“Talking’s good,” the volunteer said. “You know what he wants to hear.”
Aidan nodded. “Go on, sugar. You’re a world champion talker.”
Cinnamon’s mouth tasted terrible. She had no spit to clear it out. “Hey, Daddy, it’s me, your spice child. I’m uhm. We’re, Granddaddy Aidan and I, Mom is, is, she’s smoking too much, see and, and, you know about Sekou, right?” The volunteer flinched. Cinnamon ignored him. “Maybe Mom didn’t tell you. Sekou’s spirit now, talking to me from the beyond.” Her tongue was leather. No story storm in sight, only bad news. She looked to Aidan. “What should I say?”
“Tell him the good things, your new friends.”
Nothing “good” was coming to her. She had a mouth full of nasty.
“Doesn’t matter what you say.” Aidan leaned close, vital and strong, looking so like his son before the bullet, Cinnamon gasped. “Trust your good spirit, honeybunch.”
She was no bundle of sweetness, but acid Snow White in a ghetto fury tale. “Hey Daddy, we miss you. Every day. Mom’s sucking down ashes and running for a bridge to nowhere. Sekou’s riding the ghost train. And I’m, I’m, I wish, I do wish…” She turned to the volunteer. “Eleven, huh?”
“Out of fourteen. That’s high. Eleven’s hope.”
She stared at Aidan. “Say whatever comes?”
Aidan’s green eyes clouded over a second then blazed bright. A flash of his pain struck her. She needed to hold all of Daddy for him too. Daddy had a spark of life. Who was she to give up on him? Who was she to snuff him out?
“You felt him move?” Aidan said.
Cinnamon nodded.
“Say whatever you got.”
Cinnamon spoke softly in Raven’s ear, to elude Aidan’s ancient ones. “I’m sorry, Daddy. This is what I got — ’cause we really love you and miss you, so I wish that gunmen never took a shot, never even took a breath. I wish you hadn’t jumped in front of his gun and saved the day. Those two women were your friends, sure, but we’re your family. That bullet hit us too. How could you throw your life away? Weren’t you thinking about us? Sekou’s haunting me, and Opal’s in the hospital sick to her heart and breathing blood, from a bullet in your head. I wish you’d been a split second too late and the bullet flew by. Those two ladies are probably off somewhere loving each other, living a happy life. The gunman wanted to shoot down their love, not you, not us. It’s mean, but I wish anybody else was laying up in this bed, some stranger. Let him and his family be all torn up. What would I care? If the bullet really had to get somebody, I wish one of those ladies had ended in a coma or died instead of you.”
Death was the meanest wish Cinnamon ever had, but it was too late to take it back. Taking it back would’ve been a lie anyhow. No way to unthink evil thoughts. Raven didn’t respond. What use was evil talk to him? That’s what she had. Cinnamon laid his hand on the psychedelic sheet and backed up toward the bathroom. From the gentle expression on Aidan’s face, her nasty rant went undetected. Eshu was on her side.
The volunteer looked dismayed. Nothing wrong with his hearing, he probably caught every word. Served him right, standing around eavesdropping on private business. He glared at Cinnamon, trying to make her ashamed of death-wish thoughts. Who was he? Cinnamon glared back until the bruise at her temples throbbed. Nobody ever won a stare-down with her. Today at school she’d tangled with kids hopped up on raging hormones or drugs. Suckers hurled faggot/dyke jokes, curses, and death threats. She never broke a blink. The trash-talker that smacked her upside the head got an elbow in his mouth and one less hour of consciousness.
The volunteer shuddered and looked away. Lumpy hives raised skin up his arms. Cinnamon refused to hunt down generous feelings. Nice was a target painted on your heart. Nice landed you in the hospital, in a coma, or dead. Cinnamon didn’t want to be nice ever again. She just wanted this clown to leave them alone with Daddy.
“So, you be coming here regular, looking out for Raven?” Aidan sounded so warm and loving. “What you say your name was, son?”
Relieved, the volunteer turned to him, “Well, sir —” It was sir, now was it? “Maybe your granddaughter doesn’t remember me. I’ve put on some weight.”
Cinnamon never remembered important people, why would she remember him?
“I’m planning on medical school when I graduate Pitt.”
“Seeing a bright tomorrow.” Aidan smiled.
