Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “I know.”

  “I don’t have to be who I have been. The new king, Agoli Agbo, is a puppet, not a real ruler. He has only a few wives, and they are plump and beautiful, for his bed, not hard, bony warriors. His French masters don’t trust the ahosi warriors. We could be Béhanzin’s spies, hunters in their compounds, laying charms, destroying the power of French deities. Agoli Agbo has promised to marry the warrior women off.” She grunted. “Who thinks I’d willingly go to a common man and be his slave, someone to order about and beat when it pleases him? I won’t let anyone steal me from myself again. In America, they say, we can live as who we are, as who we want to be. They have freedom for all.”

  “How can you believe such outrageous lies?”

  “Many people coming to Dr. Pierre told unbelievable tales with no incentives to lie — poets, soldiers, adventurers from many lands. They left stories behind.” She waved a book in my face. I couldn’t read the title in the dark. “Tomorrow we’ll take a boat across the waters to America and see for ourselves if the stories of freedom are true.”

  “But a slave ship?”

  “They’re done with slavery across the sea. How could you think that?”

  “Dressed as captives in old slave quarters, a European boat clanging in the night, declaring its power over land and sea.” I smacked the book. “And you trusting what could be a collection of lies. What should I think?”

  “An Italian impresario came looking for ahosi warriors or women who could act like ahosi warriors. Our clothes were rags. He gave us these for travel. He’ll pay us well to show Chicago, America, our ways. We’ll perform our dances and do a war-masquerade.”

  “I’m no performer of masquerades.”

  “The impresario was impressed with the show your aje put on.”

  “What if this impresario has no honor, like Dr. Pierre? Will you kill him too?” I picked up the cutlass and sliced the air. “How many stories will you abort?”

  Kehinde’s lips flushed with hot blood, and I regretted my cruel words.

  “No good solution. Somso and her child are lost. I’ve accepted this, and Yao hunts us. I’m a traitor. No village, clan, family. We must go where people write a new story.”

  A bullet sliced the muggy air above my head and burrowed into wet sand. Kehinde and I rolled opposite directions. Someone emptied a Winchester at us. Clouds cloaked the moon and black water hid us. I peered through sparks and smoke into the palm trees where a rifle spit death. Darkness protected us but also hid our attackers. Four feet ran to the beach as the Winchester was reloaded. Gripping the cutlass, I let dark waves lap over my head.

  “Kehinde!” Our attacker knew who we were! “May thunder and lightning kill us if we break our oaths.” Bullets sprayed too close.

  A sickle moon cut through clouds and spilled silver light on the beach. An ahosi warrior woman charged across the sands. She was older than Kehinde. Gray sprouted at her temples. Wide eyes glistened. Scars decorated tough skin. Crystal, ivory, and coral necklaces bounced against her chest and waist. Cuffs of silver and copper covered her forearms. A cutlass rode her hip. She reloaded the Winchester.

  “You’ve lost your rifle. Perhaps your courage too.” She fired at the sea. “Yao said you stumbled through the Ouidah market ragged and filthy in the company of a fool. How far you’ve fallen! Come, face death with your last scrap of honor.”

  Behind the warrior, a second woman ran slowly, without gun or blade. She clutched a veil around her face and wore the same rough brown cloth that chafed my body. Her belly was big. I recognized her. She’d sat near us in the smelly hut.

  “Don’t waste bullets on sand.” Kehinde appeared a few feet behind our attacker and knocked her in the back. “Abla, the strong one, child of fire and maker of warriors, you were never a sharpshooter.”

  Abla almost lost grip of her rifle. She turned toward Kehinde as her companion sank in the sand with a shriek. “Don’t worry, Somso,” Abla said. “At this range, who needs good aim?”

  “Somso?” Kehinde relaxed her martial stance. “Taiwo’s Somso?”

  Many women could have this name…

  Abla pointed the Winchester at Kehinde’s head. “You don’t deserve another breath. You betrayed King Béhanzin, your co-wives, and yourself.”

  Kehinde dropped to her knees. “I’m ready to greet my ancestors.”

  “Somso tells me her husband, the great rebel leader, was a Babalawo.” Abla stepped between Somso and Kehinde. “He cast Ifa and boasted: although his twin was an ahosi warrior, her head wouldn’t always belong to Béhanzin.”

