Lost and Found, Chicago, 1910
After depositing banjo, shotgun, and their heavy bags in the Persian prince’s railroad car, Aidan and Iris headed for the Magic Lantern Theatre. The prince joined in this scouting expedition. They rode a horse-drawn trolley since the electric train lines were down. So many people were cutting the fool in the streets on account of Halley’s Comet, the prince refused to let his wives come along on public transport. The women offered to watch over Iris while the men did the scouting, but Iris didn’t want to stay behind. Aidan didn’t want to leave her, so no argument there.
The Magic Lantern Theatre was opening a big production tomorrow night, yet it seemed to Aidan the show needed another week. Actors in half-finished monkey suits dangled from ropes and got tangled in each other. One fellow, a walking tin can more than a knight-errant, limped by them. He was missing a tin shoe and hobbling after a woman who toted a bushel of funny hats. A drawbridge slammed onto the stage floor, nowhere near its green silk moat. A lion-mask in a red union suit dodged tiny people practicing dance steps. A chorus of midgets sang off-key. Nothing but white folk everywhere, and standing in the wings, shouting at riggers and carpenters, the harried manager claimed he’d never heard tell of Redwood Phipps.
“Don’t know her, haven’t seen her.” He darted away from Aidan through flats and props. “How’d you people get back here?”
Aidan licked dry lips. A drink wouldn’t help nobody remember, but he wanted one all the same. “Six feet tall, a real pretty colored lady.”
“Redwood?” A stocky blond stagehand hung from the flies next to a farmhouse flat and rubbed at dust in his eyes. “You must mean Sequoia.”
Aidan brightened at her Cherokee name.
The stagehand scratched his neck. “She hasn’t worked the vaudeville revue for several months. I bet she didn’t get your telegram.”
Iris just ’bout fell over as a circle of dark clouds got hauled up with the farmhouse flat. The prince admired the machinery.
“Don’t know where Sequoia’s living, but I hear tell she’s making moving pictures.”
“Why would she do that?” the prince asked.
The stagehand shimmied down a rope. “Colonel Selig and everybody’s brother is doing films. That’s where the money is, and show people always chase money.”
Iris gazed into the flies. Lined up behind the farmhouse flat were castles, cornfields, a big green city lit up in the night, and a sky of flying critters. “Is this all for one show?”
The stagehand leered at her. “You must be Sequoia’s kin. Or is that just how they grow ’em in Georgia?”
Aidan bristled and Iris leaned into him. “What show you doing here, sir?” she said.
“The Wizard of Oz.”
“I read the book.” She grinned. “Twice.”
“That acrobat buddy of Sequoia’s said I couldn’t get a house in a twister to land on the wicked witch. Watch me. HEADS!”
Screeching like polecats in heat, dark clouds spiraled ’round the farmhouse flat as it headed for the stage floor. Iris was enchanted.
“Acrobat?” the prince said.
“Somebody need to oil that contraption.” Aidan pointed to the noisy winch.
“He and Sequoia are thick as thieves. Find him, you find her.”
“And where might that be?” Aidan didn’t want to be jealous of no acrobat.
“Don’t really know. Son of a gun still owes me five dollars too.”
“My brother’s a bit of a rogue,” the prince said when Iris told his wives of the debt. Aidan wasn’t sure how much English they understood, but they smiled and nodded.
“Coming inside this railway coach is like we done stepped into another world, Mars or maybe Venus.” Iris admired the spicy colors, rich fabrics, and plush cushions. Fanciful creatures, cast in bronze and silver, frolicked over every surface. Aidan’s fingers itched to carve something after seeing them.
“This place is a palace on wheels,” Aidan said.
“Far from home, we have an oasis,” the prince said.
One of his wives poured tea into fancy cups and saucers. The second laid a low table with steaming meats, colorful vegetables, and flatbreads. The third held on to Aidan’s banjo and stroked the neck, just enough to make the strings buzz.
