Sycorax's Daughters

by Kinitra Brooks, PhD

  “Like I said, we used to sneak off to the clearing to dance. Me and my three friends – Annie, Beverly and Gail. We made up our own steps. They didn’t have any names.” Miss Iris smiled to herself. “After school, the other kids would gather around and ask us to perform. We was doing something new.”

  According to Miss Iris, her crew’s plan was to integrate Bandstand. The four girls were going to sneak down to Philly for a taping and do their bold new dances in the street outside the studio until someone turned a camera on them.

  But they never got the chance.

  “One day, when we was rehearsing in the clearing, I looked up, and there she was. Madeleine. I never heard her coming. She just appeared. Wearing a dress down to her ankles. All that blue walking out from behind the trees, like she was the police or something. Scared us something terrible. We stopped dancing, but she told us to keep on. Said she just wanted to watch.”

  As hot as the August afternoon was, my hands felt cold. I rubbed them on my shorts, trying to warm them, as I listened to Miss Iris’ haunting tale. “She hung out there with us. Learning our dances. I didn’t trust her. She didn’t act like no Mennonite girl I ever knew. Her hands was as smooth as a baby’s, like she wasn’t used to no hard work – milking, canning, quilting. My friends thought I was just jealous. ‘What’s the harm in letting her watch?’ Annie used to ask. Sweet Annie. She was the best dancer out of all of us. Would have been a star if …”

  Her voice trailed off. That “if ” chilled me. I suddenly grew fearful for my own friends.

  “What happened to your friends, Miss Iris?” I asked.

  “Madeleine happened. Killed ‘em.”

  The words lingered in the air for a few moments, competing with the musky scent of her marigolds. “Oh, I can’t prove it,” she said, “but she did. They was healthy teenage girls. Strong as a ox. But the longer she hung around, the weaker they got. Hair falling out. Skin spotty. One day, I looked for them in the clearing, and they was gone. Some people thought they ran off because their folks was too strict.”

  “But you didn’t believe it.”

  “Do lightning bugs glow in the daytime?” Miss Iris gave a sharp laugh, twisting her ponytail around a finger. “I think there are three graves back there in that clearing.”

  Why three graves and not four? I wondered.

  As if sensing the unasked question, the older woman said, “She would have killed me too, but I put a freezer spell on her.”

  “A what?”

  “A freezer spell. It gets rid of your enemies. My grandma Hattie was a conjure woman. I learned about spells from her.” She lowered her voice. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this. Folks think it’s witchcraft.”

  I sat in silence, trying to digest my neighbor’s bizarre revelation. Maybe Kim was a leech, like Miss Iris said. A soul gobbler. Some wicked entity that returned to the clearing every thirty years in search of new blood. Black girl blood. Not blood, necessarily. Rhythm. A carefree cadence. Whatever she was, I had to stop her before the same fate befell the Cherry Street Crew.

  “Show me how to make the freezer spell, Miss Iris.”

  The older woman smiled sadly. “Maybe,” she said. “Lot of good it did me. Thought Madeleine was gone for good, but you can’t out-trick the trickster. One day I looked up, and she was on Bandstand, smiling in the camera, doing our dances. The ones with no names. My girls were gone. Annie, Bev and Gail. Not even a bone remained.”

  #

  As soon as Miss Iris finished her story, my mom pulled into our driveway, home from work. She looked surprised to see me sitting in our neighbor’s yard because I didn’t talk much with the older women on our block. Figuring I was being a nuisance, she called me inside to start dinner.

  I stood at the sink soaking chicken liver in milk, mulling over my plan. Miss Iris told me to come by the next day and she would write the freezer spell instructions for me. I was desperate. I needed something that would banish Kim back to the vulture’s egg she hatched from.

  (Little one)

  I froze. My mom stood behind me, phone in hand. I hadn’t even heard it ring.

  “It’s D,” she said.

  “I’ll take it in your room,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

  I bounded up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom. D and I hadn’t spoken in several weeks. Maybe she had come to her senses. Hopefully, she would believe me when I told her what I learned about Kim.

