The Return of the Orange Virgin
by Rob Hunter
It wasn’t easy being born.
The golem of the Fata Morgana struggled naked and alone, knees tucked to his chin, lying on a polished stone floor.
Wet.
He was wet, that was it. A pink starfish of blue-veined fingers covered with moist translucent skin filled his field of vision. The fingers glistened. He wiggled them.
Mine. My fingers.
Closer.
He tried to lick the wet from his fingers. My tongue. My taste, then, but a barrier. There is something between me and me. This is my hand and I am wet. He licked himself again, this time a knee. He sucked at it. The pliant membrane pulled away, leaving a blister filled with colorless fluid.
Some sort of covering is covering me and I am in it.
The observation pleased him.
I am in a placental sac and the sac is filled with fluid.
And with me, of course; I am in here.
How did I know that?
This is ME; I am thinking.
The blister he had raised wrinkled, shrank, and reformed itself to tight flawlessness over the pink, perfect knee. He caught at the membrane covering his hand and pulled at it with his teeth. Its further reaches gave and stretched, conforming. There was a feeling of tightness all over his body.
Body. My body. All of this is me.
Discovery and pride.
The pleasure at his body fled before panic at confinement, at being trapped in the sac. He pulled again and it stretched again but did not separate or tear. The tightness was tighter.
I’ve got to get out of this.
Frantic, he shook his head from side to side, a negation. This loosened the membrane covering his face, giving a little freedom. A regular pounding in his chest became deeper, rapid. Bite after bite he bobbed and tugged, his mouth and throat filled by tasteless, endless, accommodating film. As it stretched he felt his toes curl. As one end loosened the other became tight. Thup, thup, thup, thup―bubbles of film were being sucked in and expelled at his nostrils and mouth, springy and resilient.
He stopped his struggling and watched, fascinated.
Breathing. I am breathing. Was I doing this before?
Before. There was a before.
His breaths became ragged. There was no more air in the sac.
I am suffocating. Desperate, he clenched again with his teeth and gave the sac a furious shaking from side to side.
The covering stretched and pulled his heels up tight against his buttocks. He paused, exhausted. Thus far he had moved only his fingers and his head.
He watched exhausted and watched the bubbles―thup, thup, thup. I can breathe; there is air. If I do not struggle it will let me breathe.
The membrane relaxed, reformed, and he lost the few centimeters of play all his efforts had bought him. Flaccid membrane filled his mouth, stretched and striated, used up, no longer a part of the game.
A game! It is playing with me.
First curiosity, now fear.
I must think. These are new feelings.
All feelings were new feelings.
Discarded membrane lay about his head. What remained still covered him, but there was less of it. Thanks to me. I did this.
The membrane tightened. His nose flattened out against his face and despair overwhelmed him. As he watched, the membrane pulled itself together, recovered its resiliency, and flowed back over his body. His toes uncurled and his nose unflattened as the pressure was relieved.
He slept.
The newborn dreamed.
"We have a window," the female voice rang with quiet urgency, "We have a window opening. Form a line and have your papers ready." Amplified hollowly, standing waves of words slapped back early reflections from tile walls. "The doors to healthier, greener lawns and celebrity tennis are open. Lawns to the left, please."
A male voice, not at all urgent, kept pace with him. There was no one in sight.
"Except for you. Don’t waste your young self hanging about on line. Nothing here for you. No second chance. You’re dead meat, stuck in the garage. Leave it in park. You’ll never make it."
The invisible speaker hurried off, bustling down an empty corridor.
The voices spoke nonsense.
"All form and no content, that’s it. You are catching on. Welcome to the world."
The newborn woke.
There was something in the air that made his head hurt. Light.
He discovered his eyes and closed them, his teeth again tugging at the membrane.
It popped and shriveled. He was free.
"You’ll get used to it." The Fata Morgana approached the golem where he stood fearful and confused, dazzled by the light. "I know it’s bright but your eyes have been closed."
She handed him a towel. "Here, dry yourself off, then we’ll have a talk." His hand reached out for the towel but could not hold it. She draped it over his arm and kissed him lingeringly on the mouth.
"I am afraid I have again made you too beautiful, my pet, my peccadillo. We but work with what we have." She took his face in her hands and kissed him again. He did not respond. Unflinching and impassive, he stood silently as she traced gentle whorls on his cheeks, lips and forehead with her long middle fingers.
"You have forgotten all that was between us. That is good. Frankly, you had become an embarrassment. Although you are still too good-looking by far, much has happened since we were last together and you have much to learn. We shall have to look to your education in areas other than knotting sweaty sheets."
He sat down amidst a jumble of alphabet blocks, his eyes wide and adoring. His head ached from the urgencies of flailing thoughts trying to draw meaning from each other.
