Four Times Blessed, page 23
“What are you doing?!” I squeak once he finally stops.
“Celebrating,” he grins.
“I shouldn’t celebrate.”
“Fine. Then I will for the both of us.”
I hear myself whimper. “Lium, I’ve got to tell you, I ruined everything.”
“I know and I love you for it.” Forefathers, he can’t stop smiling. I meant for this to be a serious and cordial goodbye. How this one can turn anything so completely opposite from what I mean is mindboggling.
“Would you put me down, please?”
He swings me back and forth, thinking about it.
“Lium.”
He kisses me again.
He’s just so purely happy, I just can’t push him off a second time. And his lips, it does feel good, something tickling and fluid that pours through me. I find myself enjoying it. I think about nothing but what’s around me, just warmth and movement and him.
I’m baffled by a rough yank. Lium holds me back and looks at me. We share one short moment, starting it in confusion but ending it with dread. I’m whipped back, and I stumble to the deck.
“Crusa. Go.”
Her speech is thin and cold.
“Zizi,” I start. I feel like I’ve just stepped out of the waves, so heavy and out of breath. I raise my face to my aunt.
She slaps me. Hard.
“Go home, before people see you.” I don’t get up. My legs don’t want to walk. There’s angry yelling behind her. Male. I hear Lium.
My zizi leans down and tries to lift me. “If you have any respect for me at all, you’ll do what I say,” her hiss rises ever so slightly, a clear warning. I scramble up. I don’t know, I think maybe something is wrong. Maybe a storm is coming and we have to get inside right away.
I catch sight of Lium, straining against a twisted arm, his brother set firmly at his back.
Sharper, my zizi yells at me to go once again. Lium shifts but Hale does something that makes him jerk to a silent, withering stop. Hale barks at me over my zizi’s constant snare. She tells me I’m not listening but that’s not it. I don’t leave yet because I’m waiting.
I’m waiting for Lium to tell me to go. Then I’ll know it’s alright.
Until then…not yet.
My expression feels still and warm and full. I’m not yelling like them. Lium’s face is soft, too. That’s why I like to look at it now when everything’s so harsh. Red, set with eyes big and wide and full of a clear darkness and something else. He doesn’t speak. He looks scared.
I scream when thick arms swing me off my feet.
I’m waiting for my zizi.
“Crusa?” she moves something across the hallway’s floorboards and it groans. She opens the door a crack and light spills in. She sees me on the floor, I suppose. I don’t look up to find out. She says, “I’m too upset to talk to you tonight. We’ll wait until morning, alright?”
I don’t respond. I know that no matter what I say, she’ll want things her way so there is no reason to agree or disagree.
“I know you’re young, but try to figure out what it is you did.” Her voice gets husky. Tears coming. But I don’t feel bad for her. Not one bit, no sir. I wish she would just leave me alone now, but this is my aunt so of course she can’t.
“Why are you leaving me? I don’t understand.”
I’m surprised. I move my arm off my face. I’m not in trouble for Lium? For some miraculous reason?
“I had to. I’m not marrying anyone. Ever.”
“I don’t think that’s what you dreaming of on that boat, now was it?” She mumbles and makes the sign of the cross.
“The things you’re doing don’t make any sense, honey. A man comes to my door and tells me thank you for my daughter’s service. Then he asks me my address so he can send your ashes for when you’re killed, you awful girl! How do you think that makes me feel?!” Now she cries. The sob in my own throat goes stale. I don’t feel like moving.
“I don’t know how to help you. I want you to be happy. My baby deserves a happy life.”
“Just go away,” I snap. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. And I feel even more wretched than I did a moment ago.
I suppose she does go.
I cry myself to sleep, absolutely sure I don’t deserve anything at all.
I wake well before dawn with my own voice zinging through my head, so I can’t go back to sleep. I jump up and go down to start the kitchen fire.
My zizi comes down around the time the farina is just cooked. She nods at it and puts on her apron. I grab the milk pail and go out to the barn.
