The white girl who taught Evangelyne what white meant, and who would star in Evangelyne’s nightmares all her life, was her first girlfriend, Poppy Beacham. Bizarre though it might seem, she was also where The Men began.
It was the year Evangelyne turned sixteen, a year she spent a lot of her time alone, out walking, thinking, looking for her life. Poppy Beacham was then twenty-two. She talked to Evangelyne in a 7-Eleven, then they walked around town together for hours, both giggling like much younger girls. That day Poppy confessed her mental illness and said she still heard voices, but the voices were comforting. A psychic had told her they were like the demons that had spoken to Socrates. “And if I want to make them go away, I just take meds. The meds work perfect for me.” Then Poppy led Evangelyne to a field and knelt at her feet in the grass. From that position, she told Evangelyne she was gay and had a big crush on Evangelyne already. Evangelyne got down in the long grass with her, and there, out of sight of the road, Poppy Beacham held Evangelyne’s hand. That was all. But that night at ARRI, the phone rang for Evangelyne. It was in the front hall, where coats were hung, an open public area, and Evangelyne covered her whole head with a parka to muffle the sound while she talked to Poppy Beacham—the most important thing she’d ever done.
Poppy was a real out gay girl with match-straight cherry-red hair she cut herself and piercings in her nose and lip. She was beautiful in an alien way, her pale eyes spaced wide apart, her body so skinny it read as an absence of body, her skin bright white. When she said she was a changeling, she meant it. She believed it was in her astrological chart. It was true that her sweat smelled better than other people’s, that her hair was peculiarly silken, that she had a physical intensity that was transfixing if sometimes jarring. Poppy Beacham ate meat with her hands, went swimming in her clothes, touched everyone familiarly—she would rest her hand on the shoulder of a store assistant to ask where the toothpaste was. All the men in Barclough, Vermont, knew who she was, even if they didn’t know her name.
At first, theirs was just one of those mismatched lesbian relationships made possible only by youth and a lack of more appropriate partners. At sixteen, Evangelyne had just discovered Foucault and was preparing as a homeschooled student for early admission at Cornell. Poppy had dropped out of high school, and the only books in her house were about astrological signs and easy macramé. Evangelyne dreamed of studying at the Sorbonne but worried it would seem too snooty to voters when she eventually ran for office. Poppy worked as a veterinary assistant and lived in fear of the introduction of certification because she would have to pass a written test. At twenty-two, Poppy still lived with her mother, who worked at a Safeway bagging groceries and was on a methadone program. Evangelyne’s mother, before she got her job as manager of ARRI, had been an adjunct professor at NYU.
In the early days, Evangelyne found Poppy’s white-trash side exotic: her smell of weed and Jean Naté after-bath splash; her cooking that always started with a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup; the bright-brown laminate floors in her house, covered here and there by warped offcuts of carpet; how Poppy and her mother, Debbie, both slept in stretch polyester nighties and unironically thought they were pretty. Poppy had five grubby rescue dogs who followed her around in a lovelorn pack and unapologetically slept in beds. Whenever anyone made a move toward the kitchen, the Dalmatian leapt to the kitchen counter, which Poppy and Debbie both considered hilarious. Trashiest of all, the house belonged to Debbie’s uncle by marriage, now also Debbie’s boyfriend. Poppy complained about him behind his back, always calling him “Uncle,” but treated him with casual friendliness to his face. Uncle was on disability and took what Poppy called “the A to Z of pain pills.” He was often at the house, lurking in the shadows of a bedroom in a thin gray bathrobe that seemed perpetually poised to fall open, but he never spoke to Evangelyne. Poppy’s breezy acceptance of him was one of the jarring notes of those early weeks.
But at the time it was the sex that was the thing, the incredible fact that eclipsed other facts. It was lying really naked, kissing everywhere, the sensitive point of a tongue that focused the world. They could talk in between, well enough, and Poppy was the first one who called Evangelyne a genius, pouncing on top of her and yelling, “How’d you get to be so smart? Did you get struck by lightning or something?” And Poppy wasn’t just a real gay girl but a grown-up. She’d been to lesbian bars in New York. She had had a real relationship with a woman old enough to own a house. Evangelyne was still a kid, and nobody knew—her mother couldn’t ever find out—she was gay. Most ARRI people saw homosexuality as one of the perversions of European culture. She walked around in a trance, aflame, dishonest, transfigured, damned. It had to be love.
