THE CURSE

If you don’t want to live, most anything could kill you—an acorn falling on your head, a summer cold, or eating the wrong kind of dinner.

My grandma said that, and chuckled, when I was fifteen. She could chuckle but I was scared and lonely already, knowing she planned to die soon.

Grandma was deaf and blind. She would hear if we shouted and her hearing aid was on. She could see blurs and some colors; pink to crimson was all rose and every light color was gray or brown.

Very early mornings, in time to catch direct sunlight through the east window of her studio, Grandma stumbled from her bedroom next to mine, made her way downstairs hanging on to the bannister, then tripped on the doormat as she walked outside. She wandered through the yard trying to hear jays and sparrows, smelling the eucalyptus, pines and mulberry trees she had planted fifty years before.

I shook myself awake, dressed and, to avoid my mother who’d be irritable from her migraine headaches and sleeping pills, I went through Grandma’s room to the balcony, climbed down the rock chimney then walked up the hillside to the studio. Grandma was at her easel. She felt my vibration on the floor and turned around.

“Otis,” she said, “is it green I’ve put on these mountains?”

“Yellow,” I said. “You always put yellow where green ought to be.”

Grandma smiled. “Then I’ll simply make it springtime. It will be wild mustard on the hills. They can be hills instead of mountains.”

I sat on the floor and warmed my feet in the quilt she kept there for me. Mornings had been like this since my father moved to Alaska and my mother and I had come to live at the old house. Over six years Grandma had told me hundreds of stories about heroes, princes, fairy queens and prodigal sons, Trojan warriors, volcanoes, guillotines. Now she dabbed paint and told me about Joaquin Murieta, a murderous bandit from long ago.

Grandma said Joaquin had a fiery temper like mine was these days. A week before I had demolished a chair, after my mom said I had no right talking back to my Spanish teacher, because I was still a boy.

In old California, Grandma said, the Mexicans were driven from their land, so Joaquin became wild with fury. He went out to rob and massacre. But a bounty hunter named Harry Love caught Joaquin, chopped off his head and carried it to Stockton where some merchant displayed it in a glass case and the citizens paid to look.

Grandma said, “One night in Stockton, Joaquin’s sweetheart, Carmela, came to see him. She broke in late one night. She lifted the glass away and touched the hair, crying ‘Joaquin, you have murdered me too. I must kill this Harry Love. Once I was innocent. God loved me, Joaquin.’ Then she fell to her knees and covered her eyes, trembling because the head had begun to speak.

“Softly he said, ‘God once loved me too, Carmela. And now Joaquin will not kill anymore. He will no longer fear the slaughter he does or hope it is a nightmare. Joaquin will not think about damnation. He is already damned. It is finished. Put his head in a box, Carmela, and throw it into the sea.’”

Once Grandma had been a dark beauty like Carmela. Even now her hair was black and her eyes sparkled, but her body was lumps and folds and her face was disguised in that wrinkled mask old people have to wear.

She smiled and asked me to tell her Carmela’s story, because she knew I wanted to make up stories. But whenever I tried, as soon as I told the action to roll, the characters would stand still and glower at me.

Carmela could’ve killed Harry Love, but then who would kill Carmela? Harry Love could’ve killed Carmela, then her brothers or somebody would’ve gone after Harry Love, but that seemed no closer to an ending.

Friday night, my girlfriend Nancy met me at the movies. Usually, as soon as the lights dimmed, I was on her with both hands, but this Friday I was thinking.

Grandma was disappointed that I couldn’t make up stories, and I thought disappointment must be one reason she had grown tired of living. If I could make up a wonderful story about Harry Love and Carmela, she might take heart and want to live longer so she could teach and encourage me to be an artist like herself.

I’d been tormented from trying to understand Carmela and Harry Love so I could decide what they should do. Now, I toyed with Nancy’s thick black hair and watched her knee bounce, until I discovered an idea, a feeling that sex might be at the heart of Carmela’s story.

And I turned so horny it seemed a kind of madness.

I said, “Let’s go get my car.”

“You can’t drive,” she whispered.

“Watch me,” I said, and told her I had a special permit you could get if you lived with an invalid who might need emergency transportation. I hustled Nancy out of the theater and up the hill to my house. She didn’t argue or ask to see the permit. Even her innocent ways, I thought, must be fronts for a brain full of wildness and larceny.

My car, an ancient Plymouth that had been Grandma’s, was parked far from the house. My mother kept a spare key in the glove box. A few times I had used the key and gone for a cruise around the block.

