Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  Opal’s monitors sounded shrill. The squiggles were definitely agitated.

  “I’m upsetting you. You’re supposed to rest,” Cinnamon said.

  “Ain’t nothing you can say that’ll make me feel more like shit than I already do.”

  “Sekou would be mad at us. Daddy and the elders too, fighting and cussing.”

  Opal tracked shadows dancing over Cinnamon’s head. “Yeah.”

  “Sekou blamed himself,” Cinnamon whispered. “Not you.”

  “How you know that?”

  “I know things sometimes.”

  Opal sat up a little. She read the magic truth in Cinnamon’s mind. They weren’t going to talk about that though. Opal pretended she didn’t read minds. “Yeah.” She sank back. Her breathing smoothed out. “Yeah, you do.”

  “Sekou told me to take care of you, ’cause you’d be too sad.”

  “Hmm.” Opal held back tears.

  “Griot Joe was looking out for Sekou. He gave him The Chronicles.”

  Opal gasped. “Joe was there the night Raven got shot, and Star too, having a drink, at a faggot bar. They all encouraged Sekou.”

  “Joe wears newsprint boots from December 27, 1982.”

  “No, maybe Joe wasn’t at the bar. He came after.”

  The floor tilted under Cinnamon. A story storm engulfed her. “I think maybe Joe’s the Wanderer, a sister, brother, aje from another dimension come to know this world, come to live in it and feel it on his skin, in his heart, come to taste pain and joy and everything in between. He’s a patchwork of every story he’s heard and lived.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Opal frowned.

  “But Joe’s scattered. Stories are where he dumpster dives, looking for the past he trashed. Aje fragments could be running amok. Dangerous, but Joe’s an imagineer, trying to call memory up from the void. An aje —”

  “Aje? Damn, baby, we don’t need to make up sci-fi demons to worry about.” She poked Cinnamon’s safety pins. “You’re a mess, girl.”

  “I’m a size sixteen. This is a fourteen.”

  “Ain’t no money for a fashion upgrade.”

  Cinnamon rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about her clothes.

  “That’s a nice scarf.” Opal caressed it. “You’re not shoplifting, are you?”

  “It’s a present. Look, Joe equals Wanderer is where the evidence points.”

  “My little scientist-artiste, believing in magic.” Opal almost smiled. Clouds passed over her face. “What are you gonna do with me stuck up in here?”

  Was Cinnamon at the mercy of Child Services? Cousin Carol or Uncle Clarence? They might as well book her a room in Hell. “Verdammt!”

  Born Two

  “We got Cinnamon, Opal. Don’t you fret.” Iris talked from the doorway, backlit by the nurses’ station. Aidan and Redwood were already in the room.

  Aidan winked at Cinnamon as he fluffed a pillow under Opal’s head. “I told Opal, ain’t nobody talking ’bout dying,” he said, “so no worry there.”

  “Doctors need time to do the best that they can.” Iris filled the water bottle.

  “That means we get to visit awhile.” Redwood stood by the nightstand, admiring Eshu. Opal grimaced. “Better us than Clarence Jones, Esquire, to the rescue.”

  “What about Rebecca? Did you call her?” Opal asked.

  “Just till they get you straightened out.” Redwood didn’t answer the question.

  “What if they don’t?” Cinnamon let a little panic slip.

  “We scale that cliff when we get to it.” Redwood wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “Rebecca got that spare room,” Opal said. “Cinnamon wouldn’t be in the way. Rebecca spends most her time at Kevin’s.”

  “Think of the trouble Cinnamon could get into on her own.” Redwood chortled.

  “How are we doing? Empty, huh?” The nurse pushed through them to put a full pouch of clear liquid on Opal’s IV drip.

  “Sweeeeeet Jesussss,” Opal said as the new dose flooded her.

  “Sorry. She’ll be in and out like this for a few days,” the nurse explained.

  Good. Cinnamon wanted to ask Opal about Raven’s paintings when she was high. Cinnamon also had to persuade Star Deer (Ms. Respect-Your-Elders) to tell what Opal hid from her baby girl. If Klaus and Marie were still her friends tomorrow, she’d get them to help. She’d do anything as a trade. Tracking down Griot Joe was a priority. She had a feeling he wasn’t going anywhere far. Lexy must know the important shit, too. Cinnamon would make him spill the beans, too bad if he still hated her.

