Chapter 5

We walked through The Garden together for my first time. When we came to a red door, attached to a huge Victorian-styled house, Cage turned to look at me for the first time since I began to follow him.

“You have a title?” he asked me.

“Just Jet.” I looked into his foggy eyes, convinced that I had probably made a mistake in following him to an isolated area where no one could hear me scream in a place where no one knew I was missing.

“Just Jet...” he repeated, mulling this over. “I am Cage. And you are about to meet my mother. Our mother...” he trailed off.

“What?” Now I was nervous. Was he about to kill me? Seriously? Was “mother” another word for “maker”?

But for some reason I swallowed my panic and waited outside the red door when he asked me to. I was glancing around for some sort of weapon (you know, just in case) when he poked his head back out and said in this super cryptic way, “She'll see you, lost one.”

I wished he would quit talking like that but I came to discover that's just how he is, melodramatic and caged inside his own mind, however expanded by drugs it happened to be. Not even Madame Rook, the woman he affectionately dubbed as his “Mother” could change him. I guess that was for the best.

I followed him through some sort of parlor. The floor was checkered black and white, and the walls were a deep, rich purple. We arrived in a luxuriously furnished, well, living room, I guess you could call it. The floors were wooden and expensive looking and the walls were painted a vibrant red. The antique furniture glinted with gold and wood polish, full of exquisite designs I've only seen the likes of on television.

The woman lounging on one of the antique couches was dressed in a top as red as the walls. She was wearing a black and white plaid skirt that reached her knees, and tall black leather boots that hugged her skinny legs closely. They looked like they'd cut off the circulation if she wore them too long, but she didn't seem worried about that. She eyed me with glassy eyes from behind a large clear glass hookah that she was nursing lazily. As she studied me, waiting for someone to speak, she swept a well-manicured hand through her jet-black pixie-cut hair.

Finally Cage said, “Little sister is in need. She found us. Her sky has no stars.”

I found it off-putting that he didn't question my gender the way the rest of humanity did.

The woman cleared her throat and motioned me beside her. She removed my grey fedora with a type of slow, clumsy grace, and her eyes grew wide when she realized that I had no hair. She composed herself and, in a heavy Russian accent, she spoke.

“Skin and bones. Bald-headed. In my home. Darling, you have not fled chemo have you?” She stared at me with expressionless brown eyes.

“All I've fled are my circumstances.” I answered uneasily.

“What a futile trek then, child. There is no escaping your circumstances. You're bound to have them in one form or another.” She let out a brief, unkind laugh. I didn't answer, only took my hat back from her well-manicured hand.

“Cage, fix our guest a drink.” she barked.

“Our guest is Just Jet.” Cage informed her as he disappeared stage-left. Madame Rook nodded.

“He calls me mother,” she mumbled more to herself than to me. “I may be.”

She gestured towards her hookah as though to offer me a hit, seemingly lost in her own thoughts but wanting to keep me entertained nonetheless. I refused it politely, which seemed to shock her, however she recovered quickly and went back to nursing it herself.

Cage returned, his hands full. One had a steaming cup in it, the other, a fifth of whiskey.

“I wasn't sure which...” he said, kind of embarrassed. “I'll take what you don't. The cup is hot chocolate.”

He offered both hands out to me and I grabbed the bottle, ingesting it gratefully. Madame Rook watched this, another brief moment of surprise flickering on her face. She cast a sidelong look at Cage, who seemed oblivious as he watched me down the whiskey. I sat the bottle loudly beside the Madame's hookah, letting the warm buzz welcome me into any possible situation.

Too late, again, I considered that they might have slipped me some sort of drug or poison and made a note to watch Cage to see if he drank any of the supposed “hot cocoa”. However, I stopped worrying once the whiskey did its job to my liver and my inhibitions.

“She doesn't smoke, Cage. Why did you bring her here?” the Madame asked curtly after another short silence.

“I suspect, Mother, that she may be climbing into the tree.” Cage looked at the floor as he said this, then turned his glassy eyes on my hands. “She just doesn't know it yet.”

