Naima opened her eyes long enough to roll them at her mother. “ ’Course.” She closed her eyes again. Suzy’d taught Naima to visualize the twin crossings her body made in that position: the lowercase-t shape traced by her upper body and two arms, the x shape of her crossed legs. Two roads, crossing each other, twice for good measure.
Crap; a pillow! Suzy’s boomerang-shaped nursing cushion was over on the couch, where she’d last fed Winston. She snatched it up and went back to Naima. She bent carefully with the baby in her arms. He chortled; he loved being upside-downed. Suzy fit the cushion around Naima’s body. Just in time, too. Naima’s head snapped back and her eyes rolled up. She began to shake and foam at the mouth. Winston shook his head from side to side and tried to imitate the garbled sounds that Naima was making. Suzy hated this part. Her Little Bit, her baby girl! She bent to cradle Naima’s head as best she could, the way it was bouncing around like that. Her eyes on Naima, Suzy yelled to the kudzu, “Your brother’s coming! You just talk to him, instead of damaging any more of our property!”
Naima stopped convulsing. She sat up and wiped the foam from her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were still showing only their whites. She said, “You rang?” in her best mock-deep Lurch voice. Then she giggled.
The racket outside had quieted. Wheedle made a surprised noise. Suzy looked to where he was pointing, at the door.
The kudzu was clean gone, as though it had never been.
An actual silk-cotton tree wouldn’t have been able to survive the Toronto climate. When Suzy’s neighbours looked at the huge tree in her yard, they saw an ash tree, or sometimes a graceful spruce with needles that gleamed golden from certain angles. The tree was both those things as well as a silk-cotton tree. From what the neighbours told her, Suzy had deduced that its ash tree presence (she’d heard one of the old guys call it Yggdrasil), dutifully shed its leaves in fall and sprouted tiny buds in early spring. Kiidk’yaas, its golden spruce form, was resplendent in its coat of gleaming needles and produced pine cones for those who saw it as a spruce. For Suzy and her family, the tree was covered crown to base in small thorns, shed its leaves in the dry season and then sprang big, scarlet flowers that gave way to fluff that blew everywhere. The kudzu that used to cover it had never seemed to spread. If it had, old Daddy B. would have lost his shit. He was fussy about letting invading species loose in vulnerable ecosystems. Now, if you were the type to see the tree as an ash or a spruce, you didn’t get fluff or kudzu. Mister Cross jokingly called his tree the Castle of the Devil. He seemed endlessly amused at being constantly misidentified as said Devil.
Today, whatever else it had been, the silk-cotton tree lay heavily on the ground, as down as a giant felled by a brash young boy with a slingshot. “It’s a goner this time,” said Suzy.
“Sure is,” replied Mister Cross. “ ’S fucking snuffed it.” The ancient being’s grin seemed perfunctory; he looked worried. His words came out in young Naima’s voice, issued forth from Naima’s small body. Naima’s eyes were still rolled back, though she could apparently see where she was going just fine. And the way she carried herself was different, more studied and somehow older than the carriage of a six-year-old girl. She’d walked out here with measured steps, clutching the bones firmly in her two hands to maintain the connection between her and Mister Cross. Suzy sighed. Such a big job for such a little ’un, to be Mister Cross’s ridden in this generation of their family. But the duty chose whom it would choose.
Centuries her family had been in charge of the hoodoo tree. It was their old guys’ branch of the eternal tree, the spine of the world’s soul. She’d heard tell that accidents had happened to parts of the world tree before. So long as the world still existed, the tree always mended itself eventually.
Suzy shone the flashlight down into the hollowed-out place where the tree’s roots had been, now ringed around with jagged teeth of rotten wood. Something shifted away from the beam of light.
“There’s something down there!” she told Mister Cross.
He raised an eyebrow, a gesture too elegant for her little girl. Underneath all the preciousness, his movements were careful, his face too still. That’s how he got when he was pissed and biding his time. That worried Suzy even more than the lightning-blasted hoodoo tree. Was he mad at her for letting this happen?
