Death of Lady Dragonfly

It wasn’t the first time Adelaide woke barefooted in a strange place and it wasn’t the first time that passersby in a busy city ignored or couldn’t see the body of the chubby ten-year old resting amid the refuse of the dark corners of their town.

The last home Adelaide knew was her great-grandmother’s shack in the countryside of some other country faraway. The house was a wooden palace, softened under the weight, of ten thousand damp mornings. The walls perfumed every space with the pungent sweet smell of mold and rot. It was within the hollow heartbeat of the old woman’s thatch roof house that Adelaide watched the magic of the mundane. The duet of crackling fires and arthritic fingers, conjuring humble sacraments on the hearth, calling she and her brothers and sisters to communion on the floor.

Across the street from her great-grandmother’s property, down a sharp incline, there was a wide opened green field surrounded by a decaying wooden goat gate. The field was littered with sinkholes and abandoned wells so the old woman forbade Adelaide and her brothers and sisters from playing there. But for the children, who spent most of their days on their great grandmother’s hard, rocky slither of land and in the sweltering, overcrowded shack that was their home, the lush overgrown green pastures were seductive.

Against her wishes, the children would often sneak over to the field, run, play and lay down spread-eagle in the tall soft grass. One day Adelaide and her younger sister Anais had done just that. They lay with the sun overhead, its rays kissing their face like the stingers of a thousand wasps, their bare feet tangling themselves in playful blades of long deep green grass. But after a while, Adelaide could see the sky was becoming unnaturally dark. Huge swollen black clouds rolling in toward she and her sister from the horizon hung low and heavy above them. Anais looked so peaceful and happy. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded across her stomach.

"Anais, it’s time to go," Adelaide said.

"No I want to stay,” Anais snapped back.

Adelaide stood, exhaling sharply. She knew what was ahead. Anais would argue, cry and would have to be dragged kicking and screaming back home. “Come on Anais,” she said, “We really have to go. It looks as if there is going to be a storm.”

“Then you go. I want to stay.”

Adelaide grabbed Anais by the arm and began to pull her up on her feet. The little girl wiggled out of her sister’s grasp and sprinted across the field leaving Adelaide standing with her hands folded across her chest, fuming. Anais ran toward the increasingly angry looking horizon, she glanced back momentarily at her big sister giggling. “If you want me to go home you have to catch me,” she taunted.

Adelaide sighed and began a half-hearted jog in the direction of her sister. Anais giggled with delight tearing recklessly through the field. There was a distant rumble of thunder followed by a steady cool breeze. Adelaide looked up to see a sky completely blackened by ominous looking clouds. “Anais, I don’t want to play anymore. We have to go!” she shouted.

Suddenly Anais disappeared down into the tall grass. Adelaide began to panic. A cold, sick feeling welled up in her stomach, travelling up to her esophagus. She began to sprint. “Anais!”

There was no answer. The little girl’s arms and legs moved faster through the tall grass. “Anais!”

Adelaide stopped suddenly at the edge of a shallow well and her worst fears were realized. Sitting at the bottom of the hole with her arms wrapped around her legs, sobbing loudly was Anais. She looked up at her sister, her face dirtied with blood from a scrape on her cheek, sweat, tears and dirt from the bottom of the well.

“Are you hurt?” Adelaide asked crawling on her belly closer to the edge of the hole.

“No but I scraped my knees.”

Adelaide extended her arm. “Come, grab my hand I’ll pull you up.”

Anais reached up but there was no use. The distance was too great. Adelaide crawled closer, moving her body further down toward the edge of the hole. The rain fell hard and fast. The earth around Adelaide began to soften under the incessant beating of raindrops. Anais looked down. She could see water rising around her ankles from the bottom of the hole as the water table became saturated. Then, in a violent rush of soil, stone and water, the earth under Adelaide gave way and she tumbled down into the well. She staggered to her feet blindly clinging onto the rocky sides of the hole.

