On the Lips of Children Page 6

  Macon swiveled his head, looking for a parent. Shadows from dim lights on the pier were cast onto the corners, and garbage cans seemed like huddling gnomes this time of night. Their parents could have been there, and he wouldn’t have noticed in the fog of dark, but if they were, they clearly weren’t too concerned over their children.

  Like bugs running for cover after you lift up a rock, the children scattered back and forth, bumped into each other, but then just stood still, as if waiting to be punished. Macon wanted to look away, to ignore these two victims of poverty and escape back down the pier, but one approached him and looked up, as if it had never seen another man before.

  Macon looked down into the child’s eyes. A girl—this was indeed a girl; he could see the soft, feminine curves in her face underneath the grime. She was filthy besides her mouth, which glistened with moisture and smiled just a crack. Her eyes were little dots of black looking up with a mix of suspicion and wonder. She wore a green t-shirt and jean shorts darkened with the sands of the area, and her arms and legs stuck out like sticks. Macon looked down at her, transfixed, trading histories for a bit. She seemed of a different species, and he acted as if at a zoo and watching. Her pug nose sniffled, tiny fingers wiped at her cheeks, and her lips started to smack. Clearly she was still hungry… thirsty and hungry.

  If Macon had some money he would pass it on. If he had a cell he’d have called someone. If he had a washcloth, he’d clear a spot on her cheek, but all he could do was give a smile, which is what he tried to do staring down at her splotchy face. The smell of old fish bait rose up to meet him, and the night sky and surf started crashing in. He’d stayed too long; it was time to move on.

  And then the sting came.

  Ouch. Damn! What was that?

  Macon jumped from a bug bite, or a bee sting, or a super-sized mosquito that had punctured the back of his leg. His hand reached back to his calf, at the same spot where the blood oozed from his scratches.

  The tiny boy, the sibling of this little girl, was kneeling behind him, and had nibbled at his open wound.

  Chapter Six

  When running into a threatening spot, like through a group of homeless men, for example, Erin learned there was a spot deep in her spinal fluid she could tap into that allowed her to remain rock solid and confident. She would let all the determination of her DNA rev like a dragster and then at the right moment let it release out her eyes, shoot from her fingertips, and fill the space all around her. Soon, she was like a cat with threatening hairs standing on end, scaring off any would-be enemies. Her eyes penetrated before her, looking ahead with a sure and steady gaze that said, “I know I’m going there. I’m going forward, so don’t pretend you can get in my way and stop me.”

  This was how she ran through the standing group of men who had erected a tent city in this ever-darkening trail. She passed amongst them like they were just spectators or aid-station volunteers watching a road race, and if they wanted to know why a mother bear was most dangerous when her children were around, they were about to see why, because she would claw out their eyes if necessary.

  She didn’t really feel afraid. Like a hot knife slicing through warm butter, she cruised on through with their faces sliding by her peripheral vision. There was still plenty of dark, but it was impossible to slip unnoticed with her doublewide jogging stroller, onward toward Macon. The slack-jawed bystanders were dumbfounded at the vessel who cruised through them, and she moved on, quickly down the trail, under the bridge, and out through the other side.

  Keeping the doublewide, two-seated stroller because she wished she had two kids was like refusing to throw away your deceased child’s clothes (yes, she had kept Max’s) or still making a plate for him at dinner (no, she hadn’t done that).

  She often wondered about Max sitting in the jogging stroller alongside Lyric. In fact, she sometimes pretended he was there, the big brother in the seat next to his sister. She pretended he’d never been born with a congenital heart defect, but had come out of her body a perfect human specimen. She pretended she wasn’t a defective baby-making machine out of whom souls where born into bodies that simply didn’t last.

  But the heart defect was impossible to ignore. His body had become translucent at times, with a bluish hue, as if he was part amphibian, an anomaly of some sort: Ebstein’s anomaly of a tricuspid valve causing atrial fibrillation. She was lucky he made it to age three, she was told. It was a miracle.

