Zadie: An Evening Introduction
“See ya tomorrow night, Zadie.”
I turned and waved, stepping out into the thick, humid air of the Natchez night. Merrybeth was an old friend from high school, part of the crowd of wild and fun-loving girls that I had run with before settling down my junior and senior years to actually study. Grandma had decided that I was gonna be something and so I put my nose to the books. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had already beat her to that decision when I was a sophomore, but I figured the slow rise in my grades had given her the idea that I could do better.
I heard the crunch of the gravel and smelled her perfume just before Merry came running up behind me. My nostrils flared involuntarily; lord but did she smell good and I licked my lips with a sigh. “You forgot your purse, Zadie,” she said, her hand warm and soft on my shoulder. I turned, concentrating hard, and smiled with a nod.
“You know I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached.” I took my purse, slinging it over my body. She stood in the parking lot, the moonlight bathing her in its soft caress and looked worriedly around.
“Where’s your car?”
I feigned surprise. “Damn, I done forgot that too,” I announced lightly with a shrug. “Merry, I walked here tonight. Needed to stretch my legs.”
Her brown brows met in the middle over her lovely hazel eyes. “Lemme take you home. If you’ll let me finish counting out---“ She stopped as I held up a hand.
“I’ll be fine.”
“There’s strangers around,” she countered, her face full of motherly concern.
“There’s always strangers around. We call ‘em tourists.”
“Funny. I’m serious.”
“So am I. I’ll be fine. I got a cell phone.” Not that I liked to look at it. The Professor was more than often emailing or texting me on the thing. I had thought that I wanted a smartphone. Well I was wrong. Gave that man more ways to annoy me. “I’ll call you if a rabid tourist decides to attack me.”
“Zadie.”
I started walking, leaving her to fuss. “Fine,” I called back over my shoulder. “I’ll be fine. Catch you tomorrow night.”
“Don’t call me from the hospital if you get raped or worse, Zadie,” she yelled as my foot hit the sidewalk. “Oh and don’t forget to bring me two of your Grandma’s rose soaps. I’ll pay you tomorrow.”
I stopped to look at her. “Not the Sun Orchid? That’s what you got last time.”
“Gift for my aunt, Zade. ‘Nite! Watch out for the boogie men and the strangers.”
I watched her walk back into the restaurant and then began my journey home. Truth was, I needed a rabid tourist to attack me. I hadn’t gotten anything to drink before I’d left for work and now I was a bit peckish. Merry was just smelling all too tasty, all to full of that ruby stuff that was the elixir of life.
It was time to get home.
As I walked, I found that I was right about them tourists. Not a wild-eyed one bothered me as I walked the familiar streets of Natchez, not a one of the boogiemen leapt out to ravage me. And as for the dark creatures of the night, well hell, me and Grandma were them creatures. I don’t blame the rabid tourists, the boogeymen, or the strangers for their lack of bravery. Ain’t none of them stupid enough to attack a hungry vampire.
********
The Cabbage Rose was beautiful in the moonlight, the old Victorian house home for me from the day I was born. It was the only home that I had ever known, Grandma and Granddaddy the only parents that I had known. Mama had good intentions about raising me. So did Daddy. He was a handsome drunk, a loser with a heart of gold, but none of that was enough to keep him outta jail. So that left Mama and bless her heart, she was a slut. Grandma hates when I said that, but it’s true. I don’t ever mean it with bitterness; I accept it as truth, something that Mama can’t help. Mama’s a hot thing, still built like hell on wheels, and she never has met a man that she doesn’t like. A crying little pink thing of a baby for any sixteen year old is hard. For Mama, it was just too much. Ain’t no man gonna want a hot woman with a baby on her hip, even as slutty as Mama is. So with Grandma and Granddaddy I stayed.
I don’t know where she is. She calls ever so often and it’s nice to talk with her. But at least I do know where Daddy is. He is gonna be there for the next 20 years. He tends to call every week, reminds me to study hard and to not run around with boys. I did say that he has a heart of gold. Just the common sense of a drunk squirrel and the moral resilience of wet tissue.