"You retain no memory of our past unions; you are beginning life all over again. The funny feelings in your head will pass. Trust me." Morgana recovered the towel from where it hung, unused, over his arm and tousled his hair with it, giving a vigorous rubdown. "You know your letters?" she asked.
He rummaged through the spill of blocks and came up with two. He held them up with proud accomplishment.
"Alpha and Zed. Very good, my darling. You are coming along swimmingly."
Basking in the sunlight of her praise, he rummaged again through the scattered blocks and came up with B I F F. The Orange Virgin knelt next to him and gave him a big hug. "Biff! Yes, you know your name and can find all your letters." She thrust her tongue in his ear and gave it a loving nip. Biff laughed and squirmed.
"I have slipped up somewhere and will probably regret it later. By rights you should not yet know your name, but I am under the gun and we have got to get cracking; these impromptus are ever fraught with peril. But... Mama’s got to get a hustle on and you will be on your own for a while. Sex will have to wait. We shall start you out with Ovaltine and Space Ace."
Morgana clicked on a floor-standing mahogany radio receiver, its cabinet peaked like a cathedral window. "We are tapping into a world where ghost whispers bloom through a sub-etheric sleet into comfortable suburban parlors." She spun a large central knob and a white pointer chased through rows of glowing numbers on an indicator panel. "Think of it―the clacking needlework of a Mom accompanies the warblings of the unseen guest as a cloud of blue, pungent smoke rises from a pipe set by in a floor-standing ashtray. Time is slippery but this is probably the youth of my pig-killer. A family at ease―a Mom at rest after her busy day as a Dad puzzles over birdhouse plans in the latest Popular Mechanics. It is their way; this is a time they have set aside. This is the Family Hour and they are listening to the radio."
"Raydeeoh..." There was a scramble for the appropriate alphabet blocks. There was a shimmering as a miniature Aurora Borealis assembled itself near the ceiling and dropped down to surround Biff and the radio. He reached out to touch the dancing strands of blue. A roaring spark leaped from the tip of his finger.
"Biff, Biff, are you there?" It was Morgana. She was now talking through the radio.
"Uh, yes. I’m here.
"Put your finger in your mouth, there’s a good boy. You have just got yourself a nasty burn."
"Ouch!" His finger was glowing and his flesh bubbled.
"Ouch! That’s right, darling. Please be more careful. You were built for pleasure, not for pain. You have no safety margins. Finger in?’
"Mmmmph."
"Excellent. Now listen to me very carefully."
"What are you doing in the radio?"
"I’m not in the radio. Forget the radio. I have a very important grown-up job for you to do and I am only going to tell you this one time, so listen up."
Biff placed an elbow on his knee and, chin in hand, leaned toward the radio. He cocked his head to one side, a posture indicating rapt attention. He had a feeling he was not alone. Morgana’s voice was in the radio, but the radio always had voices in it, so that wasn’t it. He swiveled his head around. Just on the other side of the shimmering curtain of pink and blue spangles, silent and larger than he remembered her, was Morgana herself. This was not right. Morgana was motionless; her golden eyes stared fixedly ahead. She was performing a ritual gesture, her right hand elevated, supported at the elbow by the heel of the left. Her right hand had the thumb, middle and index finger raised, the ring and little fingers folded into the palm. Her left hand accomplished a ritual gesture of aversion, index and little fingers extended.
The radio crackled and gave forth with a reassuring squeal. "Oh, her. She’s there, then, the Destroyer. One of my aspects, I'm afraid. Good. She’s me but it is not me; it’s all very complicated. I will be going away for a little while, and I thought to leave behind a likeness for you to remember me by, to give you a sense of direction. She is my essence, as I was at the beginning: the basic me. She is perfect and will be content contemplating her inner being unless you do something absolutely dumb and wrong-headed like trying to draw her out in conversation. I―me, that is―have been tempered by wisdom and folly, compassion and mercy. She has none of these shortcomings. Don’t get her worked up; she is righteous and implacable. She is the Destroyer. Don’t mess with her, got it?"
Slicing through an thunderstorm of interference, Morgana’s voice was tense and rushed. "If she gets on your nerves, have housekeeping put a screen around her. But you, my child, are to have nothing to do with her, at your peril."
Biff managed to choke out, "Yes, I understand," though he truly did not. Biff distractedly reached out to tune the radio and Morgana disappeared in a bloom of static. He had lost her! He panicked and, falling backward, just missed colliding with the motionless Destroyer. He noticed she wore a necklace of tiny human skulls.
A heterodyning squeal and Biff looked to the receiver. An urgent baritone filled the room. "And now... Dolby Jenks, Space Ace, brought to you by Chocolate-flavored Ovaltine."
