All of Us with Wings Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Michelle Ruiz Keil

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Soho Teen

  an imprint of

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Keil, Michelle Ruiz, author.

  All of us with wings / Michelle Ruiz Keil.

  ISBN 978-1-64129-034-0

  eISBN 978-1-64129-035-7

  1. Governesses—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction.

  3. Revenge—Fiction. 4. Musicians—Fiction. 5. Mexican Americans—Fiction. 6. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.1.K41513 All 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 2018049992

  Wing art: by SuicideOmen

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A Note from the Author

  There are scenes in this book that discuss sexual abuse, the use of hard drugs, and the loss of a loved one. If these might be triggering or haramful to you, please be mindful of that and pause, stop, or even forego reading the novel as necessary. Here is a little bit about why I feel these scenes were important to include:

  All of Us with Wings is my first novel. For years, I learned to write within its imagined San Francisco in time stolen from my daily life as a caregiver, glowing with the secret of the story in my pocket. As the years went on, I wrote to heal myself, to bring my own hidden histories to light.

  As an abuse survivor and mixed-race Latinx, I have long struggled with empowerment and identity. Though promising and bright, I found myself unable to follow the traditional path of high school, college, and career as the effects of my childhood trauma manifested in adolescence.

  For many years, I longed for a life that seemed unattainable: the ivy-covered college campus, the cap-and-gown graduation ceremonies, the fabulous career in theater or law teachers and family assumed I would pursue. But as I grew older, I began to see the value of a different sort of education—the one I’d given myself. I had to find my own rites of passage, my own path to adulthood. I wanted to write a story about this kind of life, both its struggles and its gifts.

  Like Xochi, the heroine in All of Us with Wings, I ran away to San Francisco at seventeen and fell in love with the city. There was something about the sky’s watercolor blue, the sun-faded pastel of the houses, the pearly sheen of fog that woke me to the world’s magic. I wanted to write about the way art and music and long talks and fast motorcycle rides can heal. About the bookstore I once worked at with a wise and cranky Siamese cat.

  As the daughter of a teen mom, I wanted to write a story about young parents and their kids raising each other, and what it means to be on your own in the world at an age when most of your peers are still living under their parents’ protection. I wanted to tell a story about found family and complicated love. Finally, I wanted to write about a girl who has been sexually abused and works to reclaim both her power and pleasure.

  Writing such a book proved to be a difficult and dangerous journey. When I felt lost during the first draft, I found the Brothers Grimm story “The Maiden Without Hands,” a fairytale roadmap to healing from the worst kinds of betrayal. In researching the name “Xochi”, which means “flower” in Nuatl, I learned of the Aztec goddess Xochiquetzal, patron of lovers, embroiderers and sex workers, who lives in a verdant heaven where the winds blow glittering obsidian knives and the trees bleed when their jeweled blossoms are plucked.

  To my astonishment, I also discovered that, just like my Xochi, the goddess’s story includes the piercing of tongues. In All of Us With Wings, this act creates a space for magic to enter the ordinary world. On Xochiquetzal’s feast day, supplicants are pierced, passing straw after bloody straw through their perforated tongues, one for each of their sins, to emerge clean, forgiven. Free.

  This moment of synchronicity led me to wonder what it takes for survivors of abuse to reclaim their power, and whether perpetrators can ever really make amends. I wanted to explore the ways we so often unintentionally inflict pain as we make the mistakes it takes to grow up, and how complex that dynamic becomes for survivors as we create imperfect heavens of blades and blood and found family and poetry. I also discovered tales from all over the world of dangerous, powerful child-sized creatures who protected streams, lakes, forests and hot springs. In the danger and power of these beings, I saw a path for our broken bodies to connect with earthly powers, a way to draw parallels between the mistreatment of women and children and the degradation of the planet herself.

  But most of all, I wanted to tell my own story and the story of the other lost young people I’ve known and loved.

  Abuse can make us self-destructive. Sometimes, we blame and want to hurt ourselves.

  It can cause us to be comfortable in dangerous situations because they feel familiar.

  It can drive us to do dangerous things because we long for relief and want to feel good.

  Sometimes, we can avert danger by avoiding it.

  But when we can’t, danger must be surmounted, outsmarted, survived.

  Because All of Us with Wings is that sort of story, the characters sometimes make mistakes. There is drug use and sex and very real danger, both emotional and physical. But there is healing, too—a thread leading out of the labyrinth.

  In the end, I wrote All of Us With Wings for the girls who are smart, but not in school because life has gotten in the way. For the mixed-race kids already exhausted by the ubiquitous question, What are you? For the motherless, the fatherless. The queer kids. The ones who retreat into sleep. The ones who scream and throw stones. The ones who survived and remember how it was.

  For all of us who grew up too fast with only ourselves to rely on:

  I want you to know that everything you did, you did to survive.

  And you made it. You are here, reading these words.

  You are strong. You are beautiful.

  I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.

  For my nana, Luciana Ruiz Smith Dudley.

  And for Carl, my true love.

  I.

