Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “Don’t ask anybody else what you asked me. Sailors take advantage,” he whispered. “Don’t repeat any of our conversation.” He clutched my hand then touched his lips to mine. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” I lied — a bad habit now. “Yes.”

  Homeless Eshu

  “We’re almost at the hospital. Hallelujah!” Mrs. Williams hollered.

  “Already?” Cinnamon held back a groan.

  Mumbling the last Chronicles lines, Marie held up a drawing. Bright flashes made her squint. Ocean spray caught on Klaus’s long eyelashes and trickled down his cheeks. Cinnamon wrinkled her nose at a dirty diaper smell. The moving-picture drawings captured every sense and distracted her.

  Taiwo, sporting pearly gray skin and a sharp dorsal fin, held Melinga above the waves. They surfed to a beat-up steamship. “La Vérité” was painted on the prow, “Truth” in French. Taiwo transformed back and forth from grinning sea mammal to grim aje. Melinga nestled against a fin and then a claw. They landed on La Vérité and the video-drawing went still. Amazon Taiwo cradled Melinga. A red feather was tucked in Taiwo’s crown of braids; a beaded bracelet dangled from a wrist. Melinga sucked Bob’s mojo bag. Raven had done a painting like this of Star Deer holding baby Cinnamon. Beside Taiwo Kehinde brandished a cutlass. Beads circled her waist, ankles, and forearms. Somso leaned against a smokestack that stank of cooking oil. Akan fabric was draped over full breasts, belly, and hips. Her hair was a spider-web of braids and metal trinkets. Unfamiliar Adinkra designs decorated the fabric and her cheeks.

  Two sailors slouched in front of animal cages: brown-skinned, curly-headed Bob and pale, tattooed Liam. The tattoos were Polynesian. The dragon was about to fly off of Liam’s arm. A lion nosed Bob’s back. The men’s faces were as unreadable as the Akan fabric. They looked with Somso toward a port framed by tall buildings and crammed with ocean liners, tug boats, and pleasure vessels. Sunlight blazed through stained glass windows. Factories belched metallic smoke. The stench of industry mixed with salt air and steamship smoke. A severed head bobbed in scum lapping against the wharf: Abla. Her eyes were starfishes, her teeth from a shark’s mouth. The whimsical, surreal style was unmistakably Raven’s. Books let dead people talk from the grave. Books and drawings let you talk from a coma too.

  “Bob likes men and women. Taiwo’s perfect for him.” Marie sounded excited.

  “What about Kehinde and Taiwo?” Klaus was troubled. “Kehinde’s jealous.”

  “I bet I know who did the illustrations,” Cinnamon said.

  “A primitive style,” Marie said. “Like Gauguin or Picasso.”

  “Yeah.” Klaus deferred to her.

  “Primitive?” Cinnamon channeled Raven. “As if people of color artists were so stupid, style dropped from their fingers bypassing their brains. No. This is like Lois Mailou Jones or Chagall. Visionaries.” Raven’s and Sekou’s favorites.

  Marie cocked her head. “Chagall, yeah, for sure. I don’t know Lois Jones.”

  “Me neither,” Klaus added.

  “I’ll show you her stuff and my dad’s,” Cinnamon said. “Opal hid some, burned some.”

  Minnie Ripperton hit notes higher than the stratosphere: It is real if it is only in your mind.

  Marie stroked the drawing. The image shocked her fingers. “Freaky. This whole night, I mean ghosts and aliens —”

  Klaus held a finger to her lips. “Ifa says, Initiate yourself again by using your wisdom and intelligence.”

  “Right.” Marie thrust The Chronicles into the orca’s mouth, zero resistance.

  Mrs. Williams turned off the radio and made a wide, slow turn off Fifth Avenue. The University Hospital loomed up, a ghostly galleon barely visible in a sea of snow. Actually, it resembled a medieval fortress more than a ship. Klaus cracked a steamy window and leaned his hot face into the draft. The ground entrance glowed, pool blue mixed with a sick green. Emergency vehicles screamed as they came and went, fishtailing in black slush. “We’re finally here.” Cinnamon was miserable. Knowing wasn’t going to be better.

  Marie petted Cinnamon’s head. Klaus squeezed her hand. Mrs. Williams slammed on the brakes. The Audi skidded across an empty parking lot and halted nose to nose with a rusty shopping cart of African statues, cloth, and jewelry peeking out of crumpled newspaper. Ferocious creatures chased each other around the base of a carved African stool, which presided over the cart’s lower shelf. Plastic bags full of cans banged against the rusty sides. A silky crow nested in the purse perch by the handlebar. A bedraggled right wing was wrapped in gauze.

