The House of Discarded Dreams (14 page)

Maya did not say anything, but her right fist gave a short, resonant punch to the open palm of her left hand. A simple but highly suggestive gesture, Vimbai thought, and smiled.

“No,” the man-fish said, studying Maya with some curiosity. “Don’t have any tongues, I really don’t. But I do wonder why are you threatening me—I’ve done nothing to either you or your despicable half-breed rats.”

“I’m not threatening,” Maya said. “But since you’ve mentioned doing things . . . you wouldn’t happen to have a few dozen horseshoe crab souls, would you?”

“Don’t be silly,” the man-fish said. “Crabs don’t have souls—even fish don’t, unless we swallow some drowned ones.”

“Is it true?” Maya whispered into Vimbai’s ear.

“Don’t know,” Vimbai whispered back. “But makes sense, sort of. Only those things I’ve seen in Felix’s head—what were they?”

“Apparitions,” said the man-fish, whose hearing turned out far superior to what one would expect from two holes on the sides of his head. “Accretions. Come closer, and I will show you.”

“Vimbai, don’t.” Maya’s hand wrapped around Vimbai’s forearm, the strong protective warmth of her fingers encircling like a sigil guarding from evil.

Vimbai gently freed her arm and handed Peb to Maya. “I’m just going to listen. Nothing will happen to me while you are watching over, right?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Maya mumbled, and showed her fist to the man-fish. “Don’t make me cave your skull in, fishstick. And don’t you think this lake will protect you—my dogs will drink it dry if need be.”

The man-fish rolled his eyes. “I do not mean you harm—not at this very moment, at least. But perhaps once you understand what it is you’re defending you would be more inclined to leave me alone.”

“I won’t leave you alone until Peb has his tongue back, and the horseshoe crabs are whole again,” Vimbai said, and regretted it immediately—perhaps, this was not a good time for threats she could not really fulfill, especially not so close to the man-fish’s hypnotic gaze—he floated in the shallows now and she stood knee-deep in warm water, fat mud oozing between her toes, and wondered how she got here. Before she could verbalize her question, the man-fish bobbed up and down on the waves, and swam closer. “Do you even know what horseshoe crabs are?”

Arthropod and other assorted invertebrate classifications turned out to be irrelevant, and Vimbai almost regretted memorizing their mouthparts, tiny, numerous, and confusingly named. Mouthparts did not make the horseshoe crab—or at least this is what the man-fish said.

When something is as ancient as these crabs, when it lives on the bottom, scavenging, for so long, it is only a matter of time before spiritual accumulation becomes as significant as the chitinous growth of the shell. Tail spikes and fragile little legs, eyes hidden behind the spiked bumps of their armor—all this was just surface. But there were other shells, other eyes, built from things less tangible than chitin.

The ocean is awash in the souls of drowned sailors, or rather in their remnants—time passes, years wear on, and the souls are rent apart by the constant action of the waves, their endless back and forth over the seesaws of coral reefs and jagged cliffs. The souls become small fragments of memories and preferences, of vague longings and dreams one could not forget no matter how hard one tried. These soul fragments, small as grains of sand and just as inconspicuous, permeated everything on the ocean floor. And they became accumulated and accreted in the shells of the horseshow crabs—forming a similar but spiritual structure that gave them not only consciousness but also fortitude and memory, persistence in the face of being quartered and stuffed into eel traps and bled half to death for profit.

And listen, listen, here’s the best part: even if you end up in the sea a few minutes after your death, your soul would still be liable to become a part of it. And the Atlantic coast—there are so many bodies there, there are so many people thrown overboard because they were dead or dying. Yes, yes, little girl—I mean the slave ships.

The
wazimamoto
are real, and they are not fools. Even if your soul is in shreds and a thousand miles away, a part of a horseshoe crab with a spiked shell and a long tail, even then they will find you, even then they will steal your blood. It is their nature, see, and it doesn’t matter to them if you’re a man or a crab—as long as you are helpless and alone and vulnerable; as long as there is blood (red or blue, doesn’t matter) for them to steal.

