Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block Read Free Book Online Page A

a dress—the most beautiful dress. When I was finished he came back. My aunt was away. He asked me to put the dress on.
    “I went into the back bedroom, so dim and draped in dark fabrics to keep out the light, and I put on the dress. The satin against my skin made me want to weep. The dress felt cool and warm, light and soft, supple and strong the way I imagined a lover would feel. I looked at myselfin the stained mirror and hardly recognized the gleaming woman, skin as pure and pale as the satin, eyes lit with the candleshine of the dress, lips moist with the pleasure of the dress, who stared back at me.
    “I came out into the parlor and showed the stranger. He sat forward on the sofa and looked at me with a hypnotic blue gaze.
    “'Thank you,’ he said. I started to leave the room to change but he called me back. He put a large stack of bills on the table and rose to leave.
    “'Wait,’ I said. ‘Don’t you want it? Isn’t it right?’
    “'It is perfect.’
    My eyes were full of questions.
    “'The dress is for you, Gazelle. And there is something else I want to give you.'”
    Dirk watched Gazelle take the golden lamp to her breast as if it were a nursing child. “I asked him what it was,” she said.
    “What did he say?” Dirk whispered.
    “That it was the place to keep my secrets, the story of my love. But I told him I have no story.”
    Like me and Fifi, Dirk thought.
    “He said, ‘Yes you do. We all do. Someday you will know it.’ He started to leave then, and I brushed my fingers against his shoulder. His eyes looked into mine—big pale sky crystals full of sorrow and wisdom. Lakes full of first stars that I wanted to leap into, wishing.
    “'Please,’ I said.
    “He took my hands in his. His hands weren’t much bigger than mine but they were powerful and hot, the color of the cocoa velvet I used to sew winter hats. He put his lips to mine. I felt the room fill up with satiny light and a sweet powdery fragrance.
    “'You must not be afraid’ were the last words he said to me.
    “The next month I didn’t bleed. At first I thought that my aunt’s curse was over—I wasn’t a monster anymore, I had been good. But when my belly got bigger and bigger I thought that her curse had become even more powerful.
    “'Oh, I knew you were evil,’ she said. ‘It must be the devil’s child. Who else could have touched you? Who else would have touched you?’
    “I thought about the stranger. Could he have been the devil? If he was the devil I would have gone with him anyway. I wished he would come back.”
    “How could she say those things to you?” Dirk asked. “What happened? Did you have your baby?”
    “Yes. She told me we would put it up for adoption when it was born. And she locked me in my room so the women who came over for fittings wouldn’t see me. She only opened the door to give me food and the material to sew. I wanted to die. I might have killed myself with the sewing shears except for three things—the baby inside ofme, the magical dress hidden in mothballs and tissue in my closet and the words I heard purring through my head. ‘You must not be afraid.’
    “Then just before my baby was born my aunt fell ill. She let me out of my room, and I sat at her bedside pressing damp lavender-soaked rags to her forehead and feeding her soft food.”
    “You should have strangled her,” Dirk said. “Sorry. But I think she deserved it.”
    “She was a damaged woman. I would have been too if the stranger hadn’t come. Someone had seen her touch herself, maybe even seen her dance, and told her those horrible lies.”
    Dirk said, “You’re kinder than I am,” and she answered, “No, not really. I was just trying to protect my baby, you know. I remembered all the fairy tales about the evil witch cursing the child. She’d almost destroyed me, and I wasn’t going to let her hurt the baby.”
    “Did she?”
    “No. She died rather peacefully with my hands on her temples. Poor thing, I think I