  “This crow is not random,” Cinnamon said to Marie.

  Behind the bird was a scrapbook stuffed with drawings. On the cart’s side, a sign framed in Kente cloth, fluoresced: Homeless Eshu: Will do Magic for Small Change.

  “Eshu, like in The Chronicles?” Klaus asked the obvious question.

  The engine sputtered and stalled to a halt. Mrs. Williams cursed under her breath. Everyone stopped breathing. An old man with uneven legs popped up five feet from the cart. He hobbled a strange dance in the snow. Scars crisscrossed his face; dark, shifty eyes refused to settle. He wasn’t actually old, just beat-up. His coat was a patchwork of ski jackets and old fur coats held together with rusty safety pins and gray gaffer’s tape. A green elf hat crowned his frosted hair like a knife bursting from his head. Flimsy polka-dot pajama pants were soaked through.

  Cinnamon remembered him panhandling at Sekou’s funeral!

  Spewing foreign words, he waved a red pouch about and kicked snowdrifts with newspaper boots. He jumped up and flew five feet into the cart, which rammed into the Audi’s fender. The impact burst a plastic bag, and a tattered sign landed on the hood: Veteran, jacked up in the war. You got peace. Can you please help me? The crow flapped its wings, hovered a few seconds, and bleated. The spell inside the car was broken.

  “Close that window!” Mrs. Williams said.

  The Homeless Eshu hobbled about picking up bottles and cans scattered in the snow.

  “Pennsylvania doesn’t even have a bottle bill,” Marie said.

  Mrs. W jumped out and threw the veteran sign at the Homeless Eshu. “Collect your rubbish somewhere else.” She ran her fingers along the Audi’s wounded chrome finish then turned on him. “You almost got us…Jesus!”

  The Homeless Eshu gripped her fluffy down coat. “Big hole. No good going that way.” Mrs. W dangled over a four foot drop. The wind swept snow into the pit. The Homeless Eshu hugged her close. “I have you.” Everybody jumped out the Audi as he scrambled back from the crumbling edge with her. “You see soft snow cloud kissing ground. I see old wounds erupting, talking heads feeding us lies. Future look better the other direction.” He had a strange accent, down-home country and also Euro-chic like Klaus. He talked on while Mrs. B patted Mrs. W’s back. “Legba is old, old spirit, tired spirit, limping down dusty public roads, custodian of entrances and exits. Ancient, cranky, tired spirit.” He pointed at a crane in the shadows. A sleeping dragon, its empty claw shovel was filled with snowy rubble. A deep gash cut across the width of the lot, a ravine that could have wrecked the Audi, totaled the passengers, or carried Mrs. W home to Jesus. Warning posts and yellow keep-out tape were tangled in snow drifts. The Homeless Eshu had saved them.

  “Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Williams pulled away. “I can stand on my own.”

  Mrs. B stepped back. “Sehr gut.”

  He held up a bottle. “Massachusetts. Five-cent deposit.”

  “We can’t thank you enough, sir, but,” Mrs. Williams hustled everybody toward the entrance, “we really must get inside.”

  Mrs. B hovered at the construction pit, toeing the edge of the hole.

  “Other people might fall into the pit,” Marie said.

  Marie, Cinnamon, and Klaus arranged sawhorses and signs around the hole. Mrs. W watched from an impatient distance. Sleet frizzed her hair into an irritable halo. The Homeless Eshu attached ragged strips of yellow keep-out tape to the sawhorses. Mrs. B secured the
tape with fancy knots.

  The Homeless Eshu bowed, his back cracking and popping. “Guardians, I salute you.”

  “You know who we are?” Cinnamon played cool.

  “Mojo working here.” His hand hovered above the hidden bag, bead, and feather. He held up a string of yellow trade beads identical to Cinnamon’s.

  “Those are from the Dahomey villagers at the Chicago Fair! You were there too?” He nodded. She pulled stolen bus fare from her pocket. “A sacrifice to Eshu.”

  Taking her money, his palm was sleek as sealskin. “Thank you.”

  “You look better than before.” Cinnamon was enchanted.

  “I do magic, for small change.” He was blurry then sharp as a spotlight.

  “Magic? You’re serious.” Marie dug in her purse. “Here.” She placed a five-dollar bill in his hand. “Do magic for me too. Do big magic for us all.”

