Blue Lily

Blue Lily

by

David Michael Conner

“What happened to her?”

“This is one of the worst I’ve seen. Even for a ritual murder.”

The two men walked around the old woman’s body, slowly taking it all in. Jones knelt down and at her body, which lay prostrate against the cool wood floor. She seemed to be fixed in worship.

“What language?” asked O’Malley, the Irish cop.

“Language?” Jones hadn’t realized that the tiny burn marks all over the poor woman’s body were actually tiny characters just larger than pinholes. He extended his neck to get a better look.

The letters were arranged as if in the frame of a crossword puzzle without the guidelines. They were free-floating, clearly defined and they were seared deep into her flesh.

“I dunno. Looks Middle Eastern or Chinese.”

“Middle Eastern or Chinese,” O’Malley repeated back to Jones. Jones didn’t get the point. “Man, they are nothing alike.”

“It’s all French to me,” Jones said, chuckling to himself.

The woman’s left breast was pushed out from under her body by her own weight. It was flattened, deflated even, and it, too, was inscribed with characters belonging to another language.

“Well she’s not Chinese,” Jones finally said after an uncomfortable quiet moment.

“How do you know?”

“Look at her hair, man! She can’t be Chinese.”

“She could have a perm,” said Jones.

O’Malley laughed. “Chinese hair doesn’t take to perms.”

“It doesn’t? Then maybe it’s a wig.”

“Why would it be a wig?”

“You got so many questions, man, where are your answers?” O’Malley said.

Jones shrugged. “This could easily be resolved,” he said, indicating the back of the dead woman’s head with his nightstick.

O’Malley shook his head. “Nah, we should wait. The guys’ll get here soon.”

But Jones was already lifting up the deceased woman’s head with his stick. The body was stiff. The woman’s neck and part of her torso lifted off the floor, and bent like a tense plank of wood. Her yellowed skin was dry and the color of an unfinished maple.

Jones pressed his fat black cheek to the floor and looked up into the woman’s visage.

“Man, this old lady fell hard. She looks like a damn Pekingese dog.”

“So she is Chinese?” said O’Malley to himself. “How’d she get her hair—”

Jones lowered the woman back to the floor and lent his partner a patronizing look. “Flat from hitting the floor. Look at all the blood around her head. Even with that flat face, there’s no mistaking a Jewish nose like that.”

“Ahh,” they said together, O’Malley in realization, Jones in mockery.

“So it’s Yiddish.”

“Where did you grow up?” Jones demanded of O’Malley.

“Yonkers. Why?”

“Hebrew, man, it’s Hebrew.”

“Oh.”

A bloodstained corner of a piece of paper caught Jones’ eyes.

* * *

It’s no use. They’re never going to understand. Not before the flesh rots away and the words are lost. I should have learned better English, or some other language that facilitates understanding. I don’t even know if my language is the same one they speak today in my part of the world. Or if my part of the world is even the same place. But I don’t care, either.

Yes I do. I worked in the nursery at the hospital around the corner. That’s an infant nursery, not a plant nursery. I never cared much for plants. People think I never cared for human babies, either, but I always have. That’s how things change over time—people give you their opinions, expect you to conform your actions to them. I never liked people.

It’s hard to like people when they all hate you.

They say I hated men, and that I hated children—even that I’ve killed them. Can you believe that? Killed. I’ve never killed anyone—at least not anyone who didn’t deserve it. And I mean that in the most charitable way possible. Some people deserve to die; you won’t understand that, probably, I know, but death can sometimes be the only solvent for an over-saturated life.

But I digress. I always have done—did—that.

When I got the job at the hospital, everything seemed to be going all right. Of course, no one had any idea who I was. (I say was because I am dead now, as you have just seen.) The job was taking care of babies. Don’t laugh; I’m sure you think it’s ironic, as well you may after the recent resurgence of myth and lore. And amulets. I still don’t know how people could have thought I would bring harm to their children. I admit now that I always wanted what I didn’t have, I do, I say that, I’ll tell you straight—but to cause suffering? No, that was never my job. That’s the job of no one; it is the one thing that people can accomplish quite well on their own without any training, without discipline. All people wait for tragedy. No one ever waited for me; no one had the patience. I waited forever, wandering alone on my feet, wondering what I had done, and I never received the answers. I waited. It was my job.