  “Why so much talk?” Kehinde gestured at Somso, her brother’s wife, big with child, Somso whose name had been a prayer guiding us. “The Wanderer will take care of the future.” Kehinde intended to sacrifice herself for a woman who’d probably betrayed her. “From beginning to end, we share the road.” Kehinde closed her eyes.

  “I knew you’d try to flee. My spies watched every departure.” Abla reloaded an empty weapon.

  “Open your eyes!” I sprang from the water with the cutlass. “Abla’s talk is a trick.”

  Startled, Abla turned from Kehinde to search dark waves for ambush. What happened next is unclear. Potent stimulants saturated my muscles. I sucked in enough oxygen for a conflagration. My eyes went dark. Human thoughts dissolved. Kehinde claimed I was no longer in human form. An aje — power spirit from the spaces between things — had strayed into this dimension with my Taiwo-self. There are in me always others lurking at the crossroads, ready to seize the moment. Kehinde described tentacle hair, sharks’ teeth, deadly tusks, and a fat, poisoned-tipped tail. Bullets bounced off skin tougher than elephant hide. The ground under my feet tasted different; the air sounded wrong, the sky didn’t smell as sweet as before. An alien world.

  The cutlass sliced mist, muscles, bone, and Abla’s head toppled from her body. Her face was a map of disbelief. She had little time to think a last thought. Blood drenched the cutlass, the sand, and my taloned feet. Abla’s dead fingers clenched the Winchester’s trigger. It spat bullets at the sky. I trampled the rifle, grabbed her body and severed head, and plunged into the waves. I rode the pounding surf, skirting lethal rocks to reach the open sea where I flung Abla into inky foam. The ship’s bell clanged an alarm. Pinpoints of light raced across the decks. Later I learned that some poor sailor had been spooked by a giant sea monster and collapsed on the bridge, never to rise again. Two lives wasted that night.

  Back on land, fire bubbled up from my gut and burned my tongue. The ugliest feelings I have ever known overwhelmed me. It was as if I’d lost my soul. Hungry for murder, I waved the cutlass at Somso (Abla’s accomplice?), who cowered at the shore. Her eyes danced between me and the waves smashing the rocks, considering which death would be worse.

  Kehinde ran between us and clasped my claws. “Spare her,” she pleaded. “This is Somayina. Somso.”

  “Somso.” My mouth ached with the last word Kehinde’s brother had uttered.

  “Brother-Taiwo loved her more than life itself. She is his wife.”

  “You know me?” Somso clutched her belly. A child stirred in her. Its salty ocean world ruptured and trickled down her leg. The child would follow soon. Curiosity doused aje rage. What led the wife of a rebel slave leader to join forces with an ahosi warrior? Somso’s death no longer tasted sweet in my mouth. I drew away from the aje and back to my Taiwo-self, back to new life crowning between quivering thighs, back to

  Pizza and Spells

  Cinnamon gasped. The Chronicles excerpt ended midsentence. A drawing on the back showed a shark-lizard-creature with a human face and seaweed hair rising out of a tidal wave. Blue snakes circled scaly arms. Lightning crackled from claw-like hands. Taiwo resembled the Oshun/Yemoja figure in the spirit cave. The image stuttered on the page like a broken video. Cinnamon stopped breathing altogether.

  A wet, sparkling baby pushed out of its mother into the world and took a breath in Kehinde’s trembling arms. Her brown dress was slick
with afterbirth. On a frothy black sea, a tiny ship flashed points of yellow light. Salt tingled in Cinnamon’s nose. Somso cried as the baby suckled heavy breasts.

  “I didn’t burn all Raven’s paintings.” Opal rattled the door.

  Cinnamon fell out of bed.

  “You can’t shut yourself in there all day.” Opal practically read her mind.

  “Why not?” Cinnamon prayed the lock was strong. “I don’t have school.”

  “You have to eat. You have to act normal.”

  Cinnamon blinked sand from her eyes. The magic-moving-picture-thing rewound and settled into a still: Aje-Taiwo waved a bloody cutlass and spewed poison from a fat tail. Fearless Kehinde stood between this monster aje and pregnant Somso sinking into sand. About to give birth, Somso clutched Kehinde’s ankles. Her eyes were comets, trailing tears.

