Lauren couldn't ignore the woman covered with flies and bees.
"Shouldn't you unfreeze her?" she asked.
Uncle Albert looked at her surprised and told her if she thawed out now, she would die from the venom bees would inject at once into her body.
“Feeling sorry for your heartless aunt will do nothing for her. Kind words and actions never had any effect on her. I transformed her into a roach, toad, snake, fish, cat, mouse, and placed her in mortal danger in the natural world so that she might be caught and eaten by someone bigger than her. She was once a frog that was swallowed by an eagle. When she came out, the smell of his droppings killed plants for miles around. She is still pretty toxic. Why don't I get rid of her!" he said, snapping his fingers, and the woman dematerialized as bees and flies, which flew out of the mausoleum.
Lauren didn't know what to feel for an aunt she just met.
"I'm glad she's gone," she said, afraid the bees might sting if they landed on her.
"She'll be back. You can't live as flies or bees forever. Eventually you evolve into a human being, however indecent she might be."
"Why would you want to continue to live with a pack of flies?"
"If it were only that simple! Flies, I can handle. It's the human fly I can't stand. No matter what incantations I use, none of my spells are permanent. She always manages to come back the way she was. So what are you doing here? Make it quick, I have to tend to my flowers or they’ll worry themselves to an untimely death.”
Lauren didn't want to repeat herself, but since it was the sensible thing to do, and the telling of the quest for her father's heart and mother's brain gave her so much pleasure, she repeated it. Uncle Albert didn't react to her tale. Instead, he took her down a long brightly lit corridor that led to an arboretum in the distance. Heads of ancestors, some of which she recognized from her grandmother’s album, hung on the walls. A couple of them winked and welcomed her. A few blew kisses, but none spoke to her. What was there to say? The live heads were no bother, but the idea of becoming a trophy disturbed her. How boring it would be to stare at a wall with faces who amused themselves, by winking, sneezing, wiggling their ears and showing their tongues! Worst of all, she would be unable to speak! How could she live as just a head?
"Why can't those heads talk?" she asked instead of saying, 'Why do you have heads hanging on your walls?'
"They can't speak because they never could," he said without elaborating.
"Were they born mute?"
"No, they spoke, but their words never made much sense. So, it's better if they don't speak."
As they reached the end of the hall of muted heads, Lauren saw her own hanging at eyelevel. The mouth on it was grimacing and spitting unheard curses at her. Afraid she had lost her head, she immediately touched her hair, eyes, ears and mouth to see if she was still whole. Why was a replica of her head on the wall with those pale, ugly ancestors? Were they envious of her being alive? Or was Uncle Albert messing with her emotions?
"Aren't you going to ask why your head is up there?" he asked.
"I don't want to know. Could you take me to a nicer place? I don't like it here. They give me the creeps. Can we go?"
"Unpleasantness is what makes us into what we are. Not pleasure! Or else you'll end up a fat, greedy pig like your Great-uncle Gordo over there."
She looked at the pig snout with disgust as it grunted her name. Uncle Albert pointed out great-grandparents who had the faces of apes. He blamed their looks on vanity and selfishness.
"What will I become?" she asked.
"I don't know."
Suddenly her own head opened its mouth and let out a stream of obscenities. Her breath was so foul that she felt faint and had to sit down on the bench nearby.
"It's all your fault, bitch! You're the reason I ended up here!" the head cried out.
Lauren was frightened by what the future might hold, when Uncle Albert snapped his fingers and shut off the stream of unpleasant phrases. He took her by the hand and led her into the sunlit arboretum.
She took a deep breath of the aromas emanating from flowers and fruits within the crystal enclosure. Kiwis, oranges and a multitude of fruits she had never tasted floated like strange space ships instead of being attached to branch or vine. The leaves weren’t green as they should have been. With chlorophyll on her mind, she asked, "Why aren't your plants green?"
"I don't like green things," he replied.
"That's not what I wanted to ask."
"Mind your words then!" her uncle might have gone on when she burst out with the proper question.
"How can these plants be red, purple, and even multicolored?"
