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Helena has been doing so much running lately, to compounds and from compounds, to Sarah and from Sarah. She can’t decide which one she always ends back at – she swings Tomas-Sarah-Tomas-Sarah-Henrik-Sarah-Grace-Henrik Sarah, now, back to Sarah.
On the last swing of the Helena-pendulum, the last inhale of the Helena-mouth, the Helena-lungs, the last inhale before the exhale, she had been running to Sarah desperate. She had thought that there was something Sarah could fix in her. She had thought that Sarah could fix the hole in her, that they could do it together and that the two of them, they would be alright.
She was wrong. It was Helena who had to fix Helena, the same way it has always been. Helena sitting in the dark putting bandages on Helena’s back. Helena pulling duct tape around Helena’s chest, around Helena’s bullet wound. Helena shoving her thumbs into Tomas’ eyes, shoving the knife into her mother’s stomach, shoving the probe into Henrik.
Helena was willing to fix Sarah’s problems too, but. Sarah did not want her to.
Sarah did not want much from Helena. That is a problem.
Another problem is this: there is nothing left for Sarah to fix.
Helena has her babies, snug in her belly and swinging from her fist. Helena has fixed Helena again, the smoke of that fixing settling in the clothes she wears and curling in her hair. She is not hollow anymore. She knows her babies are in there, her tiny family. She can make a family. She will make a family of her own, now, a family that will never lie, a family that will never leave.
Because Sarah has lied, and Helena has left, and now Helena moves to Sarah like a compass needle moves to true north: because it has nowhere else to go. Because that is what it has always done. Because that is how nature works.
She moves to Sarah like a compass needle moves to true north: because that is all it knows.
Helena’s fluttering bird heart in its rib cage pulls towards the north of Felix’s apartment, which Helena thinks may still smell like Sarah. That is: if Sarah is not there, the place will hold her ghost.
She thinks about her mother’s house, too, that would hold Kira’s ghost. So many ghosts. Helena misses riding in the car with Sarah, misses leaving those ghosts behind. She misses the Sarah that was in the car with her – the Sarah who laughed and lied so beautifully.
But Helena lied, and Sarah left, and now that memory is a ghost too. So many ghosts. So many.
She swings more between the two of them, these houses, but she is decided by the growling of her stomach. Helena is not only eating for Helena, now, she is eating for her family. Felix does not have food, only alcohol.
She does not want to take food from Kira. She does not want to take food from Kira’s ghost.
Instead she spreads her arms out as she walks, like outstretched wings (her other wings stretch on her back but do not rise along). Her babies pull down one arm, heavy, a beautiful heavy weight – Helena is light, her heart beating strong and unharmed in her chest, and her children are her only weight. They pull her wings down and Helena turns with them, swooping in an arc like a bird would do.
She heads towards another sort of nest, instead. She makes little peeping whistles to herself as she heads into the building, through the hallways. A long time ago Helena walked through these hallways with a different sort of family, a sister-brother, a brother-sister, but now Helena has all the family she needs inside of her and in her hand, holding her hand, the cold metal a dim echo of the way Sarah’s hand curled around her hand.
A lot of things seem like a cold metal echo of Sarah. Even Sarah, now, seems like that. Helena looks down at her feet as she walks, the familiarity of them, and considers Sarah the way she has not been doing. Ever. She thinks about Sarah and her family – that is, Sarah’s family that is not Helena, the family Sarah assembled around herself while Helena was busy killing and bleeding and starving and wanting, mostly. Mostly wanting.
Sarah put her family before Helena before. And they are – they aren’t others, really. They’re Sarah’s family. Her brothers. Her
sisters. Not Helena’s sisters. Not Helena’s brothers. Helena has to fix Helena. Helena has to carry her own family.
She stops where she walks, sets down the container gently as a child, and sits down next to it. She thinks about the idea of family, which once seemed like everything.
A long time ago Helena promised that she would never let her sister go.
But it was easy to promise that, with her arms full of shuddering Sarah-weight, with Sarah’s heart thumping a firm counterpoint to her own. It is a difficult promise to keep with no Sarah at all, nothing but ghosts.
Maybe it’s time to let
Sarah
go.
The thought makes Helena’s heart curl over and over in her chest, sour, the bile of it flooding her throat. Let Sarah go. Leave Sarah behind. Leave Sarah where she lies. Let Sarah hold her family close – she never came after Helena, after all, never even looked for her. It could be a choice for Helena to give her. One last chance to lead Sarah true. Then Helena can take Helena’s hand and lead her, lead her somewhere where she can be herself.
Helena’s never gotten the chance to be herself, has she? She has always been what other people have wanted her to be, and it has been so easy. Easy as anything. Easy as being a gun. Easy as being a blade. Maybe this is a chance to take steps that are her own.
Helena takes those first steps easily, standing up, wrapping her hand around the still-warm metal of the handle. She continues walking to Arthur’s apartment, through the hallway.
She is waiting for a hollowness to grow in her, at the thought of leaving Sarah. She is waiting for some sign that this is the wrong thing to do – that she should stay at Sarah’s side forever, that she should run after Grace.
No sign comes. Helena allows herself a single sigh of grief, long, shaking, and then begins the process of letting (Sarah) sadness go. She doesn’t need it, right now. What she needs is food, and then to say goodbye.
