Read Online Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block - Free Book Online

wouldn’t eat for days. She seemed to be shrinking.
    “'I never really believed he would die. I don’t want to live without him,’ she said.
    “'You have to live, for Dirby and me,’ I said, holding up her son for her to see. Oh, your father looked like you, young Dirk. He looked like his own father too.
    “It made Fifi weep to see Derwood’s eyes in that young face but she reached out for him, and when she did the doves in the rafters sang again, and the peonies in the arboretum unfolded layers and layers like Renaissance ruffs.
    “'You see,’ I said, ‘you must hold on.’
    “Her art school teacher sent her work to an animation department in Hollywood. They wanted to hire her.
    “'I don’t want to leave you, Mama,’ she said. ‘I stayed alive so I could be with you and Dirby.’
    “I told her she had to go. ‘There are groves of orange trees—you can pick your breakfast every morning—fountains in the hillsides, starlets in silk stockings driving colorful jalopies with leopards in the passenger seats, sunshine all the time. The sun will be good for Dirby. He’s as pale as his old grandmother.’
    “'You should come with us,’ Fifi said, but I couldn’t. I was afraid to travel and besides, what if my stranger returned and I was gone?
    “So they prepared to leave, Fifi and Dirby with Martin and Merlin in a big old automobile with the glitter-and-paint dance backdrops of swans and heavens and circuses and fairylands fastened to the top.
    “I gave Fifi the stranger’s lamp as a good-bye gift. Istill didn’t believe I had a story to tell. A self-imposed shroud of silence had covered me long before the real shroud of death made it impossible for me to speak. But my daughter would have a story, I thought; Fifi would fill the lamp.
    “She didn’t want to take it from me but I made her promise. Just before she was to leave, the story that I still did not believe was mine came to an end.
    “And now it’s time for you to dance with me,” Gazelle said softly.
    Dirk stood up slowly, aware of how light he felt, and held out his arms. She was like Fifi’s feather boa—not only that weightless but she brushed his skin with ticklish flicks of softness. She smelled like his grandma too—cookies baking, roses, almonds. Gently, gently Dirk and his Great-Grandmother Gazelle danced around the room while the peach tree tapped at the window and the moon made a shadow forest on the floor. Dirk saw the story of her life repeated now with the sway of the white dress, the pleatings and swishings of satin.
    “Thank you, Dirk,” Gazelle said, when the dance was over. “Bless you. You listened. You listened.”
    Death came for me, Dirk thought. She was fading away as she had come and he thought he would dissolve with her, molecules shifting without substance into veil of spirit.

Be-Bop Bo-Peep
    A nd that was when the guitar in the corner began to play by itself.
    Dirk opened his eyes. The guitar seemed to be floating on its side, strings trembling with music. Strands of smoke were flying out of the golden lamp and whirling around the guitar.
    “Daddy,” Dirk said out loud, remembering something he had lost a long time ago.
    And Dirk’s daddy Dirby McDonald’s face appeared out of the smoke just above the guitar, as handsome as James Dean, not much older than Dirk, eyes soft with love like a lullaby behind his black-framed glasses. Lullaby eyes.
    “Dirk,” his father said, “hang on now.”
    Dirk nodded. He could taste blood in his mouth like he’d been sucking on a dirty metal harmonica.
    “You came back,” Dirk said.
    “You want a story. A wake-up story. A come-back story.”
    “Yes. Please,” Dirk said. “Please tell me who you are. I’ve always wanted to know. I feel like I don’t exist. I feel like I’m spinning through space losing atoms, becoming invisible, disintegrating. I …”
    “Shhh, now,” Dirk’s father said. His voice was gentle. It was like his guitar. Like his eyes. Dirk