Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  Disguised as refugees, weapons hidden, we slipped into the coastal city of Ouidah. Kehinde winced at the falling-down forts and dilapidated houses. Cracked porticos, overgrown verandas, and rotted auction blocks leaned toward the sea. The once mighty Portuguese fortress had become a Catholic mission. A brown rash covered pockmarked white walls. Wrought iron gates and banisters were twisted and rusty. We sidestepped mounds of refuse and rivulets of offal. Mats of tiny creatures ate human and animal waste, discharging pungent gasses. Deformed beggars waved broken fingers at us; Kehinde smacked them away. I tossed shells and metal at them, and she did not protest.

  “A tavern once.” She pointed to a mound of rubble. “Good rum and dancing.” She sighed. “When money flowed from selling captives, the villas had fine gardens, sweet fish swam the lagoon, no grass grew in the streets.” She swatted a horsetail whip at biting flies. “Nothing but bloodsuckers and thieves living here now.”

  She asked everyone for news of Somso. They laughed, growled, or shrugged off her queries. The streets were crowded with stories I wanted to experience, history I wanted to join. I longed to explain this desire to Kehinde, but human language required endless rehearsal to orchestrate glands, bowels, skin, and tongue.

  “Today, I creep through this wasteland, a shadow.” Kehinde’s sweat tasted wrong. Her magnetic fields were erratic. “Once I commanded many warriors. They sang praise songs to my valor. I didn’t run when a bull elephant charged. I shot him in the eye at close range. The Fon of Dahomey stole me, made me fight and kill, but I was never a slave. Never nzumbe — living dead.”

  My body ached with her contradiction and pain over the lost grandeur of Ouidah, over her own stolen life. In this world, what one body felt was echoed in another’s — a world of magic indeed. I was restless and impatient to master this magic.

  “Soon.” She felt me as I felt her. “We’re nearly there.”

  An ancient iroko tree loomed over the ruins of a modest dwelling. I stopped in its shade, bowed my head, and stretched my arms around the girth of its trunk. The braid of black wood was cool and smooth. The high crown of dense green nodded and whispered to me. Roots arched across sandy ground and disappeared under low buildings to share an aquifer with a battered well. The iroko sucked water through its veins to feed new leaf buds as hot starlight powered its growth.

  “You feel the iroko’s power? It speaks to you?” Kehinde asked. I nodded. “Good. My destiny is not ruin. You are a sign of that.” She paced behind me. “This is Kpassezoume, the sacred forest, where all the vodun powers reside. Centuries ago by French reckoning, King Kpasse, the founder of Ouidah, disappeared from his palace, fleeing enemies who would destroy him. At death’s gate, his spirit took refuge in this iroko tree, a tiny shoot then, but grown mighty now. King Kpasse lives on in the iroko and hears our hearts.” She placed an offering in a clay pot nestled at the base of the tree. She pressed her lips against smooth bark and talked of Somso with the old tree, too softly for me to hear details. In its long life, Kpasse’s sacred iroko had heard sorrowful epics, sweet lies, and hard truths. Like a good Yoruba priest, the iroko listened without judgment or reproach and offered those worshipping at its altar the wisdom of their own minds. Refreshed, Kehinde turned to me. “We go north. Perhaps Somso and her child escaped in Béhanzin’s wake. We need bullets.”

  In the center of Ouidah, we found two mercenaries from Senegal to sell us ammunition. Their twisty magnetic fields were confusing. Kehinde smelled treachery. She opened the bundles they were selling and exposed a false bottom of pebbles.

  “You dare cheat me?” She threw off her disguise. The gun across her back, the cutlass at her waist made them pause.

  “We spit on Fon warriors! We defeated you. You’re nothing.” One thief waved a knife at me. The other reached for a pistol. Kehinde wielded her cutlass, and in a breath, their hands were ribbons of blood. I stuffed rags in their mouths, grabbed bundles of ammunition, and ran. Shaking with fear and rage, Kehinde stood above them, about to cut off their heads. I sang the hyena hymn that woke us in the night and made her spitting mad. She sheathed her cutlass and hurried after me. We ran several hours. The thieves would bleed out or be too weak to chase us.

  “Quick death is mercy,” Kehinde said when we slowed to a trot. “Who wants to linger in pain and humiliation? Why not go on quickly to dance with the ancestors?”

