ALUHANA! Good glory, there she goes again. Morning, midnight, doesn't matter with Diana. Be quiet for a minute and listen. She always does it twice or three times. There it is. "ALUHANA!" You hear it? She's a sweet girl, good with her rent and all, but that hollering -- it's got to stop, really it does. Gives me a nervous colon. Listen, come on in, why don't you? I sure picked the muddiest possible day for planting bulbs. Oh, don't worry too much about wiping your feet. That's what I put the runners down for. You'll have to tell me how you're settling in across the street. I'll make us some of that good tea Diana gave me. Tastes just like flowers. I sure enjoy it, and full of vitamins, she says. She always puts honey in hers. She loves honey on anything and it shows in that broad caboose she's got. Me, I have to use artificial sweetener all the time now for my high blood sugar. Diana tries to show me books about natural diets and proteins and such, but I can't stay interested long enough. If I'm going to sit down and read something, it sure won't be about gluten-free noodles. She burns some sort of incense every morning when she takes her bath. Smell It? Tell me -- you don't think its marijuana, do you? I wouldn't even know. That smell just saturates everything -- the curtains, the towels. Some of the tenants before her, for Pete's sake, they each had their own different stink. Sweaty panty hose. Chintzy perfume. Cough syrup was another, and french-fry grease and tom-cat spray. Diana's incense, I guess it's not as bad as most, but you tell me if you smell any marijuana. She's a peculiar one, alright. The funny thing is, though, that for all her howling and her odd smells…I just can't not like her. She reminds me of an apple. How could you get mad at an apple? ALUHANA! Still at it, I guess. She's just upstairs in her room. Have I ever introduced you to Diana? Really it's just plain Diane, but she prefers Diana because she says it's one of the thousand names of the Goddess. ALUHANA! For Pete's sake. I might as well tell you, what she's doing is summoning her angel. That's the angel's name, ALUHANA. All capital letters, that's how you have to write an angel's name, Diana tells me. Well, I said she had a loose marble, didn't I? Maybe I didn't. ALUHANA is Diana's special guardian angel -- all hers, I guess -- and when she shouts the angel's name it means she wants help with the book she's trying to write. She has a rickety old computer hooked up in there, all decorated with cotton balls and gold glitter and little Christmas ornament angels glued around the screen part. Take a guess at what her book is about. She's been pulling her hair out over the title. It's down to "Reach for an Angel" or "The Ultimate Book of Angels." I guess old ALUHANA gets the final say. Diana's been here for three months now. We're getting used to each other. She was real formal at first, thought she had to call me Mrs. Davies but I said no, for Pete's sake, just call me Carol. That goes for you, too. All that Mrs. So-and-So business, nowadays I think it's just for old people. I'm 61 -- nobody better say that's old. Diana's around forty, maybe a little younger but she's been through the wringer a few times. She's got one of those unfortunate builds, just barely plump in the face and arms, but with a giant bottom that throws her into the fat gals' department at J.C. Penneys. She has long hair that she likes to twist into a rope, mostly gray but with some blond still left. To look at the hair by itself you'd say it was actually quite pretty, but on her head the gray sure ages her. She's got that tired but scrubbed-up look you often see on people who go to recovery groups. She changes her socks five times a day. Once she decided she could trust me, she told me she'd been in a long string of abusive relationships -- boyfriends who beat her all up, or drank too much, or made her feel ugly and terrible about herself. There was also some sexual thing from her childhood that I was glad she didn't want to discuss at length. When she's talking about her past, a different Diana comes out who's perfectly normal, and I just somehow know everything she's telling me is the truth. When she's like that, I'd believe her if she said her parents got gnawed to death by wolves. So how do you like the tea? There're rose petals in it, violets, orange blossoms and whatnot. Here, take a look at the box. Like someone mowed down a flower garden. I should have offered you some sweetener, golly, I always just pour a packet in the bottom of my cup and don't