"This is today’s lesson, study it well. You will do daring things." The voice of the Fata Morgana filled his head. The radio had never done this before.
Beepbeepbeepbeep.
Harriet Hopwood, eyes puffy and full of sleep, reached to silence the alarm clock. A dark young man, red-haired with a hint of freckles―a blending of transoceanic bloodlines―squirmed backwards onto the warm spot she had just vacated. He snored gently.
"You didn't have any idea where you were, Ozzie," Harriet whispered softly as she nibbled at an ear. The snoring stopped.
Oswaldo opened one eye and reached out to hold her. "I am here, mariposa," said Oswaldo, not yet awake.
"Butterfly, mariposa," Harriet recognized the Spanish word.
In El Rosario and Sierra Chincua scientists reported over two hundred million butterflies had perished in an unseasonable fall of sleet, casualties to the careless footfalls of los caballos apocalípticos, the great wild cattle of Armageddon usually accompanied by plague and locusts, not butterflies. Night after night Oswaldo Patricio Meléndez O'Rourke y Nuñez was in a dream of running, fleeing a pursuit from which there was no escape. Harriet noticed and radiated motherly concern that the sheets were nightly drenched with sweat―"Bad dreams. I'll get you some of that nighttime liquid from the store."
"Sí, corazón. Una dolorosa pesadilla, a nightmare." Someone must have survived the explosion―the other, the second explosion after that first explosion which had vaporized Oswaldo's parents. Oswaldo was not close to Don Paco and Doña Inez but mourned his parents appropriately for all his then five years. He had been especially fond of the golden cocker spaniel which perished with them. He speculated it was Tío Patricio who ordered the wiring of Don Paco Nuñez' Land Rover with the plastique that precipitated his orphanhood. He returned to the window to observe Harriet's departure from between the slats of her venetian blinds. There are too many explosions in my life, thought Oswaldo. One at least had been left alive from explosion number two.
They were after him―after us, for Harriet ran beside him. Miguel, Patricio, the corduroy, Harriet and himself, they were all running, an ensemble. Five runners—play fives, lucky numbers in the voodoo dream books. Miguel had filled many arks with losers; he folded his losing tickets into origami animals. In the numbers, any combination of fives, the numbers of Mama Coca.
In the street, a powder blue Celebrity, a veteran of many Maine winters, coughed to life, a cloud of blue exhaust erupting from its tailpipe. Harriet's breath steamed as she emerged from the car to scrape at the layer of frost on her windshield with a small plastic rectangle―a credit card. She looked up at him as she scraped. Successful, she held her arms above her head and clapped her mittens together to demonstrate that she was entitled to a victory lap. A momentary halo of ice crystals fell and powdered her hair. Harriet waved as she drove away. He would not tell her of this.
They were after him―the money. Its inaccessibility helped. Thirty miles away,
taped and wired around the tub of a stranger’s washing machine. Before this, the
washing machine had never moved―rusted, left to be a lawn ornament deep under
the drifting snows of winter, the tall grasses of summer. It had seemed the
perfect hiding place. And now it was gone.
"Hiya, kid." The speaker had worn faded bib overalls and leaned against the
sagging door of a likewise sagging truck. The vehicle had been red once, Oswaldo
observed; it was an ancient Chevy.
"Uh... how do you do?"
"I do alright. Pease, Harry Pease." The man held out a hand that wore woolen
gloves with the fingers cut away―a fishmonger's mittens. "Just checking out the
junk in Harriet's yard. She asked me to come and clean things up. You must be
why. Guess I'll start with the fridge. Gimme a hand?" he asked.
Harry backed the truck between waist-deep drifts to where Oswaldo stood,
balancing the derelict refrigerator. "OK. Let 'er go and back off," Harry
shouted. "Fast." Oswaldo did as ordered. The refrigerator toppled forward as
Harry slammed into it with the lowered tailgate of his truck. "Got 'er," said
Harry Pease.
There was a secret foreboding as palms wet, mouth dry, Oswaldo heard the washer
crunch under the impact of the Chevy's tailgate, with it his one hundred thousand dollars, to be entrusted to the wobbly ministrations of Harry Pease and
his truck. A stranger, ¡Maron!
"Perdón, but where does this go?" Yet another trip for the money; the
washing machine was to be hauled to an undisclosed landfill.
"My place."
