She and Aidan have been missing you and cursing New England, particularly the ice storms and standoffish manners. Aidan sounds too much like, well, somebody folks ’round here in Massachusetts don’t want to get to know, so they don’t. There’s how he looks too — swamp man chic. Sister storms through town with lightning in her eyes — you know how she can do — scaring even the bravest souls away. She and Aidan get so terribly lonely. Theatre folk like to bunch together in a big crowd of good spirits and conjure another world. Nothing else like it — maybe a good book, where you play all the roles and do the set and costumes in your head. Instead of moping around frozen Northampton, Redwood’s helping Aidan write down the tall tales, wild adventures, and hoodoo conjure they can remember — for you. They’d rather be telling you in person. Would you like that?
Opal’s still mad at me for paying Sekou’s funeral bill behind her back. I couldn’t sit around and watch the creditors put you all on the street, could I? Pride can be too expensive. Now here I am writing to you on the sly.
Aidan wants to see you so bad, says it’s urgent, but won’t say why. The man wouldn’t set foot in an airplane to save his soul, and he’s talked himself out of taking another train — after one engine jumped the track in Hartford. This morning he said he’d walk the stars if he had to. Seminoles, when they die, walk the Milky Way to a City of Light. Don’t you worry, though. Miz Redwood told him to haunt you later, see you live for now. Sister got him convinced that driving will get us to you fine. (Please don’t tell him the safer-to-fly statistics!) What do you say? If I rustle up a chauffeur, could you stand a visit? Sister and I are dying to see you too. Too many days between us.
Good Lord, you’re grinning a yes back at me already. You’ve been missing us as much as we’ve been missing you. That settles it. We’re on our way.
I enclose a few gifts for your Theatre CPR unit. The envelope is from the Akan people in Ghana — Adinkra cloth you haven’t seen before. The patterns speak of patience and discipline, from the proverb: No matter how many red flames flicker in the eyes, the fire is from elsewhere.
Aidan has been weeks wrangling words to another song for you. Here’s what I pried out of him:
Cinnamon
Sugar and spice, honey and ice
I’m your poem, your song
A simple conjuration
I’m your rhythm, your dream
A total dedication
The praise-house for your spirit
Truth you know when you hear it
I’m your poem, your song
A portal to your art
A shelter for your heart
Yeah, sing me in the morning
Sing me the whole night long
Sing me to the other side of pain
Sing me from crazy to sane
Sing me in life to death
Sing me with your last breath
Cinnamon
Sugar and spice, honey and ice
Stiff fingers and all, Aidan’s bringing his banjo to play you his two new “Cinnamon songs” and also that praise song you wrote for Sekou. He claims the melodies could heal a broken heart. Sister and I haven’t heard a lick. So you pester him. I dare that man to turn you down.
Redwood sends you a spell to sing the Blues like her and Aidan. Nine is a hoodoo charm:
1: Stand still in driving rain or face a squall of bitter snow.
2: Stand still in the crush of a crowd or a roaring traffic jam.
3: Face a blare of speakers, screens, and story-sellers.
4: Feel the sun coming through you.
5: Snatch the rhythm of highways, great factories, a trolley train, the wind.
6: Play your own rhythm on top or underneath the ones that you catch.
7: Go out and find stories nobody has heard or everybody almost forgot.
8: Sing with the voice of someone you love whose voice has gone quiet.
9: Sing, ’til you give everybody back to themselves.
Sister’s spells bring folks together. You are the light of our lives shining on.
Love, Aunt Iris, Granddaddy Aidan, and Miz Redwood
P.S. Thank your Aunt Becca for me. She and Kevin call up to Massachusetts every week to check on us. Kevin says we’re the folks he always wanted. I know why Becca is still sweet on him. Two years and some change, that’s a record for her!
P.P.S. I’ve tried to read ahead in The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer, but since the eighth episode on the beach near Ouidah, when Somso was about to give birth and Taiwo was an aje spirit swallowing bullets to save Kehinde, the pages have been squiggles and blur. Thought I caught a glimpse of Raven Cooper once, flying through the air, grinning and waving at me, trying to catch something. The Wanderer throwing images or Eshu tricking my old eyes. These pages came loose today and dropped into my lap. The print was too tiny. I took that as a sign to pass them on to you.