  Low, low, deep and low, the sibling pair sleeps

  Hands clasped, hair entwined

  They share a dream of springtime

  They dream music

  They dream of a girl

  Of tears

  And heat and honey

  The mudpot stirs

  Dreaming, they drift

  Honey, heat, tears, springtime

  Earth exhales her fumarole breath

  How long have they slept in their aquifer nest?

  Lithium bubbles, lighter than air

  Eyes open, obsidian bright

  Birdsong?

  Thunder?

  Together, they feel

  Together, they listen

  Together, hands clasped, they begin to rise

  1

  All Tomorrow’s Parties

  pallas sat sidesaddle on the kitchen counter, velvet ankle boots resting daintily in the deep porcelain sink. Pressing her nose against the dark kitchen window, she glared at the hulking cyclops creeping steadily toward Eris Gardens, its single working headlight illuminating the carriage house and steep gravel drive.

  “No one’s supposed to park back there,” she said. “Can’t they read?”

  “Maybe they’re too tired.” Xochi yawned. “I mean, who starts a party at midnight?”

  “It’s an afterparty.
” Pallas swirled a perfect cursive P in the steam her breath had made on the window. “Midnight counts as after.”

  “Midnight counts as bedtime.” Xochi downed the rest of her coffee.

  “Maybe for you.”

  Pallas had never had a bedtime herself, not even as a baby. Certainly not now that she was nearly thirteen.

  She giggled. “You claim you’re not governess material, but listen to you—so prim and disapproving.”

  Xochi rolled her eyes and reached over Pallas to pull back the lace curtain. Exhaust poured like fog from the old car’s tailpipe. “Who drives a hearse?”

  Pallas sighed. She had a pretty good idea of who the boxy eyesore belonged to. “Some people get one song on the radio or open for Lady Frieda a few times and suddenly they’re above parking on the street like everyone else.”

  She held her breath as the rusty behemoth lurched past the collection of vintage motorcycles parked behind the kitchen and shuddered to a stop. Four doors opened and five girls emerged. Like a line of paper dolls cut from the same pattern, they were thin and pale, with long white muslin dresses and waist-length blonde hair. They came in single file without knocking and passed through the kitchen without a word. The last one spared a head movement toward Pallas that might have been a nod and followed the others into the hall.

  Rude, Pallas thought. But they were just bitter. That wannabe coven of undead schoolgirls had spent all of last summer trying to infiltrate Eris Gardens. They learned soon enough: sleeping with the band did not make you part of the family. Pallas slid off the counter with a thud.

  “Wow,” Xochi said. “So are they a cult, or what?”

  “Just a band. Filles Mourantes,” Pallas said. “Dead Girls. They sing in a made-up language and never eat. They want people to think they’re, like, vampires or Parisian or something.”

  Pallas wasn’t about to admit that their music was actually good. It was easier to have compassion for the not-so-gifted who tried to make up for it with attitude, but those attractive, talented girls had no excuse for being mean.

  “They’re gorgeous, though,” Xochi said. “And those dresses are amazing.”

  “Please. You’re way prettier.” Pallas opened the industrial-sized refrigerator, the only modern thing in the large, drafty kitchen, and took out a platter of sushi and a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries—Equinox food. “And your hair is perfect, especially with that dress. I’m so glad you listened to me and Kiki.”

  Xochi touched her newly bare neck. “It’s not too short?”

  “Of course not!” Pallas’s godmother Kiki had bobbed Xochi’s hair perfectly. And this after magically producing a sparkly ashes-of-roses flapper dress when Pallas had worried Xochi wouldn’t have anything nice to wear for the concert. The dress had once belonged to Pallas’s mother–Io was too thin for it now, but it fit just right on Xochi. She looked so glamorous.

  Like a storybook governess, Xochi was from a small, uneventful place where the most exciting happenings were potlucks and school dances. Although she was almost eighteen, she had never been to a real concert, let alone an afterparty for one.

  Pallas sighed. It would be selfish to keep Xochi cooped up in the attic all night reading.

  She took a deep breath. “You know,” she said, “you could stay down here and check out the party. If you want.”

  “I thought we were finishing Villette.”

  Taking turns reading their favorite books aloud had been Pallas’s idea; she’d chosen Villette because of its governess heroine. Xochi was usually into the story as much as Pallas was. But tonight, there was a tiny hint of reluctance in her voice.

  Before Pallas could answer, a disgruntled yowl sounded from the patio.

  “More vampires?” Xochi’s eyes were brighter now, the way they always got when her coffee kicked in.

  “Not this time.” Pallas hurried to open the back door. “Just one grumpy old sphinx.”

  Peasblossom strolled in, looking pleased with himself as usual. Pallas reached down to pet him.

  “Wait a minute,” Xochi said. “Is that the bookstore cat?”

  Pallas couldn’t help but laugh at the look on Xochi’s face. “He comes over to keep me company during parties.”

  Peas trotted past Xochi and leaped onto the counter, suspiciously close to the covered party platter of sushi.

  “In your dreams!” Pallas scooped him up and set him back on the floor. His tail twitched. “Nora said no sushi—it gives you gas.”

