Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “Yeah,” Aidan said. Cinnamon did the math. Since Daddy got shot.

  “That was plenty.” Redwood kissed his fingers. “Tomorrow, you can play more.”

  “Every day more,” Cinnamon said too loud, a screech almost. “Not time for you to be…” spirit yet. She caught herself before blurting stupid crap. Good thing these folks didn’t read minds, like Opal. “Don’t be sad.”

  Aidan roused from his funk to smile at her. “All right, honeybunch, I got a good mood just for you.”

  Hearing Spirits from the Other Shore

  Iris dropped a bag of sweet potatoes in front of Aidan. “If you’re not going to play any more music, you’ll have to peel. My surprise casserole always tastes better, if I make it up the day before.”

  “How’s that a surprise?” Aidan said.

  “I’ll peel, singerman.” Redwood grabbed the bag. “I know you like to chop.”

  “Can we come for dinner?” Klaus said.

  Iris laughed at his lack of manners. “Certainly.” She took a slice of mincemeat pie from the oven and set it by the empty cobbler dish in front of Cinnamon. A hunk of cream cheese was melting down the sides. “That’s for you, if you still got some room.”

  Everybody watched Cinnamon do the calorie math. The pie would set her back several days. Rustling and buzzing from nowhere in particular interrupted her bargaining with herself over how many days of hunger the pie might be worth.

  Eat it! Sekou said, all up in her shit, wearing his thunderbird tee. Iris’s mincemeat was his favorite too. You’re drooling, Sis.

  “I am?” Cinnamon scrambled to clean her mouth off.

  You’re stalling, worse than Granddaddy Aidan.

  “I don’t mean to.” Cinnamon took a bite of the pie. A sweet fermented taste exploded in her mouth.

  It’s not how deep you fish, it’s how you wiggle the worm.

  “Granddaddy said the same thing. What’s that supposed to mean?” The rest of the pie slipped over her tongue and disappeared down into her belly. “Talk to me, Bro.”

  No reply, and the buzzing and rustling faded. Sekou was gone, before he’d checked in really. Cinnamon felt woozy or drunk even. On food! Marie and Klaus gestured and shook their heads at her, too slow, as if they were swimming in honey. The elders moved as if they’d stopped time while waiting for her to catch up. Redwood peeled a mountain of sweet potatoes and somehow picked up the pace. Cinnamon blinked, and a whole bag was done. The skins were curled up in bouncy ringlets. Wielding an enormous old knife, Aidan chopped the naked sweet potatoes into bright orange cubes and tossed them in a strainer perched over boiling water. Aidan wiped fifteen inches of blade clean.

  “Is that uhm,” Cinnamon had to concentrate to form words, “the Seminole heirloom knife that Uncle Clarence claims is pure Georgia cracker?”

  It’s a Maskókî hunting knife. Sekou was back, whispering over her shoulder.

  “You’re making me dizzy, whizzing in and out.” Cinnamon didn’t turn around.

  “My daddy gave me this knife.” Aidan tossed it from hand to hand. Did he hear Sekou? “He got it from a Maskókî man, a blood brother who died too young. His widow was my daddy’s first wife.”

  “Miss O’Casey was Big Thunder’s second wife,” Cinnamon said. “They met in the Okefenokee Swamp, grassy water that rocks your sorrows away.”

  Now you’re talking! Why do you listen to the BS Clarence spews?

  Cinnamon hated to admit it, but, “Sometimes Uncle Clarence is right.”

  Not this time. Sekou was gone again in a flash.

  “Wait! You want your chair?” Cinnamon stood up too quickly. Undigested food threatened to evacuate her tight tummy. She gulped down soothing saliva.

  “What you chewing over?” Redwood said.

  “I’m uhm …” Cinnamon sputtered.

  Ribbons of colored energy shot from Redwood’s storm hand. “You’re what?” Redwood swept the curly potato skins into a pail and pointed the peeler at Cinnamon. “Just spit it out. Won’t get easier later.”

  “Well, darling, she’s sure to talk now, you being so diplomatic.” Aidan sounded more Irish than Georgia cracker.

  “Excuse me, sugar, I forgot.” Redwood had a hand on her hip. “Irish diplomacy is telling a man to go to hell so that he looks forward to making the trip.”

  Redwood and Aidan laughed like the next minute they’d be jumping each other’s bones. Had they always been this way, and Cinnamon was too young and dumb to notice, or was this more seeing sex everywhere? Marie and Klaus laughed too, washing dirty dishes. Opal refused to waste money on a dishwasher nobody needed in the first place.