  Killing the thieves was a waste, but my tongue tangled the words.

  “These rogues didn’t care that I am ahosi. They wanted to cheat and rape us then slit our throats. Don’t waste good feelings on them.”

  “Death. No more changes,” I sputtered. “Dreams dissolved, story over. A shame.”

  “You talk nonsense.” Kehinde flicked long fingers in my face.

  “You mourn only one dead one. Why not others?”

  She grunted and marched ahead. I could barely keep up.

  Heavy with bullets and supplies, we pushed north around swamps, slipped by French scouts, and ran until the war was far behind us. We came to barren lands with few human inhabitants. Scrub brush clung to rocky soil. Thousands of flying foxes hung like dark hairy mangos in the sparse trees that dotted the savannah.

  “They migrate, seeking a new destiny,” Kehinde remarked.

  The rains came. We searched for Somso in pounding wet and endless mud. Kehinde stayed in an ill temper. Who could fault her? We vomited much of our food away. Fever and chills robbed the night of sleep. I studied our anatomy and the tiny creatures who would make us — our flesh, our cells — their slaves. When we finally negotiated a blood peace, we had narrowly avoided death.

  Far north of Abomey, to celebrate the end of the rainy season, Kehinde schooled me in the ways of ahosi soldiers. I was reluctant to learn Fon warrior ways, but practicing war dances with bare hands, feet, and weapons made the challenge of speaking easier. Running over rocks and ruins, dodging spear thrusts, knife swipes, and machine gun fire, I held the cutlass with both hands and sawed the air, twisting my wrist to signal the enemy’s head had fallen. The tongue is a subtler dancer than feet or hands, but a dancer nonetheless. With new patience I worked through the words and music of human language. Kehinde treated me sometimes like a baby, patiently repeating phrases and actions, tolerantly correcting foolish errors and demonstrating nuance. Other times she offered complex insights that even initiated priests of Ifa, the Yoruba’s highest wisdom, would have barely grasped. My tongue ached day and night. Eventually responding to magnetic, chemical, and tonal fluctuations became automatic. My tongue rejoiced.

  We came upon crumbling interconnected buildings that resembled giant clay pots with straw hats. Doors opened to the west and were flanked by dilapidated altars to vodun deities, close kin to the Yoruba orisha that Kehinde worshipped. Kehinde paused at a female vodun of the waters. I was drawn to Legba or Eshu, master of the crossroads, trickster at the gate of life and death.

  “Hungry orisha desert lazy supplicants,” Kehinde muttered as we tended neglected altars. “When angry, Eshu beats a stone until it bleeds.”

  Who knows what pain we spared or what blessings we shared? “What is this place?” We walked through bright, hot starlight toward a river.

  “An old fortress of the Somba kings,” Kehinde said. “The name has crumbled like the buildings, like the high clay wall. We are nowhere and need no name.”

  “A person doesn’t get out of the way for someone who rode a horse yesterday.”

  “Yoruba wise words.” She laughed at my perfect syntax. “Well spoken.”

  “Somso…” I’d rehearsed what to ask about the man Kehinde mourned, yet faltered. How could I bring up grief when she was laughing?

  “You’re right. Somso wouldn’t come this far. I run from her.” Kehinde staggered down the bank into the river. “Omi gbogbo l’osun —all waters represent Oshun.” Before the undertow claimed her, I clasped her waist. Tasting her grief made me weep. “Warrior ahosi never cry.” She touched my tears. “We can’t have love or a family as other
women. Warrior ahosi must be loyal to the king. Nothing but valor in battle and honor in death matters. We’re men not women. Ahosi who return from a campaign without defeating the enemy and taking many captives must die. No retreat, ever. We conquer a village or bury ourselves in its ruins. King Béhanzin has given birth to us again. We are no longer Yoruba, Igbo, or Ewe. We are his wives, daughters, soldiers. War is our pastime; it clothes and feeds us.”

  She sat down in the water, tears held tight in her throat. I sat beside her. The river banged our hips and splashed our faces. Kehinde hung her head and whispered, “I’ve betrayed everyone who believed in me.” She dropped her Winchester rifle in the mud and blocked my attempt to retrieve it. “My twin brother was shot down by me, who saw only an enemy of Béhanzin and aimed to fill his rebel slave belly with bullets.”