think about it. I have honey if you'd prefer. There're two whole kitchen cabinets here chock full of Diana's health food. Twenty-five years ago, if you'd asked me what health food was I would have said liver with bacon. Now there're cookbooks open on the counter every day with pictures of tofu this and tofu that, or cereal that looks like birdseed, or some beans and greens concoction perking away in the slow-cooker. She has dietary supplements, big horse pills the color of dead grass or rusty hinges that she takes with every meal to balance her system. Expensive! I looked at the bottle. She doesn't have much money to throw around, but what she's got she's swallowing at mealtimes, like powdered five-dollar bills in capsules. Drive's me nuts. Since I started renting out the extra room -- ten years ago almost -- there've been tenants in every kind of sad situation, most of them struggling out of some awful hole or about ready to fall in one. The rent's not high; it's the small bedroom, my son Dennis' old room. I only rent to women, not that I think a male tenant would be improper or anything, but I have to do what's comfortable. There've been a few who didn't work out; the real young college girls who bring their boyfriends upstairs, for starters. I once bumped into a boy in his jockey shorts at one o'clock AM, for Pete's sake. I don't put up with that. I'll have to admit, Diana and I are an easier match. ALUHANA! For the most part. I didn't need to rent out at first, after my divorce. That was in 1970 -- the smartest divorce two people ever got. Gene and I actually became like old friends once we were out of each other's hair. Back then there was alimony, plus my job at the post office. Dennis was five, and we stayed here in Columbus while Gene moved out to Dayton and married again after a while. I won't be retiring for another four years, but that rent makes a nice little difference, you'd be surprised. Dennis has a house just 15 minutes away in Worthington with his wife and two boys. Oh, they're the cutest kids. Dennis comes over to cut my grass or clean the rain gutter and whatnot. He's shy of Diana, and I wish he wouldn't be because it hurts her feelings so. She's real sensitive about how men, any men, react to her. On the one hand she's thrilled with the tiniest bit of male attention, even the cashiers who smile the same way at everybody. But then there's something else that makes her push men away, like they're going to destroy her again. Push, pull. Probably Dennis is right to just stay on the ladder and shut up. Diana works part-time in a fluffy yellow card shop. Two years or so ago, she got the nerve to leave her last boyfriend, but had to go stay in a women's shelter. After that she moved to a cooperative household for survivors of rotten things. She wasn't happy; the house was noisy and had nightly meetings that lasted for hours. She says she's "almost home" now. She wants to save enough to buy a house south or east of here, out in a country town somewhere where she can study angels but still be close enough to help other women who need it. She's gung-ho about that book of hers. Says she's never written anything before, but that sharing her new knowledge is part of recovery. I don't quite see the logic. I hate to say this, but I think she's copying a lot of her book straight out of other books. Come on in the living room, look what she's got on the bookshelf. Words of an Angel. You'll Never Walk Alone. Cherubs. Twenty, thirty books about angels. She'll sit on the back step if it's nice out, copying and copying out of those books. Then I'll hear her typing a mile a minute when I go upstairs to use the john. She doesn't read anything else, except maybe her cookbooks. I tried to loan her Clan of the Cave Bear and it just sat on the foyer table until I finally took it back. ALUHANA! She showed me how you find your guardian angel's name. She has a kit, a wooden box with four velvet drawstring bags inside. At first I said I didn't want to play, but Diana insisted she wanted to find my guardian angel for me. It's just too hard to say no to a person like that, looking up at you like they're offering all they've got in this world. Next thing you know I'm listening to my knees crack from trying to sit down on the living room floor. Inside the velvet bags were tiles with letters or numbers on them, a lot like Scrabble pieces. The first bag was for numbers. Three through ten, she said. You reach in and grab one, and that tells you how many letters in your angel's name. I got a four. I guessed that was