“So you see,” his gravelly voice tinted with hidden laughter said. “Your precious crabs are just people in different guises, and what you thought were their souls are just simple carapaces, same as their regular shells. They have no meaning or importance, they are not at all like human souls.”

“And yet, you took them.” Vimbai opened her eyes—she did not remember closing them—and stared into the man-fish’s, yellow and bright, so close to her face. She swam in the golden ocean, weightless, bathed and suspended in pure sunlight, just slightly blurred by the film of tears. “What did you do with the souls . . . shells you took?”

“I didn’t take anything,” the man-fish replied. “If you don’t believe me, come to my lair with me, I’ll show you.”

“Vimbai, don’t!” Maya’s voice reached her from the shore distorted by water as she sank, slowly and obediently, following the whipping tailfin, the serpentine twists of the mottled green and brown scaleless body. The water turned muddy around her, and soon she could see nothing but the clay-colored murk and the undulating tailfin before her.

It had occurred to her then in a lazy, sleepy way reminiscent of a sluggish dream, that she was not being wise, following the catfish like that. Perhaps she should turn back or swim for the surface, where she could breathe air instead of water slowly filling her lungs . . . that was not good and she started, as if jolted awake.

The
vadzimu
was not here to guide her senses and vision, she was not here to help her breathe—and the water was not the cold, singeing salt of the ocean, but tepid bland mud. How could she be so stupid, forgetting not to inhale? There was no time for it now, and Vimbai swam for the surface, already struggling against a pressing cough rising in her chest. If she coughed now she would swallow even more water, and that she could not allow—already her lungs strained under the weight of water as well as the overwhelming sense of suffocation, of absence of oxygen.

She kicked her feet and propelled herself upward, and she saw the sun through a thick layer of dung-colored water and thought herself saved, the motes of silt playing in the amber light, the surface so near now. But then there was a shadow darting over head, a large shadow—as long as Vimbai, or perhaps even longer. A shadow with two fanned fins and a blunt, flat head.

Vimbai kicked faster, almost reaching the surface, but the shadow returned now, and its flat face, momentarily close and clear, blotted out the sun and Vimbai felt a strong nudge as the fish butted its head against Vimbai’s, forcing her underwater. She tried again, pushing the fish away with her hands and feet, kicking it away, reaching for the surface, but the fish was too strong and too slippery, too old and too large. The impact of its massive head felt like a hit by a basketball, rubbery and yet heavy, disorienting.

Soon enough, Vimbai was not sure which way was up, and the silt particles in the water swarmed like myriads of tiny flies, blotting out the light and sense of direction, even the sight of the man-fish. Vimbai only wished she could breathe, and covered her face with her crossed arms.

She felt him approach again and waited for him to get close, within striking distance. As soon as his face touched hers, her hands shot out and grabbed at the sensitive whiskers, the only part of him she could hope to grasp and to hurt. She pulled and punched, aiming for the eyes, and the catfish thrashed, one of its whiskers held firmly in Vimbai’s hand, wound for security across and around her palm.

Vimbai’s fingers clawed blindly until they felt a glassy slippery fish eye underneath; then they tore. The catfish thrashed more, the paddle of its tail whipping Vimbai across her chest and face. Every second stretched and went on forever, and even their fractions dragged like funeral hearses—at least, this is how it felt to Vimbai’s flooded and exhausted lungs.

Another slap of the tail, and Vimbai closed her eyes; but even through closed eyelids the flood of sunlight was unmistakable and welcome. She gasped, sputtered, and spat out half a gallon of tepid water just as her lungs expanded, drinking in tasteless but welcome air. She thought at first that she had managed to struggle to the surface, but then she realized that her feet were planted firmly on the bottom of the lake.