  “Open up.”

  Cinnamon carefully rolled the pages up; no creases would disturb words or pictures. She’d have to read this chapter again, when she wasn’t so whatever she was. Thoughts flooded her, a story storm. The Wanderer had lost its mind — The Chronicles was a hoodoo cure, Redwood’s spells #4, #5, and #6 — writing secrets, inventing magic, and sharing with a friend. Right now in 1984, the Wanderer was out there somewhere, waiting for love to come back in style. Yesterday at the funeral, somebody else said the same thing. The Wanderer was sending her signs.

  Yeah. Coincidences are probability magic, Sekou whispered.

  “Huh?” Cinnamon scanned the room. “Is that you?”

  Probability magic, Sekou repeated, a ghost talking quiet as a breeze rustling dust, maybe so Cinnamon wouldn’t freak. Can you hear me?

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “But how?”

  Your Ashe — the power to make things be.

  Cinnamon nodded. “Much Ashe.”

  I don’t scare you?

  “No. You can talk to me anytime.” She was excited at the prospect. “Why didn’t you tell me about you and Daddy at the bar?”

  Opal’s on our team, he said, a little louder. Love makes her crazy.

  “Kehinde didn’t ditch the Wanderer. I’m not giving up on Daddy.”

  “Are you talking to yourself in there?” Opal asked.

  Mom’s a drama queen. You better say something.

  Cinnamon tried Redwood’s spells #7 and #8. “I love that pizza you do from scratch, even if I’m mad at you for sending Miz Redwood, Granddaddy, and Aunt Iris away. How could —”

  “Nothing except frozen peas, ancient cereal, and black cherry ice cream in the kitchen.” Opal sounded wrong again. “Bread’s got mold and the milk is lumpy too. We can go to the store, stock up. You can help with the tomato sauce. Open the door.”

  Cinnamon shoved Iris’s letter and The Chronicle pages back into Aidan’s comet box. Opal would hate her reading such a faggot fantasy with nasty sex and violence — like it might ruin her or tarnish her soul. That was stupid. God made sense. People didn’t. That’s how come Eshu laughed at everybody.

  “Who eats black cherry? We’ll get some chocolate. You know you like that.” Opal had tears stuck in her throat. “Please, child, please.”

  “Black cherry was Sekou’s favorite.”

  “Right.” Opal’s rough breath rattled into a cough.

  Cinnamon hid her new treasures way under her bed beside Sekou’s box of secret things — which she hadn’t dared to look through yet. She piled more old sneakers for camouflage and blew dust bunnies about. She straightened the Brother from Another Planet and put a tack back in Buckaroo Banzai.

  You got this, Sekou said. Talk to you later.

  After two deep breaths, Cinnamon opened the door. Opal grabbed her, hugged so hard it hurt, then cried and got snot all over the pink princess PJ’s Cinnamon hated. They both cried. Apparently Redwood’s spells to make Cinnamon a theatre person were good for everything. Cinnamon decided to start on the other seven hoodoo conjurations right after Opal’s famous pizza.

  Pittsburgh, PA, February 1987 &

  Dahomey, West Africa, 1893

  Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  We can sing ourselves

  to the store or eternity as surely as we were born into

  this world naked and smeared

  with blood and fight.

  Joy Harjo

  Theatre CPR

  The Monongahela Playhouse squatted on the river banks, an ancient shipwreck wheezing in a February snow squall. Wind tore at banners announcing the final shows of the season. Inside was cold and damp. Cinnamon shivered as evaporating sweat stole her heat and floated toward the gallery. Artists had rescued the old waste processing plant before she was born, but they never raised enough money to fix the rambling wreck properly. Hasty renovations threatened collapse. The Playhouse creaked melodramatically in every storm and smelled of sewage, especially in summer. In winter it was too drafty for foul smells to linger. Recent budget cuts meant the jacked up furnace was set just above where the pipes froze. Stage lights and the audience kept actors warm. Everyone else (like young hopefuls trying out for the New Play Festival) stayed in coats and gloves. Cinnamon’s jacket was soaking wet. She’d hung it by a radiator, willing it to dry out before she went home. Always a stupid optimist, even fourteen going on fifteen. Why else was she trying out for this no-name musical?