“We can’t trouble you no more.” Aidan tried to ease his banjo from her fingers, but she wouldn’t let go. “We’ll just take our things and—”
“What trouble is that?” the prince said. “Farah loves making tea. Akhtar could cook a man into heaven. Abbaseh wants to know of this instrument you play.”
Iris pulled the map from Aidan’s bag. “Aunt Subie led us right to you.” She danced around, showing off a drawing of colorful folks in fancy dress at the train station. A Persian prince in red balloon pants and an Indian man with a feathered hat were hard to miss.
“On your map, why you do us honor,” the prince said. His three women stood behind him, nodding. Even if they didn’t talk English, they seemed to get the drift of things.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Cooper.” Iris squeezed Aidan’s hand. “We goin’ find my sister. We just get us a good night’s sleep and catch her in the morning when we’re fresh.”
“Listen to the little one. She is wise,” the prince said. “You must stay. My wives do not argue with me over strange company. This too is miraculous.”
Aidan wanted to turn down the prince or whatever he was back in Persia for no good reason. “I don’t know.” Maybe he just didn’t like trusting a rich man’s whim, or maybe he didn’t like the odds, three wives to one husband. Abbaseh stroked the belly of the banjo, listening eagerly to faint vibrations, a musician for sure. “You ought not to be so neighborly,” Aidan said. “This United States of America is a wild country, and plenty of folk out there as soon rob you blind as look at you.”
“I appreciate the warning. More reason for us to join forces. The food cools. We must eat soon.” The prince ushered them to cushions ’round the low table. He was a man used to getting his way.
“You offer fine hospitality, sir. I ain’t never seen the like.” Aidan crouched down and ran his fingers through a thick carpet. The colors had daylight in them. Flowers, branches, birds, and horses wove in and out of one another on a deep sea-blue. The dense pattern got him to thinking on the Okefenokee Swamp—homesick already.
“Six hundred Persian knots to the square inch,” the prince boasted.
“Does it fly, sir? Does it have spirit power? Can it take you to your heart’s desire?” Iris asked.
The women laughed in three-part harmony.
The prince smiled. “Carpets do not fly for me. Perhaps you will find a way to unleash this talent.”
“I can try.” Iris was delighted by the enchanted coach and the mysterious beauties who talked only Persian. “Like one of Doc Johnson’s storybooks.”
“These folks got their own story to tell,” Aidan said. “You ain’t read that in your book.”
“Do tell.” Iris would’ve pestered the prince and his ladies with a thousand questions if she hadn’t fallen asleep after the rich meal.
The prince sat on plump pillows; Farah and Akhtar sat behind him. After tucking Iris into soft bedding, Aidan sat on a cushion in front of him.
“My wives wondered if you would grace us with song.”
Abbaseh strummed once and placed the banjo in Aidan’s lap. His hands trembled over the strings, uncertain. He was playing better, but he wasn’t sure he’d gotten good.
“I’m all tuckered out too,” Aidan said. “I promise a real show tomorrow.”
The wives made a lavish bed on the magic carpet of scented pillows, fine blankets, and cushions, as if Aidan was also a prince. In the dark, when he was sure they were all off sleeping soundly, he got up from the forest of Persian knots and fell asleep on the bare ground next to Iris. Sleeping on the magic carpet seemed a sin and a shame to him.
The back parlor of George and Clarissa’s house had been converted to Redwood’s room. Framed sheet music covers and theatre posters of colored plays and performers decorated the walls: Bert Williams and George Walker in Abyssinia and In Dahomey, and Aida Overton Walker in His Honor: The Barber and Salome. Plays and books covered a writing table. Voluptuous white lilies filled plump vases and scented the air. Redwood was buried in sumptuous bedding, her shoulder and ribs bandaged. She clutched a beat-up music box in her right hand, and as the tinny version of “Swanee River” played, she stared up at the painted ceiling. Mythical figures from a tale she didn’t know, drawn with a whimsical hand, chased each other ’round the room, warring, loving, cheating, dying, and saving each other over and over.