  “Your mom’s a rogue hoodoo conjurer,” Aidan said. “Getting stoned interferes with her magic.”

  “Don’t fill her head full of nonsense.” Opal slurred her words as the new dose kicked in.

  “Cinnamon been knowing how to think for herself,” Redwood replied.

  “How’d you decide to come to University Hospital?” Cinnamon had almost forgotten to ask. “And get here so fast?”

  “How you plan to answer that?” Opal sneered.

  The elders looked angelic, doing hoodoo gestures, passing secrets, swallowing giggles, like adolescents putting one over on a clueless adult.

  “Iris can see your heart spirit wherever in the world you are.” Aidan bragged on Iris without explaining a thing.

  “A nice young person offered us a ride,” Iris added.

  Aidan nodded. “The same one picked us up in ’84.”

  “That was a young fellow,” Iris said.

  “I thought it was a girl.” Aidan shut his eyes, concentrating. “She had a million skinny braids. Audra?”

  Redwood chuckled. “That’s young folks’ style — dreadlocks, braids — everybody wearing that. Where you been?”

  “Standing right next to you most times.” Aidan laughed too. “Artemis?”

  “I don’t know about ’84,” Iris said. “Today was a young woman with family in Pittsburgh.”

  “Maybe they’re twins,” Redwood said.

  “Snow didn’t faze him or her a bit.” Aidan squinted into the recent past. “A police person, used to emergency conditions, drove like a fiend. Aria?”

  “Ariel?” Cinnamon suggested.

  “Yeah.” Aidan scratched his jaw. “Maybe she played a policewoman in a show.”

  “That was last time,” Iris said.

  Redwood nodded. “Carried us right to the emergency entrance.”

  “Coincidental affinity. Eshu laughing,” Cinnamon mumbled.

  Opal perked up. “What’s twin in Yoruba, Iris?”

  “Ibeji,” Iris translated quickly. “Literally, born two.”

  “That’s not the name.” Opal fussed in the sheets, straining her tubes. “Damn it!”

  Iris took Opal’s hand, “In Yorubaland, regardless of gender, twins are named Taiwo, the first to taste the world, and Kehinde, the last to come, who is considered the elder. As I recall, Taiwo scouts out what life is like on Earth and reports back to Kehinde. Twins are children of thunder and share a soul; one is the spiritual aspect and the other, material.”

  “That’s it.” Opal was thrilled. “Taiwo. Joe looks like Taiwo.”

  Cinnamon was glad to be sitting down. So much probability magic. Griot Joe had to be the Wanderer from another dimension, living right now in Pittsburgh! Joe was one of her daddy’s best friends. Raven painted scenes from the Wanderer’s Earth adventures. Of course, Joe might have made up The Chronicles without living it. Circumstantial evidence, no matter how persuasive, was insufficient. She needed iron clad proof!

  “Storm’s backing off.” Redwood pointed at dark windows.

  Aidan peered out. Stars were twinkling. “Done enough mischief for one night.”

  “That’s for sure.” Kevin strode in, cowboy hat in hand, pointy boots slick and shiny. He’d braved the storm to rescue them. “Took hours to get here. Ms. Allen downstairs didn’t want to let me up. I had to use my charm.” He still had plenty of that.

  “Who is it?” Opal blin
ked against the brightness.

  “Rebecca sent that handsome cowpoke of hers to carry us home.” Redwood tucked a wayward foot under the sheets.

  “That’s love for you.” Aidan nodded.

  “Roads are pretty clear.” Kevin kissed Opal’s cheek. “Don’t you worry.”

  “Everybody telling me not to worry. Makes me really worried.” Even high as a satellite, Opal managed to find her way to a salty mood.

  Kevin smiled. “I can handle the wild bunch and Miss Space Cadet. You get better.”

  “She will,” Redwood declared.

  Everybody picked up the get well theme. Cinnamon didn’t hear much. There was a riot going on in her mind. She couldn’t wait to call Klaus and Marie and tell them her theories. Did Kevin carry her to the car? Good thing the man lived at the gym.

  “You all right, sugar?” Aidan asked when he and Redwood settled in the backseat of the Toyota with her.

  “Just being with her own self, I suspect,” Redwood said.

