Persephone Underground Read online

  Chapter

  10

  It’s strange, the first things we notice. When they brought me back to the scene of the crime – the place the Furrs had abducted me, drugged me, and carried me away to Mami Wata’s – the first thing I noticed was the bracelet on my wrist. Hayden had deposited me in the corner, where his grandmother read palms, and when I sat down at the candle-lit table, I couldn’t help but admire the jewelry that had magically appeared on my person since arriving here.

  At my neck, there was a ruby necklace to match my dress; each stone cut like a star fish. A tiny sand dollar – about the size of the wafer Catholics eat at communion – hung from the chain and brought Mami Wata’s eye to my cleavage. My bracelet was just the same: red rubies and white sand dollars. I got the feeling, if you wanted to mug me outside, it’d be well worth your while.

  The Pomegranate was packed. There was a long table at the head of the restaurant where Hayden had gone to join his mother, Principal Robin Furr and dad, Lucas. Mr. Lucas Furr, whom everyone called Luke, owned the nightclub and was busy chatting up the woman seated next to him.

  I realized with a start, the woman was my mother! They arranged to bring her here. It was the best wedding gift I could have asked for. I made a move to run to Mom, but Mami Wata pulled me back – making me want to howl in agony. As grand as tonight was, she still hadn’t bothered to trim back her nails. I thought of the monstrous looking mermaid back in hell and shuddered.

  “You look smashingly pretty,” Mami Wata told me, something about her crooked grin making me wonder if she knew how conflicted I was about all this. Sure, I worried about violence ensuing if I took one misstep, but I was also kind of excited to be part of the Furr Family.

  “Your mother has got to be so proud of you tonight,” the old voodoo queen guessed. She tucked a lose tendril of my dark hair behind my ear. I did not miss the tenderness she showed; nor could I ignore how good it felt.

  “Are you sure about that? I’m 17. That’s a little young to have eloped don’t you think?” I was whispering savagely – my frightened eyes sparkling with a mix of love and hate. I told the old woman that she better not have drugged my mom – told her mom was a nurse and she’d figure it out.

  Mami Wata told me I was stupid and that I was going to have to speak up if I expected to have my desires carried out. I had just married the Prince of the Underworld and needed to get used to ordering people around, she said. She agreed it was too loud in here. A live band was on stage performing a cover of Hotel California – the part about some dancing to remember and some dancing to forget.

  “Relax, child. Your mother knows nothing of your nuptials. That’s my gift to you. I hypnotized her, yes – but she has no idea of what you’ve been through. I’ll wait until you recover from your anger,” Mami Wata continued, slowly, ‘then you can have the rest of your wedding gift.”

  There was something different about the old woman tonight – the fact that you could strike “old” from being a major identifier.

  Mami Wata seemed refreshed and young again. She wore a blue coral necklace and matching pant suit; her hair in dregs, and tied at the ends with white ribbon. It was hard not to mistake her for a sister to Principal Furr, who also looked vibrant tonight – like both of them had just received very good news or reprieve from something awful.

  Their joy transformed them into something more normal, and for split seconds at a time made me feel like your everyday newlywed – just an ordinary bride getting ready for her big dinner and rounds of good luck toasting.

  More like roasting, was the reality of it down in Hell.

  I wracked my brain to figure out why everyone seemed more happy than evil tonight – why they were finally treating me with respect, as though they were proud of me. Perhaps it was because I’d honed my talents, and become more like the Furrs. Since they’d stolen me, my own ability to read people had improved significantly.

  I could be a fortune teller, just like Mami Wata if I wanted. I could see the past and the future clear as crystal, and I think I know now, what kind of bullet everyone who loves Hayden thinks they dodged tonight. Looking at him, we could see the frail boy who seemed at death’s door was gone. He looked strong enough to continue among the living – and all thanks to marrying me.

  At a distance, I watched Robin Furr whisper something in her son’s ear. Hayden responded, laughing and smiling. It looked like maybe she had just complimented him. He was still thin, but so much healthier than he had been at the beginning of the summer – he looked, for all the world, like a kid getting ready to shore up his school supplies and head back to class on Monday. It was the last weekend of summer break. Come Monday, I hoped to be back at school myself.

