A Chorus Rises

by Bethany C. Morrow

  Those first ones were like call center headsets, and they came in pairs with wristband speakers. We’d cast our voices—distorted and whispery like sprite sounds, of course—across wide spaces or wherever. The most fun use was the one advertised, which involved having a slumber party and secretly wearing the wristbands around your parents while one kid went into a different room and started making creepy sprite rhymes. And, of course, your parents would pretend to freak out and think a sprite had gotten into the house. It had started as a game, and then had become a bit like social therapy. Turning sprites back into something troublesome but harmless, who just wanted to play. They got harder and harder to find after Triton Park, at least in Portland, but I bet anything that’s just one of the many things that the movie will change. Sprites have been exonerated, after all.

  Eloko synthesizers were next, and those were designed to look like bell charms. Now, those took a few tries to take off: for one thing, our actual Eloko charms are a trademarked design, and at first toy makers were trying to make them almost indistinguishable from the real thing. I distinctly remember some little girl with blond highlights at the tender age of We Were In Elementary School showing up after Christmas with a knockoff hanging around her neck, back when they were a little too exact. I’d had mine since forever, so it’s not like I personally recall what it took to get it, but my parents said the process of verification was built into the design, since my unique melody had been mapped and programmed into the bell. Having one meant people knew at a glance that I really am Eloko. So having a knockoff designed to look like mine? And one that had a synthesized three-note melody the same length as ours already programmed into it? Sacrilege. The only justice was that there were a lot of repeats, kids who got the same melody, and then it sort of spiraled into that—trying to find matching melodies between friends. Which would’ve been fine, if the charm didn’t look too much like ours.

  Anyway. We let it go once the toy design got swapped from our proper bell, which is filigreed so that we can activate it with our breath, to something called a “chanticleer bell,” which is completely the wrong shape and looks more like those nasty pink snow globe snack cakes. But that little girl I went to elementary school with had an earlier design, so. Naturally she attracted my rage. If memory serves, I worked “Lizzie is a pathetic liar” into several classroom exercises, and fashioned it into a catchy little ditty during jump rope at recess. She ended up going home early with a “stomachache,” but she didn’t wear the necklace again.

  And guess what? No one called me a mean girl, isn’t that interesting. Back then, people seemed to grasp that something was being taken from me, and it wasn’t wrong for me to check her for it.

  The point is, synthesizers have long been a thing, and the last time there was a craze over them, it was because people wanted to be us. So guess what it means when my baby cousin is wearing one designed to make her sound like a siren.

  For real. Where is my network?

  “Naema!!” Carmen squeals like we haven’t seen each other in days or weeks instead of Since Before She Can Remember. I smile wide at her, because finally, a proper reception, and I let her throw her arms around me.

  “Beware the sweat, I’m so sorry,” I say into her microbraids. As people apparently do, Courtney drove us into an air-conditioned garage and closed the door behind us before we opened our doors, and Carmen must’ve waited for that before opening the door to the house.

  It’s like living on a submarine or something. The air must be contained. The heat must not be let inside.

  “I can’t believe you’re heeeeere!” she says, ignoring my warning/apology and giving me the Aunt Carla Ann squeeze-twist-bend hug I didn’t know I’ve been missing. It feels designed to test and verify a full range of upper-body motion. “Y’all made me wait my entire life!”

  “I mean, technically, yeah,” Courtney says as he retrieves my bags. So that’s gonna be a thing, apparently; that whole We Haven’t Seen You In A Lifetime thing.

  “Mama said you could have my room and I can take the fold-out, but she said if you let me, I can stay in my room with you.” This little girl can talk. The speed, friends. Jamie could never. “And I have a full, too, so we can both totally fit!”

  What is being discussed right now.

  “Do you have any idea what Naema’s house looks like, Carmen? She had a bigger bed than our parents when we were your age. Ain’t no way she’s gonna have a sardine sleepover with you for two daggone weeks, Imma tell you that right now.”

  “She didn’t say no!”

  “She didn’t have to, Little Bit, I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t know who told your brother he speaks for me,” I say, finally getting my bearings. Between the Slightly Cooler But Muggy Garage and the whole siblings thing, I’m a little slower on the uptake than normal.

  “Told ya!”

  “Oh, you wanna suffer to prove a point?” Courtney sneers at me, but it’s so aggressive that it’s clearly for comedic value. His toasted shea butter–hued skin goes from smooth to neatly folded, and his lips curl like he’s doing an impression.

  “I’m a very docile sleeper, Courtney,” I tell him, blinking slow like he’s a bore. “By the way, your hair matches your complexion, just so you know.”

  “That’s what I said!” Carmen chirps, excitedly.

  “Wooow,” he says, looking between his sister and me.

  “It’s a little matchy-matchy.” I shrug with one shoulder.

  Courtney nods and then shakes his head, his favorite combination apparently, and takes my things into the house.

  “So we can share my room while you’re here??”

  “Of course we can!”