Even if Sarah doesn’t know Helena is saying goodbye, she will say goodbye. It is time to uncurl her arms. It is time to let her sister go.
Just as this thought settles in Helena’s mind, she arrives at Arthur’s door. 3-1-0. It is arranged like this:
Past. SarahandHelenaandKira.
Present. Helena.
Future. For dust you are. To dust you will return. Amen.
The door doesn’t stop her – no door stops Helena, and this door is almost too easy after Rachel’s door, that door Helena solved even with all of her keening for Sarah. Click goes the door, and Helena walks inside easy as anything.
A lot of things were easy, in this apartment. Helena lets a smile curl at the corner of her mouth, shy, and huffs out one laugh. Then two. There! She can manage it, she can swallow down all her sadness, let go of all her sadness, let it all go.
Arthur was such a silly man, she thinks to herself as she digs through his cabinets – or falls on them, more like, grabbing all the food she can find. For herself. For her babies. She hums to herself as she goes – sugar, oh sugar honey, you are my candy girl, and you’ve got me watching you. Or something.
With a loud hum of contentment she brings the food to the table, and eats, and waits. She keeps a patient eye on her babies in the corner. She thinks. She’s not sure she can carry it with her – the container – her children. She can’t carry it with her, so: maybe it is time to shrink her family more. She thinks about this, scooping a great white blob of yogurt onto her tongue.
Her babies are miracles, aren’t they? Just like Helena. Just like Helena-and-Sarah. Just like Kira.
Helena doesn’t need any miracles. She can leave all the miracles for Sarah, when she goes. Maybe Helena’s babies have something in them – something that can help Sarah, or Kira, or some faceless person Helena could not care less about, some person whose happiness could make Sarah happy.
Goodbye, babies.
Goodbye, Sarah. That is the future. A zero round as Helena’s belly, zero, goodbye Sarah, goodbye.
Helena eats mindlessly, the best way she knows how, and lets goodbye run through her over and over again, like a heartbeat. It is the exhale of an inhale that was so long ago: she was a heartbeat of pain, belonging, mine mine mine mine mine mine mine. This was when Sarah shot her. This was when Sarah did not want to make a family.
Helena has never had a family. She has always been just Helena. Then she had a family. Now she is letting them go. 3-1. 0. 0. Oh oh oh. It hurts to say goodbye, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She can’t carry the container with her as she goes. And she has to go. She is growing increasingly certain that there is no place for her here – here, where she has to break into other people’s houses to eat. Here, where there is no place at a dinner table for her, no how-was-your-day, only what-happened-to-you. No place. No place. 0. Oh. 0. Oh. 0.
She’s rolling the 0 around in her mouth, the roundness of it, when she hears a noise outside the door. She swallows down the sadness with the chicken she’s eating and looks to the door.
It’s Arthur!
He doesn’t look very happy to see her. That’s a shame.
He really is not happy to see her. He eyes her at his table until she stands up with a sigh, lopes back over to his cabinets to take more food from him. May as well eat, while she waits for him to make a decision.
(Not that it matters, one way or another. Helena will see Sarah. She will go. These are truths.
Helena has become a liar. This is a thing she has had to do, because it was supposed to be Sarah-and-Helena, Helena-and-Sarah, words and blades, weapons and lies.
But then Sarah left, and Helena had to be the both of them. She had to carry Sarah in her chest, across from her heart, and Sarah iswas a liar. So.
She doesn’t want to lie. She has gotten tired of lying, so tired it rolls around in her chest 0, 0, 0. All that nothingness. But she will take Sarah with her when she goes, when she goes she will leave Sarah behind. See?
Helena is a liar, now, but: these are still truths.)
Oh, cereal! It is a big container, big big, and Helena grabs it and crunches while she stands in front of the refrigerator. Hm. What to eat.
Behind her Arthur fidgets, foot to foot to foot, and she considers where his weight is placed, how she would be able to sweep him down to the floor, how fast she could do so without spilling her cereal. Easy.
Behind her Arthur fidgets, and she hears the rustling of a cell phone, the sound of dialing Sarah? Sarah? Sarah?
No; she hears the squawking from the other end of the line, the voice tinny, and thinks: Felix. A part of the family-that-is-not, then, not Helena’s family, brother of my blood, brother of my flesh.
She feels the sting on her skin that says someone is talking about her and she calls, “Hello, sestra-brother.” Brother of my blood, brother of my – well. “I want to see Sarah.”
She will use them, this family, she will crawl her way to Sarah and she will drop her weight at Sarah’s feet. Thud. Sarah I was heavy, Sarah I was hollow, Sarah I am fine now. Take this weight. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. None of the rest of them matter. Arthur does not matter (he could never catch her anyways) Felix does not matter (not Helena’s family) the others do not matter (copies) (others) (Sarah’s family). She will wait, she will be patient; she is good at this, she will fill her belly and wait and when the time comes…well, she’s used to striking, when the time comes.
This time she will pull back, instead, and she will let them close in around the space where she should be.
(In a way it is a sort of revenge. In a way it is a sort of kindness. Helena fixed the hole in Helena alone. Sarah’s family, Sarah’s family that is not Helena, they can fix themselves together. But they will have to fix themselves, won’t they? Won’t they?)
