Dirty Little Cherub

Kalyan Dudala

February 2006

"She loved this place." I nod, seeing no need for a verbal response. The table is ordinary enough but I see that there are three books perched on top of it. Rushdie’s Ground Beneath Her Feet, Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness and a collection of short stories by the man known as O’Henry. This appears to be Chet’s little memorial to her. I pick up Rushdie and idly flip through the pages. There is a passage highlighted in red with the word "genius" scrawled on the side of the page in her terrible handwriting. I don’t understand why one would choose to use red highlighting. It obscures the text and makes it awfully hard to read. Chet and I sit in silence for a few minutes because it seems to be the appropriate thing to do. As I look at him, his embellished ugliness forces me to wonder why a woman like her would have chosen to be with a man like him. I gently remind myself that Beauty needs the Beast to make her feel human.

Chet rises abruptly and I follow him as we walk next door to the club. Groovy sixties music plays as beautiful women dance and writhe, showing more skin with each beat. I would rather have skipped this stop on the tour altogether but Chet seems intent so I follow him to a booth by the bar. A fully clothed waitress comes to take our order.

"Water."

"Jack Daniels on the rocks."

A booming voice sounds on the speakers, announcing that the green light is on, meaning two for ones. Several men around us spring into action as the girls stream out of a door behind the stage. At this point, Chet begins to cry uncontrollably. I think about putting a hand on his shoulder but the dragon on it glares back at me menacingly so I stop short.

"Dad touches me," said the nine year old girl as we lay in the grass.

"Yeah, so what? Parents hug their kids all the time."

"But he touches me there. It’s dirty." Her face began to cloud as she grimaced.

"It’s just his way of showing you he loves you," I said, only half convincingly. Enough, I hoped.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the moist air. I had enough problems of my own without having to worry about her problems with family. Besides, she always did have a hyperactive imagination. All I could think of was the brand new guitar my dad was buying for me. Fifteen years old that day. Almost old enough to drive.

Chet continues to cry and people are beginning to stare now. I sip my drink and smoke my cigarette as nonchalantly as I can while a concerned stripper walks up to us. I wave her away making gestures with my hands and lips that I don’t really understand. I hand him a napkin as the snot begins to drip down his nose and into the glass in front of him. My cigarette is almost done and I have just one match left. I light another one just before the cherry burns out. There’s something about this place that bothers me. It’s not the strippers; it’s not the horny patrons. It’s that my drink is so fucking watered down that I can’t even taste it.

It’s still raining outside and it looks like we’re going to have to soak ourselves while burying her. I don’t really mind it. At least it’ll be a quick ceremony.

"She would have wanted you to be here." I take his word for it since I don’t really know what she would or wouldn’t have wanted. On our way out, the bartender nods at us with knowing eyes that seem a little too somber for the happy music wafting from the speakers.

Beads hang from store windows in preparation for Mardis Gras, still a few months away. I guess its ideal for those who want to get a head start on the celebrations, or for the loud tourists to take home meaningless souvenirs made in China. Soaked to the bone, I follow Chet as he walks irritatingly slowly. My vision is blurring slightly.

I see floaters all the time. My ophthalmologist tells me it’s because my retina is detaching itself from my eye and the fluid in the back of my eye is solidifying in those spots. In bright light, I see shapeless forms drifting back and forth. Sometimes, if I concentrate really hard, the shapes begin to make sense to me. Like ghosts trapped between my eyelids. An eternity ago, I stood by my grandmother’s grave while they lowered her into it. For a brief second, I looked up at the moon and thought I saw a bed with a woman atop it, floating...floating into the moon itself. Sometimes I’m glad for the floaters. Most times they’re just an inconvenience.

"Think happy thoughts," she said. My face darkened further and my lips twisted themselves into a scowl. My parents had just died in a car wreck. My father had been drinking too much and my mother had been miraculously pregnant at forty two. Jenney was fourteen, that irritating age when you think you have the perfect words for every situation when what might in fact help is for you to just shut the fuck up.

"You’d feel better if you cried."

We are in a cathedral and Chet’s head is bowed in prayer. I’m not religious and don’t see the sense in bowing before a wooden cross. However, I don’t want to make a spectacle of my defiance so I stare at my shoes and the layer of mud on them. We sit on a pew in the corner of the third row.

"This was the only place she could keep her mouth shut."

I smile quietly.

"We should be heading back." I find myself saying. It is three thirty, there are two hours to go for the funeral and I’ve had enough of my wet clothes. I return to Des Moines tonight. I did think about staying longer but it doesn’t make any sense. The only person I should care to see is dead and it’s not much fun talking to a grave.

Chet mumbles incoherently, getting up and leading the way out. There are a few worm heads stuck to his trousers. Or maybe they’re tails. Who can tell anyway?

The ride back is largely uneventful. The lone wiper continues his spirited fight against the torrential rain ‘til at last, the rubber slips off and the metal begins to scratch the windshield. Chet seems not to notice. I reach into the glove compartment and examine the contents of the purse. I glance at the photographs and find one of myself. It was supposed to have been a silly photograph with both of us making faces at the camera but she had tripped over a rock and was in the process of falling while I looked directly at the camera, doing my best Gene Simmons impression.

"She loved that photograph man," says Chet "y’know how her face came out all blurry and shit. She loved pictures like that." I remain quiet. Chet seems to be having increasing difficulty talking and I wish he’d stop. "She’d spend all day shooting squirrels or rain...or earthworms. Freeze frame life. That’s what she called it."

Visibility is really bad and the claps of thunder in the distance aren’t making me feel any better. There is standing water on the streets and our engine is beginning to sound like a different beast altogether. Chet has finally stopped talking and I’m remembering how she couldn’t stand still for long enough to pose for a family photograph.

I pick up the sheet of paper and it has scrawls all over it to the point where most of it is no longer legible. On the top left, however, are four letters written in capital with a red marker. They spell "CRAP". I look out the window at the trees whizzing by, the water spraying everywhere and wish I was safe at home, far away from Jenney.

"That’s her song. Do you want to hear it?" Chet asks and inserts a tape into the deck without waiting for a response. "I made it for her," he says, his voice a strange mixture of intense grief and pride. The tape begins with a loud hissing noise followed by some clanging noises, evidence of Chet’s expertise. Eventually a piano begins to play, followed by a voice….her voice, barely audible with all the magnetic static.

Dirty little cherub, that’s what you are
They think you’re so cute what do they know
Puke your food and hide your scars
Hang up your halo when you sink so low
Dirty little cherubs who cheat and lie
Won’t go to heaven when they die
No father no son, no holy ghost
No holly holly to the lord of hope
Just the endless night black and cold
A wooden box and a filthy hole
Dirty little cherubs who cheat and lie
Won’t go to heaven when they die
Won’t go to heaven
Won’t go to heaven
...when they die

At some point during her ghostly performance, I begin to cry. Hot salty tears. Tears of selfishness perhaps or tears of remorse, or crocodile tears. I don’t fucking care anymore. She was right, this feels really good. Eventually, I open my eyes to the light and I see a shower of floaters. No lunar ascendancy. No shape at all, just grubby blobs. It’s like I was saying. They’re just like little sisters, really. You’re glad for them sometimes but mostly they’re just a pain.

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