That freckle-face boy just looked at me in the mirror all blank and started brushing his tongue and letting all the toothpaste suds fall out – all the time he knows he’s disgustin’. He told me to hold his nasty toothbrush while he cupped both hands to rinse his mouth cos the tank was runnin’ low again. I repeated myself.
“Said I got somethin’ for you to do for me, Frico.”
Rinse. Gargle. Spit.
“And what you can do for me is put my toothbrush down and get the hell out. You gonna watch me floss too?”
He snapped a thread off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his fingers. I tried to sound reasonable.
“Look, we ain’t had words about Broadway and Squash, but we need to.”
“Go ahead, have words. This should be interesting.”
“I know you did it.”
“You think I did it. You imagine that I do lots of things. You should be careful with that. That’s why momma took you to see that shrink lady.”
“That lady doctor is none of y’all business. And by the way that was not because of anything I was thinkin’. It was because your friend Suzy Wilson got me into trouble and all that. I used to think things those days. These days, I know.”
“Uh-huh, you know? Why? Cos these days you are the Prophet Beaumont? I thought the only thing you believed in was money.”
“Sure I believe in money, like Doug does. I believe in you too.” That sounded crappy as soon as I said it. He stuck his finger into his mouth and made that fake-vomit sound that girls do when they think you’re a creep – well, at least that’s what Marlon told me.
“Look, we got things to do, and instead of usin’ those powers, you’re just markin’ time around here.”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. You’re mistaken.”
“I’m talkin’ about the earthquake and the sinkhole and all the stories I heard about you since I was born.”
He wasn’t lookin’ at me any more. He pulled on both ends of the flossin’ thread. Something flicked off and stuck to the mirror.
I realized this boy wasn’t budgin’. So I got real menacin’ and husky in my voice, like they do on those interrogations that come halfway through every cop show.
“I’ll tell you what will be a mistake, Fricozoid. Not doin’ what I say when I say it. Cos I got the drop on you, y’hear me?” I was thinkin’ I would use some cool police phrases too.
He just laughed.
“Wait, wait... wow. Ha. You got the drop. On me...”
He used one finger to tap his chest, while he smirked at me in the mirror. Then he went from amused to bored, but I wasn’t goin’ to leave without makin’ my point.
“Frico, I heard you say ‘shhh’ up in that tree, but I’m prepared to do the opposite if we don’t come to an understandin’ right now.”
To be honest, at that point I knew I pushed too far – and by any measure I was being too big for my britches, as Pops would say. But Frico didn’t grab for my throat like I expected him to. Instead he just stood in the mirror, took up the toothpaste and squeezed a bit on his fingertip. Then he started draggin’ his finger around and sketchin’ on the glass with the toothpaste. Meanwhile he’s doin’ it, he’s talkin’ real calm.
“See Skid... maybe I said ‘shhh’ up in that tree so you would shut up and not scream like a girl again, and let ol’ man Benet see us and start blazin’ bullets – cos maybe he thought it was Calvin climbin’ a tree or some Loogaroo or something. Or maybe I did it so you can keep your mouth shut, period – especially to Belly and Marlon and Harry T about all this rubbish – you got that?” He moved from in front of the mirror and pointed.
“Aww now Skid... look what you done gone and did to yourself.”
I looked and – would you believe it? – that bastard sketched a perfect image of my face on the mirror with the toothpaste. And then the guy added pimples! Lots of them. I grabbed my face. I was ready at this point to back off and fight another day, but he pushed past me and was walkin’ out the door when he said: “I will sketch that every mornin’ and find somewhere to add one more spot until you promise to shut the hell up. Even if it’s on your scalp. You got that?”
* * *
I got obsessed with mirrors after that. Had one in my pocket, lookin’ out for a bad complexion every hour on the hour. Then I started hoggin’ the ol’ dresser mirror inside of our shack as well. Now, come to think of it, I know I never told you anything much about the inside of our one-room swamp shack. That’s because a man can’t describe what he can’t see. But since Pops moved out with his stuff, we did some spring cleanin’ and threw out more junk – and, frankly, our house was in better shape. Inside at least. There were pale patches on the floor, squares and rectangles where appliances used to sit, pale wood undisturbed for years and years. We took out some of the furniture. It wasn’t much, just four iron chairs and a formica table with wooden legs, three beds – or, rather, two beds and a cot – and a big, tangerine fake-leather armchair behind the door.