Arthur paces back and forth across his apartment, like he’s trying to be an animal in a cage. He is bad at it. Helena knows a thing or two about cages; Helena knows a thing or two about animals. Too bad there isn’t time to teach him, say: you have to keep your anger in your stomach. Your limbs, well, they’re for fear. Arthur keeps his anger everywhere, and that’s why it would be so easy for her to do whatever she’d like to him. Kill him. Kiss him. Doesn’t matter.
Kiss him. Helena can feel the weight of Jesse’s hat where she’s tucked it away; while she eats, she remembers the pressure of his lips on her lips. Not as good as food. But: good. In their own way, good, those lips.
She’s distracted from her thoughts by a knock on the door, crisp, neat as a bullet. She watches lazily as Arthur moves to open the door…he has his back to her. Everyone is so stupid, sometimes, that Helena can’t breathe through it. Has he learned nothing?
(There isn’t time to tell Sarah all she needs to tell her. Things like never turn your back on an animal, things like always make sure the body has stopped breathing before you leave it, things like do not leave it, things like hold the body until it is no longer a body, things like never turn your back on your family. There isn’t time. If she tells these things to Sarah she will keep telling them, over and over, cut out everything Helena and put it into Sarah’s hands.
She’s thought of this before. She does not think Sarah would want it. She would keep telling Sarah everything and she would not leave Sarah, so. Sarah would leave her.
She has to go. There are a million reasons why she has to go.)
Felix opens the door, he is not Sarah. He looks at her like a childanimal. Helena forgot that she was leading him towards that, that confusion as to what exactly Helena is. She had forgotten a lot of things, a lot of things that weren’t Sarah.
She might as well leave him with that thought, though; she grins, all teeth, like a monkey. She might as well lie to him. Why not start hoarding Sarah in her chest, now, like all of the food she is stuffing her belly with? Why not practice? None of this will matter, soon, will it. All of this will be dust in the wind and Helena will be gone.
She tells it like a story, like that would make it easier. Once upon a time there was a Helena. Once upon a time there was a creator, and a creation, and the creator did not love his creation. The creator thought by not loving his creation it would follow him to the end of the earth, but the creation found another way to fill the hole.
Creators are stupid, and mortal.
Stories are also stupid.
But most people are stupid, and it doesn’t matter, does it, what story Helena tells. People will find themselves in the story, or they will think they will find her.
Sometimes people don’t understand that a story is just a story. Once upon a time there was a Helena. She could be anything.
“I fell in love with a boy,” she tells the remains in her hand, then Arthur. “Called Jesse.”
(Did she? No. But people love love; they are stupid like that. Helena is stupid like that. Helena loves love. She wishes a little bit that she had loved Jesse. For the story. Only for the story.
But if she loved Jesse this wouldn’t be a lie, would it? And what sort of story is not at least a little bit a lie? Not a very good story at all.)
“But after bar-fighting, he had to go to war,” she sighs, making up the story as she goes, turning to look at Felix, “and become tow-truck driver.”
A little bit of truth. A little bit of lies. What she does not say: the best way to tell the truth about Jesse is to lie. All Helena told Jesse was lies. Helena pretended to be a person around Jesse, so she will make him pretend too, in her memory-story. Helena-ma’am and Jesse-the-soldier will be good together. This is, of course, instead of Helena-the-soldier and Jesse, Jesse who needs no nickname to be a real person.
Oh, no, now she’s sad again. Back to the story.
Or maybe not: Arthur has gotten tired of it! A shame. She was telling the story for him, after all.
“Okay, look, there was a fire at the Johanssen ranch last night, do you know anything about that,” he says, just as angry and stupid as he was when he was asking about Maggie, Maggie Maggie, dead-in-the-ground Maggie. She wonders if Maggie and Henrik have met. Funny.
“No,” she says, small little sound. But that’s no fun. Now they aren’t telling a story, they’re telling the truth. Helena tucks Sarah away for a second and wriggles a little in her seat, makes a game out of it. Waits.
“Helena,” says Felix, like talking to a child, and Helena blows air through her lips, plane sound, propeller sound, phhphbt. It’s a good thing she loves past-Helena, loves past-Helena’s games, loves games, or she would show Felix that she is a threat. But that was never the game.
This is winning the game, for him to talk to her like that, for him to say slowly, “Did you burn down the fish-people’s ranch?”
“No,” she says, grinning – one part to let him know she is lying, make it easy, easy as killing (or easy as things that Felix is good at, being pretty, being useless). One part because she’s winning the game, the whole thing. He thinks her such a child. He thinks this another sort of game, and thinks he’s winning it. Everyone is so silly.
Helena loves them. She loves loving them. She loves love, and all these stupid people with their hearts on their sleeves, the bright red blood of their hearts bleeding.
Helena loves Helena. Helena loves Helena with her arms wrapped around Sarah, and Helena loves Helena stumbling through back alleys bleeding Sarah’s blood. Helena loves Helena now that Helena is trying, trying so hard, not to love Sarah. She loves Helena for trying.
She has to love Helena. Who else is going to? Not Sarah.
“When do I see Sarah,” she says abruptly. Asks? Says. There is no room for questioning – this is an order, this is a demand, this is a truth. Truth. This is truth.
