Shadow Swans Chapters Four and Five

Chapter Four

To hover, hummingbirds move their wings in a figure 8.


I was a melancholy child, roaming the dark woods of upstate New York with a flashlight and a death wish. At age 9, in a dramatic fit of childish self-absorption, I tried to throw myself off a cliff because I felt so alone in the world, and because my mother had refused to allow me to go to the birthday party of the most popular girl in school - the girl was a “bad influence.” I chose a very cinematic bluff behind our house, overlooking the city, where my dress would billow out around my waist, and just when the sun shone high, and the world seemed most pleasantly oblivious, I threw myself headlong toward certain death. But in actuality I just cascaded down the six-foot drop, landing in a screaming heap, wrist broken in two places.
From then on, my melancholy only grew, and I became the “bad influence” girl whose birthday party was prohibited in the most proper circles. I grew intolerant of everyone, and I withdrew into my epic imagination, and began to write stories and philosophies and life details that I presumed far more significant than they were.
I found myself to be brilliant, and unloved, and filled with languor. I began counting things early on. First, I would count the hairs on my knee, or the wrinkles in my palm. Then I counted blades of grass at recess, and the teachers became concerned, sending notes of worry home to my parents. I sometimes spent hours sitting in patches of clover, searching for the one with the fourth leaf.
As I matured, nothing could excite me – not clovers, not sex, not narcotics, not the brutality of the world. On the contrary, I searched for meaning in all of it, and found none. Only hummingbirds ever seemed to me to be complete organisms – small enough to remain invisible to most of the world, fast enough to travel throughout it, sucking sweet nectar from the most beautiful flowers imaginable.
My mother encouraged my hummingbird fetish, as she found it to be the only hint of daintiness in her otherwise dismal progeny. When I started making hummingbirds, during adolescence, my family circle was charmed by the eccentric little creations. But when they began to flow from my bedroom’s every orifice, when they began to speak to me, actually speak to me, the charm dissipated, and once again, I heard murmurs in the hallways about whether it was time for poor little Ruby to seek inpatient care… But everyone didn’t see that my erupting flock of hummingbirds was testament to my love of beauty – hard-to-reach secret beauty. I wasn’t incapable of finding joy on this Earth – I just found it harder than some. But it was not acceptable for me to be anything less than a cheerful young lady. And so I learned to play the part well enough to ward off the psychiatrists, secretly continuing my love affair with little wire winged creatures.

Soon after I met Den, my hummingbirds practically started spinning themselves. They multiplied in unprecedented fashion – my brood grew by two or three birds a day, my hands glowing raw and torn.
The streets of New York were never more detestable to me than at that time. Little sweat-shirted college girls waddled down the streets squawking into their telephones. Dirty artists sat in cafes talking about how much they hated the President, while making plans to go to Thailand over Election Day week. Fancy girls, not sexy enough to model underwear, dressed as if they were sexy enough to model underwear, so that they could trap banker boyfriends who would render them miserable and rich and eternally undervalued. New York was steeped in vapidity, and I felt smothered by it.
I took some solace in the awkwardness of the enthusiastic nerds who worked with me at Geekspace. At least they didn’t live in a world of pretense; they lived in a world where the patterns of the world could be compartmentalized. Mark was probably the smartest among my colleagues, and this was the only thing that had attracted me to him. When he talked, sweet as he was, I wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth. I just liked to watch his mind work, and lie next to him. To me, that was as good as a relationship could possibly get.