Water from the surface rushed in with the force and urgency of a small waterfall, matching the speed of the water gushing up from the ground. Anais began to bawl out of total terror. "Don't cry," the older girl said rubbing her sister's back. I'll climb out and get help."

After the first attempt Adelaide's heart sank. The soft limestone walls of the well broke off even under her slight weight. "Adelaide." Anais whimpered, "I'm scared."

"It’s okay. Come, let me lift you up."

Adelaide picked up her sister. Anais rested her head on Adelaide's shoulder sobbing as the water continued to rise. The rain came down in sheets, flowing hard through the field flattening the tall grass. It swirled in wild torrents, pouring down from the incline into the valley, down every sinkhole and forgotten well. The water rose around Adelaide’s waist. She knew that it would soon rise high enough to drown them both if she didn’t do something drastic.

"Climb up on my shoulder. That’s it. Get up there and hold on to the wall. Don’t look down Anais, just keep looking up and keep calling for help.”

Anais did as she was told screaming at the top of her lungs, stopping only to force oxygen back into her body. Adelaide held her head up, the surface of the rising water touching her chin. As the water, stink with the smell of earth and decaying plants started to lap against Adelaide’s nostrils she closed her eyes tightly and pleaded, not with God, not with the Satan but to anything that would hear. In her head over and over again she repeated the mantra “Keep me strong. Help me save my sister. I’d do anything.”

As her arms began to shake with pain and her neck muscles went into spasms as it strained to keep her head above water, the mantra was reduced to one word, “Anything. Anything, Anything.” The water rose above Adelaide’s head and traveled up her hands until it was midway up Anais thigh.

“Adelaide! Are you okay?”

There was no answer save for the clear sound of her sister’s voice in her head. “Don’t look down. Keep calling for help.”

She could still feel the reassuring pressure of her sister’s grip on her calf so she kept on for another hour until the rain stopped. Then, the next morning, with the rising of the sun, Anais’ voice was hoarse and fatigue weighed heavily on her eyes. Just as she was about to fall backward into the murky water she felt a strong grip on the collar of her shirt and her body became light raising up out of the hole. She closed her eyes tight believing that this was the feeling her great-grandmother said a person had when they died. When she opened them she was in the arms of her uncle Jim and surrounded by a small group of male family members lead by her great-grandmother. Jim set the girl down at the old woman’s feet and dashed back to the hole. He plunged his arms in up to the shoulder swirling it around wildly in the milk white water.

“Jim you see her?” Grammy asked.

Jim slowly shook his head. “It’s only her Grammy. If Adelaide is down there, then she …”

He paused and looked into the pained face of little Anais and then back to the face of Grammy whose eyes were already welling up with tears.

“No she’s down there,” Anais said frantically, “Grammy make them go get her. I tell you she was holding me up. She was holding me up all night. I could feel her hands Grammy. Please make them get her.”

Uncle Jim looked down in the swirling chalky water and then gave a knowing glance to the old woman. Grammy closed her eyes, tears forcing themselves out from her lids and streaming down her cheek. Anais was dragged back home, pleading with the adults, appealing to their reason.

When the water dried up Uncle Jim led a somber band of men to the well but they were unable to find the body. At first they thought that the mud had settled over her but after digging deep for three days until they struck water again, they knew Adelaide was gone for good.

But, somewhere else, halfway across the world, the little girl woke up with a voice invading her mind repeating over and over again, “Remember your promise. Remember your promise.”

Ever since then she would be driven by the voice to seek out a particular person and gather their soul into her. When she did she would get tired, fall asleep and then wake up in another place entirely with the same thoughts, the same urge, doing it over and over again. It had been 70 years since she fell down the well with Anais but she hadn't truly aged a day since then. Adelaide knew enough to know that she was no longer human but couldn’t say precisely what she was.

