Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

  “Your pop’s not gonna believe any of that,” said Moretti. “He’s not gonna take my word…he’ll know I’m lying…”

  “No,” Marco told him, “nobody’s gonna be a liar—because everything I just said is gonna happen just like I said it.”

  “No,” interrupted Willa. “I’m not leaving you…”

  Marco turned to her. He kept his eyes on her even as he continued speaking to Moretti and Falcone. “The two of you are gonna go outside now and wait in your car. In about ten minutes, Willa and I are gonna leave this hotel and get in a cab. You’re gonna follow us to Penn Station, and it’s all gonna happen just like I said. So nobody’s gonna be a liar.” He turned back to the men. “And you’ve got no reason to double-cross me because you won’t have blown anything. You just got the job too late.”

  The men waited for Marco to nod that it was okay for them to rise, to bend down to retrieve their guns, and then to head for the door.

  ​They exited, the door closed, and Willa exploded. “I am not leaving you…” She threw herself against him. “You promised we’d be together. You promised…”

  ​“I know,” he kept repeating, but she couldn’t hear him over her outburst.

  ​“It’s 1955. Negroes have been free for nearly a century! Who says that you and I can’t be together?”

  ​“Everybody says it, Willa! Everybody says it. You know I want to be with you. There’s nothing I want more, but we can’t be together here. Not now.” He was buttoning his shirt, pulling on his jacket. “Those were guns they had out.”

  “Well, I took care of one of the guns,” she interrupted, cockier than she felt.

  “Yeah, I saw. But it’s not safe for you here. You heard what they said. They weren’t coming after me. They were coming after you.” Willa opened her mouth to speak but said nothing. “I don’t know what Dominus wants with you,” Marco went on, “but I’m not gonna be the cause of something happening to you. If we both leave New York, maybe they’ll leave us both alone, and then we can meet up soon somewhere.”

  ​“No,” her stern voice rang out, “I’m not running away.” She pulled herself from his grip but remained facing him. “I’ve spent my whole life hiding because that’s what my family is supposed to do. We hide. We cower. We run. Well, I’ve done enough running…”

  ​“Are you listening to me? I love you, Willa. I love you. But I can’t let them get you. This guy Dominus is a sick bastard. They say he’s the grandson of a slaveholder from down South somewhere—that he’s always talking about how Negroes should still be slaves. Lord knows what he wants with you. My father does business with him because it’s profitable, but nobody likes the guy, and nobody trusts the guy. There’s something…off about him…”

  ​Willa’s expression changed from angry to curious. She just stared at him for a time. And when she finally spoke, her tone was odd, as if she already knew the answer to the question she was asking. “What does he look like?”

  ​“Pale. White hair. Light eyes. Real thin.”

  ​Willa’s face went numb. “Van Owen,” she said in a monotone, her eyes glassy. “Hendrik Van Owen.”

  “You see,” said Willa as she dropped Regina’s hand and closed off the memory, “there’s still a lot you don’t know.”

  ​Regina blinked several times and shook her head as she freed herself from her grandmother’s mind. “Why did you keep all of this from me?”

  “I didn’t want you to dwell on anything that might bring Van Owen to you—anything that might help him sense you and find you. He met Marco only once, but he was able to see me in Marco’s thoughts—to know about my abilities. Even Amara couldn’t keep him from finding her. He could feel her from thousands of miles away when she used her ability intensely or when she was in pain.” Willa groaned as she tried to stretch her legs, which shook with the effort. “But it’s too late to worry now. Van Owen has found us. He must want his revenge for what I did. He must have known that if he took Terry, I’d go after him.” She stopped for a moment and seemed lost in thought. “I just don’t understand how Carl and Warren know about Van Owen. Dara never told Carl anything about our abilities or our history…” Her thoughts trailed off only to be supplanted by Regina’s.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter how they know,” Regina explained. “I just know that we need to get to Van Owen before they do. And you need to tell me now what else you’ve kept from me.”

