by Libba Bray
“No harm, Memphis,” she said a little crisply but not unkindly. Then she placed a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him with clear eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but don’t forget to come back to yourself when it’s finished. Too much good to go throwing it away.”
She stamped a book and handed it to him. Cane by Jean Toomer. “I saved it for you,” she said.
He tried to give it back with a lackluster “’Fraid I don’t have time to read much these days.”
Mrs. Andrews pushed it right back at him. “Make time,” she commanded.
He thanked her. Downstairs, he watched the Krigwa Players blocking out a scene from a new play. Behind them, Mr. Douglas’s powerful scenery soared above the little stage, a story in color and shape. Stories. He cared about those once.
The days numbed him. Around him, Harlem swirled with life: The men laughing on the other side of the Floyd’s Barbershop glass. The trolley rattling down 125th Street. The little girl eyeing the sweets while her mother examined a bin of yams for the best ones. A pretty girl waiting for the bus, singing a song Florence Mills made famous. The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks parading past in their ceremonial aprons. The world felt like a windup toy he wished he could pinch between his fingers and still.
Memphis opened the book Mrs. Andrews had given him. Inside was a poem, “Harvest Song”: “I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.”
Memphis shut his eyes. Early that morning, the Diviners had answered a call from the caretaker at Green-Wood Cemetery out in Brooklyn who’d seen “a pack of bright, skulking terrors.” Terrors did skulk in the dark, and the caretaker was right to be afraid. They’d set off with their flashlights, jumping at every marble angel, every shadow that fell across a headstone. Berenice flitted above Memphis, hopping from tombstone to tombstone, squawking. “Shush, now, Berenice,” he’d tutted. But the bird wouldn’t be calmed. At one point, the crow tugged at his sleeve, as if urging him back. Memphis heard a sound and followed it to a crypt. There he’d come face-to-face with a wraith in tattered bedclothes hunched over the carcass of a mutilated, half-dead squirrel. The wraith’s mouth and jaw were smeared with the twitching animal’s blood. Those razor-sharp teeth gnawed at the poor squirrel’s tendons and bit through bone with a sickening crunch. The butchered bodies of two birds and a rat lay nearby, as if the thing ate blindly, never getting its fill. It was alone, though, separated from its hunting pack. So was Memphis. This one was beyond questioning and useless to them. Heart beating fast, Memphis backed away, cracking a twig underfoot. The creature’s head snapped up. Those white-marble eyes locked on Memphis’s and he froze. Nearby, the crow spread its wings as if it could shield Memphis from danger. The wraith let out a pitiful cry. It sounded confused, lost, perhaps lonely for its brethren, if one could call what it ran with any kind of brotherhood.
“Here, now. It’s all right,” Memphis said. He didn’t know why he’d said it. For those few seconds, Memphis had felt a strange connection to that lost, wretched creature trying to sate its longing. Pain did not end at the grave. Had this unfortunate thing once carried a beating heart inside? Had it walked the same streets as Memphis, shared the same dreams? Did it have a story?
The wraith had cocked its head as if trying to understand. Memphis could hear his friends calling his name as they came running. The thing in front of him growled and dropped into a defensive stance. It unhinged its jaw and hissed, showing its pointed, bloodied teeth matted with animal fur and muscle. Memphis had been trying to reason with it. But there was no reasoning with these filthy things. He needed to remember that. Ghosts had been people, Will had once told them. And people showed themselves for what they were eventually. Even people who said they loved you. Memphis understood that now.
“Now!” Sam called. The Diviners stood together, concentrating until their power multiplied. Memphis felt nothing but hatred as the ghost looked up for just a moment, a silent howl of betrayal on its pallid face just before they created the energy field and sent it into oblivion.
Afterward, once the fierce glow of ghost-banishing had faded—“I fear knowledge of my hunger”—Theta had put her hand on his arm. “That thing was so close! You copacetic?”
“Fine. I got to get Isaiah home before Octavia wakes up and finds us gone,” he said, and left her standing there in the cold of the graveyard.