I lingered on the corner tonight, studying the Rose, my thoughts wandering. Neither Mama nor Daddy knew I was a vampire. And they’d just fall all out if they found out the Grandma was one too. Of course, all my old girlfriends from high school would just scream to know it was true. Silly things would totally freak out and ask me if the man who turned me was as sexy as that stupid Oregon vampire with the accent. “What was it like?” they’d ask. “Did he look like Edward? Did he glow in the sun?”
And I’d have to say, “Naw. He looked like Grandma ‘cus it was.”
Not that I was bitter. Well, hell yes, I was. She got turned by some old dry professor and then I got turned by her. “Won’t hurt honeychild,” she’d said. And it didn’t. But it sure as hell wasn’t sexy being cuddled against her bosom as she sank her new teeth in my neck. And it wasn’t sexy to find out that I’d burst into flames in the sun, not sparkle like cheap rhinestones. No hot werewolves showed up to stop her, no hot British girly-man came to persuade Grandma that he was a better sire than she. Not that it was unpleasant. Not as good as sex mind you, yet pleasant enough. But just not sexy. Not with Grandma.
I ain’t ever gonna need to worry about Zadie the Second now either. Undead don’t get pregnant. I told Grandma that it was a good thing that Grandpa was well and good in his grave all these two past years. He’d never approved, deacon of the Baptist church and all. Oh and church was out now too. We found that out the hard way. Grandma, mule that she is, had been determined that we go try to get in the church after a week of playing sick and fielding all sorts of sympathy and concerned calls from the congregation and preacher.
Grandma’s seat in the front hurt like hell. In back with the sinners was pretty miserable too. In the balcony with the heathen just made all my bones ache and by the end of the visit, even Grandma had to just accept that we were damned. She is a stubborn one, that old lady. Put on gloves and packed the family bible with her lips pressed in a thin line. She mailed it to my Uncle in North Carolina. She already warned me that we’d have to Dominate him and his wife when the came down to visit us next summer or come up with some spell to befuddle them. I pointed out that the cousins would have to be dealt with too. But in our favor, they’re spoiled and self-absorbed. I honestly don’t think they’d notice that Grandma and cousin Zadie were a bit paler than usual and kept weird hours. They’d have to unplug off their phones and games. An’ that ain’t happening.
But that’s next summer. As Grandma says, don’t make trouble that ain’t trouble yet. I just wished I could figure out a way to spell the cousins electronics and befuddle them. If I was as smart as I thought I was, I’d be able to put some spell on my own cussed phone so that annoying professor that turned Grandma wouldn’t be able to ping me on it. On, off, the thing just stated its name and pounded me with texts, emails and voicemails from him. Don’t even know how he had time to teach class, spending so much damn time trying to tell me how to live my unlife. It was in my pocket now, insistently vibrating. Mama woulda loved it, tickling her fancy as it were, but it just plain pissed me off.
So here I stood, looking at the Rose, not even a bit tired from my walk home, my pocket alive and insistent with a grouchy phone since I refused to listen to it anymore. Now, that is the nice thing about being undead. Don’t get tired no more. Just get hungry. And it ain’t like the hungry you get after skipping meals. Oh no. It’s harder and fiercer than that, driving you like an animal inside, making you rabid. It’s why Grandma and I try to keep well fed on strangers. It’d be all sorts of trouble if either of us went and feasted on one of our old friends. It’s just weird, too weird for Grandma to feast on one of her old bridge partners or one of the church ladies or men. Now some of my old boyfriends. . .well, I ain’t no angel. Just a drop or two to hold on, lick the wound, and no one’s hurt. Most of them were losers anyway. Grandma made a face when I admitted to supping on Rooster. . .but she disliked him anyway, despite his coming from a good family. He has always just been trouble and well, I didn’t take much and he enjoyed it. But once a bad boy, always a bad boy. Goes shear through to his blood apparently according to Grandma. Like it will make me a bad person. Duh. Already cursed, y’all. I could suck all the bad boy from Rooster and he’d still be an arrogant, good-looking ass who was good in bed and who would manufacture bad to replace what I done took.