Following my second encounter with Den, I invited Charlie, one of the Vietnam Vets who squatted in my building (I always thought it fantastic that his name was Charlie, and he had lost the vast majority of his marbles in Vietnam, while killing “Charlie”), over for a glass of warm wine. He was a sucker for warm white wine – not cold – spent too much of his life freezing his ass off, he said, and he drank wine to get himself warm, so why drink it cold? Charlie came in stinking and drunk and jabbering, as usual, but sweet as aspartame. With his long beard, and wise tired old eyes, and gnarly veined hands that looked as if they had crafted the Earth themselves, millions of years ago, Charlie was like the father I might have had if I had grown up in a Narnian ghetto. He believed that most people could fly, and the cops could shoot lasers out of their eyes, and he could tell who among the general population was an alien. I, of course, was not an alien. I was one of the “protectors,” as he called us – we would save the world from evil domination. I loved that idea, and swore to him that I would uphold my duties as Earth protector. Charlie was tragic, but perfect.
He came in, sat on the floor with his back against the wall, and accepted a cup of warm wine (he was not partial to wine glasses), scratched his wiry gray beard, worked himself up about how the government had put cameras in all of the trees in the park so it could find the terrorists, and we were never alone, we were under the man’s thumb at every moment. He paced the room, flailing arms clad in an enormous old denim shirt unbuttoned at the wrists, so that when he gesticulated, the denim flapped like wings unhinged. A car alarm wailed somewhere outside; Charlie turned to the velvet-curtained window, stared at it as if preparing for the car to come crashing through. Once he was deeply drunk and placated, I asked, “What do you know about people who live in the subway?”
He jumped up from the floor, leapt to the window in one bound, and peeked out from behind my blue velvet curtains, as if he were searching for a sniper. Turning around to face me, he asked intently, “ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?”
“No. I live here in your house. I just want to know about them.”
“About who?” His face tilted slightly sideways with suspicion, his eyes narrowed to a slit, as if squinting would reveal my true intention.
“The people who live in the subway.”
“Oh, them.” He reached up and spun several of my hummingbirds on their strings, just to watch them dance, his own sleeve flapping backward as he reached to the ceiling. “Freaks. They’re blind and pink and eat each other. And once they go down there, they never come out. And they make little blind pink babies that have gills and swim around in the sewers like they’re swimming pools.”
His back again pressed hard against my wall, and he grabbed his neck, as if preparing to rip off the gills that might have suddenly sprouted. “Ha! They’ve got something going, really. They don’t have to deal with any of this bullshit.” With that, he held out his hands, to indicate all of the bullshit that surrounded us. “There are no cameras down there, you know? They’re pretty much on their own. Smart, really.” He ran to the window, and peeked out from behind the curtain.
I walked over and gently pulled him back from the window. “Have you met any of them?”
He wrinkled his face in disgust. “Me? No. I don’t talk to people who live down there. They stink, they’re dirty.” The muddled logic in many of Charlie’s personal beliefs never failed to amuse me. He continued spinning the hummingbirds, “But, hey, check this out: they brew their own liquor down there. Far out. I like your new birds, man. This one’s new. And that one right there has a beautiful soul.”
“Yeah, I know. Little John, the blue and yellow one with the red mohawk, flew away yesterday.”
With genuine sympathy, he said, “Well, he had to go. It was his time.”
“I gotta get to work, Charlie. You can take the rest of the bottle with you.”
He bent down to pick up the bottle from my worn hardwood floor. I noticed that some of my planks had rotted so deeply that the ancient frame beneath peeked through.
Charlie leaned in to give me five, and said, “Thanks, man. I’ll see ya. Let me know if they mess with you.”

That night, I painted broad white swaths over parts of my walls. Sometimes I need to be surrounded by a veil of white. I want to wear it, eat it, drink it, watch it, and think about it, until I feel blank and clean. The wan light bulb overhead rendered the room magically desperate, like in a movie about a serial killer. The new white swaths on the walls filled the room with irony and peace. By the time I went to bed my body was covered in crusty patches of white paint. I slept that way to see if the pallor and chemicals would affect my dreams. But I didn’t dream.



Chapter Five

A hummingbird may eat twice its body weight in a single day.

Really, my existence was unintended. A loveless home had grown stale, my parents dancing around each other every day, deftly avoiding one another without seeming to, so that they wouldn’t have to confront the emptiness between them. They thought that a child might repair the breach, but instead I widened it, because I was never the flower-wearing, pink-loving, cheerleading, perfect little girl for which they’d hoped.
My parents tried to be good to me, tried to be loving. But in the end, they approached me like a stock portfolio – manage the thing properly, and maybe the outcome will be positive; manage it poorly, and the whole family is screwed. I think that the Ruby Portfolio failed to deliver even a fraction of the returns that had been expected. And so, although I do believe that my mother loved me, deeply, even tragically, she always had trouble expressing any affection toward me. I became just one more fixture in a cordial home. I joined my parents’ dance of avoidance, and made myself as invisible as possible.
I think this is why darkness became my modus operandi. My concerned Mother sent me to therapists far and wide. None had any success with me, because, they said, I didn’t have the will to change, and a person without the will to change will never change.
My true therapy was found not in the doctors’ offices, but in a small patch of forest that nobody else had discovered. Across the field from my house, in an otherwise nondescript woodland, sat a giant rock that resembled a mushroom. Pine trees three feet in diameter grew around the rock, their needles blanketing the forest floor. At age 12, I strung rope from three of the trees, forming a triangle from which I could hang a tarp for protection from the rain. I painted the rock like a magic mushroom, great brown and yellow spots crowning the top, white rivets underneath the crown, and a pure white base at the bottom. The trees I painted as mushroom-worshipping tree people, using the branches as limbs, finding faces in the bark patterns. I hid small gnomes among the trees, and hummingbirds in the treetops. I spent most weekends sitting in my wild grotto under the tarp, talking to the trees, writing endlessly in my journal.
The only people I ever brought to the grotto were Claire, a big, troublesome girl who ended up losing all her potential to methamphetamines, and Rob, an old boyfriend who bought me cigarettes. To some extent, I recreated the grotto in New York, in my newest neglected corner of the world. But most of the time, even the charms of my new Grotto weren’t enough to clear the fog of affliction that sometimes enveloped me.