Her gaze cast about, to see the man-fish, his whisker still in her left fist and his face under her right, flapping in the shallow water—the level of the lake was no higher than two feet now, and falling. Vimbai saw the Psychic Energy Baby kneeling on the lakeshore, his face in the water, his chest and back rising and falling with great measured gulps, and only then did she realize that he had saved her once again—he had drunk the water of the lake, saving Vimbai and trapping the man-fish. As if sensing her looking at him, Peb raised his face and gave Vimbai his new and terrible tongueless smile. Then he resumed his drinking.

Chapter 14

Maya helped Vimbai out of the mud in the lakebed, and sat with her on the grass by the lawn chairs, rubbing her shoulders with her large, warm palms. Her touch was comforting to Vimbai, and she struggled with an overwhelming desire to rest her head on Maya’s shoulder, to let her hold Vimbai and make her feel at peace and at home.

The Psychic Energy Baby swelled up with all the water he had swallowed—an entire lake’s worth!—and sat back on the bank, great quantities of lake water sloshing inside him, as if he were a giant distended wine-bag, half-sunken into the soft mud by the shore. The cattails and sedges nodded in the breeze, sleek and green in the subdued glow from the sky-ceiling. It seemed so peaceful here, so calm—if one were to ignore a gigantic catfish flailing and thrashing in the wet mud where barely two inches of water offered it some comfort.

“I’ll die like this!” the man-fish rasped. “I swear to you, I won’t harm you again.”

“And you’ll give back his tongue and the horseshoe crabs’ spirit shells,” Vimbai said. “Right?”

“I promise!” the man-fish pleaded. “I’ll do what I can, but I don’t have those spirit things . . . they are of no use to me.”

“The
wazimamoto
,” Vimbai said. “Where are they? Do they have what we want?”

“Yes,” the man-fish said. “I’ll help you, I swear. And I’ll tell you now, that bald head on one leg is also helping them. See? I am on your side.”

Vimbai nodded to Peb and he leaned forth, a thin stream of water dribbling through his slightly parted lips. He let out just enough water to let the man-fish lie on his side, gills submerged, but the other side still exposed to harsh drying air.

“Tell us more,” Vimbai said. “Tell us about the
wazimamoto
, and where they are.” She did not ask about their purpose—after all, it was their nature.

The man-fish remained silent for a while, greedily pumping the tepid muddy water through his gills. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you how to find them.”

What he told them did not surprise Vimbai—as the man-fish spoke, Vimbai realized that she had known it already, but was too embarrassed to admit that it was her part of the communal creation within the house that gave the vampires shelter. It was too painful to think that the blooming jacaranda trees, their branches heavy with purple and blue flowers, sheltered and blessed those who sought to harm Vimbai and Maya, and had already harmed Peb and the crabs.

The man-fish hemmed and hawed, but finally told them that the vampires did have a truck and all sorts of medical equipment. They asked the man-fish about things, and they promised him favors—he hinted at it obliquely but Vimbai felt a cold hand constrict her throat when she realized that the man-fish was looking forward to swallowing her and Maya’s souls, after their blood had been drained away.

He only shrugged at her terror and disgust. “We all do what we have to. This lake here, there aren’t many drownings, as you can imagine. Very little to feed on. And if you find someone who can help you—hey, why not?”

“You understand why we would be unsympathetic,” Maya said. Her arm wrapped around Vimbai’s shoulders in a protective gesture, and Vimbai felt gratitude flood her eyes, making them suddenly warm. Being held like that . . . it felt like being home from school, back when she was still a kid and getting out of school was precious because it was rare, and it was made even better by her mother’s cool hand smoothing Vimbai’s burning forehead. She was also reminded of the touch of Elizabeth Rosenzweig’s smooth hand, and thought that she rather liked Maya holding her—almost as much as she would if it were Elizabeth.

“My dogs wouldn’t even come near you,” Maya said. “Although right now I do have half a mind to call them and let them have their way with you.”

The man-fish thrashed, and Peb let out a bit more water—just enough to let the man-fish flip onto his belly and remain submerged save for his dorsal fin and its sharp spikes. Vimbai rubbed her forearm, which bore four long protective gouges, and winced. “So they are in the city. Is there any special weapon and tool we could use to defeat them?”