The battery was dead. We pushed the car then rolled it down the hill. If I drove to the beach, I thought, with romantic waves and moonlight, I could convince Nancy to strip and go swimming. Then I’d be in business.

But as we passed the theater, my best friend Willy and Nancy’s best friend Joan flagged us down.

They climbed in back. Joan fell on top of Willy and her skirt rode up. Willy had his hands on her thighs. The beach was twenty miles. I decided to get somewhere quickly. I drove to a hill just a few blocks away with a vacant lot overlooking the old granite quarry where Grandma and I used to pick mushrooms and give sandwiches to Mexicans camping on their way north.

When I parked near the cliff, Joan was panting and Willy had his hand up her skirt.

Nancy let me kiss down her neck, so I followed a bone ridge to her chest, loosed her top button with my teeth and tried to tongue down her cleavage, but she pulled my hair. “We’re not alone, Otis,” she whispered.

I wrestled her legs out from under her, but she kept her knees flexed as weapons, buttoned her blouse and leaned back against the door. I tried to pry her knees apart but she pinched my fingers with them.

“I’m just trying to get comfortable,” I said.

“No, you’re not. You’re trying to get between my legs.”

“If I don’t, I’ll fall off the seat.”

“All right,” she said, and let me between her knees. “But watch out what you try. I can tell you’re excited.”

“Bet he’s got a hard-on,” Joan said and giggled.

“Big deal,” I said. “Tell her to shut up, Willy.”

Nancy let me French kiss for a while then I worked my hand beneath her slacks. Her butt was quivering. “The seat’s poking me,” she said. “And my foot’s bent sideways.”

Joan giggled.

“Make her shut up, Willy.”

“Screw yourself, Otis,” Joan said.

I sat up and gave her the finger. Willy had her panties around her knees and his hand under the front of her dress. “She’s got her panties around her knees,” I whispered to Nancy.

“I do not,” Joan said. “That’s a lie.”

“God, Otis,” Nancy said. “You’re mean.”

I didn’t feel mean. If I could’ve made her feel like I did, like somebody wrapped in cellophane, hot and panicked, if we could have the same heart and mind for just one moment, she would’ve stripped, been beautiful and sacrificed most anything to give us inspiration or comfort. And if we made a baby, she’d want to come live with me where Grandma could tell the baby stories.

But I couldn’t even say I was sorry without choking on the words.

I climbed out and kicked the fender hard. Then I walked to the cliff and threw rocks over. They clanged on the wreck of a car in the quarry. When I snuck a look back, Nancy was combing her hair. It was no use trying to change anybody’s mind. Thinking that was what made me turn mean.

I walked over and kicked Nancy’s door. “Get out,” I said. Then I kicked the back door and said it again. Willy and Joan crawled out, griping. I went around front and loosed the brake and gearshift then pushed the car a few feet until it rolled by itself. When the front wheels crossed into the air, the frame caught in dirt. It teetered for a while before it slid and the front end went straight down and hit the cliff. The rear end flipped. My car banged off the cliff three times before it landed in the quarry. I wanted it to blow up and burn, but it didn’t.

“Damn. Jesus,” Willy said. “That was a good car.”

“You OK, Otis?” Nancy asked. She was holding me from behind and shivering.

“I’m sorry I laughed, Otis,” Joan said.

“Lucky it didn’t bounce that way,” Willy said, pointing south. “It might’ve landed on a wetback.”

I didn’t say anything. While I walked Nancy home, she held my hand now and then, probably figuring I was a dangerous lunatic. I didn’t bother to kiss her goodnight, and she ran inside.

Walking home, I thought about how funny Grandma used to look driving that car, because it was so much bigger than herself. I remembered when a kitten hid in the motor and got chopped all to bits by the fan. At home, I climbed to the balcony beside Grandma’s bedroom and listened to her gruff and ragged breathing. I thought, of all the billion people in the world she was the only one who would forgive me everything, no matter what.

Grandma wouldn’t live much longer. That morning she had told me about a river valley where piles of dead leaves were magical castles, where there were pools of warm, clear water, tidelands everywhere and streams of sunlight that girls could walk up and pick fruits from the sky.

I snatched a sleeping pill from my mother’s jar and slept late in the morning.

My mother was on the front porch. She shouted for me to come out. When I did, she slapped me. “The police called,” she said. “They found Grandma’s car in the quarry. You’d better have a good story, Otis, or I’ll tell them to take you to juvenile hall, I swear.”

“It was my car,” I said.

“Did you drive at the cliff and jump at the last second?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, knowing she’d yell just the same no matter what I answered.

“I know you were acting out a fantasy. Pretending to be James Dean?”

“Yeah sure.”