  Iris slammed a top on the pot of sweet potatoes and jolted Cinnamon. “Who moved the fennel?” Iris rummaged through a pile of onions, kiwis, and garlic cloves until she found the shaggy fennel and a mysterious plant with orange leaves and warts on its spindly stems. “That’s the ticket.” Iris liked to cook from scratch, from: send Aidan and Redwood out into the weeds to bring back hairy things with dirt clinging to the roots for a miracle-tasting casserole surprise. Surprise was what Iris always called the dish of the moment made from whatever good stuff was on hand.

  “Everybody is doing something useful except for me,” Cinnamon said.

  Iris smiled. “Better hurry up and speak your piece, or I’ll be in an ill humor, won’t want to share my yam and goober surprise with anybody.”

  “If Iris be talking about yams and goober peanuts, you ’bout to miss a taste of Africa.” Aidan smiled at Cinnamon as Klaus and Marie groaned.

  “So what you got to say for yourself?” Redwood said.

  Sekou dropped in again and hissed at Cinnamon.

  “You know, dead folk always leave something,” Aidan said, “a trail, a song on the wind. They ain’t really lost to you.”

  Klaus froze. The big pot he gripped was dripping dark splotches on the floor. The dish towel trembled in his hand. Marie clenched the heavy lid, teetering at the edge of nothing. Everybody was eying Cinnamon, waiting for her to wiggle the worm.

  “It’s like this,” Cinnamon said. “Sekou talks to me sometimes. To my friends too.”

  Klaus let go of the pot. Marie caught it, but the lid flew away from her. Redwood reached out with her storm hand and snatched the spinning metal out the air, right before it would have hit Cinnamon upside the head.

  “You two hear Sekou too, do you?” Redwood set the top on the counter.

  Clutching the pot together, Klaus and Marie nodded. No point in denying it.

  “Ancestors on the wind.” Aidan skinned a ginger root with his scary knife. “Most folks don’t listen. Getting deaf to the spiritual frequency.”

  “People are afraid,” Iris murmured, almost to herself. “Maybe all they will hear are spirits. Or maybe they won’t know who is a spirit and who is breathing still. That’s a right reasonable concern.” She dumped cooked sweet potato cubes into a bowl filled with wedges of butter that promptly melted. Aidan shaved in ginger root and mystery weed until Iris raised a hand. She splashed lemon juice and added a few dollops of molasses before beating the sweet potatoes to orange fluff. A dusting of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves was followed by a drizzle of maple syrup and a spray of chopped fennel. Iris never measured anything. You can’t go by the numbers, got to go by the taste.

  “You don’t have more to tell us than that, honeybunch?” Aidan worked a French whip on half a dozen eggs.

  “Talk up a storm when you want to,” Iris said.

  Sekou wrote Iris anything — even letters about mean boyfriends dumping him. What was the matter with Cinnamon? Iris folded the frothy eggs into the sweet potato mix and blended it to a smooth texture. She poured thin planes of an herb peanut concoction between thick layers of sweet potato fluff into a deep casserole dish, finishing with dots of butter, peanut dust, fennel flesh, and tiny pink mushrooms.

  “You worried ’bout Sekou talking to you?” Redwood held the oven open. The blast of heat felt wonderful as Iris set the casserole on
the middle rack. “After my mama…” Redwood closed the oven, “After Miz Garnett died, she used to talk to Aidan.”

  “That she did. Like to drive me wild.” Aidan looked wistful. “Actually it was my own torment working against me, not Miz Garnett.”

  “I see Sekou too,” Cinnamon admitted.

  “How do he look?” Redwood said. “Worse or —”

  “Good,” Cinnamon admitted. “He was wearing the tee-shirt Raven gave him.”

  “The thunderbird one?” Iris said.

  Aidan hugged his own version. “He wrote Iris about wanting to burn it.”

  Cinnamon shook her head. “Bug-Man Lexy said Sekou was a drama queen, mostly big talk, until he OD’ed.”

  “Do we know about Bug-Man Lexy?” Klaus said.

  “Is he dead?” Marie painstakingly wiped down the forks. “Did he OD too?”

  “Ah, no, Lexy is, uhm, he was uhm, he and Sekou were tight, were…” Cinnamon sputtered to a halt. Everybody stared at her. If Iris knew the scoop, Redwood and Aidan knew too. The elders didn’t help her out though. The casserole gurgled in the oven, spitting sweetness that sizzled on the oven floor.