As the attendant of infants, I was able to take care of them, here and there. Here and there means something when I say it. It would benefit you to pay attention to my words: I don’t know many, and some I misplace, but of what I know, I act on deliberately. No one would ever listen to an old Jew with a thick foreign accent, even in this city, but now I am in a place where I can express myself. So listen. You’ll learn.

I saw so many babies. So many who were so full of hope. And many who were so empty, without even a glimmer of hope; you could see that glistering hope in their eyes, but some did not have it. It’s not that it wasn’t offered to them, but some just changed their minds, figured it was not worth the trouble, the pain. They change before they are born, and they change after. Many change during, when they first see the light of day, and know it’s too late to return to the other side, to the warm wet inside where they all come from.

I say they because, as you should know, that’s not where I come from. You may know the story—or at least part of it. Probably just part of it. You know about the garden, the argument—let me remind you there was no divorce—and that I left. I did that on my own. I always did everything on my own, and that’s what burned them all up. It wasn’t me.

I’m not saying I am perfect. Yes, I was jealous, but not because she had him; it was because she had them—children. I could have done that. I could. I have it in me. I’m sure I do.

Or did. It was such a short time ago that I died. But not really; really, I suppose it was timeless years ago. Though my body is cold and stiff, it was not always that way; but even before it was, life had left me.

And if I had done it—had babies, I mean—they would not have done this to the world. Their babies would not have taken everything so seriously. They would have humor. Real humor. And grace. I have always had grace, even when I was wandering the edge of the world trying to figure out why I had done what I did. I wandered gracefully. That’s one part you don’t know: When I left, I had grace and I had blessings. Many of them. But I walked, alone, and I loved it. It was lovely. Until I heard Word that I was left alone, and I was the only one.

Yes, I left, jealous, and I cursed them. I cursed their children: the innocents. I now know that only unmolded spirits are passed along through generations—they do not carry with them the sins of their fathers or mothers. They don’t carry bitterness. That is something they learn from their forebears.

Here’s how I know: I took one. I did, I admit it now, I took one for my very own. She was beautiful—she would have been more beautiful if she had come from me, but she was beautiful nevertheless, like her mother, like the morning—and she died in my arms.

I didn’t know what to do. I appealed for help. I wandered. I didn’t eat. I didn’t know how to feed her; I didn’t even know she had to feed. Where was my instinct? I didn’t know what my breasts were for, but it didn’t matter; they never expressed milk. Maybe mine weren’t for that. You know, it’s kind of funny. I never paid any attention to my own, almost as if I didn’t even know they were there, until I saw hers, and I saw the power that they had. And mine seemed like...like lungs that had shriveled after asphyxiation. Something like that. I’ve seen my share of that.

I was always tethered to them. I felt so incomplete. Not that I was missing someone, but that I was missing out on something. I can be specific with this: I was missing out on creation. I tried and tried to will it to come to pass, but I couldn’t do it alone. That’s the way we were made, and it just never suited my nature. Male and female. And I was to be the receptive half—equal half of the whole, mind you. Man: male and female, that's the definition, in case anyone ever asks you.

Then He (You should also know that your language, however you’re receiving this message, does not properly translate the preceding word. You’re thinking of penis, right now, somewhere in you, and there’s no penis involved at all, I assure you. I’ve seen Him. More on that later.) made woman, which is a shame, really. It’s not her fault: there is nothing wrong with her or her female children, but there is a tiny spark of subservience in them that I can’t understand. I never have been able to. Not that there’s anything wrong with it: That’s the best line of resentment I ever heard.

But I walked, and the baby starved, and I didn’t know why or what to do with it, so I threw it into the chaos and tried to move on. That didn’t go over well.

I tried to stop walking, but I couldn’t. I tried to stop moving; I couldn’t. I knew it instantly—well, as soon as I knew I was in perpetual motion—that I was being punished. But it wasn’t my fault, I protested. Ignorance was no excuse. I’m sure you’ve heard that one. I had remorse, I had guilt. Of course, I had guilt; that came with the creation. We weren’t angels. We were graceful; we weren’t as graceful. The sibling comparison never dies; it lingers and grows and its wings spread and allow us to see what is below us and what is above it from a more realistic point of view—if we abandon our fears and hopes and just allow in what streams in. But that’s not realistic. It is a part of us, of our natural beings, that we generate irrational fears so we can fill ourselves with unrealistic hopes. We were monsters tethered to this little blue ball by gravity, and we wandered it, in or out of the garden; it just didn’t matter. It still doesn’t.