  Cinnamon was grateful for the understanding. She felt too shy to tell the elders her theories on the first night. Over two years of keeping secrets to herself, she’d lost the habit of blabbing everything at them.

  The shocks in Kevin’s Toyota were non-existent compared to the Audi’s tech. The beat-up station wagon bumped through potholes and around abandoned vehicles. Tucked in between Aidan and Redwood, Cinnamon felt every inch of the road. The frosted streets were deserted. Giant icicles dangled from power lines and tree limbs, growing longer as the car crept below them. An eerie tinkling of frozen branches and tumbleweed trash sounded like demons chuckling. A snow witch or sleet wizard had enchanted the hilly city. No sane mortal ventured forth.

  “Cinnamon, honey, will you read to us?” Iris said from the front seat. She held up The Chronicles. “I’ve been dying to find out what’s happening.”

  “Well, if Uncle Kevin doesn’t mind.”

  “I was hoping for a little magic on this ride.” Kevin glanced sideways at Iris.

  Cinnamon took glowing pages from Iris’s hands. This was one of those theatre days that Aristotle praised, a whole lifetime jammed into twenty-four hours of conflict, action, and revelation. Do. Suffer. Know. Cinnamon certainly felt like a tired spectacle ready for a long dénouement. Redwood put her storm hand on Cinnamon’s neck and pulled pain. Aidan gripped her chilly palm and hummed a warm melody.

  “I don’t have enough voice to read,” Cinnamon spoke softly.

  “Don’t worry,” Iris said. “When the story’s raring to go, I bet The Chronicles can practically read itself.” Talking a language that was as soothing as Redwood’s river scarf, Iris spoke a spell that tugged Cinnamon headlong into The Chronicles.

  ∞

  The next morning, opening gummy lids was like lifting heavy weights. Cinnamon woke in her bed, too tired to move. She clutched Chronicles pages in both hands, and they weren’t one bit wrinkled. Bright light coming through her shade was altogether too loud. The orca lay on Sekou’s desk, mouth wide open, grinning at her. A blue river scarf tumbled from the fangs to a sweetgrass basket on the floor where her eagle feather, mojo bag, shells, and Dahomey bead nestled together.

  Sekou’s time-bomb clock read 11:30 AM. Cinnamon hoped the blizzard cleanup had shut everything down and school got cancelled. Star Deer was gone. Cinnamon had done her homework before the audition, even the boring reading on Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité and the French Revolution. School was mostly stupid, and students usually made mincemeat of substitute teachers. However, Star’s math classes were stellar. Kids acted right and aced their work. Nobody talked down faggot-Sekou or Cinnamon’s fat black ass. Star had students turn proofs into sculptures lit by special effects flashlights. Hip hop kids, biting off Salt-N-Pepa’s style, danced in this nerd art for the talent show. Star was drama coach, too, and talked about doing plays: musicals, epic dramas, comedies, on no budget. Despite what anybody tells you, doing art isn’t extra, Star said. Thinking is the best show in town!

  With Star gone, Cinnamon would be getting into fights all the time.

  Taiwo and Kehinde’s latest adventures effervesced at the edge of Cinnamon’s consciousness, a long dream that wasn’t dissolving in the bright snow-light of day. Cinnamon didn’t recall speaking a word of it out loud as Kevin drove them home last night. Maybe Iris had turned The Chronicles into an audio book, and the chapters played right below awareness. As Cinnamon read the new chapters again, each word on the page activated one in her memory dream.

  CHRONICLES 17: Ariel and Abla

  Dear Guardians,

  I toss flesh for the crows to eat. The flock waits for a fellow traveler to trust wings and fly again. The crow sulks in the purse perch. I understand. Like my once-wounded companion, I am afraid of myself, of the aje, of flying, falling, and scattering. Somso regularly scolded me in her Igbo language: Anaghi eji mgbagbu ghalu ogu.

  A person does not bolt from a fight for fear that someone might get shot.

  The air is cold, and my hands won’t stop shaking. Winter is not the season of my spirit. But, good news, I have proof. Scattering is as real as my coming together in a spirit cave ninety-five years ago in Dahomey. Battered shards of memory return. I write quickly before they flit away.