“I’m acing my classes.”
“Good for you.” Aidan had the nerve to chitchat about the idiot’s future.
“Don’t you have other patients to visit?” Cinnamon said.
Aidan snapped his head at her. A strand of white hair whipped across her cheek. The volunteer looked down at the floor. His feet were small for such a big frame. He had a neck full of ingrown hairs and more hives he’d scratched raw. He mumbled.
“I’m not deaf, son.” Aidan eyed Cinnamon. “But nobody’s ears are good enough to make out what you be saying there.”
“Since you’re family, I wonder if you might know about her. What’s happened?”
“What’s her name?” Aidan’s tone was sharp. He cleared his throat and the next words were gentle. “You ain’t ever asked her name?”
“No, sir, I, I…”
“He didn’t ask our names either,” Cinnamon interjected.
“She comes by all the time. At first I didn’t want to ask who she was. I didn’t want to scare her away, and she was so fierce. Then we got used to each other. Why upset that? I haven’t seen her for weeks. She always tells me if she has to miss. I hope nothing bad has happened. We’re stretched thin as it is.”
“Why would we know who comes by?” Cinnamon snarled.
Aidan scolded her in Irish, Seminole, or maybe it was Georgia mule talk.
The volunteer sputtered. “You’re family. She used to come every day, hold his hand, fuss over his hair. She’d tell raunchy jokes. A brassy redhead with a great dye job gets naked and her man complains, the rug ought to match the drapes…” He trailed off. “Sorry. You haven’t ever seen her?”
“I’m from up Massachusetts way,” Aidan drawled. “Don’t get here as much as I want to. How she look, young, old?”
“She could be thirty-five or forty-five. Black lady, well, she looks black.” He paused. “She’s good for him, that’s how she looks.”
“How do you know she’s good for him?” Cinnamon asked.
“A feeling I get.” He crossed his arms, fists under his biceps, a familiar tough-guy stance. Who used to do that? “Look, I gotta bounce. A report due for class. If you see her, tell her Mr. Cooper misses her. Everybody misses her. She’s good people.”
“I’ll tell her,” Aidan said. “Nice of you to volunteer here. Thank you.”
The volunteer gulped. “Least I can do.” Rushing out, he hopped over a furry orange squiggle crawling across the floor. Caterpillar? Millipede?
“Mom never comes,” Cinnamon said. “She can’t bear to be here.”
“You ain’t the only storyteller in the family.” Aidan picked up Raven’s left hand, his painting hand. “It’s me, son.” He curled Raven’s fingers around the sculpture he’d finished on the bus. “That’s a windy ole storm — Miz Redwood’s idea.” His voice cracked. “She sent a hurricane to keep you company. It come right out the wood at me. You always talkin’ ’bout me carving the wind.” He choked up. “The funnel touches ground, pulls pain out the Earth, and whirls it up into the sky.”
Cornball. Aidan got away with country hoodoo crap constantly. Cinnamon rolled her eyes. The mirror in the bathroom blasted an ugly reflection at her. She jerked away from the expression — so Snow White, or so like —
“Opal ain’t told nobody, not even Becca, how she be coming here,” Aidan said.
“You don’t know it’s her.”
“Yes I do, sugar. Her love is still in the room with us.”
They walked to the bus stop in a funk. Maybe Aidan had heard the nasty Cinnamon had spewed or felt the evil still
fresh in her heart. Every time she looked up, he was boring a hole in her. She lost these staring battles, no contest. On the bus Cinnamon opened The Chronicles. Nothing new had appeared in weeks. Griot Joe was key to the mission, and he’d gone silent. Was everything impossible, hopeless? As the bus pulled out, blurry fluorescence turned into crisp paragraphs. Demon words were coming to the rescue.
CHRONICLES 20: Father of Mysteries
“The wind is free.”
Luigi chanted this to the rhythm of La Vérité’s heaving pistons. Lazy machines devoured a coal mountain, roared, and spit fire, yet provided little steam. The Captain and Somso strolled through fog lapping the deck, as a violet sea swallowed an orange behemoth. In the wind shadow of a smokestack, Melinga and I watched the Earth rotate. She giggled. I felt desolate. Bob sat hunched against a broken lifeboat. Liam was passed out beside him. They smelled of rum and blood from a fight.