“What tree?” I asked indignantly. “And what makes you so sure that I want-” I trailed off, realizing that any wrong step could get me kicked back out into the cold, when I was just starting to notice how nice the warmth of the house was.

“The tree, little sister, the family tree!” Cage said this as though I were incredibly dense. I just stared at him, the whiskey tempting me to prod further while at the same time convincing me the effort would be futile.

“The test then!” the Madame exclaimed. With startling speed, she grabbed my pants leg and yanked it up, exposing my sock less-freezing-feet and the thickening hair on my filthy leg. I watched her expression change from impartiality to thinly veiled disgust. Or maybe pity.

“Take her upstairs. First time's free.” she ordered Cage.

Cage nodded and looked at me expectantly. I rose and followed him up a long winding staircase into a long hall and through a dark wooden door frame. We were in a bedroom and-again- I was instantly suspicious. What was this? My mind ran a hundred places at once as I watched Cage, with his glass ice-blue eyes and stubbled face, fling open a closet door and step aside. He motioned me over and I went, hesitantly.

“Pick something. It's all clean, all warm. You should be warm.” he paused before adding “And take a bath.”

I almost laughed out loud but instead turned my head to hide my unkind smile.

“Come down when you're done.” Cage said. “Mother and I will be waiting.”
Then he disappeared out the door and down the stairs.

Chapter 4

Somehow I made it back to Philadelphia. That's when life began. It's also where I was born and where my parents are buried. I guess maybe I sensed that there was a new beginning for me somewhere around the start. Luckily nobody there recognized me, and the place I had escaped from was more south anyway so I didn't have much to worry about. That and... as far as anybody knew, I was a boy. Definitely not the bar-code that had made her great escape.

I wandered around the grey streets of Philly, lugging behind me the suitcase (containing one stuffed dog and a few hand me downs from a few boys I had lived with) that had served me since I was in New Jersey. I was freezing and wishing that I had somewhere to go or at least a bottle to make the next step worth taking when something provoked me to lift my eyes. When I did, I couldn't help but draw closer to the man that immediately captured my attention.

That was the day I met Cage.

Cage was sitting on the curb right outside of a little restaurant, He was haunched over his guitar, eyes closed, greasy black hair hanging in strands over them. He was rocking gently along with whatever it was that he was playing, some kind of sad, bluesy melody that I had never heard before and didn't recognize. I eventually concluded that he was probably making it up as he went. I inched towards him, assuming that he didn't see me and I'd be able to gawk to my hearts content undetected.

“Hey little sister,” he startled me by saying without opening his eyes. “reach up and grab me that star.
”
I just looked at him, unsure of whether or not he was just speaking out loud along to his music or if he was talking to me. I was also a little afraid that the guy might be nuts.

“Don't fear, little sister.” Cage murmured, his voice a sing-songish tease. “A glint of silver carnage blinds you, blinds us all... it lies in pockets, in yours, in mine... snatch me a star so that you might see.
”
I reached into my pocket, eying him curiously, and pulled out what was left of the money Lacey's patronizing parents had given me.

“Can you do for me?” I asked, letting my change noisily clamor on the sidewalk in front of him. He looked up at me for the first time, calmly. His eyes were bloodshot, making the ice-blue irises stand out startlingly. His hands stopped playing abruptly, letting the hum of the last a-minor resonate and fade into the stillness of the empty street. He grabbed the money without looking from me.

“Indeed, little sister. I can do you well.
”
He stood up, (I realized that his back was bowed forward as though he had some sort of back problem.) and slung his guitar behind him.

“Follow me.” he said gently.

So I did.

Chapter 3

Once, maybe a month after I escaped Lady Ebony for good, I managed to get on-board a train heading east. I was huddled against the window shivering and this guy in the seat behind me poked his head over to look at me.

“Ya don't look so good, kid.” he grunted over at me.
“You alone?”
I nodded wearily and this guy pulled the grey fedora right off of his bald-ass head and plunked it right on mine. I didn't refuse it and he disappeared back to his seat. I offered my gratitude and fell asleep as soon as the warmth that the hat offered hit me. If you've never ridden a train before, let me tell you, the sound of the wheels constantly moving can be deeply hypnotic if you let it be. Even when the whistle blows you stay caught up in that flux. At least I do, or did the last time I was on a train. Then again I was exhausted and hungry and sick...
But I digress.

