Warren nodded no as if correcting a child. “How could Grandma Willa know any of this? My father is the direct descendant of Kwame, heir of the Merlante. Kwame escaped from Captain Hendrik Van Owen’s slave ship in Boston Harbor in 1859, and Van Owen has been hunting our family ever since. My father started telling me our family’s history the first time he saw me start a fire with my hands when I was eight years old.” For effect, he snapped his fingers, and a small electrical flame shot upward from his thumb, lighting the inside of the car in an eerie blue glow. He closed his palm and the glow vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving no marks on his hand. “Pop made me learn the whole family history, made me recite the stories over and over.”
“Dear God,” said Marco, “you don’t know. None of you know. Your mother—my daughter, Dara—she never wanted your father to know about her power. She thought he’d be safer if he didn’t know anything, so she kept it from him.” He was working it out in his head as he spoke, his head bobbing as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “And, all that time, Carl must have been thinking the same thing: he was afraid to tell her about himself. Somehow, those two found each other, Dara and Carl—the Mkembro and the Merlante—it’s almost too crazy to be a coincidence. But they kept everything secret from each other.” He paused. “What about Jerome? Is he…?”
Warren was beginning to understand. “Jerome’s got it too. He’s strong. And nothing hurts him.”
“And your father?”
“Similar to me.” He paused. “But I can do more.” He was defiant as he spoke. “He doesn’t even know half of what I can do.”
The Westside Highway was packed, but traffic was moving. Warren weaved the BMW between the two faster lanes, passing every car he could.
Marco was mumbling, still dwelling on his discovery. “Your father and your mother…”
Warren shot back, “You’ve been hiding away all these years. Did you ever even meet my mother?”
Marco’s voice got softer. He was ashamed, but he answered directly: “I saw her at the beginning—the day she was born, the first few days after that, but never again.” He kept his eyes on the road. “I couldn’t…Van Owen knew me. I couldn’t take a chance that he might find me again—that I might lead him to Dara or Willa or any of you, so Dara and I only spoke on the phone. She always thought that eventually I’d come outside again. But I couldn’t….” His voice trailed off as he thought about his self-imposed exile.
“Why’d you stop going outside?”
Marco retorted flatly, “Why’d you start using drugs?”
“What do you care? You ain’t been around my whole life. You don’t know me or what I’ve been through.”
Marco was insistent. “I’m not scolding you. I know I don’t have the right. I just want to understand why you’ve done this to yourself—why you get high.”
Warren was silent for almost a minute. He stared ahead, watching the traffic lights flicker in the rain. When he finally spoke, his voice was distant. “Sometimes, I feel like…it’s like I pass through a doorway into some other place. And no one can see me there. No one can hurt me. No one can be disappointed by me.” A pause. “But no one can help me either. It’s like I block out everything and forget everything. I’m lost…out of view for a while.”
“And drugs are the only way you can get there?”
Warren shook his head. “Sometimes. And sometimes drugs are the only thing that helps me get back from there. Sometimes, especially after I use my power too much, I get so lost I almost don’t know how to come down. I feel like I’ll just drift away. Vanish. The drugs bring me back down. They make me feel human again.”
Marco said nothing. He just sat staring at the road, nodding.
“So why’d you stop going outside?” Warren asked again.
Marco didn’t hesitate this time. “Because of what Van Owen did to me.”
“What did he do?”
“Van Owen was there when your mother was born. He’s been there almost every time a child was born in your mother’s family. Rolanda, Willa, Dara, Regina.” He paused, not giving Warren time to reflect, but he saw the boy flinch. “We never really understood why. Maybe he wanted to get to the child as early as possible—take it, corrupt it somehow. Or maybe try to steal more power from your family than he had already stolen.”
“What happened when my mom was born?”
Marco looked out the window. They were at 103rd Street. They’d be nearing Hell’s Kitchen soon. “Our ride’s not long enough.”
“I need to know. I might not get another chance.”
Marco removed his hat and rolled the visor up and down as he spoke, staring at the hat instead of looking at Warren. “I was third generation Italian—Sicilian. We were connected, if you know what I mean…”
“You were mafia. I know.”