  I grabbed the phone from my mom’s nightstand. “D! I’m so glad you called, girl.”

  “What’s up, Crystal?” My friend didn’t sound like herself. Her voice was muffled and thick.

  “We need to talk about Kim.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s not who she says she is.”

  “Really? Who is she?”

  I gripped the cord, staring down the dark hallway. “I can’t talk right now,” I said. “Can you come over tomorrow?”

  “I can meet tonight. Come out to our spot.”

  Our spot? I hadn’t been to the underpass in awhile and it certainly didn’t feel like home anymore. “What time?” I asked.

  “Nine.”

  I frowned. There were no street lights near the underpass.

  We were still living in the shadow of the murdered Atlanta kids. D knew my mom didn’t want me walking by myself after dark.

  Miss Iris’ words rang in my ear: You can’t out-trick the trickster. “Stop trippin’, Doreena,” I said. “You know my mom won’t let me go out by myself that late.”

  “Sneak out then,” came the reply.

  “This isn’t, D,” I said, feeling sick. “Not the D I know. Her name is Dorethia, not Doreena.”

  There was a hissing sound on the other end. I held the phone away from my ear.

  “I know your name!” I said.

  Downstairs, I heard my mom rise from the sofa. “Everything alright up there, Crys?” she called.

  The voice on the other end laughed. “Who am I?”

  “Madeleine,” I said, slamming down the phone.

  #

  FREEZER SPELL

  Mason jar Paper Water Salt

  Black candle

  Write your enemy’s name on the paper. Fold paper three times.

  Fill Mason jar with water. Add three heaping tablespoons salt. Place paper in the jar of salt water.

  Seal the jar and drip black wax on the lid. Place jar in freezer and DON’T REMOVE.

  Imagine your enemy disappearing from your life.

  The spell seemed simple enough, not the sorcery I expected that included chanting and the blood of animals.

  “Most important, you got to believe it will work,” Miss Iris said when I went over to get the instructions. “Ain’t no hoodoo on earth will work if you don’t believe.”

  When I stepped out of her back door and headed home, I felt older. As if I had aged ten years at her kitchen counter. The feeling followed me down the back stairs of my row house and into the basement, where I plucked a Mason jar off the shelf.

  Standing at the sink, I filled the jar with water, pouring in three tablespoons of salt until the crystals swirled in the glass.

  Upstairs in my bedroom, I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook, the one I used to write lyrics in. With a magic marker, I wrote KIM in big black letters on one side. For good measure, I wrote MADELEINE on the other side. Then I folded the paper three times and dropped it into the salt water.

  As I lit the black candle, I felt a chill. It was noon. A breezeless day in late August. My mom and brother were at work. I was alone. I closed my bedroom door and locked it. I stared into the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my door, at the girl holding the candle, looking as if she were on her way to some dark mass.

  As the candle burned, I tilted it, dripping wax like black tears on the lid of the jar. I suddenly had the urge to chant, to say some magic words. The spell didn’t mention chanting, and I wanted to follow the instructions to the letter. I didn’t
want her to come back. Kim. Madeleine. But I needed to give her a proper send off, the Cherry Street Crew way.

  My name is Crystal But they call me

  C-Magic

  Like magician Make a wish and Poof … I appear

  Crystal clear

  Straight to hell below I’m sending all foes

  Bitin’ off me and my friends

  Especially this leech named Kim …

  The bedroom door blew open, shattering the mirror behind it. Shards of glass sprayed the room, pricking my arm. I screamed, dropping the Mason jar. Liquid sloshed as the jar hit the carpet and rolled beneath my bed. A wind seemed to swell from inside the room. It billowed, blowing out the candle. The notebook fell open, pages rippling.

  “You can’t take my songs,” I shouted above the tempest raging in my tiny bedroom, a churning that whipped my hair back from my face. I tried to sound brave, but I was terrified.

  “You got to believe it will work,” Miss Iris had said. “Ain’t no hoodoo on earth will work for you if you don’t believe.”