Clarissa tiptoed through the doorway as the song wound down. She set a teapot on the nightstand, pulled a chair close to the bed, and took up Redwood’s left hand. “That old thing is so warped,” she said. “I know a shop where you can get a new one, with lovely music, show music that I know you’d appreciate just as much as that Stephen Foster song. Negroes have other things to sing about, besides missing the old plantation. I can’t believe you still listen to that.”
“It was Mama’s box.” Speaking hurt, like Redwood had been screaming for hours.
“Oh … I didn’t know.” Clarissa cleared her throat.
They sat silently. Clarissa shifted as if the fat upholstered chair hurt her bottom. She worried the lace at her neck and peered in the teapot twice. Redwood wheezed and stared at a mythical beast with wings flying through a midnight Milky Way.
“What are you reading?” Clarissa picked up an old Atlantic Monthly. “‘“Why I am a Pagan” by Zitkala-Sa—a Sioux Indian woman defends her religion.’ Oh my.” Clarissa set it down quickly and rubbed her hands on a clean handkerchief. “We all missed you at the poetry reading tonight,” she said. “The whole club turned out to hear poems by Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar and our own Anna Warner. Dr. Jeffrey spoke on the advantages of polygamy—that’s many wives to one husband. How much more responsible it is in light of the social temperament of women and the male appetite—fewer children out of wedlock. He seemed surprised that we ladies all disagreed so vehemently with him. There should be an article in the Broad Ax on our discussion, and also a piece on industrial versus academic education for the Negroes coming up from Georgia and Mississippi. Mr. Booker T. Washington is right. So much refined thought is wasted on those poor souls who need work, a vocation so they can get ahead and feed their families. What good is Mr. Dunbar’s poetry to them? And all that singing and dancing. How will we uplift the race if they just want to cut the fool? I know you’d disagree, but even Dr. Dubois admits to … limits. Maybe you’ll come and speak to the club and persuade us to your view.” She suddenly ran out of steam.
“What?” Redwood croaked. “I’m listening.”
“I’m just bibble-babbling at you, because you’re so quiet, it … scares me.” She looked in the teapot again. “Do you think this is ready?”
Redwood nodded. “They didn’t have to shoot her,” she whispered. That hurt too.
“Who?” Clarissa gripped the teapot. “The lioness? But you might have been killed.”
“Yes, thank the stars that gunman had a lousy aim and a dirty rifle.”
“You know what I mean.” Clarissa poured a dark brew through a strainer into a cup. “I hope I made this right.” She held it out to Redwood. “I followed your recipe. It’s amazing what you got growing out back. A pharmacopeia.”
Redwood took the cup. “Some things won’t grow up north though.” She drank the brew and shuddered. It tasted bitter but soothed her insides.
“Do you have a charm in your garden to trip up a wayward man?”
“I don’t lay down tricks to cross folks. No good trying to hoodoo somebody into going the way you want if they ain’t—if they aren’t going that way.”
“Oh, I wasn’t serious.” Clarissa laughed. “I’m a God-fearing Christian woman.” She sighed. “George loves me in his way, but sometimes—”
“Brother’s selfish and—”
“George Phipps charged into Chicago when my first husband’s laundry business was going under. My parents had invested in us and were about to lose everything too. If it wasn’t for George, I would have been out on the street, like those other poor women and with a baby to feed. My first husband coughed himself to death, and … George isn’t charming or refined. He’s a hard patch of dirt, but I love him for everything he did, for everything he still does.”
“George do know how to work hard.”
“He gives me a pain right here.” Clarissa touched her chest. “Like a hot poker.”
“I’d like to help you, but George would require a powerful spell, and…” Redwood tried to sit up. “Like I tole you, I ain’t hardly done no real conjure magic since I left Peach Grove. I don’t dare.”
“What about this stunt you pulled with a wild lion?”
“I didn’t plan that. I don’t know what come over me,” Redwood said. “If I do a powerful trick, I get sick or somebody be hurt, or somebody die even, like today. Make me ’fraid of my ownself.”