  “Please. We could use it.” Klaus also offered five dollars.

  “Danke schön.” Mrs. Beckenbauer added two twenties.

  “Blessings on you as you fit grief and joy in your hearts.” He placed a beaded wooden comb in Cinnamon’s hand. “Oshun, wise orisha, she who wears a crown of peacock feathers, Oshun loves the hard edge of stone and the soft beauty of grass. Grace for grace.”

  “You can’t give this to me.” Cinnamon tried to hand the comb back.

  He hobbled out of reach.

  “What happened to your legs?” Klaus asked. “Was it the war?”

  “No.” The Homeless Eshu shifted crooked bones and stomped a turned out left foot. His newspaper boots were from the December 27, 1982, New York Times: Clutter in Space Might Stop ICBM’s; Arafat to Meet with Kriesky; Whales Beach Themselves; An “iron curtain” dividing a mostly white neighborhood from a black community on Chicago’s South Side has been torn down. The words blurred. Cinnamon wobbled. Marie gripped her waist, managing gravity for her. December 27, 1982, was the day Raven got shot in the head.

  “So peace twisted your foot?” Klaus made a vague gesture.

  “Stop.” Marie slugged Klaus. Reluctantly he swallowed a barrage of inquiry.

  “That’s how my legs are.” Steering the cart through drifts, he headed out.

  “Wait! Coincidental affinity,” Cinnamon sputtered. Klaus would have blurted out — are you the Wanderer? “We don’t mean to be rude,” she mumbled.

  The bird fussed until the Homeless Eshu paused. He hunched his shoulders.

  “I’m Cinnamon. He’s Klaus, and that’s Marie. What’s your name?”

  “I’m called Griot Joe,” he yelled over his back. The crow cawed too.

  “Thank you, Griot Joe,” Cinnamon, Klaus, and Marie said in sync.

  “I am with you. You are with me till we meet again.” Griot Joe hurried off.

  When the rattling cart and bleating crow were muffled by the snow, Marie turned on Klaus. “How’d your legs get that way? Did the war turn your eyes to slits? What’s that accent? Where are you from? America? No shit! Really? Born in the USA! Bust my britches. Where are your parents from? How’d their legs get that way?” She shuddered. “You’re German. I thought you guys were supposed to be polite.”

  “Who told you that crock of polite German crap?” Klaus shivered in his wet shirt sleeves. “Look, sorry, I didn’t mean to —”

  “Keep your sorry. Who means to be off the wall?” Marie ran ahead.

  Klaus ran after her. “I asked what everyone was thinking. Griot Joe must get tired of answering leg questions, but —”

  “Do you ask every stupid question that occurs to you?” Marie halted.

  “No. Just the…” Klaus hugged himself. “Stuff slips out.”

  “That happens to me too,” Cinnamon said.

  “You don’t get away with it,” Marie hissed. “Do you?”

  Cinnamon shrugged. She got away with other things.

  Klaus’s teeth chattered. “It’s not my fault if everybody else was too chicken to ask.”

  “It’s not about being chicken,” Marie said.

  Cinnamon jumped between them. “What are you so mad about?”

  “I don’t know.” Marie pouted. “Everything.”

  “That can’t be good for you,” Cinnamon said.

  “I don’t have anything to complain about really.”

  Images slipped past Cinnamon’s shields. Marie tiptoed in on a sleek older version of herself — sister? — shaking dark hair over a toilet. Marie froze as the woman gagged, finally sinking down and hugging the porcelain bowl. An older man — Marie’s Dad? — jogged up a twisty staircase. Marie locked eyes with the woman hugging the toilet then closed the bathroom door. Dad’s mustache twitched as Marie blocked his path.

  “Can we go inside now?” Mrs. Williams tramped up the ramp entrance.

  “Look.” Klaus pointed.

  Griot Joe sped down the empty main drag on his grocery cart, a tail of sleet wagging behind him. The cart didn’t have any motor that Cinnamon could see or hear. They watched until he was swallowed in white.

  “Magic,” Marie whispered, without a question mark.

  Hospital Blues

  Opal wasn’t in the Emergency Room. After a battery of tests, orderlies had taken her up high to spend the night, maybe a few nights, until results came through and doctors knew what was up. The receptionist, Ms. Allen, claimed she was resting quietly.

  Cinnamon wanted to be relieved, but, “I gotta see her for myself.”