We decided not to move the heavy stuff, like Moms’ display case with all the fine china that’s never used, and the stuff that was hooked up to Pops’ power sources, like the fridge and CB, cos he wasn’t around to fix anythin’ if it went haywire. The old record changer that some poor soul had brought in to get fixed was still there. They’d left a Justin Wilson Cajun comedy record in it, but the changer played real slow, so ol’ Justin’s jokes took too long to hit the punchline. Pops’ workbench was still in the far corner of the room, with yellowin’ electronic magazines hangin’ over it from shelves like an overstuffed Po’ Boy sandwich. Moms took down each shelf herself and put them out in the yard for the mosquito fires. Tony snuck half of them back inside.
The job to clean the floor went to me and Fricozoid. Moms went into an old shippin’ barrel and took out a few ounces of some red powder, and we mixed it with water and washed the wood floors with it until it was blood red. Then we started on the porch. She called the red powder “annatto”. We called it “weird”. She was grinnin’ and sayin’ she “hadn’t seen a floor so pretty since...” – and when she trailed off, I got brave and finished her sentence: “Since San Tainos?” Well, right then she just stopped and stared ahead right across to Pa Campbell’s place. And he just turned himself around in his wheelchair and slid inside his house and locked the door behind him.
She put up some new white curtains after we painted the inside of the house with this aquamarine flat emulsion that we found in Pops’ left-behind belongin’s. “It’s time things got a little more permanent round here.”
That night the mosquito fire was a huge camp-style blaze fuelled by some of Pops’ old magazines. When the light from it was brightest and made the trees and their shadows elastic, Moms started a show-and-tell. Dozens of jars and old clothes and albums and some knick-knacks later, we had heard all about San Tainos – just like that. She said our Pops didn’t want us to grow up confused, so she didn’t tell us much, but we were older now. She made it fun, better than many teachers I’ve had – playin’ all the parts in the drama of when the sun was young and the Caribbean gods created San Tainos by breakin’ off pieces of Peru and draggin’ them up the Central American Walkway and hurlin’ them into the sea right off the coast of Mexico to make steppin’ stones into the Greater Antilles. This was a road of escape from other tribes, who raided Taino villages like it was a hobby. Well, some of the Taino people went on ahead into Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, but others stopped to rest a while on those steppin’ stones – and the breeze was so cool they fell asleep and had sweet dreams for centuries. When they woke up, Columbus was knockin’ on their door with a nightmare. But after a while some of them found refuge from the ol’ Spanish sword by escapin’ in the dead of night with some runaway slaves that the Spanish called Cimarrónes. Them and the Cimarrónes took to the mountains to live high up inside a cooled-down volcano cone on the north of the island. And up inside that big burner, the Spanish didn’t even know where th
ey were at first. That group of people recognized the volcano as a zemi, a god in itself, since it was apparently the one who saved them from the invaders. They called the mountain Bik’ua.
Moms spoke that legend like it was all true, stoppin’ a few times to get the glisten out of her eyes. Well, even though I was all of twelve goin’ on thirteen at the time, I felt brandnew again, like I was just born, like back in the day when ol’ Pa Campbell used to hang out with me and tell me cool stories.
I don’t know ’bout my brothers, but before all these revelations there were questions deep behind the ol’ Skid skull. To me it was like you’re at the bottom of a pool, so all you can hear is muffles from above and everybody below is speakin’ in bubbles. Or you’re watchin’ a movie and some dude decides to drag a chair through the most important part of the dialogue.
So I guess that San Tainos place was hauntin’ my head long before I heard about it. I tasted it in Valerie Beaumont’s cooking, when the meal came out not quite Creole or Cajun but stopped somewhere in between, or was just completely different. I could hear it when she was navigatin’ the corners of her American accent and she hit a syllable really hard, and somethin’ else tumbled out from under her tongue. Her grammar always stood steady, but the sound changed, like that time in Principal Phillips’ office. I heard it in my own voice, but only when I talked proper English and the kids at school looked at me weird. They said my accent kept changin’ gears. Talk about goddamn sour grapes. I told them they needed to listen in English and go learn to spell words like ‘colour’ and ‘honour’ correctly. Of course, it was me who always got those words wrong in class. Life is not fair. Anyway, slowly I was realizin’ that I was more San Tainos than New O’lins. Or maybe I was caught in between them, like Moms’ cookin’.