Once I got around the New Jersey area, Tanner and I picked up drinking. I had met this boy at the train station who took me back to the place he had been staying, and things progressed from there. I found myself living with a group of boys aged sixteen through twenty in a dilapidated old house that was supposed to be condemned. I mean- this thing was ancient. Every night somebody had something for everyone to get fucked up off of. The beauty of this time of my life lay in the fact that to them, I was just some “dude” that Kyle brought home from the train station. I was literally “one of the guys.” By the time I was fourteen years old I was drinking like a champion and Tanner was hidden safely in the closet of a room decorated with painfully sixties wallpaper that was sagging off the walls and revealing crumbling plaster and bare boards. I was still too young to try to find honest work to pay for my fair share of the food and whatever else I was included on, but luckily they liked me enough not to make a big deal out of it. The guys would joke about how if I were a “bitch” they would just pimp me out and take turns with me in the bathroom to cover room and board... you know, so I could earn my keep. I laughed heartily along, although on the inside I was seething.

Eventually my free ride was taken off the road. The oldest guys at the house got busted robbing a gas station, leaving the rest of us with no way to support ourselves from home-base. We were left with absolutely nothing to do, so not long afterwards, we all kind of scattered. One of the guys who had been arrested had a girlfriend named Lacey who had been staying at the house with us for a few months. She ended up talking me into dealing with her. We promised to do so only until we had enough money to get back to her hometown in Pennsylvania, where she promised I would have a place to stay if her parents were okay with it. I was just glad to have somewhere to go, whether or not it panned out.

The more time we spent together, the more I realized that Lacey seemed to have some sort of crush on me. I started acting all tough and protective the same way I saw her (by then ex) boyfriend act with her, because that's what she acted like she enjoyed. However, the longer we were around each other, the more naturally we interacted. I found out that it bothered her when guys acted like they owned her so the more myself I acted the closer we became. By the time we arrived on her doorstep we were pretty infatuated with each other, but her loaded parents weren't particularly fond of the idea of taking in her-increasingly supple-boyfriend. So she kissed me goodbye and begged for some money on my behalf, which they gave me pityingly before I turned to walk away.

“Call me sometime!” Lacey called after me from her porch steps. But when I looked at her, we were both thinking the same thing. I didn't have her number. Or a phone. I didn't even know where I was going to sleep that night. And I sure as hell wasn't going to come back for a visit. I had even almost let it slip that I was a girl, which I knew she wouldn't receive well. So basically I figured the sooner we forgot each other the better.

Obviously that day has yet to come.

Chapter 2

When I was thirteen, I decided that I would be god. I would be in control of my destiny and beat Lady Ebony at her own game. So I left.

Poof.

Gone like a jet.

And that's what the other girls ended up calling me after I was caught the third or fourth time. Jet became my identity, and any other label I had that Lady Ebony tagged mindlessly on pieces of paper, records, files, documents, became symbolic of the life I had no control over, the life they wanted for me. My real name may as well have been a number. A bar-code.

A girl named Liza was the only person I talked to. Whenever I got brought back from “escaping” she would make me tell her everything. Where I went, who I talked to, what I did... We'd stay up for hours and she tried helping me to fool-proof my plan, so that the next time I got out it would be the last. The whole idea was romantic to her, like some kind of story-book hero setting out to brave the big bad world alone. I asked her plenty of times if she wanted to come with me, thinking two heads might be better than one, but she wouldn't.

“No offense or anything,” she'd say whenever I offered, “but I'd rather not be the one coming back here in handcuffs.
”
Sometimes I wonder if she regrets not coming with me that last time. I mean, to be honest, sometimes I find myself regretting that I left. I guess everyone gets those nagging could-have-been thoughts. I'll bet Liza does. I'm sure she would have loved the freedom, but maybe not the sacrifice. I guess her spirit was in a whirl of wanderlust versus common sense. All mine was focused on was getting out from under Lady Ebony's thumb.