  Mami Wata and I continued to watch all of this from afar.

  “What’s my gift?” I asked, willing myself to soften up. The band had just finished its set with a noisy drum roll, and clattered off the stage. Lucas Furr rose from the wedding table, adjusted his suit jacket, and walked up to the mike to announce the next act.

  Apparently, her name was Demi Springer. She had just moved here from California and worked as a screenplay writer, teacher and sometimes stand-up comedian. Demi kissed Lucas’s cheek, thanked him and acknowledged her husband Marc sitting at a table close to the stage.

  Mami Wata made it quick and told me my wedding present.

  “I’m sending you home with your mother tonight. You can attend school, live in the home you are used to. Hayden and I have released you from our employ until the winter break begins.” Mami Wata’s words were a siren song of pure joy – just music to my ears.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” I told her. I rose from my chair at her tarot card table, and went over to sit with my mom finally. Mom was clapping her head off for the comedian, Demi Springer.

  I practically fell into her arms, stopping to hug her before I took my seat next to Hayden. I was so happy to see her again that I began to cry, smelling her perfume, burying my grateful face into the side of her neck. I didn’t want to let go of her; I had never appreciated my mom like this before.

  “I’m thrilled to see you, too, sweetie,” Mom said. “What a long summer its been. We’ll talk in the bathroom right after this act. I don’t want to be rude – looks like a lot of planning went into this party.”

  Her words rushed together with concern. Principal Furr – Miz Furr – was giving us stink eye. We turned our attention to the chunky red-haired woman on stage. Part of her act was to insult us with a wild, infectious laugh. I knew that laugh, and her face was incredibly familiar too.

  It was the woman who had knocked on Mami Wata’s door that day, looking for her lost dog. This was Domino’s owner. She was so dressed up tonight, I didn’t recognize her at first.

  My god, Demi Springer was hilarious! She leveled a lot of her comedy roast at Hayden’s father – suggested he was a backwards gun nut. She kept crouching down, urging him not to shoot until she had her thoughts and prayers ready as a shield.

  She tore into his political party, insisting that it was full of the Haves and the Haves Yachts. When I looked over at Lucas Furr, he was laughing right along with everyone else. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Miz Furr, whose stink eye had gotten far stinkier – going from evil to full on demon skunk in 0 to 60. Her loathsome gaze was trained on Demi Springer, and it was obviously a look of pure jealousy.

  I remembered then, how Hayden confided in me in one of our walks with Fury, he thought his dad was having an affair with one of the performers at The Pomegranate. I never dreamed it was Demi. I worried for her life, but loved her comedy so much I kindof pushed that fear aside.

  Luckily, this comedian was so funny I forgot about the scary Furrs and the black magic they could do if you were an extreme asset like me, or an extreme burden like this foul mouthed red head on stage. Demi took pot shots at her husband for seeming gay, telling the audience how he was “a delicate little man who wouldn’t dare eat a grape after 6 o’clock.” She made f
un of her own weight and the rigmarole of ordinary life.

  Evidently, Demi had gone to the doctor to have a boil lanced and the gal at the counter had said her insurance was shit and they’d never heard of it. “It sounds made up, your insurance – you really expect to see a doctor, comin’ out of left field with that Blue Cross, Blue Shield….”

  I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed reality – to be back in the real world and hear someone mock its ridiculousness so ruthlessly. It was such a breath of fresh air. When her act ended, I was drunk off comedy in addition to actually being drunk. I may have been underage, but my husband was barely old enough to drink, and he’d passed most of his cocktails down to me.

  Mom and I walked hand in hand to the bathroom, still laughing hard, wiping tears from our cheeks. After we’d peed and were fixing our hair at the mirror, I asked mom what she thought of my hus—I stumbled and ended up with just: “What do you think of my boyfriend?”

  Mom applied her dark red lipstick, considering. “Oh, Hayden’s super sweet. So quiet – a little thin maybe, but I’m sure your cooking will put the pounds on. All and all, I’d say, great catch.”