Tonight, as far as she could make out, she had awoken in an alley across from an old Jazz club called The Parker. Plastered across the building’s redbrick façade were two ten foot posters that read: "LADY DRAGONFLY ONE NIGHT ONLY". The sidewalk in front of the club was crowded with patrons lined up to get in.

The Parker was a large two story jazz club that had been a part of the city since 1928. Over the years it played host to veritable blues and jazz gods. It watched many of them rise from poverty and obscurity to the thrones of fame and fortune. It also stood witness as geniuses decayed into strung out, boozed out shells of their former selves.

Luminaries like Milt Hinton, Adolophus “Doc” Cheatham, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, John “Dizzy” Gillespie, Eric Dolphy, Booker Little and countless others all played there over the years. On a good day you could see Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters perform, share a drink with them at the bar, or if they were kind enough, at their private booth.

Adelaide crossed the street, her head bobbing from side to side as her bare feet took her swiftly to the entrance of the club. No one watched as she quickly ducked under the arm of a bouncer, who was arguing with a prospective customer, and vanished into the mouth of The Parker.

The little girl found a place in the back, in a dark corner of the club floor as the remaining cords of Lady Dragonfly’s last number played. The signer let her long elegant limbs fall to her side. The Parker was packed and the lights of the stage along with the bodies in the building strained the capacity of the structure’s ageing air-condition system. But audiences never came to The Parker to be cold. They wanted to leave slightly moistened by the warming body of their significant other,the body of a willing stranger, the candles on the table or the sensual lyrics of the crooner on stage.

Dragonfly stood center stage thanking her audience who were on their feet, foaming at the mouth, their tongues and teeth fighting with each other to get their praises to her out of their mouths as quickly as possible. She stood before them like a glittering mahogany statue of Isis receiving the sacrifices due her within the temple that was The Parker. Inside her heart, however, she wished their adulations could save her; she was desperate for them to make a difference to her life but knew they could not.

Years on the road and a hard, fast life now had made her body a contradiction, it was still glorious, but a contradiction nonetheless. She had big almond shaped hazel eyes, smooth brown skin, full lips and a cute broad nose but these were offset by hollowed out cheeks, a figure, although still shapely, that was starting to lose its voluptuousness to sag and bone. But she could care less if her body would be eaten away by veins and wrinkles; it was the state of her soul that most concerned her. As her blew kisses to the crowd, each kiss carried with it a desperate plea for help from a spirit that was on the verge of death and weighted down with an overwhelming pain.

She took her last bows and retreated to a stool directly in front of her band. A master of ceremonies emerged from stage right and riding the wave of the audience’s enthusiasm said, “Isn’t she amazing? I said isn’t she amazing, my Parker people? I hope y’all had enough ’cause we’re going to close things down now.”

As he had hoped, the crowd was outraged at the suggestion, looking past him, pleading with Dragonfly to stay with them just a moment longer. Their discordant pleas soon coalesced around a singular chant, “One more song! One more song!”

The emcee turned to Dragonfly who smiled slightly and nodded her head with the regal effect of a merciful queen. He turned and like a royal emissary announced to the throng of the jazz singer's subjects, “The wonderful Lady Dragonfly has agreed to give you one more song.”

The audience cheered with the jubilation of a horde of starving peasants being thrown bread from the kitchen door of a wealthy lord. Dragonfly approached the microphone. The crowd clapped enthusiastically. She stood there like a flower about to close its petals with the coming of evening waiting for the applause to die down. Suddenly her face was illuminated by the spotlight and the audience fell silent. Dragonfly stood there with her lips pursed tightly together and eyes closed. Then, the piano began slowly and softly.

“When I was a younger woman and I ran around the clubs in Paris, I learnt this next song from an old man who wrote it for a young woman who he loved. It’s sad a song but a beautiful one and I’m happy to share it with you. It’s called ‘Une confession à toi au vieillissement’.”