  Maybe she scratched the wrong part of her skin one day when she was cutting herself. A necessary bit of chromosome had bled out as she watched with a razor in her hand. Who could have known she was killing her future child as she watched in amazement and felt the rush of boiling endorphins running through her veins, all over, little droplets of red marching.

  After Max’s birth and then diagnosis, she Googled: What causes birth defects? How to prevent birth defects, and then, Mother cutting as a teen and then pregnant causing birth defects. She could find no connections.

  When she read that a mother’s exposure to certain medications, such as lithium or benzodiazepines, has been associated with Ebstein’s anomaly in the child, she became convinced it was in her water.

  She pleaded with her doctor, saying she was the cause. “But I had Cytomegalovirus, and I read it causes this.”

  “But you had it before you were pregnant. The connection is only there if you have this while you are pregnant.”

  The baby had been inside her womb her entire life; didn’t the doctors understand that?

  Sure, all of this insanity got explained away in her more rational moments, but she couldn’t deny that it was her fault for fucking the wrong man. Something about that man was defective. How else could she explain him leaving her, not even coming to his own son’s funeral, not even acknowledging it was his boy they were burying? How does one do that and have regular human genes?

  Max was a little version of his dad, with darker hair and a German stoicism that accepted his fate of living with an IV in his arm and tubes in his nose. He would look up at his mommy as if thinking, Isn’t this how it has to be? Why would you think any different? Look what you did to yourself—what else would you expect? No words, but just eye contact. Whenever she could, Erin would nap with him skin to skin and feel his innocent, white-blue flesh next to hers.

  But not any longer.

  One child was gone and buried, but her new child was different. The beautiful Lyric rode in front of her, healthy in body and with a spirit that shined so bright. Her soul seemed to celebrate being borne in such a sweet, earthly skeleton to house it, and it made Erin cherish her own body, made her become a new human fueled with organic vegetables, bean salads, and soy milk. Her core was made taut through Pilates, and her lungs and heart could fuel her body for 26.2 miles in three hours, plus a Fiona Apple album side.

  And maybe Macon had the right genetic makeup. They were about to see tomorrow when everything on his insides were squeezed right out of him.

  She rushed down the trail, slicing through the dark. Her breath and legs soaked in the rush of endorphins. Up ahead should be Macon. She was over a mile into the trail by now, so if the beach was just two miles away, she had to be close. She had no marathon to run tomorrow, so fully engaged and fired all of her muscles. She loved this time of the day, in the predawn darkness; everything was fresh. Her lungs hadn’t been wasted by any of the day’s toxins, and her mind was still feeling dreams that hadn’t yet been fully scattered.

  The trail dipped ahead. She got ready to rush under the bridge and then for the final slingshot to the beach when she heard tears. No, those weren’t the tears of her child; they were the tears of someone older, someone weak, someone calling out.

  She slowed, pulled back on the stroller, and was finally able to stop directly under the bridge. The sound of her heart pounded, and her breath was all she could hear. Crickets chirped in the brush. Seagulls called from unseen distances, and then she heard the cry again.

  Where was it from?


  Then whoosh… a car drove by. The flash of headlights sent shadows everywhere and obliterated all noises, until the darkness and silence took over once again. She could vaguely make out graffiti written on the concrete in puffy, blue letters: Leviticus 19:28.

  More tears and undecipherable words replaced the cries. Yes, it was a woman.

  “Mommy, what is that?”

  “I don’t know, honey-bear. I don’t know.”

  Sounds echoed under the bridge, and she looked all about but could see nothing. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and could feel her pupils dilating.

  “Can you hear me?” asked a cracking feminine voice.

  Yes, I can, she wanted to say, but to whom she didn’t know. It was coming from the ground somewhere.

  “Here. I’m hurt. I’m hurt. Please. Anybody. Can you hear me?”