  The intrepid brother she loved? The one who chased masquerades and made friends with elephants? I could not blink or swallow.

  “You saw him die.”

  I had seen many die by her hand, yet I hadn’t seen her shoot anyone.

  “What do you say to that?”

  No words danced on my tongue.

  “The Fon of Dahomey killed my family. They stole me, remade me. What am I now?” She curled her lips and grasped my throat in rough, callused hands. “Who are you to take pity on me? A masquerade, a spy? Why do you trust me?”

  Her grip was too tight for breath, for sense. Did she mean to kill me?

  Remembering

  In the twilight, fog turned to sleet. Cinnamon squinted at the next chapter of The Chronicles. Letters blurred into squiggles. Achy eyes slid shut, and she almost fell asleep. Kevin’s Toyota bumped through a pothole and jarred her awake. A drawing sparkled in somebody’s high beams. Kehinde danced in mist. Silver water pounded at her back, spraying light in every direction. A blue snake circled the neck of the Oshun-Yemoja altar in the spirit cave and spit its forked tongue at Kehinde’s cutlass. Several snakes wound around the vodun or orisha’s body and through a snarl of black hair.

  “Where is Dahomey?” Cinnamon rasped.

  Aidan scratched his neck. “It was a country in old West Africa.”

  “It’s Benin now,” Redwood said. “Maybe a small part of Togo.”

  “They met folks from there, when Sister dragged Aidan to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair,” Iris said. “Dahomey had a village at the Fair with a show of fighting women.” This must have been one of Aidan and Redwood’s hoodoo adventures — magic spells twisting time. “Some folk say that Dahomey was evil, brutal slavers, murdering savages, cannibals.” Iris paused dramatically. “Others say it was a mighty kingdom, wondrous, well-organized and efficient, a paradise for their fighting women, amazons to the Europeans, ahosi, wives of the king, mino in their own language — our mothers.”

  Cinnamon sat up. “The king of Dahomey really had warrior women wives?”

  “We don’t know much about those women, but that doesn’t make them untrue.”

  The road did a hairpin switchback in the dark. Kevin veered away from a dented guardrail and rickety houses clinging to the hillside. “Pittsburgh always look ready to fall into a ravine or a river. I’m from Philly by way of Detroit. I can’t get used to being a cliff dweller.” The close call had everybody’s heart pounding. “What’s your address?”

  They were a few blocks from Opal’s house, but Kevin careened down the wrong street. Cinnamon didn’t tell him. Getting home wasn’t high on her list. She thrust The Chronicles toward Kevin. “This drawing is like from a museum.”

  Aidan pulled her hand back. “Kevin has to keep his eye on this wandering road.” He stroked Kehinde and Taiwo on an elephant. “The Wanderer has a fine hand, like — Raven.” Aidan and Redwood spoke their son’s name together.

  “Nobody throws paint like Daddy.” Cinnamon refused evidence to the contrary. Opal sold, hid, or burnt Raven’s paintings, but Cinnamon remembered his style and the excitement she’d felt staring at his dreamy images for hours.

  “Get a light, motherfucker!” Kevin swerved around a cyclist in dark gear, “I don’t want your sorry-ass soul on my ledger!”

  Iris pressed her foot against phantom brakes as they came up on the flashy red wingtips and chrome butt of a vintage Cadillac Eldorado, the sort of pimp mobile Clarence sneered at and Sekou and Lexy drooled over. Cinnamon cringed. Would everything remind her of Sekou or Daddy? Kevin pumped the brakes. The cyclist zipped past them through a red light.

  “Suicidal motherfuc… Excuse my French.” Kevin hunched his shoulders. “Sekou give you that book? Spooky.”

  Cinnamon swallowed tears; she was tired of crying. “Yeah.”

  “Where’d he get it from?” Kevin asked.

  “Opal says Sekou was too nice, you know, doing any stupid thing for no account trash who always be taking advantage of fools, but uh, if he saw something good that needed doing, Sekou never let you down. So…” Cinnamon’s tongue tingled. “So when the Wanderer said it was life and death and asked him to be Guardian, Sekou said yes! Being an ancient alien makes it hard for people to believe in you, even if you’re talking truth. Sekou understood, ’cause he was like a brother from another planet too. I’m the only one who really knew Sekou, besides Lexy, the Bug-Man, his uhm, best rapper friend. Sekou made me backup Guardian.”

