Muffled cries woke Prisoner #935579 from the light slumber that masqueraded as sleep. The deck lights illuminated the upper tier of Cellhouse C; enough for the Correctional Officers to measure their steps, but they reduced the cell dwellers to shifting shadows. The brutish shade in the opposite cell hunched in familiar fashion.Knuckles whitened on the bunk rail as the recent arrival in Derrick Mayfield’s cell took an involuntary ass pounding. His own fault, really—only a few days in, he failed to grasp any of the rules of survival. He smiled, he chatted, and he trusted—the same get-along/polite maneuverings that served him well on the outside but marked him as a wounded gazelle to the hyenas that stalked these corridors.
Some men were destined to be punks.
The smothered screams echoed through the night. Prisoner #935579 eyed Officer O’Reilly, who ignored the ruckus though his station was only a few cells away. A bull of a man and former Navy, O’Reilly was reknowned for his harshness—another schoolyard bully who found a profession to vent his cruel streak. A scar snaked up from the corner of his mouth along the side of his face, contorting even his mildest grimace into a demonic sneer. An inmate gave him that gift the last time he interrupted a midnight tryst. “Animals rutting in the night,” as far as that hack was concerned.
Prisoner #935579 buried his head in his pillow. That was life on the Ave. Allisonville Correctional Facility. Level Four. The A-V. The Ave. Prisoner #935579 remembered the day he walked the forty-three steps of the loading plank, in handcuffs and leg irons. Rows of black faces lined up for inspection, like an auction block manned by hostile hacks barking orders. First they took away his name, then told him when to eat, when to sleep, when to shower; but the chains were the worst.
The Ave allowed few emotions, but Prisoner #935579 knew the hate. He hated through clenched teeth, the kind of hate that scratched, kicked, and lashed out at the world in blind fury, if only to break the tedium. The kind of hate that led to the fight between cells earlier this evening, ending in frustrated men hurling their own excrement at one another, staining the bars and cells yellow and brown, stinking up the whole tier. Officer O’Reilly swore to let them stew in their filth until breakfast.
Sleep without relief eventually claimed him. The incessant jangling of metal cobwebs shattered the night-time tranquility of the forest. Prisoner #935579’s tongue traced the bloody bruises in his mouth. He drew his chain-weighted hands close, studying the scars left by the metal cuffs. His back, scarred from the many-tailed whip of a man with a scar reminiscent of O’Reilly.
Steam rose from the chorus of men that marched alongside him. Tribesmen, familiar as brothers, stumbled through the forest not cooled by the still air. Branches of thick underbrush scourged them as they trod along the path that no outsider should know, but the Scar-Mouthed One did. Few chose to come to the sacred forest, a place of mystery to the faithful, peril to the unbelievers. A forlorn, gnarled tree grew at the center of a clearing—the Tree of Forgetfulness. The Scar-Mouthed One spoke in the tongue of the Igbo people. The Scar-Mouthed One commanded them to march around the Tree seven times. The men dragged themselves around the tree, their legs robbed of the strength to move. One man wept as he staggered.
The Scar-Mouthed One knew the Igbo well. None walked around the Tree except to sever their memories, or have them stolen. Memories—of their family, their village, their motherland—gone. Another man cried out, met by the wail of the many-tailed whip. The man stumbled, tripping Prisoner #935579. On his knees, Prisoner #935579 clutched a handful of dirt from mother La’s bosom. He stood, ready to curse mother La and die, then he heard the voice—the voice of his father and all the fathers that had been.
“Listen, son of our sons,” the voice whispered, a breeze through tree leaves, a roar only Prisoner #935579 heard. “The leopard and the hyena hated each other. No one remembered why, but the hate was ancient. One day the hyena was about his hunt, when he came across the leopard sleeping beneath the shade of a tree. The hyena attacked the leopard from the rear. The hyena proved too much for him. As the leopard lay bloodied and battered, he said ‘you can destroy my body, but my spirit will be free.’”
“What would you have me do?”
“Reclaim your name. Never forget who you are.”
Prisoner #935579 woke up to the thin cries of the broken fish.
“My name,” he whispered, “is Ashanti Tannehill.”
§
“Prisoner #710001. Prisoner #935579,” Officer O’Reilly introduced the two, escorting them from the newcomers tier back to Cellhouse C. He shoved the man to start him along. “You two are now roomies. Ashanti here will help you acclimate to your new home.”
Wintabi Freeman.
The hacks obviously thought it amusing to pair up the convicts with African sounding names. Anything to fuck with us, Tannehill thought. He studied Wintabi with a cautious glare. Older, at least judging from the gray sideburns and burgeoning bald spot. His eyes flashed with a warrior’s fierceness. Wintabi was different from the other fish Tannehill had seen walk the halls. He wore the prison-issue blues—blue pants and blue shirt over a white cotton T-shirt—with the dignity of one noble born. He carried his bedding and toiletries with an easy gait, confident yet threatening—the menace of experience.
“Your house, youngblood, which bunk?” Wintabi deferred when they reached the cell. Even with this gesture, he retained control.
“I’m cool with the top.”
“Lettin’ you know what’s what, I’m a lifer,” Wintabi said, setting his things on the bottom bunk. “I’m gonna die up in here; ain’t got no illusions about that. Seen the insides of Leavenworth, Marion, and am just up from Angola.”
Tannehill would’ve sighed, if he allowed himself to show any reaction. Lifers had nothing to live for, and worse, nothing to lose.
“Jus’ so we clear, I don’t wanna be peepin’ your ugly loc ass anymore than I got to,” Tannehill didn’t want to let a lion in winter set the rules, but his bravado rang a little hollow to his ears.
Wintabi smirked. “Just so we clear, I ain’t one o’ your dawgs, prags, or niggas. We stuck in here together. I’m just lookin’ to do my bit in peace.”
“A’ight, then, we understand each other,” Tannehill said. “Welcome to the Negro Warehouse. What’chu in here for?”
“What’s it to you?” Wintabi folded the corners of the sheets under his mattress with deliberate care. “You lookin’ to bond with me? We gonna stay up and do each other’s hair later?”
“Just like to know the quality of motherfucka I’m bunkin’ wit.” Tannehill looked around his house with fresh eyes. The same 10x12 room with a metal toilet attached to a metal sink in the rear. In the first five minutes of his incarceration, he knew every inch of his space. He peered through the metal bars, scoping the activity of the other prisoners.
“They say I killed two white men,” Wintabi said finally.
“I heard that they made that shit illegal now.”
“Not in this case.” Wintabi went about the work of setting out his things among Tannehill’s clutter. “These two peckerwoods broke into my house like they had a right to be there …”
The words touched a memory in him. Tannehill reached back to steady himself. The bare walls of the cell grew dark, as if Tannehill listened to Wintabi from within a tunnel. The cool metal bars felt moldy, scraping his fingers like wooden boards. Though hearing Wintabi’s words, Tannehill found himself imagining (no, remembering) hesitant shadows, imposing only in their presence at such a late hour in the ship’s cargo hold. His heart beat with the controlled fury of solemn drums.
An ominous scent pierced the fetid, still air, growing heavier with each step nearer to the partition that separated the men from the women and children within the ship’s hold. A woman’s voice cried out. Drunken hands groped about in the darkness, and hers was not the only one startled and fearful. Children retreated into scared huddles in stifled whimpers.
Tannehill’s hand curled into a ball of impotent rage at the sound of the whip cracking. He pounded the hull. Only then did he remember who he was: ozo of this lost Igbo tribe. The maniacal cackle of the Scar-Mouthed One rose above the flogging. He snarled with the savagery of a hyena, the heaving, haggard breaths of fat, slavering men pummeled the cries of the despoiled women. The Igbo men wailed to cover any trace of the sounds. Tannehill wanted to cup his hands over his ears but didn’t stir an inch until the men skittered like vermin up the stairs. Sobs filled the night air, like the scent from a fresh kill on a cool night. A familiar voice drew him back.
“… raped my wife and my daughter. Motherfuckers had the nerve to brag about it. Weren’t even charged,” Wintabi said. “Youngblood? You all right. You look like you faded on me.”
“I … naw, that shit’s just fucked up.” Tannehill glanced in the mirror. Sweat drenched his forehead. His face, drained and sallow, appeared ashen.
“That was the last time they did that shit. Different time, different era. Today, my ass would be on Oprah, off on temporary insanity, but, in 1952 Georgia, I’m lucky I made it to trial. What about you?”
“Down on a trumped-up charge for twelve years. Five-o tryin’ to get me to roll on my boys.” All his life he prepared to jail. A stretch in prison was like attending the college of the streets, with the Ave being Harvard: You were only sent there after fucking up everywhere else. “I done dirt comin’ up, corner work, so I knew shit would catch up to me sometime.”
“I seen enough of you corner boys in my day,” Wintabi remarked as he studied Tannehill. Then he just exhaled, like he had taken the full measure of the man and decided to relax, though he didn’t drop his guard. “Me, I’m just tired of the game.”
“What game?”
“All of it. The cycle. The system. The bullshit. No one tells you that you don’t have to play.”
“I don’t get you.” Tannehill trusted few people other than his mom. He’d seen niggas shoot each other over dumb shit. His cousin popped some fool simply for laughing at him. However, the weariness in Wintabi’s voice was old, like his father coming home from a long day at work and collapsing into his chair. Old and trusted.
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here,” Frank Connolly said, suddenly standing in the open cell. “What’s up, Winnie? Winnie, the nigger.” Tannehill kicked himself for allowing the redneck to get so close to him without noticing. They shared history. Connolly, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, gave him a casual eyefuck but focused his attention on Wintabi. Connolly’s clean-shaven head glistened above his groomed handlebar mustache. Tattoos stippled the side of his neck and coursed over both shoulders. Connolly’s dieseled body leaned against the guard rails outside of Tannehill’s house.
“Fuck you, Connolly,” Tannehill said, a little too defensively. A primitive part of his brain reminded him that, unless he wanted to be referred to as Mrs. Freeman, Wintabi’s prag, or a punk, he’d best leave Wintabi to fight his own battles.
“Let it go, youngblood,” Wintabi said, earnest, yet without reproach.
“I heard we had a rat problem.”
“You always tryin’ to start shit,” Tannehill said, despite himself, while glancing at Wintabi. The only thing worse than being a rapist or a child molester was being a snitch.
“Why else you think they transferred him from Angola? How the fuck did he get outta Marion?”
“He ended up here, didn’t he?” Tannehill said. “Let me ask you somethin’: Do all you Nazi motherfuckas cut off one nut to be like Adolf?”
“Fuck you. You don’t hear him denyin’ it.”
Wintabi stood in silence.
“We got a problem here, Connolly?” Officer O’Reilly approached the cell.
“Naw,” Connolly raised his hands, “just jawin’.”
“Then get your ass gone.”
“This ain’t over. You can’t hide in your cell forever,” Connolly stage-whispered. “We know how to deal with vermin.”
“Bitch ass can’t even spell ‘vermin.’” Tannehill watched Officer O’Reilly encourage Connolly. “What was that about?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Wintabi returned back to his bunk.
§
That night Tannehill tossed in his bunk, not quite inured to the smell of grown men sweating in the night. The wooden sleeping berth scraped against his shoulders and ankles during his sleep. He dreamed that blood-slickened chains connected his wrists to Wintabi’s. Tannehill ached with longing for home. A noisy fly buzzed about his head. He fought the heaviness in his bowels all day, waiting for some measure of privacy to dump his business.
“The funny thing about prisons is that, no matter where you go, they always feel the same,” Wintabi’s voice whispered from the shadows. “Losing everything can have a purifying effect on your soul—stripping you of your freedom, your privacy, your dignity. You learn what you really are.”
“So, what have you learned?”
“That most men become animals when you chain and cage them, but the true measure of a man comes in how he carries himself despite his chains.” Wintabi’s voice took on a faraway, dreamy quality; he no longer spoke directly to Tannehill. “Can you hear them?”
“Hear what?”
“The drums. The heartbeat of our people. Our ancestors. Calling out to us.” Wintabi’s voice no longer sounded like him at all. His voice grew deeper and more … ancient. “Let me tell you a story: A tiny village sent its children to the fields to gather the harvest. They filled their calabash bowls at the river for the journey home. A young man stepped from the reed and asked them to give him a drink of water. They did and in return, he gave them a pitcher of honey. They invited him to return to the village with them.
“On their journey home, the young man grabbed one of the children and disappeared, saying, “If you tell anyone of me, I will come and kill you all.” When the children arrived at the village, their parents asked what happened and where the missing child was, but the children were too scared to say or do anything.
“Finally, a young boy, whose wounds still bled, told of the man. A great rumbling shook the earth with the man’s voice thundering, “Why do you expose me?” He sprang from the forests, and they realized he was an Iimu, a great devil from across the river. He swelled to the size of an immense serpent. Fire burned in his mouth, flames fell to the ground like spittle. The men grabbed their spears.
“‘You cannot kill me,’ it taunted, ‘for you must use your own bones to grind mine into powder.’ The Iimu started to devour some of the men, the children … and the women. It destroyed much of the village while caught in the throes of its lusts. The men realized the riddle of its words: That they must sacrifice themselves to destroy it. And they did. As they and the Iimu lay dying, they saw their family and kinsmen again. All had been restored.”
With that, Wintabi’s voice faded to silence. Tannehill knew sleep would be long in coming for him.
§
“Shakedown!” Officer O’Reilly yelled. The prisoners stepped out of their houses as the hacks went in to ransack the cells. The ostensible purpose was to search for contraband—drugs, weapons, or what have you—but the real purpose was to remind the prisoners who was in charge. Officer O’Reilly lined up the prisoners and shouted a series of orders as if narrating a surreal workout video: “Run your fingers through your hair like your mothers were grooming you for lice.
“Open your mouth. Stick your tongue out. Lift it and move it from side to side.
“Lift your dick and your balls.
“Turn around, bend over, and spread your cheeks.”
A beating, Tannehill could take—a man took a beating—but the daily, heaping servings of pinprick humiliations, the constant reminder that he was owned by another, that reality slowly consumed him.
Navigating the politics of the cafeteria often proved nearly as treacherous as negotiating the yard. Each gang set had their own territory, and one had to step wise if one wanted to survive chow. Wintabi and Tannehill respected the color line but ate at the fringes of it.