The first shift came the day Evangelyne told Poppy about Yoruba funeral rites. Poppy was fascinated by everything Evangelyne said about African religions, which Poppy saw as previous to other faiths and closer to some primordial truth. It was the only area where she seemed to have real intellectual curiosity. Though Evangelyne kept trying, Foucault and Fanon left Poppy cold.
This day Evangelyne was explaining how the Yoruba king was buried with scores of other people, who were sacrificed so they could continue to serve him in the other world. There were many titles at court that required a person to die with the king, and the strange thing was that people fought for those titles. They would happily pay for high status with early death. Of course, sacrifice was part of their culture. For important rituals, Yoruba royals would sacrifice a series of creatures: a cow, then a dog, then a snail, then a bird, and a boy and a girl to round it out.
Here, seeing Poppy’s face, Evangelyne balked and said human sacrifice was creepy, but it wasn’t just African. Most people knew about the Aztecs and the Incas, and Slavs and British Druids did it too. Even ancient Greeks had done it. They had a thing called a “hecatomb,” which meant killing a hundred cattle as a sacrifice, and some scholars thought those sacrifices were originally of a hundred people. By this point, Evangelyne wasn’t sure what she was saying was true. She just needed to change Poppy’s face.
They were having this conversation in Poppy’s bedroom, lying on her mattress on the floor, hemmed in on two sides by dog crates, one of which served as a table and was covered with empty cans of Diet Sprite. Through the poorly sealed window came the sounds of wind, twittering birds, and passing cars; through the door, the too-intimate sounds of the house—the drone of Debbie’s snore and the occasional jingle of dog tags from the excluded dogs.
Poppy said, “Is that what you believe?”
Evangelyne started to answer, but Poppy cut her off, saying, “Because I don’t feel like you should do that just to keep some king dude company.”
Evangelyne laughed, but Poppy didn’t. Evangelyne said, “This was two hundred years ago. It’s not about me. Come on. You’re part English, so your people … I mean, the Druids did it too.”
“What’s worst is the dogs. And the cows.”
“Cows? What?”
“They didn’t volunteer to be sacrificed. The cows didn’t do it for a job. They didn’t even understand.”
Evangelyne wanted to laugh again but was made uncomfortable by Poppy’s rigid face. She said, “We still sacrifice cows. I mean, we eat meat. Those cows aren’t sanctified to a god, but the cow doesn’t care.”
“I think I’m going to be a vegetarian,” said Poppy. “Don’t look at me like that. I mean it.”
“Okay.”
“Do you do that at your place? The cows?”
“At ARRI? Sometimes with chickens. You eat chicken.”
“So you’re doing … what did you call it? The heck thing?”
“Hecatomb. No, that’s—”
“I always thought a hecatomb was a square with six sides.”
Evangelyne laughed then, and Poppy laughed too. The atmosphere eased, and Poppy entwined her legs in Evangelyne’s.
“You goof,” said Evangelyne. “That’s a hexagon.”
“Hexagon, isn’t that the military place?”
“I think you’re thinking of the Pentagon.”
Poppy nodded, but already she’d stopped listening. She fell back on her pillow, squinting in thought. Evangelyne was studying her face, finding the beauty in it that would make this feel good again, when Poppy gasped. “Oh shit! What if human sacrifice is all that works? What if you have to do a hexatomb or else God doesn’t answer your prayers?”
“What?”
“No, I’m serious! What if all the things that are wrong with the world—it’s all because we’re not sacrificing people?” At this idea, Poppy shrieked. She grabbed Evangelyne’s arm and said, “I’m being scary, right? It’s scary? I feel like I just had revelations and I don’t like it!”
For a week after this, no worse thing happened. She still went to Poppy’s every day but left earlier. Evangelyne felt Poppy’s strangeness more keenly without understanding it any better. She took care not to mention African religions or ARRI. They had mediocre sex predicated on the good sex they’d had before.
Then on the Sunday, when she walked up to Poppy’s house, Poppy dashed out and intercepted her in the driveway. Poppy said, laughing breathlessly, “Today we got to go somewhere else. My god! My mom just totally freaked out about your folks. You’re gonna lose it when I tell you.”
Evangelyne looked at the house. She wanted to turn around and go home.