“Why you mad at Theta?” Isaiah asked as Memphis tucked him in.
“Mind your own business,” Memphis said, and Isaiah had rolled over without a word. That was two people he’d hurt in one night. And he called himself a healer. He wasn’t anything. He was just existing. Memphis took off his shoes and socks. There were new sores on his ankles. He tried to ignore them and go to sleep.
The next night, in a corner of the Hotsy Totsy, Memphis opened his book and read: “I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry.”
He watched the band going to town and the chorines cutting loose. On the dance floor, it was glorious, stomping mayhem. Memphis felt none of it. The music was hollow. The dancing was hollow. The smiles were hollow. He was hollow. A ghost among the living but no one noticed.
He thought again of the thing in the graveyard showing its teeth. And now he wondered—had it been promising to hurt him? Or had it been afraid of him? He didn’t know. He didn’t know if what they were doing to the ghosts was the right thing. And the doubt was beginning to eat away at him.
He woke in the night, thinking of Theta, remembering every good night they’d ever had. The way the brightness strafed the Palisades as the two of them sat with their arms wrapped around each other, watching the river from the lighthouse. The softness of her lips. The husky cackle of her laugh. The quiet huff of her breath against his neck when she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. Gone. All gone. He tried to funnel the howl inside him into words. But there were limits to language. Sometimes, he stood among the tall stacks at the 135th Street library staring at the spines of all those books, all those people hungry to tell what they saw, what they felt, what they hoped other people also saw and felt. They wrote it all down so they wouldn’t disappear. So they wouldn’t disappear. A testimony: I was here. So many stories. Why did he think his would even matter?
He tucked away his notebook and didn’t look at it once.
Papa Charles came for him. Without a word, Memphis followed his boss to the back rooms of the Cotton Club, where Memphis healed up a couple of Owney’s thugs. And then he pocketed the money, though he’d long since forgotten what he was saving for. He spent too much money on a fine suit he didn’t wear but once. He bought a new leather glove for Isaiah. He stuffed rent money in Octavia’s fake sugar jar in the kitchen. At the club, there were drinks for the chorus girls who hugged his neck and told him he was “an angel.” When a dancer named Pauline kissed him and placed his hands on her hips, Memphis felt nothing. Hollow. Hollow. “My throat is dry. I hunger.”
“Sorry,” he told Pauline, and she cursed his name on the way out.
At the lighthouse, Memphis stood outside and tossed rocks into the Hudson, watching them sink. He’d known their love was bad odds. But wasn’t all love betting against the odds? He was the damned fool who’d gone and believed.
“I fear knowledge of my hunger.”
All of these thoughts weighed on Memphis as he walked up and down Madame Seraphina’s block, trying to work up the courage to ring her bell. When at last he did, she opened the basement door and smiled at him. The white turban she wore exposed the round, high-cheeked beauty of her face. The porch light made the apples of her cheeks shine as if polished.
“Come,” she said, and went inside.
Seraphina showed Memphis to her formal parlor, which had been painted a deep royal blue that made Memphis think of a sky just past sunset. She settled into the chair opposite his and crossed her long legs. “So. Here we are, you and I.”
>
“I’ve come about my mother. You said she came to see you before she passed. I want to know why,” Memphis explained.
“Your mother was worried.”
That didn’t seem strange to Memphis. She was a mother. Mothers worried. “What was she worried about?”
“She said she’d made a bad bargain.”
“What sort of b—”
“You want information. I want information. You first.” Seraphina leaned back and rested her slim forearms on the chair’s plush velvet arms. “Four of my runners got shook down yesterday. I had to go to the precinct for them. I heard from other bankers. They are having the same trouble. Cops—and Dutch Schultz. Yet Papa Charles is untouched. How is Papa Charles keeping his business safe?”
If Memphis told Seraphina the truth about his healing, he’d be betraying both Papa and Owney. There was no telling what they might do if they found out he’d shared their secrets. Memphis’s stomach tightened. “Papa doesn’t tell me everything. I’m just a runner.”