“So when are we goin’ there?”
Frico was askin’ if we could ever visit the island, and she just smiled and looked off at nothin’, starin’ dead ahead with her palm under her chin, like she was watchin’ reruns in her head.
“You can go there right now. If you can fly real fast like a hummingbird, go west-south-west. Keep your eyes open or you’ll miss it. It’s always under a cloud.”
After that, when the fire was dyin’ down, she didn’t make it blaze again, and we knew she needed the shadows for a few seconds. There was a question-and-answer session after that, and I had a coupla things to ask – but I couldn’t just jump into the hocus-pocus part of San Tainos and her naturalmagic workin’ and she and Captain Benet and all that, so I played smart.
“Did Pops like San Tainos?”
“Oh boy, that man loved the place.”
“He used to come all the way there to see you?”
“Quite a bit... yes.”
“By himself?”
At that point Moms, she just looked at me like she knew that I’d heard all about the conjurations and the grimoire seals and, worst of all, about her and Benet. The thought flashed in my head that I could twist her arm a bit and get her to influence Frico, but for three days after that she kept me so busy with chores every day after school I knew she was sendin’ me a message.
By the way, I found out the reason that tamarind-tree conference room was so cool. It grew from tamarinds that my pops carried from San Tainos back in the day. He was eatin’ some of that stuff and spat those seeds in the swamp years before we were born. He was still a coward, though.
Now, maybe it was cos Pa Campbell told me all these other stories, but I was diggin’ this whole San Tainos thing. Like somebody found an old picture of me and blew the dust off it and handed it back to me. Moms bought shoots and seeds, and we started a garden. She was better at real food, like tomatoes, callaloo, peppers and corn than those flowers she wanted to plant. In the summer we boys tried our hand at dasheen and cassava. Those are like root foods and stuff. They taste much better than they sound, by the way.
We learnt about Taino words – that, like us, were only slightly changed or misinterpreted and hidden in plain sight. When we cooked outside on the “barbecue”, when we rowed out to fish in a “canoe” and when Doug got in trouble for tryin’ some chewin’ “tobacco” that made him drowsy for hours, those were all Taino vocabulary.
Shortly after, I wanted my hair back in a topknot, like when we were little. I could have it like that at home at least. Moms didn’t mind teasin’ it into a knot and all, even though it was coarser now. She said we were on earth to gather up the pieces of our lives and make somethin’ of ourselves. The African and the Cajun parts of us were easier to find, but the Taino took a little more diggin’, cos the culture was almost buried along with many of the people. She said I should go dig at the library over in Algiers. Well, I did, and it turns out that in San Tainos’ case, the Spaniards did those Tainos in with hard work and diseases – all the ones who didn’t head for the hills, I mean. Meanwhile those who ran away to live with the Cimarrónes were sittin’ pretty. The volcano had two massive cones up in the sky and inside one of them was a world by itself. There were lakes and rich soil and little crop farms and lots of birds comin’ and goin’. Spanish soldiers tried three times to come up into those sky burners, but Bik’ua hid herself under a cloud, so they got confused and fell down ditches and stabbed each other and all that. The English came after a while and threw out the Spaniards, to put it nicely. Then they tried to make it up the mountain and got caught up in bloody clashes. But then the mountain started rumblin’ and heatin’ up, so the Cimarrónes slash Tainos called a truce and came down the volcano to meet them. This part was eerie, written by an English guy who travelled all that way just to write stuff down:
The Tainos and Cimarrónes came down from the mist of those cones after generations, blinking eyes and straining ears. There was hardly any echo of Spanish and no trace of any Arawakan tongue, save that which stammered from their own lips. The streets were empty of their people and filled with brand-new, loud and fearsome contraptions.
Contraptions. Now, there’s a word that sounds like the thing itself. I like those long-ago guys, though. They got words to shake ya. Anyway, after readin’ that at the library, I told Moms about the volcano drawin’ I did for that lady doctor back in the day. She said she saw it and she wasn’t surprised. My Pops warned her never to tell us about San Tainos, but she would whisper Bik’ua’s name in both ears when we were born.
