Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “Warned you, why?” The twin reference made no sense to me.

  “True Christians don’t live by pagan superstition,” Kehinde said. The air crackled with irony and innuendo. “You’re a Christian, like your mother?”

  “Yes.” Somso fingered a crossroads talisman at her neck. She sacrificed to the stringy haired orisha who walked on water and raised the dead. His followers ate his body, drank his blood, and named Eshu the devil — a powerful, mysterious cult. “Your brother liked my boldness in the face of superstition. He said, Men always blame the woman. I was surprised to hear this from a Yoruba man, especially a handsome one. Yao has five wives, he said, and can’t make the grandsons his mother longs for. Could so many women be barren? This was honey talk. I said nothing, and he cast Ifa.”

  “What verses did Brother-Taiwo speak?” Kehinde asked.

  Somso recited:

  Ifa says, there is no one to whom God has not been generous

  only those who will say God has not been generous enough

  Ifa says, see the blessing of visitors, the blessing of children,

  the blessing of money, the blessing of a title.

  “After offering this wisdom, Taiwo proclaimed, Surely you would have children with me. He had no other wives. A bonded man was lucky to manage one. Our children would belong to the king. We were foolish to marry, but the whole village celebrated us. A wise Babalawo, what better choice did I have? Taiwo’s talents didn’t go unrewarded. The Fon weren’t so stupid as to waste a capable person. They hoped to buy his loyalty. He humbly accepted Yao’s goats, also glass beads from French traders, fine cloth from the Akan, and gold too. When I first lay in his arms, I felt rich. I didn’t suspect that he was a rebel leader, sworn to die for freedom. Taiwo hid his hatred of Yao, but never forgot the taste of loyalty.”

  Stung, Kehinde looked away.

  “We were happy. In a few weeks, I was pregnant. Ifa had guided us well.” Somso’s tears fell on Melinga’s head. She cried easily. I marveled at her abandon. “Melinga was almost a year in my belly. Everyone said I would die giving birth and take the baby to greet his father in the land of the dead. My own fault, consorting with a twin.”

  “Save your tears. Twins are sacred,” Kehinde said.

  Somso wiped her eyes. “My mother’s minister said one Yoruba or Igbo superstition is no better than another.” Somso’s magnetic spikes made my scalp itch. The tangle of emotions between her and Kehinde captivated me. “The villagers claimed that only witchcraft could save me and the child. Now I’ve given myself over to ajo mmuo.”

  “Evil spirit,” Kehinde translated these Igbo words.

  Somso grunted. “Alu, demon, abomination against Ani, earth goddess.”

  “Demons?” Kehinde sucked her teeth, as if I had never roared fire or dripped poison. “Your mind is in battle, Christian. Why consult Ifa or Ani if the wisdom of the ancestors is worthless maamajomboo� to you? Dr. Pierre insisted demons and orisha were unscientific superstition, but he knelt down to pray and ate the body and blood of his god. Christians come to conquer rich lands with machine guns and civilized lies. You converts are the traitors who have lost the taste of loyalty.”

  Somso’s defiant electromagnetic spikes crackled in hot colors that no earthly language names. I understood Yao and Brother-Taiwo’s passion. Who would not want to drink from Somso’s well of power?

  Kehinde made the gesture above my head again, a knife thrusting from the crown of my braids into bright starlight and clouds. “Eshu rides the Wanderer — a twin in this realm and others. Sacred.”

  “What do you mean?” I reached for her.

  “You aren’t broken yet.” Kehinde hurried ahead. “We’ll miss our ship.”

  Brilliant starlight splashed moody trees; a raspy breeze sang through the leaves; roots snapped and popped, tripping careless running things. Insects chewed the living and the dead, and shat fresh soil. Two hairy creatures slid into one another to create a new being. I was too troubled to appreciate these wonders. Somso shuffled along, leaning into me.