“Always looking for shortcuts,” the man-fish admonished. “Always wanting the easy way. Think about it—if there was a vulnerability, would they tell me? Would you?”

“No,” Vimbai said. “I see your point.”

“But I can explain their nature to you,” the man-fish continued. “I don’t know if it would help, but please accept it as a show of good faith—I do expose myself as much as the others when I talk about such things.”

“Of course,” Maya said. “Go ahead, talk.”

That’s the thing about injustice, the man-fish said. Those who are affected by it naturally wish for vengeance, for a manifestation of their rage and pain; and manifestation comes, although rarely in the form it is expected. When Lilith was banished from Eden, they say that she was the mother of giants, but really, the giants were just a sign of the injustice done to her. They roamed and rumbled and shook the earth.

Monsters followed Cain to the land of Nod, and monsters bred and lived in the shadows, on the underside of history—like thin fabric grown transparent in the sunlight, it showed them briefly and in shadowed outline inhabiting humanity’s dreams. They bared their teeth and claws, and their eyes watched people from every fold of darkness, waiting for them just beyond the edge of sleep.

So were the
wazimamoto
, the vampires, born out of injustice, as its manifestation and burden. They took residence in Harare built by Vimbai’s imperfect recollection, the closest they could get to the Africa of dark dreams and cruelties not talked about, and did what they were imagined to do, embodying the terror and the despair of those who had birthed them.

“I think I get it,” Vimbai said. “I just don’t understand why you . . . and them, I guess—why all of you are here? Are you just my nightmares?”

“It’s never that simple,” the man-fish said. “Now, give me my lake back and go—I mean, if you care at all about your friend.”

Maya and Vimbai stared at each other.

“Shit,” Maya said. “Where’s Felix?”

“I hope to God you’re not lying,” Vimbai said to the man-fish, and turned to Peb. “Come on, sweetie. Spit out the water so I can carry you.”

Peb obeyed, and Vimbai marveled at the stream of water spewing endlessly from his mouth, as Peb himself deflated gradually. The man-fish bounded and swam to the bottom.

“Don’t you worry,” Maya told Vimbai, “we can always get to him if we need to. Do you think they really got Felix?”

“I haven’t seen him after he went chasing after that freaky dried up head,” Vimbai said. “Then again, I wasn’t paying attention with all the drowning.”

Maya laughed and patted her shoulder. “You really have to cut it out,” she said. “It’s the second time this has happened, and the second time Peb saved you.”

Vimbai nodded, and Maya pulled her to her feet. “Come on, let’s go. It’s over the Malcolm X ridge, right?”

Vimbai smiled. “We’ve named everything there. I wish I’d written it all down.”

“I remember,” Maya said.

Vimbai nodded. “I do too.”

The two of them almost ran now, through the kitchen where Maya’s half-foxes joined them, and into the closet. They crossed the plain of discarded sisal rugs and mattress boxes, past the mound of gumboots and handkerchiefs. They passed through the valley of Five Percenters (named on Maya’s insistence, since Vimbai’s understanding of the doctrine consisted of the vaguely remembered class on African-American History, where it shared a lecture or two with hoodoo and other not-quite-religions for which the lecturer seemed almost apologetic. Even back then, Vimbai could not understand why the professor thought that these religions were less legitimate than the big three, or even the African religions and voodoo and
muti
magic.)

They reached the Harare of Vimbai’s dreams late at night, when the sun was already setting. They looked from the ridge at the long shadows falling over the city, starting at the no man’s land surrounding it and reaching deeper into the streets, serpentine, both familiar and strange—as, Vimbai supposed, a dream city ought to be.

“Perhaps it is not wise to go there in the dark,” Maya said. “For all we know, they can see in the dark.”

“They can,” Vimbai said. “And it is a real problem for Felix right now.”

“That’s right.” Maya frowned. “Felix. How do we find him here?”

“We let them find us.” Vimbai sighed. “I just don’t see any other way.”

“Unless my dogs can sniff them out.” Maya turned to her animals, smiling. “Go search,” she told her pack. “Search for Felix.”

