Perfume (5 page)

When people said
very very very
, Dove was suspicious. Truly excited people did not need a row of very’s to prove it. So probably what Mr. Phinney really was, was very very very
not
excited.

Mr. Phinney set down the stack of ancient history term papers and patted them. Neatly, he aligned the edges of each project. They were nothing now but a pile of past words. Words that would rest peacefully in the tombs of their pages.

Dove was as distant as a camera: as if she were just a frame, and the outside world were snapshots, not people, not real.

Dove was very still, trying to determine whether she had a body, or was merely a mind—a person without flesh. She wanted to whack the side of her skull with the bottom of her palm, and knock out the queer thoughts circulating in her mind … or Wing’s mind.

But her hand did not obey her.

If she had a hand.

Dove could not see her hands. No matter how hard she looked, she could not see any of her body at all.

I am in the back of the mind, thought Dove. It is Wing who has the body and I who am invisible. I have no hands. I cannot protect myself, or fend things off, or write things down, or wave, or eat—

What would Wing think of to do with Dove’s hands?

If Dove were part somebody else, had she lost part of herself? Which part? Where had it gone? Would she get it back?

Wake up, Dove! she thought desperately. There’s nothing on that desk but typing and handwriting. There is no tomb. There is no Wing. There is no problem. Except the problem that we have spent too much of the semester on pyramids and the Nile. It’s made me a little crazy. Come on, let’s move up in time, Mr. Phinney. I’m ready for Greece and Rome.

“And now,” said Mr. Phinney, “let’s talk about the next class project! Oh, my! I’m
very very very
excited about our next project.”

Dove had been wrong; he truly was that thrilled with history; he was shivering with the pleasure of new projects about ancient times.

“Together, we will research something that extends
over the ages
! Put your thinking caps on, class!”

He really said this: Put your thinking caps on, class. The mean kids in the room imitated him in an ugly way, while the nice kids in the room were gentle with Mr. Phinney and tried to look as if they were putting on their thinking caps.

Which one is Wing? thought Dove. Is she being nice or mean? I can’t see her. Or me. Or whoever it is.

“I want you to come up,” said Mr. Phinney, out of breath from his excitement, “with one single aspect of life that we as a group may study, research, and follow from the ancient days right up to the present!”

Nobody was able to think of anything that could be followed from 5000
B.C.
to the present.

Nobody seemed deeply interested in trying, either.

“A topic which every one of us can research!” prompted Mr. Phinney. “The same subject, don’t you see—but each of us studies it at a different period in time!”

The class was blank.

“Duh,” said Timmy, speaking for them all.

Next to Dove was Hesta, a girl whom Dove had always disliked. Hesta delighted in telling you that you looked a little heavy lately, had you put on weight? You looked a bit run-down, had your parents’ ugly courtroom divorce bothered you? You had done poorly on that exam, hadn’t you? Well, a person couldn’t skim along on favoritism forever, could she?

That was Hesta.

Hesta’s eyes were glued to Dove’s. She was staring the way you simply never stare at another living human being: incredulously, fascinated, perhaps even sickened. Her mouth fell slightly open, and the gum she was chewing lay in a pale green wad between her teeth. Her eyes never blinked.

“I’ll give you a hint,” said Mr. Phinney. “For example,” he said, his desire to pass on his eagerness touching, “
bridges
!”

Bridges? thought Dove.

“Bridges,” repeated Hesta. She crossed her eyes. The class inched toward snickering.

Hesta’s method of going to school was simply to sit there and wait for it to be over. She never acted as if she even heard the teacher talking, and she certainly never attempted to respond to the teacher’s questions or lectures. She was almost worse than rude; far from being difficult or talking back, Hesta acted as if there
were
no teacher.

“The technology of crossing rivers,” explained Mr. Phinney.

A weird chuckle sounded right next to Dove. It did not seem to be Hesta. Dove did not know who in her class would laugh like that.

Hesta could see something behind the curtains of Dove’s eyes.

But what was it?

“The history of bridging, don’t you see!” cried the teacher, as excited as Christmas morning. “From early pontoons lashed together with cords of rawhide to the Brooklyn Bridge! From—”

Dove’s lungs were collapsing. Her chest was caving in. She tried to faint, but her lungs would not permit it. They inhaled.