"Bueno." If the condition of this man's truck could be trusted as an indicator
of his work ethic, the washing machine would lie unmolested in the yard of Harry
Pease for many years. But thoughts of the absent money bore down upon him and for weeks he wandered vacant-eyed
about the house, forgetful of the mechanics of everyday life. Boiling water was
poured on the table as he missed the coffee carafe while he stared into space. A
marmalade spoon was set dripping and sticky on the tablecloth. He
inadvertently flushed a magazine down the toilet. There had been a costly visit
from the plumber. He neglected the daily intimacies that give substance and
meaning to life and love. Harriet was puzzled, then hurt by his distracted
absent-mindedness, and that he could not bear. He must tell her all. Of the
money and its hiding.
Harriet was ironing with the radio on, humming a different tune, an adored
maddening habit. He was sure the music was important to someone, a homing tone,
the buzzing of the hive. The radio was Mozart; Harriet hummed rock 'n' roll. He
had come to her for reassurance. She kissed him lingeringly on the neck and
Mozart continued alone, a disconsolate plucking at mandolins and harpsichords.
He was shriven with a kiss for penance. Harriet was not preoccupied with
reforming the world into her image. "Well, then we have nothing to worry about."
"Corazón..." Relief at even so minimal a confession made him feel warm and weak.
He hugged her to keep from falling over. She was right, there was nothing to
worry about. It was all glowingly simple, such a rightness of things.
"Just stay away from it is all. If they are keeping an eye on you, let that
be their problem, not yours." His confession had put a sparkle in her eyes and a
spring in her step. And for Oswaldo the world as reflected by his beloved, his
adored, was again a beautiful place. But the obsession, though lessened, had not
passed.
Oswaldo flinched as a reverberation, a momentary figure, moved in the mirror over Harriet's dresser―himself, his reflection. "I am a frightened monkey, a furtive loiterer to no good purpose," he said the words aloud. Tío Patricio's monkey was Miguel the origami man, an analog of Mama Coca herself, meaning no disrespect. Miguel then, who played at being a monkey with his origami animals.
Stalker and prey, jackal and capybara, the tracker and the tricker, must meet
then―Oswaldo and Miguel who was dead.
Harriet threw him a kiss from the departing automobile. She was gone; he was alone.
The money and the washer survived their trip unblemished, the money undiscovered. Several thousand miles to the south, the butterflies hung, frozen stiff. Orange and black bodies of Danaus Plexippus, the common monarch, clung to the trees, then fell. "Something in the milkweed," the norteamericanos said about the dying butterflies. With a wet winter, an unseasonable sleet and no blossoms of helianthus, aster and verbena to browse to keep up their strength on the long flight north, the butterflies died in their millions.
In the first year the Monarch butterflies failed to migrate north, Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face. In New York a bewildered teenager stared from the front pages of the Post, News and Times. Mary Jo's husband, Joey Buttafuoco, was Amy's lover and worked on Ferraris. On the inside pages a Texas woman reported seeing a vision of Christ after a near-death experience, "He was radiant, a Spirit being," she said in an interview. After her return she had an encounter with a passerby's guardian angel. In El Rosario and the Sierra Chincua overwintering colonies of dead butterflies were free for the gathering by the shovelful, the bucket and the truckload.
In the second year, Oswaldo Patricio Meléndez O'Rourke y Nuñez arrived in Harriet Hopwood's life unannounced and unforeseen. "I see you in the corners of my eyes, beloved," he had said. That eyes might have corners was uno tropo, a figure of speech. In return Harriet presented him with her love and a book to help with his language studies.
"This is your book. You are giving it to me."
"It's the library's. You know―the big red building with the soldier and the cannon? Keep it as long as you want."
"Querida, there will be an excise, a late fee." Money, always money.
Harriet kissed him. "I can slip it into the after-hours book return box―it's a regulation government mail box painted blue and welded shut. Vandals dump snow in the box in the winter, and in the summer, the few pensioners in the neighborhood who do check out books return them at the desk."
The book was a children's picture book printed on glossy paper. There were pictures of many colors, whimsically drawn. The book had a shiny plasticized cover, librarian friendly; the smudges of small fingers would easily wipe away.
He had swum a river, an international boundary, dragged down by whirlpools in miniature tidal eddies. He was on his own, a refugee, and covered with the welts of many insect bites. Strapped about his chest in a water-logged body pack he carried one hundred thousand dollars and the battered figurine of a neglected saint. Expedito, the gambler's saint, Hodie his motto―do it now, today, the saint of immediate gratification.
"If you want to take getting sucked to the ocean bottom by the weight of wet money as an allegory, feel free," said the saint. The voice of the saint was that of Mama Coca, the Andean Avon Lady.
"I prefer not to," said Oswaldo, gasping for breath.
"Good boy," said the voice, the voice of the Fata Morgana, Orange Virgin, Lady of the Wild Things, etc., etc...
copyright 1993, 2006 Rob Hunter