  Willa’s eyes welled with tears. “I’ve been so blind.” She felt the irony of declaring blindness to a girl who spoke with Amara’s voice. “And I can’t let you be blind too. You need to know, to see, everything—from the beginning.”

  ​Willa found her way back to the bed and sat again. Then she closed her eyes and opened her mind, allowing Regina to watch the play of memories as they shifted to an endless white sand beach surrounded by blue water. In the distance, the trees were deep green. The vista was freer and more expansive than anything Regina had ever imagined.

  ​“What you’re seeing now,” said Willa, “are not my memories—they’re ones that were shown to me by Amara. These memories are hers. And this is where we came from. This is Mkembro on the shores of West Africa. Before the slavers came.”

  Twenty

  At Lincoln’s command, Africans in America are free, though many of us never truly learn what that word means. We don’t have money or land or social skills or the right skin color to fit into American society. Most whites don’t accept us; some never will. Still, I try to mimic the euphoria of my brethren with tireless talk of forty acres, mules, and equality. Some of them head out west, seeking land and new frontiers. Some veer to the North, chasing rumors of prosperity that won’t play out for decades. Most of them stay in the South, on the plantations, and become sharecroppers, only to get cheated by the plantation owners. They work all season and then line up to be paid, only to be told that the cotton or tobacco—whatever crop it is they grow—fetched bad prices this year. No matter how abundant their harvest, most sharecroppers finish every year breaking even or in debt. I’m through with plantations, but I have no illusions that new surroundings will offer me any greater happiness, so I, too, stay in the South.

  Knowing what comes next for me, I follow my visions to the door of the Jasper family in Whelan, Tennessee. For nearly two years, I live in the tiny room down the hall from their daughter Cecily, working as maid and nanny. Although Cecily is only three, I take it upon myself to teach her to read and write. We keep it a secret from her parents until she is five. Once they discover how advanced she is in her studies, they promptly hire a college-educated tutor for their “genius daughter.” Of course, I don’t tell them that Cecily is not so remarkable—that she has simply benefited from my ability to teach her from inside her mind. Sometimes, as she sleeps, I fill her thoughts with letters and words and pictures, training her how to decipher them. There are moments when I fear that Van Owen is out there somewhere, listening for me—waiting for me to use my mind in this way so that he can locate me—so I use my abilities only in short bursts. It occurs to me that he could have returned to a life at sea or moved across the country or to another continent even, but I know I can’t allow myself to be careless. I enter Cecily’s mind, I do my teaching, and then I exit before I can be traced. Once the Jaspers limit my duties solely to cleaning their mansion, I leave Whelan. I leave it, though, with two newfound loves—teaching and children.

  For some time, I find similar work with families across the South. I always begin my tenure as maid, but, within a few weeks, I take on the mantle of educator and then nanny. Within a year or two, I move on, before anyone notices how quickly their children are progressing, before they can tell all of their friends about the miracle worker of a nanny they’ve employed; I don’t need that sort of attention. Still, I always leave with a reference for my next job. It pains me sometimes to know that I’ll never hold a job as a real teacher—in a school—but I must keep myself hidden, tucked away within the homes of others until I know t
hat I’m strong enough to defend myself against Van Owen. For the visions are never clear enough to inform me exactly when our next meeting will be.

  I rarely venture into public, though the only people who might know my face are other former slaves and plantation guards. “Don’t you ever go out, Amara? Isn’t there a man in your life?” the mothers of my charges sometimes ask. “There was a man once,” I tell them, “but he died.” I leave it at that. I don’t speak of my days in Mkembro, or of the tobacco fields of the plantation, or of the sound of Kwame’s body hitting the water as the bullets hailed from the deck. He was beautiful. I barely knew him. He’s gone. That’s all that need be said.

