Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys (2 page)

The wind died down and the feathers settled around Cherokee and Coyote. They gathered the feathers, filling a big basket Coyote had brought from his shack.

“Now you can make the wings,” Coyote said.

Cherokee looked at her hands.

   Cherokee took wires and bent them into wing-shaped frames. Then she covered the frames with thin, stiff gauze, and over that she pasted the feathers the wind had brought. It took her a long time. She worked every day after school until late into the night. She hardly ate, did her homework or slept. At school she finally fell asleep on her desk and dreamed of falling into a feather bed. The dream-bed tore and feathers got into her nostrils and throat. She woke up coughing and the teacher sent her out of the room.

“What is wrong, Cherokee?” Raphael asked her on the phone when she wouldn’t come over to play music with him. “You are acting as crazy as your sister.”

But she only sighed and pasted down another feather in its place. “I can’t tell you yet. Don’t worry. You’ll find out on Witch Baby’s birthday.”

The rain was like a green forest descending
over the city. Cherokee danced in puddles and caught raindrops off flower petals with her tongue. Her lungs didn’t fill with smog when she ran. She loved the rain but she was worried, too. She was worried about Witch Baby getting sick out in the shed.

Cherokee brought blankets and a thermos of hot soup and put them outside the door. Witch Baby took the blankets and soup when no one was looking, but she didn’t let Cherokee inside the shed.

When Witch Baby’s birthday came, Cherokee and Raphael planned a big party for her. They made three kinds of salsa and a special dish of crumbled corn bread, green chiles, artichoke hearts, cheese and red peppers. They bought chips and soda and an ice-cream cake and decorated the house with tiny blinking colored lights, piñatas, big red balloons and black rubber bats. All their friends came, bringing incense, musical instruments, candles and flowers. Everyone ate, drank and danced to a tape Raphael had made of African music, salsa, zydeco, blues and soul. It was a perfect party except for one thing. Witch Baby wasn’t there. She was still hiding in the shed.

Finally, Raphael got his guitar and began to play and sing some of Witch Baby’s favorite songs—“Black Magic Woman,” “Lust for Life,” “Leader of the Pack” and “Wild Thing.” Cherokee sang, too, and played her tambourine. Suddenly, the door opened and a boy came in. He was carrying a bass guitar and was dressed in baggy black pants, a white shirt buttoned to the collar and thick black shoes. A bandana was tied over his black hair. Everyone stopped and stared at him. Cherokee rubbed her eyes. It was Angel Juan Perez.

When Witch Baby was very little, she had fallen in love with Angel Juan, but he had had to go back to Mexico with his family. He still wrote to Witch Baby on her birthday and holidays and she said she dreamed about him all the time.

“Angel Juan!” Cherokee cried. She and Raphael ran to him and they all embraced.

“Where’ve you been?” Raphael asked.

“Mexico,” said Angel Juan. “I’ve been playing music there since my family and I were sent back, I knew someday I’d get to see you guys again. And how is …?”

“Witch Baby isn’t so great,” said Cherokee.
“She won’t come out of the shed in back.”

“What?” said Angel Juan. “Niña Bruja! My sweet, wild, purple-eyes!”

“Come and play some music for her,” said Raphael. “Maybe she’ll hear you and come out.”

Witch Baby, huddling in the mud shed, smelled the food and saw colored lights blinking through the window. She even imagined the ice-cream cake glistening in the freezer. But nothing was enough to make her leave the shed until she heard a boy’s voice singing a song.

“Niña Bruja,” sang the voice.

Witch Baby stood up in the dark shed, shivering. Mud was caked all over her body, making her look like a strange animal with glowing purple eyes. It was raining when she stepped outside, and the water rinsed off the mud, leaving her naked and even colder. The voice drew her to the window of the house and she stared in.

