Persephone Underground Read online

  When Mom finally got up, she nearly tripped on her way to the toilet.

  “Are you….Wiccan now, Persephone? She pronounced the word like answering in the affirmative to it would be the worst thing in the world.

  “No, but over the summer when I worked for Mami Wata, I did learn some voodoo. I thought ‘what could it hurt to try and vanquish your cold’?”

  Mom was touched. “Oh, that’s so sweet! Maybe it worked. I’m feeling much better after my nap.”

  “Good enough to go to the cemetery and get it over with?” I asked.

  Mom knew instantly what I was talking about and hung her head – still ashamed of our ancient history in that car wreck. It was time to place flowers on Allyson’s grave.

  “I bought a bouquet a few days ago. I’ll just ride with it in my lap.”

  She wanted me to drive. That was a first. We blew out the voodoo candles, and got in my car.

  On the way over, Mom, desperate to have something normal to say, asked if Mami Wata’s house were close to Our Lady in Heaven.

  “Yeah, and my teacher friends, Demi and Marc Springer, live on the Boulevard of Champions, too.”

  The basket of yellow roses and white carnations trembled in Mom’s lap. I could see she was a wreck. I thought suggesting we drop in on The Springers after our morbid little errand might cheer her up.

  “Would they mind, though?” my mom asked. “It’s close to 6 and I don’t want to crash their dinner plans.”

  I tossed her my phone. It almost landed in the flowers.

  “Text em’ for me, would you? Ask if it’s okay. You can pretend to be me. Just tell him, we’re running errands in their neighborhood and could we stop by because I want you to meet my mom.”

  She did as she was told and within seconds we had a “bing” from Demi telling us to come on over. But first, we had to make our annual apology to Allyson. I parked in the church parking lot, so we could get a little walk on the way to her headstone. I found, in this ritual we performed every October 9, that it was less depressing if you didn’t drive straight up to her plot.

  I couldn’t get it over fast enough. I charged ahead, past a church employee watering shrubs with a hose and wearing an “I love Jesus pin” – past the stained glass windows of the Catholic chapel, a gift store and smell of Pot Luck emanating from a rec room.

  Mom got out of breath catching up to me. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to be enveloped in the smell of Marc’s cooking – to be in the classy Springer home, pretending to be one of them. By the time, I reached Allyson’s grave I almost hated her. I hadn’t admitted it to myself yet, but I suppose I had been looking for her in the Underworld – hoping to match her face to one of the Persephonies. But there was no trace of Allyson Cox down there. She was in the ground alright, but only six feet deep.

  I figured if there was a merciful God and a heaven, Allyson was in it. I had my doubts, but I still hoped her family would be reunited with her someday.

  Mom bent to place the flowers and then predictably burst into tears. I put my arms around her, glad the cemetery was empty. We’d learned in our four years of doing this together, the right time to come. Allyson’s family only visited her in the mornings, and appeared to skip the anniversary of her death. They came for her birthday on June 11 and on major holidays for the most part – this was what I’d proved on my own, anyway. I used to pay my respects with my foster family while mom was in jail.

  I still have nightmares sometimes about what would happen if we paid our annual visit and ran into Allyson’s parents. Would they try to strangle us? In one dream I had, Allyson’s mother stoned us to death, shouting at us that we’d ruined her life.

  I was just a baby when it happened. And by the way, I hurt my head and can’t do fractions or count change, I’d always defended myself in these nightmares.

  Then I’d remember in real life, Allyson’s parents sent my caretakers cards when I was little. They knew mom had a little girl, and said that wishing me all the best was something Allyson would have wanted.

  “Bad things happen to good people,” I blurted. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  Then Mom did something that stunned and disappointed me. She opened her purse and extracted not one, but two, airplane sized bottles of booze. She offered me one and we knocked them back right there in front of the dead.

  “I need a shot a courage,” she said wiping her mouth. “I’m about to meet your upstanding friends, and pretend I’m not some piece of shit.”

