Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  I zip up Bedford, giving the monstrous-old-fortress men’s shelter a wide berth. I swing right toward Franklin, slow as I approach where the house once was. Try to pull loose from the mire of memories, fail. Mama Esther telling me about the different women who lived in that house over the years, each of whom became a part of her spiritual swirl. Mama Esther reading out loud to me while I sulked after a mission with two new recruits went sour. Mama Esther listening while I talked about the dramas and heartaches from my life, my life when I’d been alive, and the one that bled over into my death: Magdalena.

  I round the corner onto Franklin. The night has become crisp; the air whispers of snow. A bodega on the corner; brownstones line the block. And there . . . except no. I pause across the street. Where I expected a pile of rubble hidden by a construction fence, there is a cheerful neon sign on a brand-new brick storefront: JUNIPER’S PET GROOMING AND ORGANIC CUPCAKERY.

  Juniper . . . pets . . . cupcakes. How can one even put those two things in the same . . . It doesn’t matter. Confusion flattens and disperses beneath the sudden onslaught of rage. It covers me, burns and glistens inside me. I cross the street, oblivious to the passing cars, the passersby. Smiley faces gloat around the words on a sign saying there’ll be a grand opening next week, complete with DJ and a “PET COSTUME / CUPCAKE CONTEST.” Through the window, I can see the darkened front room, with cartoony arrows pointing to the grooming area and the bakery. Some cans of paint and rollers lie around on the floor, but otherwise the place is pretty much done. Some entrepreneur’s lifelong dream, perhaps, or maybe not—you never know what people with extravagant resources will do on a whim.

  The rage, somewhat subsided as I took the place in, reignites.

  I enter, feel the windowpane’s density prickle through me as I breach. Then the stillness surrounds me. This was once the empty front room. Just two weeks ago. How does the world move so fast? I would step in and take a deep breath, like I’d just crossed a border back home. Here I was safe. Now . . .

  The sob that comes out doesn’t sound like me—it’s high pitched and it catches me off guard. I only know it’s mine because I feel my whole body heave when another one comes out. Mama Esther was my safe place.

  Mama Esther was my safe place, and now we’re at war. We’re at war, and I’ve already killed my own teacher. And ahead there’s only more killing. And Mama Esther is gone, my safe place.

  The third and fourth and fifth sob come in gulpy hiccups, and there’s a precipice—that moment where the deluge will either burst forth or fall back, I’ll wipe my eyes and walk away or I’ll fall apart. The strength of this rage and sadness is such that I don’t know what’ll happen if I let go; I feel I may never come back.

  I hang there for a good few moments, barely breathing, just a fat flickering shroud in an empty room on a winter night. Tiny flickers erupt within me. Flashes of bright amidst my vast darkness. My safe space gone, I am untethered. Here is where I would’ve come to cool this hatred.

  More flickers. I don’t know what they are, what they mean. They register as momentary, condensed unravelings—like slivers of my DNA are coming undone, each sending out little blasts of light as it trembles and then dissolves.

  A pause, and then more flickers. Many more. Bombs exploding across a darkened city. Flares in a night sky. Then they catch and spread, unchecked, a million now, blistering and burning across all of who I am, each minuscule spirit cell explodes to life and light.

  Finally, I look up from the crouch I’ve been trembling in. The night has caught fire around me. No—I’m on fire. The flames spit and lash from my shining translucent arms, my belly, my heart. The rage issues forth in bright yellows and purples. It is real, not just a spectral illusion: the quiet lobby glows now with all this rabid heat; I am aflame.

  The first thing to catch is one of the drapes they’ve laid out for painting. Flames tiptoe along the edge, find some flammable bit of chemical along its surface, and then scream to life. Soon one of the walls has caught.