I put together a package for Den, in case she called me again: some clothes I didn’t want anymore, old makeup, worn copies of Middlesex and Kite Runner. I didn’t know if she’d ever use any of it, but I would’ve thrown the stuff away soon anyway, so I didn’t really care.
Around that time, I fell into one of my fogs, saying almost nothing to anyone. Mark tried to revive me with sweetness and flowers. At lunch, sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, he said, “What’s happening to you, when you don’t talk to me for days?”
I felt no warmth toward him, and his efforts gave me no warmth. Just coldness and apathy, except for a glimmer of familiarity, which was enough to keep me from running far away. I swung my feet up on the bench, leaned my back against his side, said, “Nothing. Tell me more about the new code.”

Eventually, I all but gave up on the possibility of seeing Den again. I had known her for almost three months, seen her only twice; I clearly was not, for her, the bastion of excitement that she was for me. At the end of April, I submerged myself in a total fast for 24 hours, thinking that perhaps not eating would make me feel fully alive, and serve me some kind of spiritual revelation. My fast began at 8PM; by noon the next day I decided that my idea was ridiculous. But my obstinacy outweighed my irritation and appetite, so I figured I’d see it through. At lunchtime, I resolved to go home from work and paint my walls again, because the sterility of my office had grown more infuriating as my hunger mounted. As I painted a massive whale-like creature, its saber-toothed mouth open so wide I could have walked through it, my phone rang.
“Yes.” I said, with no emotion.
“It’s Den. I need you right now.” Her voice sounded less brash, less imposing than usual. Was she crying?
Blood evaporated from even the tiniest of my veins, chilling my body. Quietly, “What’s wrong?”
“Just come down here, please. Same place.” The desperation in her voice alarmed me.
I threw the paintbrush into the bucket, wiped paint-spattered hands on my jeans, slipped on my sneakers. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
I found Den already sitting on the bench, stinking, staring at her hands, one foot bouncing nervously on the floor. She looked up at me, her face blotched, patches of red staining her translucent white skin, eyes swollen and mangled with tension.
“What happened?”
“My Mom is sick. I don’t know what she has. I thought it was just a cold, but we don’t have any medicine, and she just keeps getting worse and worse. I need something, antibiotics or something. But I don’t have any way to get them. And I need to heat her up – she’s so cold, no matter how many blankets we pile on her.”
I wondered who “we” was.
I took a breath. “Meet me back here in an hour, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”
“Thanks. Thank you, really.” She still hadn’t risen from the bench; her body inert, filled with three tons of lead, her shoulders pulled toward the floor by giant subterranean magnets.
“Sure. See you in an hour.”
I loped up the station steps and then sprinted toward Mark’s apartment on 12th Street. I didn’t have a key, but his place was about as hard to break into as a piggy bank. Jumped up on the handrail of the stoop, then onto the fire escape, and in through his always-unlocked second-floor window. The place was cluttered with video games, books, dirty linens, dishes. Mark had a penchant for painkillers, and all other prescription palliatives. His medicine cabinet hid a massive hoard. I took two bottles of expired antibiotics and one of Percoce. Then I went to the Kmart and bought a battery-operated heat blanket, some batteries, a mini-flashlight, some vitamins, Zinc lozenges, Advil, Nyquil, orange juice, and a thermometer. The flashlight I slipped into my pocket; the rest stayed in a giant bag emblazoned with the company logo.
Back in the station, Den was still sitting on the bench, unmoved.
I handed her the massive bag, “Here you go.”
“How much I owe you?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it. Just take me down there sometime.”
She grabbed the bag, jumped out of her seat, threw me a twenty-dollar bill, and towered over me. “My Mom’s dying. Spare me your condescending curiosity. Here’s 20 bucks. Thanks for your help. I’m sure you have killer dreams about me late at night in your fancy heated house.”
My proverbial back arched like an angry kitty: “You don’t know what I dream about.”
Without another look in my direction, she tumbled down into the passageway and leapt soft as a gazelle over the third rail, into the tunnel, Kmart bag crinkling along at her side.
As I watched her shrink and fade, I checked myself. Why should I not follow her? Did I not deserve a discovery today? Had I not done everything I could to save her mother’s life? And who was Den to assume I dreamed about her (which I had, many times, but she couldn’t possibly know that). Did I fear the tunnels? No. Did she have any right to prevent me from entering them? No. She neither owned nor governed the underground. And she was ungrateful, as far as I could tell. I thought, I’m as tough as she is.
I tumbled awkwardly down after her, jumped clear of the third rail, grabbed the flashlight nestled down in my jacket pocket, and zoomed all my senses in on Den’s receding steps.