  I side-snuggle Carmen, who’s taller than I was at her age, so her shoulder fits snugly in my armpit, and even though I keep looking at it, I resist the urge to ask about the siren synthesizer she’s wearing. I already know what it is, and there’s no way she’d believe me if I pretended not to. I know I said kids aren’t super smart, but she’s family, so she might be. And anyway, even if nobody’s in the network down here and they don’t know I used to shield a siren, at least Courtney’s seen both the movie and my livestreams. So they probably know I outed one. Allegedly.

  I could ask her why she’s wearing it, but. That seems just as disingenuous. I know why. Because it’s fashionable to be a siren now, thanks to the same girl who tortured me.

  In the still air of the garage, just when I think that maybe leaving Portland was a mistake, that maybe I should’ve stared down the incessant noise and vilifying and character assassination, I feel a cool and calming whirl of wind inside my chest.

  I breathe.

  I still don’t know what this wind is or why it’s been happening, but. It’s helping. It’s like having a center, despite the way the world has shifted around me. Right now, it’s helping me extend grace.

  Carmen’s a child. She’s celebrating someone who looks like her being celebrated. Whatever I wish would’ve been taken into account—for instance: of course you can have a synthesizer, Little Bit, but maybe put it away while your embattled Eloko cousin is here—it’s not like anybody knows what Tavia did to me.

  Yet.

  The Extend Grace wind is light, but encouraging. Even though I now fully understand that you never seem to get credit for grace unless you humblebrag about it. Document it and then share it under the guise of encouraging other people or being moved by the reaction of the person you gave the grace to. Philanthro-posts, if you will. They’ve never been my style, so maybe that’s on me.

  I didn’t vlog about what I did for Tavia, so when I posted about anything else—my rightful oughts against her, for instance—well, at the time, it was fine. Now, not so much. Instead of being proclaimed Humble Queen Naema for not needing internet cookies over being a decent human being, apparently now the consensus is that I’ve never done right by anyone, ever, because you can’t find a post about it on LOVE.

  Which is actually why
I’m conflicted over the video I do find the next time I log onto Knights of Naema.

  I endure a solid hour of Aunt Carla Ann telling me she’s gonna let me get some rest and then proceeding to tell me a million stories about people I don’t know or remember, or asking me a grillion questions about Mommy’s pregnancy (a) like there’s much to tell and (b) like she doesn’t watch it in real time on a daily basis. Baby cousin Carmen aka Little Bit is bouncing between us the entire time, until finally the two of them plus Uncle Deric have to leave me be because family reunion prep calls them away from the house.

  Courtney’s disappeared into his own room, so when I shut myself in Carmen’s, I’m alone at last, and resolved to make a Knights of Naema account so I can see the members-only content. But when I get back to the site, there’s a new top post.

  It’s another transplant from my LOVE account, and it genuinely takes me a minute to recall what it is. The thumbnail is me, in my droopy purple beach hat whose brim can be curved so it hides one of my eyes. Which is obviously what I’ve done. Iconic.

  There’s text in the top left and bottom right of the image, and it reads: GIRL, BYE and FED! UP!

  And I remember.

  I don’t read the KoN poster’s caption, if there is one. I just play the video.

  You guys know I don’t usually do this, and I look away for a moment and take a deep breath, before facing my phone again. But there are times even the happiest person gets pissed all the way off.

  I can feel it. The tension in my chest and shoulders while I was taping. The rage seething out of me as I’d driven home from the construction site that morning. I couldn’t call my friends, couldn’t tell Priam what had just happened, even though it was partially about him. Because Tavia had summoned me to an early morning meeting that day, and I was acting within the confines of my network oath. Which said I would shield and protect Portland sirens from exposure, suspicion, or threat of harm.

  So I couldn’t tell anyone that she’d not only had the nerve to summon me at Bright And Early O’Clock, but that when I didn’t respond with the proper deference—when I questioned why she would’ve done something as stupid as using a siren call in front of Priam’s police officer dad—she snatched my phone out of my hands, and finished by threatening me.

  “Don’t cross me,” she’d said.

  Like, bish, whet?

  In Carmen’s room, I realize I’ve covered my mouth with my hand, while I watch the me in the video struggle to say anything without saying too much.

  Listen. There are different kinds of magic in this world, thank gawd. That’s what makes the world amazing, right? And there are some kinds of magic only some people can be—

  Video Naema curls her lips into her mouth, and her one visible eye wanders. Because she’s trying to be so careful, even in her palpable rage. She shakes her head, and then pushes her lips out like she’s asking for a kiss.

  I remember the congestion. Believing in what I’d promised to do, and despising the individual who required it, and being totally helpless to express it. No matter what she did. No one who wasn’t a threat to her thought she could be a threat to anyone else. Or just a pain in my behind.

  They wanted me in the network because of the trill in my voice. Because if ever a siren needed to employ some misdirection, I could try to take credit for the call that was heard, and charm the hearer. Being Eloko meant I was the least at risk. I could absorb the impact, be the soldier who falls on the live grenade, because that’s what you do when you have a privilege someone else needs. And even though my parents presented it to me without applying any pressure at all, I agreed.

  No magic, indeed, Professor.

  The network needed me because I’m Eloko, but they made it seem like Tavia was more Black than I was because I was Eloko.