“You feel it, youngblood?” Wintabi asked.
“You ain’t gonna start with that drum bullshit again are you?”
“What are you goin’ on about? I’m talkin’ ’bout the air. It’s got that vibe.”
“I feel you,” Tannehill said, unsure whether the other man remembered his “drums” soliloquy, “like somethin’s ’bout to jump off.”
“You see your man, Derrick?” Wintabi nodded toward him as he sat among his brothers. “You gonna make a move on ’im?”
“If there’s gonna be a stickin’, he’s welcome to try,” Tannehill said.
“Just make sure that you remember who you are. You’re still a man, they can’t take that away from you.”
“What was Connolly goin’ on about the other day?”
“Old ghosts. Most times, it’s about who hurt who last. I knew his father when I was at Leavenworth. Me and him got into it pretty bad. Someone dropped a kite to the warden …”
“Didn’t know anyone up at Leavenworth knew how to even write a letter.”
“The kite detailed a conspiracy to kill a couple of hacks. They took it seriously. Next thing you know, hacks shakedown Connolly’s old man’s house and found a shank. He ended up in Ad-Seg and died there.”
“They thought you dropped the kite?”
“Ask me, he sent the kite himself to get himself away from me. Don’t matter none. Even in Ad-Seg, you can be reached. Got me moved to Marion.”
Tannehill felt hate like it was his birthright, the bondage of this life passed onto the next, with chains as his legacy.
Connolly approached as the two stood up to dump their trays, bearing a scornful eyefuck that Tannehill couldn’t let pass without reciprocating. He was so intent on his posturing that he didn’t notice Connolly letting his filed toothbrush slip from his sleeve into his hand.
Connolly turned and jammed it into Wintabi’s back. Blood darkened the old man’s prison blues. Connolly handed the shank behind him, and that person passed it along until its final owner was unknown.
“Where’s all your jigaboo prancing now?” Connolly raised his hands as the hacks rushed toward them.
“Get down! Get down!” Officer O’Reilly shouted. Other hacks pinned Connolly against the wall as he smiled.
“Why can’t I feel my legs?” Wintabi asked to no one in particular. He stretched out his bloody hand searching for purchase on Tannehill.
With enough imagination, anything could be turned into a weapon. For Connolly, it was a toothbrush. For Tannehill, it was a bedspring, unwound with its edge sharpened. Tannehill pulled it from the waistband of his pants. The cycle tightened like a noose about his neck. If he had any inkling of hope, he watched it fade with the pool widening about Wintabi. Their eyes locked, the light fading from them even as Tannehill brought the bedspring to bear. The hacks pushed the men along, preparing to escort them to Ad-Seg. No one thought to keep a closer eye on Tannehill, not especially known for being a trouble maker. He buried the shank in Connolly’s chest, right through his cloverleaf tat, before the stunned COs had a chance to react.
“Get the fuck to your cells!” Officer O’Reilly shouted. “Lockdown!”
§
Administrative-Segregation, Ad-Seg, was a prison within a prison. Most of its inmates were snitches in danger of being shanked in the yard, prisoners too dangerous to roam “free,” or incorrigibles awaiting a transfer. However, even within Ad-Seg, there was a prison, the secure housing unit known as “The Hole.” Twenty-three hour a day solitary lockdown with two hacks that escorted each bound-in-chains prisoner to the concrete exercise yard during his one hour of rec time. Hacks cut the lights on or off at their discretion, most leaving them on and forgetting about them.
Ashanti Tannehill sat in the middle of the floor and admired his handiwork. He crafted a mural of misery from the only media at his disposal: his own blood and shit. The buzzing flies didn’t bother him. Their company dispelled some of the loneliness. After the first three years, his family, one by one, wearied of doing time with him.
His frayed braids fell into his face. He wanted to brush them out of his face, but he was cognizant of his shit-stained hands. A fly buzzed past his ear and landed on his eyebrow. He fought to ignore the crawling of tiny legs along his body. A sole fly circled his head in its own curious orbit. Soon, two engaged in aerial combat chasing each other through the ravines of his body. The flies swirled around him, their wings’ hum haunted his ears. More flies gathered, a pooling swarm of wings, legs, and bulging red eyes. They scurried along the walls drawn to the stench and filth. They crawled along Tannehill’s body, despite him brushing them aside. A maddening buzz, incessant voices that formed words.
“Ashanti.”
He cocked his head to the side, uncertain that he heard the name from his dreams. He pushed aside the gnawing nervousness as if the nesting army of flies swarmed solely in his imagination. The flies gathered around him in a thick cloud, whorls and eddies, blown about by an unfelt breeze. He dared not breathe for fear of inhaling dozens in a careless gasp. Innumerable feet itched his flesh in their passing. Tannehill covered his face. Still more flies settled along the mural, their bodies glistened as light reflected at impossible angles from the black sheen of wings. A figure took form along the mural. From within the head of the figure, red embers burned to life. Its voice, like terrible thunder, echoed through the beating wings of its mouth.
“Do you know what I am?”
“An egwugwu,” Tannehill said, not knowing how he knew, “an ancestor spirit.”
“Yes,” a tremulous voice covered in raffia replied. Tannehill dared not stare into its face. A sickly odor hung in the air about him, cutting through the filth, like the rot of diseased fish left in the sun. “I have come from the underworld. My journey has been long, and my stay will be brief.”
“What do you want?” Tannehill asked, sure that this time his mind had finally snapped in the bowels of the Hole. He wouldn’t be the first to go mad in solitary.
“‘Ike di na awaja na awaja’—Power flows through many channels. As long as your head is not separated from your body, your ancestors will guide your spirit home. Let your body die that your spirit may be free from these chains.”
The flies flew tight circles around his form, each competing for space to claim. They skittered across his eyes and crawled into his mouth. They climbed along his nostrils. Flies crawled along every inch of Tannehill’s body. His flesh glinted in the moonlight like shifting shards of shattered glass. He imagined the flies consuming his body, grinding his bones to dust to float away.
Home.
Nathan Bratton was always closing his eyes to something.
Though only 16 kilometers separated Montego Bay from Maroontown, an eternity passed in the dips and sharp turns of the hillside roads. He forced his eyes shut. He hoped to sleep—if God so chose to favor him—but mostly he didn’t want to watch. The taxi driver expertly (Nathan prayed it was expertly) wove along the road. With each heave or lurch of the car, Nathan’s mind registered a flood of images. The taxi honked. Kids laughed and yelled. Branches whipped the car. Tires squealed as they skirted what Nathan knew was the edge of a steep drop off. The taxi honked. A passing car returned the honk. The din was like mating sheep being run over. Nathan opened his eyes for a moment. A bus passed excruciatingly close at its own breakneck speed. He tugged at his seat belt. Again.
Nathan reconsidered his reasons for coming back to Jamaica, although that made it seem like he had a choice. Nathan’s mom was born in Maroontown. She left when she was a teenager. She visited often, bringing Nathan with her. She wanted him to know where he came from even if he didn’t. Jamaicans struck Nathan as a proud people, proud to the point of arrogance. They acted like their culture was superior to everyone else’s, their ways made more sense, their history somehow richer. Those beliefs were shoved down Nathan’s throat. He took it for granted, the foods, the stories, his heritage, until his mom died last year. Only then did he realize how little he knew about her. And himself. He was a tabula rasa, part of his identity was missing. He’d planned, or meant to plan, a pilgrimage to Jamaica. Then yesterday the phone rang with news of his grandfather’s death. This morning Nathan found himself on a plane bound for Jamaica. And as much as an outsider as he felt, he knew he had no choice but to come.
He was summoned.
“How much?” Nathan asked, tugging his suitcase free of the car seat. “Five hundred dollars.” The driver’s thick accent clubbed his ears. Nathan watched as the driver studied him in his rear view mirror. Even with the $40 Jamaican for $1 U.S. exchange rate, the price seemed high. Nathan hated to haggle, but the word “tourist” might as well have been spray-painted across his forehead.
“You must be mad,” Nathan said, believing that the key to effective haggling was in the attitude. “That doesn’t even sound right.”
“Five hundred dollars,” the driver repeated.
Nathan spied a familiar face pulling alongside the taxi. He removed a folded photograph from his vest pocket. A wedding photo of his mother’s sister, Karen, and her new husband. The photograph was little more than a month old. “You must be Uncle Edward.”
Edward filled his police Jeep with his massive build. He opened the door and put one freshly polished black boot on the ground as he waited for the transaction to finish. Stiffly pressed Navy slacks with two red stripes running down the side and an equally pressed light blue shirt was the uniform of a ranking police officer. A sense of menace exuded from Edward like a sinister shadow. Staring into his black eyes was like being raked by shards of glass. The taxi driver locked eyes with him momentarily. Edward nodded.
“I’m sorry. How much was that ride?” Nathan repeated.
“Fifty dollars,” the driver muttered. He gripped his steering wheel like a drowning man to his life preserver. “Respec’, corporal.”
“Respect, man.” Edward dismissed the driver. He looked about conspicuously, then pulled his black cap curtly to the front of his head. He approached Nathan in arrogant strides. Though Edward’s hands were soft and manicured, there was a heaviness to his handshake.
“It’s good to finally meet you, Uncle Edward.”
“It’s good to meet some of Karen’s American family.” Edward’s words rang with exaggerated enunciation, as if speaking slowly for Nathan’s benefit. It was only mildly condescending and was better than the sing-songy, frenetic accent that sounded like it could have been as easily Chinese as English.
“I’m happy to hear someone I actually understand,” Nathan said.
“Oh, surprised to hear my command of the English language?” Edward’s voice bubbled with a self-satisfied haughtiness. Nathan was swept along in the intimidating charm of Edward’s serpentine grin.
“I didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken. Not everyone speaks in ignorant patois.” Edward gestured toward his Jeep. Nathan quickly learned to hate the silence. Edward spoke in a loop, as if he had rehearsed only a certain amount of topics. Any lull in conversation was filled with Edward recapping how important he was. As senior Justice of the Peace for his ward, he knew everyone. He was well traveled. He’d been to America, England, and Canada and had no trouble driving on either side of the road. His authority was such that he could have anyone jailed, for no reason, for three months. Nathan listened amiably, a forced smile plastered across his face. Edward droned on, in love with the sound of his own voice. Either that or he was simply used to people hanging on his every word. Every so often, Nathan caught Edward glancing at him, trying to read him. Nathan smiled, continuing the dance of first impressions. The radio distracted him with jingles for Prima milk. IRIE FM was the main station received in the country. The trip took a surreal turn as a reggae version of “We Are the Champions” played.
“How much longer to your house?” Nathan masked the impatience in his voice as travel fatigue.
“It’s just around the corner,” Edward chuckled to himself. “Everything’s ‘just around the corner’ out here. You can go 10 miles around that ‘corner’ and still not be there. But if I honk my horn from here, they’ll have the gate open by the time we get there. Supper will be ready.”
“By the way, thanks for letting me stay here.”
“No problem. Family takes care of family.”
§
“I’m full.” Nathan pushed his plate to the side. His palate, too weak for ackee and saltfish, felt fairly safe picking at the curried goat, boiled bananas, and yams. The food sat in his full stomach. The heavy bass of Beenie Man’s “Betta Learn” thumped from down the street. Many people slowly gathered for the funeral though it was not until tomorrow. The gerriae, which Nathan likened to an Irish wake, started the day of his grandfather’s death. The music, dancing, and food would not stop until his burial. Friends and family were flying or driving in from all over, though no one else dared ask to stay with Edward.
“Before you make good food go to waste, ‘mek belly bust’” Edward scraped the untouched ackee and saltfish onto his plate.
“Aunt Karen always did cook enough for an army. I guess she had to, I mean, granddad did have 37 children.”
“You mean 36,” Angela said. Angela McGhie was Aunt Karen’s daughter from her first marriage. Nathan and Angela bonded immediately since they were both in their early twenties. Her mocha complexion only deepened the melancholy that girded her face. Long braids of thick black hair framed her oval face. She possessed a hustler’s eyes and a rogue’s heart, but everyone in the family had a bit of The Scoundrel in them.
“No, 37. Here’s the notice.” Nathan fished in his briefcase, past a flurry of Post-It notes and scraps of paper, to reveal a folder. Most of what he knew about his grandfather he learned in the obituary column. “See here, he was survived by 37 children, 139 grandchildren, and 3 great grandchildren.”
“Yeah,” Angela paused meditatively, the names ticking off in her head. “We forget ’bout Hubert. He was a baby when he died.”
“Yeah, crib death. I heard.” Nathan attempted to wrap his mind around the idea of 139 grandchildren.
“Hmph.” Angela’s fork clattered noisily against her near empty plate. They sat around the table as Aunt Karen fussed in the kitchen. Edward’s son, Saul, quietly ate. Nathan watched as Saul surreptitiously dropped a piece of meat for one of the dogs to eat. The other dogs perked up with interest.
“What are your dogs’ names?” Nathan asked.
“Names?” Saul asked.
“Don’t they have names?”
“No, suh. We call ’im ‘puppy,’ an’ ’im come. We call dat one ‘puppy,’ an’ ’im come.”
“Who name dem dogs?” Angela interjected. “Dat’s like fe name your chickens.”
“But we eat our chickens,” Nathan said. “They don’t run around the yard.”
“We ’ave our dogs jus’ fe mek noise at night. Fe tiefs.”
“He nuh ’ave dogs in America?” Saul asked.
“Yeah, but dey ’ave dem all in dey bed wid dem.”
“It’s time for bed,” Edward cut short the conversation.
“Come on.” Angela reached for Saul’s hand. “I’ll tell you a story.”
“Can I listen?” Nathan asked.
“Come on.”
Angela told Saul the story of Brer Ananse saving Brer Buffu from Brer Snake by tricking Brer Snake into his own trap. Nathan listened intently, jotting down the story onto one of his Post-It notes. “An’ he and Brer Buffu went off fe de village,” Angela concluded, “leaving Brer Snake for de woodcutter’s axe.”
Saul grinned broadly, then rolled over. She leaned forward and kissed him. She ran her fingers softly through his hair.
“Was there a moral to that story?” Nathan whispered.