pretty good. The next bag had just two tiles, a red and a pink. I pulled the pink one. That meant the angel's name started with a consonant. Diana put those tiles back in their bags. She was getting all excited, smiling and patting me like I was in childbirth. The last two bags had letters inside, one for consonants and one for vowels with extras of most letters in case your angel's name needed them. Are you seeing the silliness of this? She explained to me, softly and carefully, that I was to pick a consonant, then a vowel, consonant, vowel. Four letters, and that would reveal my guardian angel's name. Thinking about it now, it's easy to figure out that by that system, your angel's name could very well turn out to be BANANA or SUNOCO. I was actually embarrassed for her, but I pulled mine out. C-O-T-O. Well, fine then. Diana just beamed. "COTO. COTO!" She whispered it over and over again, saying it differently each time. "COTO is the guardian angel of Carol Davies!" Good glory. I didn't like it. It sounded too much like "Kotex." "Is COTO a boy or a girl?" I asked. "Guardian angels are always the same gender as the person they protect." Diana said this like it was an absolute fact from the dictionary or something. Most likely she'd copied it right there on the back step. "Well, " I said, "what kind of a girl's name is COTO?" "It's an angel name, not a girl's name." I still couldn't believe she was serious. "What if we tried it again?" I asked her. "Odds are it would come out completely different." Diana looked at me like I was the witless half of a half-wit. "Why would you ever need to do it again?" "I didn't say I needed to. I just meant that the letters would come out differently every time, so how do you tell which name's right?" She must have done this sidestep before. "An Angel Naming is something you do only once in your life. There's no reason to repeat it because what you've drawn is correct. COTO put each of those tiles in your hand -- the number, the letters, the order of the letters." Diana chuckled, shook her head at me. "She's your guardian angel. Why would she ever, ever lie to you?" You tell me, what do you about a woman like that? Sure, there're flakes all over who believe the craziest things, like those flying saucer worshipers, or the End-Of-The-World people outside the Greyhound terminal. You'll read in the newspaper how they all committed suicide and whatnot, then you fold up the paper and it's like they don't exist anymore. But now here's a girl who shakes the ceiling yelling to her angel, and she's living right here in my spare bedroom and stewing crabgrass in my slow-cooker. Sharing is her method of preaching. When Gene and I were married, we went to church together exactly once and that was on our wedding day. You sure couldn't accuse me of being overly religious, but I believe there's a God of some sort and that it's best not to make a production over it. I brought up Dennis that way, though of course we celebrated Christmas and Easter. Kids need that in their lives. Just being as nice to people as possible was all I told him God wanted from us, and I took him to church once, for a little carnival, I think it was. He married a Catholic girl and had to open up that can of worms, but you don't see him spouting about the pope all day. Diana's a different matter altogether. She has this group she goes to every Sunday night. I never gave it a thought; recovery groups are not my concern. Then, maybe a few days after that angel naming business, she started asking if I would go along. "It's an angel circle," she said. She had that same excited, begging look. "Now that you know your guardian angel's name, don't you want to learn more about her?" I certainly didn't. "Sunday nights I make peanut butter bars for Dennis to take to the kids," I told her. It's only true about once a month and Diana knew it. "I'll help you make them in the morning," she said. "Then you'll be free to go. Please, Carol. We're having Delvin Ayers lead the circle, coming all the way from Buffalo. He's a Licensed Angelologist." Now what the hell is a Licensed Angelologist? That truly gets my goat. Licensed Astrologers, Certified Professional Psychics -- that's plain crap. And then you have so many poor desperate souls like Diana who look up to them like they were heart surgeons. I want to know who's handing out licenses to Angelologists. I'll give them a piece of my mind on a dirty fork. Don't ask how she got me there. I said no for two days, and the next thing I knew we were walking the four blocks to Marshall