Throat (8 page)

We went in the backyard. Manda was glued to Papi’s side the whole afternoon and he threaded his way around her the way you walk around a cat. I wondered if I was ever going to get any time alone with him, hoping I wouldn’t chicken out when I finally did.

We ate BBQ on Papi’s rolling front lawn. Not one inch of his small lot was level, but the grass was cropped like a golf course. His garage was just as neat. I could see his old-fashioned rowboat and fishing tackle hanging above his Buick.

The T-shaped bars where my grandmother used to hang clothes out to dry were still there—my only clear memory of her
was standing by her side between billowing sun-blown sheets as she snapped wooden clothespins to her line. Papi had been bellowing a bouncy song from the kitchen window called “Ein Prosit.” “Stop singing that beer-drinking fighting killing song!” my grandmother had yelled. Papi swatted her on the butt as she came inside.

Papi was a stonemason from the old school and had built the little house himself with native rocks. You wouldn’t think he was an educated guy. Mom said he never got beyond the eighth grade because he had to quit school to work for his family when his father died. But looks were definitely deceiving.

The house had only five rooms and a bath, but it was stuffed with books, all history. I knew just exactly what he would say if I asked him if he believed in vampires. Papi believed in combustion engines, Jitterbug lures, and his hero, the German NASA engineer Wernher von Braun, “who put Mr. Armstrong on the moon.” Bloodsucking monsters? Forget it.

“Now,” Papi said, putting aside his plate of BBQ and fixing me with one squinty eye. “Something is wrong, I can tell this,
Enkelin
. You want to talk about it? You ask your mother, I promise you, I am not a good listener. But for you, I listen.”

I didn’t know how to begin. I talked about everything but the real thing. He could tell I wasn’t revealing anything and said nothing about it. That was one of the best things about him. Unlike my mom, Papi wasn’t a control freak about other people.

Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. We had settled down in the living room to talk about history, books, that kind of thing, just like we always did before going to bed. It was now or never.

“Papi, do you believe … What do you think … about … supernatural things?” I said at last.

His eyebrows jumped. “Religion? I am surprised you ask this
question. You would have been better to have known your grandmother.”

“Not religion, Papi. You know, just things.”

“Things?”

“Things like you can’t … understand. Things that are beyond understanding. Beyond explanation.”

“Could you give me just a little bit example,
Enkelin
?” There he went with the elders thing again.

“What about … what about vampires?”

I cringed as I said it. Papi could be pretty brutal when he wanted you to know just how dumb you were. But I was built for brutal.
Here it comes
.

Instead Papi put a finger to his lips, then walked me up the hall to the little room that used to be Grandmother’s bedroom. Where Manda was sleeping now. We both peeked at her. She had kicked off her covers but was completely out of it. I wondered how Papi would react if I told him she was glowing softly blue in the dark? I followed him back to the living room. He poured us fresh mugs of cider and sank back in his recliner. I could tell he was settling in for one of his stories.

“Something I never told you. It was a story my own grandfather told me. There was a man in his village who was his good friend when he was a young man. And this good friend had an elder brother named Dieter. Dieter was a stonemason and he was also a suicide. Something to do with a love that was not returned. My grandfather was told this man Dieter, three days after his death, because of the suicide had become a
Nachtzehrer
.

“A vampire. He ate his death shroud and began to eat the corpses of his neighbors. The people noticed this defilement and began to place clumps of dirt under the chins of the dead or coins on their tongues to prevent any others from doing this.”

My skin went cold all over. Papi went on.

“Once this Dieter, the
Nachtzehrer
, had devoured the limbs of those buried around him, he began to walk abroad in the village at night drinking blood. He practiced on the blood of pigs to begin with
und
then graduated to human beings. There was a panic in the village and all the doors were smeared with
Knoblauch.
”

“
Knoblauch?
”

“Garlic. At last it was determined who was the identity of the
Nachtzehrer
, and a crowd came from the village to the cemetery to cut off its head
und
drive a spike through its mouth, to pin its head to the ground. When they opened the crypt of this Dieter, he was found to be lying in a pool of blood, so gorged was the
Nachtzehrer
that it could not retain all the blood it had consumed.”