“My profits burn to ash,” Luigi grumbled.
“Your profits?” Somso laughed. “We earned this money.”
The closer La Vérité steamed to America, the more we twisted our stories. In the tall-tale versions, Luigi never planned to abandon me. A bolt to the head had addled my brain. Bob erased Spotted Man memories with rum and fisticuffs. Liam denied hopeless love for Bob and Kehinde. How could love be hopeless? Somso grumbled about Melinga spending too much time with rogues, heathens, and an ajo mmuo — evil spirit. Still, she dumped her daughter on us at every opportunity. Bob even carried Melinga on his night watch. Kehinde pretended Raymond’s war stories hadn’t poisoned our faith in America; we would be free, like the wind.
“Stuff it,” Luigi yelled at homesick, seasick animals rattling their cages.
“You waste energy on anger.” Somso spoke crisp English learned from her Jesus cult. “The wind is bound by the land, water, and mountains too. Nothing is free.”
“I never know what you’ll say,” Luigi said.
“Why should he be able to divine Somso’s speech?” Kehinde materialized out of the dark, speaking Yoruba.
Luigi circled Somso. “I’ll make a spectacle of you from coast to coast.”
“Men have talked nonsense to me since my twelfth year,” Somso said. “You remind me of my first husband, Yao, a very rich man with many wives.” No mention that Yao was a scoundrel and assassin, a dead-end man who had no sons or even daughters.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Luigi bowed.
Kehinde curled her lip.
“You don’t trust him,” I whispered.
“Or Somso,” Kehinde replied.
“What’s Somso got in her trick bag?” Bob said.
The ship rocked over choppy water, and Somso stumbled. Luigi offered his arm.
Kehinde pointed toward land I could not yet see. “The New World.”
Bob whacked Liam, and he woke with a growl.
“America,” Bob said.
I held Melinga up. “Here is where we shall bury your umbilical cord and find out who we are called to be.”
Somso halted with Luigi in front of us. “Wanderer, you have taken Taiwo’s place. You should have this.” She displayed the ide Ifa, a beaded bracelet worn by a Babalawo, sign of a father of mystery. “My second husband always wore it, except for his last day. I never understood why he left it on our bed.” She stroked opal beads that anchored strands of green and yellow. “You share his name, his destiny. Go on, take it.”
“I’m not wise enough.” I glanced at Kehinde. Her face was a cool warrior mask.
“Nothing precious, cheap glass beads,” Luigi said. “Right?”
“Exactly. What are pagan trinkets to me? I’m a good Christian, and Melinga will also love Jesus.” Somso dangled the ide Ifa over the rail. It reflected the last rays of the home star into my eyes. “Do you want me to throw it away?”
Melinga reached for the dangling treasure and protested when I pulled her to my heart. “Why discard what doesn’t matter to you?” A flick of flame escaped my nostrils. “Lady Atlantic holds the truth of all her children. Her many beads of wisdom color the rippling waves that are her garments. We can make a better offering.”
“Such poetry.” Somso retracted her arm. Blood flooded her lips and cheeks; electricity buzzed around her head, as if she’d been caught hiding stones in a packet of bullets for sale.
“I will keep the ide Ifa safe,” I said, “if you like.”
“One day, you will be wise enough to wear it.” Somso dropped the bracelet into my hand and hurried on with Luigi. Melinga squealed and mouthed her father’s beads.
“Somso probes for weakness,” Bob said. “She plays a long game.”
“In Somso’s story, her husband’s blood stains us,” Kehinde said. “We are her enemies. Abla would slit Somso’s throat and claim Melinga.” Another flick of flame flared from my nostrils. “No fear, Wanderer, I’m not Abla.”
“The aje doesn’t possess your restraint,” I said.
“We have our own story,” Bob said.
Kehinde nodded and stroked Melinga’s thick hair. “To live is to hope,”
Liam curled into a knot on the deck. “Life could just be a bad habit.”
“You don’t believe that.” I slipped the ide Ifa into the folds of my robe.
I hope Ariel has it still.
Who Do You Mean To Be?
The bus driver careened around a corner, almost smashed a cab, parked and minding its own business, and then scraped the finish off of three cars. Nobody called the driver out. Opal would have lost her job behind that kind of stunt.
