a calendar year, they were always luxury cars with every extra. He had a way of ‘owning’ women, too. When he was tired of you, he would not care to see you again, and he’d give you a ‘gift in parting’—but if he wasn’t tired of you yet, you could not just walk away. Anton liked me—‘My gal Jacky’ he would call me—when I’d fill in at the club for him, he knew he could depend on me, and this was lucky for me, that he only ‘liked’ me but nothing more. Zoe was the one got under his skin.’ Anton spoke of Zoe in this way like Zoe was some kind of infectious thing like lice, he couldn’t shake off. He wore expensive suits that never fitted him right, made him look like a corpse some undertaker had dressed. Zoe laughed at him behind his back. ‘That little mannequin-man’ she’d call him. ‘My Boris Karloff And we would laugh. And maybe it got back to Anton. I forgot to say, Anton could be very generous. Nobody in Sparta was like Anton Csaba that way. If you worked for him and did a good job he would give you presents, if he liked you. Of course if you bitched or made trouble, you were out. Some of those nice clothes I brought to your house, Aaron, that time, Anton had given to Zoe, and she’d always thank him real gratefully but after a few days, you know Zoe, she’d forget…. And there’s cops who hung out at Chet’s. This ‘police chief’ at the time, he was a friend of Anton’s. You’d see them smoke cigars together. It was known that Anton paid off the Sparta police, so they wouldn’t interfere in his business which had many facets. When Zoe was killed, ‘Anton Csaba’ was a name some people told the detectives, but it never went much farther than that. The detectives knew it couldn’t be Eddy Diehl who’d killed her because Eddy’s prints were all over Zoe’s room except not bloody prints. I heard this. This was known. It had to be, whoever killed Zoe was wearing gloves. They knew that Eddy hadn’t been there, at that time. The time Zoe was killed. They brought Eddy in and questioned him and made it hell for him but not because they thought he was the one who’d killed Zoe, it was just some personal dislike of him. You fuck with the cops, they take their revenge on you how they can. They’d have tried to arrest Delray but there was a general feeling in Sparta, that Delray had been badly enough treated by Zoe behaving like she did, and Delray’s boy—that is, Aaron—I came to know Aaron—gave his sworn statement, he and his dad had been home together that night, all night. So if it came to a jury trial they figured that Delray would be found ‘not guilty’—so the detectives never arrested anyone. Every God-damned question this Martineau asked me, there was a trick to it. Trying to get me to name ‘Eddy Diehl.’ Which I would not. And I would not say ‘Anton Csaba’—I would not have lived beyond a week. Not in Sparta. And where else could I go? Where, that Anton couldn’t follow? This son-bitch Martineau would call me, he’d drop by where I was living, had to move out of the house where poor Zoe died, I was living on Towaga and he’d drop by there on his way home he said, off-duty he said, the son-bitch prevert, ‘Hey there Jacqueline,’ he’d say in this fake-honey voice, ‘you named for Jacqueline Kennedy? You—named for her?” Things that bastard did to me I had to be high, or blind drunk, to endure, and d’you think the bastard ever showed any gratitude? ‘Lucky you’re not in the female house of detention, fat-twat Jacky, for obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting a homicide, drugs on the premises.’ He’d leave me like some broken thing on the bed, or the floor. He never gave me a God-damned penny. A man like that, and the ‘police chief too—Schnabel—Schnagel—things were said of, he’d never sign off on Anton Csaba being investigated let alone arrested. Oh no.’ Jacky paused, shivering. The room seemed to me overheated yet almost I, too, could feel a draft from the window, I shivered locating a blanket to wrap around Jacky’s shoulders. Still Aaron kept his distance from us, like a kid getting more and more dangerous as he’s more and more restless and near to explode. The last speech she’d made Jacky seemed to have forgotten that there was a third party in the room, blinking at me with watery eyes of such yearning, I had to look away. The smell of the woman’s body seemed less strong to me, as the minutes passed. I thought When this is over, I can bathe her.