(The story’s over, anyways. Or. Almost.)
“Soon,” says Felix, soft, gentle now that she is asking things of him instead of the other way around. “She said that Kira can’t wait to see you.”
Kira.
Oh. Oh no.
Helena’s vision blurs and her mouth droops, slowly; she had forgotten. Somehow, impossibly, she had forgotten about Kira. How can she leave Kira. How can she do this thing.
Like this: it is the best thing for Kira, isn’t it? Won’t Helena just hurt her again? Maybe Helena will break Kira, like she breaks all the things she loves, so easily. She could touch her lightly, she could play at gentleness, but the most gentle thing, the most loving thing, is leaving. Isn’t it?
Kira will hurt in her heart. But her heart will keep beating. That’s what’s important.
Leaving Sarah is best for Helena, maybe. Probably. Definitely. Leaving Kira is best for Kira. This, well, this Helena knows to be true, true as true, true as seeing Sarah, true as leaving Sarah.
In stories the monster always lets the princess go, doesn’t it? In stories the angel that falls never hurts the angel that doesn’t.
Oh. Stories.
There is another story Helena is telling, and it’s not over yet.
“After…my heart was broken,” she says, not exactly lying – her heart almost broke, a while ago, but Sarah missed – “I became roommates to…a very good girl.”
Helena’s story isn’t Helena’s story without Grace, who is out there somewhere, who gave Helena food and truth. In return Helena gave her a chance to run.
Maybe someday she will find Grace again. Maybe she will say thank you. The future is open, isn’t it? Helena’s story could go anywhere, to anyone, now. She’s done what she’s been told to do, but. But. Maybe the road ends here. Maybe she can step off of it. Make her own road. Make her own path.
Arthur doesn’t care about Helena’s path…or maybe it’s just that Helena isn’t saying anything out loud. Whichever. He latches onto the idea of Grace like a dog after a scent, Grace all fox, Grace all copper blood fox.
“Okay,” he says, moving forward, obvious body language, easy signals, “why don’t you tell me about that.”
Helena sighs, says, “She had a…crisis of faith.”
Once upon a time there was a Grace. Once upon a time there was a creator, and a creation, and the creator did not love his creation. The creator thought by not loving his creation it would follow him to the end of the earth, but the creation found another way to fill the hole.
Once upon a time there were two creations, and they could not fix up the holes their creators had made in them, like bullet wounds bleeding, like mouths without stitches. But they tried, and maybe that’s good enough.
That is all of Grace’s story Arthur gets, because it is not Helena’s story to tell.
That is the end of Helena’s story, anyways. There is no happily-ever-after yet. Helena would need to die for that, wouldn’t she? Real life does not end in neat ribbons, going away when you want it to, letting you end your own story.
Real life is not as kind as Helena, in this respect.
She considers this as she eats; Arthur asks her more questions, rains them like blows on her body, but she answers none of them. The story is not over, but it is over. She wants to see Sarah. She wants this chapter, at least, to end. The story of Helena, who was created. Once upon a time there was Sarah, and Helena, and Sarah said she loved Helena. Sarah thought by saying she loved Helena Helena would follow her to the end of the earth, but
After a while Felix gets a phone call, and Helena can read Sarah in the way his body sags, the way he smears his hand over his face. It’s alright. She would do the same, if Sarah ever called her.
It’s a good thing Sarah has never called her, isn’t it. Isn’t it. Isn’t it.
He steps outside but Helena can still hear the horrible, terrible relief in his voice and she is, suddenly, angry. Angry in a way Arthur couldn’t comprehend, even as he prowls around his apartment. This is real anger. This is the righteousness that leads Helena to stab men in necks.
Which is, it seems, what she should have been doing. Because Felix’s relief? That means there is something Felix was afraid of. That means Felix was lying to her, and he was afraid, the way Sarah was afraid on the phone, back when Helena was a body. The way Sarah was afraid right there, close enough to touch, when Helena made a body. Just for Sarah Helena made a body, made it out of a man. Creator and creation. Holy.
That means Felix was lying to her, and Helena would be impressed if she wasn’t so angry. Sarah was hurt, and her time has been wasted in this apartment, telling stories—
But. No. That’s not her job, is it, to go after Sarah, to stick knives in necks, knives in stomachs, thumbs in eyes, probes in…well. This is no longer what Helena has to do.
The weight of that hits Helena again and she slumps, pants a few breaths, makes a small sound in the back of her throat. Arthur looks at her and she raises her eyebrows, grins in a lying sort of way.
He looks away, and she goes back to thinking. Sarah doesn’t need Helena. Sarah was in danger, horrible terrible danger, and now she is fine.
There is nothing for Sarah to fix in Helena. There is nothing for Helena to fix for Sarah.
In a way it’s almost a relief. The knowing. In a way.
She wasn’t sad, really, but she’s still managed to be even less sad by the time Felix swoops back in. Helena likes him more, now that she knows him a liar. He and Sarah will take good care of each other once Helena is gone.
“Helena,” he says cheerily, “how would you like to meet your other sisters?”
What.
There is a difference, Helena thinks very calmly, between lying and blasphemy. Lying is not a harmless thing, but blasphemy is always harmful. That’s the difference.
