After talking to Stone, Billie took her coffee down to the studio and tried to get some work done, but she didn't feel like it was flowing and she didn't like to work the glass when it wasn't cooperating. Instead she went further down the hall to the back room. She hadn't been in here since Christmas and seeing as she was in the mood for getting on with things she thought it might be a good time for a spring clean.
She opened the door on a dark and stale room. She flicked the light on, went to the windows and drew open the heavy drapes. She threw up the large sash windows that opened onto a private alley and the fire escape, to let some air in, then looked around her sacred space.
Motes of dust swirled in the air currents and lay thick on most surfaces. Billie walked slowly around the room letting her mind drift where it wanted.
This was her Craftroom. Her altar room.
The place she came to make offerings and pleas. The place she came to talk to her ancestors and her own spirit.
She'd slept here on the small bed in the corner for the first three months after Tim died.
She couldn't lay in their bed to sleep at night. She'd lain there a little during the day but when night fell she couldn't bear the emptiness so she'd gathered up some things and brought them down here where she could smell only orris and cedar, wax and ink and not the bitter scent of unfaithfulness. Down here she couldn't hear the phone ringing or the knocking of people bringing casseroles and there was nothing to stop her screaming or praying when she felt like it, or sleeping 36 hours at a time.
Then things had shifted again. She'd found out about Luella's pregnancy and something inside her fractured. She felt like the great spirit had betrayed her as well. She felt untethered and disconnected to her practice. She became faithless and hollow. She'd mostly abandoned this space in her despair.
Rather than dwell, Billie went back to the kitchen in the music room and gathered some cleaning things from the kitchen. Soapy water and cloths and the broom to start. She worked for a couple of hours, practicing keeping her mind still.
She wiped down and furniture and stripped the bed. She washed the walls, swept and mopped the floor and polished the windows inside and out, and then placed small piles of salt in the corners of the room. Then she sat in her armchair feeling tired and looked around the room.
She really loved this space. There were dried herb and flowers hanging in random places and crystals and stones gathered over a lifetime. Candelabras, sticks and shells. Her ragdoll from childhood and some prints of her favourite paintings. Her tablas. Her altar with candles and incense and statues of Mary and Doni, Kali and her Sheela-na-gig.
Photos adorned the walls. Her grandparents, both sets. Her parents young and in love in London. Fishing with her dad. A photo of her and Cass dressed up as vampires for Halloween.
She stood and took her polishing cloth and went from photo to photo cleaning the glass. Her and Tim at Disneyland. A photo of her and Danny on his bike somewhere in Baja made her smile. She wiped the glass and moved on to the next, a series of three pictures in one frame and her smile faded.
Billie as a teenager, her brother Toby, and his best friend Jeff, hanging out by the stretch of the LA river that ran alongside Frogtown.
Billie stood transfixed. Looking at the picture, even now, she could still feel the vibration of the traffic on the Golden State, feel the heat of the sun on her back and hear their laughter.
Billie had spent countless hours by the river between Frogtown and the Narrows. A small portion of the river that couldn't be tamed. Where springs of water and sand bubbled up through the concrete they tried to imprison her with. Where birds and fish and trees gracefully persisted, despite the best efforts of men. She'd found peace there often, along with heron and eel, raccoon and toad.
Toby used to tease her but he would always come along, now she realized it was just to spend time with her. When she was in LA they were inseparable. When she wasn't they missed each other desperately.
One day he'd come looking for her, he knew all her favorite places, and following behind him was another boy, skinny, with a bad haircut, crowded teeth and the softest brown eyes Billie had even seen. From that day on they were three.
With shaking hands Billie polished the glass, and when it was done, shining in the glass was her own tearstained reflection.