I have no appetite myself. The meetinghall fills but I’m exhausted. I put my feet up on a bench and hold a newspaper in my lap. Cassie slips in. She glances about warily before making a beeline to our aunt. I pretend to read the paper. I’m so not up for anyone else’s drama.
“What?” my zizi hisses, shrill enough for my ears to pick at it. Cassie says something else, and this time my aunt gasps, “What? Milo.”
I’m on my feet, moving towards her. I intercept them by the coat closet, taking her arm.
“What’s wrong?”
She mutters, unseeing, then, “Those fiends!”
“Zizi-”
“No!” She glares at me. I don’t move. “You stay.”
By now other people are passing by us, men trundling outside, little kids and some of my cousins squishing themselves in the other direction.
“No, tell me if it’s Milo. What’s wrong?”
“Your brother is fine. Let’s all stay inside.” She heaves the two doors shut, yelling at someone to move or she’ll close the door on them.
Cassie has my hand, gently leads me to a window. We stand on our tiptoes.
On the green, right in front of the meetinghouse, are a bunch of our uncles. They’re all fascinated by something awful, I think, because they can’t turn away despite their disgust.
There’s a shoe on a limp leg, and for a moment I’m horrified, thinking it’s my brother. My Uncle Groton clears a space with his arms around the prone boy, then, and it’s not Milo. It’s Lium.
Something that could have been a groan or a wince or a scream, I’m not sure, pierces my throat. Cassie clutches me, and she’s strong.
“Crusa,” anyone else and I’d rip myself away. I feel powerful enough, surely.
She speaks to me in a firm, calm voice that’s mesmerizing, “Last night, the other side of the family, they tried to raid Uncle Groton’s business.” I don’t care. I try to bolt. She yanks and we spin, “They didn’t get there,” she says, “But to make up for it, they went after the stupid cow. Philbert. Just to do something. They brought him back and were going to cook him, I think, but he ran off and all they got was his tail. So he’s fine. But by then Uncle Groton had gotten some guys together, including Lium and Hale, and went over there. There was a confrontation.
“Crusa, Lium went after one of their biggest guys. Milo’s adopted family’s son, Crusa. They had on masks. Milo got in the way, and Lium, he attacked him instead.”
This is a fairy tale, it must be. Because it makes no sense, and I’m a fairy there because I feel like I’m suspended above the floor, my blood so heavy, tingly with magic.
“Camillo is fine. But then Uncle Groton went after Lium. He’s out there now. You need to just leave them.”
No, I don’t. She makes no sense. I hear someone, Hale, scream, so close. I make for the doors, and Cassie doesn’t stop me.
I fly, and then I’m outside in the grass. My feet barely touch so I’m lucky when I don’t stumble. I kneel by Lium’s unconscious body. They drag him, toss him away from me.
I try just slipping through them but they’re hard and strong. I didn’t know how hard and strong. There are sickening noises. I saw Lium at first, but then he starts to disappear, and I’m being pushed back out into the open green. I hear his name being screamed over and over and I feel each one because it’s me.
There’s a clear shot, and I make it in again. I grab at him. A chilly, dry knuckle hits me on the jaw and there’s a burst of liquid in my mouth. I duck and pull, dragging myself in further. Other things make contact, but I don’t let go. I’ve got him. I’ve got Lium’s arm, twisted in one of mine at unnatural angles, and his hair, crushed in a fist. He’s dead weight, I can feel it. I don’t like it at all. Something licks the back of my thigh and I let out a muffled scream.
There’s shifting underneath me, and I’m hurled over. Lium’s awake, I note fleetingly. He smothers me into the grass, each blow resounding through his body before mine. It doesn’t stop.
I think we might die like this.
Then there’s no more errant blows landing on me. No more buffeting from around us, for him that’s made himself my human shroud. Heavy and slack.
“Everybody back,” my zizi calls.
There’s murmuring, and I know that order will have sent the men away.
