Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “My mom’s parents were in a Japanese Internment camp in Gila River, Arizona.”

  “What? Wait!” Klaus jumped up.

  Marie stomped around the galaxy rug while he flipped through articles on Japanese Americans, over 100,000 US citizens ripped from their lives and thrown into camps during World War II. Gila River was an Indian Reservation, home to Pima and Pee-Posh folks opposed to the camp. US government officials missed the irony and ignored the outrage. Indians were overruled. A few German and Italian Americans got interned too. That was news to Cinnamon, and Sekou had kept her schooled on reasons to riot.

  “Ready?” Marie hovered in the doorway, her proscenium arch. “I don’t have to —”

  “Over before you’ve started?” Klaus quipped and Marie looked ready to bounce.

  “Let me braid your hair,” Cinnamon said.

  Marie flipped dark waves out of her face. She’d wondered if Cinnamon could do heavy, slippery hair. “While I talk?”

  Cinnamon waved her close. Candlelight made anything seem possible. “I won’t do real skinny braids. That takes forever.”

  Marie dropped to the floor by the bed. Cinnamon leaned her face into Marie’s lavender aroma, dragged a comb through slippery snarls, and braided. Klaus eyed her fast fingers. She let him attach beads at the end of the first braid. Cinnamon massaged Marie’s scalp before doing a second and third braid. At the fourth, Marie sighed.

  “Mom’s parents lost everything but survived Gila River, a harsh desert camp. Dad’s parents had come to the US through New York City. Immigration put Chinese on their forms. Who cared till Pearl Harbor? The white hicks where they lived never really asked. Maybe they were happy not to know. There was one other Japanese family, the Unno’s, an older couple, good Buddhists in their sixties with a grown son who went to fight in Europe. They kept my grandparents’ secret. Mr. Unno asked Granddad to look after their farm. So my grandparents learned farming and went through the whole war, pretending to be Chinese farmers in very good English.

  “After the war, when Dad was born, they moved to San Francisco and never talked about those years. Dad’s older sister slipped him the dirty family secret when he turned eight: no Santa Claus, and by the way, the ’rents saved their skins with Chinese lies. His sister worried that if people found out, catastrophe! Dad wasn’t born till 1946. How were Chinese lies his fault? The camps were crazy. People froze to death in the desert. Why not get around that? Dad told Mom before they married. She still loved him.”

  “Of course,” Cinnamon said.

  “Natürlich,” Klaus added in passionate German.

  Cinnamon tugged a hidden streak of dyed blond hair. “You got more?”

  Marie chewed a lip. “Mom told me and my sister. She thought we should know. Dad is furious. He claims it’s his secret, and Mom should let the past stay in the past. Dad’s only got daughters, but in America, we can be his legacy. My sister’s a real genius at math, debate. She got into Amherst College, so I was off the hook. She only dabbles in theatre. I’m the actress. I sang Dad around to believing in me. But according to her, I’m a banana.” Yellow outside, white inside? “My sister put up this one woman show, telling the whole family drama at a hole-in-the-wall over in Shady Side. It’s World War III at my house.”

  Klaus muttered in German and fussed over a green bead without a hole.

  “Stop that.” Marie smacked his hands. “Say something.”

  Only lame crap came to Cinnamon: This is America. Everybody be passing. “That’s rough.”

  “My parents are threatening to disown my sister. This is 1987, not feudal Japan.” Marie’s lips trembled. “My sister’s got the hots for some revolutionary Latino dude. She’s eighteen, so she stormed out the house to his place.”

  “In her bare feet,” Cinnamon said. “I could see that coming.”

  Marie flicked her weird hand. Sparks flew. “Maybe she won’t go to Amherst next fall. Mom and Dad are dropping hints. I have to be the big doctor of their dreams now. Theatre has become criminal activity, so I lie. They trust me. I could —” Shoot her sister? “OK, you guys tell something, quick.”

  Klaus threw the defective bead in the corner.

  “You already heard my shit,” Cinnamon said. “Can we finish your braids?”

  Marie blinked rapidly. Cinnamon took that as a yes and braided the second half in a blur. Muttering in German, Klaus did an ombré bead pattern — dark blues to pale greens with an occasional flash of silver.