“Poppa seh, ‘de same knife wha stick sheep, stick goat’,” she said, looking down at the soundly sleeping Saul. “Why you interested in stories?”
“My mother used to tell me the same stories when I was growing up. Over and over. Oh man, they got on my nerves. Then, when I grew older, I realized I had no stories to tell. I miss them, especially the duppy stories.”
“Duppies dead out.”
“Ghosts don’t die out,” Nathan said.
“People don’ believe in dem. Dey nuh scared of dem.”
“That’s because there are more frightening evils among the living.”
§
Nathan tossed fitfully in his bed. Aunt Karen placed bottles of Jamaican Rum Creme on the dresser, in case Nathan wanted a midnight nip. A curtainless window opened against the night heat, allowing shadows of the burglar bars to play along the far wall. Several mosquitoes buzzed too close to his ears. Nathan flung the sweat-soaked sheets to the other side of the bed. He prayed that sheer exhaustion would carry him to sleep. The wind murmured its dirge through the banana trees. The wind-whipped leaves produced a sound easily mistaken for rainfall.
The dogs growled. Again. The snarls usually signaled a dispute over sleeping arrangements that ended in yelping. This time was different. The tenor had changed. Nathan grabbed a bottle of Rum Creme and headed outdoors. It tasted like a vanilla milkshake spiked with rum, albeit 200-proof rum. The house was an anomaly along the street side. Their neighbors dwelled in little more than tin-roofed shanties. Edward’s home hid from the road behind a grand concrete wall, ornately decorated with roaring lions. Iron gates enclosed the veranda. Even Nathan heard the rumors of how crookedness swirled around Edward like an inescapable odor, but he dismissed them as the gossip that generally accompanied all Jamaican police.
Nathan circled around the house, enjoying the night air outside of his stifling room. Hundreds of stars flecked the night sky, freed from the cloak of pollution. The crickets hummed like overhead power lines, interrupted by the occasional cry of “ka-ka” of passing birds. As Nathan approached the side of the house, the dogs whined, as if disturbed, then abruptly stopped. Fear fluttered briefly in his chest like a vulture disturbed from its perch. Nathan heeded that primitive part of his brain sensitive to danger, though he overrode the urge to flee as he pressed himself against the house wall. He peered around the corner only to see the dogs sitting in a perfect semi-circle. Their attention seemed engaged on someone in the middle, engulfed in the shadows of the trees.
The unseen presence charged the air around him. Nathan gulped courage from his bottle. The figure defied recognition from so far away, so Nathan crouched alongside the wall and edged closer. Hidden behind the rainwater barrels, Nathan chanced another glance.
The shadow-enshrouded man reached out toward the dogs, mimicking a petting motion. The dogs wagged their tails merrily. The wind died, an eerie stillness settling on the scene. Faint traces of marijuana smoke emanated from the neighbor’s home. The gerriae revelers had long turned in for the night, readying themselves for the funeral tomorrow. No traffic rumbled along the street. Nathan fumbled with his bottle as he neared the distracted dogs. Each footstep firmly set itself along the pebble-strewn path. The figure’s haunted face was familiar to Nathan, though he only recognized it from a yellowed photo crammed into his bedroom mirror like a mute guardian: a younger version of Nathan’s grandfather. The essence of his grandfather flickered in the gentle eyes eclipsed within the hardness of his face. Except that the figure stood taller than Nathan recalled. Too much taller.
He hovered above the ground.
Nathan dropped his bottle. The shattering glass splintered the silence. The man’s eyes bore into Nathan. The figure melted into the night as if a spell had been broken, little more than a memory captured from a fleeting dream. Nathan’s hand grappled for anything to steady him. The Rum Cremes must’ve been more potent than he thought.
§
“Don’t sit there. That’s Poppa’s chair,” Aunt Karen said. Nathan froze in mid-sit down, not sure if she was serious. She patted a nearby chair. “Sit down over here.”
“Uh, okay,” Nathan tried to keep an open mind. He wasn’t conceited enough to consider himself sophisticated, but his mind often wondered whether or not his people were backward. It was bad enough that they spent the morning of the funeral fretting about the house. Death was little more than a chore that needed to be attended to. Aunt Karen shuffled outside to collect the laundry from the line. That unnerved him more than any foolish superstition. “But why save his seat for him. He’s probably not going to need it again.”
“Oh, but he might,” she huffed over the basket. Nathan ran over to grab it, but Aunt Karen brushed him aside with her don’t-make-me-box-you-over look. “He was a powerful obeah man.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me seh he worked obeah, set duppies,” Aunt Karen said as she folded the laundry. “True, true. ‘Is people dey come trouble ’im, all vex up ’bout dem neighbor or someting. He work obeah on ’em, an’ seldom asked fe anyting.”
“Really? Interesting.”
“You an obeah man, too,” Aunt Karen said. “Yes suh, you ’ave faith, so if an obeah man tried to work obeah on you, it wouldn’t work.”
“So, if you believe in it, it works on you. If you don’t, it won’t.”
“Mostly people wit grudges seek out obeah men. Some obeah are real,” Angela interrupted from the doorway. She cut a sensual figure, even in her mourning outfit. Nathan rose, taking his cue to leave. “Most are con men. Li’l more than thugs. If they say someting bad will ’appen, dey may do it demselves.”
“How can you tell a real obeah man?” Nathan asked. Angela led the way as they walked along the gravel path that headed toward the church. It was a short walk cutting through the property.
“Real obeah men seldom look you in a de eye. Dey carry a basket or whatever dat ’olds ’is tings. Dey of’en wear a red flannel shirt or someting. He ’as fe kill a member of his own family as the final rite to become a true obeah man.”
“You ever been to one?” Nathan asked Angela.
“Once. ’Im read me up.”
“Told you your future?”
“Yeh. ’e tell me, me not gon keep no work unless me let ’im give me a guard ring. So me ask ’im, ‘How much is de guard ring gon cost?’ ‘Im say, ‘$8000.’” She bugged her eyes out in mock amazement. “‘Je-sus,’ me seh, ‘Me no ’ave no $8000 fe pay you.’ ’Im say me fe give ’im $4000 as down payment. If not, ’im seh me gwon dead in a two week time.”
“So, what happened?”
“Me no know. That was three weeks ago.” Her laugh was as free and easy as it was infectious. Her laugh trailed to silence when she glimpsed Edward sauntering toward the church. A somber pall settled between them. She whispered as he passed, “Do you ever wonder ’bout Edward?”
“Wonder what?” Nathan asked.
“Sometimes me tink he did someting to Poppa.” Angela cast her eyes downward, as if not wanting them to betray her to Edward. “Death’s shadow is ’pon ’is face. You no see it?”
“What? Obeah?” Nathan smirked, thinking himself cuter than he was. Angela was less than amused.
“Shh. Ne’er mind. The funeral soon start.”
They made their way to the front of the church. Everyone stood as the coffin was brought up the steep, rocky steps to the church. A gray shroud covered the coffin. Once the coffin rested before the pulpit, the casket lid was opened so that Poppa was visible during the sermon. His appearance was waxy, dehydrated. Rumors circulated all week as to the cause of his death. Some said he only had diarrhea but was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Some said he was poisoned. Some said a rival obeah man worked powerful obeah on him. He seemed so small, almost lost in the silken linens of the casket.
The church filled to standing room only. The doors in the back of the building were opened so that the overflow crowd could catch a glimpse (and be seen). It was quite a spectacle. Poppa was a retired district constable, so many off-duty Montego Bay policemen lined the walls, decked in full regalia. People were there from all over Maroontown, even as far as Garlands. Angela explained to Nathan that it was because of more rumors. Word spread that the will had been revised to divide the farm among the family. That rang true to Nathan. When his mother visited, she brought all manner of goods and merchandise from America and left all that she brought, even her own clothes and luggage. “Family took care of family,” she said.
When it was time, a Rastafarian—with a huge nest of dreadlocks tucked under his multi-colored hat—crawled into the sepulcher to receive the coffin. Whispers churned among the gathering, since only family was allowed to gather immediately around the sepulcher. And Rastafarians never went near the dead.
“Nathan, I think it’s time we talked. Man-to-man.” Edward beamed with malevolent intensity. Angela shook her head “No.” An uneasy chill stirred in Nathan’s gut.
“Sure, Uncle Edward.”
The night was unusually frigid as a wind sliced through the lush hills. Brooding clouds encroached the baleful eye of the moon. A distant rumble disquieted the sky. Suspense reduced Nathan to halting breaths.
“What were you and your cousin whispering about this morning?”
“Oh that?” Nathan was tempted to breath a sigh of relief. “Nothing. She was telling me tales of obeah men. Do you believe in that stuff?”
“I don’t have time for that necromancy foolishness.”
“Why do you ask?” Nathan still waited to exhale.
“I just didn’t want you meddling in my family’s business.”
“Our.” The word leapt from Nathan’s mouth before he could stop it. “What?”
“Our family’s business.” Nathan heard his voice, though his mind wanted his mouth to shut up. Words kept tripping from his tongue. “We are in the same family now.”
“Let me ask you something,” Edward half-smiled, as if enjoying some game. He reached to his side and unsnapped his holster. “Have you ever fired a gun?”
“No.” Nathan eyed the holstered gun. His armpits itched ferociously. A nervous perspiration dampened his forehead. His mind raced, mapping possible escape routes. All of a sudden, Nathan counted all of his dumb mistakes. He let himself be convinced to meet this virtual stranger alone. He didn’t bring a weapon with him. Nathan’s eyes followed as Edward drew the gun in mock-gunslinger style. Nathan flinched, but remained rooted.
“Take it. Go on.”
“Okay.” Nathan held the gun with the tips of his fingers.
“How does it feel?”
“Heavy.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“What do you mean?” Nathan asked.
“I’ll show you. Feel the gun in your hands. Aim it over there.” Edward pointed to a distant hill. He spoke slowly, almost seductively. No lights glimmered along the valley. “Pull the trigger.”
The gun cracked with deadly authority, jerking in Nathan’s hands. His ears rang as the discharge was louder than he imagined it would be. An acrid odor, like burnt ozone, assaulted his nostrils. He held the gun where he fired. Nathan didn’t know what lesson he was suppose to glean from this exhibition. Edward continued his baiting smile.
“It’s about control.” Edward grabbed the gun at the barrel and turned it and Nathan toward him. “Right now, you hold my life in your hands.”
“I don’t think….”
“How does it make you feel?” Edward’s eyes burned with a devil’s luster. He wetted his lips. Nathan was unnerved enough to begin trembling. His stomach churned with imminent queasiness. He could only stare along the sights. He itched with mosquito bites that he didn’t remember getting. His palms slickened against the grip. Edward reached for the gun. He removed it from Nathan’s grasp. Nathan’s hands still cupped the air, not daring to move. “Control. Power. No fear. Don’t cross me.”
Just then, a sound pealed in the distance. Like a thunderous snort. Rain poured from the skies hitting the corrugated tin canopy next door with such fury it resonated with the roar of distant applause. Beneath the din was the sound of jangling metal getting nearer.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Thunder. Let’s go inside.” Edward’s voice wavered. It was slight and quickly covered up, but Nathan heard it and found it comforting. A few moments later, another grunt bellowed, shaking the floor. Aunt Karen scurried to the living room and called from the window.
“G’wan fe bed,” she ushered Nathan to his room, “an’ don’ look outside.” Nathan retreated to his room, not bothering to turn on any lights. Outside the window was a terrible tramping, as if some behemoth trudged along the banana groves. It occurred to Nathan to peek outside, but his aunt’s warnings echoed in his head with the urgency of angels to Lot’s wife. The clanking sounds of metal coalesced into something familiar. Like chains. It sounded like something bowled over the banana trees and ate the gungoo pea stalks. With each hideous snort, the house warmed up like a make-shift furnace. Nathan sat on the corner of his bed wondering if this was some sort of Jamaican fire drill. He had come to Jamaica to answer one nagging question: Who am I? Yet, all he had seen left him no closer to any real answer. The figure and the dogs. Angela. Duppies. The funeral. Edward. The gun. Obeah. If a destiny awaited him, it had to come to him.
The chains rattled outside his doorstep before fading into the night.
§
Last night seemed like a nightmare induced by a bad batch of goat belly soup. No damage had been done to the groves. He woke to the usual bleating of goats, though the dogs were nowhere to be found. He found Angela washed blood from the house walls with a casualness that stupefied him. The blood was smeared, almost sprayed. A garish display that felt more like a warning than anything else.
“Look how de duppy kiss me last night,” Angela laughed, as she pointed to a bruise on her arm.
“Oh, really?” Nathan asked, unsure if she was even joking.
“Shut yo’ face gal wit dat nonsense,” Edward scolded. He seemed more on edge than ever. He glanced at Nathan and regained his composure. And his unaffected speech. “I’m sure our guest doesn’t wish to hear such … foolishness.”
“Me love fe chat, it don’t mean nutting.”
“You love chat too much,” Aunt Karen yelled from the porch. “’Ere comes Saul. Mek ’im put on ’is school clothes.”
Aunt Karen, often lamented that none of the current generation wanted to farm. It was, after all, the family business. So, Saul had to work in the field before he went to school. The banana exports were due soon. Saul headed straight to the house from the field. What was once Sunday dress pants was worn to feather-thin, dirt-encrusted fringe. His tennis shoes were barely soled, and his New York Knicks jersey was soiled to inscrutability. He brandished a machete that was over half his size. Angela followed him into his room to hurry him. Nathan trailed behind her.
“All right, what was that last night?” Nathan asked.
“You mean de rollin’ calf?” Saul giggled. “Aunt Karen tol’ me de tale las’ night.”
“A what?”
“You did wan’ a duppy story,” Angela said. “It obeah man duppy.”
“It come ’roun’ between Christmas an’ New Year’s,” Saul called out from the bathroom. “It a huge someting wid chains ’roun’ ’is neck an’ fire in a dem eye. You can’t look in a dem eye. Its breath kill you dead. He can’t trouble you on de straight road or in shadow of a tree. Otherwise….”
“Anyting dem meet in a dem way, dem kill.” Angela finished.