“I have a suggestion,” said Wing.

Her fluted voice trembled like feathers in the breeze.

Dove fell backward into the space in the head.
Not in class!
she said to Wing.
Don’t you do this in class! You can’t be Wing right in the middle of my life!

Wing said, “The history of snakes.” She hissed on the
s’s
, until the class trembled, seeing snakes coiled under desks, forked tongues lashing, cold skin quivering, poison sacs gathering.

“The history of snakes, Dove?” said Mr. Phinney, frowning.

It’s not me, Dove tried to say,
I
wouldn’t research the history of snakes. But Dove’s lungs had collapsed. Wing owned the voice now. It was Wing’s body now. Where am I? thought Dove.

“Starting with Egypt, of course. Remember Cleopatra?” Wing spoke as if she did, indeed, remember Cleopatra. Wing stood up, using Dove’s body, and threw a pose like Egyptian royalty. “When the Romans were going to take Cleopatra prisoner,” said Wing, “and exhibit her like a beast in a cage, Cleopatra took her life like a queen. She held an asp to her bosom.”

Wing cupped her hands around an invisible, snake. Her eyes widened in pain and horror, and yet in pride, as she allowed the asp to deliver death. “Poison,” said Wing, “can be a gift.”

Nobody moved. They had frozen into place in the classroom as if bitten by Cleopatra’s asp. They were transfixed by Wing.

Whom they thought was Dove.

I’m here, thought Dove, I’m still here, don’t go away!

“I have a perfume called Poison,” volunteered Connie. Of course Connie could never follow a conversation. Connie was always picking up a single word and running off in some other direction with it. “Why, Dove, just the other day, you bought a perfume called
Venom
,” said Connie. “Isn’t that a coincidence? Both snakey names.” An immense shudder shook Connie’s body, but Dove, who was well acquainted with shudders, thought it was fake.

“Why do they give perfumes names like that?” said Timmy, frowning. “Poison. Venom. Obsession. I think it’s sick.”

“Then buy your girlfriend perfume like Pale Linen or Whiff of Spring,” said Wing. “Boring, dull, characterless slop.”

“Got to get the girlfriend first,” said Hesta. She jeered at Timmy.

From her new vantage point, deep inside, distant and speechless, Dove saw them all differently, as if they were changing colors—turning blue and green and silver in front of her eyes.

“What happened to your voice, Dove?” said Luce, frowning. “You sound like a different person.”

Wing smiled.

From way in the back of the eyes, Dove watched that smile cross the room and hit Luce. Or bite her.

Luce flinched. And then leaned forward, frowning, intense, staring.

She can see me in here, thought Dove. So could Hesta. How weird that must be! They can tell it’s not me looking out, and yet it
is
me looking out.

If only she could telegraph a message to her friend. Help! I’m a prisoner at the back of the mind!

But if Dove sent a mental message, it was not received, because Luce lowered her gaze rather than accept the double image: the twinned eyes. Luce doodled studiously on her notebook, drawing pyramid after pyramid, dividing each triangle into the huge stone blocks from which they had been built.

“You have the right idea, Dove,” said the teacher, “because you have chosen a subject that certainly covers thousands of years, but I simply do not feel that the history of snakes and mankind is deep enough for every one in the room to pursue for a month. But it’s a start. Other suggestions, class? Let’s have a
good
idea, now.”

Wing blinked long and intensely, like a door shutting.

It was shutting in Dove’s face; Dove could not see out during the blink; she was in the dark—the darkest, evilest dark imaginable.

Dove tried to scream but Wing was using her mouth. Dove ran forward to rip the door open, but of course there was not really any place to run to. All that happened was that she annoyed Wing’s thoughts, like pebbles in a shoe.

Wing opened her eyes. The light came back into Dove’s prison and Dove got a grip on herself.

He turned me down!
said Wing, up inside her thoughts where Dove was.

The force of the thoughts tipped Dove over again.

I had a brilliant idea
, said Wing,
the sort of idea I’ve always wanted to express in class when
you
were saying something
dumb,
Dove, and he turned me down!

She was in there all along, thought Dove, listening to me.

