“It was part of his punishment.”
I stopped in mid-spate. “Whose punishment? Dad’s? You mean the soul-severing thing?”
She nodded. She went closer to Dad’s bed. She stroked his balding head. He’d complained so bitterly when his hair started falling out! He’d never experienced aging before.
Abby continued, “It takes a mind and a soul to work mojo. One to drive, one to steer. It’s not clear which does which. Granny Ocean made Uncle Jack reap Dad’s soul.”
My scalp prickled. “She made him take his own brother’s immortal soul? Abby, that may be the coldest thing I have ever heard.”
Abby’s lips trembled. She pressed them together. She bent and kissed Dad’s cheek. “Really, it was Gran’s way of punishing both Dad and Uncle Jack. Dad’s soul can’t die. Without it, he just wouldn’t be able to work his mojo.” She looked at me. “It isn’t permanent.” She was crying again. “She was going to let Uncle Jack give Dad’s soul back to him when you died.”
My skin literally went cold. “You mean when Dad dies?”
“No, Niece. When you do.” Uncle Jack stood in the doorway to Dad’s room. He was wearing a handsome but wasted black man of about thirty. His horse sported flannel pyjamas, blue with yellow ducks on them. The sleeves were rolled up. One of his wrists was bandaged. A pack of smokes stuck out of the chest pocket of his jammies. Uncle shrugged, tapped the horse’s chest. “He looks a little like I did, before I was transformed. I wanted to look sort of like my old self when I came to collect my brother’s soul.” He glanced at Dad’s body, then away. “But Boysie’s soul is not in that dying clay. It’d be so much simpler if it were. Just pop it on out of there, find another place to store it, and go back to plan A.”
Softly, Abby said, “Maka, you asked me in the car why you couldn’t work your mojo.”
Uncle interrupted. “She knows, then?”
Abby shook her head. “Not yet, but she’s about to.”
Right then, I badly wanted to beg them not to tell me.
Abby said, “You can’t use it because it’s not your mojo. It’s Dad’s.”
Uncle supplied the next piece of the puzzle. “I grafted it into you. When you die, Boysie’s soul can get its mojo back, and then he’ll no longer be locked into just one kind of body. He’ll be back to normal.”
“Why…” I began. “Why do…” I couldn’t figure out how to begin the sentence, how to end it. I fumbled my way to the chair and sat down.
Uncle said, “This is such a cock-up. But we’ll figure it out, Maka. Your time to go isn’t yet.”
Abby stammered, “Now that Dad’s… like this, will Grandma, uh, make you take his mojo out of…?” She stopped, a stricken look on her face.
“Of course she will not!” Uncle replied, all indignation. “She can’t. She’s not allowed.”
I leapt up. “But that’s it! That’s the solution!” Elation was making me light-headed. “Don’t you see? Dad’s fulfilled the term of his punishment, or he’s about to. So here’s what we do: Abs and I issue the DNR, Dad’s body shuffles off this mortal, and Uncle, you take his mojo out of me and graft it back onto his soul. It’s perfect, right?”
Abby’s shoulders sagged. Uncle had his head in his hands. Neither one of them was saying anything.
“It’s not perfect?”
To my profound horror, Uncle started to sob. He stared at me, his eyes brimming with tears in his skull-and-bone face. Uncle ferried deaths and births by the thousands, every day, always with a ready joke and a smile. I’d never seen a single one of them make him cry.
An uncomfortable stillness came over me, that sick calm you feel the moment before you know that something awful is about to happen that will change the course of your life forever, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Uncle got to his feet. He held me tightly. Breath rattled in his horse’s chest, and the man’s bones poked into me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Niece of mine, I’m so sorry.”
I took a deep breath. “Tell me. Just fucking tell me.”
“It’s not as simple as taking Boysie’s mojo out of you. If I do that while you’re alive, you will return to the way you were when you were born.”
“Which is what?” I whispered.
Uncle replied, “Absent.”
And he told me the rest. That story? That romantic family saga of tragic, forbidden love and star-crossed lovers? A pile of bullshit, stinking to high heaven. It was maggot-riddled with lies.