"Just because you've never witnessed them before, doesn't mean they don't exist."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then stop asking questions and breathe. What do you smell?"
Lauren was frustrated, unable to form a question. Instead of breathing and enjoying the indescribable scents, she said, "I studied biology and I'm not stupid! All I want to know is why all your plants are everything but green!"
"Maybe I should write a book about everything but green plants. You just haven't looked deep enough. Some things aren't green at all. I've just managed to bring this particular plant from beneath the sea. Now look how well it has adapted.
“Can't you enjoy these beautiful flowers without imposing the silly names they dislike immensely?"
"How do you know?"
"Know what?"
"They don't like names?"
"We talk and they’ve made it clear that they have their own names."
"You speak to plants and fruits!"
"Sure. Why don't you try it? They need watering anyway. I do get tired of talking."
"What language do they speak?"
"They don't speak. They listen."
"What language should I speak to them?"
"Each plant and fruit has its own language. I just change my tone to water them."
"You don't use regular water?"
"No, irregular water with as many irregular verbs as I can. But you didn’t come here to learn about plants. Let’s get on with your dad’s story.”
He invited her to sit on the bench and made her promise not to interrupt his story. Not being big on details or explanations, he told her he would paraphrase his life as quickly as possible before his flowers and bushes dried up. And since his spell over Aunt Maude would only last as long as it lasted, he would have to hurry. “So no interruptions!”
He told her how her father enjoyed walking along the seashore, gathering shells, feathers, special stones, anything that fancied his eye. And he loved to talk to himself and sing to seals, eagles and even ravens.
She didn't want to hear a childish fairy tale when she yearned for a love story between her dad and Amy MacGregor, and how it went sour.
Uncle Albert sensed her boredom but kept the tide rolling in and the waves lapping up her father’s gifts to the sea. That’s when the head of a seal emerged and stared at him with large obsidian eyes. Without speaking English, she told him how much she loved his beautiful songs.
Lauren couldn't help but think the story was for kids between 4-8. She craved romance, sex, battles between good and evil.
It didn’t take long for her father to fall in love with the seal. And everyday after a hard day at sea, fishing for cod and salmon, he would spend his evenings on the beach where they had first met.
Was her dad some sort of pervert? she thought.
Admitting love for a seal in the public eye would have been worse than admitting being in love with another man. Both ideas were queer to village folks who had limited their world to catching cod. Loving a seal was definitely queer, unless the seal could shed her skin and become a woman like no other. No potion could perform such a transformation, but their deep mutual love was enough for Mother Nature to grant Amy’s wish. So, she slid out of her skin and put it away in a safe place in case she ever wanted to swim with her old friends again. To speed things up, they were married the following day and they might have lived happily ever after. But it wasn’t supposed to be so since every fairy tale is full of loopholes.
One day, she wanted to feel the coolness of the ocean and play with her friends. No sooner did she put on her skin than a fisherman who thought more of his catch than he cared for poaching seals shot her as soon as she hit the water. Amy’s body was never recovered. So it goes.
Uncle Albert’s voice was calm and matter of fact. And his story was so short and devoid of details that Lauren couldn’t believe any of the words she’d heard.
“That’s it?”
“In a nutshell, if you will!” he exclaimed, slamming the point hard to put a final end to a story that might go on and on if continued.
Uncle Albert picked up a flower that looked like the orcharosamum she had attempted to pluck out of the cemetery grounds.
This story tells me nothing, she thought, and why the fairy tale? What about details? How could she feel for words that were bare bones? She was now more interested in her birthmother than her father’s imaginary pain. Who was her mother?
Sensing her impatience, he handed her the flower she had coveted earlier and told her to get on her way!
“We’re done with story telling,” he said.
“But this can’t be all of it?”
“I don’t really relish telling stories. Just take this flower and find your own way.”
“What about my mother? Who is she? I need to find her!” she exclaimed.
“No more criticism of my abilities or you can spend the rest of your life mounted on my wall!” he said this so seriously that she shuddered at the thought of being a head with no place to go.
Lauren didn’t say a word as she sat quietly, allowing her uncle to tell the story his way: “Your father was having a miserable time. To feel better, he carried a gun with him whenever he left the house, hoping he would get the courage to use it, if he got drunk enough. Grief turned his heart to stone.