  “…three years later, when it happened. Nobody knew what, exactly. Anton was in Buffalo meeting with some ‘investors’ and he ‘disappeared’—like that. It was a time he and some partner were buying up property on the Strip and he’d expanded the club and people were saying he’d made some enemies, and they had him killed. You hear these things. There was never any obituary of Anton Csaba in the local papers because there was never any body located but there were stories in the papers, on the front page o
f the Journal—‘Prominent Sparta Developer Missing Twelve Days’—that’s the one I cut out, and kept. Nobody could believe, in the paper it said that Anton was forty-nine, and he looked ten years older at least. It was a fact he’d been born in Budapest but he was ‘survived by’ a son living in New York, nobody had any idea that Anton had any family like a normal person. So Anton was gone, this was sometime in 1986. And he had to be dead, buried in concrete somewhere, or dumped in the Niagara River, was what you’d hear. Chet’s got sold, and turned into some ordinary strip joint, nothing classy about it now. So there was some kind of justice for poor Zoe—‘poetic justice’—and for her family though they could not appreciate it. For nobody knew about Anton Csaba and the ones who did, they kept quiet. Sometimes I’d see Delray out on the Strip, or Eddy Diehl, when he was back visiting Sparta, I’d have liked to explain to them, those poor bastards so harassed, but hell, how could I, there is nothing to be proved, in a case like this there is just nothing because it has been destroyed. If you don’t have the police taking in evidence, there can be nothing proved. Even after Anton was gone, years later there are friends of his in Sparta who’d hear if I said anything, this is a damn small town in certain circles!—like that cruel hypocrite and utter bastard Martineau, and his boss Schnagel. So I never said a word. Of this I am ashamed but I had not the strength, then. What I took solace in, Zoe forgave me. I knew this. Zoe was repentant of her life, at the end. She’d seen ‘both sides now.’ In time, I think it had to be Zoe who intervened with Jesus to flood my heart with rapture, when I had no wish to continue living. I was in the Towaga place, couldn’t get out of bed for days, Zoe would come to me—‘Jacky? Thought it was you!’—she’d kind of tease, but gentle, the way Zoe teased you if she liked you, or loved you. Only if I was alone, and receptive to her, could I feel her presence like something shimmering in the air, and hear her voice that seemed to come out of the air, that sweet-sexy voice when Zoe sang her special songs. But I could not see Zoe! Except if my eyes were shut, sometimes. There’s a special kind of cocaine-high you can get, that isn’t so crazy, it’s like there is a ‘piercing’ of the sky, that’s inside your head, and sometimes then I could ‘see’ Zoe—like an angel, all light. And I would say to her, Oh Zoe why did you take so much money from that man? And those clothes? Didn’t you know who that man was, did you think he was someone just from Sparta, didn’t you know that he is the Devil, he is the Devil come to us on earth, if you take gifts from the Devil you are beholden to the Devil, if you laugh at the Devil the Devil will laugh at you, and pull you down to hell with him. It was the drugs Zoe took—or were given to Zoe, to take—when you are high you lose judgment, Zoe lost ‘proportion’ it was said. Zoe thought she could cast off Anton Csaba like some man she’d cast off in Sparta, like her husband, or a lover, and there would be no consequences. Zoe was going to Vegas with this ‘enter-prenner’ and Anton found out, asked me what did I know about him, when was Zoe planning on leaving, and I said, ‘Zoe wouldn’t stay away from Sparta for long, Zoe would miss her son too much,’ and Anton didn’t say a word just slapped me, hard across the mouth Anton slapped me and I cried saying, ‘Oh! Why did you do that—’ and Anton said because I was lying to him, and so I saw there was no hope, the Devil can see into our hearts if Jesus doesn’t dwell in them to protect us, so I said, ‘Yes Zoe is leaving tomorrow morning, with—’ His name was Scroon, I think. Some name like ‘Walter Scroon.’ This was what Zoe called him though afterward it would be like with ‘George Hardy’—there was no man with that name, the police could not locate any man with that name. So I told Anton all that I knew, because I was frightened he would hurt me worse than he had, I said that Zoe was leaving with ‘Walter Scroon’ who was a ‘music producer’ and he was coming to pick her up in the morning, maybe around ten, they were driving to Albany to the airport. ‘But if you see Zoe, don’t tell her I told you’—those were my words to Anton Csaba. And Anton just laughed. And it was then Anton introduced me to ‘George Hardy’ to take me out—that weekend—to pay me one thousand dollars—we stayed at the ‘historic’ Inn at Chautauqua Falls—which is so special, and so expensive—and when I returned to Sparta and to West Ferry Street it was like something in a movie, all these vehicles in the street in front of our house, and the street blocked off, and the front door was wide open and cops inside and they told me my ‘roommate’ was dead—‘beaten and strangled in her bed’—and the looks in their faces, like this was some punishment Zoe deserved, that should have been mine, too. There was not a single woman there on the premises—just men—uniform-cops and detectives and emergency medical people—all men—looking at me like I was shit. I fainted, I guess—it was my time to enter ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’—where I would dwell for years, until…”

  In short breathless gasps like stifled laughter Jacky had begun to cry. Her face crinkled like the face of an aged baby. The silver-wire wig was askew on her head at a rakish angle. Carefully I straightened it, and adjusted the blanket around her shoulders.