  Of course, I couldn’t laugh at the fish metaphor while Mom jabbered on. She mentioned that Mami Wata had arranged to bring all of my stuff back to the apartment.

  “She hired movers. Didn’t ask Hayden to move your stuff this time. We couldn’t find you two love birds anywhere.”

  Mom capped her lipstick and we left the crowded bathroom. Weaving our way through smoke and the din of music, I could see dinner was being served at our table – glistening red lobsters and champagne – a baked Alaska cake with lit candles, all but melting the ice cream inside.

  We polished off everything. Then we each got a turn dancing with Hayden and his father. As a joke, we shared a dance or two with Miz Furr, and each other, and then we went home – it was all just a blur, frankly. The only part of the evening I remembered well was Mami Wata’s assurances I’d get to leave The Pomegranate with my mother. The old woman had disappeared shortly after giving me that gift – a relief to me, lest she’d get the chance to ply my mother with any poisoned food or drink.

  Mom was pretty diligent with her AA meetings and avoiding temptation. She hadn’t drunk anything at The Pomegranate, and got us home in a smooth commute from downtown Lauderdale to the crappy north part of town, where our apartment was just a 10 minute walk from Bad Ass Academy.

  When I walked through the front door, it was like no time had passed at all – just an ordinary summer, with take-out cartons, magazines and remotes littering the coffee table. Mom had checked out the old 80s movie, Splash from the library and there were bottles of half-spent nail polish everywhere. The colors reminded me of the scales I’d cleaned from Mami Wata’s tub.

  Maybe there was some credence to what Mom had said on the drive home – that I was just confused and not fully over my head injury; the defining thing in my life that made me so retarded at counting change and telling time. She apologized for the millionth time for driving drunk all those years ago with me in the car. She’d make an appointment for head scans on Monday. I was talking nonsense again.

  Before all the stuff with Hayden and Mami Wata, I would have been infuriated to hear all this. But right now, it felt so good – so comforting! All summer long, I had been a maid and taken care of other people. Now someone was taking care of me. Mom took my shoes off and got me into a pair of pajamas with the strength of a nurse who was used to such things.

  She patted my back as I leaned over the toilet, and lost pretty much all of my grand wedding feast. When she tucked me in, she remarked how nice it was to have even Snowball the hamster back.

  “I’ve missed the sounds of you being here,” she said, watching the little white rodent run on his wheel.

  We talked a little bit more about our respective summers, but I was too drunk and sleepy to describe it the way I felt I needed to – to do Hayden and the Underworld justice – to explain that there were many Persephonies, kidnapped and doomed to a life in hell and then maybe, if they were lucky, an oceanic heaven. I babbled things and Mom just stroked my hair, telling me it would all be better in the morning.

  And that was all fine and good. Any sense of responsibility in telling my story properly was rapidly slipping away from me. My eyes narrowed to slits, eventually – the last thing I saw before drifting off to sleep was Mom’s worried face.

  Chapter

  11

  Mami Wata made good on her promise, and didn’t bother me the entire first quarter of school starting back up. And I made good on my promise to mom that I’d stop talking crazy. She took me in for brain scan, of course – and back to the psychologists who helped with my memory problems following the accident she caused. You see, after Mom’s DUI my mind was completely scrambled.

  I had to learn how to walk and talk again, and I did (well, obviously) recover everything. Everything but math. School had been a nightmare until I mastered first grade math. I learned it more recently than I care to admit.

  I used to daydream in classes that were too hard. I lived in a world of my own. In elementary school, I even had an imaginary friend – so for me to tell a story about the magical Mami Wata and her Prince of the Undead grandson, was not so far out of character. That’s what Mom said anyway – to the shrink who had me play with dolls to illustrate where Hayden touched me. I didn’t share the Furrs’ real names or where they lived. When school got stressful, I fantasized about going back to the Underworld.

  Letting the Fuurs kill me, so I could live there in a legitimate sense – Hayden’s princess. My sketch book filled with drawings of everything that happened to me that summer. My grades slipped because I was doing most of it in school.