  “Look in the mirror,” Cinnamon said.

  Marie halfheartedly swung her braids. “Later.”

  “We should do a hoodoo spell for family high dramas…” Cinnamon trailed off. Sitting on Sekou’s bed, candles sputtering, an empty house creaking, they could have indulged raging hormones and MADE OUT, instead of whatever they were doing.

  “You’ve been silent or in German for an hour.” Marie tugged Klaus’s scraggly hair.

  “Yeah.” Cinnamon squeezed his tight shoulders.

  “Ariel would do anything for the Golden Angel Donors,” Klaus said.

  “Non sequitur.” Marie punched him. “Explain?”

  “The Angels are like your fairy godmothers,” Cinnamon said.

  “This is about cancelling the dinner party, isn’t it?” Marie sprang up.

  “Talk to us. Don’t be such a black hole.” Cinnamon dug into knotted muscles.

  “Owa.” Klaus flinched. “Ask me questions. That helps.”

  Groaning, Cinnamon and Marie relented and coaxed the story out of him. Glass-slipper Gwyneth, Commander Williams, and the VIPs invited themselves to Klaus’s to brainstorm the Playhouse fund drive. Mrs. B saw it as a rehearsal for Vati’s dinner party. She served cake and coffee and talked bad-English-getting-better. She knew more than anybody realized. Medea blew through, a surprise to pump their spirits.

  Meanwhile in the garage, Vati was shooting up nasty crap. He nodded out on his tools and made a terrible racket. The Angels had to go see what was up. Mrs. B couldn’t stop them. Klaus didn’t want to. The ladies barged in on Vati drowning in his vomit. A few heartbeats later, he would have croaked. The ladies shipped him to the hospital, and the hospital shipped him to rehab. Commander Williams and Gwyneth helped Mrs. B take care of business. Luckily, Vati made his own drugs. The family bank accounts were still intact.

  “That was two weeks ago.” Marie was pissed. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “Why didn’t you tell sooner?” Klaus replied. Marie shook her braids.

  “Shame,” Cinnamon blurted. “And wishing death on somebody.”

  “I’m evil like that, but,” Marie pointed at Klaus, “you?”

  Words stormed Cinnamon. “If Vati gets clean and sober for a second, he could talk Mrs. B out of her right mind. She’d take him back without being sure he was cured —”

  “Should she story-storm on?” Marie took Klaus’s hand, kissed his palm.

  After an eternity, Klaus mouthed “Ja.”

  “Watching Vati choke, you imagined him taking a last breath, imagined light frozen in his eyes, so you and Muti would be free.” Cinnamon’s throat ached. “Who’d want to talk about that?”

  “Certainly not in English,” Klaus said with perfect comic timing. They laughed hard, rolling and choking. The house groaned. A draft blew in from the hall, and shadows danced. Naked, with their clothes on, the Squad fell into each other and held on tight. They listened to the house rock on the edge of a cliff and not fall over.

  Klaus touched Cinnamon’s bruise. “Your turn.”

  Her palm tingled where Raven had tapped it. Why keep that secret? The whole nursing home saga tumbled out. When she finished they were nuzzling and kissing, sort of making out. Cinnamon’s and Marie’s braids got tangled up.

  “Wait!” Klaus undid the knot.

  The spell was broken. They looked at each other, sheepish.

  Cinnamon shivered with so many good, new feelings. “This must be —” SHY.

  “Oma — Grandmother —
used to say: Verzeihen ist die beste Rache,” Klaus said.

  Cinnamon and Marie practiced the phrase until they nailed it.

  “Translation please?” Marie asked.

  “Rache is, is…” Klaus sputtered.

  Cinnamon jumped up and grabbed Sekou’s German-English dictionary from the foreign language row. “Spell it, the whole phrase.”

  As Klaus rattled off letters, Marie stretched limbs gone to sleep. She flipped through The Chronicles. “New chapters! We’re behind!”

  “Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.” Cinnamon said. A note was tucked between zücken — flare up and zünden — ignite. “First I read this missive from my ghost brother, then you guys do new chapters out loud. OK?” She refrained from mentioning that she’d read Chronicles 20 and 21 without them.