Mister Cross got down on his knees and peered inside the hole. He said, “Something there? So there is.” Talking down into the hole like that made his voice echo, only it sounded like two people saying the same words; Naima and a deep-voiced man. “Not the one I’d hoped to see, though. That pigeon has flown the coop.” Mister Cross looked up at Suzy. “Stop fretting, Sis-in-law. I know you weren’t careless.”
Suzy felt her shoulders lower in relief. She’d heard tell that Mister Cross could carry a soul halfway across the border between life and death and strand it there for as long as he chose.
Mister Cross sighed. “Someone took entirely too much care over this escapade.” He reached a hand down into the hole. “Come out, little earthworms,” he cooed. His voice was shaking with suppressed anger. “You know I won’t hurt you.”
From the hole, a woman’s voice replied, “We know that, sir. But it was just finally getting quiet in here again after all that commotion that one was making last night. We were trying to enjoy the peacefulness.”
Suzy knew that voice. Hearing it brought on a fever-shock, like someone had doused her in warm water. “Ma?” she said. “Is that you?”
“Susanna? How’re you hearing me? You never have before this. Not since I crossed over.”
Mister Cross said, “Come on up, Pearl, if you want to chat with her for a bit. She can see and hear you while I’m here.” He said to Suzy, “Some of your kinfolk choose to hang around for a while after they’ve passed over.”
Suzy had known in theory that the ghosts of her family’s dead gathered around the exposed buttress roots of the silk-cotton tree, but she’d half decided that was just a story the adults told to frighten children away from the tree. Heaven knew she’d told Naima the same story herself. “Ma was here all this time, and you never told me?”
He shrugged. “Not my business. You’re already living, and she’s already dead.”
The old guys could be so cruel, without scarcely knowing they were doing it! Suzy found she was shaking; she wasn’t sure whether it was with anger for lost opportunities long past, or with longing trepidation for what was about to happen. What would Ma look like? By the time she’d died, the illness had burned all the plumpness from her body.
A man’s voice from the hole, trembly with age and speaking with an accent Suzy didn’t recognize and could barely understand, said, “Tell her that baby of hers is coming down with a cold.”
“A cold. Figures,” Suzy said to Winston, chucking him under his chin. “You have to go and do everything your big sister does, don’t you?” Naima was just getting over a cold.
Then Suzy remembered her manners. She called, “Thank you, sir!” down into the hole. Her voice echoed with only one person’s voice.
The ghost down below continued, “You should give him catnip tea, then grease him all over with camphor and lard.”
Suzy blinked in surprise. The hell?
“For heaven’s sake, Peter,” said Ma, “you’re confusing curing a child with pickling it!” And then there was Ma, standing right there in front of her. She wasn’t wearing the black skirt suit in which she’d been buried seven years ago, the one they’d had to pin in the back because she’d lost so much weight. Instead, she had on the comfy, wash-worn jeans she’d preferred for hanging around the house in, and her pale blue T-shirt with “Foxy Mama” on the front of it in rainbow glitter. It had the same old coffee stain on it over the second m.
Ma winked at Suzy. “Him and his old-time cures,” she said. “He still thinks he wouldn’t have died of gangrene if they’d washed his leg in warm turpentine.” Wheedle chortled and thrust a pudgy brown arm in Ma’s direction, squeezing
his fist open and closed. He still confused the signs for “hello,” “goodbye,” and “milk.” But it was easy to tell which one he meant this time.
Ma wiggled her fingers back at Wheedle. “Hello, darling! Yes, I’m happy to see you again, too. You’re the only one who seems to know I’m there when I come over to the house.” She looked Mister Cross sternly up and down. He, wearing Naima’s body, was leaning against one of the huge exposed roots of the old tree. Ma said to him, “I know that you’re the boss of me and I have to mind my manners. But there’s a thing I’m going to say; don’t you let any harm come to my granddaughter. Wearing her like an old suit.”
“Harm,” he scoffed. “As if. You know better than that, Pearl.”
It was Ma! Right there! Looking like she’d never died! “Oh, my goodness, Ma; can I hug you?”