“Wait,” Vimbai said, and dug through her pockets. “This is the handkerchief he gave me—maybe it still smells like him.”

“And don’t forget Peb,” Maya added. “He must retain some smell of Felix—after all, he and all his limbs came from his hair.”

They made sure that the dogs got a good and thorough sniff of the handkerchief and Peb both, and Maya sent them into the streets below. Maya and Vimbai followed the silent pack as they sniffed the air, no doubt stumped by its lifeless quality.

“It’s win-win,” Vimbai told Maya and Peb. “Either we find them, or they find us. In any case, I hope we get to Felix in time.”

“Wait,” Maya said. “Should we take Peb with us?”

“Good point.” Vimbai propped Peb in the branches of the nearest jacaranda tree, blue and languid like the night itself. “Stay here, little Peb, and if something bad happens, go get my grandma, okay?”

Peb nodded that he understood, and smiled a little. In the dusky gloom, he seemed transparent, but happier than he had been ever since his tongue was gone. He was either aware that his tongue was nearby, Vimbai thought, or the ability to help them in their search had distracted him from his troubles. Vimbai kept turning to look at him, glowing like a ghost of the moon in the low blue branches.

As they wandered through the streets, following the meandering track of Maya’s dogs, Vimbai looked for landmarks, for any signs that signaled that this city came from her dreams. She recognized the painted stone, the stone friezes, stiff and intricate like frozen lace. She looked into the windows, dark on the inside, and saw stone carvings everywhere—birthed from her memory of the small coop stores that sold such carvings by the artisans. Stone green and black, simple flowing lines hinting at the outline of a face with a single sweeping turn. There were flowers inside, heaps upon heaps of them, as if every house Vimbai peered into was a stall at the flower market. There were people—or rather, signifiers of them, little more than dark faces in the dark corners, hovering above moth-white crucifixes of t-shirts. She remembered how much of a shock it was to her, walking down the street with her mother, and the two of them not being the only black people around—in fact, almost everyone was black in Harare. She expected that, of course, but her heart could not be prepared for the exhilaration she felt then; the sheer intensity, the reality of it could not be anticipated.

Then there were houses that seemed to belong more to South Jersey suburbs than Harare, but Vimbai’s careless dreams plucked them from her memory anyway and dropped them among the trees and houses they did not belong with. In those, vinyl siding reflected the moonlight in fuzzy, opaque pools, and the floor lamps inside lighted the endless repetition of Vimbai’s parents’ dining room—the sturdy formal cherry table and the straight-backed chairs that surrounded it, haughtily expecting guests whose bottoms they would soon cradle. The tables were covered in the same white cloths with red trim—unusual, some sort of a heirloom, Vimbai suspected, but never cared enough to actually ask. The TVs glowered from the corner, with blue artificial static of their fisheye screens.

There were houses with tricycles on the lawns and plastic toys, large and bright and terrible in their garish innocence, strewn across driveways. There was asphalt and red dirt, and the signs for streets one would find in Zimbabwe mixed together with the ones from New Jersey. There were underpasses too steely and desperately industrial to be properly connected to a place, steel and concrete and humming of wires—the same in Zimbabwe as they were in northern Jersey and everywhere else in the world. Vimbai thought that humanity always managed to dream these not-quite-places everywhere—structures and interiors that remained the same from one continent to the next, airports and highways and hospitals, the dining rooms of franchise restaurants, prison cells. Even if the small details differed (and they rarely did), the overall sense of alienation remained the same, marking them as similar to each other and separate from the rest of the world, from the vibrant life that flowed and smelled differently in different cities, that made them all unique and recognizable—even in dreams.

Vimbai stopped as soon as she saw the sign. It winked at her from afar, its sideway neon grin fractured by the dark outlines of tree branches. “Hospital” the sign read. Of course, Vimbai thought, and pointed out the sign to Maya. “This is where they are.”

“You’re taking the medical truck literally, huh,” Maya observed, but moved closer to Vimbai, ever so casually.