“Bye, uncle.” Saul threw his backpack over his neatly pressed, khaki-colored school uniform. Nathan silently thrilled at the respect shown by being called “Uncle.” Saul shook his hand with a fearful trembling like he wanted to warn him. He looked over his shoulder, toward the door, and thought better of it. Angela grabbed Nathan’s hand, escorting him along, leading him back to the kitchen.
“You are quite fortunate to marry a man like me,” Edward said, noting Nathan and Angela’s return. “You are lucky to have a man who has breakfast cooked by the time you get home.”
“Me know, me know,” Aunt Karen said.
“Now, I cleaned up the kitchen when I cooked. I expect it to stay that way.”
Edward raised his hand, only to pat her shoulder, but she shrank back like an oft-scolded dog. He headed toward his bedroom. Aunt Karen ate her breakfast in solitude. Angela waited a few minutes then gestured for Nathan to follow, leading him down the porch steps behind the house. She stopped below Edward’s balcony. Angela cocked her ears toward the opened window.
“What’re you doing?” Nathan asked.
“Shh.”
Edward’s distinctive baritone echoed as he spoke on the phone.
“Yeah, man, the property’s practically mine … banana farm too … I know … she got it all … he never had a chance to change his will … sure she’ll sign it over to me … interest of British importers … not often an opportunity like this comes along.” Edward loosed a chilling chortle, its echoes scraped across their souls like gnarled fingernails.
Nathan lacked Angela’s surefootedness; he stumbled over the jutting stones of the house base. Edward awaited them on the veranda. He dropped a basket of laundry, apparently for Angela to hang.
“Nathan, you’ll never fin’ a woman if you keep ’round your cousin. You carry on like a couple in love. You two are aware you’re family?”
“That never stopped you.” Her words sliced like daggers through her teeth as she turned to pick up the basket. Nathan’s heart stopped in his chest. Silence reigned for an interminable span of seconds. Edward shifted noisily before turning sharply on his heel. His voice was a tyrannical rumble, like crashing waves.
“Don’t poke around my business.”
§
Nathan sat along the beach edge, fascinated by the water’s clarity. He stamped his foot underwater just to watch the sand stir about then settle. His hands dug nervous holes in the sand next to him. Storm clouds gripped the hills of Maroontown in a terrible grasp, a view best appreciated from Brighton Beach. Vestigial winds whipped sand particles across his back like a stern taskmaster. Angela delighted in Nathan’s suggestion to visit the beach. He found it difficult to watch Angela in her own element. She enjoyed the liveliness of the beach. Her playfully flirtatious manner made her quite popular. However, she quickly tired of the attentions of the crowd.
Nathan felt relieved to see her walk toward him. Despite her joviality, Angela carried herself with a melancholy air, a profound sadness that saturated her every movement. The only time it didn’t haunt her was when she played with children. Even then, the sadness transformed only to a longing. Maybe that was why Nathan felt so protective of her. She was at once fragile and hardened. Angela sat close to him. They watched the events of the beach like it was their personal stage. Two young boys, not quite teenagers, shadowed a tourist who might as well worn an “I’m a Tourist, Please Rob Me” shirt rather than his orange and turquoise flower print shirt.
“See those two pick’ney behind dat white man?”
“Yeah?”
“They’re pickpockets.”
Closer to them, a Rasta performed his own show for three college frat boys giving them a “Jamaican Experience” to tell the folks back home. He sang for awhile, breaking his routine to sit for conversation. He borrowed one of their Walkmans to provide extemporaneous commentary on their music. One of the frat boys sat up in attention, extremely entertained.
“’’E betta be careful,” she said. “’Im tek ’is time moving farther and farther away as he dances. Soon, he take off wid it.”
“Ain’t that the same Rasta who pulled Poppa’s coffin into the sepulcher?”
“Yeh, dat’s Bigga. He didn’t even go fe ’is own mother’s funeral. Dreads seh, ‘When dey dead, dey dead.’ Won’ have anyting fe do wid dead bodies.”
“Why not?”
“Dead bodies are unclean. Like pigs.”
“They don’t eat pork either?”
“No, suh. You give ’im a box o’ animal crackers, he’d even pick out de pigs befo’ he ate dem.”
Bigga noticed their laughter. His scruffy blue jean shorts, along with his red-yellow-green crocheted hat, flapped as he danced next to his knapsack. He sang along with whatever melody overtook him, occasionally casting a sideways glance toward the prying eyes of Nathan and Angela. One of the men got up for a drink run. He brought back four bottles of Guinness: one for him and each of his friends and one for his dreadlocked acquaintance. A few minutes later, Bigga wandered toward Angela and Nathan, neither of whom hid their nosiness.
“Irie.”
“Irie, dread,” Angela said
“Why you watch me so close?”
“Just watching you entertain folks,” Nathan said
“Wha’, you wan’ be like this Rasta?”
“Yeh, Rasta,” Angela mocked, “jus’ like you, some mawga foot dread. Move yo’self, you too facety.”
“You wicked, gal.” Bigga turned to Nathan. “No suh, what you need is fe eat a plate of steamfish, drink two Guiness, and smoke two spliffs. Thas how you ’andle a big gal like this’un. You do dat, and you break a woman six times before you break once.” Nathan and Angela looked at each other and burst into titters. Bigga took another spiteful swig of his Guinness.
“I’ll have to remember that,” Nathan finally said. “Too bad you don’t know anything about obeah.”
“Obeah. It jus’ science,” Bigga nonchalantly said, knowing eyes peering over his tipping beer bottle.
“What, you an obeah man, too? Like my granddad?”
“You wan’ me fe read you up?”
“Yeah,” Nathan offered Bigga his pen. Bigga fitfully wrapped his hands around it and closed his eyes. His face contorted with some unseen agony. He winced, tilting his head to the side. To Nathan, it seemed quite the performance, but his skepticism gave way to apprehension. Feigned or not, Bigga’s apparent fretfulness caused anxiety to creep into Nathan. Angela stared with equal, but silent fascination. Bigga set the pen down and foraged in his knapsack.
Overturning various accoutrements—feathers, beaks, horns, bones, hair, dried herbs, balls of clay bound with twine—he decided on a small ball, little bigger than a clear marble. Nathan’s rising anxiety returned to cool skepticism.
“I look in a it fe see who trouble you,” a fearful grimace of confirmation soon flickered on his face. “Here, take this. This will help protect you.”
Bigga tied a tiny leather pouch around Nathan’s neck. Nathan often watched his life play out like he was little more than a spectator. Of all the things to happen on this trip, this was the first to feel natural. The pouch necklace felt right. He asked the only question he was capable of mustering at this point. “How much?”
“Nutting,” Bigga said sharply. “You ’ave potential. Only need ta be taught. Keep it, man. It’s a gift.”
That evening Nathan found his suitcase perched on his bed, spilling its contents like a disemboweled stomach. The papers of his briefcase were scattered across the room. All of his belongings had been thoroughly rummaged.
“Where’s Edward, Aunt Karen?” Nathan demanded.
“Whas de matta, boy,” she flustered, “he went out fe visit Poppa’s grave. Him vex ’bout someting.”
Nathan stormed toward the door, until Angela blocked his way.
“You can’t go. Thas what he wan’ you fe do. Meet on ’is terms.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint him, now would I?”
“You no easy, cho,” she sucked her teeth disgustedly at him, a habit that never ceased to annoy him. He glared at her, but she turned her head from him. So, he left. Her voice echoed after him. “Lord Jesus, he no easy.”
The family cemetery was not far behind Edward’s home, halfway down a hill that leveled to a plateau. Rocks spit dust into the night air marking his passage. The overcast moon scowled. Nathan paused at the stone marker of his grandfather’s tomb. Edward stood calmly on the other side of the small cemetery, with his back turned toward Nathan.
“I still know what you did, even if I don’t have any proof. You know as well as I do, Jamaicans, especially Jamaican police, aren’t real fussy about proof,” Nathan shouted.
“Did what?” Edward asked. He turned, revealing a joyless smile as he slowly walked toward Nathan.
“Kill Poppa,” Nathan’s voice softened. He wasn’t sure at what point his grandfather became “Poppa” to him. Edward stepped closer.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Menace laced Edward’s calm measured words. Nathan took a few steps backwards.
“I bet you don’t. I won’t stop, you know. The will can be contested. Better yet, Aunt Karen wouldn’t sign anything over to someone she suspects killed her father.”
“You haven’t learned anything, have you? You’re in my country. My town. Your laws do not apply. Here, my will is done.” Edward’s hand patted against his side, toying with whatever hung there. “It’s a shame that I couldn’t find you sooner.”
“Sooner?”
“‘You hear how your people dem behave? Those rasclots from de shop got a hold of you. It was all I could do fe chase dem after dey tief you’.” Edward mimicked the gossip he would spread. “If only you hadn’t been so determined to come on your own. I, for one, was greatly saddened. Family is supposed to take care of family.”
Edward pulled his machete from its scabbard, the dim moonlight glinting off its razor-edged blade. He stood between Nathan and the road, blocking the path. Nathan dashed into the banana tree grove. The leaves cut into Nathan’s soft flesh as he ran. Still in beach attire, he cursed himself for not dressing more properly. The sand in his clothes scraped as he ran, rubbing his skin raw. The wind ripped through the leaves, creating the illusory sound of a deluge.
Nathan stumbled blindly through the trees. Edward stalked close behind him, slower, but with sure footfalls, like a man who knew the grove like the back of his hand. A truck banged loudly along the road behind him. Above him. Beside him. He didn’t know. He felt the truck rumble past as if his own stomach suddenly grumbled. Nathan’s breath grew ragged quickly. The trees thinned ahead. Nathan hoped that was because they led to the back of the house.
The trees opened into an isolated clearing.
Wan moonlight weakly lit the area. Nathan’s arms swung wildly as he ground to a halt. As he regained his bearings, he realized that the house was at the top of the next hill over. He swallowed deeply, his breathing little more than short, dry rasps. Nathan heard a tuneless whistle from behind him. Edward gripped the machete’s taped handle firmly, tantalizingly slicing the air in front of him. He feinted to one side, letting Nathan flinch impotently, for the sheer joy of extending his game. Nathan’s exposed skin rippled with gooseflesh. Nausea pooled in his belly, threatening to overwhelm him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as if he had backed into a socket. Edward halted and looked around. He felt it, too. Something approached.
The shadows stirred nearby. A forlorn wail erupted all about the trees. Birds fluttered. All else seemed to fall silent. A harsh grating echoed closer, like a train braking in the woods. Edward craned his neck from side to side. The clanging of huge chains dragged in the distance. Nathan felt the blood in his veins freeze with terror. A foul, dank odor seared his nostrils. It accompanied the nearing cacophony of a maelstrom of metal.
A shape slowly materialized into view.
Twin, red pyres peered through the night. The abomination was twice the size of a bull. It was mostly black, with white patches, approximating the shape of a hornless goat. It had no mouth. A collar strained against its thick neck, attached to a series of chains that dragged along the ground. One of its front feet looked like a horse’s hoof; the other, a human foot. Its back legs were reminiscent of goat legs. A cow-like tail swooshed broadly over its back. The raw stench of wet fur gagged both Nathan and Edward. The grotesquerie seemed to have absorbed all manner of life in its travels.
The rolling calf galloped faster than any living horse. Nathan simply fell and scampered backwards as fast as he could away from the horror. Nathan shrank away, hiding in the shadows, praying it wouldn’t notice him. He watched in horror as the creature chased down Edward and cornered him. Edward swung his machete haphazardly at it, for all the good it did him. The rolling calf pinned Edward with its front legs. The horse hoof planted squarely in Edward’s gut, the human foot pressed against his neck. It had no mouth, but it bent its face low toward him. Whatever awful exhalations it expelled choked Edward. Nathan saw the comically quizzical expression on Edward’s face as his skin shriveled, as if his insides had been sucked dry. Even as he closed his eyes, Nathan still heard the snapping, the rending, the sounds of … breaking. Then the dull thud of a machete hitting the ground. When he opened his eyes, Edward had vanished without a trace.
The rolling calf turned toward Nathan.
Nathan cringed against a tree, his arms thrown up, waiting for the inevitable to play itself out. The rolling calf snorted its dreadful cough. Nathan’s mouth dried, as if hot sand filled it. His throat closed as a scream died on his lips. Each desperate gasp pained his chest. His muscles convulsed into seizing knots. The howl of the wind fluttered the banana trees, creating their rain-like patter. The rolling calf stopped just short of him. Its flame-socketed eyes locked onto Nathan’s primitive pendant. It exhaled with a frustrated humphing of a donkey’s bray as if it were reminded of something. The whole area grew hot with each breath, its snorts exuding blue flames, far hotter than the tiny flames should’ve produced. The rolling calf fixed its gaze toward Nathan. He peeked from behind his shielding arms. He saw something familiar, like the essence of country geniality hidden among the horror.
Nathan closed his eyes. He waited for the pain that never came. When he chanced opening his eyes, he found himself alone. Except for the red scarf that lay at his feet. That was when he knew: the farm had to be worked, but obeah was the true family business. And it was his turn to run it.
Von and Earl Duperon glided past each other in the kitchen, knowing each other’s moves. A choreographed dance of reaching for hand towels, opening the refrigerator and trading off frying pans they alternately stirred then tasted, all the while without touching each other. All the while in silence while she strained to think of something safe to talk about. Earl was the first to break the silence.
“Are you nervous to meet him?”
“Who?” Von was careful not to make direct eye contact with him. These days, such an act seemed too intimate. A challenge. A careful dare to search for anything familiar, anything that once was. Or worse, only finding a stranger’s eyes peering back at her. He stirred his Alfredo sauce, an attentive eye to its color and texture, but all she knew was that he never made meatloaf much these days. He would rather conquer some new recipe, attempt some exotic dish than fix something she enjoyed. She liked meatloaf. No need to dress it in some fancy sauce. Just plain old meatloaf.
“You know who. Your new stepdad.” Earl piled dirty dishes into the dishwater without consideration. He slammed the last plate into place. A blue, plastic one from the set they bought the year they were married. Their everyday set. Scratched and water-worn, the color bled from them. “God, why do you have to make each conversation like pulling teeth?”
“He’s not my stepdad. He’s the guy my mom married.”
“That’s awfully long to put on a Hallmark card.”