“It’s cool,” said Poppy. “I know where we can go.”
“I don’t know.”
“No, it’s cool. We could just—”
The door of the house flew open, and Debbie plunged into the yard, crimson-faced, and screamed, “You fucking leave my daughter alone! She’s not well! And tell your fucking Africans to leave her alone!”
Poppy shrieked, hit Evangelyne on the shoulder, and took off running. Evangelyne was lost for a second, but when Debbie charged toward her, she panicked and chased after Poppy.
Almost immediately, Poppy veered off the road and ran directly into the woods. Evangelyne followed, conscious of her slowness. She was chasing Poppy’s red hair among the trees, ducking branches, clumsy on the uneven ground. She called out, but Poppy didn’t seem to hear. By the time Poppy stopped in a clearing, Evangelyne was out of breath. Poppy ran back to hug her, laughing and elated. She tried to swing her around, but Evangelyne resisted.
“What’s happening?” she said. “What was that?”
“Look!” Poppy pointed up to a weather-beaten tree house just a few meters overhead.
“I see it. What happened with your mom?”
“Could you believe that? Fuck! It’s because I told them what you said? About the hexagon?”
“The hexagon?”
“Uncle lost his shit. He says, ‘That’s Satanism, that’s demon worship,’ like he’s suddenly a Christian? What?” Poppy laughed. “And my mom’s all crying, like she only now discovered I’m a lesbian, and maybe that’s Satanic? Says the lady who sleeps with her uncle!”
Evangelyne tried to smile, but she felt nauseated from the run.
“I told them what you said about eating chickens, and Uncle’s like, ‘Eat every damn chicken in the world, but if you burn it to an idol, you’re a Satanist.’ He thinks every cult is Satan worship. Like, I asked him if the Moonies worshipped Satan, and he says, ‘Hell yes.’”
“You’re talking about … You didn’t tell them about the human sacrifice?”
“I said how you said ancient Greeks did it, and I’m pretty sure he thinks ancient Greeks are a cult now.”
“You know we don’t believe in human sacrifice. You told them that?”
“I know you don’t.”
“Also ARRI’s not a cult.” Saying this, Evangelyne felt a scruple. She herself had often complained to her mother that ARRI was a cult. They were people trying to change the world by chanting in languages they didn’t speak and praying to statues they’d ordered from a catalog. All her life, she’d been ashamed to bring friends home.
But now she said what her mother had always told her: “If believing in the power of ritual makes ARRI a cult, then most of the world’s in a cult. I mean, think about Catholicism.”
Poppy shrugged. Her mind had moved on to something else. “I was saying to my mom—this was what she freaked out about, okay? So, in your religion, do they only sacrifice their own, or would they sacrifice someone like me?”
“Now I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I mean, she’s the one who’s scared. I’m not. I know you’d protect me, but she’s afraid you’re bringing me to them.”
“You don’t think ARRI is doing human sacrifices?”
“I’m just asking. Just so I could tell my mom.”
For a second, Evangelyne couldn’t speak. Her mind was trying to put this together with Uncle, with methadone, with Debbie screaming, “Tell your fucking Africans to leave her alone!” At last Evangelyne said, “I mean, my people are … we’ve got some weirdos there, but we’re not killing people. My mom has her PhD, she still writes articles in journals. That’s what you think my home is like?” Then she felt something fall into place and said, “You’ve got to know that’s racist.”
At this, Poppy turned away from her with an offended smile.
Evangelyne said, “No. You have to take that back. That’s my family.”
Poppy said, in the voice of a person being patient in the face of unreasonable treatment, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But what Uncle says—and some of his friends are retired police, and they say it too—there’s people in your house who came here to prey on girls. Because a lot of your men are criminals from places like Baltimore, where it’s part of life? They sing songs about being pimps. And those men are abducting girls, even kids, like I don’t know how young, but kids. That’s what cops say. So it could be human sacrifice or just a normal criminal thing. Or the two could be connected, because …” and Poppy went on talking, as if Poppy, not Evangelyne, knew who Evangelyne’s people were, while Evangelyne was paralyzed by rage. She was unable to speak. She was unable to even make a facial expression. Her heart rate spiked, and a feeling swept through her like a piercing noise that kept increasing in pitch.
It should have ended there. There was a blank in Evangelyne’s memory where she saw herself going home, a clean break. She should have never seen Poppy Beacham again. There was a gap in her memory where that could have happened.