She sat on the porch rail and shook her head as though she knew everything. “Otis, you know I don’t like to talk against your Grandma, but this needs to be said. Those stories of hers are so dangerous, the way they fill your head with illusions. Look at your uncles.” She meant Charley who built a sailboat that sank on its way to Tahiti, and Fenton who was getting his sixth divorce. “Or me, to marry a dreamer who goes off chasing oil wells. Otis, Grandma’s stories are for children. Then you put them aside, or else they become a curse.”

She stared at me and I stared back, for a long time, feeling as though I should defend Grandma or my father. But I didn’t know enough. My ideas were like theirs, visions of how things should be rather than how they were.

“Did you tell Grandma?”

“Of course. It was her damned car.”

I made a savage face and nodded until the nodding became a spastic compulsion, while I thought about Grandma with her eyes watering, her chest going heavy and pulling her down.

“Go on to Grandma,” my mother said. “I can’t do a goddam thing with you anymore.”

I walked to the studio and sat on the steps, believing Grandma would probably clear my troubles by taking them on herself, and die even sooner than she would’ve, if she hadn’t died already rather than see me again. I pounded my legs with a stick, then threw the stick at a bird and walked inside.

Grandma was there at her easel. “I’ve given up colors,” she said. “They don’t matter anyway. It’s textures I’m trying for now. I know what you did. Otis, it was just something you did. We already know what you are.” She pressed my chin between her fingers and smiled, meaning whatever I was, was all right to be.

“I’ll tell you a story,” she said.

“Once there was an older brother who had magical powers and a very young sister. They lived in the north woods. When the brother was about to die, he told the sister, ‘Cut off my head and hang it over the door, then I can watch out for you.’

“Soon he died and the sister obeyed him. This was near a mountain where a great bear lived. He slept in his cave all winter, but when warriors came to hunt him he would wake up and kill them. Until one day a strange warrior appeared at the sister’s Hogan to ask for help with hunting the bear.”

“Was the warrior named Harry Love?” I asked.

“All right,” she said. “He was Harry Love. What was he doing in the north woods?”

“Running. Because he figured Carmela and a gang of Mexicans were out to kill him for whacking off Joaquin’s head.”

Grandma nodded in pleasure. “As they started up the mountain, an avalanche came. They found shelter under a ledge. Harry love said, ‘The avalanche has awakened the bear. Take my knife and cut your hand. Let the blood keep flowing and hold it high so the bear can’t miss smelling it, while I stay hidden. Walk out lightly into the drift from the avalanche. Because you are small you will stay above the snow, but when the bear comes to take you his weight will drive him down, then I will come and beat him to death with my tomahawk.’”

Grandma’s voice became raw and grim while she told how the sister helped kill the great bear. Then she skipped through time until, back at the Hogan, Harry Love sat looking proud and giving orders.

“He told the sister to take her brother’s head from above the door and burn it, but she refused. So he chopped off her head with his tomahawk. Then he set fire to the Hogan and burnt both the heads. The sister and brother saw it all, from the smoke they had become together, because they had the same souls in their heads.” With her eyes drifting, Grandma said, “I wonder what became of Harry Love.”

She smiled dreamily and looked at me for an answer, but I only shuddered and asked, “Grandma, why do you tell me stories about whopped off heads?”

“Oh,” she said, and thought for a while, “a chopped off head could belong to somebody who gets carried away, like in anger or when we love. And it could belong to a madman, an artist, or an old person who doesn’t want her body anymore.” She sighed and looked toward the window. “But I don’t know why I tell the stories. If I knew, I would tell you why instead of telling the story.”

That week Grandma got laryngitis. She couldn’t talk and only painted an hour or so in the mornings. My mother wanted to take her to the hospital but she refused and said she was improving.

One night she started to choke. I got scared and even after she stopped choking I couldn’t relax to sleep. I needed someone to share these troubles, a devoted ally, like a sister might be. My mother had no imagination, so she couldn’t help me save Grandma. Besides, I wanted somebody to hold me.

Willy was the closest to a brother I had, and his sister Denise came closest to being my sister. She was barely thirteen but mature for her age and a tease. She would brush my arm with her breasts and sit on my lap squirming until she felt what she wanted. Then she’d kiss my cheek and give a coy smile.

Thinking about her, I became wild and horny. Also, I thought she might help me with a story or give me some inspiration and comfort or at least she would take my mind off things, especially if we loosened up with wine.

I stole a few dollars money from my mother’s purse then snuck out and ran down the hill to the quarry. Three Mexicans were sleeping in the shack where the quarry office used to be. I woke one, which spooked him. Then he couldn’t figure out why I was giving him money and saying “Vino.” I had to lead him across the road and point to the liquor store.