“It’s a dumb word. Nobody I knew ever used it. But…yeah, I was mafia. I met Willa when she was playing jazz piano in this club in Brooklyn. We started sneaking around, seeing each other after midnight in secluded parts of the city. Black and white didn’t really mix back then, so I was worried for Willa—and for me—if my family found out about us. So I decided to quit the family business. Willa and I packed our things. And we met up in Manhattan, planning to leave on a train the next day.”
There was a fender-bender on Eighty-sixth Street. Traffic was stalled as two police officers sorted out the conflict. Warren tried desperately to pull the car toward an exit, but there was no chance. They were stuck until the accident could be cleared. Warren pounded his hand on the steering wheel. He was frustrated but still engrossed in the story.
“Back then,” Marco went on, “the families—the mafia—didn’t really do business with outsiders, but somehow this guy from outside—Peter Dominus—he started getting in good with the families. He was a high-class cocaine dealer, and this was back before cocaine was being sold on street corners. His stuff was so high quality—and he was bringing in so much money—that the families couldn’t say no to him. The deal was too good.”
“So you dealt? You dealt cocaine, and you’re asking me about using drugs? At least I never sold it, never got anyone else to use it!”
“I didn’t deal,” Marco told him. But then he paused. “Not directly.” He exhaled, wanting to keep lying to himself, but there was no use anymore. “But I was part of the business. I was young and stupid. It was all I knew—to do what my family did.”
Warren nodded.
“But you’re right,” the old man went on. “My hands are just as dirty as if I sold cocaine myself.” He breathed in and out. “Anyway, Willa and I tried to skip town, but somehow Dominus found out about me and her—I don’t know how. He told my family about us, and they sent these two goons after us. That’s when Willa realized that Dominus and Van Owen must be the same person. So we ran away separately—Willa went to Minnesota, and I went to California—and we met up a few weeks later in New Mexico…and she told me she was pregnant.” Marco smiled. “Her grandmother Amara was with her. She was blind and—more than a hundred years old, and she looked it—but she was still strong and feisty. She got around so well you’d never know she was blind. I found out later she had this trick: she could connect with other people’s minds and look out through their eyes.” He spun the fedora on his finger. “She was an amazing lady. She talked in this old Southern aristocrat accent.”
“Just like Regina,” Warren interjected, nodding his head back and forth.
Marco didn’t understand, but he didn’t belabor the point. The traffic was starting to move again. The accident lane had opened up.
“We don’t have much time,” said Warren.
“Right. So at first I’m thinking, as soon as Amara finds out I’m a gangster, she’s going to send me packing. Plus, she climbed out of slavery, and here I am, a white man who got her granddaughter pregnant out of wedlock! But she never gives my color a second thought. First time she hears my voice, she says, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ as if
she already knows me. Weird. Anyway, she says we have to go far away for the birth of the child. So the three of us take off. We travel for a while, town to town across the west coast, never staying in the same place too long. I learn all about your family—Amara’s family. I see the two of them practice their tricks.”
Warren looked perplexed but said nothing.
“Amara…she was something. She knew the future, but she wouldn’t tell us anything. She said it was safer if we didn’t know. Then, out of the blue one day, she announces that we have to go to Maine. We ask why, and she just says that’s where Willa’s supposed to have the baby. So I buy us cross-country rail tickets to Maine—to this cabin in the mountains where my family used to hide people. Amara works out this plan for the day of the birth. I wait out in back by the woodshed, near the edge of the mountain. It was pretty scary—no rail or fence or anything—just this big cliff and then nothing, like if you took one step back, you’d just go over the edge. And it’s early March, deep winter. There’s snow everywhere, and I’m freezing my ass off. Amara and Willa are in the house. Willa’s in labor—I can hear her screaming. I want to be in there with her, but I do what Amara says—I stay by the woodshed.” He fumbled with his hat and coughed, though it sounded like a laugh. “Amara had told me that Willa and our daughter were gonna be fine. She said to me ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to make it too. I know how you die. It’s not here, and it’s not for a long, long time.’”