  “Thank gawd you’re Eloko,” and also: “You can never truly understand the struggle because you’re Eloko.”

  So the me in the video, the one who knew before I could really understand that I basically wouldn’t have a place in the community if I wasn’t in the network—she was Black enough to be in it, but never Black enough. And when the community that loved her was predominately made up of other people, it wasn’t a hurt she could ever discuss. And never in those words.

  So she said it the best way she knew how.

  There are some kinds of magic only some people can have, and maybe they think that makes them more real than the rest of us. It clearly makes them think they have some kind of power over the rest of us, but beloved. It’s only as much as I allow.

  I’m Eloko, whether you like it or not.

  The livestream capture includes all the original reactions and running commentary from when I posted it on LOVE, and the bell charm emojis explode all over the screen, along with overzealous shouts of support and allegiance.

  I know when Video Naema catches sight of them because her eye sparkles, and I see her chest rise. But also because I remember it. I remember remembering.

  I. Am. Naema. Bradshaw.

  I remember the surge that rushed through me. Which is interesting, considering that I’ve been feeling the wind now—but that isn’t what I felt before. It wasn’t calming, or centering. It was a tingling right beneath my skin; an electric surge, like you get when the audience goes uproarious during a jaw-dropping, window-shattering gospel choir performance.

  I’m Eloko first.

  Don’t cross you? And Video Naema laughs, joined by a burst of laughing emojis from the viewers. She whips the purple beach hat off, shaking free a cascade of wet, wavy hair she didn’t get a chance to blow-dry before getting Tavia’s text.

  The screen goes pink and silver with hearts and bells.

  Girl, bye.

  And even though I always let the video continue while I went about my business in the still-visible background so that my viewers would continue emoting and messaging, on the Knights of Naema site, it cuts right off.

  I need a moment, so instead of reading the caption on the post, or the comments I know will be underneath, I take a deep breath and let my gaze drift around Carmen’s room. There’s not much to look at, if we’re talking space. There’s a delightful matching bedroom set that looks like she saw an ad and got everything in it, most of it white. White sheer curtains cover the window to the side of the bed. They’re moving but it’s due to glorious, recirculated air. The sight makes me close my eyes to see if the wind is there. And whether it can tell me how I feel.

  Because I remember so much about the morning I filmed that video. Almost everything. And I wish the conviction was part of it.

  I can’t point to anything Video Naema said that doesn’t track, but. Somehow I don’t feel it.

  She was right. I know that. But something’s missing. Upside-Down Portland has made sure of that.

  When it’s been several minutes and no wind is swirling in me, I return my attention to the forum and see what the Knights had to say.

  #ElokoFirst.

  They’ve made it a hashtag and an apparent mantra. It’s all throughout the comments, and they unanimously love me more for it. That I’ve always identified that way.

  Which I have. They’re my own words.

  But.

  Courtney bursts through Carmen’s door without knocking, and then just stands there, super casual and chill.

  “What’re you doing,” he asks like it’s a statement.

  “Minding my business,” I respond.

  “C’mon.” He gestures with his head.

  “What?”

  “We gotta go run an errand for my mom. It’s for the reunion.”

  “You mean you gotta run an errand.”

  “Naw, I’m pretty sure I said ‘we.’”

  “I’m jet-lagged, Courtney, I think I’ll probably just stay in the air-conditioned house.”

  “Jet-lagged? Girl, if you don’t. We in the same time zone!”

  I stop responding to him, and before I remember how small the space is, he’s bounded over to the bed and s
pun my laptop to face him.

  “What are you even looking at,” he says like he’s not already looking at it. “Knights of Naema.”

  A moment ago, I was ready to snatch the device back, but I’m suddenly curious what he’ll think.

  “Don’t sound so mystified,” I tell him.

  He’s scrolling, and the farther he goes down, the higher his brow curves.

  “So. You started your fan club over somewhere else?”

  “I didn’t start it, stupid. Somebody linked it in my LOVE comments.”

  “You can’t resist, can you?”

  “I can’t resist what, Courtney?”

  “You’re like a pretty bird with a mirror, you can’t look away.”

  I roll my eyes, but I snap the laptop shut.

  “I mean, you ain’t gotta close it on my account,” he says, hands up like he’s surrendering.

  “We have an errand, remember?”

  “Wherever you lead, my liege,” Courtney says, and bows his blond coif, one hand across his torso, the other toward the door.

  “I can’t with you.”

  * * *

  Courtney is a pathetic liar.

  As soon as we were in the car, An Errand became A Few, and when my face fell at the news, he hit the lock and backed out of the garage at breakneck speed.

  “Can you silence that?” he has the nerve to ask when we’re on the road, and my phone has been buzzing up a storm.

  “It is on silent. It’s vibrating.”

  “Right, but you can turn that off?”

  I can feel him occasionally glancing at me as I hold my finger against the Home button on my phone so that I unlock it just enough to read previews of the messages.

  I miss you too much alreadyyyyyy, Jamie says.

  Way to let us know you landed safely, Gavin says, and then, Hey, I love you.

  Are you gonna talk to Priam? You know he’s devastated, right?