“You can try,” Mister Cross told her, “but you’ll be grabbing air.”
Sadly, Ma said, “He’s right, honey. I’ve tried hundreds of times to put my arms around you. And to read you the riot act for calling that poor child… what is it? Naima? Is that some kind of Black Power thing?”
Like a wheel sliding into a comfy old rut, Suzy snapped back, “You would know, I guess. That Black Power stuff was from your time, not mine.”
“Pearl?” said Mister Cross. “Did any of you see what happened here?”
“Lightning strike,” replied another man’s voice from down in the hole. “Not long after sunrise. Out of nowhere. And Himself that you had in here with us was mighty agitated all last night.”
A woman’s voice said, “It was Flash that struck the tree.”
Mister Cross scowled. “Really? Why am I not surprised? Did you see him? Did he say anything to you?”
A younger woman’s voice said, “Weren’t Flash. She just wants it to be, because she has her cap set for him something bad.”
“Oh, yes, it was!” said the first speaker.
“Yeah? What do you know about it? There wasn’t any thunder! Flash always comes with thunder.”
Mister Cross raised that eyebrow again. “There wasn’t, huh?” Angrily, he stamped his foot. Looking up to the sky, he said, “Crap and damn, Cathy! Why can’t you stay out of this?”
“Told you it was her; nyah, nyah.”
From the hole came a drawn-out, echoing kiss-teeth of vexation. Suzy had to smile. She’d never met a black person who didn’t make that noise when they were exasperated. Apparently even the dead ones did it.
“And what about the kudzu? What happened to it?”
Suzy said, “I was so busy watching over Naima while she called you that I didn’t see what happened to it.” She looked at Mister Cross. “I told it I was on its side. I told it I was calling you. I figured it’d want to see you.”
Mister Cross sighed. “Seems not,” he said.
A child’s voice came weebling up from the depths of the tree: “Sir? Can you cover us again, please? The sunlight’s coming in and bleaching stuff out. We can’t see the numbers on our dominoes.”
“Gotta go,” said Ma. “I’m winning that dominoes game, and if I don’t watch the little dickens, she cheats.”
“Ma?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Why do you stay here?”
“On this plane, you mean?”
“Yes. And in the tree. I mean, come on; you’re living in the roots of a tree? You hate dirt!”
Ma smiled. “I wanted to make the acquaintance of my grandbabies, and to see how you were getting on.” Ma had passed while Suzy was pregnant with Naima. “Besides, it’s not forever. I’ll move on along presently. Won’t I, sir?”
Ma glanced meaningfully at Mister Cross, who smiled and blew her a kiss. “In you go, Pearl.” For all that he was tooth-gnashingly pissed off, he was being gentle with his charges.
Ma mimed blowing three quick kisses: one at Suzy, one at Winston, and one at Mister Cross. “That’s for Naima,” she told him, “not for you.”
“I’m not jealous, honey,” he said. “Like any claypicken, you were mine from before you were born.”
She cut her eyes at him and turned to Suzy. “Naima’s a pretty name,” she said. “You and Roger are doing a fine job.” Then she winked out, like a star.
Suzy felt a tear trickle down her cheek. Wheedle touched it and baby-talked something at her. Mister Cross put a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell her too much, now,” he said. And Wheedle hushed, just like that.
“Wow,” said Suzy. “I could have used you here this morning, when he wouldn’t stop crying for anything.”
“Catching a cold will do that to them,” he said sympathetically. “Hey, can you cover that hole with some tree branches for me? I can’t because, you know.” He opened his hands to show the two dice in his right and the black cat bone in the left. In his open palm, the dice had rolled snake eyes.
“But—”
“Wheedle, I’ll hold you,” he said, “if that’s OK with you?”
He wasn’t asking Suzy. Winston cooed and reached out to him with both hands. He leaned so far forward that it was easier to hand him over to Mister Cross than to try not to overbalance. “His name’s Winston,” she said. “I won’t let Naima call him Wheedle.”