  And me? I keep burning, but there’s no pain. The fire is me—it can no more burn me than burn itself. We are together: one. I wonder, briefly, if I’ll ever be able to put it out, if it’ll matter, because maybe I’ll be gone soon anyway. And then it doesn’t matter, but not because I’m gone, because it’s simply what I am. There are no more questions inside me as I tip to one side just so, lighting the reception desk, with its cartoon puppy dog explaining in bubbly letters how to follow them on social media. The desk explodes into a million shards of wood and glass, shattering the front window. From the wreckage, I gather someone had stored a twelve-pack of PBRs and some bottles of Captain Morgan in one of the cabinets, probably for the grand opening.

  From not too far away: sirens.

  Then more—they’re coming from all sides now, and an irrational panic wells up within me. Cops. Firemen. They’ll find me. Destroy me, somehow, but no . . . no. It’s not just that I’m invisible: I’m fire. There is no finding me; there’s no catching me. These flames keep up their steady dance along my shoulders and up my back, the crown of my head.

  As the engines screech up, I walk forward, as slow as I feel to, arms outstretched, out of the flaming wreckage and into the street. Their eyes sway past me; there’s too much going on to bother with glints of flame sparkling in the air in front of a massive four-alarm fire.

  The first pressure blast from the hoses rises into the night sky as I turn my back on all that carnage and stroll slowly down Franklin Avenue.

  —

  The tiny lights are still glinting across my body when Jimmy, the Iyawo, and Redd find me around the corner from the wreckage. I look up from the ball I’m curled in, and there they are: two full-flesh-and-blood humans, one shining in her white puffy jacket against the night, and a ghost. They’ve become friends over the past weeks—we all have. The coming war gave us common cause, Baba Eddie’s a place to meet. And then losing Mama Esther cemented the bond. I still want to slide all the way up on the Iyawo when I see her, and every time Redd flashes that huge grin I want to take all of him in my mouth, but somehow I manage to put all that to the side and just be cool with them anyway.

  The Iyawo is the first to speak. “Did you—” She nods to where the pulsing emergency lights beat against the sky.

  I nod.

  “You’ve still got some on you,” Redd says. He smiles, hugely. “Like, right there.” He points at a random spot on himself. “No wait, now there.”

  “Actually over there,” Jimmy says, pointing at his knee.

  I roll my eyes. “Y’all found me for the purpose of annoying me, or what?”

  “How did you even do it, though?” the Iyawo asks. “I mean . . . what happened?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure.”

  “You okay?” She looks more concerned than I’ve ever seen her, that big ol’ forehead of hers—the only thing big on her—creased with worry.

  “I dunno,” I say. “No.”

  “Neither are we,” Redd says. “That’s why we found you. We figured you’d be as fucked up as we are.”

  “Solid basis for a friendship,” Jimmy muses.

  “It’ll do,” I say.

  Redd spits a gooey, translucent loogie into the ether. “Ay, fuck a cupcakery, though. The fuck is that? And how I look eating baked goods out a spot where they clean a dog’s anus? Gonna get some literally ass-flavored-ass cupcakes, is what.”

  Jimmy’s laughing uncontrollably. “You sure got twenty-first-century Brooklynized real quick for someone who just walked out of slavery era a couple months ago.”

  Redd shrugs. “Been hanging out with the Black Hoodies since I showed up. Guess you could say they initiated me into the ways of today.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” the Iyawo says. “Council prolly gonna have some goons out soon enough to see whatsup, and anyway I’m not even supposed to be out at night.”

&nb
sp; —

  “Uno!” the Iyawo yells. Then she giggles. She never giggles. Again I imagine an imaginary phallus rising through my translucent pants. As it is, I’m soaked.

  “Bitch,” Redd says without looking up from his cards. “You always on Uno. How is this even— Jimmy, your go, man.”

  “Jimmy out,” I say.

  “What? He had like eighty cards a second a—oh.” He finally looks up, sees Jimmy leaning against the Iyawo’s bed with his head slumped over, a little gob of drool dangling from his open mouth. “Well, damn. Then it’s my go.” He drops a “Draw 4.” “What’s good now, son?”

  “Fuck.” I add four more cards to my already-mountainous hand. “This some bullshit.”

  “Whoa,” Redd says. “You know you’re still kinda lit up? And it flared again just now when you cursed.”