Helena has one sister. One. Her name is Sarah, and soon Helena will say goodbye to her but she will still have a sister. She will make Sarah into a story, and tell her to people: this is my sister. We grew up together. We shared a bed, and told each other stories in the dark. But I had to go. You know how these things work.
Helena’s story does not have room for more sisters, especially if Felix means what she thinks he means, which is: blasphemy. All these paper-doll girls, and Felix thinks her part of a chain. She is flesh and blood.
But then again, they are too. Helena saw Katja Obinger’s blood in the dirt. Helena felt Janika Zingler’s heart beating. Helena heard Danielle Fournier laugh. They are paper, but they are paper people.
Sisters, though? Sisters? The thought makes Helena want to vomit on the floor, the thought of sharing a connection with these women who have never felt Helena’s heart beating next to theirs. No. Not sisters. Not sisters at all.
…They are Sarah’s family.
Helena lines her thoughts up like passports and photographs on a table, that face not her face staring up at her over and over.
Her thoughts go like this:
Helena has been told that these women are not people, but she was told this by Tomas who was a liar but Sarah disagreed but Sarah was a liar but Grace said Helena wasn’t even human and she told the truth and Helena—
Her thoughts. Go. Like this.
Helena has been told that these women are not people.
Maybe this is true, maybe it is not. She is not sure she has the right to choose.
These women are Sarah’s family. Sarah has chosen them.
Helena is going to be leaving Sarah with them. They will have to take care of Sarah, hold Sarah in their paper arms, speak their paper words that will fall, crumpled, like the shiny gold angel Helena saw on the floor of Rachel’s bathroom.
She will have to see if they measure up. If they are good enough.
Also, she reminds herself, it does not matter. They might be abominations; she won’t kill them, because Sarah loves them and Helena still loves Sarah. It doesn’t matter if she’s kind to them because not killing them is sin enough. If they aren’t abominations, she might as well be kind. When she is gone maybe they will repay that kindness, pay it forward to Sarah. She can only pray.
Felix has been talking while Helena has been thinking, but his words do not matter to her. She wonders if she should grin but decides against it; she will use Felix’s thought that she is not a threat, she will introduce that thought to Sarah’s
sisters. Helena? No, she is not a threat. She was so kind to me me. Helena would never hurt me me. Helena is small and sweet and gentle.
They will know her like fish do, Helena decides, standing and saying a goodbye to the fish tank, grabbing the other tank in her fist. She can’t forget her children, after all. These ones will not know her. When (if) they grow they will know her by the stories Sarah’s family tells. And Sarah’s family will know her like fish do.
That is: they will not know her at all.
Arthur comes along, like he thinks she would run. Like he thinks it is time for that, when she has not even seen Sarah yet. Foolish man. Foolish stupid man; Helena will miss him. Maybe. Why would she leave without seeing Sarah, when this whole journey, all this running, all of it has been for Sarah?
(Where would she go?)
(Where will she go?)
They bring her to Felix’s building, and Helena plays at pretending she can still smell the blood, the blood that hung in the air, her-blood-Sarah’s-blood and the blood all over her dress.
She wonders idly what happened to that dress. Doesn’t matter. It reached its purpose. Like other pieces of clothing that have reached their purpose, Helena had to leave the dress behind. Bye bye, dress. Bye bye, coat. Bye bye, Lon-don-Call-ing. Bye bye.
She passes the time thinking about these things and then Felix is bounding down the stairs with his eyes sparkling. He thinks he is being so kind. He thinks this is the biggest kindness he will ever do her. Poor Felix. Poor Felix, who knows nothing; Helena will miss him. Maybe.
She shrinks in on herself as she follows him, like what is waiting for her is people who would break Helena instead of people Helena could break. Maybe. She shrinks in on herself. She sees Sarah at the door but does not speak to her, just twists the straps of the bag Arthur gave her ‘round and ‘round her fingers.
She can’t. She can’t do it. Not now. Not yet.
There isn’t time to tell Sarah all she needs to tell her, Helena thinks, sadness rising in her throat, as she lets Sarah stand at her back, follow her inside. There isn’t time.
Felix opens the door with a low rattling, but Helena’s mind is very still – she is not considering escape points, she is not (yet) considering running.
He leads her forward; when he turns to see her behind him he lets out a laugh, through his teeth, like he’s delighted to see her there. Like this was his doing.
Helena does not give that the violence it deserves. Instead she just lets her mouth twist a little bit, a wee itty bit, at the corners. She puts her bag down on the ground, wonders if this is where her babies will stay, here in this apartment.
(What’s strange is her other babies, isn’t it? Helena’s babies. No one here knows about Helena’s babies except Helena. Nobody knows a thing. They may never know Helena a mother at all, and isn’t that funny? Isn’t that sad?
Which one is it. Helena doesn’t know.)
Helena lets her babies down, gentle, and turns to look at the small bird-bone woman on the couch. She is possibly dying. Helena knows a thing or two about dying; she knows less about tubes in noses, metal sticks to lean on.
The tank is familiar, though. Helena may not be a sister to this woman, but the tank is a sister to Helena’s and that’s close enough.
Sad, though, that she is sick. Sad for Sarah. Sarah deserves as much family as she can hold, hands full of family, pockets full of family, veins full of family. She will already be losing Helena, whatever family Helena is to Sarah. Not this woman too.