Cinnamon slammed The Chronicles shut. More chapters appeared, but she had zero patience for aliens, Amazons, and clueless sailors in 1890-something. She was here and now, not then and there. Who gave a holler if Somso was a royal bitch planning to trick Kehinde and Taiwo? Melinga would be the one to suffer, growing up in the disaster adults made. Then Melinga would make a disaster too. Hadn’t it been going down like that for eternity, or for two-hundred-thousand years of homo sapiens sapiens history?
“Don’t feel like reading on?” Aidan nudged her.
“No.” Cinnamon usually read until the words ran out. Blank or blurry Chronicles pages were a cruel disappointment. Everything was a cruel disappointment. No one told kids that growing up. Who’d bother with a second decade?
Actually, Opal put out warnings. Cinnamon never listened.
“Eleven.” Aidan repeated this like a country fool. He was ready to tell random folks standing in the aisles. “Ain’t that the best news?” Passengers cut their eyes at him. He was oblivious. “What you got to say to eleven?”
“It’s cool,” Cinnamon replied.
Aidan frowned. “It’s a damn sight more than cool. What’s wrong with you, gal?” He wanted the stupid optimist act.
When Cinnamon had been little, she’d felt invincible, immortal, and almighty. A true believer just this morning: if she put her mind to it, she could learn or be anything; if she worked hard enough, she could do anything. Opal was always tired and depressed, but not Cinnamon. Bring on the danger, fiends, and zombies. She was Cinnamon the Great — upbeat and indefatigable. But she’d left Cinnamon the Great on the scuffed nursing home room floor. Who was she now?
Hillbilly Aidan would have zip to say about that, so she kept her mouth shut.
The ride home took forever. Actually, despite a spring snow squall, an accident, and two roads under construction, it only took forty-five minutes. When they got off the bus, Patty Banks and Cherrie Carswell were hanging on the corner. They gaped at Aidan’s beads and flashy walking stick, then smirked.
“Ain’t you goin’ introduce me to your friends?” he said.
“They hate me.” Cinnamon touched the bruise at her temples.
“How do?” Aidan could smile at anybody.
“Hey.” Patty and Cherrie snorted. Big lies would sweep school tomorrow.
Climbing the hill to her street, Cinnamon walked behind Aidan, slower than old man slow. Maybe she’d lost her mind at the nu
rsing home. The next door Doberman yammered at her for dragging by without a scratch, tummy tickle, or treat to supplement the starvation diet that supposedly kept her lean and mean.
Cinnamon growled, “No, Rain. Go sit.”
The dog dropped onto her haunches. Aidan glanced up to Opal’s porch. The twenty-three steps could have been Mt. Everest. He leaned into the climb. Cinnamon sat down half way from the top. Rain barked.
“You can get up. I’m too tired.”
Rain trotted to the fence eyeing Cinnamon with doggy concern.
“Who is that cracker they got up in the house while Opal’s at the hospital?”
Cinnamon snapped around to face neighbors talking shit. Aidan kept trudging up the steps. No one in sight to fight with — was she hearing things? On the porch, Redwood and Iris hugged Aidan as if they hadn’t seen him since forever and a day.
“How do he look?” Redwood asked.
A skeletal Raven Cooper squatted in psychedelic sheets and mouthed words, scolding Cinnamon silently. She read his lips. Folks wishing death on strangers was how he landed in that stupid coma.
“Eleven on a scale of three to fourteen,” Aidan said. “What you ornery women got to say to that?”
“Hope hurts sometimes.” Iris sighed. “You pick your days for hope.”
Redwood squeezed his shoulders. “Did I fight you on this?”
“Will you go see him?” Aidan replied.
“Everybody can’t worship at the same altar.” Redwood looked stricken.
“He’s our son, not a monster.”
“Was our son.”
“Wait till he’s dead to bury him,” Aidan shouted. Redwood waved her storm hand. Aidan turned to Iris. “Eleven is a prime number, right?”
“It is indeed.” Prime numbers were Iris’s favorites.
Redwood yelled at Cinnamon. “Did those few steps wear you out, young as you are?”
Aidan bent close to Redwood and Iris, muttering and pointing at Cinnamon. She ran the last eleven steps. By the porch her shields were tissue paper and eggshells.
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