Notes (#3) to the Current Edition of the Earth Chronicles, February 1987
Esteemed Guardians,
Eshu taunts me at the crossroads. One direction leads to regret, another to despair; and one is a bridge to nowhere. Going back the way I came is impossible. I have scattered into many different beings. Kehinde has gone on to dance with her ancestors and can’t call me back together. You, dear Guardians, rescue me with belief. Like Kehinde, you call me home. You will guard my stories and tell your own.
Chasing lost memory, I have traveled this world, steaming to islands of fire, jetting to lands of ice, and walking the dust of many roads. Whatever country, tribe, or community I visited, it was clear from the condition of the storytellers who was on the rise, who was headed for a fall. If few storytellers carried the great epics into the next generation, if a community didn’t bother to remember itself, disaster came. If storytellers were bought and sold and only a few free voices could be heard, if hardly anyone offered a challenge to greedy hearts or posed difficult questions, rivers dried up, mountains were eaten, and rain was toxic spew. If people spat on storytellers, gave them rags to wear, and forced them to live on the edge of ruin, these people, even in the fullness of their lives, faded into nothing, dragging their world into the void.
To kill a people without spilling blood, steal their stories, then feed them self-serving lies. Blood is nothing without story. You might think I exaggerate, dear Guardians, so look around and see for yourself.
A wise woman, tall and fierce, with lightning eyes and hurricane hands, once told me, The most a person can do for another is believe in ’em ’til they come true. Storytellers do this. I didn’t understand at the time. The woman didn’t seem wise. She made fun of herself on stage and played a fool in picture shows. I didn’t trust a masquerade. It was early in the twentieth century, in Chicago town, where all the trains met, where people from across this planet came and went in great hordes, with new tales they wanted to write, sing, and live. In a carnival atmosphere, the world upended, bold ladies and fine fellows were flying west or running north. Promises flashed in their eyes, hope gushed from their pores, covering up the stink of train stations, factory smokestacks, and foul injustice.
From Dahomey to Chicago, I gorged on delicious humanity. Whenever I thought myself too greedy, Somso scolded me in her Igbo language:
Onye riri osisi oji kpaa ya nku ka o nwere ike: anaghi ari enu oke oji kwa daa.
If you’re on top of the iroko tree, gather all the firewood you can: it is not every day that one scales the great iroko.
Gathering a good story and passing it on is redemption.
CHRONICLES 9: Coast of Dahomey, 1893 —
Demons
The sea raged against the jagged coast. Hot metal, cloaked in dead cells and fecal matter, made its way through twisty intestines toward my anus. Rather than swallow more bullets, I spat out the last few. Fire from my breath danced on the waves. My thoughts were scalded steam. An Igbo woman cowered in the sand. She had magnetic eyes, a dimpled chin, round cheeks, a moon face. Hugging her fat belly, she groaned. Yet another stolen w
oman from distant lands made into a traitor. Shadowy trees sighed as I readied for attack.
“Taiwo!” A warrior woman threw sand in my eyes.
My startled exhalation singed the fine hairs on her cheeks; poison from my tail dissolved broken shells at her feet.
“I am Kehinde — twin spirit. You held me in the circle of your being. Eshu laughed at us wandering desolate paths to royal cities with no names.”
I reached sharp talons toward her heart, scratching rough cloth and scarred skin. Her blood glistened on the tips.
“I am your stillpoint! Eshu honors the oath we made never to betray one another. We are one road, one destiny.” She flicked long fingers at my fire breath. “You hate the bitter taste of killing. You weep at every story’s end.” She gripped my poison-tipped tail, aiming venom at my eyes. “I have pledged to protect Somso with my life.”
“Somso?” My words were smoke and sparks. “Your brother’s last word.”
“Speak more and find yourself again.” Kehinde pressed cool fingers against my throbbing temples. A shiver traveled from her nerves to mine. “Tell me who you are.”