  Marie broke the silence. “I get it.”

  Klaus looked baffled a second and then said, “Oh, Sekou, er war vom anderen Ufer.”

  “What’s that?” Marie asked.

  “A figure of speech,” Klaus explained. “He was gay, from the other shore.”

  Cinnamon tilted her head at him, a Marie move. “Lexy is still very much with us, on this shore.”

  “Hey, this shore is the other shore,” Marie said. “And we’re hearing spirits.”

  The gay-boy truth was out, and no melt-down.

  “When I was eighteen, nineteen, after Redwood’s mama had been…taken away from us, I…”Aidan gazed into the past and shuddered. Back in the present, he fixed Cinnamon, and Klaus and Marie too, in his eyes. “After a posse of white men raped and lynched Miz Garnett, after they set fire to her in a Georgia pine that didn’t burn when she did, Miz Garnett come on back to keep a look out on her children and on me too.”

  Klaus and Marie were transfixed. They didn’t mind this history. Cinnamon was furious. This was important shit Opal didn’t want her to know. “Keep going, please.”

  Aidan looked away. His jaw twitched. “I felt like a low-down worthless coward.”

  “Nothing you could’ve done, a boy against a posse of grown men,” Redwood said.

  Aidan took hold of her storm hand. “But I was set on drinking myself to kingdom come. Now, even dead and gone, Miz Garnett wasn’t having none of that. Bold as you please, violet orchids growing in her hair, swamp stink on her breath, Miz Garnett sat in a broken rocking chair on my front porch and scared me sober.”

  “You don’t drink.” Cinnamon was confused. “Ever.”

  “Not anymore. But I was worse than your Uncle Dicky.”

  “Too many folks be erasing themselves with booze, smack, or cigarettes.” Cinnamon couldn’t imagine Aidan falling down, stupid drunk. “Why would you do that?”

  Aidan shivered. “I thought I’d lost most everything, tried to drown the last bit of myself in a jug. Walking the coward’s way.”

  “He wasn’t the only one.” Redwood sighed. “I was up in Chicago town, cooning, so I could forget my own hurting self.”

  “Cooning?” Klaus asked. “What is cooning?” Cinnamon was too stunned to explain. Marie whispered something about black folks acting stupid in minstrel shows to him.

  “Like Raymond Abernathy in Paris?” Klaus said.

  “Every night and twice on Saturday,” Redwood said, “getting drunk on a crowd of folks laughing at me and mine, tearing us down, bringing us low.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Cinnamon shook her head. They let her imagine glamorous stage adventures.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Iris said. “Aidan come back from the dead to save me. Sister opened the doors to my tomorrows. She was tearing up the stage in Chicago town.”

  “You were just knee high to a sprout, hair like a dandelion gone to seed.” Aidan tweaked Iris’s nose.

  She smacked his hand away. “Sister knew how to strut her stuff on stage! She was a headliner with that Persian dreamboat.”

  “Saeed,” Aidan said, sounding almost jealous.

  “Saeed was definitely from the other shore.” Redwood smiled. “Found him a sweet Union man.”

  Iris grinned. “When Saeed danced he made your heart leap. Aidan was busy working his banjo hand, like tonight. He was a matinee idol in the moving pictures.” Aidan tried to protest. Iris shushed him. “This is my story. Aidan had women swooning in the dark over his brave warrior escapades. Sister flew through the air on everybody’s dreams and put on her own picture shows, Sea Island romances: The Pirate and the Schoolteacher and Sorrow Mountain. She and Aidan lived happily ever after in that one. Now that’s how I remember it. Everybody was doing the best they could. They saved enough money to send me from Oberlin all the way to a PhD. We had hard times for sure, but plenty of grand times too.”

  “Amen to that.” Redwood dispersed the memories with a flick of her wrist. Grief and joy washed over them, but did not linger. Redwood took a breath and looked ready to fly. “We have to stay on track. Sekou is a good spirit.”

  Iris nodded. “He won’t tell you anything wrong.” She headed for the sink.

  “Wait! You not goin’ rinse that down the drain.” Redwood grabbed the mixing bowl, scraped sweet potato fluff from the sides, and sucked it off her finger. She scooped the last dab for Aidan before passing the bowl to Klaus to wash. Aidan sucked her finger to the knuckle. Redwood shivered at his tongue tickling her thumb. Old as they were, still acting bad, in front of folks too. How did anybody stay in love that long?