“Let’s just get through this. She’s only in town, hell, in the country for a month. Two good visits and I’m back to being the favored daughter.”
“The bar’s not that high. Your brother and sister still aren’t talking to her.”
“I know. But I thought only one visit would seem … obligatory.” Von dried her hands as she swept the kitchen one last time for anything out of place. She tried to tell herself that it was the obligation of family that made her agree to allow her mother to visit. That it was the duty of the firstborn to protect their siblings, even if it meant hosting their mother. But while that all sounded good, the real reason was guilt. Forty years worth of her mother’s hooks in her compelling her to accept a visit or else be tortured by the idea of being a bad daughter. The whole prospect made her more nauseated than she already felt.
“But two is okay? I’d hate for you to do the bare minimum to keep a relationship going.”
“The key is to space them out. You know, make it seem like there’s more to the relationship than there is.”
The soft knock at the front door severed their dueling glares. Von wiped her hands on her pants and took a deep breath. She chanced a glance at Earl, who nodded.
Isabelle Bogle (now Isabelle Aster) loomed so much larger in Von’s memory than did the diminutive woman who stood before her. Von hugged her with the awkward embrace of a security point pat down.
“Yvonne, it’s good that you found time to fit me into your schedule.” Her mother still insisted on calling her Yvonne, despite her legal name change. She smiled with the predatory gleam of a shark. “This is your new dad, Neville.”
“Don’t do that. It’s a lot of pressure,” Neville said, and concentrated on wiping his feet on the doormat, probably to dodge the awkward “do we hug or shake hands” dance. The thick gray of his hair was cut low, and he nearly matched Isabelle’s burnt honey complexion, despite her orange glaze of foundation. He pushed past them into the house with a portly waddle, his expansive belly nudging the both of them. Like with aging, with death men got the better part of the bargain; there was a social cachet to men who were widowed. The cloak of sorrow made them sexy in a way that the stigma of divorce couldn’t. Divorce meant someone or someones had failed. Widowhood meant someone had stuck it out to the end.
“Anyway, if I want a dad, mine’s just down the street.” Not that Von had seen him in months, but the ability to be absent from another’s life was what the two of them had in common. She probably owed him a phone call. “This is my husband, Earl.”
“The ’Ville’s in the house!” Earl shouted, and reached out in a wide arc to grab Neville’s hand. Earl had a wild swagger to his grin, a contagious charm when he wanted. A forced light danced in his eyes, but, if Von closed her eyes and listened to his laugh, she heard her father’s chuckle.
“Too much, honey,” Von tugged on his arm, a plastic smile plastered on her face.
“Earl.” Isabelle pronounced it like some gauche mistake, so beneath her delicate sensibilities, so utterly … American. Except for his color, Earl behaved exactly like her father. When he walked, his bearing and shamble was so similar that the fact that her mother never commented upon it spoke volumes. Earl no longer worried about pleasing his mother-in-law and engaged her as little as possible—a series of head nods and “uh huhs.” Similar to the way he handled Von these days.
Isabelle glanced about the house, crinkling her nose as she inspected the place. Von expected her to run a gloved hand along the bookshelves, with her other hand free to speed dial her friends to report on the state of the house. “Oo-wee,” Isabelle clucked in conclusion, the house not kept the way she would have.
When they arrived in the living room, Isabelle and Neville took separate couches, dividing them by sex as Von joined her mother. Distance didn’t stop Isabelle and Neville from bickering, correcting, and talking over one another without heat, as they discussed the best directions to get back to their hotel, whether to use a whole sheet or scrap of paper to jot down a note, whether it was warm enough to wear a jacket. Each married over 40 years before divorce or death caught up to them, they understood the rhythm of relationships.
Von hoped to disguise the appearance of her boredom by tapping at her laptop. Earl fixed his gaze on her. She exited her programs without meeting his eyes.
“Is it almost time for tea?” Isabelle asked.
“Somewhere over the Atlantic, I’m sure,” Von said.
Von’s mother was only conveniently British. Though born in Jamaica, she did her schooling in England. Tea time became a sort of game they played, as if any of their relatives in England still practiced high tea. Today it would have to be 1:00 p.m. rather than 4:00 p.m. because Isabelle wanted to eat at MCL Cafeteria to take advantage of the all-too-American senior citizens’ discount rather than eat with them. Which was fine since, rather than “biscuits” or scones, she’d have to make do with day-old chocolate chip cookies. From McDonald’s.
With the ease and forgetfulness of two people for whom the rest of the world disappeared, the chatter between Isabelle and Neville lapsed into thick Jamaican patois. Von believed in her heart that this was partly designed to exclude Earl. She rolled her eyes and headed toward the kitchen. Earl followed.
“You were chatting with him again.” Earl’s whisper had the steel of accusation to it.
“Him, who?” Von turned the heat up on the kettle of water. She attempted to find matching mugs but couldn’t. Too many had broken over the years. She gathered the two remaining from their original set, a Star Trek: The Next Generation one, and another commemorating Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding. She couldn’t believe it had survived all these years.
“We’re going to do this again?”
“I ended it. I keep telling you it was nothing but an internet … fling. I guess.” Von rifled through the cabinets to find something suitable to serve tea from.
“So, what had you so occupied on the computer?” His arms folded over one another, Earl leaned against the counter.
“Work. Hell, taking my turns at Scrabble would preoccupy me if it meant,” Von lowered her voice another notch, “not having to pay complete attention to my mom.”
“Work? You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes. Are we going to go through this every time I log onto the computer?”
“Yes. Shit. No. I don’t know. I’m still getting my head around it all. How you could get feelings for … a set of 1s and 0s?”
Von prayed he didn’t notice her wince at the dismissal of what she had shared. It was all emotional, that was as far as it went, she had told him, and it was over. She eyed the bottle of vodka in the glass-doored cabinet above the kitchen sink. Her mouth watered at the thought of a drink, but she knew she shouldn’t. Not until she made her choice. She slid a stack of saltine crackers alongside the cookies, hoping they would settle her stomach. “There’s nothing to get your head around. It’s over.”
The kettle whistled, sending them to neutral corners. Von arranged the cups on a tray. She used the champagne flute from their wedding as the creamer. She poured some lumpy brown sugar into a small, faded, blue plastic bowl. She slammed the tray down in front of Isabelle harder than she intended.
Serving himself, Neville said, “Add raisins to your brown sugar. It keeps it from going hard.” He was one of those types that was an authority on everything. “The Chinese keep buying up all of the sugar fields in Jamaica. They process the sugar too fine. Not enough molasses left in them, and that’s what’s good for you.”
Reminded of something, Isabelle snapped her fingers and dove for her purse. She fished around in the huge thing for minutes. Finally, she withdrew a photograph. “Look what I found.”
Her grandmother—who had forced everyone to call her “Aunt Mame” instead of anything warm like “grandma”—posed beside, yet apart, from her daughters. They stood oldest to youngest in descending degrees of misery, bitterness plain in all of their eyes.
Earl leaned in to see better. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“There are 16 of us. No, 17. Aunt Mame insisted that we count Zaccie even though he never made it to term.”
“You look like your mother when she was younger,” Neville said to Von. Von resisted the urge to spit in his eye. “It’s like looking at the ghost of future past.”
“The dying are travelers, going on to a better world. Sometimes they get lost. A duppy haunt me up once.” Isabelle sipped her tea without blowing on it first. “Back when your father and I were having problems.”
“So, for forty years?” Von asked. Earl shot her a “don’t poke the crazy” stare.
“Hmpf.” Isabelle’s face twisted in an odd expression. “I was asleep, and suddenly this weight was on my chest. I tried to swing my arm out to wake your father, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t catch my breath. Then suddenly it was gone. I turned on the light, and your father wasn’t even in bed. He was downstairs watching television.”
“Don’t mind her,” Von said to Earl, “she has a duppy story for every occasion. Treefoot. Rollin’ calf. There’s a whole menagerie of Jamaican bedtime folk tales. Any excuse to tell one of their stories.”
“It’s better than any obeah man.” Neville stretched his arm out along the couch and settled into it, leaving his tea untouched before him. He dabbed his forehead with a red handkerchief that didn’t match any part of his outfit. “They tell you stuff you don’t want to hear. Stuff you don’t want anyone else to know. They scare me sometimes.”
“What’s obeah?” Earl asked.
“It’s like the Jamaican version of voodoo,” Von stage-whispered.
“Like my sister Carmen,” Isabelle said. “When she gets sick, before she go to the doctor, she go see an obeah man. Her daughter, too. Me, I don’t truck with no obeah nonsense. I remember walking into town once with my mother …”
Von closed her eyes, the way she had when she was a little girl and her mother started one of her stories.
Isabelle was back home for a visit. A cock crowed in the distance, but, by six in the morning, Isabelle and Aunt Mame were well on their way to the cave to collect water for the day. Isabelle balanced her basin on the nest of long plaits on her head. A thick mist rolled in from the hills. The wind stirred the trees, the banana leaves whispering.
Someone beat a drum. The arrhythmic pounding echoed from all around them, the sound scattered by the early morning fog. An old woman carried a lantern, its wan light smothered by the cloud. She swatted the drum she cradled in the crook of her other arm. She wore a blue gingham dress with dirt smudges along its front. A red bandana tied her hair back.
“Isabelle!” she said sharply.
Called by name by the stranger, Isabelle froze. Aunt Mame didn’t move either, but she didn’t show the apprehension of being approached by a complete stranger.
The woman took Isabelle by the chin, turning her head side-to-side, her hand with the grip of a vice despite her age. “You have the mark of God on your forehead, but you’re disobedient.”
Aunt Mame nodded. She followed the old woman along the washed-out road, pausing long enough to turn around to call after Isabelle. “Come, nuh, gal. She to read you up.”
They approached a dingy shack of gray planks. Some of the boards had been painted sky blue at one time, as one wall was still washed with the faded color. Log stumps raised the house from sitting directly on the dirt mound. Stones strewn throughout the yard, looking more like they’d been accidently unearthed rather than forming a deliberate pathway. Barefoot children with their unbuttoned shirts or their one-piece dresses, scampered about, not noticing the rough ground. They said nothing, only watched as the trio entered the house.
Isabelle was careful not to run her hand along the rough-hewn banister for fear of splinters. She took a seat on a dilapidated vinyl chair in the gloomy living room. A card table was turned off to the side. Knickknacks, a random assortment of kitschy figurines, lined the shelves.
The woman hung the paraffin lamp in the corner and, without a word, began beating her drum. She bucked and jerked to the erratic rhythm, dancing as invitation for the spirits, though it looked to Isabelle like the dying spasms of a madwoman. The old woman’s skin seemed so much darker indoors; her face was a filigree of wrinkles polished by sweat. Without buildup or crescendo, she stopped.
“Put two shillings into my hand,” the crone said.
Isabelle suspected that the woman wanted to see if she wore a wedding ring. But Isabelle wore her band on the wrong hand, not wanting anyone to know she was married unless she told them. The woman’s claw of a hand was thin but so alive as it wrapped Isabelle’s own.
“There is a man in your life.” The woman fixed her large, piercing eyes on Isabelle, their intensity unsettling. “You are conflicted.”
“I’m here for you to tell me something,” Isabelle said, avoiding the obeah woman’s fishing.
“The spirit can’t go through because you’re too tough to break.” The woman turned to Aunt Mame. “If you put ten shillings in my hand, I could go further.”
Aunt Mame dropped the coins into the woman’s palm, all the while complaining about her stubborn, willful daughter who ran off with the first man she found. Off to America, away from her family. Her roots.
The woman pressed the coins to her forehead. “The spirits have something to say,” she said in an all-too-knowing tone.
“Lord Jesus,” Isabelle said. “Duppies not dead out if they get paid?”
“Don’t vain the name of the Lord,” Aunt Mame said.
“You have a brown boyfriend,” the woman said. “You lived near a burial ground.”
Isabelle nodded, even though everyone lived near a burial ground since they buried on their property.
“Your boyfriend has another girlfriend. And there will be an altercation.” The woman slumped into her couch as if spent. She waved them off.
Aunt Mame gave her ten more shillings.
“Come,” the woman led Aunt Mame to a back room.
Isabelle wondered who the woman pretended her ancestry from. All of the healers and mystics claimed to be descended from Abyssian royalty, Jesus, or John the Baptist. The door to the back room creaked open. Aunt Mame emerged with a smile on her face. She smelled of spiced olive oil.
“A whole coolness has come about me.”
“When you’re rubbed down with oil, it’ll cool you down,” Isabelle said.
“A spirit haunt your mother. The oil will protect her,” the old woman said. “You too foolish. Come on, I’ve had enough.” Isabelle grabbed her water basin with one hand and Aunt Mame with the other. The old woman followed her out of her shop and down the street.
“They will all leave you. Your every relationship will sour. You will be a poison to your own.” The woman stopped and convulsed for a moment, sputtering nonsense in a strange tongue. Isabelle and Aunt Mame paused midstep. The woman ceased her tremors and stared at them. “Someone is going to have an abortion, and then someone is going to die. This is curse you to the third generation.”
“To the third generation?” Earl asked.
“The woman did love her threes. Those obeah cons love to try to shame you when they don’t get their money,” Isabelle said.
“The third generation?” Von repeated Earl’s question. “Does that start with Aunt Mame or you?” Von asked.
“Either way you’d be included, Yvonne. Besides, I had to have two abortions, and I’m just fine.”
“You did?”
“I’m sure we’ve talked about this. I wanted to have six children, one right after the other, but the doctor said that it was too high a risk for me. That’s why there’s the large age gap between you and your brother.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about this before?” Von asked.
“I’m sure I did. What does it matter?” Isabelle sipped her tea but crinkled her nose at it now that it had cooled. “No one believes that crap.”
“‘Crap?’ That’s awfully American sounding,” Earl said. Von shot him a glare.
“Don’t be foolish. Anyway, the obeah people them, they just con artists. They try to get a read on you and twist your greatest fears against you.”
“Why are you so dismissive about what she said? What she predicted came true,” Von said.
“What do you mean?”
“I love him, but Daddy wasn’t the most faithful of men. And you did get into that shouting match with that one woman who tried to sue for child support.”