  Yes, it was from the ground. She could hear it now. Her head swiveled in all directions, but found nobody in sight. The only sounds were the crickets and her heart still beating from the run.

  “Lyric, stay right here. I’ll figure this out.” She pushed the jogging stroller to the edge of the trail, and then went back and bent down toward the noise.

  “Down here. I’m here. I’m hurt. Are you there?”

  Then she saw it. There was an arm, a dirty arm, hanging out of a rectangular drain opening.

  “Please.”

  Is that dirt or blood? Did this person live here, or were they trapped? Help them out, move on, or call 911? What to do?

  “What do you need? How did you get down there?”

  Erin got on her knees, bent down toward the voice, and tried to picture what exactly was before her. Moans came from a woman, then an arm reached out, covered with wet dirt or blood, and the fingers began motioning, grasping at something, but getting only air. A woman was hurt; a traveler had been caught up. Urgency was clear.

  “It hurts. It hurts. Pleeeeaaaasssse. Get me up.”

  The voice sounded weathered. The hand lifted and reached up in the hope of aid. Erin’s head swiveled to look toward Lyric, who was safely nestled in her stroller. The urge to help, to bring this being to safety drove her. If she didn’t, she’d forever wonder how she could have saved this unknown person, never knowing if she made it out okay or…

  Suddenly the arm reached for her and fingers grasped around Erin’s arm—hostile fingers holding tight. Her heart hammered, electric, and she pulled instantly. This wasn’t right, and then there were two hands—strong hands—and fingers, not injured hands but hands that had grabbed before, that had set this trap. The grip was tight and fleshy.

  Her whole body was pulled down to the ground, and her chest smashed straight into the pavement. She wanted to scream, to tell Lyric to run, but was fearful of scaring her. Her whole torso fought against it, twisting, engaging every muscle. Grunts rose from her gut, but her frame was being trapped.

  Three hands were on her, then four. These were men’s hands. She wouldn’t be caught; she’d break free and be out of there in a flash.

  Erin bellowed with might, she screamed loud and unrestrained, but their hands still grasped onto her, and then she heard their voices.

  “Keep’er down.”

  “Drag’er here.”

  “Use the knife.”

  “It’s a woman, and a kid. Is that a kid?”

  Fingernails scratched and clawed all over her. Limbs came climbing out of the sewage pit and forearms pressed on her back. Her head bucked with extreme might, fighting against the weight of a being on top of her. It was moving with precision, using rope to try and tie her up. She wasn’t fighting against just a lone sick woman, but two creatures of the night.

  The man pushed her face into the ground, and she began twisting and kicking with her legs. Her powerful legs and muscular abs all fired, but when she struck at one, the other would move to keep her held down. The woman attacker had strong, stringy limbs. The man moved in frantic twitches with breath that fired down on her in a noxious cloud. He smelled of sewage.

  All of this happened while Lyric was next to her, witnessing it, wondering. Rage boiled in Erin’s gut; every muscle flinched. She would kill these two, gauge their eyes out, and then run.

  Ropes burned her wrists, and she writhed like a person on fire.

  She was flat on her stomach with one on top of her. Her hands were bound, and they were struggling to tie her legs. As soon as one leg was taken, the other would break free, and she slammed them back and forth against the person’s back.

  Thud!

  A swift kick to the back.

  Thud!

  Another one, but with barely a reaction, until…

  Whack! She felt her shoe connect with the person’s backbone, and she was sure she’d done some damage.

  The creature responded by pulling back on the rope until her collarbone seemed to snap. She howled in pain until her face was pushed into the pavement and tiny granules were embedded in her cheek. Her eye was squished closed.

  She wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t make this easier; she had more to live for, more energy than they could ever fathom. She had a man, a father, her love coming down the path soon.

  She had her voice and used it. She screamed, hollered as loud as she could, with all the energy in her gut.

  A gag then covered her face. Arms and limbs pressed down on her back.