But she also remembered staying there all day while Poppy raved about being sacrificed—hours of holding Poppy and soothing her, lying on the old musty mattress on the tree house floor. That day Evangelyne explained again and again why it didn’t make sense to think people sacrificed their neighbors in Vermont in 1997, why it didn’t make sense to believe ARRI men were pimps from Baltimore, why Poppy shouldn’t go around saying these things—just the first of many days Evangelyne spent trying to talk Poppy Beacham out of being insane.
Looking back, there were two reasons Evangelyne fell into this trap. The first was that she didn’t yet understand racism. To her, it was a dubious entity, something exaggerated by adults to stop kids from going out and doing things. When Evangelyne and her brothers were growing up, there was a neighbors’ house they were banned from because the parents were supposedly racist; Evangelyne and Giovanni sneaked there once to hang out with the sons of the family and found it thrillingly had MTV, Nintendo, deviled-ham sandwiches on Wonder bread, Playboys, and a picture of Jesus with a glowing heart visible through his clothes. There was a thing going on (Evangelyne and Giovanni agreed) where the adults were afraid they would hang with redneck kids and pick up their habits, and so those people got called “racist.” It was true that local kids had called them racial slurs, but kids said every nasty thing, even when they didn’t know what it meant. One white girl had cracked Giovanni up by saying his NYU hoodie was “ghetto.” And maybe that was racist, but it wasn’t real racism, not the kind that hurt people.
The second thing was that Evangelyne had lived around mental illness all her life. Places like ARRI attracted troubled people. One visitor spent his whole time there facing Mecca as he moved about the rooms. Another built shrines in the woods to his own shoes. Cowrie shells were ubiquitous at ARRI—if you walked barefoot, sooner or later you stepped agonizingly on a cowrie shell—and one woman had to be expelled because she wouldn’t stop eating the shells clandestinely, believing they would cure her cancer. Evangelyne was raised with the belief that madness could be revelation—God’s strange voice—or else a manifestation of pain. Either way, it could happen to anyone, and one of the beauties of African cultures was that they didn’t lock people up for being different. The best cure for ailments of the spirit, Evangelyne was taught, was unconditional love.
So Evangelyne kept going back to the tree house, bringing herbs to burn, vitamins, spiritual books to read aloud. And it worked, or so she believed at first. Poppy started back on medication and got on a waiting list for therapy. She admitted it was her “demons” that kept telling her about human sacrifice, and maybe they weren’t so benign. Sometimes she even talked about her sickness with humorous chagrin. Once she told a story about a man who came into the vet’s office holding an elderly dachshund in his arms and asked, “Do you treat spiders?” Then all the people waiting with their pets had looked at the dachshund in revulsion, thinking it had spiders. Really the man had a sick tarantula at home; he just happened to have the dog with him. Then Poppy said, “I’ve got spiders. Head spiders.” She made a goofy, cross-eyed face and, when Evangelyne laughed, was innocently pleased and burrowed her head into Evangelyne’s shoulder. Evangelyne loved her then, or wanted to love her. She wanted her to be okay.
But there were whole days when Poppy was delusional, and her delusions were still focused on ARRI. She would ask if the ARRI people burned people alive or killed them first. Once she saw a stick in the woods she thought was a “baby bone” and started to cry and tremble. Poppy thought ARRI men were following her in cars, waiting for a chance to seize her. Her demon voices muttered to her that Poppy had to burn, that only her death could save Earth.
Worse in a way were the things Poppy told Evangelyne that might be true. Was it delusional when Poppy said Uncle tricked her into taking extra sleeping pills so he could have sex with her? When she said she’d once woken naked and both Uncle and his friend Roy were standing over her in their underpants? When she said once she didn’t want to take an extra pill and Uncle said, “Oh, you’re no fun,” as if he thought she was in on the game? Was it true that, when Poppy tried to tell Debbie, Debbie said Uncle kept a roof over their heads, and Poppy would have to toughen up? Poppy made Evangelyne promise to save her if Uncle “got really bad again,” and Evangelyne promised— couldn’t not promise. But she wanted to say, I’m a kid, this isn’t my responsibility, I can’t do this.