Abby had been fine when we were born. Only that shorter leg. Whereas I was all but an empty shell. A living body with a near-inert mind, and a tiny undifferentiated nubbin of aetheric where there should have been the psychic organelle of mojo that all living creatures possess to one degree or another. Whereas Abby’s had been working just fine. And it was Abby’s blood and breath that had been sustaining me in the womb.
Dad’s kin had had cut me away from Abby in order to keep her alive. They sliced me off my precious sister, neatly as paring a hangnail, and left me in my crib to die.
Ma had begged for my life. For mine. Abby’s continued existence wasn’t in question.
It was me that Dad and Uncle had carried across the border, intending to break the chiefest laws of life and death for love of my mother. And there the Family caught them, and Ma Ocean meted out her punishment, forced one of her sons to rip the other into pieces. Without mojo, Dad couldn’t transform into his celestial self. With his soul locked away, he couldn’t get to his mojo.
Turns out that when Uncle brought me and our newly mortal Dad back over to this side of the border, to their surprise, I began to grow and develop. I had a personality, an intellect. My father’s mojo had instilled me with a false life. When it was gone, I might remain alive, but I would return to my vegetative state.
“You put Dad’s mojo into me.” That information was beginning to sink in, leaving me woozy. I clutched the railing on Dad’s bed, for something steady to hold on to. Dad’s body inhaled and exhaled, remorselessly.
“Yes. I offered to put it back into Boysie at the beginning of his punishment. If he’d been careful, Ma need never have known. But he said no, you were using it.”
There was no me. I was nothing but a living container. I started to shiver. “That bush medicine you drink,” Abby said. “Nothing’s wrong with your liver.”
“My liver didn’t come from you?” My voice came out thin and squeaky.
“It did. But you and I have identical genetics. Your body accepted the graft perfectly. You don’t need an antirejection drug for it.”
I understood. “The medicine is so I won’t reject Dad’s mojo,” I mumbled.
Uncle said, “That graft couldn’t take forever. You can’t sustain a demigod’s mojo indefinitely. It’s like a house cat whelping a lion.”
Abby told me, “That’s why you have the seizures. The tincture keeps them under control. I’m sorry, Makeda.”
“Shut up.”
A rattly exhalation came from Dad. There was a bit of drool trickling from one corner of his mouth. I took a tissue from the box of them by his bedside table and dabbed gently at his mouth. My whole body shook with the effort of being so very gentle. “Guess it wasn’t me you were looking after so diligently, huh? I’m just a life-support system.”
“Maks, it’s not like tha—”
“Shut the fuck up, I said!”
Uncle tried to touch my hand. I yanked it out of his reach. My gorge rose at the brief brush I’d felt of his fingers on my skin.
He said, “I know you’re mad at me. You have a right to be.”
“I think I’m madder at Grandma Ocean than at you. Or maybe I will be, eventually.”
“I could fix all this if I just knew where that kudzu plant had gone to.”
Dully, I told him, “A kudzu vine broke into Dad’s room last night. We think that’s how he got away.”
Uncle’s eyes went wide. “Really?” It was a disturbing look on the face of his half-
dead horse. “Oh, this is excellent news!”
He told us what had happened at Aunt Suze’s.
Abby said, “Let me get this straight. Quashee the kudzu vine is walking around with Dad’s soul inside?”
I shook my head. “That sentence is too long. Let’s start with this, Uncle Jack; Quashee is walking around?”
“More like rampaging, actually, to hear Suze tell it.”
“Shit. Did anyone get hurt? Are the kids all right?”
“Everyone’s fine. Suze said she reminded Boysie that there were children inside, and he backed off.”
“Oh, Dad,” said Abby. “You were only trying to rescue yourself before your mind went completely.”
I grunted. “Fat lot of good it would have done him without the missing piece that I’m carrying. If Dad has no mojo, what’s making the kudzu move?”
Uncle Jack replied, “I don’t know.”
Surprised, I looked at him. He said, “I don’t know everything, remember?”
“How did Quashee even know where to find Dad?”
“That part’s easy. Quashee has been visiting him regularly for months.”
Abby gasped. “The kudzu tea we’ve been making for him!”