“She told you how you’re gonna die?”
“Not many of the details. She said she didn’t know all of it anyway.” He paused. “At first it was strange to know that no matter what I did, I was going to be around for a while. But it kind of takes the pressure off things.” Marco wanted to stop, but he knew he shouldn’t. “So I’m there hiding in the snow, and, just like Amara said, Dominus—Van Owen—pulls up in this green DeSoto. He climbs out of his car, and I hear Amara’s voice in my head: Shoot him. Shoot him now. In all my days in the mob, I never shot anybody. I roughed people up. I waved my gun around, made a lot of threats, but I swear I never shot anybody. But I knew what Van Owen was, and I knew he was there to take my daughter and to hurt Willa, so I didn’t have any choice. Van Owen steps out of that car, and I fire—BLAM BLAM—two hits right into his chest. He staggers back like he’s hurt, but the guy should be dead, you know, taking a load like that in the chest. He looks at me. I’m about to fire again, but then I see his eyes just drilling into me. I feel this strange chill, and I realize he’s there in my head with me, reading my mind, listening to my thoughts, taking control of my body. I look down, and suddenly my gun’s lying there in the snow. He made me drop it. I’m trying to reach down and get it, but I can’t move. I’m just standing there like I’m frozen. His hand comes out from inside his coat. I figure he’s pulling a gun, but then I see blood dripping from it—and there’s a light coming from his hand. Amara had told me he might do this, but I didn’t believe her. How could it be real? But she was right—his hand was glowing, just like yours does. He’s got blood all over his chest from the bullet, but he starts pressing his hands against his chest—cauterizing the wounds…with electricity from his hand.”
“Yeah,” Warren agreed. “I do that too when I get hurt. I got shot once in my shoulder, and I pulled the bullet out with sparks—used it like electricity, like a magnet—and then I sealed the wound. Hurt like hell for a few days, but it healed.” He stretched his shirt collar downward, displaying a jagged burn mark running along the right side of his chest. “This one’s from a knife wound, he added, pointing to another scar. “The doctor at the hospital told me it was going to take like sixty stitches. Hell with that. I fixed it myself.”
Finally, the traffic was flowing again, and Warren found an opening. He took the exit at Fifty-sixth Street and headed east toward Ninth Avenue.
“So,” Marco went on, “Van Owen fixes his wounds. Then he smiles and starts walking toward me. I try to move, but I can’t. It’s like my body’s not mine anymore. Van Owen’s getting closer, and I’m thinking Amara’s wrong—I’m gonna die right now, before I even get to see my daughter born. But Van Owen calls out, ‘No, Marco, I’m not going to let you off that easy. I want you to stay alive so you can suffer.’ I hear this weird hum, and these images start appearing in my head, like I’m watching a movie or I’m dreaming, having nightmares. I see myself shooting Willa…shooting my own mother. Shooting little children and priests and strangers. I see myself murdering my whole family. They’re all bleeding. There’s blood everywhere. I can feel it on my hands and running down my face. It’s like I’m swimming in it…”
Marco thought about explaining that the fear and the blood sensation stayed with him for months—especially every time he tried to leave his apartment. That by the time the images stopped coming, agoraphobia had become a way of life. He couldn’t leave. He looked down at the hat in his hands. He had crumpled it. The visor was bent irreparably. “Damn,” he muttered. “I wanted to look good for Willa.”
“What happened next?”
“I passed out. When I woke up, Willa was standing above me holding the baby. She told me she threw Van Owen off a cliff… and that Amara’s dead. Amara’s lying there in the snow not too far from me.” He paused. He pressed the brim of his hat against his knee, flattening it as best he could, and then returned the hat to his head. “I buried her under a tree behind the house, overlooking the ocean. Facing southeast, toward West Africa.”
