Daddy said he could talk to the Devil. He liked to grill and drink his nights away (my dad, not the Devil). Mama used to say that he was the whitest hispanic she’d ever known, but I’ve never met a white man who could talk to the Devil. Not yet. Daddy offered to show me, only once, while we laid cramped and side-by-side on the sofa. I held a small teddy-bear dressed like a pirate to my chest, the one he gave Mama on Valentine’s day, and when he prodded me with his cigarette – endearing in the same way that it was endearing when he hit me in passing and insisted it was because he loved me, and endearing in the way that I believed him, and still do – I rolled off of the couch and landed on top of it, and it spoke.
Argh, I’m going to get yer booty, it said, and we both laughed, but at the time I didn’t understand. Just like I hadn’t understood when Daddy asked Mama for a BJ in public and insisted it was ice-cream when I asked him about it later. I believed this one for several years, even after a kid on the school bus offered to tell me what it really meant, if I really wanted to know. This offer I had declined, but when Daddy stepped over me and locked himself in the hall closet and told me to wait, I couldn’t resist.
There was only rustling in the beginning, but then there was a loud mumbling like thunder. Like if you could imagine the start of a stampede – the way it grows because one creature sees another one running and joins in, because of groupthink or primal fear or FOMO. It was a frenzied rush, a headlong flight. That’s what it sounded like. Funny thing is, the Devil sounded a lot like Daddy but he said that was because the Devil was within him. That he was within me, too, and if I wanted to talk to him, he would show me.
Just come in, I remember him saying. He won’t hurt you, mija, I promise.
He tried to pull me into the closet by my arms, but I found strength and a dip in the carpet I could shove my sandals into so he couldn’t. He yelled at me until he got tired of it and slammed the door behind himself. When he did, it knocked me on the side of the head, and when he saw I was crying, he told me my head was too big and sent me to my room.
But I wasn’t crying because he hit my head or made fun of me. For one, it didn’t hurt at all, and for two, I already knew my head was big – so big, in fact, thatMama had to get a C-section because I would’ve killed her if she tried to rid herself of me any other way. This wasn’t news to me. It was no insult, either. I was crying because I saw the Devil standing over my Daddy’s shoulder, and they looked just the same.
My parents raised me to always be polite, even to strangers, and I was sure that included the Devil. Instead of sleeping, I waited until they began to snore, crept out of bed, and slipped a note under the closet door apologizing for my rudeness. Part of me did this to clear my conscience, but mostly, I just wanted to see if the Devil was still in there.
A few moments passed, and I took a breath of relief. Just as I made up my mind to return to bed, however, I heard a crinkle, and the piece of paper was shoved underneath the door. Aside from trembling, I couldn’t move an inch. But I somehow managed to unravel the paper without tearing it. When I opened it, the words I’d written had been replaced by the thin, scrawly lettering of the Devil.
I’ll forgive you on one condition, would you like to know what it is?
The pen I’d used to write my apology letter to the Devil was still on my nightstand back in my bedroom, with my nightlight and stuffed animals, safe and sound, where I would have been if Daddy hadn’t tried to show off. I didn’t want to be impolite again. Being rude once and by mistake was one thing, but to do it consciously and for a second time would mean something worse than what I figured the Devil had in store.
I hesitated, raised my hand to the hollow, wooden door, and then I knocked three times. “Um, excuse me, Mr. Devil? I don’t have a pen on me, but yes, I—”
I felt a pain in my knee. I looked down and jumped backwards, slamming myself into the wall and sending the photos hanging into a shaking frenzy. A photo of my parents on their wedding day fell to the ground and shattered. I cringed at the sound of breaking glass, but quickly looked down. One of the Devil’s claws had left a thin trail of blood on my knee, and it was running slowly down my leg. I wiped it away just as Daddy came around the corner rubbing his eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing, Isolabella?” It couldn’t have been past midnight, but he worked early almost every morning and sounded groggy and exhausted.
In all my years of finding silly excuses and crafting lies to get by, I’d never been stumped. I didn’t want Daddy to know I’d gone and tried to talk to the Devil without him, but how was I supposed to lie myself out of this? I figured I’d have to be honest.
“I was talking to the Devil,” I said.
“The Devil?”
“Yes, sir.”
Daddy and I played hot potato with our eyes before he threw his hands up and asked me if I was fucking stupid. He told me to get my ass to bed. I scrambled away quickly, the paper in my hand. I pulled my quilt over my head and fell asleep.
When I woke up, the letter was gone, but standing in the far corner was the Devil. He, maybe she, since she had my face, was massive, watching me in a hunched position so her horns didn’t go through the ceiling. Her eyes looked like mine — but unnaturally out of place on the mess of hair and patchy, red skin that was her face.
She waved at me and smiled grossly. “Hello, Isolabella,” she said in a distorted version of my voice.
She followed me to school that first day, and she slept standing in the corner that night, her eyes never closing. I don’t think she was watching me, though, and never once did I feel scared. Well, at least not until a week or two into the whole ordeal when she asked to share the bed with me.
“Why?” I asked. I felt a mingled mess of horror and disgust. And pity. A lot of it.
“I’m cold.”
The pity increased. I shifted beneath the covers and then scooted all the way to one side, making room for the Devil. She crawled in next to me. She was ice-cold and slimy. Her skin was both dry and most, like it had been condensation.
“This is much better,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”
I didn’t move. I turned over so I was facing away from her and fell asleep.
We have gotten closer with time. The other kids all but stopped talking to me, not that they did much before the Devil came along, so she sits with me at lunch. She sends kids falling off of swing sets when they won’t let me have a turn. She sets the pile of tests on fire when I know I’ve done poorly. I think we make a good team.
And it is like this that the Devil and I have gotten acquainted. She likes sunsets; she loves summer. I bring her leftovers after dinner and feed her like a dog. She tells me secrets. Things I shouldn’t know like the way Daddy will die, in just a few months, and that Mama hasn’t been so loyal as she likes to seem, and that these two things are related but I can never confess it to anyone. The Devil told me the bad things in the world aren’t the things she thought up. They’re things from Heaven that went all wrong, think mutations. And I’m one of them. So are you.
She told me she may have to go away soon, something about a big bloody moon and gigantic, many-legged creatures that will eat all of us up. She said to listen for the sound of trumpets.