  “If Sekou tell you something out the way,” Aidan paused, “you gotta trust…”

  “Trust your heart spirit.” Redwood finished his thought. “You’ll know the truth.”

  “How?” Cinnamon, Marie, and Klaus asked in unison.

  The elders exchanged looks and unreadable hand signs. “Who can tell you what you got to figure for your own self?” Redwood glowered at them. “Life is finding the way and having a good time doing it.”

  Cinnamon thought of Kehinde and Taiwo guzzling poison water or dying of thirst. “Are you kidding, offering fortune-cookie wisdom when we’re facing important shit?”

  Redwood laughed. “Fortune-Cookie Masters steal from the best minds.”

  “You’re all for doing life your own special way.” Iris had a devilish half smile. “You’ll figure how to make that way out of no way.” Maybe she could read minds.

  “Cinnamon was an ornery cuss even as a little baby.” Aidan squeezed her nose. Nobody else would have dared. “She spit carrot baby food in my face, ready to go hungry rather than eat slop.”`

  “I still hate cooked carrots,” Cinnamon declared.

  Iris pulled the casserole dish out of the oven. It was done already. Time was messed up. “Babies know what they want.” She held up a spoon of her sweet potato surprise.

  The aroma made Cinnamon swoon, but she’d gone over the limit. “I’m too full.”

  Redwood muttered Sea Island Gullah and shook her head. Klaus gobbled the surprise gratefully. Laughing, Marie had a taste too. The March wind howled outside, blowing a sudden storm against the windows. Wind chimes clanged on the porch as clouds swallowed the last bit of daylight. Hail pelted the roof. Lightning flashed nearby. Light bulbs dimmed out for a second.

  “So, little miss woman, is that all you got to say for yourself?” Redwood demanded.

  “You guys had fantasy; that was easy. We’re in the twentieth century. We get science fiction too.”

  “Is that so?” Redwood’s tone was deadly.

  Cinnamon flinched. Lynching, easy? Thunder shockwaves shook the foundation.

  “What about trancing out to The Chronicles?” Klaus licked Iris’s spoon.

  “That’s nothing.” Marie displayed her hand “
What about —”

  A flurry of sparks arced from her jet black nails, crackling and frying dust motes, zinging metal pans and doorknobs. One bolt blackened a wooden eagle’s eye. Cinnamon and Klaus jumped and hollered. Marie trembled as more sparks surged from glowing fingertips. Aidan dodged sparks and wrapped his banjo in Kente cloth. Light fixtures got zapped and blew out. Iris squinted in the bursts of bright energy and grabbed a stepstool. Candles died and hissed smoke. Crazy shadows danced along the walls. The acrid smell of ozone stung their noses. Redwood strode to the hoodoo altar, stretched out a long arm, and opened her storm hand. Every zigzag of electricity raced toward her. Marie’s hand spit a final trickle then went dim. Sparks gathered in Redwood’s palm, spiraling into a white hot ball. Grunting, she closed her hand into a tight fist. The kitchen was pitch dark. Iris clomped up the stepstool and screwed a bulb into the overhead. Warm incandescence filled the kitchen.

  “Did that just happen?” Klaus said.

  “Before you go flying off on a wild tear,” Redwood spoke calm into the jittery room, “you have to know what’s goin’ bring your behind back down to Earth.” She opened her hand. The palm was empty and clear.

  Ear Worm

  Redwood’s storm-hand display was what Cinnamon, Marie, and Klaus needed. Finishing each other’s sentences or talking over one another, they explained the last Chronicles episodes in hyperspeed. Marie gave a graphic account of her hand getting swallowed by the weird from another dimension. Cinnamon offered the Wanderer Taiwo is Griot Joe theory. Klaus mentioned Ariel doing magic blocking that no one could explain. The elders absorbed this barrage without comment. Exhausted, the Squad tumbled onto the worn couch in the living room. Three people hadn’t sat together on the poor thing in years. It caved under their behinds and gave off a dusty musty odor.

  “Sometimes I say things.” Cinnamon did a solo turn. “I mean, I make up things, or, a deluge of words comes to me. It could be tall tales, but mostly what I say turns out to be true. I said you all were coming here after Opal fell out at the audition.”

  The elders stood framed in the kitchen island window. Iris relit the candles. Redwood set these spears of fire by the acorn guards. Aidan opened his worn journal and pulled out a dried orchid. The elders huddled close to one another, flickering and mumbling in the candle light, a silent movie without the titles.