They passed Forty-Second Street and continued down Ninth Avenue. Without warning, Warren suddenly veered the car toward the curb near Port Authority, almost smashing into a parked taxi as he stopped. “You’re not what I thought you were gonna be,” said Warren as he opened the car door. “I came to you because I thought you could help. And I thought: this guy’s old anyway; it doesn’t matter if he gets killed if he can help me save Terry. But I’m not getting my grandfather killed tonight.” He put his finger to the ignition and sent lightning into the key slot. The dashboard sparked and crackled, and the engine shut down. “I’ll see you, old man,” he said as he climbed from the car and took off in a sprint down Ninth Avenue.
“Hey,” Marco shouted after his grandson. “Warren…come back here.” But he was gone.
Marco clambered out, his legs stiff and slow—too slow to run to the stable. So he trotted to the first parked car he saw. It was a huge, run-down silver Thunderbird. Now this is a car, he said to himself. He reached inside his jacket and withdrew his gun. He glanced around—the street was full, but no one seemed to notice him. He spun the gun in his palm so that he was clutching the barrel. It took him two swings before the butt of the revolver sent spider-thin cracks along the driver-side window. The third hit created a jagged hole big enough for Marco to reach in and open the door. Once seated, he pressed his jackknife into the ignition and twisted until the engine roared to life. “Sorry, Warren,” he said aloud though his grandson was long gone, “Amara told me years ago that I would die in New York City defending my family, and I’m not about to prove her wrong.”
Twenty-Eight
Raising Willa isn’t easy. Rolanda was demure and obedient and focused. Willa is wayward and stubborn and reckless. She defies me constantly. She refuses to stay hidden. She’s loud. She insists on playing piano in nightclubs where gangsters hang out. She runs off with her boyfriend—a white man—and gets pregnant! It’s enough to drive an old woman mad.
Still, her childhood can’t have been easy for her either. My youth was ravaged by my parents’ murders, by Van Owen destroying my people and tearing me away from my home—but at least I knew my mother and father. I grew up as a chieftain’s daughter. Willa was raised by her grandmother, ninety-one years old and blind when Willa was born. Rolanda was content staying home with me, conversing without speaking. Willa can barely sit down—except when she’s playing piano. She learns from a neighbor in our apartment building in Boston. From the beginning, music just flows from her fingers—classical, jazz, and especially that syncopated
ragtime she loves so dearly.
I don’t tell Willa about the visions I had years ago—images of her hobbled, confined to her bedroom, barely able to walk. At least she’ll live to be old, which is more than I could manage for her mother.
Maine is beautiful, majestic, peaceful, like nowhere I’ve ever been. Here, I feel removed from the rest of the world. When I stand outside, I can hear the wind roll through trees even older than I am, feel gentle snowflakes stroke my face, smell true winter for the first time. Willa lets me see through her eyes. Giant trees greener than anything I’ve known since Mkembro line the snow-covered back roads behind the house. The white snow dotted with pine needles stretches on endlessly. Winter is cold and yet welcoming. Why did I spend so many years in the South?
Marco and Willa are so good together. Yes, he’s a gangster—and he has much to atone for—but we can’t all help what we were born into. He has left that world, and that’s enough for Willa and for me. And he loves her. I wonder if it was right for me to tell him about his death, but I need him to be calm for what’s coming. I need him focused and unafraid.
Van Owen will be here soon. He’s followed us across the country. I had hoped to keep us hidden longer, but he’s still attuned to our pregnancies. I don’t know how. Does he instinctively know when the women in my family are weak? Does he have some premonition when a new Mkembro child will be born—a new threat to challenge him? A new source from which to steal new powers?
I’ve grown far more powerful in the years since Rolanda died. The visions still elude me, but I’ve learned to reach out with my mind the way Rolanda did—even to people very far away. I’ve learned how to block people from seeing or hearing things. Van Owen can’t sense me—I’m sure of it—perhaps he thinks I’m dead by now. But I know that he can sense Willa.
It’s so unjust that every birth in this family must be marred by his presence. No one comes into this family without Van Owen ensuring that one of us leaves it. This birth—Willa’s only child, Dara—will be no different. I saw glimpses of it years ago, before the visions stopped coming. I don’t know all of the details, but I know how it ends. I like how it ends.
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