  Ms. Allen pointed at the wall clock. “Visiting hours end at nine.” The clock stuttered at 8:45, banging and clicking. “Oh shoot. With the ice and snow, we lost power for a moment, and the generators kicked in.” She was young and wore heavy makeup five shades too light for her dark pockmarked skin. Her hair was straightened to within an inch of its life and pulled back way too tight. She stretched cracked red lips over dull yellow teeth, but frowning eyes gave her fake smile away. “The clocks hate power interruptions.”

  “Time is messed up. Go by the clocks. No rules broken,” Cinnamon said.

  “Nice. Like a bear pelt.” Ms. Allen gestured at Klaus’s coat. “This storm came out of nowhere. I only wore a jacket.”

  “Do I care —”

  “We’re immediate family.” Klaus acted twenty-five and important. “I assumed we were allowed up anytime.”

  Ms. Allen sputtered. “Somebody’s already —”

  “The Joneses are quite a big clan, international in scope.” Marie played an imperious rich kid used to buying her way into anywhere. “Renown on several continents.”

  “That’s right!” Cinnamon said.

  Her bedraggled family dripped slush onto grimy carpet runners and held each other up. Mrs. B spoke in German to Klaus who gestured at the receptionist.

  Ms. Allen got that he was blaming her. “You have to understand. This is a —”

  “If you think we’re going back out there without…” Commander Williams looked at the ceiling, trying not to come out her face at Ms. Allen. “You’re dead wrong.”

  “Bitte, bitte, bitte!” Mrs. Beckenbauer sounded so sweet; she could have been melted sugar. She took Ms. Allen’s hand. “Bad night. Mercy, yes?”

  “Mercy, yes?” Cinnamon, Marie, and Klaus repeated, nailing her lilting accent.

  “Fine. It’s a zoo tonight. Go ahead.” Ms. Allen waved them on.

  Only one guest elevator was working. Grumbling about heart-attack snow and lethal cobblestones, a mob of white people squeezed in with Cinnamon’s crew. Had Ms. Allen been talking trash about visiting hours being over? Cinnamon hated wondering if the dark skinned receptionist was harder on colored folks. After rising seven floors, the elevator hovered a moment between levels as the motor fussed and the lights winked on and off. Cinnamon was ready to bust into the shaft and crawl up to Opal’s room. Commander Williams pounded the eighth floor button once, and they rose the last few inches. The doors clanged and banged before pulling themselves apart. Cinnamon was the first one out. She raced across a slippery floor.

  Mi
z Redwood, wrapped in a swath of purple and green chenille, stood in front of an empty nurse’s station. She was as tall, straight, and strong as Cinnamon remembered. A blue silk scarf flowed like a river around her neck. Bangles and beads at her waist jingled as she took in a breath and stretched her arms wide. The smile on her face filled the hallway. “Little Miz Woman! Look at you, growing into yourself.”

  “I knew you were coming!” Cinnamon ran into her full force.

  Miz Redwood scooped her close. “We been coming back since the minute we left.”

  “I tried not to hope too much, in case you didn’t make it.”

  “What you mean not make it? Aidan was ready to walk the stars to get here.”

  “Really?” Cinnamon’s words turned into a jumbled mess. She babbled on about how hard getting to the hospital had been. Eshu was a fiend, testing her, testing everybody.

  “We like a challenge. Convenience is overrated.” Redwood’s magic hands pulled pain and weary right out of Cinnamon. “Opal’s goin’ be fine. Doctors got x-rays, new rays, and whatnot, trying to figure out the mess she done made in her lungs. They put a drip in her arm for pain, to help her sleep too. After that she was flying so high, woman had the nerve to ask me to go buy her a pack of cigarettes. As if we come all this way in an ice storm to buy her some darned coffin nails.”

  Iris materialized out of nowhere. Her dry lips and cool fingers brushed Cinnamon’s cheeks. She kissed Cinnamon’s forehead too. “I couldn’t keep them away.”

  “We had to see you, sugar plum.” Aidan gathered them all to his chest. “Every morning I get up and you be on my mind, the only melody running ’round my mouth.” He smelled of licorice and fresh cut wood, like always. “Iris wanted to jump on a jumbo jet.” Aidan laughed. “That wasn’t happening. Storm clouds had a dark look. Who need to go flying off into that? I made these ornery ole ladies drive from Massachusetts.” The elders stepped back for a good look at Cinnamon and bumped into her international family. Aidan talked on to them too. “Clouds came chasing after us anyhow, spoiling for trouble. Bald tires were grunting and growling at slippery roads, but that storm hung fire till we hit Pittsburgh.”