Suddenly, my immutable pluck crashed into a bottomless pit. I was terrified. I didn’t know how many third rails there were down in these tunnels. I imagined myself surrounded by toothless raving lunatics, hell-bent on deflowering and mutilating foolish young girls. I imagined my naked flayed body decaying on the tracks, slowly consumed by giant rats; my parents wondering, in desperation, what had happened to their wayward daughter; my colleagues hiring some other loser genius to take up my projects with far greater efficiency; the world spinning neatly on its axis despite my soul’s obliteration.
The light around me faded, but didn’t disappear altogether – frightening bluish bulbs punctuated the darkness, strained to illuminate gerbil-sized cockroaches suddenly swarming at my feet. Sounds of moving things filled the dimness. A train was coming; from which direction, I couldn’t tell. My hair began to swirl, marking the arrival of the oncoming train; I looked both directions, at first couldn’t see it, then suddenly it came around a bend, and screamed by me as I pressed my body against the wall, so loud it punctured my ears; it took my breath away. The sound of Den’s steps disappeared in the din.
I lost myself in a mire of confusion. I remembered I hadn’t eaten in almost an entire day, but was afraid to turn back – I might come face-to-face with an oncoming train. At least I trusted that Den knew a safe path. She understood the tunnels and the trains. I peered forward, watched the outline of her form moving some 50 feet in front of me, followed at breakneck speed, shocked that she wasn’t aware of my presence. She was running too fast, the bags in her hand and the trains at our backs making too much noise, and she focused only on the path in front of her. The farther we ran, the less I could see.
The underground smells overcame me. Decaying flesh, garbage, shit, city fumes, piss, all vaporized into a thick wind that pushed back and forth through the passageways, with the passing trains. Rats and roaches ran in uncountable herds, like wildebeest across the plains. They crunched under my feet. A train wailed somewhere in the distance. My heart nearly beat out of my chest, and I focused intently upon the figure in front of me.
Den turned left into a tunnel devoid of lights. I followed her, a lump rising in my throat, tears nearly pushing through my stinging eyes. I was so furious with myself for being scared – my fearless nature had always been a great source of pride. I mean, I lived in an abandoned building. But this tunnel could strike fear into the heart of Zeus.
The darkness trapped me; I almost couldn’t make out the features of my hand, as I held it before my face. I turned on my mini flashlight and pointed it at the ground in front of me. Den ran farther and farther ahead. I was flying through a wide tunnel that showed no sign of recent life aside from the rats. On either side of me ran a set of ancient tracks. The ground rasped unevenly beneath me. I heard the scrapings of glass under my feet, the squelch of soft unknown things, the banging of metal (please, God, let me avoid electrocution). I thought I heard Den turn right, up ahead of me, and disappear, but I couldn’t see her. After another 50 feet I came to a cross-section – a tunnel on either side. The sound of Den’s movements had nearly vanished. I counted my breaths, tried to calm myself. Turning down the right-hand tunnel, I shined my light directly in front of me. Suddenly, like a phantom, Den stopped in her tracks and turned on her heels.
Hissing like a snake, she whisper-yelled “Get away from me! Are you crazy? You will get KILLED in here!”
My voice would not rise above the stench; delirium and fright and hunger clenched me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to get back.”
“You stupid selfish asshole. I can’t take you back right now, because my Mother is DYING.” She looked around, as if searching for a ditch in which to toss me. Finding none, she threw up her hands. “I’ll take you with me, but if you get killed, it is NOT my fault. Tell everybody that you’re a doctor or something, and you’re going to save her, and you better make them believe it’s true, or you are so screwed you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” I stammered. Regret is not something I often experience, but at that moment, it clutched me.
“Follow me, do not deviate from my footsteps, don’t talk, and don’t ask any questions. Take off all of your jewelry and put it in your pockets. Button up your jacket all the way. You stupid, stupid...”
She ran off, down the middle of the tunnel, for another five minutes. Then, abruptly, she turned and held out her hand to stop me, put her finger to her lips, turned around and walked slowly another 100 feet. A dim redness hung in the air out in front of us. As we crunched our way toward it, I saw that the light eeked over a 10-foot plywood wall on our right. Behind the wall, voices tumbled over each other in a soft muddle.
Again, Den turned to me: “This is my life, do you understand? You are here to save Mom, and nothing else. You do not know anything about these people. You do not ask them any questions. If they feel even a little bit threatened by you, they will kill you, and they will not lose sleep over it. Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“Yes.” I really did.
Den bent back the far corner of the plywood, shoved the bags into the opening, and slipped herself deftly between the board and the wall. I thought to myself, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, and then I wedged my own waifish body through the plywood portal.