Then Evangelyne walked home down an empty country road and thought, But I love her, and was afraid. Too much had happened, and the world had become too big. It was the year Sundayate had his heart attack, so all the lectures and workshops were canceled, and the ARRI house was hushed, half empty. The adults were preoccupied, furtive, in the mood of a people whose king is sick and all the land is sick. When Evangelyne got home, no one knew she’d been gone. She went to her bed in a six-bed dormitory, tiptoeing past a woman already sleeping, and crawled into her upper bunk that was always full of books. Now it also had a shoebox of Poppy memorabilia: a Bic lighter, an empty vial of Lorazepam, a blue silk flower, a Siouxsie and the Banshees cassette Evangelyne listened to only in snatches because she didn’t like the music. Evangelyne lay with these relics all around her on the bed and cried. She’d long ago learned to cry without being heard, but now for the first time she resented her proficiency. She needed to be caught. She needed to escape from Poppy Beacham and she didn’t know how.
What broke this spell was that Evangelyne’s older brother, Giovanni, came home from college for the summer. Evangelyne instantly confided in him about being gay, about Poppy’s mental illness, Uncle, everything. If it was a bid for his attention, it succeeded. As their mother commented, all that summer she and Giovanni were “thick as thieves.” Giovanni told her it wasn’t her fault and that bitch was an adult and she should “lose that bitch.” He also took on a big-brother role toward two teenage brothers staying at ARRI, Jay and Paul, who’d been left by family who thought they were getting into trouble in Philadelphia. That summer they all became best friends. Giovanni had just bought his first car, and they would drive around for hours, explaining their true selves to each other, singing to the radio, laughing at anything, Jay ambiguously flirting with Evangelyne, and the boys all smoking while Evangelyne sat blissfully breathing their smoke and the wind, so excited and so safe. She came out to Paul and Jay, and they were overawed at first, tongue-tied; as Giovanni later said, “rabbits in the headlights.” But soon they started teasing her about it shyly, and Evangelyne could tell tales about her crazy ex, which Giovanni used to interrupt with little falsetto cries of “Oh no!” Paul had a beautiful singing voice, and the others tried to harmonize with him sometimes, failing and laughing and blaming each other as they barreled down an empty highway. Only one night they succeeded, a night they were stuck in a blinding fog and driving with dreamlike slowness on a winding road, seeing nothing but the closest branches and a faint apparition of road ahead, their voices magically interwoven, turning and turning, singing slowly,
If you get there before I do
Coming for to carry me home
Tell all my friends I’m coming too
Coming for to carry me home …
until a sudden shock of light hit, a car with high beams on their side of the road. Giovanni braked, swerving so the wheels left the tarmac and a tree trunk loomed, the song smashed every way: yelps, shrieks, swearing. Then they were back on the road, the lights gone, song gone. They all laughed explosively, clobbering each other. Evangelyne said, “Oh shit. We’re alive!”
In this time she didn’t see Poppy. She’d asked Poppy (borrowing not just Giovanni’s language but his tone of voice) to respect her boundaries. She did agree to call Poppy once a week, which she justified to herself with the fear that Poppy would kill herself.
In these calls, Poppy swore she was doing way better, and the new meds worked, and she was eating and even picking up shifts at work. Evangelyne explained why they couldn’t be together, and Poppy agreed, expressing admiration for Evangelyne’s maturity. “You’re my one true love,” Poppy said, “but I know if I love something, I’ve got to set it free. So I’m sticking to my once-a-week, and I’m so, so grateful you didn’t slam the door.”
This was bait, and Evangelyne knew it. She also knew she was creeping toward seeing Poppy, allowing herself to remember Poppy’s gentle hands, her otherworldly face, the all-day glow of having a girlfriend. She would find herself thinking it could still work out. Bipolar was an illness, and you didn’t abandon a person for having an illness. And soon Giovanni would go back to school. Jay and Paul would go home. She’d be left here alone.
Then one Saturday night Poppy called, hysterical and sobbing, to say that Uncle was “hurting” her again. “I didn’t want to tell you, but he’s getting so bad. He puts the pills in everything. And Roy, that friend of his, is always around. They started drugging the dogs. I was sleeping with the dogs in my room, and last night I couldn’t wake them up. I couldn’t wake them up!”