“Hmpf,” Isabelle said without commitment. It wasn’t her most dignified moment, and she hated to be reminded of it.
“Obeah works through belief. Either you have a spirit in you, or you don’t. You have to choose.” Neville folded his red handkerchief and tucked it back into his pocket.
§
Gentle snores drifted across the gulf between Von and Earl, the exigencies of life reduced to the way of slumber. In bed, in dreams, anything was possible. She could go anywhere she wanted to and start anew. Like clearing away dishes after a tea party: she could give the illusion of tending to someone’s need without any real exertion or risk on her part, even if the someone in need was herself. Beyond this place of misery and anger, surviving the wounds of childhood, but not wanting its scars to last the first, second, or third generation.
Her mother made sense to her in a way. Von thought of the story she told herself about her life, like she were cursed and bad things hunted her like a hungry lion hot on the scent of a wounded gazelle. But it all came down to a choice. That was what her mother was, a series of choices, the choice to strangle relationships to within an inch of their lives, the choice to remain in a bad marriage, in a situation that made her miserable. Von thought about the picture of her grandmother, mother, and aunties and saw her future. Bleak. Miserable. Bitter. One day she might stumble into the living room of her child and mutter about her ingratitude, the refrain to her same, sad family song, ticking off the litany of offenses, both real and imagined. Each slight clung to and nursed like a coddled infant at her venomous bosom. She didn’t want to join the ranks of sad desperation. She wanted to be free from it all, to go where she could heal from the mistakes of her past, to be someone … whole.
To the third generation, the voice now whispered.
She would be the master of her fate, not the legacy of her mother’s fears. And she dared anyone to tell her otherwise. It was her choice.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be too late to create a life of joy with Earl. She wasn’t sure he even much liked her these days. Nothing would spite her mother like her finding happiness. For a brief moment, Von wondered what life would be like if everyone told the truth. Whenever words landed in a way that cut. Whenever actions failed to live up to expectations or frustrated. Whenever life hurt or the heart was denied. To live in the open, in complete honesty, to forge life from truth. Life was messy, and there were no easy answers, especially after so much deception. She pondered how to begin repairs to correct the mistakes of the past and move forward. She just wanted a chance at finding happiness. If not for herself … her thoughts drifted off while ticking off mistakes to correct.
She patted her belly and dreamed of red.
Blue was her favorite color.
He touched the glass case one, last time before returning to the desk, but his handprint lingered on, an ethereal smudge above the backlit, cerulean shadow of her face. No matter how often he tried to write their story, he couldn’t shake free of the lies he had built around them. He suspected that even if he could discover the truth, it would pass him by unrecognized, as ephemeral and false as a balladeer’s concept of love. Love knew you better and could hurt you worse. Where fear faded so did love, and he nurtured a delightful terror, a trembling fascination bred in tales. He wanted to reach her and make her understand, but all he had left was the elusive call of memory.
A decade out of fashion, his pin-striped suit hung well on him. A man of occasion, his father would have called him. A head full of gray hair, a filigree of wrinkles around his gray eyes, his manicured nails adjusted his tie one final time before his appointment. The door chimed fifteen minutes earlier than expected. If he didn’t have to inspect the merchandise, he wouldn’t have bothered. The living offered little except their stories.
“May I help you?” he said.
“You the old dude who buys stuff?” A young boy looked past him with heavy-lidded, half-upturned eyes. His camouflaged hoodie, drawn up, shadowed most of his face. He under-enunciated his words.
“I am. I’m also quite busy. I have a one o’clock appointment.”
“Yeah, with me. JaQuon Wilson.”
“I see … JaQuon. Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I should be a lot of things.” The bulk of the hoodie hid his husky frame, and JaQuon allowed his wrinkled clothes to hang from him in calculated slovenliness. His book bag, half-slung over his shoulder, slid into the crook of his elbow before he hitched it back. He avoided eye contact all the while clutching a skateboard to his chest, protecting it as if it held all the secrets of childhood.
“Is that the item in question?”
“Yeah.” JaQuon gripped the skateboard even tighter.
“It won’t do. I have quite … specific requirements.”
“I know what you want. You think I’d be caught in this creepy joint if I didn’t have what you wanted.” His determined eyes half-pleading with him, JaQuon puffed up his chest and stepped broadly, all bravado and empty swagger.
“Come in.”
The man’s hard-soled shoes sat by the doorway, one pointed in the opposite direction of the other so no one knew if he was coming or going. Walking barefoot into the room, he checked his watch, age spots, like tiny scars, on the back of his hand.
The great thing about wealth was that things mattered less. Not the trappings of power. Not the social jousting of civilized behavior behind smiles like gleaming swords. Money excused eccentricities, and only the dreams mattered. That was the last lesson his father had taught him before he went away, leaving behind a blood-splattered envelope—addressed to him in exquisite calligraphy—shaded by the slumping body with the large hole in its head on the couch.
Thigh-high clusters of golden ropes of grass, their pallid color from lack of water, provided beauty in their dying. Burrs and brambles clung to his pants and socks, scraping his thin skin as he walked without care, a boy with the blush of ruddy peach in his cheeks. Resting in the crook of a low-lying branch, he daydreamed of the castle atop a hill he would one day build for a princess.
Glass enclosed the porch. He dreamed of tending hydrangeas, lilies, and morning glories. From the patio they would sit and watch the sunsets together. The paint fresh and the wood polished, the furniture stopped short of being inviting, museum pieces meant to be stared at and appreciated, but not for too long. Serviceable rooms held little decoration as not to give too much away. No knickknacks, bric-a-brac, or curios; no pictures, no portraits. Thick curtains didn’t rustle when he moved past them, a ghost in his own home.
“Your house is bigger on the inside,” JaQuon said.
“Is it? I hadn’t really noticed.” He leaned down, and whispered, “It lies, you know. The walls have ears and move to confuse you when you aren’t paying attention.”
“You ain’t right in the head, old man.”
“You’re the one trying to sell me your skateboard,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Ain’t much to tell. I go to Persons Crossing Elementary. I’m nine years old.”
“What’s that? Fourth grade?”
“Yeah, I stay with my grandparents. My mother doesn’t come around much anymore.”
He thought he’d seen JaQuon before: a latchkey kid, after a fashion, who punched in the code to their garage probably because he so often lost his key. JaQuon wandered about the sitting room, without shame or pretense, directed by the insatiable curiosity of childhood.
“So, what’s your deal anyway?” JaQuon studied an empty curio cabinet.
“My … deal?”
“Word is you buy stuff people died on. That’s the story, anyway.”
“Stories take on a life of their own, fireside tales spun into morbid tapestries of death and loss and remembrance. That’s the point of them, isn’t it? Voices of the past, grief working itself out in patterns of familiarity. Objects hold memories of a life lived, but the memories of the death outweigh the memories of the life.”
“You talk funny.”
“Do you wish to hear this or not?”
JaQuon nodded.
“It started with the couch my father died on. My mother set it outside to be hauled away, but I had it brought to my study. She never came near my room after that. When I curled up on it, I could still feel his presence. At night I still smelled him, the scent of loneliness and pain.”
“Dang.” JaQuon gave the word an extra syllable for emphasis.
“My collection has grown over the years. That chair over there? A grandmother of seven fell asleep while knitting and watching her stories, to never wake up. A man stroked himself out on the toilet, not to put too crass a point on it, straining during his morning sit down. It reminds me that death comes at anytime and there is no place safe from it.”
“You’re making that up,” JaQuon said.
“Like most stories, some parts are real. But the stories comfort me.”
Death was separation, leaving unchanging echoes of the people they used to be. He was the caretaker of a grove of memories, his and others. Kept like a scrapbook, taken out and revisited, an echo chamber of death. Grasped onto like a skateboard he couldn’t bear to let go of.
A time of remembrances, of the day, of days past, of summertime dresses and walks along the canal, of hands held. Her leg brushed against his, and he still received the same thrill from her presence as the first day he saw her.
A farmhouse had stood on the field when he finally bought it. He covered her blue eyes as he walked her to the spot.
“This will one day be your castle,” he said.
“But it’s such a beautiful farmhouse.”
“We raze history when the memories become unbearable.”
She smiled with her upticked chin, leaned into him, and kissed him on the cheek. She filled his spaces. That was what love did.
“What am I going to do with a skateboard?” he asked.
“What did you do with the couch?” JaQuon said.
“I can sit on the couch.”
“You can skate on the skateboard. You can sit on the motherfucker for all I …”
“Language.”
“What?”
“Watch your language. You have plenty of words to choose from in order to express yourself. Why limit yourself to the basest ones. It’s so … common.”
“You a weird, old dude.”
“You haven’t told me the story of the skateboard.”
JaQuon peered at him, his eyes suddenly seeming too large for his face. His legs quavered, and he sat down on the couch without thinking. His thin legs about to give out on him. “It was my brother’s. I loved my brother, Demarcus. I was the oldest. It was my job to protect him, you know. My mom used to always hover over us. Wouldn’t even let us walk down the two courts to our friends’ house.”
“It’s a mother’s job to overprotect. It’s difficult to let their children rush off into the dangers of the world. As if they can keep you safe by force of will and control.”
“Sometimes, it was like she wasn’t happy unless we were rolled up in bubblewrap before going outside. Playing on the lawn only where she could see us.
“Demarcus really wanted this skateboard. We tag-teamed mom for weeks, wearing her down. Demarcus was in third grade, so if she let him have a skateboard, she’d have to give me more room to … be. She bought him this board. Plus knee pads. Elbow pads. Mouthguard. Cup. And a helmet. The next two weeks she insisted on watching him learn to board. And we counted down the days until we’d be able to run free. She began to let us go. Just a bit. We could go over to the next court to play. She even stopped driving by … like we wouldn’t notice her car. Though a couple times, I swear I saw her peeking over bushes. Eventually, she trusted us to return. ‘Don’t worry about it, mom, we just ride around on sidewalks, and we just sort of push ourselves along.’
“No one wore a helmet. Definitely not our friends. That stuff was for babies.
“Demarcus wasn’t even going that fast. He turned the corner, and the wheels stopped when it hit a break in the sidewalk; but he didn’t. It threw him from the board. I watched him fly through the air, his arms flapping like a drunk bird. He landed head-first into the sidewalk, and I laughed.
“I laughed.
“It was like one of those funniest home videos. But then he didn’t get up. They said it did something to his brain, and I had laughed.”
JaQuon didn’t wipe away his tears, probably wasn’t aware that they trailed down his face. “So, you want to take it off my hands?”
The man leaned forward. In this chair a man cheered on his favorite basketball team and had a heart attack. “Five dollars.”
“I can do better than that.”
“I didn’t amass my wealth by throwing good money after bad. I make wise investments. Hold onto it for a while. Offer’s good. Whenever.”
It wasn’t about the money. JaQuon couldn’t bring himself to allow it to go out in the trash. For him to let it go was to begin to let go of his brother, and, as painful a reminder as the skateboard was, forgetting his brother was worse.
Death was the pruning shears of childhood. Sometimes, to grow, you had to lose something. Sometimes, you had to force people to grow and change, shock them back into life, or else they may become a ghost trapped in a museum.
She found the first stray by the back door, sick and wounded. A large, white husky with eyes the color of overripe persimmons. She couldn’t leave it behind: she had already pledged her heart to it. Rivulets of blood streaked when she shifted its matted fur from unseen wounds. Its head heavy in her lap, it didn’t move, but simply closed one eye. A sullen nod of its head, its tongue lolled across its lips in pathetic repose. She hand-fed it pieces of torn chicken collected from her plate into its bowl. Stroking its fur for its pleasure, then for hers, as she nursed it back to full health.
He bought the dog a mate, and they patrolled the grounds, fiercely protective of her.
A cat park had once circled the outer gardens, but she was allergic. He loved cats, but he loved her more. Each cat was buried in a carpeted casket under a brass nameplate. His shoes click-clacked, click-clacked, click-clacked along the plated sidewalk each day.
“Come upstairs. I have something I wish to show you,” he said.
“I ain’t going upstairs with you,” JaQuon said.
“You’ve already come into my house.”
“True. And you are wise to be cautious. I was going to show you her bed.”
“I for damn sure don’t need to go to your bedroom with you.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just get so caught up when I tell the stories. I guess I just miss her.”
“Who?”
“Helen. My wife. I was going to show her to you. I’m not going to touch you. I just need someone to know. Someone who’d understand.”
An unspoken knowledge leapt between them. JaQuon nodded. The old man led the way up the stairs without any tiresome soliloquies about the state of his bones or kidneys.
The first time he saw her, she captivated him from the stage of the vaudeville show. She had yellow hair straight out of a fairy tale and eyes the color of a frost-covered pond. Her smile, a melancholy upturn of her lips. She wasn’t the strongest dancer, her steps too pensive and calculated, like clunky prose that flowed from the head, not from the heart.
He just wanted a chance to be near her, to watch her up close. Every time you see a beautiful woman alone, someone was tired of being with her. That was the secret men told themselves. He dared asking her for a dance. Hers was an inexhaustible beauty. He feared touching her. She might have consumed him. The difference in their age was nothing, he told himself.
She loved to swim and spent hours picking out her bathing suit from J.C. Penney’s. He would build the largest pool in Indianapolis. Large enough for a hotel, but just for them. Far away from ogling eyes. The inside painted blue and lit from underneath, its glow lent a bilious tinge to the hillside. They swam in the summer months, often sharing too many glasses of wine. Lost in their moment, an eternity in routine.
They stopped in front of a set of double doors.
“Is this your bedroom?” JaQuon asked without any nervousness.
“It was her favorite room in the house.” He rested his hand on the door handle, attempting to gather the strength to open it again so soon. “When we got married, her father stood up during the reception. He wanted me to take care of his little girl. All of her. They had a tradition of saving everything. He handed me a box. It had all of her baby teeth.”
“That shit is weird.”
“I remembered thinking, Thank God I didn’t marry their son. I’d have his bronzed foreskin or something in here.”
JaQuon stared at him for a heartbeat then stifled a chuckle.
“Do you know how the Egyptians preserved the dead?”
“They were into mummies and stuff. My mom took us to the Children’s Museum back when …” JaQuon trailed off.
