Page 60 of Night Songs

“I’m so scared, Tate. I don’t want to die.”

There was a beat of silence, and then he said, “I used to be scared of death. I would think about it all the time, and it almost made me want to die, just so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.” He looked away. “But then, in school, I read something that helped me move beyond it.”

He got up on his knees and unbuttoned his own shirt this time, revealing a pale, hairy chest covered in thin ridges. I sat up to get closer, and I saw that they were words carved into his skin and healed into white scars. I traced them lightly with my finger. All together, they said,Amor Fati.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It is a saying of the Stoics. It means to love one’s fate. It reminds me to welcome all of life’s experiences, good and bad. Even death.”

“But how can you love your fate if you know you’re headed to hell?”

He let go of his shirt and let the fabric hang down over his chest. “How do you know you’re going to hell?”

I got on my knees so we were eye to eye. “So you don’t believe me, huh?”

“What I’m saying,” he explained, “is even if this curse is in your family, and you’re certain you’re going to die at 33, how do you know you’re going to hell afterward?”

I thought back to the first time I ever heard about the curse.

It was my fifth birthday, and a neighbor who doted on me brought me a cake and got everyone to sing. I’d never gotten so much attention, and I’m sure I was beaming with it.

After she left, my uncle got into his secret stash and tied one on. He could barely stand as he roamed the house, looking for something to torture.

Us kids knew to make ourselves scarce, but it was oddly cold that night. My shoes were worn to holes at the bottom, and I imagined my feet turning to ice if I escaped to the woods. When I tried to join the others in thevarious hiding spots around the house—the cellar, the space under their parents’ bed, my aunt’s bureau—they wouldn’t let me nestle in with them. They said there wasn’t room.

So I stood in the middle of the kitchen with my small five-year-old body and dared him to do his worst. If I couldn’t hide, I sure as hell wouldn’t cower.

When I didn’t scamper, he got angry. He lunged at me slow and sloppy, and I dodged him easily. He tried again, and I dodged him again. He peered at me with bloodshot eyes and said, “You think you’re real special, don’t ya? That lady only felt sorry for you, ’cause she knows where you’re headed.”

I looked at him curiously, and he said, “Everybody knows that the women in your mama’s family arecursed. They all die at 33 of some gruesome accident—just like your mama.” He leaned in closer, and his voice went low, like he was telling a ghost story. “And it’s all because one of your kin from way back made a deal with thedevil. Traded her soul so she could sing like an angel.” He grabbed my wrist with his meaty hand. “Your mama and your grandmama and all those other ladies are in hell right now, burning alive. And one day…” He paused, bringing his mouth right up to my ear. “You’re gonna join them.”

I knew my uncle liked to torture things just for fun, and I shouldn’t pay him any mind. But deep in my gut, I knew he was right. I was the demon child, and I was damned to hell, just as my mother had been. I saw the place I imagined in church, the place where the only music was a terrible sound. I saw my mother there, the house dress from the only picture I had of her set aflame.

“The devil owns my soul. Where else would I go?” I said to Tate.

“I don’t know. I just have a hard time believing you are destined for hell. When you sing, it’s like I can see God’s light pouring out of you.”

It was true that since I was a girl, I had also felt the Lord with me. The devil might have given me my voice, but it was God who sent me music.

I didn’t know how to fit these two ideas into who I was or what I wasdestined for; perhaps as a damned girl, a demon child, God took the greatest pity on me. Maybe he even had a big, grand plan for me, and one day all of the ecstasy and sorrow would come together in one striking image, and I’d see what He’d intended.

Perhaps all I needed was to let go, as Tate had. Love my fate. Welcome the good with the bad and watch it unfold.

It was dark when Tate dropped me off at home. We were two travelers at the end of a long journey; there was nothing left to say. We nodded at each other, and then I walked inside.

I’d come back down to earth from the LSD, but things were still a little cockeyed. I lay down on the couch and tried to sleep, but the brocade pattern kept pestering me. The world wouldn’t let me turn off.

I must have drifted off at some point because I woke to a hammering on my door. It was early evening in spring, and the smell of wet daffodils wafted through the screen window. When I looked at the brocade, it stayed mercifully still.

Another knock came at the door.

I opened it, and there was Tate. It felt natural that he should be there, like the next chord in the song of my life. We both reached out and brought our palms together, testing reality. I felt none of the drug now, but our connection was still there, a luscious vibration where our skin met. I wanted to feel more of it, and so I snaked my arms inside of his jean jacket and pushed my hands beneath his shirt to his warm, bare back. He did the same, and we stood there, clutching one another under our clothes.

I looked up at the dark-blue sky over his shoulder, and I heard something in the distance. At first it was just a little tinkle in my brain, and then it got louder and more complex, and my body shivered as it crackled through me like an electrical current.

It was a new song. A special one. About a cursed woman, searching for a bit of light.

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