  “Mom, you’re a different person now! Is that your first drink since it happened?”

  “No,” she laughed sadly. “But I’ve made some real progress. It can be my only drink tonight.”

  We talked about her AA meetings and whether or not to call her sponsor on the way back to her car. I felt ill, not from the vodka I’d chased down, but from the sense that someone, or something, was watching us.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw a big, black dog lope through the bushes. No doubt about it; it was Fury.

  Chapter

  19

  Nobody warned us Hayden’s dad was coming to dinner. I didn’t know what he drove – just that a person of influence must be joining us tonight. When mom and I arrived, we were near blinded by a black Mercedes, so meticulously waxed, its bumper glistened in the setting sun. The car was so thoughtlessly parked, I knew it had to belong to an asshole. It took up the whole of The Springer’s driveway. I had to drive up on the lawn to park.

  By the time I spotted him, zeroing in on a massive snack tray, it was too late to get out of the party. Mom recognized Lucas Furr immediately from sitting at the long, ceremonial table with him during our wedding feast at The Pomegranate.

  I could tell from the way he smiled and warmly gripped her hand, in an extended handshake, that Lucas had been briefed by Mami Wata on what to expect: a woman who knew almost nothing about my relationship with his son.

  Lucas Furr was quite charming, actually. They chatted briefly about how the school year was going for me, and work for mom. I heard Lucas tell her he’d spent the summer campaigning to be a city commissioner.

  “Is Hayden coming?” I interrupted my secret father-in-law. He snapped his attention away from Mom and got lost in me, as he had been unable to do with everyone else in the room. He had the same penetrating gaze as Mami Wata, which I suppose made sense. The appetizer I’d snagged from Marc come back up in my throat considering this.

  “Unfortunately, no, Hayden couldn’t be here tonight. I only got this invitation myself last minute,” Lucas explained, picking up his tumbler full of Maker’s Mark and sipping eagerly from it.

  He told me he and Demi Springer were great friends, considering all the new people her brilliant comedy act had brought to The Pomegranate.

  I caught Mom staring at us from across the room, clearly in envy that people enjoyed themselves at adult parties every day, and she had given up her right to be one of them after her DUI. She tried to distract herself – following the barks and whines of the Springers’ new little dog, who had been quarantined to one of the bedrooms while the dinner party commenced.

  She stopped herself from going in to visit the poor incarcerated little canine. Animals have a sixth sense. You could tell from the sounds it was making that it could tell something evil and unnatural was in the house.

  Lucas’s lips glistened with whiskey. I tried finding a resemblance to his twin, Miz Furr but turned up nothing, again shuddering inside. Lucas was, as I said earlier, vaguely Hispanic looking, with a pencil thin Gomez Addamsy mustache – he was not Caribbean looking like his sister, and not Native American looking like Hayden.

  He was tall and thin, curving his body into a question mark to look down and talk to me. His eyes were as black as Fury’s coat. A few glistening drops of Lucas’s cocktail were stuck in his mustache.

  “So….,” he said, stirring the drink in his hand, long fingers wrapped around the glass. His fingernails were preternaturally long, and yellow.
If he were going to run for local office, he’d have to do something about that, I thought.

  “I know that you saw me in the cemetery.” At that, Lucas grabbed my wrist, pressing so hard I was certain he’d leave a bruise. I waited for someone to notice his inappropriate behavior – swoop down and save me, but no one came.

  He had cornered me as The Springers busied themselves in the kitchen, and Mom went back to being interested in thumbing through books on the living room shelves. She had clearly found one she liked, and was even humming to herself as she took a seat in the corner – completely engrossed.

  “Your family,” Lucas pronounced slowly and with loathing in his eyes, “is so god damned easy to manipulate. Now you, Persephone – you, I have a little more respect for. You’re smart. But not smart enough to…”

  I didn’t let him finish. I knew what Lucas was getting at. He didn’t want me hanging around Ronnie anymore – not with both of us in on his disgusting secret.

