Song of Susannah Read online

3rd Stanza: Trudy and Mia

  One

  Until June first of 1999, Trudy Damascus was the sort of hard-headed woman who'd tell you that most UFOs were weather balloons (and those that weren't were probably the fabrications of people who wanted to get on TV), the Shroud of Turin was some fourteenth-century con man's trick, and that ghosts - Jacob Marley's included - were either the perceptions of the mentally ill or caused by indigestion. She was hard-headed, sheprided herself on being hard-headed, and had nothing even slightly spiritual on her mind as she walked down Second Avenue toward her business (an accounting firm called Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel) with her canvas carry-bag and her purse slung over her shoulder. One of GF&P's clients was a chain of toy stores called KidzPlay, and KidzPlay owed GF&P a goodly sum of money. The fact that they were also tottering on the edge of Chapter Eleven meant el zippo to Trudy. She wanted that $69,211. 19, and had spent most of her lunch-hour (in a back booth of Dennis's Waffles and Pancakes, which had been Chew Chew Mama's until 1994) mulling over ways to get it. During the last two years she had taken several steps toward changing Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel to Guttenberg, Furth, Patel and Damascus; forcing KidzPlay to cough up would be yet another step - a long one - in that direction.

  And so, as she crossed Forty-sixth Street toward the large dark glass skyscraper which now stood on the uptown corner of Second and Forty-sixth (where there had once been a certain Artistic Deli and then a certain vacant lot), Trudy wasn't thinking about gods or ghosts or visitations from the spirit world. She was thinking about Richard Goldman, the asshole CEO of a certain toy company, and how -

  But that was when Trudy's life changed. At 1:19 P. M. , EDT, to be exact. She had just reached the curb on the downtown side of the street. Was, in fact, stepping up. And all at once a woman appeared on the sidewalk in front of her. A wide-eyed African-American woman. There was no shortage of black women in New York City, and God knew there had to be a fair percentage of them with wide eyes, but Trudy had never seen one emerge directly from thin air before, which was what this one did. And there was something else, something even more unbelievable. Ten seconds before, Trudy Damascus would have laughed and saidnothing could be more unbelievable than a woman flicking into existence in front of her on a Midtown sidewalk, but there was. There definitely was.

  And now she knew how all those people who reported seeing flying saucers (not to mention ghosts wrapped in clanking chains) must feel, how they must grow frustrated by the entrenched disbelief of people like. . . well, people like the one Trudy Damascus had been at 1:18 P. M. on that day in June, the one who said goodbye for good on the downtown side of Forty-sixth Street. You could tell peopleYou don't understand, this REALLY HAPPENED! and it cut zero ice. They said stuff likeWell, she probably came out from behind the bus shelter and you just didn't notice orShe probably came out of one of the little stores and you just didn't notice. You could tell them that therewas no bus shelter on the downtown side of Second and Forty-sixth (or on the uptown side, for that matter), and it did no good. You could tell them therewere no little stores in that area, not since 2 Hammarskj?ld Plaza went up, and that didn't work, either. Trudy would soon find these things out for herself, and they would drive her close to insanity. She was not used to having her perceptions dismissed as no more than a blob of mustard or a bit of underdone potato.

  No bus shelter. No little shops. There were the steps going up to Hammarskj?ld Plaza, where a few late lunchers were still sitting with their brown bags, but the ghost-woman hadn't come from there, either. The fact was this: when Trudy Damascus put her sneaker-clad left foot up on the curb, the sidewalk directly ahead of her was completely empty. As she shifted her weight preparatory to lifting her right foot up from the street, a woman appeared.

  For just a moment, Trudy could see Second Avenue through her, and something else, as well, something that looked like the mouth of a cave. Then that was gone and the woman was solidifying. It probably took only a second or two, that was Trudy's estimate; she would later think of that old sayingIf you blinked you missed it and wish she had blinked. Because it wasn't just the materialization.

  The black lady grew legs right in front of Trudy Damascus's eyes.

  That's right; grew legs.