Once I had the wine, I followed a trail up the cliff and over the hill, stopping to drink and trying to feel brave.

Denise’s lights were out but her window was open. I jimmied the screen then reached in and shook her. She yelped. I told her to hush and said, “I can’t drink all this Ripple myself.”

She climbed out wearing baby doll pajamas, quivering with excitement, her hair still damp from a bath or shower. I followed her across the lawn to a sand pile behind the guest house. She sat and grinned and drank wine, with her shoulders pressed back so her nipples poked out.

“I never got drunk before,” she said. “I’m glad the first time is with you, Otis.”

She kissed my cheek and flashed her coy smile. Then I lay with my head on her lap, watching stars and thinking that if I knocked her up, Denise would make a perfect mother, young and happy with plenty of vigor. In places like Mexico, girls her age were always having babies.

I smelled something foul and asked, “What stinks?”

“Willy’s superculture.”

The superculture was a fishbowl into which, for a year, Willy had been tossing food scraps and boogers, armpit hairs and cigarette butts, worms and snails and flies, sweat, dingleberries and toe jam. He thought it might create a new kind of mold or work to repel mosquitoes.

“My mom made him put it in the guest house. Boy, this Ripple tastes like Koolaid. Will it get me drunk?”

“That would take two bottles,” I said.

She swallowed the rest and tossed it away, so I gave her another and opened one for myself, wondering how I could explain to her that it was a crime some people were older and some were younger and some people were sisters, and all those accidents of birth were supposed to keep us from doing what we could if we were the same age or strangers. But, I would argue, why should they?

“Otis? Maybe I drank this bottle too fast. Oh!”

I jumped up and led her to the Eugenia bushes. In the next yard was a cat fight, then a big dog came woofing and the cats jumped the fence. After Denise threw up, she turned around smiling and humming a tune she’d forget and stop then start all over again. Then she crashed onto the ground.

The guest house door was unlocked so I dragged her inside. The room was small and dusty with a double bed. I pulled back the covers and stretched Denise out beneath them. The superculture was fouling the air. I carried it out to the lawn.

I swallowed the last of my Ripple then sat beside Denise. I kissed her forehead. Her hair smelled like peppermint. I took a deep breath, lifted her arms and pulled off her pajama tops. She wasn’t as plump as she seemed in clothes. Her breasts jiggled as she lay on her back with her legs spread slightly. I peeled off her bottoms and bent down to look. Not having seen a live pussy up close since I was small, I studied it a moment, contemplating its magic and danger. I got nervous and pulled the covers over her. I slipped under the covers beside her. I kissed her neck, then lay still holding my enormous pecker. For all I knew it might’ve split her in half.

I squeezed up against her so we touched all along to my knees where her feet reached. In her sleep, Denise lay her arm across me and gurgled then snuggled her hair against my face and said, “‘Night.”

I stayed there, warm and tingling, and thought about the hope just a touch from some people could give, until Willy opened the door.

He looked fierce as Harry Love.

I jumped up, yelping, “I didn’t do anything. Swear to God.”

“Maniac.” He hissed and looked ready to attack me. “She’s my sister, Otis, you pig. She’s twelve and I ought to get my dad.”

I wanted to scream that she was thirteen, that he had Joan to squeeze, and I deserved somebody. But all that would sound like begging. So I got mean and pushed him against the wall, then walked out to the lawn and kicked his superculture with my heel. The fishbowl broke. Stuff inside made a stream running toward the Eugenias.

Walking home, I tried to imagine anything that might help me feel less rotten and disgraced, but nothing would. Grandma couldn’t help anymore. Even if she got her voice back and quit telling me about whopped off heads, her stories would be about kings and spirits and heroes, noble ones so different from what I had grown to be.

I stole a sleeping pill then slept until very late when the sparrows and jays had already quit singing and Grandma was dead. When I came into her studio she was slumped against the wall in the quilt she kept for me. The quilt was over her face. I sat beside her, stared out the window and made up a story. In my story Grandma thought, “The poor boy dressed in a man’s body will find me cold and bloodless. I won’t let him suffer that.” So she walked toward the door, but the table got in her way. It was still morning. The sun was climbing, turning the smog crimson. There were mushrooms in the canyon beyond the quarry, she knew, wishing to see one for the last time. There were kids in the street kicking balls around. She crawled back to the wall by her easel where a great white bird was waiting. She petted the bird and kissed him, then she hid in her quilt and died. The bird took her soul and flew it away, to the golden boxes where they keep the most precious things.