Cherokee was the only one who noticed Witch Baby clinging to the windowsill and watching Angel Juan through the rain-streaked stained-glass irises. Cherokee ran
and got a purple silk kimono robe embroidered with dragons, went out into the rain, slipped the robe on Witch Baby’s hungry body, pried her fingers from the windowsill and took her hand. Hiding behind her tangled hair. Witch Baby followed Cherokee into the house as if she were in a trance.

Cherokee handed Witch Baby a pair of drumsticks and helped her tiptoe past everyone to the drums they had set up for her behind Raphael and Angel Juan. Witch Baby sat at her drums for a moment, biting her lip and staring at the hack of Angel Juan’s head. Then she lunged forward with her body and began to play.

Everyone turned to see what was happening. The drumming was powerful. It was almost impossible to believe it was coming through the body of a half-starved young girl who had been hiding in the mud for weeks. As Witch Baby played, a pair of multicolored wings descended from the ceiling. They shimmered in the lights as if they were in flight, reflecting the dawns and cities and sunsets they passed, then rested gently near Witch Baby’s shoulders. Cherokee attached them
there. The wings looked as if they had always been a part of Witch Baby’s body, and the music she played made them tremble. Angel Juan turned to stare. Once everyone had caught their breath, they tossed their heads, stamped their feet, shook their hips and began to dance. Cherokee got her tambourine and joined the band.

When the song was over, Cherokee brought out the ice-cream cake burning with candles and everyone sang “Happy Birthday, dear Witch Baby.” It was hard for Cherokee to recognize her almost-sister Glowing from music, and magical in the Cherokee wind-wings. Witch Baby was beautiful. Angel Juan could not take his eyes off her.

After she had blown out all the candles, he came up and took her hand, “Niña Bruja,” he said, “I’ve missed you so much.”

Witch Baby looked up at Angel Juan’s smooth, brown face with the high cheekbones, the black-spark eyes. The last time she had seen him, he was a tiny blur of a boy.

“Dance with me,” he said.

Witch Baby looked down at her bare, curly toes. There was still mud under her toenails.
but the wings made her feel safe.

“Dance with me, Niña Bruja,” Angel Juan said again. He put his hands on Witch Baby’s shoulders, hunched tightly beneath the wings, and she relaxed. Then he took one of her hands, uncurling the fingers, and began to dance with her in the protective shade of many feathers. Witch Baby pressed her head of wild hair against Angel Juan’s clean, white shirt.

Everyone clapped for them, then found partners and joined in. Cherokee stood watching. She remembered how Witch Baby and Angel Juan had played together when they were very young, how Witch Baby had covered her walls with pictures she had taken of him, how she never bit her nails or pulled at her snarl-balls or hissed or spit when he was around. Then he had had to leave so suddenly when his family was sent back to Mexico.

Now, seeing them dancing together, the nape of Angel Juan’s neck exposed as he bent to hold Witch Baby, the black flames of her hair pressed against his chest, Cherokee felt like crying.

Raphael came up to Cherokee and took her hands. For almost their whole lives,
Cherokee and Raphael had been inseparable, but tonight Cherokee felt something new. It was something tight and slidey in her stomach, something burning and shivery in her spine; it was like having hearts beating in her throat and knees. Raphael had never looked so much like a lion with his black eyes and mane of dreadlocks.

“The wings are beautiful, Kee,” Raphael said. “They are the best gift anyone could give to Witch Baby.” He lifted Cherokee’s hands into the light and examined them. “How did you do it?” he asked.

“Love.”

“You are magic,” Raphael said, “I’ve known that since we were babies, but now your magic is very strong. I think you are going to have to be careful.”

“Careful?” said Cherokee. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” said Raphael. “I just got a funny feeling. I just want things to stay like this forever.” And he stroked Cherokee’s long, yellow braids, but he didn’t put his arms around her the way he had always done before.