  There was nothing wrong with Trudy's powers of observation, and she would later tell people (fewer and fewer of whom wanted to listen) that every detail of that brief encounter was imprinted on her memory like a tattoo. The apparition was a little over four feet tall. That was a bit on the stumpy side for an ordinary woman, Trudy supposed, but probably not for one who quit at the knees.

  The apparition was wearing a white shirt, splattered with either maroon paint or dried blood, and jeans. The jeans were full and round at the thighs, where therewere legs inside them, but below the knees they trailed out on the sidewalk like the shed skins of weird blue snakes. Then, suddenly, they plumped up. Plumped up, the very words sounded insane, but Trudy saw it happen. At the same moment, the woman rose from her nothing-below-the-knee four-feet-four to her all-there height of perhaps five-six or -seven. It was like watching some extraordinary camera trick in a movie, but this was no movie, it was Trudy'slife.

  Over her left shoulder the apparition wore a cloth-lined pouch that looked as if it had been woven of reeds. There appeared to be plates or dishes inside it. In her right hand she clutched a faded red bag with a drawstring top. Something with square sides at the bottom, swinging back and forth. Trudy couldn't make out everything written on the side of the bag, but she thought part of it was MIDTOWN LANES.

  Then the woman grabbed Trudy by the arm. "What you got in that bag?" she asked. "You got shoes?"

  This caused Trudy to look at the black woman's feet, and she saw another amazing thing when she did: the African-American woman's feet werewhite. As white as her own.

  Trudy had heard of people being rendered speechless; now it had happened to her. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and wouldn't come down. Still, there was nothing wrong with her eyes. They saw everything. The white feet. More droplets on the black woman's face, almost certainly dried blood. The smell of sweat, as if materializing on Second Avenue like this had only come as the result of tremendous exertion.

  "If you got shoes, lady, you best give em to me. I don't want to kill you but I got to get to folks that'll help me with my chap and I can't do that barefoot. "

  No one on this little piece of Second Avenue. People - a few, anyway - sitting on the steps of 2 Hammarskj?ld Plaza, and a couple were looking right at Trudy and the black woman (themostly black woman), but not with any alarm or even interest, what the hell waswrong with them, were they blind?

  Well, it's not them she's grabbing, for one thing. And it's not them she's threatening to kill, for anoth -

  The canvas Borders bag with her office shoes inside it (sensible half-heels, cordovan-colored) was snatched from her shoulder. The black woman peered inside it, then looked up at Trudy again. "What size're these?"

  Trudy's tongue finally came unstuck from the roof of her mouth, but that was no help; it promptly fell dead at the bottom.

  "Ne'mine, Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll d - "

  The apparition's face suddenly seemed to shimmer. She lifted one hand - it rose in a loose loop with an equally loose fist anchoring the end, as if the woman didn't have very good control of it - and thumped herself on the forehead, right between the eyes. And suddenly her face was different. Trudy had Comedy Central as part of her basic cable deal, and she'd seen stand-up comics who specialized in mimicry change their faces that same way.

  When the black woman spoke again, her voice had changed, too. Now it was that of an educated woman. And (Trudy would have sworn it) a frightened one.

  "Help me," she said. "My name is Susannah Dean and I. . . I. . . oh dear. . . ohChrist - "

  This time it was pain that twisted the woman's face, and she clutched at her belly. She looked down. When she looked back up
again, the first one had reappeared, the one who had talked of killing for a pair of shoes. She took a step back on her bare feet, still holding the bag with Trudy's nice Ferragamo low-heels and herNew York Times inside it.

  "Oh Christ," she said. "Oh don't that hurt!Mama! You got to make it stop. It can't come yet, not right out here on the street, you got to make it stop awhile. "

  Trudy tried to raise her voice and yell for a cop. Nothing came out but a small, whispering sigh.

  The apparition pointed at her. "You want to get out of here now," she said. "And if you rouse any constabulary or raise any posse, I'll find you and cut your breasts off. " She took one of the plates from the reed pouch. Trudy observed that the plate's curved edge was metal, and as keen as a butcher's knife, and suddenly found herself in a struggle to keep from wetting her pants.