“His love for Amy had killed every good feeling he'd ever had for people in general. He'd never said an unkind word to anyone. Now he cursed men and women if they even came close to him.”
There seemed to be no end to her dad's story.
'What about me?' she thought.
Uncle Albert didn’t give in to her question.
“The Protector, sensing how miserable he was, sent down an angel before he took a wrong turn. She swooped above him with blue wings the color of robin eggs, and a face that glowed so brightly it seemed to have no features at all. At first I couldn't tell if the angel was a he or a she or a he-she. Your dad was too drunk to notice her until she landed in his way and cried out, 'Philip, I've been sent to live with you! Your sister Flo said you would take care of me. I'm pregnant with someone else's child, but she said you have a good heart and you would understand.'
“Too consumed with his pain, he aimed his rifle and shot her in the wing. I rushed him before he could take another shot, knocked him out and took his gun. I ran over to the angel to see if she was hurt. But as I reached her, her wings suddenly disappeared. When she came to, the glow in her face had faded. She said her name was Sylvia and that she was here to take care of Philip Anderson. And so she did.
“That night, I rushed over to your dad's, thinking I'd explain Sylvia’s presence in his house. When I got there she was wearing a wedding gown, your dad a tux, and the village priest had just pronounced them man and wife.
“Time passed quicker than you can fathom. A daughter was born. Your dad held the baby with tears in his eyes even though the child wasn't his. But he was so happy he named her Lauren, after his favorite actress.”
Is it me? I am her. Is she me? Is Sylvia my mother? Is my mom not my mother? Is my father another? Is my dad not my father? How she wanted to open her mouth to put an end to all her questioning and get on with life!
“One day a man recognized Sylvia in the market place. Once the news that Sylvia had worked as a prostitute traveled through town, most people turned against her, even the parish priest, who had visited Gonora more than once. At school, no one played with Lauren anymore. The parents had told their children she had the plague. The children were so frightened by her disease they didn't look at her. She was put in a corner, facing the wall until school was over. It was painful for her. She held her chin up and never shed a tear.”
Hearing the tale of punishment being dealt Lauren, she felt sorry for her namesake.
“One day after she got home from school, she found her mother waiting with her dad on the porch. They were both crying. I was there to drive Sylvia and Lauren to Gonora where no one would bother them because they would be strangers. This was one of the hardest moments in my life. To see a daughter being separated from her dad who loved her more than anything in the world. She cried she didn't want to leave.
“'Are you getting divorced?' she asked them.
“Sylvia didn't answer and told Lauren to get in the car. Her dad told her everything would be all right and that he would visit. He took his solitude hard. And with time, the distance between Sylvia and your dad grew. Sylvia filed for divorce."
'How did I end up here again?' Lauren asked herself. Had Sylvia died? Had she resumed working with Aunt Flo? Did she contract a strange disease and become so unsightly that she was forced to give custody to her dad? What happened? Lauren strained her brain and attempted to retrieve images of her dad. She had no recollection of Gonora, Sylvia, only of herself and her dad as he was now.
She was confused, but still quiet.
“You need to go to Gonora to find things out on your own. But you've got to go through Fat City to get there," he said.
Lauren couldn't wait to get going to Gonora, where she thought the answers to her questions would be written on a giant screen.
“Which way is Fat City?” she asked.
Uncle Albert pointed to a hole in the ground at the end of the arboretum.
"That tunnel leads to Fat City in the New World. Your future lies there. The answers to your questions lie dormant. It's up to you to awaken them. Walk quickly towards the light. But don't disturb the Keeper of Oblivion. If you wake her, she will riddle you with riddles. Be careful how you answer. She doesn't like being fooled by half-full lies or half-empty ones for that matter, and don't forget your orcharosamum. It may come in handy or it may not. Have a safe journey, Lauren."
Lauren sensed Uncle Albert's image collapse along with the glass arboretum as she stepped into the hole. When she looked back to see it closing, she noticed the young boy with glasses standing in Uncle Albert's stead.