“I’ve never seen you afraid of anything.”
“Mama used to say, We conjure this world, call it forth out of all the possibilities. But I’ve lost my good magic.”
“I won’t listen to you saying you’ve lost your goodness.” Clarissa was hoarse now too.
“They didn’t shoot that she-lion to save me. ’Fraid of us both. Good reason too.”
Clarissa’s hands shook as she poured a second dose. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I almost stopped that gunman’s heart from beating in his chest.”
“Of course you didn’t. What nonsense.”
“You have to hear what I say.”
Clarissa searched Redwood’s face. “How could anyone believe such tales?”
“I can pull somebody’s pain,” Redwood declared. “Not my own though. And if I’m wild and crazy and feeding on rage, I think maybe I can pull the life right out too. Or maybe not. Anyhow, I didn’t.” Snapping Jerome’s neck was enough killing for her. She swallowed the blood rising in her throat. “I can see times that are over and done or haven’t even happened yet. I went to the Chicago Fair after it was long gone, back to 1893 before it burned down. Aidan and me worked that spell together.”
“Who is Aidan?”
“He’s … He’s a conjure man with his banjo. Aidan was my friend, before, back home.”
Clarissa tried to smile. “A sweetheart?”
“My friend. We … Sometimes I open my mind so wide, I can feel myself in everything, dead and alive, yesterday and tomorrow. Aidan can too.” Redwood didn’t have much voice left. She gripped Clarissa. “Do you hear what I say?”
Breathing hard against corset and collar, Clarissa marched away from Redwood. She opened the window, and a night breeze filled the room. She gulped chill air. Down the street, horses whinnied and a child wailed. Maple trees rustled with the wind, and two squirrels teased each other ’round a nearby branch. Nestled under the eaves on the third floor, the twins snored loudly, safe in their dreams.
“I don’t tell you a lie,” Redwood said, more frightened than when she danced with the lioness. “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Friends believe in each other.”
Clarissa whirled to face her. “All right, all right. I believe you. I’ve been believing you for a while—I just didn’t say.”
“Thank you.” Redwood drained the second dose of medicine and then opened the false bottom of Garnett’s music box. It was stuffed with money. “Don’t fret. I’m goin’ do my own moving picture. They won’t gun me down ’fore I get started good.”
The next day at breakfast in the luxury railroad car, Aidan and Iris feasted on things Aidan couldn’t recognize by sight, taste, or smell. While they ate, the Persian prince, whose name was way beyond Aidan’s country mouth, went out and leased a motor hack to hunt his brother acrobat and Redwood. He also hired a chauffeur—a lanky Scotsman with a thick brogue and a sickly freckled face who claimed to know everything ’bout what he called “the movies.”
“Slang sure can eat up words, or am I just getting too old?” Aidan shook his head.
“I hope you don’t mind if my wives join us,” the prince said.
“It’d be a pleasure.” Aidan tipped his hat to the ladies as they filled the back seats.
Iris squeezed in next to the women. “This is our first time riding a motor vehicle.”
As they combed the windy city for colored folk making moving pictures, Iris told the Persian ladies everything they should know ’bout America. She read snatches of Miz Dunbar-Nelson’s book, offering hoodoo advice on men and happiness. Aidan only half listened. He scanned the broad streets in the hazy daylight. Chicago was a magic city, crowded with the future, and Aidan was one of them nineteenth-century relics some editor railed against in the morning paper. Modern folk paused in dirty alleyways to stare at the foreign entourage, but it was beauty making them gawk as much as anything. The chauffeur honked and sped up.
“It’s a wonder Mr. McGregor can see where we’re going.” Aidan shivered in the cool wind off Lake Michigan. “With this dirt storm squatting on us.”
“Air’s not so bad.” Iris hugged Aidan from behind. “Worrying’s put you in a bad mood.”
The prince glanced from Iris to Aidan. “A young wife is good for a man.”