“Their funeral rites were the ritual re-enactment of the acts that raised their god Osiris from the dead. Life, even death, boiled down to ritual. The act of remembrance, more than the process. They took a long hook, shoved it up the nose, and took out the brain. They cut open the side and emptied the abdomen then washed out the cavity with wine then stuffed it with myrrh and frankincense.”
“Ain’t that the stuff they brought baby Jesus?”
“Yes. Then they sewed the body back up and wrapped it with bandages of fine linen cloth smeared with gum to glue it to the body.”
Like a cloth coffin? Sounds like they were cheap. Wrap someone in a bed sheet and call it a day.”
“Except that they then put them in coffins. They wrapped each of the organs and put them in Canopic jars. Each one shaped into the form of a head of the four sons of Horus, who were charged to protect them.”
“That sounds cool.”
“You young lot want the scares and blood of it all. Always with the blood, never enough evisceration for your prurient minds. But for us, the old folks, ones who have lost, we cling to the hope of contact with the other side. We all want some … consolation. Consideration. Something from that place. To let us know it’s okay. That it’s all worth it. But the dead stay silent and keep their secrets to themselves.”
Their first Christmas together, he spent three weeks in the woods hanging lights. Cobalt lights, purchased from all the stores in the city, strung in the trees surrounding the house. When he turned them on, the shimmer haloed the treetops for miles around.
The lights bathed them in sapphire luminescence when they stepped in. JaQuon twirled, wide-eyed, as he took in the room. A bank of shelves lined the wall. Jars, like soldiers at parade rest, awaited inspection. Dark shapes bobbed in clear liquid, like raw meat drained of their color. The serpentine coil of intestines piled in one jar. Kidneys floated in another. Liver. Stomach. Lungs. On and on, a collection of viscera cleaned and preserved. Attending their distant mistress. On a stand next to her glass coffin was her heart.
“They couldn’t get her eyes right. They were the most delicate shade of blue, but they lost something in the process.”
The old man ran his hand along the glass surface, the reliquary of memories, wanting all the things he had left behind. The finest linen bandages held her together, dipped in preservatives and molded and shaped to her body. He couldn’t imagine her sprayed, sliced, waxed, painted like some sort of museum piece doll. Wanting her preserved, a beautiful snapshot of how she was in life, he wondered if she cared what color he would dress her in. She lingered. A forgotten pair of glasses here, her favorite pen there. Afraid to disturb anything. Hoping in vain that it wouldn’t hurt as much tomorrow.
“I don’t want to get to know who I am without her.” He left one hand on the glass sarcophagus, a lingering touch before turning to JaQuon. “I think I’ll purchase your skateboard, after all. It’s all right to let him go. Five hundred dollars suffice?”
JaQuon nodded absently, his silent revulsion rooting him to the spot.
“I’ll know when my collection is complete. I thought I knew what I was looking for. You know how there’s a word on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.” He pressed the bills into JaQuon’s hand then checked the time on his broken pocket watch, his age spots like tiny scars on the back of his hand, knowing that the time was always theirs. His and Helen’s. “I suppose it’s time for you to go.”
§
Writing filled the days, scribbles that scratched toward the truth, each second a graveside marker, a matter of figuring out how to end the story. He lived a life steeped in regret. Not the man, the husband, he was meant to be. Neither able to do right by her nor live without her. He drifted until he found comfort in dead things and found purpose, knitting together some of the broken bits inside of him by simply not letting go of any part of her.
The first time he told her he loved her, she said she didn’t believe him. Trust was a razor, she said, and belief had to be earned. The threat of competition, the possibility of her absences reduced his breath to hollow gasps. He mourned her loss though she was still with him. The memory of her, a ghost that wandered the hallways. His heartbeat, an aching flutter whenever she neared; her presence, a shadow within him. His thoughts drifted to her. Her skin the smell of crushed dandelions and jasmine. Her touch along his arm, the gentle tread of a spider along its web. He had words to describe his love.
§
[But it was the love written in the margins of journals. His alone.]
Everyone called the church “The Underground.” It began as a joke, as their services were held in the basement of United Presbyterian Church. The building was everything he loved in a building. Mostly that it was old, over a hundred years old. Things that withstood the rigors of time had been tested and found true. It had turrets, a slate tile roof, its design held prisoner by an architect’s demented whimsy. And it had character. Like all old buildings, it had personality. Hallways that went nowhere. Nooks and crannies and misplaced alcoves that served no purpose. He volunteered for so many programs, such as the Exile and Restoration—the E/R, they liked to call the ministry—as much to be in the building as to be with her.
She waited at the top of the stairs, head held high. Not asking for pity, nor accepting it. The old building had been grandfathered in, not having to meet the code for being handicap accessible. The people rushed to carry her down the steps, held aloft as a queen in procession. Every night, the same routine. It took him weeks to screw together the courage to talk to her.
“What is that you’re wearing?” he asked when she noticed him staring at her. She noticed everything. Her eyes were cerulean. They weren’t really, but he believed the word cerulean wasn’t used nearly often enough.
“An asymmetrical caftan, cut on the bias.”
He didn’t know what that meant. He only knew that her dress had a kente cloth pattern. A bead necklace draped her, long loops bunched around her neck like a high collar then swooped along her top. She jangled as she moved. With her accent, her English was succulent. No, it wasn’t the right word, but it described the sensation he felt when he heard her speak, which made it the right word after all.
She toyed with the edges of her caftan, tugging at it in an unconscious way, drawing attention to her chest and he found himself staring. He leaned against the wall in an awkward posture, hoping to not loom as tall over her. Nor did he wish to seem like he was constantly trying to look down her top. She didn’t appear to care either way.
Her feet were hooks. He pretended not to notice and figured it impolite to ask. Not everyone was comfortable with some of the refugees being vampires, but the church’s mission wasn’t to judge.
“How long have you been in this country?”
“A very long time. I was the first. I made the way for the others. I look out for them. That is my role, sweetie.”
With practiced ease, she punctuated many of her questions with endearments: “You still doing okay, honey?” or “Can I get you anything, sweetie?”; as if she learned English by being a waitress in a local diner. He could never be that familiar with people he barely knew, much less strangers. He barely shook the hands of the people he did know well. But he loved the way she said “honey” and “sweetie” as if she meant them just for him. He bathed in the words, allowing them to soothe him.
“Are you all …” Twirling his finger as if waving a wand at the rest of the people who milled about in the church basement, he realized that he did not know how to finish the question about the nature of her people. Words had traps he had found, because he was no good with words. Often, without meaning to, he insulted those around him. After a while, he found it safer not to speak at all.
“We are one people though different groups. Different bloodlines. Each with their own history and ways of doing things. In the end, we all serve the tribe. My mother was Asante. My father was Fante. So I speak Twi and Fante. And English. How many languages do you speak?”
“I’m doing good to speak American.”
And she laughed. Never had he seen someone laugh or smile more. “My name is N’Kya.”
N’Kya.
Such a beautiful name. He had to have her say it because his tongue was far too clumsy to pronounce it correctly. N’Kya. From her lips, her name had music. As he saw it, she made music with her lips. Say her name … N’Kya.
He had a name once, he remembered when he mattered to people.
The E/R had the run of The Underground for the last few weeks. The ministry worked with people displaced from their country for one reason or another. He had been displaced from his home when his wife declared that he wasn’t a man because he couldn’t provide for her in the way she wanted nor was a fit example for their children. His dreams were the toys of infants long overdue to be put away. With no warning or fanfare, he found himself displaced. Not that E/R could’ve helped him. Unlike the clients of E/R, he had food, clothing, transportation, a place to stay, and spoke English so he didn’t need many of the services E/R provided. Still, he was an extra set of hands to help care for the people.
“So, what do you do?” The words tumbled out of his mouth, clumsy and awkward. “For them, I mean.”
“I sew.” The words leapt from her mouth with such conviction. As if she were the embodiment of sewing. Colors for eyes. Fabrics for her body. Needles for fingers. Thread for vessels. Her hands trembled against the armrest of her wheelchair. His mother’s hands shook like that when her blood sugar dipped too low and she needed to eat. Wizened, useless things that seemed so dark against his. Not that he dared to touch her. “Back home in our village, sewing was an important skill because clothes are very important. Not just to protect but also to define. Clothes set people apart, but first they have to be made. We brought that skill with us.”
“I wish I had a skill,” he said.
N’Kya laughed, but not in that hurtful way that his wife used to snicker at him when he shared something about himself. No, N’Kya’s laugh was a revelation. “Come, let me show you what we do.”
He fell into a seat beside the table, as if the force of her request compelled him to sit. The surrounding ladies glanced up at him with hungry eyes. Hungry, but not predatory. Their faces possessed a stoic grimness like the beauty of porcelain figurines, watching without comment as N’Kya wheeled behind him. A young woman whose face seemed ancient when he glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye, piled a bolt of fabric before him.
“We aren’t little children waiting to be taken care of or exploited,” N’Kya said. “Pick a piece, sweetie.”
“Which one?”
“Whichever one speaks to you.”
“How will I know if I get it right?”
“It whispers to you and you alone. How will we know if you got it wrong?”
He flipped through a velvety material; though he enjoyed the texture of it, it wasn’t quite right. Then a kente cloth pattern with green as its focal color, but that wasn’t for him. He settled on a black fabric broken by strands of gold. The material was lush, but not like velvet. “This.”
“Good.” N’Kya ran her hand through the material then along his fingers and up his arm. “You’re a natural.”
He nearly stopped breathing.
In high school, he loved a girl once. Her name was Amanda Fisher. During French class, she sat in front of him. And when their teacher—who never wore a bra and always stood beside him giving him a clear view of her—passed out homework, Amanda’s hands brushed against his. He froze every time, holding the memory of that contact for as long as he could or until the kid behind him snapped him out of his moment.
N’Kya rolled close to him, filling his empty spaces. Her presence brushed along his neck.
“I think I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t know what,” he said.
“Then don’t say anything. Sometimes silence is the greatest wisdom.”
“Is that a saying of your people?”
“Our people have many sayings,” N’Kya said. “And even more secrets.”
“Tell me a secret.”
N’Kya smiled. Two of her teeth had lengthened, her tongue lolled between the protrusions. Her mouth matched her eyes, hungry but not predatory. It was an exquisite smile. “You’ve been chosen.”
“By who?”
“By us. By me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re lonely, too. But you’re also not ready yet. You haven’t found your place.”
She had been out of place, too, once upon a time. Her wheelchair was superior to the old wood crutches she got by on in her old country, she said. There, she had been abandoned to beg for a living. Until one day she was called and, when she was ready, turned. She became one of the tribe, and though her body changed, it was not made whole. Had she been a child, she would have remained a child. Or had she been an amputee, she wouldn’t have suddenly grown a new limb. Still, she made the choice and joined her people to minister to their souls.
He remained unafraid.
“Did you dream that your life would be like this?” he asked.
“I expected to grow up in a village.”
“No one expects to grow up in a village.” He tried to picture a village, but all he imagined was dirt and straw-thatched huts held together by dry mud.
“Why, because your massive cities are so wonderful?”
“Well, yes.” He knew that “yes” wasn’t the right answer and that the question itself was one of those traps of speaking, but he didn’t have anything clever to say instead.
“That’s why your American Dream is doomed to fail, sweetie.” She could condemn his lifestyle, values, and national illusion all she wanted, as long as she ended it with “sweetie.”
“Why’s that?”
“All your country is about—all your churches try to protect—is based on two parents and their children. Even if there is only one child in that family, that’s not enough to support your way of life.”
His way of life involved going to work and then coming home to watch television while his father ignored him from the other room. Though displaced, he had a place to stay, even if it had meant moving in with his father. That wasn’t so bad, as he never had much of a relationship with his dad. He liked taking care of his father, though the elderly man went out drinking every night. Although the volunteer occasionally wrote checks for things he didn’t remember buying or using, his was a sedentary lifestyle perfectly supported by his own efforts. He asked, “How so?”
“Not enough support. Your relationships become as disposable as any other material object in your life. Like poorly chosen fabric. Now in a village, you have parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all together, bracing one another. Different and many threads weaving together to create a stronger tapestry. It’s all about family.”
Family sounded wonderful when she spoke about it. For him, family meant more people to eat the things he bought and put in the refrigerator. And more people to turn the heat up too high in the house. And more people to argue about what to watch on television. Which she agreed with, but made it sound like those were exactly the things to be treasured.
§
Church at The Underground was on Sunday evenings. Some people objected to the time because it didn’t feel like church time. Saturday nights they could live with and call it the Sabbath. Sunday mornings were the expected church time. But Sunday nights interfered too much with their football game viewing schedules.
The church service lasted an hour. For the first twenty-five minutes, the congregation sang: pop choruses reminiscent of seventies rock ballads for the regular attendees; Negro spirituals in an attempt to make their African guests feel more at home. No one knew the words or understood the melody, a congregation united in awkward singing. For the next twenty-five minutes, the pastor went on about shame and choosing to live by lies you came to believe about yourself.
The last ten minutes were for Communion. A large wedge of freshly baked bread. The body that was broken for us. Two sets of shot glasses. The colorless ones were filled with grape juice. The pink ones were filled with wine. Not everyone wanted wine. The blood that was shed for us.
The volunteer checked the time. When the service started, there were only a handful of folks. Though they were encouraged to attend the services of the hosting church, none of E/R’s refugees had bothered to attend. But there was a meal afterwards, so a few refugees, joined by the local homeless, drifted in as the service wrapped up.
They also always arrived at this time, a murder of crows roosting at the periphery of their community. He didn’t need to turn around to know who had entered as a shiver of fear rippled across the refugees.
Kwame.
His name had no melody no matter who said it. Tall and elegant, a curtain of night falling onto a stage. His skin tone ran toward mahogany, dark and rich. His pupils were too white against his skin. And he never smiled.
They were overdressed for the service. Clothes told their story. Most of the regular congregants arrived in shorts or jeans or whatever casual wardrobe they had. Perhaps misplaced empathy, not wanting to make the homeless feel out of place, guilt by privilege. The homeless didn’t particularly notice or care.