  “So you came here to threaten me? I actually owe Ronnie my life. Mami Wata had drugged me and I woke up alone, on the floor of her root cellar. She got me out.”

  “You weren’t alone my dear. I was there,” he paused, deeply considering what he might say next. “I am Fury, you know.”

  “Yes, you most certainly are,” I agreed.

  Lucas released my arm as if to break the spell the room was under. Marc waltzed in as though nothing were amiss, a smiling party host offering us oysters on the half shell.

  “Mr. Furr brought these and they are wonderful,” Marc enthused. “They slide right down your throat.”

  Lucas laughed and reminded everyone in the room to call him by his first name. The alcohol was flowing freely now and the vibe loosened up enough for Demi to sweep into the room and beg for her teaching job.

  “Can you tell your wife to give me until at least the start of the winter break to turn things around in my classroom?” she begged him.

  Lucas Furr had the sort of deadpan sense of humor that made it so you never knew if he was joking or not. He asked Demi a question that made everyone in the room uneasy and amused all at once.

  “Baby, if I did that, what would be in it for me?”

  “What do you mean, Lucas?” Demi seemed nervous at the “baby” slip.

  Why had he called her that? Were they dating or something?

  Lucas didn’t care like his mistress seemed to. He didn’t skip a beat, just answered her question with brutal honesty.

  “Well, if Robin fires you from your teaching position – which we both know isn’t you because you’re a lousy teacher – I have no one to headline events at The Pomegranate. Your comedy brings ‘em in in droves.”

  He left Demi standing there, mouth agape at his cruel remark. There was a smaller table loaded with delicious snacks of which he wanted to partake. The devil incarnate was quite the gnosher, I thought.

  Hayden’s Dad popped an olive in his mouth, asked my mom if she had tried the goat cheese and bruschetta yet.

  By this time, Mom was nursing a big fat, Maker’s Mark of her own. I was heartbroken. This was a huge backslide for her. I hated Lucas Furr for causing it. I blamed him 100 percent. I drank nothing. Not only because I’m the sort of girl who knows she’s underage, but because I knew I’d have to get both of us home in one piece.

  I was all fake smiles the rest of the dinner. Lucas commandeered the conversation, and it took a turn for the worse when gun violence in schools came up. We all talked about how awful these mass shootings all over the country had been – especially in schools.

  “What do you think school administrators need to do? I mean…,” Demi trailed off thoughtfully for a minute. “What does your wife think of all this?”

  I did have to wonder if Miz Furr thought the answer was more guns, like her husband.

  “I believe we should arm teachers,” Lucas Furr said with no apologies. Not even Marc’s outraged laughter made him falter.

  It was me who changed the subject, and I did it by saying that Mom and I had better get going. I gathered up our two empty plates and went into the kitchen against my hosts’ protests they would see to that.

  As I rinsed everything under a powerful cascade of water, I felt Lucas come up behind me. He added his plate, as well as a caveat.

  “Listen, you little whore. My son thinks he’s in love with you, so I won’t do what I want to do, which is hypnotize everyone in this room and slit your throat.

  But I will. I will visit you in the night in Fury’s form, jump through your window and carry you off to hell in my jaws if you ever see that Ronnie woman again….if you ever breathe a word of what she told you.”

  I gripped the sides of the kitchen sink, praying as I looked down, whimpering in fright louder than the little dog who was still locked away in the Springers’ bedroom.

  “I won’t,” I said, refusing to look at him as I made my solemn vow.

  “Good, because I won’t stop at coming after you,” the devil said, breathing his hot, foul smelling breath into the side of my neck.

  “I’ll come for everyone at your school except my wife. Principal Furr will be more than happy to let me in. She’s the one who leads me to girls like you in the first place.”

  Chapter

  20

  All the way home, Mom talked in a slow, drunken way about how much she had liked the “charming” Lucas Furr. I didn’t say anything. A sober version of my mother would have had a problem with my silence. Mom-the-lush just looked out the window and babbled. Her word choice was a little odd. Not that she was an idiot or anything, but her vocabulary didn’t usually give itself over to “dashing”, “brave” and the especially terrifying “I love a smart conservative thinker.”