“Am I your Taiwo, the Wanderer?”
“Yes.”
“Well, who is that?” Terrified, I glanced at the sea where I’d flung Abla’s head and body. Would the aje also murder Somso? Kehinde slid her hands across my heaving torso over floating ribs to the end of my spine. She protected her brother’s wife, but also saved me from myself. “I could scatter,” I whispered. “What have I done?”
“Wanderer-Taiwo is who you mean to be in this lifetime,” Kehinde replied.
I rubbed aching palms. “How do you live with so many murders on your hands?”
Somso cried out and stumbled to the water’s edge. She squatted as muscles contracted. Frothy waves tugged at her feet. A stiff wind caught in her throat. Escaping my question, Kehinde hurried to her. After a great shudder, the placenta and baby came at once. The taste of new life, bitter and coppery on salt air, soothed me. I wanted to laugh or sing or roar at Somso giving birth to a girl in the sand. But my mouth burned from catching death on the fly, so I made no grand sound to welcome another daughter of Dahomey. The aje flickered at the edge of my Taiwo-self, stealing balance. Dizzy, I sank to my knees.
“Rejoice.” Kehinde pointed to the curved blade of moon cutting through the clouds. “A beacon heralds the child’s arrival.” She rubbed the baby’s back, urging her to breathe. “The afterbirth came with her. The Hausa people call such a child Melinga — someone born wearing clothes.”
Somso muttered Igbo words and clutched her ragged insides.
Kehinde frowned at mother and child. “She might die.” Whom did she mean?
Melinga coughed phlegm from her nose and throat and took a swallow of night air. New eyes blinked and teared as she named her first moments with high notes. The pattern of her being was strong. Kehinde held the baby toward Somso, who shook her head. Blood from her vagina drenched the sand.
“Too much blood,” Kehinde said.
“A warrior knows well how we bleed ourselves away,” Somso groaned.
I bent between her legs and breathed the last of my heat inside her, searing arteries large and infinitesimal. She screamed and writhed at the fire in her womb, banging my ears with bony knees. I barely registered the blows. Close to a fleshy cave of life, sparking with the aftershocks of birth, I wavered again between Taiwo and the aje.
“No.” Kehinde toed the hollow of my back.
Melinga distracted us with a high melody. Deep animal voices answered the child. I managed a second blast of hot breath. The last trickles of blood hissed in the heat. Nerves dulled to pain fired less, and Somso’s clenched muscles relaxed. I drank a final draught of her and sweet Melinga before taking three steps back. My right ear dripped blood and rang like a distant bell.
Somso inspected herself gingerly. “What have you done?”
“Should we watch you bleed to death?” Kehinde rocked Melinga quiet.
“Should I embrace demons?” Somso’s words came covered in spittle.
Kehinde turned from her and whispered, “The night is more than half gone.” She squinted at Melinga’s round face and fat feet. Most newborns were squishy and wrinkly. Brother-Taiwo’s plump child was a blade in her heart. “What will the sun see?”
“Melinga is our story,” I declared.
Kehinde scowled at Somso. “How do you decide this?”
“Nothing to decide. The child makes sense of this world.”
“But bringing treacherous Somso and a young one onto the steamship or into Chicago town?”
“Melinga is your brother’s child.”
“Will she rejoice to know me?”
“Who saved Somso from death by my hand?”
“You would have regretted killing her.”
“Ifa says, what we look for is near us, yet we don’t recognize it.”
Kehinde frowned. “I dreaded finding Somso.”
“She found us!”
Again, Melinga made strong music for one so little. Kehinde turned to Somso. “Your daughter calls you.”
“Ora na-azu nwa,” Somso said. “A community raises the child. Who do I have?”
Kehinde held the baby toward her.
“How do you mend a rip in the sky?” Somso let loose a nerve-rattling hyena laugh. Startled, Melinga lost her song. “Somayina means may I not travel alone.” Laughter turned to a wail. “I have no one.” Somso was Igbo, another people from the east. She was suffering a great tragedy. We were too few to celebrate the birth of her child. No husband to make a fire, no women to feed and pamper her in the first weeks of her daughter’s life. No family to sing praises to god for the gift of a daughter. No elders hovering between life and death to offer wisdom and guide Melinga to her personal destiny, her chi. Kehinde had schooled me in Igbo beliefs. The Fon learned the ways of their enemies to conquer them.