Avenue, even though I offered to drive. That Diana, she was practically skipping. It was warm out, not October-y like now, but she had on a heavy white wool cloak that went all the way to her ankles. You'd think we were prancing down the Yellow Brick Road. That group is it for her, her whole social life. Half way there she stopped and turned her face to the tree branches over our heads. "ALUHANA!" she shouted in the middle of the damn sidewalk. I've known some of the neighbors on that street for thirty years. "You need to summon COTO," she said. "Not by hollering at the tree tops, I don't!" I felt sorry right away. Diana's eyes sank just a bit, but then she smiled. "It's alright. She's always with you anyway." Have you been down Marshall Avenue? There's that whole six-block strip where all the houses are the same split-level design with the mock-brick fronts; cream brick on the bottom and pale gray around the bay window. She didn't need to tell me which house it was. It's hard to miss anything when it's got a life-sized gold foil angel nailed to it. Anyway, Diana didn't even bother knocking. We walked right on in, through the front hall and into the living room where two dozen people were talking all at once, half to each other and half to the absolute thin air. Diana took her cloak and my jacket and laid them with some others on a piano bench while I stood wondering what I should and shouldn't stare at. Over on the sofa, an elegant, well-dressed lady sat by herself, grinning at a cat-shaped pillow. Then she leaned over and tickled it. Some kind of choir music was playing on the stereo. I couldn't figure out why the whole room looked like a TV screen with a broken color tube, and then I noticed every single lamp had a pink bulb in it. I held out my hand, turned it over. The light made my skin look sore and chapped. "Welcome!" said a short, chesty woman in a pink kimono who came at us with Styrofoam cups of punch. Probably her kimono was white, but who could tell? Her hair was blond and cut like a little Dutch girl. Diana took a punch cup and kissed the woman on the cheek. "Anna-Lisa, I'd like you to meet Carol Davies." Diana gave me a little nudge. I smiled a straight-line smile. "And with her this evening is COTO." Anna-Lisa handed me the other punch cup and took a step back. "I welcome you to the circle, COTO!" She bowed at the shoulders, then blew a kiss to someplace above my head. "Come in, Carol! You need to meet everyone!" When those Jehovah's Witnesses ring your doorbell, do you ever let them spit out a sentence or two before slamming the door? Yes? Well don't, because that's all it takes to see how very, very much they believe their own talk. Then something comes over you, pity and some kind of sad respect mixed together, and you just have to let them have their pathetic say. These angel people were like that. They truly believed they had guardian angels at their party, sipping punch and eating zucchini bread like ordinary guests. Diana mingled, helloing people and angels alike. I'd never seen her so lit up, really in her element. Anna-Lisa introduced me around. She couldn't just say "Carol, meet Sam." It had to be "This is Sam, and with him is BINOLAZ." I suppose I was expected to introduce my own angel, but darned if I was going to, so Anna-Lisa did it for me. You can tell I'm no shy violet, but what conversation do I have for the air in front of my nose? I got introduced to more angels that night than any sane person should in five lifetimes. SAROF. XUH. UTOKABEPI. Lots of them sounded like names from Diana's letter game, but not all. An old man in a red Valentine's necktie told us his angel's name was BIG MURPHY. "I gave him the name myself," he said. "It helps him get girlies into the sack." There were refreshments laid out on the dining room table -- Stella D'Oro cookies, a big hunk of bleu cheese, a platter of mushy black and green health food dips like Diana keeps on her shelf of the fridge. I was just standing around, thinking how I'm over-due to change the Arm & Hammer box when I look and see Diana poke her head around the archway, waving me back to the group. Anna-Lisa was busy with a stack of flat cushions, laying them in a big circle on the floor. "We're starting," Diana whispered. Frankly I'd hoped we were almost done. "Delvin Ayers is leading us tonight. That's him in the gray slacks." "Is he getting paid?" I whispered back. "Of course! He's a pro." You just picture me, parking my rear on a stranger's floor, an angel goon on either side putting their clammy hands in mine. To my left