  The freezer spell said to imagine your enemy disappearing from your life. I grabbed the jar of salt water from beneath the bed as if it were a buoy in a dark and roiling sea. Clutching it to my chest, I closed my eyes and imagined Kim. Not with her B-girl clothes and trendy hairstyle. I imagined her as she looked the first time she appeared beneath the bridge. Frail. Thinning hair. Draped in a gingham dress. I focused on the strong wind in my bedroom. I saw it whipping through the passageway where we used to rap.

  It kicked up gravel in the white girl’s face, blowing her around like a doll. She tried to hold on to the walls of the underpass, her nails scraping the concrete until they were bloody, but she was no match for the wind. It swept her down the road and up, up, over the trees. Out of our lives.

  The room fell silent. The curtain fluttered, as if waving goodbye to an unseen presence. Then the wind abated. I looked out the window. Trina, D and Vee-Money were riding their bikes up Cherry Street. I knew of only one place they could be headed.

  “Wait up, y’all!” I called out the window. “Wait for me.”

  #

  I hopped on my Huffy, pedaling up the block. My girls were back. Something happened in my bedroom to free them from Kim’s grip. I was sure of it.

  I whistled as I rode up Johnson Highway, passing two boys walking on the shoulder carrying fishing rods. It seemed like just another summer’s day in Wing.

  I cruised down the pebbly path that led to the underpass. It used to be a clearing, Miss Iris said, but it became a burial ground for black girls who dared to be free.

  young girl/yo girl

  why you gotta go, girl?

  I heard my friends before I saw them. I pedaled faster, eager for a reunion.

  I parked my bike a few feet from the underpass, engaging the kickstand. The gesture seemed like an announcement. I’m home. Trina, D and Vee-Money held hands in a circle, as if playing some ring game. I glanced around, expecting to see her. Kim. No one else was there.

  “What’s up, ladies?” I said. My voice echoed off the walls.

  I paused. Something didn’t feel right. My friends continued to stand in the circle as if they hadn’t heard me.

  “Y’all still mad?”

  I wanted to venture further into the underpass but I couldn’t move. I gazed at my three friends as they huddled, then down at their feet. My eyes widened. Four shadows slanted on the ground.

  young girl/yo girl young girl/yo girl young girl/yo girl…

  The girls chanted robotically. I backed away from the entrance. Shaken.

  A breeze rippled inside the underpass, surging through the circle. My friends collapsed, seeming to disintegrate before my eyes like mannequins in a furnace. One minute, they were hunched together, holding hands. The next minute, their clothes were crumpled in a heap in the dirt.

  (little one)

  I cried out, losing my balance, and landed on my butt.

  Kim loomed at the opposite end of the underpass. She was clad in her blue gingham dress, bigger than ever.

  “Are you ready to dance?” she said, gliding across the gravel.

  Her hair coiled around her head like a nest of snakes.

  I pushed myself backwards in the dirt, away from the entity bearing down on me. Kim crossed a span of thirty feet in seconds. She hovered over me, a bird of prey diving from a precipice. Her face was lineless, like a young girl’s. Her blue eyes were wide with lust.

  “Dance, little one.”

  My knees locked together as my body rose against my will. Kim would get her wish after all. Deep sadness engulfed me. Not only would I die at the hands of the soul gobbler, but I’d be forced to perform for her before she killed me.

  I don’t know why the story “The Valley of Dry Bones” came to me at that moment. Maybe it was the sound of my knees snapping to attention at the white girl’s command.

  Although I had gotten kicked out of youth choir because I didn’t know how to sway, I still remembered that biblical story from the Book of Ezekiel: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

  Before my mind could process what I was doing, I called out, “Annie. Beverly. Gail. Come forth.”

  Kim looked uncertain, surprised at the sudden boldness that replaced my cowering. Then her face shook with fury. Her normally pale skin pulsed with crimson.

  “Annie. Beverly. Gail. Rise up!” I said. No, commanded. “Rise up. Do your dance.”