“If I had me a prince, wouldn’t share him with nobody,” Iris said.
“I’m enlightened, as you can see. I do not shut my wives away from the world. When their English is better, I will let them speak to whomever they like, even young girls who spout revolution.”
Aidan snorted. “You talking big now, but wait.”
“Abbaseh, my third wife, sold her dowry to educate her sister. She agitates for women’s rights, similar to your suffragettes, but in a secret society. They say I was a fool to marry her.”
“Well, women got as much sense as men do ’bout most things,” Aidan said.
“More sense,” Iris said.
“If a woman has wise words, why shouldn’t a man listen?” The prince plucked The Goodness of St. Rocque from Iris’s hand and thrust it at one of his wives. “It was Abbaseh’s idea to enlist your aid.”
Aidan stared at Abbaseh. It was hard to tell who was who when they were all wrapped up. “She’s a musician.”
“Yes, and a poet.” The prince frowned. “How did you know?”
“We’re here and arrived in one piece.” Mr. McGregor interrupted with a thick Scottish burr. “Let’s be quick, sir.”
He left the motor roaring in front of a studio on Peck Court in the Levee district. The buildings were run-down and overgrown. A man had fallen asleep in stringy weeds, hugging an empty bottle to his lips. To the surprise of the Persian ladies, Iris bolted from the auto and chased down seedy strangers. The wives called after her.
“These whores dinna care if you be the king of Egypt,” Mr. McGregor said. “If your pockets look rich, they put a hole in your heart and bleed ya.”
Iris found a friendly woman, makeup smeared ’cross her face, clothes tumbling off a fleshy figure, who directed them to another studio, on the nearby South Side.
“Redwood’s famous.” Iris plopped her behind on the leather seat.
The wives spoke harsh words to her, a plain-as-day scolding.
“That gal’s hardheaded, won’t listen to nobody,” Aidan said, proud of her.
Mr. McGregor sped off at fifteen miles per hour, like a thief making a getaway. Aidan sat up out of a slouch as more colored faces stared in the motor hack.
“What’re y’all s’posed to be?” A dark face sneered at them.
“This is where most of the colored live,” Mr. McGregor said. “A danger zone.”
“I shall reward your bravery in driving us here,” the prince said.
The streets got narrower and meaner; the buildings crammed into one another; thrown up quick, they were tumbling down quicker. Somber working people dribbled out of factories at the shift change. Tired out and caved in, they resembled sharecroppers back home, the Jessups and the Robesons, who didn’t work a lick for themselves—not the dreamers Aidan rolled into the station with last night. Children playing in the street weren’t plump, but stick and sinew kids with hard eyes and stone tears. Was Aidan writing his fear all over their faces?
Mr. McGregor drove up to a third motion picture factory. A sign proclaimed:
COLORED PEOPLE ARE FUNNY
If colored people weren’t funny,
there would be no plantation melodies, no banjos, no cakewalks,
no buck and wing dancing, no jazz bands, no minstrel shows
and no blackface vaudeville!
And They Are Funny in the Studio.
Real Colored People Caught in the Act!
Above the words, a grinning Redwood in a chicken suit chased a blackface sharecropper. Redwood had a pillow on her belly and another on her rear. Her hair was running wild ’cross her head. Aidan touched her face on the crumbling yellow paper.
“That ain’t how I remember her.” Iris leaned into Aidan.
He put his arm around her bony shoulders. “You was just a little bit when she left.”
Aside from the photo, there was no sign of Redwood or the prince’s acrobat brother.
“Colonel Selig’s moved to the outskirts of the city, shooting Wild West shows and jungle movies. You should try there,” a colored crewman said. “You folks gonna play in his next motion picture?”
“My wives in front of a camera?” The prince pointed to clown Redwood as they drove off for Irving Park Road. “They won’t sell themselves to any man’s greedy eyes.”
“He didn’t mean no insult, sir,” Iris said. “Back home, working in traveling shows, a colored woman make more money than anything, even—”
“Hush,” Aidan said.