  A marvelous journey across the great waters was upon us. A new world of stories beckoned. We had new life and needed to claim a new home. However, like the jittery people gathered around the jolly Italian Impresario Captain Luigi and his sailors, I was anxious. I had murdered a great Fon warrior woman. Bloodlust defiled my spirit, erased memory. Kehinde was distant. Home had shattered into battlefield, last stand, grave. This journey was exile, a scattering…yet…

  The ship, La Vérité, was an astounding floating machine weighing many tons yet bobbing on the water. Smokestacks belched an oily brew. Rats, chased from the food stores, circled the labyrinth of ladders and stairs to return to their haunts. Slave animals wailed in smelly cages. A broad array of humanity — as varied as on the streets of Ouidah — tromped aboard the ship. A torrent of languages washed over me. People escaping war-torn Dahomey jammed into tight little cabins.

  I wrapped Melinga in Adinkra cloth, crafted by the Akan people in a distant land — a bribe from Yao to Brother-Taiwo. The Akan weave their wisdom. This cloth meant: No matter the many red flames flickering in the eyes, the fire is from elsewhere. Where did Kehinde’s fire come from? Once on board, full of regret and shame, she avoided my glance, my anxious fingers. She mourned her broken past in solitude.

  Steaming off for Chicagoland by way of Paris, La Vérité charged ahead of sailboats plying the wind. Storm clouds loomed in the north. Giant sparks flashed across the bowl of heaven. An unruly ocean tossed us toward saber-sharp rocks along Dahomey’s treacherous shore.

  Eshu roared through my ears and out my mouth.

  Snowballs in Haiti

  A terrible laugh gave Cinnamon goose bumps. The theatre lobby bounced up and down as if tossed on stormy waves. She felt seasick. Luckily, realist Skinny dashed around a bobbing pillar and gripped Cinnamon’s arm, right there, right now.

  “No callbacks!” Skinny’s perfect pink and blue fingernails drew blood. “They’re putting up a cast list. This minute!” She raced off.

  “Flugzeuge im Bauch.” Klaus muttered. “What are you reading? It’s glowing —”

  “What does that mean?” Cinnamon stuffed The Chronicles pages into her journal. “Flugzeuge im Bauch?”

  Klaus smiled at German in her mouth and leaned close. Boy perfume or zesty deodorant tickled her nose. “Flugzeuge are flying things. It means airplanes zoom in my belly.”

  “Sounds worse than butterflies.”

  “It is.” He eyed his mother then whispered. “Vati will blow up if I don’t get a really good role. Muti will have hell to pay.”

  “Why would you not getting cast be your mom’s fault?”

  Klaus stared at Cinnamon as if a bug was crawling up her nose and flinched away.

  “Whatever.” The flying things were working her stomach too. “Vati — your dad?”

  “Yeah.” Klaus clutched his belly.

  “Bad news, huh?” Vivid images popped in her head. Colorless eyes and sausage fingers. Vati, taller and paler than Klaus, shot up evil shit in the garage then went off on Muti. A fist print of broken blood vessels turned purple and green on her cheeks. A string of bloody snot hung from her nose. Muti hid a bruised eye behind tendrils of red blonde hair. Klaus stood between his parents, taking a blow in his stomach, for Muti. Cinnamon gasped.

  “What?” Klaus looked around.

  “Uhm.” The garage drug-scene was a story storm. She hugged Klaus quickly, then punched his shoulder, how she used to do Sekou. “You’ll get the lead. Watch.” Klaus’s face quivered. “Trust me.”

  The hunky ASM tacked a sheet on the callboard. Kids and grownups mobbed him. Skinny elbowed to the front. Mrs. Beckenbauer yelled German until Klaus sauntered into the fray. Cinnamon pressed Aidan’s mojo bag to her heart. She willed her name to be on the list. A girl burst into tears.

  “You’re not on it either,” Skinny yelled. Her almond eyes dribbled away into dirty streaks across her cheeks. One boy was so crushed at not b
eing cast, he slugged his mom. A few kids jumped up and down beside parents who wanted to jump too.

  “Are you sure?” Cinnamon barged through the crowd toward Skinny, fiercer than the production coordinator. “What’s your name?” She surveyed the list.

  “I told you. Marie Masuda. I remembered yours, Cinnamon Jones.”

  “Neither one of us made it, so who cares?”

  Klaus beamed at Cinnamon. “You were right. I’m the Drug Prince, the lead.” He punched her shoulder and whispered, “You should have been up there. Both of you.”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell the director.”