She brought her lips close to the microphone placed her long brown fingers around its head, cradling it with the care and tenderness of a mother cupping the crown of a newborn child and she began:

Je t'ai attendu si longtemps, ma chérie,

Agile comme un jeune arbre, près d'un ruisseau.

J'ai perdu des années, les remplissant d'inquiétude,

Obstinément obsédé à propos de rien.

Mon visage tout ridé, doux n'est plus,

Mes yeux sont obscurcis et mon sourire s'en est allé.

Les années sont comme de profonds canaux sur mon âme,

Déplaçant des navires de chagrin à une mer de crainte.

Tous seront ton petit agneau d'amour,

Et tous un jour grandiront jusqu' à être moutons.

Et tous murmureront, comme tous feront,

Une confession à toi au vieillissement.

Toi ma chère est un être d'éternité,

Comme l'éblouissant premier mot du premier mot,

Mes pieds défaillants ne me portent rapidement,

Je t'ai perdue dans les profondes cavernes sombres des rêves.

Alors tiens ma main longtemps bien-aimée, ma chérie,

Elles sont toujours avides et pétulantes.

D'âge en âge, il y en aura des plus jeunes,

Qui t'enchâsseront toujours dans leurs cœurs.

Tous seront ton petit agneau d'amour,

Et tous un jour grandiront jusqu' à être moutons.

Et tous murmureront, comme tous feront,

Une confession à toi au vieillissement.

Twenty years ago this song had made her famous and wealthy. At the time she was managed by the owner of an independent record label in Paris, André Augé. André had once been a moderately successful poet in France but in his middle age turned to producing and publishing jazz acts under his Profonde Bleu Crépuscule label. By the time Dragonfly met him, he was old, fat and bald. But he was still brilliant and an absolute joy to be around. He became the father she never had and gave her the love of family totally absent in her life.

It was something she missed deeply ever since the day he died. No matter who they were, Dragonfly saw every manager, every record executive, every lawyer and hanger-on after André all the same way, as seaweeds. Massive ugly clumps of dead sargassum washing up on the shore of her life, dirtying a pristine beach, hiding all manner of parasites and vermin in the tangled network of their shifting loyalties.

They would come in with one tide, and be out with the next. Some seasons brought more of them than others but she had become an expert at predicting their true intentions. It was a survival tactic that removed all emotion from her interaction with other human beings but left her starving for love and true friendship. André had always been there to protect her but now that he was gone, it was her responsibility.

After writing and composing the music for Une confession à toi au vieillissement, André presented the song to his partners as the first single on Dragonfly’s debut album. They were incensed. They complained that the song was too good for an unknown. It should go to Mirabella who was already a star and a top earning act for the company. André listened to their protests for an hour before raising his hand to silence them. He slowly opened the draw in his desk retrieved a cigar, rolled it appreciatively between his thumb and forefinger, sniffed it and placed it in his mouth. He leaned back in his chair and said, “You know I’ve must have heard a thousand people sing ‘Old Man River’. About a thousand; and I’ll be damned if only one person has ever sung it to my satisfaction. You all like the theater. You know who I’m talking about?”

“Paul Robeson?” someone asked cautiously.

“Paul Robeson. He messed it up for every poor bass and baritone who came after. None of them had the heart, the strength of his performance. If they sing that song in Heaven, I promise you he’s the only one that God allows to sing it.”

André started rocking back and forth in his chair, and in one fluid, deft move simultaneously struck a match cupped his hand over his cigar and lit his tobacco, turning it around in his mouth with his tongue. He threw the match into an ashtray on his desk and blew out a fat white cloud of smoke. He scowled at his partners who could see his teeth bite down hard on the cigar. “That’s why I told Mirabella that she’d never sing that song. Never! Not as long as I own this company. Ever! It wasn’t written for her, she could never sing it like Dragonfly, not in a million years. Not if she struck a deal with the Devil himself for her immortal soul, she will never be as good signing it as Dragonfly is. It isn’t hers!”