Felix waltzes over to her, grabs her arm. “Helena,” he says proudly, to a muffled squeak of “oh my god” from his companion, “this is your sister, Cosima.”
One of these things is true.
Co-si-ma stands like Helena falling down, bones, blood. She stands like a dying thing.
“You should not be up,” Helena says – maybe Cosima is the stupid one, maybe she is not smart enough to know these things – but Cosima says, “I’m up” with a grin that is just close enough to Sarah’s to make Helena’s heart hurt, make Helena’s heart sing a loud pain-song.
It’s worse when Cosima hugs her, with a muffled “C’mere.” It’s worse. It’s so much worse, because Sarah never hugged her willingly. Not like this. Sarah never hugged her with Sarah’s arms, and these arms are just close enough to Sarah’s to – well. Hurt.
The amount of people who have hugged Helena willingly is far, far lower than the amount of people she has killed.
Some overlap: most of both groups share her face.
Then the embrace stops, and Helena should be relieved. Cosima’s hands linger on her arms as she looks at Helena, murmurs, “You’re very beautiful.”
Lies, Helena’s heart wails, lies lies lies, because Helena was a monster. Helena was barely-even-human. It is Sarah who is beautiful – she wants to turn around, grab Sarah by the arm, say: see? This is beautiful.
She doesn’t, because that’s not the point of being here. Roll over. Show your belly. Lie back.
“Thank you,” she says, which is not an acceptance. Her tongue fumbles for a compliment to give back – maybe she will not have to lie, lie back. Not this once. Not with Sarah right behind her, so close Helena’s skin still sings with it.
(Nothing could make Helena stop loving Sarah. Anything else is—
a lie.)
“I like your hairs,” she says gently, because it’s true. They make her not-Sarah. They are strange, and not-Sarah, and that is something of a relief.
Cosima giggles, an easy bubbling sound that is still nothing like Sarah. That makes it good.
“Thank you,” she says with a smile Helena will never, ever be able to match. “I like your hairs too.”
“Helena,” Felix says, “this is your other sister, Alison.”
“Hello,” says A-li-son, folding and refolding her hands in a constant wave of nervousness, “Helena. Lovely to meet you.” She offers one of her hands, like an apology, to show Helena that it is not shaking.
She reminds Helena, briefly and blindingly, of Grace. Grace did not shake at the end. Grace was afraid. Helena is not sure she likes the reminder. She misses Grace.
But her voice is not Sarah’s, her nervousness is not at all Sarah’s, and it is good for someone to be nervous. It is good for someone to be afraid. Someone has to be afraid, in a family, to look out for all the others. To keep the others from being afraid.
“Pleased to meet you too,” Helena says, and means it. Cosima laughs at something, settles – something in Helena is almost relieved, to see that, to see her sitting down.
It’s for Sarah, though, that relief. She couldn’t care about these women. Especially not now, especially not now that she’s leaving, she couldn’t care, she couldn’t.
It is just the lying. It is just the making herself small, harmless. It is leaking into her heart. It is making her feel things that maybe aren’t hers. Yes. (Maybe.)
She needs to distract herself from this; her eyes land on the flash of Alison’s ring (ringonHelena’sfingerIwas marriedIwasmarriedandhetookinsidemehetookdeadmennomouthsdeadmentakingSarahpleaseSarahpleaseSarahpleaseSarah).
“You are married?” she says, maybe barks. Her mind is full of remembered cold.
“Yes!” Alison says, afraid, “Oh, yes, very much so. To Donnie.” She grins, moves her hands ‘round and ‘round and ‘round, like any of this means anything.
“I will be married too, one day,” Helena lies. Helena does not think about her other marriage. Helena would never – be – married – againstherwill—
“Well it’s very…rewarding, if you can get through the rough patches,” Alison says, and Helena knows that with her story she has won Alison over. She was so kind to me. Helena would never hurt me. Helena is small and sweet and gentle. Someday she will be married-like-me.
“Auntie Helena!” a voice calls, like a sweet little blade cutting through Helena’s thoughts. She turns.
Oh. Oh Kira.
She is the brightest thing Helena has ever seen, and the best, all in pink like a birth, her smile big on her face. Helena looks at her and thinks maybe she knows miracles; she wonders if the others can see it on her face, that feeling that the sun has risen.
Oh Kira you are so beautiful. The best thing Helena can do for you is leave.
For now, though, Helena sweeps Kira into her arms. It is the easiest thing she has ever done. It is easier than killing. It is easier than lying. It is easier than breathing, too, it is so right.
Cosima’s arms around Helena hurt and were not-right, not-Sarah. This embrace, this is true and real and beautiful, so beautiful Helena cannot find the words to shape it into anything but what it is.
She buries her nose in Kira’s hair and inhales. Kira smells like hope.
“We thought you ran away from us,” Kira says, and Helena does not say: I am going to. Soon.
“I came back to see your little face,” she says instead, smiles. Sadness has no place here. Sadness will never come near Kira.
(This is why Helena has to go. There are a million reasons why she has to go.)