He took the baby from her. “Why not? You do, when you think Naima’s not listening. Naima just told me so.” He dandled Winston, his fists still closed tightly over the bones. “Besides, Wheedle prefers the name ‘Wheedle,’ don’t you, boo?” He blew a raspberry at the baby, who chortled and bounced, clapping his hands in that hit-and-miss way that babies do.
“You won’t drop him?”
“You don’t scurry, I just might, not meaning to, you understand. A six-year-old’s muscles can only hold up a strapping baby like this for so long.”
Suzy scurried. As she was dragging branches over the hole, Mister Cross and Winston were babbling and cooing at each other. At one point Mister Cross said, “Sure, they’re particles. But they’re also their own antiparticles. At least, the way claypicken perceptions reckon it.”
Suzy looked over there to see who he was talking to, but there was only him and Wheedle. Great. Just great. She’d taught the baby to sign only words like “Daddy” and “ball.” Suzy was sure that it wouldn’t occur to any parent on this green earth that their babe in arms might need to know how to say “antiparticle.” What was ASL for that, anyway? Mister Cross called, “That’ll do for now, Suzy. But soon’s you can, get that hole filled in with dirt.”
Alarm spiked Suzy’s heartbeat. “Dirt? But how will the folks down there—”
“Breathe?” He chuckled. “Now, why in the world would they do such a thing?”
“Oh.” They were dead; breathless and insubstantial. “Right.”
Mister Cross’s eyes widened. “Motherhumping… do you know what that ignorant chit has gone and done?” He began a flow of impressively inventive invective.
“Hey!” said Suzy. “Quit it with the language, please? I had a hard enough time of it trying to explain when Naima heard the word “fuck” on television and asked me what it meant.”
Right away, he stopped cussing. He smirked at her, though. “Don’t know why you’re trying so hard; she’ll be teaching herself what “fuck” means anyway in a few short years.”
“She needs to learn in her own good time, not in yours,” Suzy replied. One good thing Suzy’d figured out over the years was that she didn’t have to mind her p’s and q’s so much now that she and Mister Cross were practically in-laws, thanks to her fool sister. Though you’d think Cora would have had more sense than to take up with Boysie. Look at all the mess it had caused.
Suzy went over and took Winston back from Mister Cross. “Actually, she needs to learn in her parents’ good time while she’ll still listen to us, ’cause Roger and I have our hands full enough trying to deal with her at six, let alone at sixteen.” Honesty scored you points with the old guys.
He smiled that eerie smile. “I feel you, cous, I really do. Kids, eh? One of our kin’s tr
ying to rip apart the veils of physics and probability right this minute. What’s she want to go and fashion a thing like that for? And all totally innocently, can you imagine? But don’t young ’uns all try rip their worlds apart at some time or other?” He frowned. “Though it might be happening right now, or tomorrow, or maybe a year from now. You folk are so finicky about time, living it in straight lines like that. It’s enough to drive a body to drink.”
“If that was a hint, I’m not giving you any white rum,” Suzy replied. “Not till Naima’s of drinking age.”
He pouted. “In my day,” he grumbled, “ ‘drinking age’ was when you were old enough to pick the cup up and put it to your mouth without spilling any.”
Oh, but he was starting to get up her nose now. First this business with the kudzu, and such a fright that had given her! And then the tree, and the surprise of Mom. Plus she still had a full day ahead of her before Roger came home to do his child-care shift. She hadn’t made Naima’s lunch yet, or given her her lessons. She’d planned to start teaching Naima about burnt offerings today. And Wheedle was beginning to fuss for the boob. Suzy said to Mister Cross, “You want to whine for treats like a six-year-old? Fine. You can have apple juice, or milk. Which one would you like?” She said it in exactly the voice she’d use to talk to Naima. She’d lay odds he was only whinging for the principle of the thing. He never hurt children. Sure enough, he burst into a belly laugh. He liked a show of wit.
“Good one, Mama. Point taken. But make sure you give Naima her cookies, now. She’s earned them.” He sighed. “This has been pleasant, but I have to go and find out where my dear brother has got to.”
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