  Aaron was somewhere behind me. He had ceased pacing and stood very still. Jacky’s eyes widened on him as if, for a moment, she’d forgotten who he was. In a pleading voice she said, to Aaron and to me:

  “…please believe me, Kristine—Krista?—and Aaron—please believe me, Zoe was my closest friend. Zoe was my heart. Never would I have willingly injured her. Never would I have betrayed her. Only, those years before Jesus, I was so weak. The Devil could entice me to any thing with a look, a caress, a promise. Jealousy consumed my heart, too. And envy, and spite. And pride. I did not possess the courage to save my sister in Christ, that is the terrible fact I must live with. For a lie to Anton Csaba that would convince him—if there could be such a lie, from me—might have saved Zoe, but then the lie would have hurt me. If I had said, Zoe was not going away so soon the next morning—Zoe was not going to Vegas for a few days. Then, Zoe would be gone from Sparta, and Anton Csaba would have to follow her to Vegas to hurt her, which he would not have done, I think. It was how angry Anton was, at that time. But then, the lie would have hurt me. This was my choice, and I was too weak to choose Zoe but only wished to save myself. For this sin I would descend into the dregs and ashes of humankind and I would be broken underfoot as the lowest scum and scorned by the righteous until at my darkest hour after being released penniless and sick from the detention house—this was the Women’s House of Detention—down behind the courthouse—it was the ‘psych ward’ they put me in, I cried so much—I tore my hair, and my face—why they’d arrested me, I never knew—maybe it was ‘possession of a control-substance’—maybe Martineau planted it in my room—when I was released I found my way to the Evangelical Unity Church and Reverend Myron Diggs and these wonderful Christians who did not judge their fallen sister Jacky but prayed for me and with me and at last, at prayer service one evening, when Reverend Diggs called for us to come forward, to welcome Jesus into our hearts, I felt such strength suddenly, like a current of electricity bearing me forward to the rail, and Jesus flooded my heart with His warmth and love and has not departed from that hour forward. For so it was, ‘Jacky DeLucca’ had truly repented of her sins and the terrible sin of ‘des-pair’—which Reverend Diggs says is not-caring if you live or die—my most joyful hour was when Jesus allowed me to know You are forgiven, Jacky. And that has been six years now. Six years! So I have been granted strength to endure my sickness, that is a test to my faith, washing over me in waves, now that the chemotherapy is finished, and ‘there is no more to be done.’ And Jesus gives me strength, and will be awaiting me. And so—I am opening my heart to you, that you will forgive me? And—you will bless me?”

  I told Jacky yes of course. Yes we would “bless” her. I could not bring myself to look at Aaron Kruller behind me.

  I held Jacky DeLucca sobbing in my arms. I held the hot quivering emaciated body. A numbness came over me, I think I was smiling. I was seeing us, Jacky DeLucca in the silver wire-wig, Krista Diehl with her pale plaited hair, our f
aces shining with tears, a pietà, a cartoon sort of pietà, though who was the mother wasn’t certain, or in whom did God’s greatest grace abide. There was a roaring in my ears, I was close to fainting. My lips were dry as sandpaper. I thought But I don’t have to kiss her do I? I am spared kissing her.

  Just the two of us in the room—Jacky DeLucca, Krista Diehl. For the other, the man, Aaron Kruller, had walked out at some point. He’d left us, in disgust or in rage, or in a terrible sympathy for us, I would not know. In the confusion of our embrace the pot of gorgeous hydrangea had been knocked onto its side, now I righted it. Some of the blossoms had broken off. On the table beside Jacky’s shabby sofa-bed were several small bottles of pills, a scummy water glass. I saw now that the plasterboard walls of Jacky’s room were festooned with religious pictures that resembled enlarged Bible cards. The most striking of Jacky’s artifacts was a three-foot-high likeness of Jesus on a swath of black velvet stiffly holding out his pierced and bleeding hands, open-palmed: strikingly pale, with large dark eyes and a crimson mouth like a girl’s and on his forehead a crown of bloody thorns crudely painted in bright colors. Conspicuous in the lower left corner were the initials J.D.