  No, no she did not. My mom was a Democrat through and through. We liked to watch MSNBC in our PJs and shout at the right wingers who dared come on Rachel Maddow’s show as guests. It was if someone were pulling strings on mom and making her act a certain way.

  I put her to bed when we got home, and went into the bathroom to clean up the candles and hankies from the spell I’d done earlier today. The compact mirror from Mami Wata sat on the pink porcelain sink, next to a bowl of strawberry scented potpourri. I noticed as I sat down to use the toilet – reached over and grabbed it.

  When I snapped it open, I jumped a foot when I looked into its small mirror.

  “Nice place to communicate with me, eh Persephone?”

  I repositioned the mirror in my hands so it was only possible for Mami Wata to see my face.

  “Does this thing dial down to the Underworld, too?” I asked in the deadpan way I suspected Mami Wata had come to adore. Hayden confided in me one lazy summer afternoon, while we cleaned kitchen grout together, that his grandmother loved my sense of humor.

  She loves that you aren’t shocked by anything she does and only seem to want more…Hayden had said to me that day.

  Keeping her lips from going up at the corners, Mami Wata maintained her tight expression but I could see it was a struggle.

  Her face took up the whole of the clam shell lid. I couldn’t tell where Mami Wata was broadcasting from, but I could see her thinking carefully before she spoke again.

  “I want to apologize for Lucas, he had no right to threaten you at the dinner party. You know our dirty family secret, so what? I just have a feeling about you. You are different from the other girls we’ve…taken. You must truly know us before you agree to join us forever. Now, I feel that Lucas has spoiled that for Hayden.”

  I was stunned to learn from her I had any sort of upper-hand. What I told her next was the truth. I didn’t mean for it to be; it simply was.

  “I don’t care that Hayden came from your twin children. I still love him, and I think…I think I may want to rule down there alongside him. I just don’t have the courage to die yet.”

  “I understand,” the old woman said. “But please know my grandson and I do not have black hearts, like Robin and Lucas do. If and when you join us, my child
, we will leave my house on the Boulevard of Champions. We can start anew in any time and place.”

  I told her I knew anything was possible with her magic, and snapped the clamshell shut. I stupidly wondered if it could begin to ring, like a phone, in my hand. I would have asked to speak to my beloved, but didn’t want Hayden to know I was in the bathroom.

  I hiked up my jeans and went back to my room. As I went about my business preparing for bed, I heard the sound of tiny stones being thrown at my window, ping, ping ping. Glad I had selected a slinky, pink night gown that exposed my cleavage, I went over and pushed it up, leaned out over the sill. What I saw next, I thought only happened in the movies.

  “Hayden, is that you?” I whispered loudly.

  It was the lanky, awkward version of Hayden indeed. “Can I come up?” he asked me, pushing his glasses up his sweating nose. It was a hot night. The breeze from outside felt good against my bare arms and exposed chest, blowing my long dark hair so it whipped around my face.

  “Yeah, let me let you in from the front. But please be quiet, my mom is sleeping.”

  He tip toed around the house, and as soon as I opened the door, he fell into me, kissing the side of my neck – surprising me with his ability to lift and carry me toward my room.

  “You look so beautiful,” he mumbled against my own lips – it was like we were chewing on each other. We fell in a dizzying tumble onto the bed. It was the first time we’d done this above ground.

  I told Hayden, he couldn’t stay the night. My mom would be rising for her shift at the hospital soon. It was not yet 3 a.m. but I told him if he could leave by 4, it should be fine.

  “I’m glad we have this chance to talk,” he said, taking my arm from where it lay in the cool of the sheets.

  Hayden rearranged himself so that we were nestled together like two mated puzzle pieces. I was relaxed as I could be; then he got my pulse racing. He admitted he knew Ronnie and I were friends.

  I leapt into defense mode.