Uncle smiled. “Smart girl.” Then he looked uncomfortable. The man he was riding slumped. When he straightened up again, his eyes were rolled back in his head, and his uneven breathing rattled in his bony chest. Uncle said, “I’ll need to take this guy back soon.” He smiled weakly. “Can’t reap ’em while I’m wearing ’em, can I?”
That did it. I was already hurling into my hand by the time I shouldered through the bathroom across the hall to upchuck into the toilet.
I washed the sour taste out of my mouth and returned to Dad’s side. His breath had definitely started to death-rattle, too. Between him and Uncle’s horse, it was macabre squared. “Abby? I think we need to get the doctor back in here. It’s time to let Dad go.”
“Yeah,” said Uncle, “they need the bed.” He saw our horrified faces. “What? I already told you, that’s not Boysie! Don’t mistake the doghouse for the dog.”
I winced.
“I’m just saying, better we spend our energy finding him than in mourning his suit of clay. He’ll make himself a new one once he has his mojo back. Maybe he can hang on inside Quashee until it’s Maka’s time. I’ll figure something out.”
Through a clenched jaw, Abby said, “I’ll go get the doctor.”
He nodded absentmindedly. “You do that. And since I’m already at a hospital, I’ll just go about my regular shift.” He grinned. “People in here are a-borning and a-dying on the regular. I’m needed.”
“Fine, then.” Abby patted Dad’s shoulder, then left the room, leaning wearily on her cane and walking more slowly than she usually did.
Uncle tried, he really did, but he just didn’t have the same perspective on death that Abby and I did. I said, “That was harsh, even for you. And with Dad right here in the room, too.”
“What? Where?” A startled Uncle looked around, his face full of hope. “Oh. Right. You’re talking about the shell again.”
“Stop saying that!” I wanted to put my hands over Dad’s ears so he wouldn’t have to listen. “And you’re not fooling me by saying you have work to do. You’re perfectly capable of delivering and collecting souls the world over and being right here at the same time.”
He made a face. “It’s true. Fact is, I don’t have much patience with human grief. I don’t exactly understand it.”
“How about human anger?”
“You’re pissed at me?” His voice was cool.
“I’m furious.”
“Why? Because I played god with you? Baby girl, that’s what I do. And not lightly, either.” He thought about that for a second. “Well, yes, sometimes lightly. You know what they say about all work and no play.” He hacked for long seconds, bent over and wheezing. He spat into the sink by the wall. I looked away, repulsed by my own uncle. He composed himself, straightened his clothes. “All right. Things to do, a brother to locate. I’ll bet you that a giant, ravening kudzu vine stomping around Toronto is not going to go unnoticed for long.”
“Quashee is probably shedding. Dad’s gotta be freaked at all the bits of invading species he’s contaminating the city with.”
“Your Dad’s not in his right mind at the moment. He’s not in any mind. I’ll find out whether anyone’s spotted him. I’m going to check the world’s best source for spawning new urban legends, the Internet. What, you thought I couldn’t even type? The Web is just another threshold between one world and another.” He leaned over to kiss me goodbye, but I pulled back.
“Suit yourself. Let me know if you hear from Boysie.” He waved instead as he left. His horse had to hold on to the walls in order to stay upright.
In a minute or two, Abby was back with the doctor, who said, “I hear that you ladies have made a decision about your father’s life support?”
“Turn it off,” I blurted. I couldn’t let myself know how I felt about giving that order, so hard on the heels of what I’d learned about how Dad and Uncle had treated me. I did my best to switch my brain off and do what I knew I should; I bent and kissed Dad’s warm, stubbly cheek. The furze of his beard tickled my nose, perhaps for the last time. “Bye, Dad,” I whispered.
The doctor looked at Abby. “Ms. Joli, do you give your permission, too?”
She didn’t answer him. She was looking at Dad. She drew two quick, shaky breaths. “Could you lower the railing for me, please?”
“Of course,” said the doctor, leaping to do as she asked.
She sat on the edge of the bed. She clasped Dad’s hand for a second. Straightened his pyjama top. Said, in a quiet, trembly voice, “He would have hated being plugged into all these machines.”
“Yes,” I replied, “he would have.”