The volunteer didn’t have anything resembling fashion sense. He didn’t believe in wearing clothes that had ads on them. If he were going to be a billboard, he wished to be paid as such. He was not made for low-cut or hip-hugging anything. His midriff remained quite concealed, thank you very much, beneath a crumpled blue T-shirt that read “Superdad,” a Father’s Day present from his children before he was displaced. He couldn’t picture their eyes. He also had a pair of jeans whose brand he had forgotten, but he only had the one pair. That was the thing about jeans: few people looked closely at them. They were just jeans. Every pants.
To him, Kwame was just a man in a fancy suit, but when N’Kya spoke about clothes, he paid attention.
“He hasn’t changed,” N’Kya said. “He sports that same turn of the century look of when he first ventured from home and spied gentlemen of leisure. Dark gray saque jacket, like smoke, double-breasted with peak lapels. His sleeves worn short.”
All the volunteer knew was that he hated the way Kwame wore the clothes. So regal. So commanding. The people stared at him with awe-tinged fear. A suit all too American on its surface and yet not, cinched too tight around the arms and waist, drawn too tight at his calves. Bold, square buttons. Colored inner lining fabrics. The matching pants flared a bit at the calves, accommodating the heavy boots he wore. He knew what those boots must have hid.
“The fabrics were a dance, honey. Materials conjoined together to tell a story about the article of clothes as much as the clothes told the story of the person who wore them. Look at Kwame’s chorus.”
Three women shadowed Kwame, a blur of lime green and fuchsia. They walked tall and proud. Walked was too small a word. Their bodies glided between shadows with a mix of grace and sensuality, the way a tongue licked along the top of a lover’s lip in a languid brush. The curves of their bodies demanded to be noticed, yet with the menace of excoriation should a glance linger.
“They have remembered that modesty protects and inspires allure. There is a sensual mystery to fabrics. I designed that look for them,” N’Kya continued. “Three different dresses, one story. All of that lime green, Dutch wax print edged in fuchsia tabs. The fabric itself an artificial construct. Colonization, imitation, assimilation. Patterns used to set them apart and define prestige. The tangled history of Europe and Africa all in the simple play of fabrics. It is only fitting that we ended up in America.”
“They were pretty dresses.” He loved their boots. They went all the way up to their knees. They reminded him of superheroes.
“Even their boots hold secrets.” N’Kya eased back in her chair and shifted her weight. She drew her legs under her and draped them with her dress. It felt like a private moment, and he wanted to allow her space without embarrassment. Embarrassment wasn’t the right word. If he had the correct cloth, he would sew something regal and proud, with a high collar that shielded all but deserving eyes. It was the only time he ever saw her slump, even in the slightest. “He won’t make me jealous.”
Perhaps he called himself being chivalrous or protective, perhaps he simply didn’t want to let his jealousy get the better of him. Either way, he found himself stepping to Kwame. “Can I help you?”
“I’ve come to look for any of my people who may have arrived recently. Those forgotten by their own. Those who would die a slow death trying to fit into your world. Those whose needs you might not wish to meet.” Kwame stepped to him and leaned in close. His voice was decadent. That was definitely the right word. To the volunteer, it sounded like an entitled basketball player who got into too much trouble. His breath smelled of hot iron.
“We have food. You and yours are welcome to join us for dinner.”
“We hunger, but you don’t want to feed us,” Kwame said.
“We also have clothes, if any of your people need them.”
“I don’t want any of your clothes.”
“But they’re perfectly good clothes.” The volunteer reached for the donation box. On top was the red sweater his grandmother made for him. A garish shade of red, like a prostitute’s lipstick, with three bears across the center, each wearing a Christmas stocking. He hated the sweater and never wore it.
“They are an insult,” Kwame said.
“It’s Indiana. It gets cold.”
“What does that matter to us? We haven’t seen the sun in a long time.”
“You ought to be grateful you have any clothes at all.” There was no trap in Kwame’s words, except the one the volunteer not only created but fell into himself.
“Grateful?” Kwame turned his dark, unwavering eyes to those gathered around them, directing his comments to the volunteer without deigning to meet his eyes. “I, for one, don’t want to be part of your feelgood effort. You clean out your garages, give from your excess, and call it charity. You are emptying your refuse on us. To truly give, you have to sacrifice.”
“That’s enough, Kwame,” N’Kya whispered, though her tone carried the threat of thunder. “What do you want?”
“More of the tribe have found us. We have need of your people’s services. Of you.”
“To brand our people.”
“Aren’t we set enough apart?” N’Kya asked.
“This is not who we were meant to be.” Kwame held up the volunteer’s grandmother’s sweater, then tossed it in front of the wheel of N’Kya’s chair. The sweater crumpled on the floor, bear side down. “We must find our own place here. We must find our own way.”
Kwame’s words touched a chord in the volunteer. Thinking back, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone or anything stirred his heart.
“Come with us. You do not belong here.”
The volunteer hoped Kwame had been talking to him.
“We are of the tribe,” N’Kya said.
“I am Asantehene of our people. I trace my line back to Okomfo Anokey himself. I need a Mamponghene. Come with me.”
“And you wish me to play second to your first? I belong with my people, sweetie.” N’Kya wheeled away from him. “I’ll need time. And measurements.”
Kwame turned up his nose. Waving his fingers, the woman in the cocktail dress produced a piece of paper. “Find us when you’re ready.”
§
The story of the immigrants were all too similar. One way or another the story was always about one story moving against another. When stories clashed, one had to be eliminated. That was the story of people. The government moved against the people. The military needed to take over a land or another resource because people only had limited value as a resource. The authorities burned down villages, separated families, forced them into labor or battle or sex. Men, women, children faced elimination so they ran away, ran away, ran away. Hiding and going, resting and going, going and going, until a refugee camp became home. Over and over the same story with different details.
Indiana was one of the top settlement states. Who wouldn’t settle for Indiana over extermination? And it had corn. And room for different ethnic groups, even from the same people. And churches on nearly every corner. A church for everyone.
“Kwame and his … followers. They are different from the others,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive Kwame. He’s gruff, but that’s his way. He is the shepherd of our people,” N’Kya said. The others look to her for guidance. Yet they also fear her. Maybe more than they did Kwame. Perhaps they had never heard her say her name. Their people had been lost, scared, and the future was a great unknown that yawned into the horizon and threatened to swallow them whole. N’Kya brought them back from the brink and gave them purpose. A circle of women sheared fabric into patterns. Another group hunched over sewing machines, delighting in the thrum of the stitch. In their work, they found self-confidence and worth. They found personhood. Freedom. A look of longing filled the volunteer’s eyes. “We rarely mingle with outsiders.”
“You have no choice now.” The words sounded like a puffed-up chest.
“You are so presumptuous, sweetie.”
“Americans rarely do. You believe your ways to be superior to everyone else’s. After all, the world turns to you for help, never the other way around.”
There was another trap in her words. He wished he were smarter, more handsome, so that she could see him. He handed her a lunch tray. “The corn is fresh.”
“We have our ways, our traditions, our stories. We’re still a people. With history. And secrets.” She turned up her nose at the food, then seemed to chide herself for seeming ungrateful for the gesture.
“Tell me a secret,” he said.
“I thought people would welcome us, maybe have some tea with us.”
“I like tea.” He didn’t, but it was a good lie.
She smiled. “You have a rare gift with the fabric. You have the eye, the heart, for the craft. And people. I could use your help.”
“Anything.”
“You should understand the cost before you choose, honey. I go through a lot of helpers.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then let me have your hands.”
§
The news reported that a jogger went missing at Eagle Creek Park. A pretty girl, Elementary Education major. When she started her run that evening, she probably never suspected that she would end up as prey. She was the kind of college girl who would have stared past him as if he weren’t even there. He wasn’t mad. He knew that he was ordinary, and commonplace things were easily ignored. Every man.
§
He and N’Kya found a secluded workroom down the hall and around several corners from the sanctuary of The Underground. He wasn’t too certain the hallway actually connected to the room and hoped they’d be able to find their way back.
Craning his head back as if caught up in a moment of writhing ecstasy, he presented his neck. He counted the cost. Closing his eyes, all he could picture was a cat revealing its belly so that it could be pet. A most delicate undertaking. A declaration of complete and utter vulnerability. So exposed, someone could do untold damage: tear though muscle and trachea; leave him gasping for breath, wet and throttled.
The body that was broken for us.
His decision. It wasn’t much of a decision. No one would remember his displaced life. He would disappear into the night and be unremembered. All that he was, all the mistakes he made, would be gone. Like moving to a new land. He wasn’t going to get any older, and that thought made him sad.
He entrusted himself to N’Kya. The neck was a thick muscle, its veins throbbed against her hungry mouth. To have her tongue lap along the corded vessels of his throat like an antiseptic swab before an injection. To know both pain and delight in one piercing. Her hands—wrinkled though rough-hewn, like tree bark—scraped against the other side of his face. Her canine teeth were so pointed, he expected her to lisp when she spoke again. But she didn’t speak again. She ran her teeth along the thickness of his neck. Images flickered through his mind as his life drained. The last bits of an umbilical cord falling brittle and black. The plucked eye of a doll, its vacant gaze staring like black buttons. A backseat copulation, awkward and hurried, with the attendant spill of a virgin’s blood. The smoke of a crack pipe smoldering, like the remaining embers of hope.
Baptized in the sweat of the suffering, they were joined: conceptual artist and the performance. He’d never felt anything so wondrous. Like a blissful, unscratched itch.
The blood that was shed for us.
He was chosen, and he accepted.
A drop of crimson daubed his collar.
§
N’Kya hovered over him, always busy in that mysterious way cats were. He hunched over the bench under the column of light provided by the dim bulb dangling from the overhead fixture. A spider skittered across the pile of fabric. With a casual flick, he knocked it to the ground. He had nothing against spiders, but he knew N’Kya was terrified of them. Everyone was afraid of something. Still, he apologized to it before he reduced it to a black smear on the carpet.
“Tell me a secret.” He rubbed his feet. The bones slowly ground into one another as the flesh tightened and morphed. He assumed it would be over when he first transformed. But not being of the tribe, the transformation took days. He concentrated on the boots he would have to make for himself.
“In our land, there are many people. The Ewe fear the creature known as the adze. They come to you as a firefly. In its ‘human’ form, it has a hunched back, sharp talons, and jet black skin. In an instant, it can kill you then drain you of your blood, then devour your heart and liver.”
“Does your tribe fear anything?” he asked.
“We have our own night monsters. And we bring them with us, for where the village goes, so goes our nightmares.”
“What do they call their monsters?”
“The sasabonsam.” N’Kya touched his hand. “It’s time.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Some are hunters. Others are caretakers. In the end, all gifts serve the tribe. Open your mind, sweetie. You have to prepare yourself for the task to come. Consider this the communion of the creator.”
“When do I start?”
“When the cloth speaks to you.”
He had never been good with his hands before. Once, he labored with the act of folding paper to make an airplane for nearly an hour to get the folds correct. But when he described a pattern, the look of it, the interplay of fabrics, her words brought his hands to life.
He thought of his father’s skin, having persevered, ready to be sloughed off before death, ready to be flensed from his bones.
§
Indianapolis was a crazy quilt of old and new, concrete and green. The concrete and metal spires of downtown gave way to dozens of incorporated concerns and communities which made up the city. On the northeast side of town, with its fashion malls and congested traffic, Allisonville had been swallowed up leaving only Allisonville Road to remember it by. On the west side, Speedway—home of the Indianapolis 500—was its own city within the city. A preserve for a people who were about their cars. On the northwest side was Eagle Creek Park. A nature preserve of 3,900 acres of land surrounding 1,400 acres of an eponymous reservoir.
“It was a perfect place to hunt,” N’Kya said, when the fourth person went missing over there. “You must deliver the package there. Tell them you are ready to serve.”
At night only an honor box attended the gate of the park. Few came at night fearing the predators within the woods. People were lost in Eagle Creek Park all the time. He believed the trees moved. Waiting beneath a stand of trees, the glow of the moon marked him. It whispered lonely things to him. He made it a point to ignore the moon. It was prone to lie. Night congealed, thick shadows surrounded him.
Flanked by two other men, Kwame glared at him. He wore a double-breasted purple silk suit with a notched collar. The two men each wore single-breasted suits: one, a burgundy velvet suit with the same angled flap pockets and a shawl collar; the other, a red one with a notched collar under a bow tie. Their pants were wide in the leg, giving room to their black boots. Kwame snatched the package of new outfits from the volunteer. His mouth unfurled into a terrible grin. His teeth glistened, thick iron bands worked by his bulging jaw.
Some friends mentioned that he tended to observe the people around him rather than interact with them. A writer’s posture. He couldn’t remember his friends’ names. N’Kya and Kwame were different kinds of old things. Tested and true, she endured. She persevered. She was holy. All personality, Kwame was a character. Not to be confused with having character. He was a long, beautiful hallway that went nowhere.
“What are you?” he asked.
“You mean, what are you now?” Kwame said. “The Sasabonsam. We endure. We persevere. We thrive. New shores. Old ways.”
Kwame gestured to the surrounding trees. Three shadows in the trees undulated under the play of moonlight. Their forms, a cross between a woman’s and a bat’s. Short arms scratched at the night. They ringed the space, their wings unfurled like rooms of cloth spanning twenty feet. Mewling in chorus, their cries were wet and needy. “And we hunger.”
“My place is to serve.”
The volunteer nodded. Kwame cocked his head to the side as if giving serious thought to an ancient song. He appeared to be somewhat remorseful. Sad. He’s not especially good at it. He nodded to the man in the red suit. The air whistled as he leapt into the air, disappearing into the gloom of night. After a few moments, the man’s boots landed beside the volunteer. Hands snaked about him, and he was drawn into the air. The man in the red suit hung down like an empty sleeve and hoisted him until his inverted face met Kwame’s. He dangled as if he were a boneless cat toy, but his struggles ceased when he saw the man clutched to the overhanging branch by the hooks that formed his feet. Kwame licked him with his sharkskin tongue.
“I have loved her for an eternity. But she has only ever looked at me with pity. She said that I’m not ready. So, I will love her for an eternity more. Or not. And our tribes will end one another.”
“What will happen to me?” the volunteer asked.
“She has chosen you over me. You will pass out of one story into the next,” Kwame said. “You have been set apart. And with us you have haven.”
That didn’t sound too bad. It had been too long since he called a place home.