“So you say. But I hear the two of you make visits to the Cotton Club late at night—yes, I have eyes on the streets, too. If you’re just a runner,” she sneered, “then why is Papa Charles taking you to see Owney Madden? What is Owney doing for Papa?”
“He just needed someone to come along,” Memphis lied. “For protection.”
Madame Seraphina smirked. “Protection is why he has Yannick and Claude.”
Memphis tried the power of his charm. “That’s all there is to it,” he said, tossing off a shy smile. “That’s all I know.”
Seraphina leaned forward, eyes flashing. “Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. I did not come to this country and rise up from its streets to be dismissed in my own home!” She cupped Memphis’s chin in her silk-soft palm. “Cowards ignore women. Men listen. If you will not respect me, you can leave. But then you will never know what your manman confessed to me.”
Papa Charles had told Memphis about the honor among men. Memphis hadn’t really thought much about how that honor was built on the idea of keeping women out. On a belief that they should not be trusted. After Theta, Memphis felt that Papa had been right. But Seraphina wasn’t going to tell Memphis anything unless he was honest with her, and he needed to know the truth.
“Some of his runners got arrested,” Memphis said carefully. “And Papa pays his dues.” Everybody had to pay off the police if they wanted to run a business. That was common knowledge uptown. “But these cops are getting paid by Dutch Schultz.”
“Everybody knows that,” Seraphina said, dismissing Memphis’s comment with a wave of her hand. “What is Charles asking you to do for Owney behind closed doors?”
Memphis hated to think about what Papa Charles would do if he found out Memphis had been telling Seraphina his business. “He’s having me heal up Owney’s men when they get hurt. Owney’s still more powerful than Dutch. Papa says if we get Owney on our side, make an alliance, we can keep Dutch from taking over. That Owney will protect us.”
For just a moment, Seraphina was so still that Memphis could scarcely hear her breathing. And then a laugh tore out of her, loud and guttural and tommy gun–quick. She slapped her knee. “Oh, Charles, Charles. You old fool.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“So. Far,” Seraphina said, drying her eyes. “Papa Charles thinks if he makes nice, these ofay will accept him.” She shook her head.
“I’m sure Papa Charles will look out for us,” Memphis said, feeling defensive.
Seraphina snorted. “Papa hobnobs with radio stars and the mayor. He thinks they accept him as one of their own, just another businessman. He forgets that in this country, he is a black man first. They will never let him in, not all the way. Owney will ignore his promise. And when Dutch Schultz calls the shots, the white people will back him. What do they care as long as they can dance where they like?” Seraphina lowered her chin and leveled her gaze at Memphis. Her eyes were flecked with gold, like a tiger’s. “No one feared the rabbits until they took over the garden. The white gangsters have been occupied with bootlegging. But now they’re pushing into our numbers game. Bit by bit, they will take all we have built. And they will destroy the Harlem we love.”
The news unsettled Memphis. He didn’t like healing Owney’s men in the first place, and the idea that it might all be for naught made it worse. Still, he had to believe that Papa Charles knew what he was doing.
“I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Tell me about my mother like you promised.”
Seraphina leaned back against her chair again. “Your mother said she had taken bad medicine. She was afraid it had cursed you and your brother. Do you know this?”
Memphis nodded.
“She told me that because of the bad medicine, there were people who would come for you. She had wanted to protect you and your brother from those bad people. And that was when she made her mistake.”
“What mistake was that?”
“She called upon a bad spirit from the land of the dead. She made a bargain with the King of Crows.”
Memphis’s heartbeat quickened till he could hear the rhythm of his blood in his ears like drums. “What kind of bargain?”
“My turn,” said Seraphina. “Why do you do this healing?”
“Told you why. Papa said it would help us.”
“Papa said, Papa said. You do everything Papa tells you? You make any decisions for yourself?”
“I made the decision to come here,” Memphis sniped. “I want to hear about my mother.”
“Your mother knew she was dying,” Seraphina said after a pause. “And she feared she would not be here to watch over her boys. She was worried about threats here and from beyond—a coming storm. So she went to the graveyard barefoot, and that night, he appeared to her. He told her that he would make sure the bad men could not find you and your brother. He promised that she could watch over you from beyond. For a price.”