Evangelyne was in the ARRI front hallway. She could see through the window into the dark front yard, where she could just make out Giovanni and Paul smoking at the edge of the road. Now she kept her eyes on her brother, letting her sense of him guide her responses. “Okay. So maybe you could call the police? If you could prove it—”
“I can’t. The cops are all his friends? A few of them are. And I don’t know if it’s true. Like, the whole point is, I don’t know. And all they have to do is say I’m crazy.”
Evangelyne kept her eyes on Giovanni. “Do you think it could be that?”
“I don’t know. I wake up, and it’s like, I have a top on and no bottoms. So I could have gone to sleep like that, but I don’t feel like I did? And now it’s the dogs. I can’t be crazy if I can’t wake up the dogs?”
At that, Evangelyne started crying herself. “You have to get out of there. For real. Is there someone from work? Because I can’t—”
“No. Listen, I worked it all out.”
“Because you need a place to stay. Long term.”
“Yeah, a place he can’t get at me. I worked it all out. I’m going to go to a hospital.”
At this, Evangelyne relaxed as if an agonizing pressure had been released. She even smiled, gazing out at the dark yard. “Of course. You need a hospital.”
“Yeah, I mean, right?” Poppy laughed a little nasally. “Like, we’re so dumb. Not you, but I’m dumb.”
“Okay. So you’re going to call an ambulance?”
For a long time, Poppy didn’t answer. Waiting, Evangelyne felt a peculiar heaviness in her stomach. Poppy might really need her to come. If Poppy needed her, she had an excuse to see Poppy. Outside, Giovanni had stooped down to look at something in the grass. She could ask Giovanni for a ride. If he said yes, that would prove it was all right.
At last Poppy said, “I could call an ambulance. But if they come, my mom’s just going to get rid of them? She’s so shit scared of getting stuck with the bills. If you came, I was thinking we could walk to Dunkin’ Donuts. There’s a pay phone there. Then I know I’d really do it.”
Evangelyne gripped the phone. “My brother drives. I could ask—”
“Oh my god! You’re an angel. Oh my god, thank you. Just get me out of here, and I swear I’ll never ask you for anything again.”
Evangelyne ran out onto the lawn. By the time she reached Giovanni and Paul, she’d already decided they had to go. She told the story in that mood. She used the word “rape” and talked about the dogs being drugged, about Poppy waking up half naked.
She was ready for Giovanni and Paul to resist and dismiss this as more crazy shit. But both boys became very serious and noble. Speed was of the essence, they agreed. It was perfect that Poppy was going to a hospital; it would keep her safe and away from Evangelyne, plus she could get real help. Paul ran into the house to get Jay, and before Evangelyne was ready, they were driving to Poppy’s, through a night that now felt wild and warlike. They were heroes on a rescue mission. It was real.
They parked a little distance away from the house, and after some disagreement about how to proceed, all four of them got out and gathered to observe it from a copse of trees. It was an ordinary white one-story house with weeds grown up all around it so it had the appearance of sinking into the ground. Later, they all agreed you could tell bad things had happened there. The penumbra of skunk reminded Evangelyne of the dogs, who mustn’t be woken. She crept forward alone from the trees, but not far enough to get out of sight of the boys, picking her way on the littered grass. It took a while to find something to throw—the broken shell of a ballpoint pen. She was afraid it wouldn’t make enough noise against the screen, but when it hit, Poppy’s window immediately opened. The screen came up, and Poppy crawled right out as if this were all prearranged. Even in that act, she was graceful, and perhaps it had been her athletic nature that had initially cloaked her illness and made her seem not sick but elfin. Poppy dropped lightly to her feet and turned to Evangelyne with a broad, thrilled grin. Then she noticed the boys and stiffened. Evangelyne whispered hastily, “It’s cool, it’s just my brother and—”
Before she could finish, Poppy was screaming.
Because they were teenage kids, they laughed. It was a nervous giggling they tried to suppress, and it terrified Poppy more. Poppy leaped back for her window, clinging to the windowsill a moment, shrieking, “Help! Help!” like a cartoon character. Lights went on in the house. There were voices and thudding footsteps, a cacophony of furious barking. Then Poppy flung up a leg, hoisted herself with startling sudden power, and vanished. Evangelyne still hadn’t moved. She had some idea of confronting Debbie and Uncle and telling them Poppy had to go to the hospital. With the boys there, she felt safe.
The front door opened. Giovanni was already pulling at Evangelyne’s arm when Uncle appeared on the doorstep, wearing his familiar gray bathrobe, with a pistol in his hand.