  They must wonder why I sometimes wake screaming or why they find me sitting on the porch at twilight, staring into nothing, remembering terrors past and to come. There are still so many visions that I cannot understand. Some I have seen only once, such as the scene of the girl, Leticia, with Van Owen. Others keep replaying. I’ve seen my father die at least a hundred times. I’ve seen Van Owen storm into my wedding ceremony just as often. I’ve seen my descendants—Terry and Jerome and Willa and others—in various contexts, dangerous and benign, but I’ve seen so little of my own future. It is as if fate has chosen to show me only what has already passed or else what is so far ahead that I cannot affect it. I’ve seen again and again Van Owen’s attempt to rape me. With each viewing, I gaze more intently, trying to glean something new from it. Sometimes I just revel in the outcome—his leaving unsated and emasculated. Sometimes I focus on how he used his mind to subdue me. I try to dissect his methods so that I can mimic them. Sometimes I spend hours trying to understand how Kwame and I managed to pass our powers on to Van Owen. It should have been possible only through lineage—the way Kwame and I inherited ours from our fathers—but Van Owen gained his powers from through our touching him. There is still so little I know of these abilities I was born with and which my descendants shall inherit. My father, who might have taught me our history—where these powers came from, why we have them—is gone. I am the oldest of my line. I have seen the panoply of the African American future unfold. Just as many of us lost our parents and families when we were herded into slaving ships or sold on the slaving block, so too shall generations of Africans in America go through life never knowing their parents. In particular, so many children will never know their fathers. It was ingrained in us in plantation life—families split up by slave trades or broken apart because so many of us never had a community to teach the necessity of the family structure. Will we ever break the cycle? Will we ever find unity?

  Sometimes, I still see my father in combat with Van Owen. Did he, I wonder, have the gift of foresight as I do? Did he believe me, I wonder, when I came to him before my wedding and told him of my visions? Had he already seen himself? Did he know that a battle was coming but that he had no choice but to face it? Did he know that this prescience allows one only to see the future but not to change it? Or did it even occur to him that I might share in the family birthright of unnatural power? Did he think it was limited only to the males? Did he tell me to run because he couldn’t dream that I could have the strength to face his murderer in battle?

  The bullet flies again and again. And my father falls each time. His blood flows like water. I think of Van Owen’s wounds—the ones he showed me when he came to rape me—they were like scorched holes in his chest. He claimed that he had been shot and stabbed in the war but that he had repaired the wounds. “I change,” he said, “but I cannot die.” He was boasting, trying to impress me with his invulnerability. And yet he bled. Just as my father did.

  And anything that bleeds can die.

  Twenty-One

  Even unconscious and dreaming, Terry could still see the face of the man in the back seat of the car. The hollow, haunted, sapphire eyes, the ghostly white skin, the ravenous mouth. It was the face of death, but it had a name. Terry knew it from somewhere. Even unconscious and dreaming, he knew the name: Van Owen.

  ​The memories coursed through his mind, pulling him from era to era, across five generations. A beach, tranquil and untouched. A farm with scents so soothing but with an undercurrent so brutal. A dozen cities across the South, transient homes for a princess forced to live like a refugee—a woman named Amara, pursued always by the pale man named Hendrik Van Owen.

  He could feel the tape covering his mouth, covering his eyes, wrapped around his wrists and ankles, binding him like a prisoner. Like a slave. He knew that he was dreaming, that he shouldn’t be able to feel the duct tape or recognize what it was, and yet he could. Somehow, he was both awake and asleep at the same time.

  ​He thought of Regina; he wished that she could see these dreams. Regina would understand, he was certain. In spite of their four-year age difference, Terry and his sister were connected like twins. They understood each other; they could read each other—ever since that day when she stopped speaking and started communicating without words.

  That day seemed decades ago. It was evening. He and Regina were playing cards when her eyes went glassy. Terry thought she was pretending to be in a trance, something a playful little girl would do. He reached out for her, to shake her. His fingertips brushed against her bare arm, and it started: images flooded his mind—death, pain, blood, lust. And that face. That man’s face. It had been there two years ago in those images—the pale man, the man from the car! Van Owen. A man determined to hate and kill and dominate. It had been too much for Terry then; the nightmare was too real. He couldn’t bear it. He tried to close his eyes, his ears, his mind, to shut away those harsh memories that weren’t his, bury them far from everything, where he’d never have to see them. And that’s what he’d done—sealed them away, forgotten everything but their effect.

