Loud, Belle, remember, Tom said. I play Madonna, who Mother hates. Why don’t you play that record by the Bangles instead? Mother always says. With “Walk Like an Egyptian”? Mother bought it for you, remember? And she hums the song, does the dance from the video, arms and hands bent at strange angles. At a parent-teacher meeting, Mother told Ms. Said she bought the record for me. And do you like that song, Belle? Ms. Said asked me. Yes, I lied, to protect Mother. I hate that song. Whenever Stacey sings that song to me, which she loves to do, breathing it hot and close into my ear, I go red in the face and want to not exist. But Mother loved me for saying I loved it to Ms. Said. She even bought me the Madonna record True Blue on the way home as a surprise. Rolling her eyes a little but smiling when she handed it over. Trashy with that blond hair now, Mother said on the bus home. She was watching me stare at Madonna on the cover, I could feel her eyes. Always trying to transform herself. Into what this time? Marilyn Monroe?
Now I play True Blue the loudest it can go. My very favorite song, “Live to Tell,” which is like a secret at the end of side one. When I first heard it, I thought I dreamed it there. It sounds like smoke. I take the black bag of roses out from under the bed, and the mortar and pestle. But it’s funny, when I open the bag, I see the petals have changed. Not soft and red anymore, they’re dark and crisp like they’ve been burned. I’ll start the process, I remember Tom said. The bag will start the process. You’ll finish it, mouse.
Petal by crisp petal, I put them in the bowl and crush. Very important to go petal by petal, Tom said. It needs to be a fine powder in the end. A very fine dark red powder is what you’ll have, Tom said. If you really crush. I crush all night in my white dress, never once looking in Mother’s mirror in the corner. Can’t seem to bring myself to, though I can feel Tom there somewhere. I can almost smell the ocean of him through the roses. Nice to feel him there. It takes a very long time to crush, longer than I would ever think for thirteen petals. Grand-Maman doesn’t knock on the door. She won’t now that I’ve told her that lie about Bryce. She’ll leave me alone. Maybe she’ll pray to her and Mother’s god for me. But she’s not praying now. Even over the sound of “Live to Tell,” I can hear Grand-Maman watching Wheel of Fortune in English out there. I can hear the rickety turning of the wheel and the applause. Then Jeopardy! and Grand-Maman never knowing the answers. Never shouting them out like Mother, even when I know she knows them. Not the answers, darling, the questions, Mother always corrects. In Jeopardy!, the questions are everything.
* * *
Midnight on the Snow White clock when every petal is crushed. My ceiling stars are glowing. Grand-Maman is dead silent. She could be sleeping in the rocking chair. She could just be staring at the dark. She does that sometimes. I have no idea what she’s seeing there. The perfume of the roses is so thick in the bedroom. It smells just like I’m back in Alla’s garden and the yellow squares of light are coming on behind me, freezing me in the soil. The phone rang twice earlier. Once and then once again right after. Maybe Alla. Maybe Stacey. What the fuck were you doing in our garden? Grand-Maman never picked up, though. She let it ring and ring. It rang so loud, it rattled my pink phone. The spiders in the corners are awake now, spinning bigger webs, dangling down from threads, but I’m not afraid of them anymore. Funny, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Mother’s still not back. She won’t be back till dawn, Tom says. He says it at the very back of my mind. That’s where I still hear his voice when I need to. That’s where he reminds me of everything I need to know.
The next step, Tom says, is the trickiest of all.
To go into Mother’s bedroom. To her vanity with the three mirror faces. To find the jar of night cream on the table. The one she uses every night. Rubs tenderly into her face in counterclockwise circles. I sometimes watch from her bed, making wishes in my head until she tells me to leave. Why do I have to leave? I always ask her. Because this is Mother’s secret, Mother says, and her face is suddenly a closed door. The night cream smells like perfume and is named after the sea in French. Because the cream has red algae in it, Mother told me once. Plus a magic sea broth.