“Stranger things have happened in our house. You didn’t just draw that out of the blue.”
So we settled in – and, honestly, it was like an adventure all over again. That is until some of the gloom and doom that Pa Campbell predicted walked up to our doorstep, literally. One mornin’ Pa Campbell rapped on the window with his rifle, and when we went out, he shook as he pointed out some huge, grey footprints from one end of our front porch to the next. Whoever or whatever paid us a visit had walked barefoot and then tracked mud across the anatto-red floorboard to the front window. He pointed out that they were crouchin’ as they walked, sometimes goin’ down on all fours, and you could see that they had tipped up on their toes to look inside on us while we slept. Calvin’s kids hadn’t made a sound, so Doug was sayin’ it’s Pops, but Moms said her husband’s foot is half that size: he’d never go barefoot, and the man she married didn’t walk up the aisle on all fours.
After that she bought her own rifle. Bolt action. She blamed those parasites, the swamp rats, but I knew what she meant. Tony took sticks and old clothes and started trainin’ Calvin’s six kids. And that’s when Moms gave Frico a job to paint some diagrams on the lower part of the house usin’ that redpowder thing. He had to do it before nightfall each day and within seven days. Turns out that the red-anatto thing also wards off spirits.
Thirteen
Mai was mad at me cos I’d finally told her that we were the ones who sent Calvin over to the Benets’ house that night a while back, and that’s how the whole thing started. Doug and Tony made me swear not to say anythin’ to anybody, but Mai wasn’t just anybody. Well, as soon as I told her, that girl gave me a s
olid scoldin’ about bein’ more responsible and how I could have been killed. You shoulda seen her rockin’ her head and hollerin’ at me in Vietnamese and very good English. You believe that? You teach your girl English and she beats you over the head with it. After that, whenever I went to the Lam Lee Hahn, she talked to me like I was just a customer: “May I help you, sir?” or “Sorry sir, we don’t have any brown rice.” Worse than that, she stopped givin’ me my lagniappe – that’s like somethin’ extra that you get in your groceries, just for shoppin’.
“Lan-yap is for people who deserve it. Have a good day.”
And she would close the cash register and look away, like I wasn’t there. Well, that kind of abuse just made her cuter.
So one evenin’ after school I washed my face and spruced up my topknot and put on clean jeans and went over to Lam Lee Hahn. That day she wasn’t mindin’ the shop, so she was in the backyard. I didn’t have to knock, cos by the time I walked up, their little butt-biting dog started hollerin’. Mai, she came around the side and saw me. She opened a small gate in the wooden fence and put one hand on her hip.
“May I help you sir?” Cute as hell.
“I didn’t come to see you, I came to meet Kuan – that person you told me about that day at Al Dubois.”
“Hmm. I see. Let me check if she’s available.”
She closed the gate again and walked away down a neat footpath that they had made from broken pieces of Vietnamese pottery. Seemed like every time someone dropped an expensive pot or a bottle, they just took the accident and made somethin’ pretty. I trailed my eyes along that mosaic of deep-blue and red glass and yellow clay pieces and listened to her footsteps fadin’, while a tall weepin’ willow howled in the breeze. Meanwhile, the dog, he recognized me even though it’d been five long years since we danced cheek to cheek. So he decided to keep an eye on me until Mai got back. He put his paws under the fence and stuck his face between them and kept sniffin’ the air and sneezin’ when the dirt got sucked back up into his nose. Stupid dog. I tried to ignore him, so for the first time I really took a look at the Lam Lee Hahn property. You really couldn’t tell it was a shop by just passing by in a train. It looked like one of those pagodas you’d see in a World Atlas. Well, not as fancy, but the colours were the same. And it looked like somethin’ that grew out from the ground, rather than something constructed. There was a high red wooden fence at the front. Grapefruit trees were planted all along the length of it, and the bright-yellow fruit stood out against the flat red. Four tall wood columns divided the fence into sections. Rough dragon carvings curled around each column, with the dragons clawin’ their way towards a blazin’ gold ball at the top. A white sign with Vietnamese writin’ hung right above the front doors. I couldn’t tell if it said “Lam Lee Hahn”, but it looked cool. The dog jumped up and wagged his tail. Mai came back to the small gate, opened it and stepped back to let me in.
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