But even though that was 20 years ago and André was long dead his words proved prophetic. There had been many covers of the song, even one by Mirabella a year after his death but no one could sing it like Dragonfly. The audience inside The Parker was enthralled by the soft mournful song. It was as if the fibers of a web, weaved by some ethereal black widow, had entangled their hearts. She made their souls whisper strange, surreal pastel chalk words. Like limp marionettes they hung heavily on the lyrics, each manipulated by the tune tenderly struck on piano keys. Each cracked crescendo, each amorously truculent syllable she sang lifted them high, made them high, as if their blood were replaced by some wonderful drug generously pumped into their veins.

Her eyes, which she kept closed throughout the entire song, opened to an enraptured crowd who took to their feet to show their appreciation. But among the tall limbs of the adults packed in the room Dragonfly caught sight of what she thought was the figure of a little chubby girl in the far back of the room.

Lady Dragonfly sat in the comfortable solitude of The Parker’s private upstairs dressing room removing her makeup in front of an ancient mirror perched atop an antique mahogany vanity. The mirror had gazed back at many a famous face but now it was blighted with a multitude of black spots and in desperate need of re-silvering. The moisture left behind from the rain earlier that day seeped through the bare gray cement walls that surrounded her. The brightly polished pine beams and rafters above her head glistened from the light from the bulbs that surrounded the mirror.

Dragonfly placed the top back on the tub of cream. She looked into the mirror and reflected on the shadow that stared back at her. Without the makeup and the bright, plumping effect of the spotlight she looked sickly and frail. It was if the creature with the deep disappointing gaze she saw in the mirror was a stranger looking back at her from the window of some stone hovel. The woman’s cheeks were thin with hunger and her pleading feral eyes desperate and threatening.

For a moment, Dragonfly looked at herself with disbelief, finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that this shade, this ghost was her. A familiar burning and scratching sensation in her throat sent her searching in her bag for a handkerchief. She placed it to her mouth and coughed violently. She looked down at the several crimson spots on the white cloth cupped in her hand. Then, Dragonfly’s ears picked up the sound of heavy footsteps making a slow deliberate march up the stairs. A couple of hard courtesy knocks and the door to the dressing room opened gradually.

Cat, Dragonfly’s manager poked his head in. “You ready?” he asked sheepishly.

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” she said sharply.

“I want to get you to bed. The cold’s no good for you.”

“No, what’s no good for me is having people stress me out. I tell you I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

Dragonfly coughed violently again. Cat walked over to her quickly. “That cough is getting worse,” he said placing his hand on her shoulder.

Dragonfly contemptuously shrugged it away. “Get out!” she snapped.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“I said get the hell out!” she said standing up and pointing a boney finger to the door.

The aggression in her bloodshot eyes burned a hole in Cat’s heart. Their eyes were locked, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Cat turned and began to walk out of the room. “Cat!” Dragonfly called as he placed his hand on the door knob.

“Yeah?”

She stepped forward, hesitated and then said, “Send up some lemon juice.”

As Cat left the room Dragonfly sat back down at the vanity spinning around only when she heard the door slam. Her body was ridged with a painful yearning for his company, her rummy eyes pleading with the apparition of his presence to return, her mouth partially open to call him back. Her eyes, heavy with fatigue and regret lowered themselves to the carpet. She turned back to the vanity and began to frantically search through her purse. The dry hacking cough returned, running through her body like a strong, foul wind rattling the frame of a weak wooden house.

Dragonfly retrieved a small black case and placed it before her. She looked at it all at once with contempt, excitement and pain. She opened the case and retrieved a syringe, a small pocket knife, a lighter, a spoon and a piece of foil. As she put her spoon on the table she could feel a presence behind her, a pair of eyes burning the back of her neck with their intense gaze .She looked up from the table into the mirror, her heart stopping at the shock of seeing an unfamiliar body in the room. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

Behind her Adelaide stood holding a small glass. She walked over and placed it at the edge of the vanity. “I brought your juice,” she said never loosing eye contact with the singer.