  Note from Sekou, December 9, 1984

  Sis,

  I love you, kid. You’re the one. Get out there and run something big or write a vast epic or act the hell out of great, juicy roles. Be sure to star in your own life while you’re at it. Do every wonderful thing you do for me too.

  Please look after Opal. Mom’s shields got blasted. Her soul’s leaking out. I know that’s real.

  If you see lover boy, you’ll figure what to tell him. Last couple weeks I been feeling lower than low, which has nothing to do with Lexy or Opal, you, or anybody but me. My man bought me this German-English dictionary yesterday, an early birthday present. What the hell? Lexy used to crack on my collection. Sitting on my bed, getting high on my weed, he was always saying dictionary geeks weren’t sexy. N!$$#& got hot when I looked up words, really hot when I found something unbelievable. I mean he loved this geek.

  (Opal doesn’t want me forcing the n-word on you. Or queer sex. Like you don’t hear that shit everywhere.)

  Geek is an old word. Geeks were worthless fools in 1876. In 1919, geeks were snake charmers and carnival degenerates biting off the heads of chickens. The obsessive student thing started in the 1950s: somebody ranking on people who wanted to know too much. That’s wrong. Ain’t nothing bad about being greedy for knowledge. That’s why you picked up this dictionary. What are you looking up? What are you greedy to know?

  I must be dead. Sorry about that. If I don’t do it soon, the drug will have my soul, and I won’t be able to do it at all.

  Lexy wrapped the dictionary himself, instead of making his moms do it, in little-boy paper with planets, stars, and galaxies on navy blue-black. Lexy loves this SF geek shooting my mind to the stars. Bad analogy. Sorry. Lexy looked for a Chinese dictionary, but couldn’t find one. German’s not Chinese, but a real fucking challenge too.

  Once upon a time, I wanted to learn ten languages by age thirty and fly around the world and talk to everybody. One of those pathetic kid dreams, before you realize that half of everybody hates the other half for no good reason. OK, there are reasons. Whatever. I’m depressed. You’re not. Do your story. Learn German if you want.

  Lexy was so excited yesterday. He bought me a bucket of fried calamari and stashed a quart of black cherry ice cream in the freezer — a chaser for the rubbery sea-bug. I ate the whole bucket myself. Lexy got the jump on everybody and celebrated me all to himself. I’ll be legal in two weeks. Eighteen years, a man, like magic. No more jailbait blues for him. That doesn’t mean we’d be kissing on Fifth Avenue. Maybe we’d stop slinking off behind washing machines. The different cycles were supposed to cover the noise. You were too smart to think we were back there separating the dark from the light. Too cute, prowling around in your comet nightie, twinkling and talking to yourself, then catching us doing the nasty. I wasn’t mad. I was glad you saw us. Relieved. Lexy was scared, hollering scared. Cut him some slack. He’ll be hurting, doing a butch act, fronting the unsentimental macho. You know, crying on the inside, like Opal.

  Lexy calling me a geek… I first saw him escorting a gravid ant queen across the avenue near Carnegie Museum. I walked behind him, helping to divert them to grass. We didn’t acknowledge each other until the dinosaur room. Doing that do you flow that way, do you like me two-step under a T-Rex. He dragged me to the bugs and butterflies talking warp speed, like you do. Drawers of death on a pin, trapped in a vacuum so we humans can appreciate our genius, our superpowers. Lord and Masters of the Earth, we can stick anybody on a pin. Lexy is into bugs, dead or alive. He said studying ants, bees, and butterflies was communion with God. Dr. Bug-Man! He got down on the floor to show me an ant trail and stole my geek heart. An entomologist in the making and this n!$$#& called me a weirdo for being a dictionary demon?

  I’m rambling.

  When you run into Lexy, improvise one of your good stories. Let him know how much he meant to me. I love everybody. I can’t stand myself, almost too fucked-up for words. My mind ain’t right. That’s the scariest thing, losing my soul and my mind. I freaked on Lexy. He tried to drag me to that nursing home. I got there once. But twice? No way. So I went off on him, talking shit I didn’t mean. Lexy’s been making himself scarce since the tirade.