I sat there blinking, not knowing what to say. “Jeez, Papi. That’s really messed up.”

“
Ja
. And so why do you ask about such things?”

“It’s just … I have been wondering. About something like that. Did you believe his story? Your grandfather’s?”

“I believe that he believed his friend.”

“But you, what did you …”

Papi snorted and thumped his hand on the arm of his recliner. “Complete nonsense. People are … what is the word … 
leichtgläubig
. Gullible. They want to believe what they want to believe. It has been so down throughout history. That is one reason it is so interesting to study. The history changes, but the people? Never.” He smiled again. “You did not answer my question,
Enkelin
. It is your choice. I just want you to know I noticed.”

We waited, looking at each other. No one, I mean no one, could beat my papi in a staring contest. I blinked.

“Papi, another thing … Could you please translate something for me?”

I took a small piece of paper from my pocket where I had spelled the words out phonetically and did my best to repeat what the man in the dark coat had said to me.

Papi frowned. “I don’t think maybe you are pronouncing it a little bit right. Is it this:
Geben Sie mir Ihr Leben
?”

“Yeah! That’s it. That’s what it is.”

Papi’s frown deepened. He dropped the footrest on his chair and sat forward, eyes shining intently. “Where did you hear this? Did someone say this to you,
Enkelin
? Tell me.”

“Never mind, Papi. Just what does it mean?”

“It means this,” he said. “ ‘Give me your life.’ ”

It took me a very long time to get to sleep on the rollaway cot in Manda’s room. Papi snored so loudly, it sounded as if the house would break apart from the sheer decibels. That was the reason my grandmother had demanded a separate bedroom. But the sound had never bothered me before. In fact, it had comforted me.

But tonight I couldn’t stop thinking about the
Nachtzehrer
. The story, the way he told it, had the feel of truth to it. No matter what he said about it being nonsense. Maybe that was Papi’s way of dealing with something he couldn’t, didn’t want to, understand.

What if … what if the lust for blood … what if it was a change that I hadn’t gone through yet? What would I do if it came? How could I live?
Can a vampire commit suicide?

Most of all, I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the dark coat. The vampire, I reminded myself. Back on the mountain, he had wanted to kill me. I was helpless. But something had stopped him.
My seizure?
That had to be it. Maybe when a person dies in a vampire attack, they are just plain dead. But because I survived, I was turning into one.…

I didn’t want to think about it. I looked over at Manda, her tiny
hand dangling over the edge of the mattress, one leg pointing at the floor.
So small
.

What chance would she have if …

Could I stop myself? Would I even be able to think like a human being anymore if the change came? Or would I be a ravenous beast, hell-bent on nothing but feasting to drive off my terrible hunger? The vampire … his face … I refused to ever let that be my face.

In the end, I didn’t tell Papi. I couldn’t. As we were leaving the next morning, he suddenly grabbed my arm.

“You have lost weight,
Enkelin
. That is the difference,
ja
?”

Actually, I had. Who wouldn’t have, going through a sickness like that? But I still liked hearing somebody say it.

“Is that it? I believe it is, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes, that’s it, Papi.” I looked at him, trying to figure if this was just his way of letting me off the hook.

“You can’t fool these eyes,” Papi said. “I never will remember a name well, but I remember faces forever. Appearances. Personalities. These are the things that do not change for me.”

He held me to him and hugged Manda as Mom pulled into the gravel drive. “You can tell me anything,” he said into my ear, making it look like a goodbye kiss. “You are never afraid. You are my
Kämpferin.
”

He had said this before. I felt tears in my eyes. I knew a little German from hanging around Papi over the years.
Kämpferin
meant “fighter.” I took Manda’s hand and we ran to the car.