Dragonfly eyed the little girl suspiciously but then turned her attention back to the contents of her pouch scattered before her. She unwrapped the tightly balled piece of foil carefully and using the tip of the knife, placed two hits of heroine in the spoon. She paused and then placed another in, another, then another and then one more. She added some lemon juice and with the syringe retrieved some lemon juice from the glass which she carefully squirted into the spoon She heated the spoon with a lighter stirring it gingerly with the tip of the knife. When it dissolved she drew the mixture into the syringe through a piece of cotton.. After checking it for air bubbles she placed the tip of the syringe against a long green vein in her temple and injected herself.

As she slumped back into her chair staring at her skeletal face in the mirror Adelaide walked up quietly. The two locked eyes in the mirror as Dragonfly began to drift. Adelaide’s eyes then gradually rolled to the back of her head and her jaw slowly extended itself so that it almost looked as if her chin would touch the top of the vanity. Then in a deep male voice with a heavy French accent Adelaide said, “I heard you sing my song today and in French too! I was so impressed ma chérie. ”

If Dragonfly was afraid, shocked or surprise it was impossible for her to express it. Her body was stiff from the effects of the drugs, her breathing shallow and labored, her skin cold and clammy, her pupils reducing themselves to pinpoints. Adelaide’s hair began to lift off her shoulder into the air standing on end, waving quietly on some invisible current of air flowing in the room. “What have you done to yourself Cherie? What made you become so sad? Was it because I left you? Did you have no one to love you after I had gone Dragonfly? Is that it mon petit?”

Dragonfly’s breathing was almost nonexistent now and her eyelids began to drop like the curtain of a stage moving in a thick haze of ether. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you,” the voice from Adelaide’s mouth said, “But I told you I was old, so very old and tired. I wish we knew each other sooner but c'est la vie and life has not treated you well.”

Dragonfly’s eyes were closed completely now and her breathing had stopped entirely. As Adelaide took a step closer to her a multitude of voices began speaking at the same time bubbling up from her throat. She leaned down and placed and ear on the singer’s breast. The voices stopped and the Frenchman spoke again. “It still beats. Slowly and quietly but your sweet heart is still going. I wanted to tell you, you would be happy with me ma chérie. I learnt our song… I learnt it in English but I never got to sing it to you. Should I sing it now? Of course I should.”

Adelaide took Dragonfly’s hand and held it tenderly in hers and slowly in a heavy baritone the voice sang:

I’ve waited for you so long, my darling,

Lithe as a young sapling, beside a stream.

I’ve wasted years, filling them with worry,

Obstinately obsessing over nothing.

My face worn with wrinkles, is soft no more,

My eyes are dim and my smile departed.

The years are like deep canals on my soul,

Moving ships of grief to a sea of fear.

All will be your little lambs love one,

And all one day will grow to be sheep.

And all shall whisper, as all will do,

A confession to you for aging.

You my dear are a forever being,

Like the dazzling first word of the first word,

My failing feet do not carry me fast,

I’ve lost you down the dim deep dens of dreams.

So hold my hands long loved one, my darling,

They are still eager and petulant things.

From age to age there will be younger ones,

Who shall always enshrine you in their hearts.

All will be your little lambs love one,

And all one day will grow to be sheep.

And all shall whisper, as all will do,

A confession to you for aging.

Dragonfly’s breathing had stopped and her heart was silent. The voices rose once more out from Adelaide’s throat all speaking at once. She stood on tiptoes placing her mouth over Dragonfly’s face and began sucking with such a force that it made the dead singer’s limbs flop around like the arms and legs of a marionette in an unskilled puppeteers hand. When she was done Adelaide fell to her knees. Her jaw and eyes returned to their natural position. She looked up at the corpse in the chair and began to sob. She crawled over to Dragonfly’s body, placed her head on her lap and fell asleep.