Ollie and her ilk had wrought generations of pain. It would never stop. Vern was a blip.
With Queen at her side, maybe she could’ve changed the world. The woman could’ve taught her the bounds of her power. “Maybe if I had Queen,” said Vern, though even as she said it, she recognized it for the romanticization it was, no different than how she’d treated Lucy’s memory. It was easy to make someone into a hero when they were gone, to ascribe to them infinite potential. Godlike though Queen’s power seemed, she was human and therefore small and imperfect.
“Based on what you told me, Queen was tethered to a leash made of trauma and pain. Ollie had her on reins, a bit in her mouth,” said Gogo. “I have no doubt you will surpass what she was capable of. You are limitless. You healed me. No matter what, I’ll be right here with you, and so will Bridget, and Feral, and Howling, and anyone you choose. Everyone here who came to bear witness to this. You can do anything, anything but read the future. You can’t know how it will turn out. Let your will be,” said Gogo. As she said it, Vern felt the rush. Memories sweeping her, new hauntings swelling her brain.
It felt like drowning. She was back at the lake being pushed beneath the surface by Sherman, lungs overwhelmed by the inflow of liquid. It wasn’t water, this time, that entered her, but the past. She felt it in her belly, in her chest, her knees, in her fingertips, in her knuckles. For the world, it was a small loss. For her, it was a flood. Vern could feel it. Everybody in Cainland was dead.
26
RUTHANNE JOSEPHINE NICOLETTE RILEY—mother of Vern Freddy-Mae Riley and Carmichael Charles Riley—was born to punks.
Her father, Jojo Charles “Frothmouth” Riley, fronted a funk-punk-metal band and was a pioneer in the genre he called hard-core devilpop. Ruthanne’s mother, Clarissa Ruth Odette Riley née Buckley, played drums. They were the Afrosapienz and recorded four albums to little commercial but significant underground success. Summers were a barrage of block parties. Burgeoning hip-hop groups sampled their music. Clubs underpaid them to play to sold-out audiences.
They loved Jimi Hendrix more than breathing. They lived in motels and on friends’ couches and in vans that stank of vomit and weed. They were Black Panthers. They were dissidents. They were angry. They were afraid.
Nothing was right in Jojo and Clarissa’s lives but the music, and they couldn’t always get that right. When they did, there was no guarantee folks would understand. They were mad with the grief of living, of being Black, of being artists, of being so goddamn poor, of being failures.
Jojo and Clarissa never planned to have a child, but in 1972 Ruthanne was born, named for one each of Jojo’s and Clarissa’s grandmothers, Ruth and Anne. They did not make very good parents at all, though, bless them, they did try. Multiple times, though unsupported, Clarissa tried to give up drinking while pregnant, sometimes lasting for weeks at a time before bingeing on gin or cognac. Ruthanne was born small and mostly stayed small. She arrived frighteningly late to every milestone. She drank only formula until twenty months and did not walk until two. She listened, but did not talk.
Clarissa smacked Ruthanne when she cried because that was what you surely did—she’d gotten smacked and turned out all right. She and Jojo both left their daughter at home in front the TV while they played gigs. They needed the money to pay rent on their tiny studio apartment.
Ruthanne ate generic-brand chocolate cereal and not much else, for there was rarely much else to be had. By the age of four, she was wandering the block, hanging around older kids who didn’t know what to do with her silent self. Missy Jones, nine, called her dumb and slow. Annie Peterson called her dirty and stinky. Only a girl named Birdy Lamonde was sometimes nice, handing Ruthanne bags of potato chips or bottles of orange soda. Missy and Annie would roll their eyes, call Birdy a high yellow for her light skin, and ride away on their bikes, knee socks sagging down over scabbed-up legs.
Truth was, Birdy was a bit of a high yellow, for she couldn’t stop going on about how it wasn’t her fault she was so pretty, and it wasn’t her fault she had good hair, and it wasn’t her fault her dad was an accountant and had money to send her to a fancy school. It was always “woe is me” with Birdy, but Ruthanne was obsessed and followed the girl everywhere. She always had spare dimes to buy Ruthanne chocolate milk and mangoes from the bodega or bagels from the Jewish bakery. It was Birdy who first got Ruthanne talking, as Ruthanne was so enamored of Birdy’s white accent. She sounded so proper and silly, and Ruthanne just had to copy it. She had a role model, someone who was good to fixate upon.