  Peas washed his shoulder in disdain, clearly insulted.

  “Nora—she’s the bookstore lady, right?” Xochi’s brow furrowed. “She knows about these little visits?”

  “Of course,” Pallas said, stroking Peasblossom’s velvet nose.

  “But how does he know when there’s a party?”

  “I tell him,” Pallas said.

  The front door banged. Laughter. Voices. The thud of music gear. The mayhem was about to begin. Pallas steeled herself. It wouldn’t be so bad now that Peas was here.

  She feigned a big yawn, put a few pieces of sushi into her Hello Kitty bento box, and looked down at Peasblossom, her best and oldest friend. “Come upstairs, hungry thing. Maybe I’ll give you one bite of my yellowtail.” To Xochi, she said, “Reading’s going to be pointless when the music starts. Why don’t you go freshen up your lipstick? You should experience the full catastrophe at least once. In the morning, I’ll say I told you so.”

  Xochi’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

  Now it was Pallas’s turn to roll her eyes. Of course she was sure. Wasn’t she? She’d always loved the feeling of being alone in her attic bedroom during a party. She’d imagine her bed was a ship in a storm or Dorothy’s house spinning through the tornado toward Oz. That kind of imagining was harder these days; she wasn’t sure why.

  “Totally sure! I’ll probably just go to sleep.” She yawned again, this time for real. She was tired. And honestly a little peopled out, as her mother would say.

  From somewhere in the front of the house, a speaker made a catfight screech, putting Peasblossom’s fur visibly on end.

  “You can sleep through this?”

  Pallas shrugged. “I have earplugs. I’ve been at this since I was a baby, you know. Every Solstice and Equinox and Samhain and Beltane—a concert, a big afterparty. I have it down to a science.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go check it out for a minute . . .” Xochi was already pulling the red lipstick Kiki gave her from the pocket of her leather jacket. She looked so beautiful with her warm brown skin and minky waves. The kind of girl flapper dresses and fishnets and combat boots and leather jackets were made for.

  “Come on, Peas,” Pallas said, heading for the attic staircase. She bit her lip against an absurd welling of tears. There was no reason to be upset. Nothing was different about this Equinox from any other—nothing except Xochi. And now that Xochi was going to the party and Pallas was alone, nothing was different at all.

  2

  Rite of Spring

  Xochi perched at the top of the grand staircase, watching the party below. The partygoers wore their wildflower crowns with tattered Victorian picnic clothes or spiderwebbed layers of black, eyes painted like Egyptian royalty. The music wasn’t Lady Frieda, but something from the same section of the record store—hypnotic and velvet dark, the soundtrack to a dream.

  Xochi touched the rose at her ear, plucked from the bucket of leftover flowers in the kitchen. In the thick of things, she spotted familiar pink curls and a sparkly silver mermaid dress—definitely Bubbles. As usual, she was laughing, surrounded by boys. She paused to hug a tall dark-haired guy, his mouth beside her ear. The strobe light illuminated his face: Leviticus, Pallas’s dad. Uncrowned, his long, wavy hair was wet. He must have showered after the show. Earlier that night, onstage with his guitar, his presence had been the source of gravity, his vo
ice a replacement for air in the sold-out art-deco theater. Now, in the middle of the crowd, he went unnoticed.

  Xochi had read something once about Marilyn Monroe, how she could turn her star quality on and off whenever she wanted. Leviticus seemed to have the same power, floating in his own quiet eddy, a river inside a river. She watched as his black T-shirt disappeared into the crowd.

  Before meeting Pallas, Xochi had never heard of Lady Frieda. She might have never moved in if she’d known the band was more than just “named after a British aristocrat who painted tarot cards,” “pretty good in a gloomy art rock sort of way,” and “kind of famous.”

  After seeing them perform for the first time tonight, it was clear they were more than kind of famous. As for pretty good—no, they were Bowie good, Patti Smith good. The real thing.

  From the moment Xochi had met Pallas two months earlier, a lonely girl eating black licorice on free admission day at Steinhart Aquarium, she’d felt like she was living someone else’s fairy tale. Once upon a time, there was a white castle on a green hill, overlooking a city by the sea. And tonight, there was even a ball.

  She rolled her neck, already stiff from thrashing around at the concert. When was the last time she’d danced? Had it really been the bonfire after her grandmother’s wake? Xochi touched her throat, where a pair of carved jade hummingbirds held a glowing opal between their two beaks. The necklace had been Loretta’s favorite. Xochi rarely took it off.

  Laughter floated up from the party. Whatever heaven Loretta was in must be a lot like the swaying chaos in the ballroom below. That woman lived for parties. She would celebrate anything: a full moon, a perfect sunset, the first day of fall. Xochi wished Loretta could have heard Lady Frieda at least once.

  The music changed, slinking and heavy with the bass so low Xochi felt it in her tailbone. She recognized the song from the concert—Lady Frieda covering the Beatles. The rhythm took off, coming apart at the seams in a way Xochi’s hips understood. Loretta would have been all over this. Get off your ass and dance, she’d say. Also: fake it till you make it, kitten.