  Find you and cut your breasts off,and an edge like the one she was looking at would probably do the job. Zip-zoop, instant mastectomy, O dear Lord.

  "Good day to you, madam," Trudy heard her mouth saying. She sounded like someone trying to talk to the dentist before the Novocain has worn off. "Enjoy those shoes, wear them in good health. "

  Not that the apparition looked particularly healthy. Not even with her legs on and her fancy white feet.

  Trudy walked. She walked down Second Avenue. She tried to tell herself (with no success at all) that she hadnot seen a woman appear out of thin air in front of 2 Hammarskj?ld, the building the folks who worked there jokingly called the Black Tower. She tried to tell herself (also with no success at all) that this was what she got for eating roast beef and fried potatoes. She should have stuck to her usual waffle-and-egg, you went to Dennis's forwaffles, not for roast beef and potatoes, and if you didn't believe that, look what had just happened to her. Seeing African-American apparitions, and -

  And her bag! Her canvas Borders bag! She must have dropped it!

  Knowing better. All the time expecting the woman to come after her, shrieking like a headhunter from the deepest, darkest jungles of Papua. There was a ningly-tumb place on her back (she meanta tingly-numb place, but ningly-tumb was how it actually felt, kind of loose and cool and distant) where she knew the crazy woman's plate would bite into her, drinking her blood and then eating one of her kidneys before coming to rest, still quivering, in the live chalk of her spine. She would hear it coming, somehow she knew that, it would make a whistling sound like a child's top before it chunked into her and warm blood went splashing down over her buttocks and the backs of her legs -

  She couldn't help it. Her bladder let go, her urine gushed, and the front of her slacks, part of atr??s expensive Norma Kamali suit, went distressingly dark. She was almost at the corner of Second and Forty-fifth by then. Trudy - never again to be the hard-headed woman she'd once fancied herself - was finally able to stop and turn around. She no longer felt quite so ningly-tumb. Only warm at the crotch.

  And the woman, the mad apparition, was gone.

  Two

  Trudy kept some softball-practice clothes - tee-shirts and two old pairs of jeans - inside her office storage cabinet. When she got back to Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel, she made changing her first priority. Her second was a call to the police. The cop who took her report turned out to be Officer Paul Antassi.

  "My name is Trudy Damascus," she said, "and I was just mugged on Second Avenue. "

  Officer Antassi was extremely sympathetic on the phone, and Trudy found herself imagining an Italian George Clooney. Not a big stretch, considering Antassi's name and Clooney's dark hair and eyes. Antassi didn't look a bit like Clooney in person, but hey, who expected miracles and movie stars, it was a real world they were living in. Although. . . considering what had happened to her on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth at 1:19 P. M. , EDT. . .

  Officer Antassi arrived at about three-thirty, and she found herself telling him exactly what had happened to her,everything, even the part about feeling ningly-tumb instead of tingly-numb and her weird certainty that the woman was getting ready to throw that dish at her -

  "Dish had a sharpened edge, you say?" Antassi asked, jotting on his pad, and when she said yes, he nodded sympathetically. Something about that nod had struck her as familiar, but right then she'd been too involved in telling her tale to chase down the association. Later, though, she wondered how she could possibly have been so dumb. It was every sympathetic nod she'd ever seen in one of those lady-gone-crazy films, fromGirl, Interrupted with Winona Ryder all the way back toThe Snake Pit, with Olivia de Havilland.

  But right then she'd been too involved. Too busy telling the nice Officer Antassi about how the apparition's jeans had been dragging on the sidewalk from the knees down. And when she was done, she for the first time heard the one about how the black woman had probably come out from behind a bus shelter. Also the one - this'll killya - about how the black woman had probably just stepped out of some little store, there were billions of them in that neighborhood. As for Trudy, she premiered her bit about how therewere no bus shelters on that corner, not on the downtown side of Forty-sixth, not on the uptown side, either. Also the one about how all the shops were gone on the downtown side since 2 Hammarskj?ld went up, that would prove to be one of her most popular routines, would probably get her onstage at Radio Goddam City someday.