  Captured. It was over and she was done. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep them safe. Why me? Why this? She wanted to jump ahead to the time this was resolved, to undergo any abuse they might have planned for her and do it quickly, so that she could take her daughter to safety. Whatever they do wouldn’t hurt as long as Lyric was safe.

  Weight was firm on her body, and with groans and strained movements, she turned her head to see the stroller and caught the side of Lyric’s face. Lyric sat frozen, wondering what was happening. She was clearly smart enough to know this wasn’t good—this wasn’t right, and all her training to call 9-1-1 might work.

  The phone was in the stroller.

  What will they do when they see my child? She needed to get all of their attention on wrestling, and so she fought to flip over. They didn’t know a beast could buckle like her, and she’d keep them busy, hoping Lyric would flee. But they stayed on her even as the twists and jerks of her body made them work and shout.

  “Get that!”

  “I got it!”

  “Don’t let her do that.”

  “There. There.”

  “Wait—okay, now we got it.”

  “Fuck… okay.”

  Two shadows started approaching out of the darkness from down the trail. Two people were coming? Could it be? Yes, down the trail they walked. Somebody was coming. People were coming, and this would be fixed. Two smaller people, early morning walkers, she hoped, and they approached at a light run, seeming more like little gnomes, not people with strength who could help. Still, her mouth cried out to them through the gag, but it only sounded like murmurs, muffled chirps from the wounded.

  And then she saw them up close.

  The two weren’t right; children—small, dark children walking with the uncertainty of a kindergarten student but with an aura of darkness, waddling, step by slow step, over to Lyric, who was trying her hardest to unbuckle herself. Lyric was rarely able to unbuckle herself without help.

  “Ma-ma-mommy, Da-da-daddy, itza girl. A girl.”

  “Q, it’s a little one like us.”

  One of them spoke in broken English, the other sounded precocious. Both of them turned to look in Erin’s direction. Guttural noises were all she could produce from her gagged mouth. The rag was wet with saliva, and her legs thrashed despite the weight of her attackers on top of her.

  The two children didn’t respond, didn’t flinch, and didn’t question with a glance or show concern. They’d heard these noises before—Erin could tell—and they must have been the spawn of her attackers.

  It can’t end now… not now, not like this.

  The childre
n walked over to Lyric with their bare feet plopping on the ground in an excited shuffle. They stared into the jogging stroller for a moment, before one of them finally spoke.

  “Wa-wa-wa-wanna play with us?”

  Chapter Seven

  Macon closed his eyes and lifted his head, feeling tiny and small in the salty air. Stars sparkled above, a bit less brightly than at the dark of midnight, yet he still felt alone and floating in outer space. Silent crashes of the waves below whispered to him, and he listened before trotting back down the pier.

  There were no signs of the boy and the girl—they seemed to be boy and girl—and they also looked to be twins. The two had scurried off after Macon stood aghast and frozen at the boy nibbling on his calf. Their little legs and bare feet were kicking fast down the pier, and he thought of sprinting afterwards, of giving chase, putting a hand on their shoulders, exchanging a quick moment of trust, and trying to intervene and change their lives, if just for that day.

  But instead he just watched. The girl was much faster and ran with sleek efficiency. The boy was a bit chunkier, running with a waddle, slightly embarrassed maybe. Like centipedes scurrying to hide in the dark, they had vanished. Maybe they were illegal immigrants hiding, although they didn’t seem Hispanic, but more like dark, little tulips that sprouted from the dirt of the land.

  He needed to wash his wound.

  Someday Erin and he would have two. Yes, another child was in their future. And the end of tomorrow’s marathon was the beginning.

  He moved off the pier back to the surf, looking for his footsteps in the sand to follow back to the trail, but knowing they were lost and would never be found. He’d have to find his way by faith and not by sight. The thought of his way back to Lyric and Erin being erased and swallowed up by the darkness made him sprint down the surf looking to find the path.