Kira puts her hand up – unlike Alison’s, Helena knows what to do with it. Kira is a real person. She makes sense. Helena puts her hand up to meet Kira’s; without the glass between them her palm is solid and real and there against Helena’s skin. She can feel Kira’s heart beating, beat-beat-beating.
“I am so happy to see you,” she whispers, folding her fingers around Kira’s, like an embrace, like a lie that says: I am never going to let go, “I am going to eat your finger.”
Kira giggles, says no, says don’t, and Helena does not. She does not, because she is lying, today, tonight. She is lying to all of them.
She is lying; she is pretending she is not hungry.
Helena does, eventually, have to let Kira go. She misses the little girl as soon as she is gone, but. That only makes sense: it is, after all, possibly the last time Helena will hold her.
She watches Kira run and sees Cosima’s grin at the corner of her vision, a white moon of teeth; sees Alison’s own red blood grimace; does not see Sarah. She does not see Sarah. It’s like Sarah doesn’t exist.
Cosima urges Helena to sit down – Helena’s muscles ripple, her wings ache, she is so sick of doing as she is told – and Helena sits obediently, although it makes her stomach ache. Her babies twitch, like dreams of kicking. It’s alright, she tells them. You will not be ordered, you will not be punished. Ssh. I will be a good mother to you.
She does not say this out loud. Motherhood is the only thing that is hers, here – not her face, not her body, only her babies in her stomach and her scars wrapping around her skin, her skin wrapping around her stomach, her stomach wrapping around her babies. Amen.
Alison sits next to her and Helena can almost taste her fear on her tongue; she wants to drink it, wants to remember Grace. She doesn’t. Instead she watches Sarah sit on the floor, as far from Helena as she could possibly be. Maybe Sarah understands Helena’s leaving. Maybe she already knows. Helena wouldn’t put anything past her.
But then there’s the noise of music, suddenly, crackling through Helena’s thoughts and scattering them like Helena in a flock of birds, Helena also hungry for crumbs. She brushes her thoughts away and brushes her hair out of her face, out of instinct, the better to hear you with.
Cosima, by the record player (SarahrawanimalscreamSarahbleedingknifeblockmusicamenamenamenamenamenamen), moves the way an inhuman thing would, all fluid motions. Water. Wind. More proof she is not Helena: Helena could never move like that.
Then: Felix, then Felix, then Felix pulling Cosima out to dance in the middle of the room. Felix and Sarah laughing. Helena rolls her lips between her teeth, watching the two of them: the way Sarah’s family makes a unit, the way Sarah loves them – the movement of the two of them, the way they fit together, Sarah loves that. If Helena looked, Sarah would probably be smiling.
A family, all together. And Helena. She moves to stroke her belly, over and over again, as a reminder: here is your family, Helena. Here is you. Helena is all the family she needs, even as Sarah gets up to join the dance.
Helena is all the family Helena needs – but then her babies roll again, in her stomach, a memory of a memory of moving. Helena remembers Sarah in the womb (it’s not possible, is it, but she does, all warmth and connection) and thinks, blindingly, goodbye.
She looks at Sarah and Cosima, turns to look at Alison. This whole family. Yes. Now’s the time to say it.
She stands; movements string themselves together in her mind, the way she will make herself gentle, small, goodbye, goodbye, it was nice to know you, it was nice for you to not know me. She sways back and forth and Cosima grins at her; Cosima likes this her, maybe, this harmless thing. Helena would never hurt me. Helena is small and sweet and gentle. Look at the way her teeth do not draw blood from her skin; they must not be that sharp.
She dances in small little movements but somehow, sometime, the music has crawled beneath her skin and is growing there, growling like an animal, saying Helena! Saying, Helena, dance!
She can’t lie anymore, she can’t do it. Not now. She is saying goodbye. It is time to let it go.
Helena sheds gentleness like a skin and dances, thrashes, her hair flying like a halo around her face, a message from God, you are the light, you are Sarah’s sister, amen amen amen! Amen! Sarah is right there, close enough to touch, goodbye Sarah, amen amen.
Distant laughter rings around her, underneathabove the music, and Helena lets herself go, like telling a story. Once upon a time there was a Helena, and she was afraid. She was so afraid. Now Helena is not afraid and her limbs, free from the fear kept there, are light and jagged as wings.
Once upon a time there was a Helena, and she was hollow. She was so hollow. Now Helena is not hollow and her babies sing inside of her, all of her a family, all of her in love with love. Helena is selfish like that, maybe: she is a closed circuit of love, skin on skin, her arms twisting in patterns in the air. Her mouth gapes open but it is not a hollow thing. Her heart pulses with love – love for herself, love for her babies, love for Sarah who dances like the world is ending – like Helena’s world is ending – love for Kira who Helena can see smiling. She loves. There was a time when she was hollow. But that is not this time, not anymore.
Once upon a time there was a Helena, and she was sad. She was so sad. Now Helena is not sad and she leaps off the ground, playing at flying, remembering being an angel. She was so sad, then. She was so alone. Now she is not sad, and she does not have to be alone.
Once upon a time there was a Helena, and she was angry. She was so angry. Now Helena is not angry and her heart is light, her heart is not weighed down – it was heavy enough to pin her to the ranch bed, it was heavy enough to drag Sarah’s body down down in the shower, Helena’s heart heavy enough to keep dragging Sarah down.