  She was asked for the first time what she'd had for lunch just before seeing this woman, and realized for the first time that she'd had a twentieth-century version of what Ebenezer Scrooge had eaten shortly before seeing his old (and long-dead) business partner: potatoes and roast beef. Not to mentionseveral blots of mustard.

  She forgot all about asking Officer Antassi if he'd like to go out to dinner with her.

  In fact, she threw him out of her office.

  Mitch Guttenberg poked his head in shortly thereafter. "Do they think they'll be able to get your bag back, Tru - "

  "Get lost," Trudy said without looking up. "Right now. "

  Guttenberg assessed her pallid cheeks and set jaw. Then he retired without saying another word.

  Three

  Trudy left work at four-forty-five, which was early for her. She walked back to the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, and although that ningly-tumb feeling began to work its way up her legs and into the pit of her stomach again as she approached Hammarskj?ld Plaza, she never hesitated. She stood on the corner, ignoring both white WALK and red DON ' T WALK. She turned in a tight little circle, almost like a ballet dancer, also ignoring her fellow Second Avenue-ites and being ignored in turn.

  "Right here," she said. "It happened right here. I know it did. She asked me what size I was, and before I could answer - Iwould have answered, I would have told her what color my underwear was if she asked, I was in shock - before I could answer, she said. . . "

  Ne'mine, Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll do.

  Well, no, she hadn't quite finished that last part, but Trudy was sure that was what the woman had meant to say. Only then her face had changed. Like a comic getting ready to imitate Bill Clinton or Michael Jackson or maybe even George Clooney. And she'd asked for help. Asked for help and said her name was. . . what?

  "Susannah Dean," Trudy said. "That was the name. I never told Officer Antassi. "

  Well, yeah, but fuck Officer Antassi. Officer Antassi with his bus shelters and little stores, justfuck him.

  That woman - Susannah Dean, Whoopi Goldberg, Coretta Scott King, whoever she was - thought she was pregnant. Thought she was inlabor. I'm almost sure of it. Did she look pregnant to you, Trudes?

  "No," she said.

  On the uptown side of Forty-sixth, white WALK once again became red DON ' T WALK. Trudy realized she was calming down. Something about just standing here, with 2 Dag Hammarskj?ld Plaza on her right, was calming. Like a cool hand on a hot brow, or a soothing word that assured you that there was nothing, absolutelynothing to feel ningly-tumb about.

  She could hear a humming, she realized. A sweet hummin
g sound.

  "That's not humming," she said as red DON ' T WALK cycled back to white WALK one more time (she remembered a date in college once telling her the worst karmic disaster he could imagine would be coming back as a traffic light). "That's not humming, that'ssinging. "

  And then, right beside her - startling her but not frightening her - a man's voice spoke. "That's right," he said. Trudy turned and saw a gentleman who looked to be in his early forties. "I come by here all the time, just to hear it. And I'll tell you something, since we're just ships passing in the night, so to speak - when I was a young man, I had the world's most terrible case of acne. I think coming here cleared it up, somehow. "

  "You think standing on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth cleared up your acne," she said.

  His smile, only a small one but very sweet, faltered a tiny bit. "I know it sounds crazy - "

  "I saw a woman appear out of nowhere right here," Trudy said. "Three and a half hours ago, I saw this. When she showed up, she had no legs from the knees down. Then she grew the rest of em. So who's crazy, my friend?"

  He was looking at her, wide-eyed, just some anonymous time-server in a suit with his tie pulled down at the end of the work-day. And yes, she could see the pits and shadows of old acne on his cheeks and forehead. "This is true?"

  She held up her right hand. "If I'm lyin, I'm dyin. Bitch stole my shoes. " She hesitated. "No, she wasn't a bitch. I don't believe she was a bitch. She was scared and she was barefooted and she thought she was in labor. I just wish I'd had time to give her my sneakers instead of my good goddam shoes. "

  The man was giving her a cautious look, and Trudy Damascus suddenly felt tired. She had an idea this was a look she was going to get used to. The sign said WALK again, and the man who'd spoken to her started across, swinging his briefcase.