Lium groans, which is wonderful. I realize he’s trying to sit up, so I help him. He starts murmuring things, trying to soothe me, moves my hair behind my ear, holds my head to himself. We don’t make it upright. I realize I’m shaking. I sink my face and fingers into him, wishing it would stop. I’m so glad he’s not dead. He keeps saying things into my ears.
My zizi is bent over us. There are dark circles around her eyes. She smacks Lium across the cheek and ignores the sound I make. All of this smacking is new. She tells him, “Don’t you ever threaten a child of mine.”
Lium looks like he’s about to say something to her, but I’m afraid. “He won’t, Zizi,” I say.
She stares at me like she can’t find me.
“He’s done it already.” She shouts, “I’ll kill him myself if you won’t let them do it!”
“Zizi! You won’t!” I try not to cry. “Leave him alone. Please, I’m begging you.”
“I told you not to come out here!”
“I had to.”
“Crusa,” warns Lium, laying alongside me. My zizi rolls her eyes.
“Fine,” she says. “If that’s how you want it, I’ll give you just this once. You tell that boy to go.”
“Lium?”
“Not leaving you.”
My zizi snorts. I wipe some blood off the face of the boy who is causing me so much trouble. “Yes, come on. You go and I’ll deal with them.” He’s trying to get up. Good. He slumps onto my shoulder, unconscious again. His weight clobbers me into the grass.
“I want him out of my yard in thirty seconds.”
“Zizi, hush,” I say, strained. I get an elbow under me.
“Oh, don’t you tell me to hush, girl. I’ll tell you to hush.” I bite the sides of my cheeks. “He’s not good, honey.”
“He’s good to me.” I try to figure out how best to get up without injuring him further.
“Boys like that aren’t good to you.”
“Zizi, stop!” My voice is sheer. “He is. He’s mine and I love him very much so just let him go, will you.”
I stop my tongue right then.
“Crusa,” she drawls, horrified. “Don’t say that.” She swallows in disgust. When she laughs, it rings. I could vomit.
“Crusa. Honey. Don’t be silly. Tell the boy to go home before I make him.”
I stare at her. Then, Lium, groggy, heaves himself partly up, grimacing in the attempt. He makes it to one knee. I sit up and wait until he sees me.
“Honey, it’s time for you to go home,” I say. I hope the spells of unconsciousness have him confused enough that he just does it.
“No,” he spits the word out at me.
“Please, for your own sake, just go.” I shake his shoulder. I start tearing up. His jaw tightens and twitches, but he shakes his head.
“No.”
“Please.”
“Listen to her boy. You go home and rest.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. Lium steadies himself on my shoulder, and he tells my zizi, “No, I can’t go home. She’s my home.”
He has both my zizi and I listening. Utterly still, the two of us.
“You tell me to go home and rest? I can go to her…and nowhere else. I can rest with her, and nowhere else. Even if I go, I end up right back here.”
I find the air too thick to breathe. I don’t think the words. I’m just inspired with them, then I say them. It’s a good idea.
“Come on Lium, let’s go.”
“I won’t go, Crusa!”
Calmly, I tell him, “I’m going, too, Lium. Come with me.”
He lets me help him to his feet, rests heavily over my back. When I think he’s relatively steady, I take a small step, relieved when he trips along.
So low, it’s almost not there, my zizi says, “My girl, you go with that boy, and you never come back.”
I turn and stare at my aunt. I blink. I don’t know her.
She says, “You listen to me. You go out there, and I know I’ve taught you nothing. You don’t need me, then go. Go to the boy. Go fight strangers. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine without you.”
I don’t breathe. I don’t feel any need to.
I heave on Lium to give him some momentum. Without any hurry, I tell him come on, let’s go, again, and we shuffle off together.
At some point, Hale appears to take him from me. Then I get tired and I decide to collapse. Hale starts blabbing on and on about finding a spot where nobody will find us. I give him a solution so he’ll shut up. Then I sob and don’t stop.