Oh, but I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Life is a wonderful thing.

I learned that the hard way. I did my time. I walked and walked in this chasm of time, I suppose, and my feet were killing me; I bet you think you’ve known that feeling after shopping at a mall all day or the like, but you try walking an endless misty realm for eons, and then you come complaining to me about tired feet. I’ll listen.

It was forever. I promise you that, as little sense as it makes, it was. Then I saw light. I emerged, and it was like opening my eyes again for the first time. Of all places: New York City. I suppose it’s so I could take full advantage of my senses again. Have you ever had a sandwich from a real New York deli? Oh, you’d just die.

Yes, I say things like that. I bet you expected me to be all ‘thou art’ and ‘spake thus,’ but remember, this isn’t even my language. Why would I speak like sixteenth century British aristocrats just because I am old? That’s just stupid.

People don’t think. They never did, though, so that’s nothing to feel bad about. I blame it on poor mothering.

So in New York I got a job at the hospital attending new babies. The job just came to me; it fell in my lap, so to speak. And it was wonderful, being back with people again. Just because I didn’t like the first ones doesn’t mean I never liked anybody. I had quite a little circle of friends, you know. Regular bridge games every Tuesday night. I tried to balance losing and winning so as not to look suspicious, since I always knew.

That’s the thing. Something inside me was different when I came into this city. There was a different kind of light inside of me. I knew what it was, but I can’t explain it to you, because you have no frame of reference. None at all.

Maybe if you’ve seen magnesium burn, you have an idea of the type of light I’m talking about. You know, that white-white light that creates an orb unto itself and is so white it’s almost blue and you wonder if it will blind you?

It’s nothing like that. But the awe that you feel when you first see magnesium turn to flame, when you expect just a different color of fire, it’s something like that.

Back to the babies. It was perfect. I was in love. And though I wasn’t their mother, I was charged with taking care of them, of helping them. Of saving them.

But the more I saw, the more concerned I became. These babies, they’re different from the first ones. There’s something missing. I’d call it joy; I don’t know what you’d call it.

Mothers on drugs, I can take that; I mean when they give birth. Don’t listen to those crazy people: It’s not a punishment that should be felt. That’s ridiculous. It just hurts, that’s all, so dull it. But then get over it. Your baby, your little child, is here in the nursery. With me, if you know the ‘me’ they talk about, if that helps you pay attention.

So many times I saw it. This room, an organized system of filing away newborn souls. Row by row, they sit, alone, under fluorescent light. Plants in nurseries, they have lights over them that approximate the Sun. Do you know how important that warmth is? It can’t come from a heater.

Mothers used to hold onto their children after bearing them, hold on to them for dear life, to use an overused expression. But it’s true. They wouldn’t let go, because they knew that only their arms and the sound of their beating hearts would do it. Now you have assembly lines. Do you know what that is?

It’s betrayal. And they know it, and let me tell you, it doesn’t help them when they are trying to decide whether to stay with you or not.

Don’t tell me that was harsh. I’ve never told a soul before, but I can tell you now. I am free to do so. (Contrary to popular opinion, we, when alive, aren’t free to do anything we want. I mean even to will it.) I didn’t tell the whole story earlier. You’ve never heard the whole story. But don’t call me a liar: I lied, yes, but only because you thought you knew me and you didn’t, and you never would have listened. The part about taking a child, the first born to the first couple, yes, it is true. I did that. And it died. But it was the second child born of two adolescent, innocent souls—we had a child, he and I, and it was both of us and yet it was its own self, as babies are. In it I saw myself completely and none of him. And then I learned it was ours—that it was half his. Yet he had never entered me; I was unwilling. I did not will it. It was a mar in the plan, as he did and I did not, and our wills, equal halves of a whole, canceled each other out. He wanted a closeness that I did not want, and he never had it from me. I canceled his will with my own. That was a problem, I learned, but I was content what I had of myself, and then with what I had outside of myself.