was Diana, and holding hands with her felt odd, being as I'm her landlady and all. On my other side was the woman who'd been tickling the pillow. She squirmed around to get comfortable, jiggling my arm but not letting go. For whatever it's worth, which is nothing, I can say I've met a Licensed Angelologist. That Delvin Ayers, he sat at one end of the circle like Big Chief Thunder Cloud. He was thin and ashy, piqued you might say, with brown hair combed over a big bald patch on top of his head. He looked like a dentist in Sunday brunch clothes. "Angels among us!" he said, gentle and cheerful. "Angels among us!" shouted everybody except me, since I didn't know enough to. "It's delightful to see so many familiar faces again, and new ones as well. We're all grateful to Anna-Lisa Hilliard for sharing her home with us this evening. Angel's protection to you, Anna-Lisa." "Bless and protect Anna-Lisa!" "I'd like to start the circle tonight by welcoming our angels, whose presence we celebrate and whose help and guidance we seek. As we light the angel candle, may we draw their energy for us to see, touch, and hold in our hearts." He stood up and took a long fireplace match from the mantle, struck it on a swatch of sandpaper and lit a thick pink candle. Several people murmured "aaaah" like they were watching fireworks, then a few began softly chanting their angel's names. I knew as soon as they started that Diana would have to jump on the bandwagon, though I hoped she wouldn't make a spectacle of herself. "ALUHANA… ALUHANA…" in a tiny voice, smallest voice I've ever heard. "She's so beautiful," Diana whispered to nobody. "See how beautiful she is?" Look at you there, that shine in your eyes. I know what you want me to say. Um hmm. You want to hear that I saw an angel too -- that they're genuine and true and walking around beside us. That magic is real and I'm a live, sane witness, changed, a believer. Angels, spaceships -- all real and you're safe and looked after. That's what everybody deep down wants. You too, I guess. Well, tell you what. If that's what you want to hear, you go on home and put on your TV, because that's the only place you'll get angels who save you from bus wrecks and find your lost daughter and play "Beautiful Dreamer" on the piano. In Columbus, angels don't do diddly-squat. Here's exactly what happened, like it or lump it. Delvin Ayers pulled two pie-faced women up to the front of the circle with him, a pair of sisters it turned out, roly-poly with their hair teased high, standing there with their feet splayed out like fat gals do in silk slacks suits that looked brand new but wrinkled. "What is the name of your angel?" he asked one. "BRIGHTNESS." "And yours?" "HEKI." "And what sort of help are you seeking from them this evening?" The one with the dangly teddy-bear earrings turned to him and started sputtering, but he swiveled her by the shoulders to face the group. She cleared her throat and started again. "My sister's daughter, my niece…her name's Blaine…she's the one we'd like help for. Her classroom…it's a class for delayed learners…every year the class sells raffle tickets to raise money for March of Dimes. Zayre's donated a VCR for the prize. But there's an award for the child who sells the most tickets -- a trip to Cedar Point. Blaine loves Cedar Point so much, but Dori just can't afford to take her very often, so we'd love to see her be the winner. It would sure help Blaine's self-esteem, too; it's a problem area for her. That's what we're asking the angels for tonight." Delvin Ayers herded them back to their places in the circle, where everyone's hands were linked. "BRIGHTNESS and HEKI," he said with his eyes closed, "We call on you grant your loving assistance." He recited a big long prayer that people in the circle hummed or bobbed their heads to. I just sat there. At the end he cried "So may it be!" "So may it be!" yelled the whole peanut gallery. He opened his eyes. This fellow was smooth. "How many tickets does Blaine need to sell?" he asked. The one named Dori spoke up and said last years winner sold 160, so she figured about 200 would do it. "They're a dollar each," she added. "And how might we assist the angels in their work?" He scanned the group, counting. "I think if everyone here were to buy, say, ten tickets, Blaine could win that trip to Cedar Point." The candle made his scalp shine. "Do you have any tickets with you tonight?" he asked the sisters. They sure did. "Then who will purchase ten tickets? Actually, who will not help? May I hear from you now?" Nobody said