She wiped her nose angrily with one of her sleeves. Bent and kissed Dad’s cheek. “Bye, Dad.” She stood and came to huddle against me. She moved as though she’d suddenly been blinded. Her hand was shaking and cold when I took it. Mine were no better.
She said, “Turn them off.”
One by one, the doctor did. In hushed tones, he asked, “Would you prefer to be alone with your father right now?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, please.”
He left the room, shut the door quietly.
Dad sighed heavily, once. Then twice more. And then no more. As I watched, the faint, Shiny scrim of green around him faded away to nothing. And all I felt was fury.
I need to go, I need to gogogo. Have to find the thing I lost. Lost lost moss horse. Ride a moss horse to Banbury Cross to find a young lady. Ride the green growing walking. Thank the green growing walking for offering me to ride. You see, Boss? I give to my garden, and the garden give back. But this horse too small. No; the fuse, I mean to say. Green growing brain too diffuse. Can’t spread myself so thin. Can’t hold. I might fall off. I might get worse.
To find a young lady before she get worse. Thief! She is a arrant knave and thief. Is she have the rest of me, lock up tight in she pannier. Must find her, take it away from her. Take it out of her.
Max? Mak? Makeda? I sorry, doux-doux. I sorry I burden you. For I don’t know what to say the donkey won’t do. Thief! I can smell it out, you know? Smell out where you hiding me, ride to the hidey-hole. Rip. Oh, Big Boss, they rip me. Rip me in two, in three. And now two of me in this tree, and I going to find she. Go, green growing. Go.
Chang and Eng Bunker; those were the very first conjoined twins I’d ever heard tell about. Born in Siam, which became Thailand. Where the term “Siamese twin” came from to denote people like me and Abby. Born joined at the chest, those two guys were, by nothing more than a “fibrous band of tissue.” They each had their own limbs and their own organs. Their livers were fused together, but they each had a complete one. Nowadays, it would be a breeze to separate them. But in 1811, that wasn’t going to happen. So they lived joined together all t
heir lives.
“The left one’s a little too tight.” Abby was sitting on our bedroom floor, between our two twin beds. She was wearing a white cotton singlet and her baby blue “Wednesday” panties. She was leaning her back against my bed. She had her crutches across her knees, within easy reach.
“OK,” I said, “I’ll do that one over.” I was sitting on my bed in my favourite green nightie, my bare legs hanging down on either side of Abby’s body. I’d been plaiting her hair into two. I began undoing the left one. The twined strands of her hair were crinkly and crisp against my fingers. “You don’t have to keep your crutches so close, you know,” I told her. “I can help you up.”
“I know.” She hummed a tune.
“What’s that one?” I asked. We were only about thirteen years old, but I was already beginning to be jealous of Abby’s music, that seemed to be taking up more and more of her time and attention.
“The one from this morning. Remember, I told you about it when we woke up? How I’d dreamed about these happy ghost girls playing dress-up with their mothers’ clothes, and dancing to a song they were singing?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Lots of people remember the moment in their youths when someone first enlightened them about sex. People talk about their youthful selves being both fascinated and repulsed by the details of this weird thing they were apparently going to want to do—if they weren’t already doing it, that is. If a kid didn’t know, suspect, or care anything about sex before they were told about it, I think that the scariest thing wouldn’t be the specifics of what bodies did when they slapped their naked selves up against each other in that particular activity. What’s really creepy is being told that you, your essential self that went “Ew!” at the very idea of even putting your tongue in anyone else’s mouth, was going to change into some unrecognizable creature that would find sex deeply desirable. You were going to suddenly start seeking out opportunities to get some. You were going to cease being yourself, and there was nothing you could do about it.
I didn’t have that life-changing moment of learning about the birds and the bees. Abs and I had figured most of it out because we’d been learning about how birds, bees, lions, spotted cranes, leaf moulds, and amoebae reproduced from the get-go. When we were maybe nine, Dad decided we were old enough to be told how humans did it. We kept asking him if he was done yet. He was boring us and The Simpsons was on and we didn’t want to miss it. But it took only a couple more years for the hormones to kick in and our curiosity to be piqued.
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