  ​Even so, he wondered sometimes if there were answers in those visions—something to explain why Regina’s voice had changed, why she could now communicate telepathically. But whenever Terry thought about the images, he would instinctively compel himself to think about anything else.

  ​But why, he wondered now, was the pale man there in those visions two years ago? Who is he? What does he want with me? I need to know. I need to understand.

  ​The dream stopped. Terry woke fully and became aware that the tape was indeed real—fastening him to a chair, wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, his eyes. The tape tugged on his skin, tearing at his eyelids as he struggled against it. So he sat still and thought of that man with the white hair. He concentrated on that face—its rigidity, its cruelty, its hardness. And, for the first time, Terry didn’t retreat from the face or from the memories. He let them come. First, there was only a trickle. Van Owen on a ship, Africans in a field, chains. But, as Terry opened his mind more and started to delve, the memories came flooding back.

  It was all so familiar, as if the memories were his, and all he had to do was watch them, experience them, live them. From the beginning.

  So there he sat, a captive physically and mentally, watching the waves crash on the shores of Mkembro in West Africa, and in the distance, the shadow of a slave ship darkening the horizon.

  Twenty-Two

  In visions, I’ve seen Dara with Carl. I’ve seen Willa with Marco. I’ve seen Rolanda with William. They laugh and argue and cry and love and collapse against each other as if their arms could fit around no one else. But as my first labor pains double me over until I am crumpling into Ray Franklin’s arms, I try to feel what my descendants will feel. I allow Ray to scoop me up tight against his chest, to support me and the child within me, but I know that all I feel for Ray is appreciation, a natural response to the love he shows me. I appreciate him. I respect him. I care about him. I trust him. But I do not love him the way he loves me. I’ll never know that manner of love. Perhaps I’ve seen too much hate.

  ​“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” he tells me, cradling me toward the front door of our Atlanta apartment.

  ​“No. No hospital. I told you it’s not safe. Take me to my room.” My ri
ght arm is curled around his shoulder. In my hand, I can still feel the first page of the newspaper, the sight of which triggered the first contractions of childbirth five weeks too soon.

  ​“Not safe?” Ray stutters, “It’s a hospital, Amara.” In his mind, though, I can hear the doctor’s words from six months ago: “Your wife is forty-six years old, Mr. Franklin. This won’t be an easy pregnancy, especially since it’s her first. She’s got to stay off her feet. You have to bring her in every month for an examination and keep me notified of any changes in her health…”

  “It doesn’t matter how old I am,” I tell Ray, accidentally responding aloud to my memory of the doctor’s words. “The child will be fine. I’ve seen her.”

  But Ray keeps leading me toward the door until finally I realize I have no choice. I reach into his mind with mine and make the decision for him: "We will stay here; we will have the baby at home."

  He stops short, his hand on the doorknob. He lets it go and turns around. “Yes, I think we should have the baby at home.

  I haven’t used my power like this in years. I’ve tried to stay silent, tried to keep myself and my abilities hidden, tried to be vigilant always, but I can’t afford to be careful now. I also can’t afford to let Ray take me to a hospital—a public place—when I’m this weak.

  ​He carries me to our room and lays me upon the bed. He sits in the chair beside me, stoking my hair, cooling my forehead with a wet cloth. Ray is such a good, gentle man. I do wish I could return what he feels for me. Instead, I dwell on the guilt I feel for lying so much about my past, for never confiding in him about who I am, where I came from, what I’m capable of. And now I’m doing far worse: I’m taking away his free will, just as mine was taken from me so long ago.

  The contractions come again and again, pain shooting up my spine until my head snaps backward. I scream, but the sound emanates not from my mouth but from Ray’s. I want to release him; I don’t know if I can keep control over him when the contractions peak. What if I pass out? Will Ray be able to deliver the baby on his own? As I told him, I know that the baby will live, that she’ll be born healthy, that I will call her Rolanda, named for Roland, the first American man who showed me kindness, bringing me water and then dying for it.