  My words seemed to hang in the air. Powerless as dust. Then the clothes once worn by Trina, D and Vee-Money shuddered

  on the ground. Jeans and oversized tops ballooned, then legs and arms appeared in the openings. The air in front of me vibrated, as if stretching to accommodate this bizarre rebirth. The bodies sat up suddenly. I didn’t recognize the faces of the teens, who wore pompadours and old-timey hairdos, but I knew they were Miss Iris’ slain friends.

  Kim watched the resurrection. Incredulous. Her blue eyes narrowed with rage. But beneath the anger, I detected a gleam of fear.

  I dragged myself backwards to a tree, struggling to rise.

  Unseen fingers still had a grip on my legs. “Let me go!” I shouted at Kim.

  “No,” she said. “I collected you. All of you.”

  The girls still sat in the dust, a blank look on their faces as if wondering why they had been summoned from the sleep of three decades.

  “I know what you are. A soul gobbler. But you’ll never steal mine,” I said to Kim. Turning to Annie, Beverly and Gail, I said, “Rise up. Do your dance.”

  I felt like an emcee at a party, trying to move a stubborn crowd. As the teens rose shakily to their feet, the invisible rope around my legs snapped. Kim howled in fury as the girls began to sway.

  The wind kicked up harder than before, ripping out my hoop earring. Dirt stung my eyes but I held on to the tree. It was my power against Kim’s power. My conjuring against hers. I had brought something back to life, something she had stolen and ruined.

  As the ground hummed beneath the leaping feet of Miss Iris’ friends, I knew I had won. Maybe it was my defiance or the sight of the dancing dead girls that finally destroyed Kim. As I watched, sickened, she began to melt. Her eyes receded into their sockets.

  Her youthful skin cracked and peeled in long strips. Her lustrous hair thinned, until scalp was visible, a decaying field of pink. Her blue dress began to smoke at the hem, growing into an inferno that consumed her, until she was nothing but ashes on the wind.

  The area once known as the clearing fell quiet.

  A thudding sound startled me. The dead teens had disappeared. There was nothing left but a pile of bones and discarded clothes. I limped down the passageway, hesitant at first, then walking faster as I regained strength in my legs.

  Something glittered atop the mound of clothing. Vee- Money’s dog tag. My eyes filled with tears as I picked up the chain once worn by my friend, leader of the Cherry Street Crew. My girls would
never know the feeling of standing on stage at sold-out arenas, of captivating crowds with words. Maybe one day I would.

  I fastened the dog tag around my neck and then set about the long task of collecting the bones.

  More’s the Pity

  by Tenea D. Johnson

  Night falls, more’s the pity

  And she sits on a back porch awash in moonlight,

  Sullied by something someone left in her:

  Not the wolf, that is welcome,

  but the key to a place too long ago to remember,

  but too sharp a loss to live with.

  So she waits for the pain to pass and

  return her the focus she’ll need to survive the hours

  until her body is again her own

  (this time for better, wilder reasons).

  She puts away the balmy, beautiful memory of home and

  her grandmother’s voice in her ear.

  Even now and under the full force of the moon,

  the distance is too great,

  the ocean too vast.

  Touch changes first.

  Needles of sensation cover her.

  She feels them grow and thin,

  bend in the breeze that blows the clouds and

  delicate candle of moonlight out.

  She worries for a second that the transformation will stop,

  that it can be arrested as they would her, and

  strip her of it as they have everything else.

  Out of habit, she begins to whimper.

  Even she can hear the hurt.

  It will bring the hunters, more’s the pity.

  No better bait than vulnerability.

  When they arrive

  she will find

  what this new strength opens,

  beyond bone and flesh.

  Pity them.

  Summer Skin

  by Zin E. Rocklyn

  I saw her on the D train and she looked like an auntie so I sat down next to her and started asking her questions, but she moved away.

  You see, I’ve got this thing with my skin and it’s been so long since I’ve been around family. I miss my family.

  We had all these remedies, all these bush baths and teas and draws that would cure you or make you shit or both and either way, I’d never felt so loved in my life.