  “That’s a heavy load to drop on his little sister,” Kevin said.

  “No, it’s not! What you remember makes you whole.” Cinnamon smacked his seatback. Redwood grabbed her hands.

  Kevin sputtered. “I don’t mean to upset anybody.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Iris patted his shoulder.

  “Sekou let me read any book of his. The Chronicles is tame compared to —” Aidan and Redwood shook their heads. Cinnamon didn’t need to tell all. She stuffed The Chronicles through the toothy grin of her orca knapsack. A fabric fang on each side stretched over the spine, so the swollen volume just fit. Relieved that backpack and Chronicles had worked out their issues, she murmured, “Sorry. What I mean is, uh —”

  “Remembering does make you whole,” Kevin stammered.

  “You’re tired, honey. Put your head in my lap.” Aidan eased Cinnamon against his patchwork coat. The scent of licorice and fresh cut wood calmed her.

  “Sekou left you a story that won’t wear out or break down.” Redwood stroked her back, pulling out knots that Cinnamon hadn’t realized were hiding there. “A good story can last you a lifetime.”

  “I’m too old to believe stuff like that.” Cinnamon fought sleep.

  “Well, Miz Lady, watch out for the tales you be telling.” Redwood stroked the mad out of her too. “Lies have a way of taking over from truth, wiping it out the picture. I say, don’t cast a spell you can’t live with, you hear me?”

  Cinnamon sniffled. What did lies have to do with stories or spells? “Do you think the man Kehinde carried into the cave at the beginning was her brother?”

  “What do you think?” Iris was professor emeritus from Oberlin College. She always made you look up things and figure stuff out for yourself.

  “But, what do you think?” Cinnamon pleaded.

  “I think I made a wrong turn.” Kevin wiped the inside of his streaky windshield. “Down here, right?” He turned onto her street.

  Cinnamon whispered to Iris so Kevin wouldn’t hear. “Do you think Wanderer-Taiwo is a boy or a girl or both? I think both.”

  “In vodun, realizing full male and full female spiritual evolution simultaneously is the highest state of the physical body,” Iris replied — not so much an answer as a puzzle.

  “You’ll have to keep reading to find out.” Redwood patted the knapsack.

  “What’s the number?” Kevin asked again.

  “Tell the man how to get you home, honeybunch,” Aidan said.

  “7654,” Cinnamon muttered.

  “I knew we were close,” Kevin said. “They should fix those busted streetlights.”

  “Nobody want to find this street.” Cinnamon quoted Opal as the car p
ulled up to the house. She had to make a face to hold her eyes open.

  Aidan hobbled out the car first, his bones cracking and popping. Kevin scooped drowsy Cinnamon up, like she didn’t weigh a thing. The next door Doberman threw herself at the fence, snarling, despite a choke chain.

  “Some welcome committee.” Kevin carried Cinnamon up the steep stairway as if she were a little child. The Doberman trailed them, growling and clanking the chain.

  “Hush, Rain, it’s me,” Cinnamon muttered at the dog. “They’re on our side.”

  It was twenty-three steps to the front door. Rain was silent for the last five.

  “What took you so long?” Opal said through a curl of cigarette smoke.

  “The train quit on us before Hartford,” Aidan said.

  “We were stranded on the rails.” Iris shook her head.

  “A white out. Snow thick as a bale of cotton.” Redwood jabbed the air.

  Opal took a drag on her cigarette. Kevin’s legs trembled. Cinnamon was getting heavier by the second. “You letting us in, Opal?” he said.

  Opal stood aside. Kevin carried Cinnamon through the door. She closed her eyes on how mad her mom was. The elders’ voices were a cornbread molasses tumble, slow and sweet, thick and chewy.

  “I didn’t think we’d make it on time.”

  “Miz Redwood worked a spell.”

  “I waved down a car.”

  “Heading for Route Ninety-one South.”

  “Snow was gone outside of New York City.”

  “The wind…”

  “Singing a storm song the whole way.”

  “This nice young person drove us right to the funeral parlor…Aria?”

  “Such a flimsy car. I thought we were goin’ fly off that bridge.”

  “No, Ariel, the spirit who would be free.”

  “An actress… How you holding up, Opal?”

  Aidan whispered in Cinnamon’s ear. “I’ll take you to see your daddy, if you like.”