  "Mister!"

  He didn't stop walking, but did look back over his shoulder.

  "What used to be here, back when you used to stop by for acne treatments?"

  "Nothing," he said. "It was just a vacant lot behind a fence. I thought it would stop - that nice sound - when they built on the site, but it never did. "

  He gained the far curb. Walked off up Second Avenue. Trudy stood where she was, lost in thought. I thought it would stop, but it never did.

  "Now why would that be?" she asked, and turned to look more directly at 2 Hammarskj?ld Plaza. The Black Tower. The humming was stronger now that she was concentrating on it. And sweeter. Not just one voice but many of them. Like a choir. Then it was gone. Disappeared as suddenly as the black woman had done the opposite.

  No it didn't,Trudy thought. I just lost the knack of hearing it, that's all. If I stood here long enough, I bet it would come back. Boy, this is nuts. I'mnuts.

  Did she believe that? The truth was that she did not. All at once the world seemed very thin to her, more an idea than an actual thing, and barely there at all. She had never felt less hard-headed in her life. What she felt was weak in her knees and sick to her stomach and on the verge of passing out.

  Four

  There was a little park on the other side of Second Avenue. In it was a fountain; nearby was a metal sculpture of a turtle, its shell gleaming wetly in the fountain's spray. She cared nothing for fountains or sculptures, but there was also a bench.

  W ALK had come around again. Trudy tottered across Second Avenue, like a woman of eighty-three instead of thirty-eight, and sat down. She began to take long, slow breaths, and after three minutes or so felt a little better.

  Beside the bench was a trash receptacle with KEEP LITTER IN ITS PLACE stenciled on the side. Below this, in pink spray-paint, was an odd little graffito:See the TURTLE of enormous girth. Trudy saw the turtle, but didn't think much of its girth; the sculpture was quite modest. She saw something else, as well: a copy of theNew York Times, rolled up as she always rolled hers, if she wanted to keep it a little longer and happened to have a bag to stow it in. Of course there were probably at least a million copies of that day'sTimes floating around Manhattan, but this one was hers. She knew it even before fishing it out of the litter basket and verifying what she knew by turning to the crossword, which she'd mostly completed over lunch, in her distinctive lilac-colored ink.

  She returned it to the litter basket and looked across Second Avenue to the place where her idea of how things worked had changed. Maybe forever.

  Took my shoes. Crossed the street and sat here by the turtle and put them on. Kept my bag but dumped theTimes. Why'd she want my bag? She didn't have any shoes of her own to put in it.

  Trudy thought she knew. The woman had put her plates in it. A cop who got a look at those sharp edges might be curious about what you served on dishes that could cut your fingers off if you grabbed them in the wrong place.

  Okay, but then where did she go?

  There was a hotel down at the corner of First and Forty-sixth. Once it had been the U. N. Plaza. Trudy didn't know what its name was now, and didn't care. Nor did she want to go down there and ask if a black woman in jeans and a stained white shirt might have come in a few hours ago. She had a strong intuition that her version of Jacob Marley's ghost had done just that, but here was an intuition she didn't want to follow up on. Better to let it go. The city was full of shoes, butsanity, one'ssanity -

  Better to head home, take a shower, and just. . . let it go. Except -

  "Something is wrong," she said, and a man walking past on the sidewalk looked at her. She looked back defiantly. "Somewhere something isvery wrong. It's - "

  Tippingwas the word that came to mind, but she would not say it. As if to say it would cause the tip to become a topple.

  It was a summer of bad dreams for Trudy Damascus. Some were about the woman who first appeared and thengrew. These were bad, but not the worst. In the worst ones she was in the dark, and terrible chimes were ringing, and she sensed something tipping further and further toward the point of no return.

  STAVE: Commala-come-key

  Can ya tell me what ya see?

  Is it ghosts or just the mirror

  That makes ya want to flee?

  RESPONSE: Commala-come-three!

  I beg ya, tell me!

  Is it ghosts or just your darker self

  That makes ya want to flee?