Escaping to a new world with your enemy was a different matter.
Kehinde thrust her niece and the slippery afterbirth against my chest. Grumbling, she stomped into the surf toward the European ship. Melinga’s warm umbilical cord still pulsed. She nestled against me, soft and sweet, with spongy muscles and delicate bones. Her breath called complex, heady chemicals to my veins. Persuasive hormones cleansed my mouth of the taste of bullets and brought clarity to my actions.
“Will Kehinde abandon us?” Somso asked.
“Don’t worry.” I spoke too quickly.
Somso twisted her limbs into a knot. “Why not?”
“Kehinde and I searched through war and plague for you and your daughter.”
“Disappointed?”
I dipped Melinga in the warm ocean and laid the child at Somso’s breast. The pressure of milk surprised my flat breasts. An unfamiliar song touched my lips. I sang softly, words and melody I couldn’t place. Music spirited away the pain of Abla’s life cut short. I severed the umbilical cord with Kehinde’s cutlass. Melinga tugged at a plump nipple and Somso moaned (pleasure and pain?). Her resistance faded as the baby fed. Even the waves settled down. Kehinde danced in the shallows to the suckling and gurgling. Her shoulders relaxed, her heartbeat slowed.
I caressed the baby’s back. A life saved — redemption for a life taken? “Melinga.”
“A good name.” Somso leaned against a smooth stone.
“Yes. A beautiful name.” I washed blood from Somso’s legs with frothy sea water.
Somso flinched. “My husband…” Words died on her tongue.
“I met him only once, yet his story has stayed with me. I am Taiwo, the Wanderer, and am honored to share his name. May I live to honor his memory.”
“You remind me of him.”
“Ahh.” Perhaps I’d come back from the aje more man than woman.
“How you look, how you carry yourself, so like him.” She eyed me with more curiosity than fear. I was pleased, yet worried for the pain the likeness might bring.
“Why?” Kehinde tromped back to us.
“Tell us.” She stood over Somso as I gathered her niece’s umbilical cord and dug in the sand.
“NO!” Somso shouted. “We must bury Melinga’s cord in Chicago land so she will be at home there.”
“Why?” Kehinde demanded as the child sucked greedily.
“Chicago then.” I wrapped the cord and afterbirth in Somso’s veil.
“You know what I ask.” Kehinde gripped Somso’s chin and yanked her face up. “Tell us your story. Now.”
Fire in the Eyes
Cinnamon paused. She didn’t remember Wanderer-Taiwo swallowing bullets or Somso giving birth like that.
Still ready to believe anything?
She stared a hole in the theatre lobby back home to Chronicles pages hidden under her bed. Keeping her promise to Sekou, she’d memorized every word.
Tall tale lies…
But, maybe Iris, an African scholar, not the Wanderer, changed the story, a story she made up in the first place. Lies were harder to remember than truth. Trial lawyer Clarence loved to pounce on lying fumblers and bring them down. Opal too.
Big as a house, but when you gonna grow up?
Opal’s doubt smacked Cinnamon upside the head. Her mom didn’t trust a soul, not even Becca, who loved her sister no matter what. One time Becca and Cinnamon walked in on Julian (Becca’s boyfriend before Kevin) about to jump Opal’s bones in the den. Opal said she was trying to prove how no account Julian was. Becca bought that story and Cinnamon had too. Since Opal’d lost Raven, she didn’t believe in love anymore.
Cinnamon wiped sweaty palms on the moldy carpet and stared at The Chronicles. Fluorescent pages glowed in the dimness at the edge of the lobby. Half the bulbs along the back wall had blown out. Happy for shadows, Cinnamon squinted at handwriting so precise, it could have been typed. Not Iris’s curlicue hand. Still, Cinnamon groaned. Opal’s doubt had been messing with her mind all day.
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