chapter 47

ZAVION

“The storm is over,” said the man.

The storm was traveling away from the street—that was true. The violin squeal was slowly fading.

But the memory was getting brighter.

The storm had brought it crashing in.

Luna had opened the window in his brain and the memory had flooded back to him.

He remembered.

—

Mama’s hands on his face.

Mama’s voice.

Mama’s hug.

—

A blue ceramic mug.

Mama’s mug. Her favorite mug. The one she brought from North Carolina. It had a tan and brown bird on it, built up with clay, so it stuck out from the rest of the mug. It was positioned at the top, at an angle. Its wings were fully opened.

Zavion remembered tracing the outline of the bird when Mama set it down in the morning to have her cup of coffee. He remembered wondering, each time, if the next time the bird would be gone. If it would ever finally fly away.

Zavion remembered that blue mug, and a sad blue thing crept through the open window in his brain.

It crouched in a corner there.

Then it stretched its body out flat.

—

Zavion was four.

He had been outside, pulling mint out of the tiny garden Mama kept behind their house. Her family had kept enormous gardens at their house in North Carolina, at the base of Grandmother Mountain, and Mama had carried a garbage bag filled with dirt when she moved. A little bit of North Carolina in New Orleans. Just enough dirt for a tiny garden.

She grew tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, and mint.

Lots of mint.

That morning she had sent Zavion out to pick some for a big pitcher of iced tea she was making.

Mint, ginger, and tea.

Her specialty.

“My special tea,” she would say. And then she would laugh.

That low, rumbly laugh like a cat purring.

Zavion picked two big handfuls of mint and was running back into the kitchen. He was so excited he had forgotten to take off his garden boots—tall, yellow rubber boots—just inside the front door, which was a rule of Mama’s. She liked a clean floor, liked to walk in the house barefoot, and didn’t want to step in dirt or mud or worse.

“New Orleans is dirtier than North Carolina,” she always said.

“New Orleans just has more to offer,” Papa always said.

“True words,” she always said back.

Zavion barreled into the kitchen, his fists full of mint. The mud on the bottom of his boots was slippery. He skidded when he hit the linoleum floor. Hands full, he careened into Mama, who was standing at the kitchen counter, mug in one hand, a piece of ginger in the other.

Zavion banged into Mama with such force that his fists popped open and the mint scattered onto the floor. But that was not the worst part.

Mama’s mug, the mug with the bird that was getting ready to take flight, the one Mama had brought with her from North Carolina, flew into the air—

—like Zavion always thought the bird might—

—and cracked on the muddy linoleum floor.

Shards of blue clay skittered everywhere.

And Zavion felt his own body crack into a million pieces.

He had broken Mama’s rule.

He had broken Mama’s mug.

He began to cry.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” he wailed.

Mama knelt down on the floor and took his face in her hands.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Her bangles sounded like chimes in Zavion’s ears.

Then she pulled him into a big, warm hug.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re okay. You will always be okay.”

And then she said what she would say many more times.

“You were you, you are still you, and I love you all the same.”

She said it until she died.

And then Zavion never heard it again.

Instead, he shut the window, turned the lock, and vowed never to make a mistake or break a rule again.

—

Zavion looked at the man whose hand was still on his shoulder. He looked at the boy whose hand was still on his other shoulder. He looked at the bird, who was sitting on the arm of the boy, balanced like he was on a tighrope between them.

He didn’t know them.

But, at the same time, he did.

He asked them, “Do you live near a mountain?” A question that he was certain he knew the answer to.

The boy said, “Yes.”

And then Zavion said, “I need to go to it.”