  I was daydreaming about the big red bed in Hayden’s chambers, and his muscles rowing us through seas of mermaids, when Mrs. Springer called on me in English class. Demi Springer is the comic I remember from The Pomegranate. She wears her crazy red hair in a loose bun when she teaches. It would blow the other students’ minds to know she is so funny. In class, Mrs. Springer is a nervous wreck, with zero in the way of behavior management skills.

  “Persephone?” she asked in a helpless way. “Could you come up here and help me out with some grading, please?”

  I approached Demi’s desk, where you almost couldn’t see her under an avalanche of mid-terms on The Iliad. The kids were throwing paper airplanes, and fighting over the bathroom pass hanging by the door. She had tried to do a lecture, and gave up when they wouldn’t listen. The bell was about to ring anyway.

  “Mrs. Springer, you need to get control over this class,” I told her, as I began to collate the garbage on her desk. There were all manner of things on it – from notecards with jokes she wanted to use in her standup, to sticky crap that actually stank. She waved away my concern and muttered something about teacher evaluations happening soon.

  “I just need to get these grades in, so Mrs. Furr doesn’t have my head,” Demi told me. “Without your help I’d be totally lost. Thanks so much, honey.”

  It was the last class of the day, and a Friday at that. Everyone, including myself wanted to get the hell out of dodge. The bell rang at 2:40 sharp and the kids poured out in a near screaming stampede.

  My English teacher looked at me gratefully, as she knew I’d stay late and help her clean up, work on lesson plans. I’d been doing it for the past two months, and gleaned so much about her private life in that time. I could tell her husband Marc, who taught history down the hall, was gay; their marriage a sham. I knew they were struggling to start a family – that they were in debt to a fertility clinic. Mrs. Springer – well, Demi, as she begged me to start calling her—was a funny lady, but kind of a tragic lady too. A lot of the mess surrounding her was just a manifestation of pain.

  I don’t know if it was for moral support or what, but she had a pretty extensive Beanie Baby collection overwhelming her desk space. She had to chuck a few to the floor to get to her laptop.
I was glad to see her so distracted entering our grades. I didn’t want her to think I was being critical. I only wanted to see her become a better teacher, because I knew Miz Furr was on her case and wanted her fired.

  Maybe Demi could read my mind because she snapped her laptop shut, and looked me dead in the eye.

  “Look, would you like to come to my place tonight and have dinner with Marc and me? We’re having a real nice spread tonight. A college friend of Marc’s is coming over.”

  I knew Demi’s husband was getting his doctorate at FAU.

  “Oh, yeah. Who?” I asked.

  “Some chick from from Delray Beach. Apparently she’s gorgeous but you can understand after meeting Marc why I’m not intimidated,” she laughed rather breathlessly. Anyway, it would be great to have a friend of mine, with me tonight.”

  I finished up matching a stack of tests to the answer key while Demi babbled on. She said that the woman joining us for dinner was in her 40s and had been a student at Bad Ass back in the day.

  “Bad Ass is kicking my ass,” Demi joked. I need a bottle of wine and a surrogate daughter to help with the dishes. We’re having baked ziti,” she declared finally.

  I didn’t tell my teacher this, but I’d jump at the chance to see her house if the dinner were liver and onions. I pretended to need the address she jotted down for me; truth was, I knew the way to her house like the back of my hand. Hayden and I had passed it every night, walking Fury last summer. I snatched up the little pink note with 719 Boulevard of Champions on it, and ran out the door.

  “Don’t get there before I do!” Demi had yelled after me, and then, “ah, hell, the key is under the pot of geraniums.”

  On the drive to Marc and Demi’s, I thought about how much I missed the old dog walk with Hayden – how I had resisted the temptation to wander the cemetery, and enter the Furr’s crypt in Our Lady in Heaven – try to get back into hell. But the pragmatist in me thought, if I just ride this out, he’ll forget all about me – maybe fall in love with one of his other Persephonies – and then I won’t have to join him down there, come winter break.