The veiled ladies stirred behind the prince like shadows caught between cracks of daylight.
“I’m just saying,” Iris said.
“It’s none of our business, honey bun,” Aidan said.
“Aunt Subie say a hoodoo should always help folk understand what they can’t see themselves,” Iris whispered.
“You a hoodoo like Miz Subie now? At twelve?”
Iris blushed and didn’t say any more. Mr. McGregor picked up speed.
“Sequoia’s around here somewhere,” a white production manager at the fifth studio said. “And we got Jap acrobats—they’re playing the Eskimos, but I don’t know about a Persian one. What’s that look like? Another colored fellow?”
Aidan exchanged glances with the prince, who shrugged. “Yeah, but light-skinned,” Aidan replied.
The production manager leaned close to Aidan. “One colored fellow look pretty much like another to me: dark hair, dark eyes sitting on top of a grin.” Aidan didn’t know what to say. The manager chuckled and patted his shoulder. “But colored women, now that’s a different story. Go on in and see for yourself.”
The studio was a big ole barn, the ceiling several stories high. Hanging from the rafters, banks of electric lights loomed out of shadows. A painted drop covered one wall, a nature scene done so real, Aidan might have walked through it if he wasn’t paying attention. A few backless buildings were set off from the painted prairie, and cowboys on horses milled around, waiting on the cameramen.
“They’re doing a moving picture about the Wild West.” The prince pointed to half-naked actors in dark face paint and buckskins crouching in dirt. “The Indians are waiting to attack.”
Aidan winced as Iris cornered a colored man with a camera.
“Sequoia? In there.” He pointed. “Booma went wild, attacking everybody, tore the place apart. Mad Nicolai kept rolling and Sequoia, well, you gotta see her dancing for yourself.” He directed them to a screening room.
Nobody noticed Aidan, Iris, the prince, his three wives, or Mr. McGregor push into the back of the crowded room. Spears of dusty sunlight streaked the dark as a breeze lifted black curtains from the windows. Moving pictures flashed against a white sheet hanging on a wall. Aidan saw a lion spring in the air and lose a fake mane. Redwood exploded into view, and she and this lioness danced toward a cage. Even in a silly grass skirt costume, she had him breathing hard.
“What did I tell them? I had her going back in,” Redwood said. Her voice came from no more than ten feet away.
The spit in Aidan’s mouth dried up. His heart stopped. Iris clutched his elbow. “She’s somewhere close,” he whispered.
Aidan scanned the dim room until he spied Redwood standing between a skinny fellow with a curly red beard and a muscular man who must have been the prince’s brother. As a spark of jealousy was ’bout to burst into a bushfire, he noted that she was wearing his old shirt and pants. His cap was stuck in the back pocket. That had to be a good sign. Of course, she’d changed too. Her brown hair was shiny and sleek, in the Madam Walker style now. Her long neck sloped into graceful shoulders. Her hips were fuller than he remembered, round mounds dropping from a delicate waist. A sparkly blue scarf circled her belly, a cool creek that flowed almost to the ground.
“You see Sis?” Iris said.
“Yes, ma’am. She done come into herself.” Aidan struggled through the crowd.
He fought tears as onscreen the lioness was shot in the chest and belly.
Turning away from the lioness dying in her arms, Redwood came face-to-face with Aidan. She gasped and tried to blink her vision clear, expecting him to vanish, like a haint you refused to believe in anymore. But he was flesh and blood torment, not a ghost. Tears stood in his moss-colored eyes, and his chest was heaving. Her chest was fixing to burst too. He was tall and straight and strong, just as she remembered him. Shiny black hair hung free, and a song was on the tip of his tongue, whistling across his lips with each breath.