Evangelyne never saw where he aimed. She was running with her brother, her skin all afraid, her whole body feeling how the bullets would hurt. When the gunshot actually came, she tripped and almost fell. She wasn’t hit. Paul shrieked, an unnatural sound that went through her like a saw. But he was running, not hit. At the car, they were panting and muttering swears as she realized how slow and ponderous a car door is, how long it takes to crawl inside. They ducked down in the seats as they pulled away, veering off the road because Giovanni hardly dared raise his head above the dashboard. They only sat up when they got out onto the highway, heading any direction, away. Then they all burst out laughing, shouting the story at one another, asking questions and talking over the answers, pounding fists on the upholstery, imitating Poppy’s shriek of “Help! Help!”
They were too excited to go straight home, so they drove around for an hour like that. Evangelyne cried a little, and Jay was crying too, or anyway wiping his eyes. He talked about seeing a guy shot once in North Philly. They agreed that fucked you up. Whole communities were being fucked up, and not only in the city. What about these crackers here? Even having a gun was fucked up, but they should maybe start carrying, just to be safe. They laughed about how they didn’t want to even open the windows, it was like you’d let a bullet in. As if a window would protect you! Jay said, “Like you wearing a hat and think you safe.” They riffed on the idea of what they’d be like in World War II, all racing to hide behind a tank. A tree. A hat. “Help! Help!”
They agreed they’d better not tell anyone. They were world-class fools for believing in all Poppy’s psycho shit. Giovanni said, “Tell me that’s not all lesbians.” At this Evangelyne laughed so hard she keeled over onto Jay, who laughingly shoved her away, saying, “I don’t want no lesbian on me! Y’all got crazy cooties! Help! Help!” They all started shrieking “Help! Help!” again, laughing, while Giovanni weaved all over the empty road for no particular reason, honking the horn.
Evangelyne felt restored to life. It was done. She’d tried, and Poppy had screamed and run away and almost got her killed—almost got her brother killed. Evangelyne was free now. Giovanni forgave her. In a year, she would go to Cornell.
The incident in the supermarket parking lot in which the soda can was thrown at Sundayate happened exactly as written in “The White Girl.” The mother of one of the girls really did call the police and make wild claims. But by that time, police had been investigating ARRI for weeks, ever since Uncle called 911 on the night Evangelyne tried to rescue Poppy. The police spent that night in Uncle’s kitchen, listening to Uncle’s and Debbie’s stories about human sacrifice, child abduction, and criminals from Baltimore. Two dozen other people would later make statements to police in a similar vein, giving depositions in which they said they’d heard screams coming from the ARRI house and witnessed rocket launchers being unloaded from trucks. Of course other neighbors dismissed this as ridiculous gossip, but the police soon stopped interviewing those neighbors, considering them “dead ends.”
During the weeks of the investigation, local attitudes toward ARRI hardened. The darkest rumors were now widely accepted as confirmed. Now there were hand-delivered threats in ARRI’s mailbox every morning. Once there was a noose, and another time someone shot at the house from a passing car. The police were called after that incident but said there was nothing they could do. In the final week, ARRI posted armed guards at front and back, which were seen by law enforcement as a red flag. Police plans for the raid on the house took on a military aspect.
Meanwhile, Poppy Beacham had become nonverbal and was finally admitted to a hospital in Burlington. Debbie told the jury at Evangelyne’s trial, “My daughter always had problems, but nothing like that. Nothing like, she can’t talk. So I’ll never know what those animals did to her, but I didn’t want it happening to anyone else.”
And one summer morning, just before dawn, Evangelyne Moreau was woken by gunfire. She would remember scrambling out of her bunk into darkness, noise, glass shattering, air filled with plaster dust. She was blind and gasping, crawling on all fours with plaster raining down on her head. After that, her memory was patchy. She wouldn’t remember how she got up. When she tried to remember killing the cops, the image would always be of a cartoon cop who evaporated neatly as the bullet hit. But she knows she didn’t initiate the gunfire, because she took the gun she used from the body of her brother Giovanni. Jay lay beside him, screaming; one of his eyes and a chunk of his face were gone. The window above them was shattered, open to the air. As she rose into it, she was thinking, As if a window would protect you.
She saw armed strangers on the lawn. She aimed. She squeezed the trigger and became a different person.