After coming back from Papi’s, I began to feel better again. There were no new changes. I was still going outside in the sun with no ill effects, and the bloodiest thing I craved was the prime rib Mom always got for us on birthdays and at Christmas.

It’s interesting how quickly a strange situation can melt into the background and become the new “normal.” At school everybody was used to my shades by now, even me. My grades even picked up. I was hanging around the apartment so much, I spent more time with my books out of sheer boredom.

I hadn’t even had an argument with my mother lately. Not a bad one, anyhow.

“You worry me,” she said one night.

“Why?”

“I’m starting to think you might almost like me.”

“Mom.”

She was sitting on the floor in the living room. An old movie was on that wasn’t very good—Cuba and dancing and a butt-ugly singer with a receding hairline who we were supposed to believe was making all those beautiful girls swoon.

“Emma, do you ever miss your father?” she said, looking down at the laundry basket in front of her.

That one caught me off guard. “I don’t really think about him all that much.” I wondered if I was telling the truth, thought about it, and decided I was. He hadn’t entered my mind much since the attack.

“Do you ever wish you could see him?”

“I used to.”

“Why? Do you miss him?”

“I wanted to ask him things.”

“Like what? Why he left?”

“I know why he left.”

Mom scooped out more clothes to fold. It was late; Manda was in bed. The laundry tended to back up, so the living room was crowded with little piles. I sat down in the middle of them and started sorting socks.

“What, you’re actually going to help?”

“Hey, come on, I help.”

“Okay. You do. Sometimes. Do you really know why he left?”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

“It’s okay.”

“For you, maybe.”

“He met someone, Emma. You know that, don’t you?”

I reached for more socks. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“It wasn’t anything you did, honey. It wasn’t your epilepsy. That was just … timing.”

“I’m not stupid, Mom.” My seizure condition was usually off-limits when it came to talking about Dad. She knew that. She was supposed to know. We worked together for a while not speaking.

“I think he’s embarrassed,” Mom said.

“Who?”

“Your dad. He’s embarrassed. It was supposed to be one of those happily-ever-after things, you know.”

“So do you hate him?”

She watched her hands working on a shirt. Picked up another one and folded it. “There’s no future in hating someone, Emma.”

“Even if he deserves it?”

I looked at her face. She was swiping one of Manda’s socks across her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Why don’t you go to bed or something?” she whispered.

“Not sleepy,” I said. I would have patted her on the back or given her a hug, but I was not big into the comforting thing. I figured it made you weak. But I touched her arm. “Mom?”

“What.”

“Sometimes you believe in something, you think you know what it is, and it changes. Your world is suddenly completely
different and you have to figure it out all over again. I know what that’s like.”

“Because of your epilepsy?”

I let her believe that’s what I was talking about.

Later I lay there looking up at the ceiling in my room. My window was cracked open and somewhere across the complex I heard somebody say, “I really can’t stand living like this anymore.” I listened to them going back and forth, a man and a woman somewhere out there in the night. Nothing earth-shattering, but still something no one else should have been allowed to hear.

I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew my old life was coming to an end. It had to. I was different. I wasn’t my mother’s daughter anymore. Not the daughter she knew.

I looked at the clock: 12:03 a.m. I stared at it. Kept staring. The numbers were red. Someone once told me the best clocks had red numbers because the light was softer than blue in the dark. I couldn’t see how that was true. Blue was robin eggs, soft spring skies, water that was not stormy. Red was war and sunburn and ambulance lights and warning beacons.
And blood
.

I was still staring, but I didn’t really see the number on the clock anymore. Actually, I saw it, but it wasn’t a number. It wasn’t even a light. It had become a colored thing with edges and a shape. Something about the shape pleased me. I kept staring.

Pretty soon I was experiencing another “small” seizure. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. You usually don’t, not till afterward. Sometimes not at all. I just kept staring and staring at the number on the clock, feeling more and more comfortable.