I did say that I weren’t no angel. I, like Mama, like men. I just don’t let them lead me by the nose. I always knew Rooster, Shane, Drew and all the rest of them boys were just fun before college. They never did lead me away from my studies once I settled down to make something of myself but I was never one to have all work and no fun. I haven’t tried to find out if I could still do the naughty now. I’m certain that I could. But I don’t know how to ask Grandma at all. She’d kill me to find out that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. But damn, I’m glad that I didn’t wait. It’s too late now if all I get is the kick from drinking their blood.
The moonlight was nice and all, but I finally decided it was time to go home. I ran from the corner to the porch, enjoying how fast I could go now. That was another cool thing. I was fast as all get out and stronger too. I reached the porch and turned the lock, pushing inside. The rose-colored faceted glass doorknobs winked at me; I tended not to use them since it was easier to turn my key in the lock and push. The knobs were more for show, something for the customers to fondle to open the doors to go inside the shop. They didn’t turn, but they did give you something to hold onto as you pushed inside. I locked the door back as I entered and paused to adjust a display of googas on a marble table to the right.
I moved the googas around to the way that I knew would get them sold; I knew that by the morning, Grandma would move them back to the way she wanted them. I did it every night and I hoped that someday she’d leave it be. It’d probably be at the end of time when it happened, but damn it, maybe someone would buy that truly horrid green glass paperweight and that laughing, ceramic bear before then. She kept them almost hidden and I was pretty certain that she really didn’t want to sell them but couldn’t bring herself to just take them back to the cottage and keep them. But that was Grandma.
The Cabbage Rose was her baby. She and Grandpa had started it when his family grocery had been driven out of business by the big chains, building the cottage out back as the place where they could start selling googas and knickknacks as a part-time thing as the grocery went outta business. As the Rose grew, we slowly moved into the cottage and gave over the big old Victorian house to the business, first and then second floors slowly filling with stuff for sale. Grandma always baked free cookies and made spice punches, keeping the house smelling delicious for friend and customer to come by. Many a customer rocked on the big porch with pink bags of goodies, sipping on spice tea and gnawing on a delicious something. Many a customer came back again and again to experience the prettiness and nostalgia that was the Rose.
I’ll be honest. Much of it was the fact that the Rose was one the premier gift shops anywhere, pulling tourists like flies to its sprawling, gingerbread beauty. Much of it was the fact that Natchez was nothing but a tourist town, nicely recovered from its earlier days of debauchery and excess to a new level of respectable debauchery and excess. Much of it was our stuff, nicely priced and totally beguiling and all too charming not to go home with someone to clutter their house or make it smell nice or give it some old time charm. I could say all that and not be lying. But if I left out the bit of witchery that Grandma did with the herbal sachets, soaps, teas, and yes, the cookies, I’d be so close to a fib of omission that I might as well be lying. You came to the Rose and smelled it, heard those tinkling doorbells, or tasted it and you wanted to come back. Again and again. Touch those ruby-rose doorknobs and the Rose just called to you. Home like home never was. And never would be.
But I loved it too, magic or not. It was my home and in the evenings when the sun went down, Grandma and I still rocked on the big porch just like we used to do with Granddaddy. What we had in the glasses wasn’t always lemonade, but whatever. It was still warm and homey to us and our neighbors walking down the streets still waved and were friendly. Magic and Deep South southern charm, we got the antebellum tourists on the Natchez Trail, neighbors old and new and even the gamblers on the river and if they came once, they always came back.
I slipped to the back of the house and peeked out the back door. No lights were on in the cottage where we lived out back. A smile twitched over my face. Grandma was in the attic and that meant that it was gonna be a fun night. I ran up the back stairs and went in the door to find her concentrating over a tiny cauldron over an electric plate.
“Well now, old lady,” I chirped with a grin, coming to hug her. And she hugged me back.
“Hush now, girl, and help me with this spell.”
“What you doing?” I shrugged my purse off onto a Victorian chaise lounge and joined her by the cauldron.
“Preventing trouble, Zadie. Trying to prevent trouble.”
I squinched my nose. Grandma was always right. About Rooster, about life, and about afterlife. I gathered her hand in mine and began to chant. Trouble was coming. Grandma was always right.
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