Now Helena is not angry, not really. She understands a lot of things. She understands that she has to unwrap her arms, cut Sarah down from the shower. She has to let Sarah take her first, stumbling steps towards the sun.
Helena dances for a while, until her body murmurs small exhausted sounds, until the ache of Sarah dancing next to her – jumping up and down, the two of them, like they could fly, like they are both angels, both holy – becomes too much for her poor heart to bear.
But it was the right thing to do – one last Helena thing, yes? To say goodbye in words would not have worked, because words belong to Sarah. She had to say it with her body: goodbye, fear. Goodbye, hollowness. Goodbye, anger.
Goodbye, Sarah. Goodbye.
Now all that remains is to go.
They all bed down in different areas of Felix’s apartment, like slumbering animals (except Alison, who – like Grace – leaves for her own nest); Helena is the best sort of animal, though, and she makes the best sort of nest. She lies there with her eyes open, memorizing the sound of Sarah’s breathing in the dark, untangling it from Cosima’s breathing like fingers in hair. She winds it around her ribs, lets it stick. For later. Sugar packets in pockets. Goodbye.
Then Sarah’s breathing melts, softly, into Sarah’s words, which melt into Cosima’s words – Cosima spins a story, spins a world, in nature, in flower petals, and honeybees, in – y’know – the stars in the galaxy, and in every molecule of our DNA.
Helena thinks about that world. All those golden honeybees. All that golden sunlight out there, waiting for her to embrace it. Light filters through the apartment, bathing her, and she thinks: time to go. Goodbye.
Goodbye, Sarah. I love you. I will never stop loving you. Nothing could make me stop loving you.
She uncurls, pulls on her jacket.
Goodbye, Kira. I love you. I do not want to hurt you. I am sorry for all of the ways I have hurt you.
Slowly, carefully, she pulls her babies out of the bag and leaves them where they can be found. She turns and looks at Sarah’s family, Sarah’s family sleeping, murmuring to each other the way Helena and Sarah could have, in the dark.
Goodbye, Sarah’s family. I do not have room for you, to love you. Take care of Sarah. Take care of Kira.
Goodbye, Sarah. I do not know, anymore, if you love me. Please – try. Please understand that I want love, too.
She leaves the light. Goodbye thumps under her skin, making her body one big heartbeat of loss.
Out into the dark. The smell of Sarah lingers in her nostrils; it is difficult to say goodbye, even if she is not wearing Sarah’s clothes – the smell of her sister floats around her head, one last vision from God.
She pulls Jesse’s hat out from between her clothes and smells it, deeply. It does not smell like much – unlike Kira, it does not smell like hope. But. There is a certain kind of hope in it. There is a hope for future.
And Helena has a future, now, she is taking her first steps towards it. She is stepping off the road. She does not know who she wants to be, yet, but—
Hands on her skin, black bag over her head, Helena is an animal now not even thinking just striking blindly out get off get off nobody – hands – do not—
The world goes black. Helena is once again orphaned.
When Helena wakes, she is in a big car, surrounded by men. Military. Soldiers.
Her hands are in chains, again, and the unfairness of it claws at her belly, wraps around her babies, hissing no no no no no. She was going to be a person, wasn’t she? Maybe she would have been done with killing, maybe not, but it would have been her choice. Not this. Not this press of bodies against her own.
She thinks about fighting – whirling with her animal teeth and animal claws, ripping these men to shreds and flying back…where? Where would she go?
The problem is this: it is too easy. It is all so easy, falling back into place, letting go of Helena to become what others have wanted her to be, what others needed her to be, killer, brood mare, killer, child.
Nobody ever needed Helena to be a sister except Helena. It falls from between her fingers easily, too easily, and the dry clattering of pulse points and weaknesses lurches back to life in the back of Helena’s head, loud. It is a din.
She will never get the chance to be herself. Maybe there is no herself under there – maybe she could claw away the scars off her back like digging through dirt, tear out her hair, and in the middle she would be hollow. No Helena at all.
She wants to weep. She does not weep. Something mean crouches in her head, whispers, you wanted a life without Sarah, didn’t you. You wanted a new life.
Maybe God sent you here. Maybe this is what God wants, for you to be a killer.
Or maybe it is punishment, Helena thinks as the cars stutters to a stop, like a body falling to the ground. Maybe God is angry because she has made so many bodies fall to the ground, and now she is going to have to kill the right sort of people.
She doesn’t know, and she still wants to cry from frustration, and she is so tired of trying to find God’s plan. And she is so tired. So tired. So tired.
They lead her into the sun, and the light blinds Helena’s eyes, brings tears from them, stinging, singing. The light in Felix’s apartment had been a pale imitation of this, when she’d left it. It looks like she had forgotten what light was entirely.
They lead her into the plane, which gapes like a mouth, Helena’s mouth making plane sounds. So long ago, that was. Now it is only her and the plane. It is a hungry thing. A hollow thing. It’s a little fitting, isn’t it, that hollowness will eat her, after she thought she was done with it.
They lead her into the light, when she thought she had left it. They lead her into hollowness, when she thought she had left it. They lead her into the future, which looks like a road, which looks like a gun, which looks like a hand holding a razor blade.
It is a long walk.
It gives her time to think.