“What price?”
Seraphina sighed. “This, I don’t know. But I do know that crows are powerful. They are messengers of the dead. They can travel between worlds.”
“Between worlds…” he whispered. Something was fighting to take shape in Memphis’s mind. The room tilted sideways as it came to him. “Berenice?”
Seraphina made a face. “Who is Berenice?”
It was impossible. But the more Memphis thought about it, the more he realized that the bird that had been following him for months had been keeping watch like a guardian. Like a mother. Instinctively, he looked to the window. The crow was just outside, waiting. Memphis kept a grip on the chair; it felt as if he could float away so easily.
“Can the curse be undone?” Memphis asked.
“I only know so much. I don’t play with bad magic. And he is bad magic,” Seraphina said. “You want to know? Ask the ghosts.”
Memphis thought again of the thing in the graveyard. Of the spirits they’d annihilated over the past few nights. Guilt twinged in his chest.
“No,” Memphis said.
Seraphina pushed air through her teeth and pursed her lips in mild rebuke. “You afraid of spirits? They’re with us always.”
“I know that better than most,” Memphis snapped.
“You do, huh? It’s you who needs to find your way home, Memphis. Walk with your ancestors. See. Feel. Know. Let me give you some protection at least.”
“Your protection didn’t work very well for my mother,” Memphis said, angry.
“How do you know it didn’t? There’s all kinds of magic in the world.”
“Why do you want to help me?”
Seraphina shrugged. “I like your smile.”
She laughed then—a big, powerful guffaw that brought out Memphis’s smile against his will.
“You see there? Powerful. There is something of the Oungan in you. I sense it. You shouldn’t turn your back on it. Encourage it. Let it grow. Let it be in the world. And stop being afraid of spirits. Now. Wait here for me.”
Memphis did as he
was told. A while later, Seraphina arrived with a small leather bag on a cord. “Here. Keep this with you. A connection to all that has come before, to the lwas, to your ancestors, to your birthright in this world. It will protect you.”
“How?” Memphis asked, tucking it into a pocket of his coat.
“That, I can’t see. But you’ll know when the time comes.”
Madame Seraphina saw Memphis to the door. “Why you run around with that old blind man?” she asked rather suddenly, catching Memphis off guard.
“Mr. Johnson? He’s my auntie’s boarder. He’s nice enough.”
Seraphina said nothing. Memphis felt the need to defend Bill against judgments unsaid. “He’s been awfully good to Isaiah. In fact, he’s saved Isaiah’s life a few times. Every time Isaiah has one of his seizures, it’s Mr. Johnson who’s been there.”
Even as Memphis said it aloud, something stirred in his gut. Something with teeth.
Seraphina’s brow furrowed. “There’s something left-handed about that man.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” Memphis said. He was feeling defensive now. And worried about what he’d done, telling Papa’s secrets to his competition. That was a stupid mistake, and it chilled him.
“Maybe not. Your brother keeps having fits? He should come to me. I will help him.”
And suddenly, it all made sense to Memphis. It was a saleswoman’s pitch to get them to come back. He felt that he’d been had. He had half a mind to toss the gris gris bag back to Seraphina and tell her to keep her magic. “I look after my brother just fine.”
“As you say. But I would be careful around Mr. Guillaume Johnson.”
Memphis startled at the name. “What did you call him?”
“Guillaume,” Seraphina said innocently. “Guillaume, William, Bill. It’s all the same name.” Seraphina’s eyebrows furrowed. “Now you really do look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Memphis reeled away from Seraphina’s place and down the street, lost in his thoughts. Guillaume. No. It couldn’t possibly be the same person! That was ridiculous. Guillaume Johnson, if he were still alive, would be, what? Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, maybe? And he’d sounded like a big, powerful man. Blind Bill Johnson was a broken-down bluesman, stooped, with a lined face and gray hair. He was not a powerful Diviner who could steal the life from things.