Later, I find myself laying on a row of seats festively decked in the M.S.A. colors. I think something’s wrong with my head, maybe from all the screaming and crying I did, but then I see the windows. So Hale did listen to me. He even did it all without my help. I’m glad, but hijacking government transportation has always been my thing. It feels strange that now I have to share it with Hale. But I guess I was pretty useless this morning, so what was he supposed to do?
I’m glad it’s still dark, because I’m not ready for tomorrow yet. And it’s quiet, no more yelling. That’s all done. I turn onto my stomach. Lium’s here, on the row in front of me. Hale found the first-aid kit. Gripping the tops of the chairs, I wobble around and take the seat by his head.
I’m not liking the way he just lays there, face puffy, knuckles stiff when I touch them.
“Crusa.”
I jump. He reaches back, but his hand just gropes the air. It looks painful so I take his fingers and rest them on his shoulder.
“Are you ok? Did they hurt you? Tell me.”
“Quiet, quiet, I’m fine,” I try to tell him, but he won’t have it. He accepts it only when I fold over and lay my head on his stomach. The unbandaged part. He puts a hand in my hair, and sighs.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what, Lium?”
“I swear I didn’t know, Crus. I didn’t know that he was your brother. I have a brother,” he says, surprised. His pupils are too dilated, actually. “And I would never, never…” he cuts himself off and I think he’s about to cry. He shakes his head too hard.
I tell him I know. I put a palm on his forehead. Against my skin it’s sticky and feverishly hot. It takes him a bit longer to stop the fearsome shaking.
I promise Camillo is fine, that Cassie said so. But when I try to get up he tells me to please don’t, just stay there. I settle back down, curled over him in a downy silence.
Since I’ve volunteered for deployment, my work at the base’s AIS labs is suspended and I’m on leave until departure. That’s not for another week, five, three more days, and all the while I loathe the thought of leaving this boat. I’ve spent most of my days laying on the seats out front, and cleaning this filthy vessel. Today goes by the same.
Later, it’s after dark and we’re all stumbling over each other trying to get ready for bed. Lium is much recovered thanks to the Resources officer who stocked this lab boat at a Great Proficient level, I’d give him. Currently, he’s drinking a cup of water right over me, which I’m getting better at not letting bother me given that no matter where he and Hale put themselves in the cabin they are literally right next to me, puts it down on a window sill, squeezes me on the ribs, lifts me up, I pull my knees up to my chest, and Hale, now able to bend over, reaches under me for a sock. Once he’s clear, Lium puts me back down with a “There we go,” all while I carry on brushing my teeth.
There’s a clatter and the boat pitches a bit. We all look at each other. There’s a not exactly whispered argument and then a triple knock on the cabin door.
I wipe my mouth and move towards it, but Lium puts a sprawled out hand on my stomach. He shakes his head, for my benefit I believe, while he stares over at Hale. I decide to go with it and hold very still, on account of Hale has the fire ax and looks like he’s got the whole door-answering thing covered.
Lium starts trying to nudge me further back and I scowl at him. He makes a shooing motion. I widen my eyes. A, no, and b, where does he propose I go?
He growls something under his breath that I’m not even sure is made up of real English words and stands smack dab in front of me. He then somehow manages to contort his arm so he can push me, from behind, into his back. I sigh and consider climbing up on the couch that of course, is right next to us.
While I contemplate, I get backed into the bathroom stall. Hale slinks to the side of the door, opposite the handle. Then he rips it open, and I startle and grab for a fistful of Lium. Then, I swear I hear him laugh, along with the accompanying scream from just outside the door.
“Eleni!” I call from on top of the toilet. Her eyes are huge and her hands are curled at her throat. And I think that’s Cassie hovering behind her.
“What do you want?” says Hale in a very unwelcoming tone of voice.
“Hale! Stop it, it’s just my cousins. Come in you guys, what are you doing here?” I hurdle Lium and tumble onto the carpet.
Apparently, the boys are too distracting, Hale with his hovering and Lium with his hand holding, because the girls stay frozen out on the deck.
“What are you doing out here, Crusa, forefathers? Come back. Why are you being so stupid?”