a word. In my mind I was whacking Diana on the head with a bag of rocks. "Then the angels have completed their task. BRIGHTNESS and HEKI, we thank you from our hearts!" "We thank you!" It wasn't the end. People got up and asked their angels for all sorts of things and Delvin Ayers found ways to make it happen. He never took credit. One lady wanted nothing but a ride home that night. The angels got thanked every time, and loudly. Got my colon up and rumbling. Some cried -- they had an alcoholic relative or a tumor in their breast -- and Delvin Ayers solemnly promised that their angels were standing by, fixing things up. They'd stop then, smile through their tears. It was their faces that really got me. I've seen it before. Back when my brother and I were young kids, our Uncle Will showed us photos he took of the Ozark snake handlers at a State Fair someplace. They charmed poisonous water moccasins for Jesus. We thought the snakes were scary enough -- mindless and mean -- but those poor hillbillies' faces, how holy they thought it all was, that's what haunted me every night for weeks when I tried to sleep. I'd lay in the dark, trying not to picture their dumb, sweaty rapture. These angel people had faces like that. They swayed and their chins trembled, shot full of a kind of joy I guess I'll never understand. In one of Uncle Will's photos, you can't make out the top half of the snake; just a black and white blur like a comet whizzing toward the handler's cheekbone. Uncle Will said his camera flash was to blame. He backed out of the crowd while the other Holy Rollers laid hands on the poor convulsing guy, pushing the medics away. Angels and snakes. I don't make much distinction. ALUHANA! Gosh, she's been quiet a long time. I hope she didn't hear any of this. What I've been telling you, I don't mean in a bad way. Well, maybe I do, just a little. After the circle broke up and everyone started milling around again, I was over by the mantle writing out a damn check for ten raffle tickets when Anna-Lisa tapped me on the elbow and said she felt her angel and my angel had a strong historic bond. That was it. I found Diana and said I was tired and going home, but she wouldn't let me walk by myself. Out on Marshall Street she was still jabbering about her angel. I didn't say a word. I wanted to make it home without a discussion. She watched me from the side. "You didn't like it," she said disappointedly. I couldn't answer. "ALUHANA wanted you to like it." I turned on the heel of my tennis shoe -- I should have held my breath and counted to ten but she'd gone too far with me. "Diana," I said, "do you realize you're a full-grown adult with an imaginary friend?" It felt right to say it, and I wasn't sorry. Diana stood stock still, blinking, looking from me to the sidewalk and back like she'd stepped on a glue trap. I couldn't tell if she was getting a speech set up or going to cry or what. She looked like a toddler, surprised by a fall, betrayed. Right then I suddenly needed to use the john something terrible. Diana took a timid step or two towards me, her hand outstretched for mine but I cut her off. "You get on home," I said just like she was my own kid. Her face twitched -- she looked grown-up again, angry and hurt. She spun and headed away in quick, slappy steps, her shoulders held high. I managed to wait until she'd rounded the corner, then hurried myself, squeezing, hating how everything always wants to come out at once. Later that night, I was shuffling around upstairs, third or forth trip to the john, tired and not, thirsty and not. Diana's light was on, dim yellow through the cracks of her closed door. Tap, tap, tap on her computer keys. I thought I should apologize. I stared at my slippers, picked at a thumbnail. "Sleep tight," I said too softly for her to hear, or so I thought. "You too, " she answered, full and clear. Gave me a spook. Her keyboard kept tapping. Did she know it was me, or mistake me for an angel? ALUHANA! You'll run into Diana before long -- she takes her bike out most evenings for a spin around the neighborhood. That old brown Schwinn with the too-small seat so that her rear hangs over the sides. The kids make jokes about her, I think, but if you see her, could you give her a hi, or a wave? Could you? Just something friendly. You might stop short of inviting her in, but if you happen to be out front, she's fine for a chat. Talk to her about food; she'd enjoy that. And please, no need to mention what you know. ~ © 1998 by Mare Freed This story was first published in The Antioch Review.