Things happened that way for a reason, I'm sure. I mean, it would have been a hell of a lot easier for them to spot two of us on the loose than just one. She definitely would have gotten me caught, or the other way around. And I'll bet she wouldn't have been willing to shave her head. That's the first thing I did after I got out for the last time. I went completely bald. I was young enough to pass unquestionably as a boy. I've never considered myself to be particularly “feminine” and the rest of society must not have either. So I lived the majority of my teen years as a boy.

I got really good at stealing. I sort of had to to live. It's not like I had somewhere to turn in at 6:30 every evening for supper. I was constantly moving and at first that was good enough. I hitched and walked for miles- it became a sort of a purpose, to keep moving. I wanted out of Pennsylvania and out of everything that had been previously associated with my life, my bar-code. I became Jet. Non-gendered, non-beautiful Jet.

Chapter 1

All the reasons don't amount to shit.

Why I was left here.

Why I was forsaken.

Why god deemed me just subhuman enough to be forgotten.

None of that means a fucking thing.

What does though, is that I'm here. What matters is the product of reasonings I'll never understand. And that's exactly what I plan to accept...
One of these days.


This day though, this day wasn't it. I knelt in front of my mother's tombstone- an unimpressive display of craftsmanship, small, rounded, name and date. No implication of a life beyond her name. No “loving mother” or “dutiful wife” or “super duper daughter” or any of that bullshit. My father's was just as bleak. Names and dates on stones as cold as the hands that crafted them. I studied them then as I had a thousand times before, and a thousand since.

The sun was disappearing behind a hill littered with more, well, “furnished” stones, scattered chaotically across the whole of it. Some were shaded by the umbrage of large, bowing trees standing firmly as guardians among the ancient corpses, whose stories were long forgotten- buried with the relatives who had laughed alongside them, their names symbolic only of a reference to a two-dimensional black and white face that nobody alive today would recognize in flesh.

I could already tell that it was going to be a long, rough day. I sighed, tracing my mother's name with my index finger, shuddering at the coldness of it. I was wrenched back to a day when a five-year-old me touched her hand for the last time, right before I was shooed away so that the lid could close over her. Her cold death hands somehow solidified the fact that this moment was going to last the rest of my life. The perfect stillness of a face that once sung me lullabies and taught me the alphabet, the light brown hair that became a venue of my personal identity (whether I kept it or not is a different story) became a place I retreated to when there was nowhere to go, a pit I dug gradually throughout the course of my eternity alone. The memory of that perfect stillness became, over the years, my epicenter of self-pity, a stumbling-block in the way of my emotional liberation. My mother, sleeping in a shiny glazed box right beside my father, who I barely remember glancing at. It was only my lullaby angel, my gentle disciplinarian, my life-raft in a world she had deliberately tethered me to from wherever I happened to be before I became a being. It had been my mother who I watched intently for any sign of movement, of life (even though then I had no real concept of the term). A gentle, downy man with a long beard and kind eyes warned me tactfully that there would be none.

I remember this man better than I remember my father. I remember how his eyes glittered with unshed tears as he withdrew into himself, shaking his head slowly, as he appeared to contemplate some great mystery that everybody but myself seemed to be in on. If I had known then how in the dark everyone is about death, I'm sure that I would have felt very adult.

That night I stayed in a strange woman's house with nothing but a stuffed puppy I called Tanner. The house smelled strongly of perfume and potpourri. I slept on a lumpy tan couch decorated with realistic, albeit undefinable, maroon flowers. In the morning, the woman tried to feed me oatmeal, but I refused it with hysterics, and not long after that, Lady Ebony came and took me away to a strange new place full of strange new people who asked me a lot of questions and wanted to play with Tanner. I wouldn't let them.

I jumped around from home to home to stay briefly with women who had names like Beth and Marcy who had husbands with names like Bill or Dave. Some of them had dogs with names like Ruffles or Max, and others had children with names like Melanie or Stephen. All of them tried to feed me goddamn oatmeal. All of them sent me back with Lady Ebony. All of them said good-bye. And more importantly, all of them meant it.