She could hardly bear it: her private thoughts exposed to this person all her life. There had never been any privacy! Not even in the dark, or in her room, or in her very own head. Wing had been living there, like a squatter in a tenement.

I’ll fix him!
said Wing, staring at Mr. Phinney. Dove’s eyes had to go where Wing’s did, and Dove, too, had to stare at Mr. Phinney, and him, too, she saw differently: a teacher trying so hard that he was trying too hard, and the class had stepped back from him.

Dove’s heart ached for Mr. Phinney, and she wanted to speak up and rescue him, and give them all a project that would make Mr. Phinney happy.

But the rage of Wing—the venom—pierced Dove’s prison like an acid bath, drowning her.

W
ING WAS HAVING A TANTRUM:
dancing, stomping, hitting, and storming.

“I’ll fix him!” said Wing. Wing was panting.

Oxygen leaped into the lungs and coursed through the body, like a bright angry wind blowing Dove backward.

The condominiums stood still and watched, their miniblinds like a million flat eyes.

No human eyes looked out; all human eyes were at work. Whatever else people did in this complex to entertain themselves, looking out the windows was not one of their pastimes. They did not know their neighbors, they did not wish to know their neighbors, they hardly even qualified to be neighbors.

One look at Wing, face contorted, rage exploding, fingernails raking, would convince accidental watchers to return to not watching.

Dove tried to use the mouth, to speak to Wing, tell her to calm down. But Wing was in there, jabbering, saying what she was going to do to Mr. Phinney.

Finally they were back inside their own unit, and finally Wing had something to drink—a cherry Coke—which seemed to calm her down a little.

“Wing,” said Dove, “It’s just a history project. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means that man thinks he knows better than I do!” said Wing, half choking on the cherry Coke.

“He’s the teacher,” said Dove. “It’s okay for him to think he knows more.”

“Nobody,” said Wing fiercely, “nobody tells me what to do! Not any more! I’ve been trapped here for fifteen years! Do you have any idea what that means? How long a time it is?”

“I was there, too,” Dove pointed out.

“You were free! You were born!”

It was true. Dove could not really imagine what it must be like not to have gotten born after all, when you were ready to go, but no longer had a body to take you.

“I will not be pushed around any longer!” shouted Wing. “I will not step where your body decides to step! I won’t look and I won’t speak the way your body wants to.”

Dove thought, I have to gain control here. It’s still my body, not hers. I have to get it back! “But see, in school, Wing,” she said pacifically, “you have to—”

“I am not going to do what some fat slob of a teacher thinks!” snarled Wing.

“Dove?” said her mother.

But it was Wing who whirled to face the attractive businesswoman. “Hello,” said Wing. Her voice rippled strangely.

Her mother studied her daughter uneasily.

She can see me in here, too, thought Dove, just the way Hesta and Luce did. Does she see two personalities? Does she see two sets of eyes? Two separate people?

Dove’s mother said, “Honey? Is something wrong?”

But she’s Wing’s mother, too, thought Dove. She’s the “maternal body” that Wing talked about.

Wing looked Mrs. Daniel up and down as if reading notices posted on a tall, thin bulletin board.

Another mother might have cringed, but this was the Daniel home, in which business came first. The phone rang, the fax spilled messages, and the pile of mail was too enticing to be skipped. Mrs. Daniel answered the phone, opened the mail, and sifted through the faxes.

Dove was used to this.

Wing was not.

“I am right here!” said Wing furiously.

“I see, dear,” said their mother. “Keep your voice down, please. This is an important call.”

“Let’s go upstairs and talk,” said Dove to Wing.

Of course her mother thought Dove was talking to her. “Really, Dove, you can see I’m busy.”

“I don’t like the maternal body,” said Wing. “I never did.”

Their two voices clashed: one high as a flute, one middling and rounded.

“Dove, why are you doing that?” said her mother crossly. “You sound like two people.” She turned back to the phone. “Sorry, Joshua, it was Call Waiting, I’m here now.”

“Call Waiting!” said Wing. “You refer to your own daughter as Call Waiting?”

Mrs. Daniel looked briefly at her daughter, but this time the iris and pupil did not reveal anything. Either Dove or else Wing was not showing up. Mrs. Daniel returned to her business.