  Wanderers have no fixed, eternal essence. Flux powers our spirits. Death is another transformation. Scattering is the Wanderers’ greatest fear. A few legends speak of Wanderers who, with the aid of powerful guardians and stillpoints, drew as many as six selves back together. I can’t imagine such a return. Why be one when you can be many? The first sign of scattering is many minds, and then you are splitting into two beings instead of becoming someone new. Sometimes, these beings refuse to remember one another or recall the shared past. Amnesia can be a blessing as well as a curse. From two, imagine breaking into so many pieces that all the king’s horses and all the queen’s women couldn’t put you back together again. English does a beautiful rhyme on biology and the arrow of time.

  Tonight, dear Guardians, braving killer snow from an inland sea, proof cruised right in front of my nose on a ten-speed bicycle. Beautiful to behold, dressed in elegant robes — Yoruba or Fon finery —proof skidded into my cart near the old industrial plant perched above the Monongahela River. It’s a culture house these days, doing masquerades. Actors called my scattered-self “Ariel” and praised last year’s midsummer night dream. In winter it’s good to dream of summer’s return. Now there were tempests to tame. Ariel swerved onto the sidewalk to avoid reckless drivers and didn’t see me. We collided. Ariel wasn’t wearing a helmet. Impact on the hard ground stole consciousness. I did what I could — my powers are greatly reduced. Ariel came ’round quickly though and jumped up.

  “Thank you.” Ariel brushed blood and snow from guarded eyes.

  Energy sparked between us. “Do you recognize me?”

  “Should I?” Ariel checked the bike for damage. “Did we do a play together in New York? Chicago?”

  Marveling at our similar magnetic signatures, I didn’t know what to do or say.

  “Are you a fan? What’d you see — For Colored Girls? Midsummer? That Alice Childress one — Trouble in Mind?”

  “I saw you disappear on stage in every one.” I smiled. “You’re amazing.”

  “I’m not the characters I’ve played.” Ariel balanced on the seat, put a foot in a pedal.

  “Of course you are. Each character changes you.”

  “I can’t even remember all the characters I’ve played.”

  “You carry them with you!” I clutched Ariel’s sleeve. “I do know you.”

  “No you don’t.” Ariel shook me off. “You’ve fallen for someone who doesn’t really exist. A masquerade, a ghost.” Ariel wheeled down the street into milky shadows.

  I was intoxicated, immobile. My crow companion, desperately flapping a fragile wing, lifted up and pecked my head. Above us the flock urged me to move on. With the cart’s power, I raced after Ariel, until I reached the University Hospital parking
lot and lost the trail.

  For eighteen seasons, I’ve been haunted by visions and ghosts who could have been me: a face rushing by on a trolley; a performer hanging from a thin trapeze, twirling in the air, and vanishing; a rogue with money-green eyes gloating over the latest successful scam; a rescue worker dragging wounded people from burning rubble; an actress giving old folks a ride to a funeral. Always I was too far, on the opposite end of a broadcast, or breath-close yet too jammed to read the magnetic fields. Eshu runs backwards and trips over herself. This time I’m certain. Despite being cloaked by ground fog, by clouds of static and swirls of ice, I SAW MYSELF!

  “Taiwo, child of the empty spaces, you scatter us all.” Abla’s severed head screamed at me tonight for the first time in fifty years, in English. I’ve forgotten too much Yoruba, Fon, or Igbo for her to torture me in those languages. Emitting a blue-green fluorescence, she floated in scum at the bottom of a construction pit in the University Hospital parking lot. Sleet coated withered tentacles coming through her translucent skull.

  “You are nzumbe,” she told me, “a damaged soul with delusions of alien grandeur.”

  “You describe yourself.”

  “You have eaten countless African and American stories.” She spit tiny desiccated corpses at me. “Our histories explode your belly, backbone, muscles, and skin. You fly off in a thousand directions.”

  I tore through my cart searching for Bob’s bag. Chill air turned my hands to clumsy claws. I wreaked havoc with drawings, altars, minkisi — spiritually-charged vessels that I’d collected. Bob’s red mojo was nowhere. Tiny bottles of rum rattled in the bottom of the cart, tempting me to drown Abla in alcohol. My crow companion pecked my arms.

  Abla laughed a foul wind. “Have you lost your slave magic?”

  “No.” I lied.

  “Your stillpoint has deserted you. Come down to me.”