  Panic streaked purple across Klaus’s alabaster skin.

  “Congratulations, my prince.” A Jennifer Beals lookalike kissed Klaus on both cheeks. She could’ve stepped out of Flashdance. Tall and whipcord thin, she had big bosoms, hazel eyes, and dark curls, probably biracial like Beals. Cinnamon wanted to smash her half-white ass. “I got Snow White.” The girl actually purred.

  “That’s great, Janice,” Klaus muttered. He knew her!

  Snow White smirked at Cinnamon and Marie Masuda before floating away.

  “Janice,” Marie said, as if naming poisonous vermin, “can barely read music. Flyer said you had to read music.” Marie was as pretty and skinny as Janice with a big gospel voice nobody would believe. Eshu was laughing at them. “It’s not fair.”

  “My life’s never going to change.” Cinnamon sank to the floor by the mold.

  “But we were outstanding.” Marie sat down beside her.

  Cinnamon leaned into Marie’s bony shoulders.

  “You two were better than everybody.” Klaus’s voice boomed through the lobby.

  Even yelled out loud, the truth didn’t help. Cinnamon gritted her teeth. It was a dumb play anyhow. Diamond couldn’t even come up with a title.

  Tottering on broken shoes, puke green coat pulled tight, Opal cornered Director Hill talking up a donor in glass slippers and a liquid silver gown. “That’s my daughter.” Opal pointed. “She was outstanding.” Opal put an arm across the doorway and blocked Hill’s exit strategy. “She’s got more talent than ten of these kids.” Opal’s vocal chords were raw from smoke and sleet. “You saw her tear it up with Snow White. Everybody did.” So Opal had seen her. “That little Oriental snippet was good too. Man, what’s wrong with you?” Spit spraying from her mouth was flecked with red.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Hill chortled. “You need to calm down.”

  Opal hadn’t raised her voice or done anything wild like the folks going off around her — no public display. “I’m very calm, sir.”

  Cinnamon leapt up. Calm and deadly.

  “You have to admit they were outstanding,” Klaus shouted.

  Hill turned toward him. “Listen, you little —”

  “Not the kid.” Opal was up in the Hill’s face. “Me.” Opal coughed so hard Hill backed into the glass slipper donor still hovering at his elbow.

  “Your mom?” Marie asked. Cinnamon nodded. “She got up out of the hospital to pick you up. My dad would never…I have to take a cab home. By myself.”

  “You must be realistic, Mrs. Jones.” Hill knew her last name. He was good.

  “Ms. Jones.” Opal corrected him. “I’m very realistic. I drive a bus on these streets.”

  “Professionally, Cinnamon doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Haiti of making it.”

  “Do you mean Haiti or Hades?” Opal said. The glass slipper donor snickered.

  “I’m talking mainstream. Alternative work, OK, but anything popular…”

  “You don’t even believe the crap you’re saying,” Opal said. “Please. Spare me.”

  A third button on Cinnamon’s blouse popped. Fumbling with her last giant safety pin, she hastily closed the gap.

  Hill gestured at her. “There aren’t roles for her…type.”

  “Not even in the chorus? With that voice?” Coughing caved in Opal’s chest and twisted her face. “You’re a coward.”

  The crowd gasped. The gutsy college girl cheered.

  Hill looked ready to strangle Opal. “I’m no coward.”

  Opal grunted. “You lie to yourself, a lot.”

  Hill sputtered and turned purple.

  Sekou writhed in his dark casket. Cowards fight dirty. Opal needs back up.

  “Get out of my way.” Hill tried to shove Opal aside.

  “Don’t push my mom.” Cinnamon charged him with Marie at her heels. Tears dribbled down Marie’s face making Cinnamon madder. “Both of us are good.”

  “Who said you weren’t good?” Hill said.

  “Outstanding,” Klaus yelled, shaking his fist for emphasis. Silver blond wisps fell over his eyes. “Ausgezeichnet!” Maybe he was cute.

  Other voices shouted about Ghetto-itis and outstanding fat asses.

  “Hold!” Hill hushed everyone. “Good as you are, I don’t have roles for you in Diamond’s musical.”