A
fter Witch Baby’s birthday, Cherokee, Raphael, Witch Baby and Angel Juan decided to form a band called The Goat Guys, Every day, when Angel Juan got home from the restaurant where he worked and the others from school, they practiced in Raphael’s garage with posters of Bob Marley,
The Beatles, The Doors and John Lennon and a painted velvet tapestry of Elvis on the walls around them. Witch Baby sat at her drums, her purple eyes fierce, her skinny arms pounding out the beat; Angel Juan pouted and swayed as he played his bass, and Raphael sang in a voice like Kahlua and milk, swinging his dreadlocks to the sound of his guitar. Cherokee, whirling with her tambourine, imagined she could see their music like fireworks—flashing flowers and fountains of light exploding in the air around them.

One night, Cherokee and Raphael were walking through the streets of Hollywood. Because it had just rained and was almost Christmas, a twinkling haze covered the whole city.

They passed stucco bungalows with Christmas trees shining in the windows and roses in the courtyard gardens. They stopped to catch raindrops off the rose petals with their tongues.

“What does this smell like?” Cherokee asked, sniffing a yellow rose.

“Lemonade.”

“And the orange ones smell like peaches.”

Raphael put his face inside a white rose. “Rain,” he said.

They walked on Melrose with its neon, lovers, frozen yogurt and Italian restaurants, Santa Monica with its thin boys on bus-stop benches, lonely hot dog stands, auto repair shops where the cars glowed with fluorescent raindrops. Sunset with its billboard mouths calling you toward the sea, and Hollywood where golden lights arched from movie palace to movie palace over fake snow, pavement stars, ghetto blasters, drug dealers, pinball players and women in high-heeled pumps walking in Marilyn’s footprints in front of the Chinese Theater.

Cherokee and Raphael made shadow animals with their hands when they came to bare walls. They stopped for ice-cream cones. Cherokee heard Raphael’s voice singing in her head as she sucked a marshmallow out of her scoop of rocky road.

“We are ready to play out,” she told him. They were hopping from star to star on Hollywood Boulevard.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to deal
with the whole nightclub scene,” he said.

“But it would be good for people to hear you.” She looked at him. Raindrops had fallen off some of the roses they had been smelling and sparkled in his dreadlocks. He was wearing a denim jacket and jeans and he stepped lightly on his toes as if he weren’t quite touching the ground.

He shrugged. “I don’t think it’s so important. I like to just play for our friends.”

“But other people need our music, too. Let’s just send the tape around,” Cherokee said. She looked up and pointed to the spotlights fanning across the cloudy sky. “I think you are a star, Raphael. You’re my star. I’ll send the tapes for us.”

He shook his head so his hair flew out, scattering the drops of rain. “Okay, okay. You can if you really want to.”

Let’s not be afraid, Cherokee thought. Let’s not be afraid of anything that can’t really hurt us. She grabbed his wrist and they ran across the street as the red stoplight hand flashed.

Cherokee sent Goat Guy tapes to nightclubs around the city. She put a photograph that Witch Baby had taken of the band on the front of the cassette. Zombo of Zombo’s Rockin’ Coffin called her and said he could book a show just before Christmas.

When Cherokee told Raphael, he got very quiet. “I’m not sure we’re ready,” he said, but she kissed him and told him they were a rockin’ slink-chunk, slam-dunk band and that it would be fine.

On the night of the first show, Raphael lit a cigarette.

“What are you doing?” Cherokee said, trying to grab it out of his hand. They were sitting backstage at the Coffin. Raphael coughed but then he took another hit.

“Leave me alone,” he said. He got up and paced back and forth.

Angel Juan and Witch Baby came with Witch Baby’s drums.

“What’s wrong, man?” Angel Juan asked, but Raphael just took another puff of smoke.

Cherokee had never seen him look like this. There were dark circles under his eyes
and his skin seemed faded. And he had never told her to leave him alone before.

Cherokee kissed Raphael’s cheek and went to the front of the club. It was decorated with pieces of black fabric, sickly-looking Cupids, candles and fake, greenish lilies. The people seated at the tables had the same coloring as the flowers. They were slumped over their drinks waiting for the music to begin.