Like a potion, I said.
Yes. Mother laughed. Exactly like that. Mother needs all the help she can get these days.
I look at the jar shining on the vanity in the blue light of the moon through the window. I’m supposed to open it, Tom said. Take the dark red powder from Tom’s black bag and mix it in. Easy, Tom said. I picture Mother’s throat closing. I think of the open throat of the rose whose petals I plucked.
This will hurt her, I tell Tom in my mind.
And in my mind, Tom smiles, amused. Didn’t I already know that? Didn’t I fucking know that when I plucked the red petals? When I crushed them one by one by one with the heavy black stone? I’ll have to mix them into Mother’s cream. Your mother’s cream comes with a little gold spoon, remember?
Yes. Of course I remember. Mother using the gold spoon to scoop. How she dabs it on her face dot by dot like she’s anointing herself, she says. I always ask if she can anoint me, too. And Mother always says my skin is young and plump and perfect just as it is, so I don’t need anointing. I won’t ever need it anyway because of my father. That Egyptian blood. It will always save me in the end. How she wishes she had it, Mother lies, so it could save her, too. And she cups my face between her hands like a light she wants to keep lit.
Can you believe that cream actually comes with its own little gold spoon to mix? Tom said in the bedroom last night, delighted. Shaking his head at the ceiling stars like how perfect was that?
Yeah. And I just stared sideways at his so perfect face. Glowing like a sunrise right beside me. If I touched it, would it burn me?
Too perfect, right? Tom whispered, turning to me.
Too perfect, I whispered. I smelled the cold ocean of him. And I thought, how could someone be a sky and a sea and a sun all at once? How could someone be heaven and also the endless deep? Tom, I thought, this is what you are to me. This is what you will always be. Everything all at once.
It’s fate in a way, Tom said, oblivious to my staring. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s why he was smiling. Do you know what fate is, Belle?
I thought of the picture of him I’d torn from Sky. Folded three times then hid like a secret. And now here he was in the flesh, here with me in the flesh.
It’s what’s meant to be? I whispered.
And Tom nodded in the dark. Definitely.
Like you and me, then, I said. Shy suddenly. My turn to look away up at the stars. But I could feel him still watching me. I could feel his fang shining in the dark. The fang was my favorite part of Tom.
Yes. Exactly like you and me, seedling.
But Mother will see, I told the stars. She’ll notice the red powder. She’ll smell the roses.
Which is why you’ll have to mix it well, Tom said. So well that Mother won’t be able to tell. She won’t be able to see or to smell that anything is amiss. It’s a good thing her cream is red, too. Red like roses. Red like blood. Red like the algae she steals from the Deep to make her look young and beautiful forever. But it won’t save her in the end.
It won’t? Why not?
Nothing saves us in the end, Tom said, stroking my hair. Not gods or shadow gods. Not heaven or the endless Deep. Not blood or cream red as blood. Rouge, as they say.
And he smiled his smile that lit me up.
* * *
In Mother’s blue bedroom, I’m quick and light as a mouse. But not like I was in the garden. Not stiff and afraid and waiting for a yellow square of light to fall across the garden, exposing me. I’m not afraid of being caught, even though Grand-Maman’s not sleeping. I can hear her breathing in the living room. I can hear her still staring in the dark. She doesn’t say, What are you doing in your mother’s room? She gives me all the time I need. To open the jar. To tip the red powder in from the black bag. To mix it with the little golden spoon that’s too perfect. To mix it well by the light of the June moon. To not look in any of the three mirror faces. Tom won’t be there anyway. Just me alone in the glass, though I don’t dare look. Three of me mixing in my white dress stained red from the flowers. And my memory of Tom’s voice in the back of my head like a song.
Now you’ll also want to dust some red powder onto her hairbrush.
Which hairbrush, Tom?
Oh, you know the one, Belle.