Onscreen the gunman crumpled at Redwood’s feet, not dead dust like Jerome, but close. She was a danger to herself and fools who made her blood boil. Quiet fell in the screening room like a heavy stage curtain. A few folk slipped out the side door. The projector sputtered and smoked. White curlicues spun ’round her and Aidan, gathering into a pale gray twister before surging out the open window. Aidan knew who and what she was, but stepped so close, she could taste the grin on his lips. Nicolai observed this, wishing for a camera no doubt. Redwood didn’t care what he or anybody saw. She reached her storm hand toward Aidan, then balled it to a fist.
Behind Aidan, a gangly colored gal, with scraggly braids sticking out a rat’s nest tangle of hair jumped from foot to foot—Iris, all grown up but still wild and spooky, light coming from her eyes. She and Aidan wore dusty rough coats, muddy brogans, and lopsided grins, resembling what Clarissa’s set would call backcountry fools. Saeed turned to see what had caught Redwood’s attention. Stunned, he spoke in Farsi and moved to greet a man dressed in Persian finery.
“You came all this way to find me?” Saeed said or something close. Redwood’s Farsi was spotty.
“You are my brother, always,” the stranger replied.
Applause skittered like wildfire through the crowd as onscreen Redwood placed the lioness’s head in her lap. The business manager for the whole picture factory lingered at the back door as the black curtains in the windows were opened and light flooded the room.
“Dancing with lions, I see,” Aidan said, “my brave Sikwayi.”
Redwood blushed at her Cherokee name and made herself turn from him. “That can’t be my baby sister, grown up now.” She opened her arms. Iris glanced at Aidan.
“Don’t look at me.” He pushed her toward Redwood.
Redwood scooped Iris up and swung her as if she were a child again. Iris tried to say something ’bout, “I’m too big,” but squealed instead as her feet lifted high in the air. Redwood set her down by one of the Persian women.
“This is Abbaseh,” Saeed said. “This is my Redwood.”
Abbaseh nodded/bowed slightly to her. Redwood matched the gesture, but felt too shy to try any of the Farsi words Saeed had been teaching her.
“This is my brother, Anoushiravan and his other two wives, Farah and Akhtar.”
Redwood bowed and gestured at Aidan. “Saeed, this is Mr. Aidan Cooper, a … neighbor from back home, and this is my baby sister, Iris.”
“Are you the prince’s rogue of a brother?” Iris said.
“Prince?” Saeed smiled. “Well, I am indeed the rogue.”
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” Redwood said to Aidan. “Either one of you. Kept your promise, I see, Mr. Cooper.”
“My pleasure, ma’am. But if it wasn’t for Iris, I’d have been lost.”
“Coughing plague took the whole family ’cept me and Mr. Cooper.” Iris blinked tears. “So we come to find you.”
“I felt the dying, wasn’t no good for days.” Redwood’s voice cracked. “Miz Subie sent word, but I didn’t want to believe her.” She hugged Iris close.
“Everybody said you run off to New York City to marry Mr. Williams. I saw that wasn’t true.” Iris’s eyes flickered, like candlelight in a breeze. “Mr. Williams was smoke rising to the stars. You were a tree pulled loose in the storm, walking off, then taking root in hard soil and sprouting a new name too, Sequoia.”
The business manager applauded Iris’s hoodoo speech. “Family reunions warm the heart.” He sidled up to Saeed without looking Redwood in the eye. He whispered and gestured and passed Saeed an envelope. Dodging Saeed’s brother, his three wives, and a white man in chauffeur livery, the business manager headed for the door. He spoke to Aidan like he must be in charge of them all. “A miracle that she-lion didn’t rip out Sequoia’s throat. Our business is pleasing the crowd, not scaring ’em to death. I’m sure you understand.” He hurried off as the last words settled in.
“Understand? The mullahs everywhere claim righteous wisdom.” Saeed handed Redwood the envelope. “He gave us a bonus before firing us.”
“He fired you too?” Redwood didn’t know what to do with all the feelings storming her. She let the crisp paper money spill from the envelope. The bills swirled around her several times and landed crumpled and frayed at her feet.
Aidan grasped her empty palm in his. “Does my heart good to look on you.”