  “You changed the key for Beckenbauer, I mean for Klaus,” Cinnamon said, “but you don’t want to give us a chance, and we can really sing.”

  “In any key,” Marie said. “We read music too.”

  “Admit it, Mr. Hill, they were better than you’ve ever seen.” Klaus was smooth and sweet and cold as ice cream. “The best.”

  Hill glared at him. Golden boys should stick together. “Your little Mod Squad’s cute, but no cigar.”

  “Mod Squad? That’s really lame.” Opal was laughing. “Are you stuck in 1968?”

  “We’re a professional theatre, not community service. We can’t use everybody.” His eye twitched. “In the real world talent gets wasted.” The glass-slipper lady groaned.

  “I hate the real world.” Marie jabbed Klaus. “Don’t you?”

  Mrs. Beckenbauer clamped a hand over her son’s mouth before he ruined his future.

  “We make the real world, every minute, with every breath.” Opal was wheezing, running out of breath to make her reality.

  “Failing now is good practice for grown-up life,” Hill said.

  “They didn’t fail. You did.” A pale sheen covered Opal’s brown skin. She teeter-tottered, ready to fall over nothing. “Coward.”

  “I’ve been patient with your disappointment —”

  “How good are you, really?”

  “Who the fuck do you —”

  “Show’s over.” The production coordinator gripped a handful of Hill’s shirt and pulled him into a throng of fancy donors. Two women spirited him away in a flash. The production coordinator herded parents and kids to the exit “You all go home. Food is for invited guests only.” She turned to the donor angels. “Eat the wafers. Mingle. We’ll pop champagne soon.”

  The donors crunched and sipped on her cue except the glass slipper lady who watched Opal, Cinnamon, and Marie through slitted eyes.

  “Wipe your noses.” Opal shoved tissues at them. “You and your friends always got your hearts on your sleeves.”

  “Always?” Cinnamon didn’t have any friends until this evening. She was a fat, geeky talkaholic. Other kids made fun of her. Sekou had to haunt her so she wouldn’t be lonely. Marie blew her nose in sync with Cinnamon. Theatre magic was still holding them close, but how long would that last?

  “OK.” Opal kissed Cinnamon’s forehead. “You three were special and spooky.” She tried for gentle, for nice even. “Nobody’s looking for that at an audition. You all were scary good, magic.” Nice stole the last of Opal’s strength. Her legs twisted, her arms flailed, then she collapsed on Cinnamon, who was glad for once to be a big girl.

  “Just what I don’t need,” the production coordinator muttered.

  Rust brown goo bubbled out of Opal’s mouth. Her eyes rolled up in her head.

  “Shit.” The production coordinator waved at the ASM. “Help her.”

  “How?” he asked.

  “Don’t you touch her,” Cinnamon roared before he even thought of moving. “Nobody touch her!” Everyone froze.

  “Your mom should’ve
stayed in recovery.” Marie walked close, unafraid.

  “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have —” Cinnamon trailed off. Another story storm lie come true.

  “Marie means we have to get your mom back to the hospital.” Klaus stood close too.

  They leaned against Cinnamon’s shoulders, holding her up on the sly.

  “Your mom’s fierce, a hero,” Marie said and slugged Klaus who nodded.

  “OK, but, but, now, what?” Cinnamon said.

  “Call your dad,” Marie said. “He’d have to come for this!”

  “He’s been in a coma for four years and two months. Shot in the head.”

  That stumped Klaus and Maria. Opal’s wheezing was louder than the radiators finally clanking to life in the lobby. She was getting heavier and heavier. Cinnamon’s muscles protested. A flood of tears was a blink away. Nobody wants to see that! You promised not to be a crybaby!

  Folks in the lobby started yelling — infectious insanity. “You can take the Negro out the ghetto, but getting the ghetto out the —”

  Cinnamon screeched gibberish at them.

  Sing with the voice of someone you love whose voice has gone quiet. Miz Redwood’s spell #8b filled Cinnamon’s mind. Spell #9b too: Sing, ’til you give everybody back to themselves.

  Cinnamon tried Aidan’s song, looking for the tune he was writing:

  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

  Klaus and Marie joined her with a sweet harmony after two times through. Everybody and her brother calmed down. Theatre magic.