  I shrug. I don’t know what’s going on with me, don’t know what these flames mean. Truth is, though: I like them. It’s like a moving fire tattoo, reminding me that I brought hell to the establishment that tried to replace Mama Esther. I hope it never goes away.

  The Iyawo taps, which brings it back to Redd, who drops a “Draw 2.”

  “Shit!” I say, laughing now, and sure enough, the tiny flames dance to life along my arms and down my chest.

  She gapes at me. “That’s amazing. Does it hurt?”

  “Not exactly. It prickles, I guess. But I like it.”

  “Me too.”

  “It’s pretty badass,” Redd agrees.

  “Lemme feel,” the Iyawo says.

  Redd and I lock eyes. We’ve talked about the Iyawo before, chewed over and over whether it’s the forbidden thing, or the curve of her spine, or the full picture of her fineness (“Many hot parts,” Redd said, “and an even hotter whole”), or how she doesn’t take any shit, whatsoever, from anyone. We never came up with one answer, but it was fun trying, and a relief to be able to talk about it with someone who agreed but, magically, doesn’t feel like competition. Maybe it’s because I want to grind up on Redd too. And yeah, at first I got glints of jealousy when I’d see them talk together, but pretty quickly those got swallowed up by how much fun we all have.

  She’s wearing bright-white gym shorts and a wifebeater, which reveals a generous portion of sideboob. Very slowly, I place my shimmery hand on her knee. She watches, then meets my eyes. “Now swear or something,” she says with a mischievous grin.

  That grin. I don’t have to swear—the lights sparkle on their own, a direct response to the gap in her teeth, the sideboob, the warmth of my translucence on her brown knee, the possibility of closing the gap between us, sliding along her skin, and letting these lights light her up too.

  And then, as Redd watches with wide eyes and an open mouth, I do. The Iyawo’s head falls back; her spine arches, receiving my shimmering girth in the space behind her; my other hand finds her other knee and a million explosions erupt across me, sparkle and flit across the blurry boundary where my skin meets and merges with hers.

  She lets out a sigh; her hands slide along my arms, land on my hands, guide them up to her shoulders. The lights flicker fiercer, and for a second I wonder if the pillows we’re sitting on will catch fire. “Ow!” she whisper-yelps, and I’m about to apologize when she laughs. “Don’t stop.”

  I don’t. My hands slide down her sides, brush that sideboob, send minibursts of light firecrackering from my gut to my crown. When I look up, Redd is kneeling before her, the Uno game scattered beneath him. She reaches up and draws him in; his lips find mine in the muddled place that is the Iyawo and is me, and we all catch fire. The whole world seems to light up at once, but really it’s just me. That is: I am the source, the fountain, the burning heart of the flame inside this burning room, and they are the leaves, also aflame—one dead, one alive—curled and curved and writhing around me. My hand slides along the Iyawo’s thigh; hers caresses my face; Redd’s open mouth is still pressed to mine, his tongue entwined with mine, his hips rocking forward toward me, his fingers tracing a slow pilgrimage along her spine.

  The sorrow doesn’t go away. These flames don’t singe it. It stays; it is fuel; it burns through all of us. I embrace it, with the same embrace I hold them in, and I let it bristle and crackle amidst us.

  And then we’re rising. Heat rises, and we are the embodiment of heat in flesh and soul. The Iyawo gasps—she’s close to tipping point, and I’m afraid for a second she’ll get hurt, this light will consume her. But these aren’t the enraged fires from before; this is a whole different flame. Her eyes closed, she opens her mouth slowly and lets out the illest moan, curls forward suddenly, shoulders hunched, and nods, nods again. Then she stands, steps away, cracks a smile, and shakes her head, rubbing her eyes.

  “Yo,” she gasps. “Yo.”

  Redd reaches for her, but she steps back again.

  “I ain’t even sposta mess around with anyone if we ain’t a thing, let alone two mothafuckas at once.”

  “Let alone two dead mothafuckas,” Redd says, mostly I think, to assure her we don’t take it personally.