I had a baby. I was given a baby. I bore it myself, and it passed through my flesh as babies do. It was born, and it was blue.

There was no man. I am not Mary. I was not on drugs. I was not anything but the mother of a dead child. It wasn’t punishment, either, it just happened. I think—though He hasn’t told me, so don’t quote me on this—that the point was to make me empathetic. But it wasn’t punishment.

Punishment was walking and walking until I reached an age, ancient to you, when I could no longer bear a child. Not even with another man, a male. I passed that time of my life, and then I reentered the world with a newfound compassion, determined not to let infants leave the world without knowing of it.

Those blue babies will never leave my memory, whatever form I take. Amidst a sea of arms and legs, flailing in their plastic carriages, reaching up to the light—that hideous fluorescent light! —one baby, nearly the silvery blue color of its spirit, would lie still. It never failed. There’s always one.

And I would hold it and ask it, ask it without words, and it would tell me everything, without any reservation. The new ones are like that; they remember everything and they have everything to say. They’re forthcoming. That’s why people can’t hear them—people aren’t accustomed to hearing the truth. But they want you to listen.

Most people can’t hear beyond themselves. And they can’t see anything that’s not immediately apparent. While I walked aimlessly in no direction, in that prickly electric mist, I learned to focus my gaze, my hearing, all of the limiting senses I had been granted. I saw and heard things when nothing was there. I felt it.

Where I was was in the expanse that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness. It is a place that only I can walk, because I had no childhood; it is the place that holds your whole Earthly life, that cache of memories and sentience that you see only once; the whole thing, you see it in the instant you die.

It is where the infant souls took me. When I held them, I knew the place where I traversed living inside and outside of the psyche, where you charge your life with the charge of life, and where your consciousness and your conscience become one with God. That’s where the children took me. Or maybe I took them. I don’t know.

But let’s be clear about this: I did not take their souls. I accompanied where they had already chosen to go. This is not something you can understand. Inside of the world is a world, and inside of that is a truth that is protected by life, and it’s not something you know or something you feel.

In this world, babies are torn from their mothers, handled, filed in pods under cool lights. They beseech the world for acknowledgement of their arrival, and they wait. They are immensely patient, as you will see before you forget again, as you wait for your own receipt of life: warm arms, pulsing indications of other companionship. These days, some of the light is left behind each time a child enters the world and feels only sanitation. Something is missing. Some choose not to come at all, and retreat to that static womb. It tore me apart each time I saw the arms reach out and find nothing, nothing to hold them in their transport. It satisfied me to guide them back to their knowing home.

For years, on a real-time scale, I did this, and I did it happily. I would hold the blue babies and throw them back into that chaos; many begged for it, cried with the strained voices of ancients. The voices only stopped when they were given back.

And, rarely, some begged to stay in this dim place, having traveled such long distances only to exhaust themselves of the energy needed to pass through. I gave of myself to them, as only a mother could; I gave of my life, in shards and splinters, and nursed the blue babies with my own soul. With each bit, the whiteness inside of me grew brighter and my own skin grew dimmer. I knew what was coming; I was about to be returned, finally, forever.

There was light as I told you before—analogous only to sparking metal and standing back in awe. This time it was not New York; it was not anywhere, not even the chasm I had walked, for what seems like no time now. I feel the coming of the moment at which I can no longer speak in any way, even as the recessed thought in the voice of your mind, as I appear to you now. It’s waning, and the truth is approaching. If you can hear this, tell the men—male and female—my story. I tried myself while I was alive; I tried over and over.

But who wants to listen to an old foreign woman?

“Hey, Mike.” Jones emerged from the old dead woman’s bedroom holding onto a floral print jumpsuit. “Change that Jane Doe,” he said.

“You got a name?” O’Malley asked.

“First. Lily. That’s what the name tag says.”

“Lily?” O’Malley grimaced. “She looks more like a Lilith.”

Jones shrugged as he watched the pretty young coroner zip the body bag closed over the cold silver face. “Doesn’t really matter at this point. Call her what you want.”

“Lilith,” O’Malley said as he wrote the name on the death certificate.