  “You don’t have a lobster’s chance in boiling water.” Opal read Cinnamon’s mind. She did that a lot recently. “Theatre is a dying art. Dead already.” She brandished a pack of Camels unfiltered and peered out glass walls at the storm. “Even if they would cast somebody like you, which I doubt, it won’t get you anywhere.”

  “Uh huh.” Big and dark, Cinnamon was theatrically challenged.

  “There’s a bridge to nowhere.” Opal wheezed. “If you jump, you don’t break your neck on the river, you’re just gone, away from here.”

  Opal was always staring out windows and talking about getting nowhere — since Sekou OD’ed. For over two years now, Cinnamon’d had to drag Opal off the floor and make her eat, get dressed, go to work. Cinnamon badgered her for days to wash clothes for a teacher meeting this morning and then get to this audition on time. She promised everybody to cut Opal some slack and not whine, so letters to Aunt Iris were filled with how things ought to be. She lied on the phone to Aidan and Redwood, and Aidan forgot himself and talked Irish or Seminole. Redwood didn’t say what was on her mind. Iris never sent more Chronicles pages and wasn’t even writing anymore.

  They’re older than the hills and don’t have time for your young sorrows.

  Water (condensation? leaky roof?) dripped from the foyer ceiling onto once blue and gold carpet. Bright green mold dribbled down brick walls and colonized the dampness in concentric circles. Not exactly promising, but, doing Redwood’s spells #1 and #9, Cinnamon had found the Monongahela Playhouse walking by the river. It flowed inside her. It was her theatre.

  “I need a smoke.” Opal staggered out the glass doors. The heel on her right shoe wobbled like a loose tooth. Her puke-green coat opened to the wind.

  Cinnamon turned away as Opal lit up. Ahead of her, at least sixty kids and their parents shook sleet from waterproof coats, snarling and jostling between the box office and the emergency exit, too eager to stand still. Behind her was the same hopeful chaos. The crowd smelled like wet dog and stale French fries. Half the noses were running. Parents shoved tissues or snacks at whiny brats who didn’t know the first thing about patience. Cinnamon sagged. She was near the end of the line. She could concentrate for hours to get what she wanted. Opal liked that about her. You didn’t get patience from me, that’s for damn sure. Patience and discipline weren’t the same as wasting time.

  “Save my place,” Cinnamon said to the bony girl beside her. “I gotta pee.” Faking a bathroom run was better than pointless waiting. She dodged down a hall past a techie stuffing cold pizza into his mouth with grimy fingers. Techies never min
ded eating bits and jots of their work. They were grit and grease inside and out and could turn a pile of junk into a magical kingdom. She admired them.

  A barrel-chested man, with silver Einstein hair and bushy eyebrows, rehearsed Prospero in an alcove. His swirling black cape ripped and roared like the Monongahela rushing up a ravine in West Virginia. His deep voice made the walls and floor vibrate:

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

  The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

  “Did I get that right? I’m still tripping on this cape thing.” Prospero talked at an assistant stage manager hunched over the script. “I’ve told them twice.”

  “Long like that, your cape looks fierce and wizard-worthy,” Cinnamon said.

  Prospero smiled. “Not the most propitious moment for an interruption.” Who said propitious out loud?

  “Sorry.” She ran to the mainstage and peeked in on the rehearsal of Shakespeare’s Tempest. A mighty lantern swung across the proscenium and made her seasick.

  “Shoo!” A hunky assistant, clad all in black and cute as an actor, chased her off.

  Cinnamon dashed into the studio theatre. A muscular woman leapt into a chariot pulled by fire-breathing dragons and soared up over the audience. Euripides’s Medea! Techies running the flies hissed at their pulleys, but didn’t call for a hold. Medea cursed a man crouching over two motionless little boys in bloody tunics. Jason, the Argonaut. Stealing someone’s Golden Fleece was very bad luck. What good was stolen magic?

  Medea had thick ropes of black hair and silver streaks around florescent green eyes — a fierce hero and beautiful. Jason was supposed to be cute too. The Playhouse had brought him in from NYC where he did soaps and car ads: Ride American, we’ve got dream machines! Jason left Medea for another woman. Cinnamon didn’t get it. How could you stop loving someone who could fly? That’s what Aidan always said.