  She smiles at him, nods, steps back. “But there’s nothing that says I can’t watch.” She plops onto the bed, slides a hand into her shorts. I want to ask if she’s going to be okay, what breaking the rules might mean: Does she have to clean off somehow? Is she in trouble? But the questions sizzle and pop out of existence when Redd turns back to me, his eyes alive and sly. There’s nothing between us now, no flesh and bone, and I feel naked, even amidst my wildfires.

  It is terrifying; it is thrilling.

  Normally now, the terror would win. I’d try to shrivel inside myself somehow, become small, vanish, maybe. All this bulk, all these layers of me, I’d wish them gone. Even ghostly, my flesh is mountainous; I am girth.

  But instead the terror and excitement combine into something brand-new, a wild cocktail I have no name for. These fires have birthed bravery in me. Redd steps forward, whispers “May I?” through his smile, and when I nod—because truly, whatever it is, he may, he may—he slides the straps of my shirt down my shoulders and then pulls it down my body entirely till I shimmy out of it. He struts a slow circle around me, taking me in, and I am glorious, a revelation. His hungry eyes say so, his pursed lips too. From behind me, his hands slide along each curve and fold of my torso, lift my breasts, tease my nipples.

  Then he eases forward and enters me, all of him slides within all of me, and he begins anew, teasing and caressing, but this time from inside. I gasp, almost scream, glance at the Iyawo, and laugh because she, like Jimmy, has passed entirely the fuck out. From within me, Redd snickers, and I close my eyes and give myself over entirely to pleasure.

  —

  Day hasn’t broken yet when I rise, but it must be close. Jimmy’s still knocked out at the foot of the bed. I almost feel bad he slept through what may have been the most epic night of his life, but the way it was is the way it had to be. The Iyawo is curled like a bug in her white comforter, snoring with a slight grin. Redd lays spread out across the floor, mouth wide open to the ceiling, chest rising and falling.

  I barely slept. Joy and sadness were making too much noise as they battled it out over my mood. The hundred fires still leap and fizzle across me, but they’re subdued now, the gentle glow of coals.

  The Iyawo’s room is a damn mess: comic books lie scattered around the floor and desk, along with various balled-up socks and panties (all white). There’s an empty bag of Doritos and a half-finished Sprite on the windowsill beside an ashtray with the plastic tip of a Black & Mild sticking out. Magazine cutouts decorate the wall, various black and brown models with natural hair being fabulous and unapologetic. A postcard from Rio I can only imagine is from her cousin Giovanni. A record sleeve for an album called Red-Handed Royalty by King Impervious, with a black-and-white photo of the King herself spitting frantic verses into an adoring crowd.

  I push some of the
comic books to the side and take out the gigantic tome Mama Esther left with me before she died. I been lugging it around in my pack for weeks now—hadn’t worked up the courage to look at it, to be honest. But now I’m something new, somehow unstoppable, and so I ease it open on the Iyawo’s desk.

  Mama Esther told me something about her library once, and it’s always stayed with me. The books, much like Carlos, are both of the dead and of the living. That gentle ethereal glow they got? It’s because yes, they’re spirit books. They’re easy for us to touch and carry and all that. But they’re not, like most spirit stuff, invisible to the living. They’re really there, full and physical, for even those non-ghost-seeing folks.

  For a terrible few moments, my mind tries to wrap itself around all the wisdom we lost in that fire, all those hundreds of thousands of pages of truth and art. I shake my head to clear it—there’s enough loss to be consumed by without going into all that. It’s gone. That’s it. Now we have to see about bringing hell to those who did it.

  Perhaps literally, I think, sliding my glowing fingers along the elegant lithographed words on the title page: An Atlas of Hell.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Carlos

  A tense giddiness crackles through the war room when Sasha and I walk in. Could be the location—this morning Cyrus has called us to the back room of an event hall in the Bronx, where about two dozen little Mexican kids are running wild. It’s a birthday party or something—their shouts and laughter reach us through the thin walls, and it’s somehow easy to forget why we’re there.