  I’m too sad…

  Griot Joe gave The Chronicles to me the night Kehinde died and Raven got shot in the head. They were stone cold heroes — saving us from a crazy man aiming a gun at love. Kehinde and Taiwo were too beautiful for him. What the fuck? Griot Joe says that ripped some pages from his book, still, he’s writing the whole story down, from Africa, from the nineteenth century at least. Somebody else be holding the twentieth century.

  The past might as well be another planet.

  Joe works the spaces between things. Words magically appear on the page. Memorize what you can so it doesn’t get lost again. I’m counting on you. You’re a Guardian, in charge of tomorrow. Keep your shields up against bullshit torpedoes.

  Love,

  Your Own Brother from Another Planet

  Bathroom Refuge

  The Brother from Another Planet poster was hanging crooked and had faded, or Cinnamon was dizzy sick. “Hold up. Can we take a break?” She staggered down to the narrow bathroom, a second floor afterthought when the outhouse came indoors. She bashed her shoulder on the door. Vessels broke, and a bruise blossomed. She dropped onto the toilet. Hot piss burned coming out. She wiped herself and stood up. Pulling on her underwear, she almost fell over.

  Wishing somebody dead didn’t make her responsible for psycho gunman shooting at Kehinde and Taiwo.

  “Mist!” She washed her hands.

  Marie pounded the door. “What are you doing in there?”

  The potty stopped being a refuge forever ago. Cinnamon broke out in tears.

  “There are so many new pages,” Klaus yelled.

  Cinnamon wanted to burn the damn Chronicles. Nobody needed to know every stupid thing that went down from 1892 ’til now. Marie’s dad was right. Opal too. They should let the past stay in the past. A hundred years was too heavy when you only had fourteen and a half of your own. The door banged open into her thigh.

  Marie stuck her head in. “Are you in here moping about Sekou?”

  That would be righteous. Cinnamon was mostly feeling sorry for herself. “That gunman shot my dad and Kehinde.”

  “Come on, we have you, and you have us.” Klaus tugged her away from the sink. “We’ll read to you. This shall let your mind soar elsewhere.”

  Cinnamon didn’t deserve friends like this. But how could she get rid of them now?

  CHRONICLES 22: Chicago Dreamland

  How could Bob say Chicago was my fault? Kehinde and I were bound to Somso. We loved Melinga; Bob loved her too. Running off to sea with Brother-Taiwo’s child would have poisoned the future. Chicago was nobody’s fault.

  The World Columbian Exposition was a celebration of a New World conquered. Refugees and renegades called on honored ancestors to inspire future greatness. At this grand carnival masquerade, Xavier Pené, a French River Pirate, outwitted Captain Luigi. With French government blessings, Pené imported Fon warriors from Dahomey to Chicago for a primitive spectacle. He set up a village at the end of the mile-lon
g Midway Plaisance, an open-air entertainment museum. Dahomeans cavorted around ugly thatched huts. Plump women, naked to the waist, drank rum, brandished long knives, and danced mock battles with half naked men. Spectators paid a quarter to stroll beyond civilization into the heart of darkness. Curious crowds claimed disgust at heathen carryings-on, but, as in Paris, were enchanted. Pamphlets advertising Pené’s show proclaimed slavery a blessing. American Negroes had been saved from heathen savagery! Bob howled to read this. Luigi wept. He had too many debts, no profits, and a troupe of useless savages eating through the last of his money. He thought to sell his African masquerade to a traveling Wild West Show. Buffalo Bill was set up at the edge of the Fairgrounds. Rumors flew that Bill, Wild Jack, or somebody needed Indians, black cowboys, and even African warriors for another tour of the Old World. Somso was disgusted. She encouraged Bob and Kehinde to take Luigi’s head. I was against this. Luckily, Liam threw his spear with me.

  “This is homecoming,” he said.

  “Tomorrow we ask welcome of Lady Michigan.” I waved at distant water. “Fresh blood from rash deeds might offend this Indian orisha.”

  “You speak wisdom, demon,” Somso said as Bob fussed about cutthroats and desperados.

  “Let’s visit the Fair,” I suggested.

  “Before spilling blood, eh, Bobbie?” Liam said. “You warrior ladies better look smart.” Liam slapped Bob’s back. “You too.”

  Kehinde also appealed to Bob. “Let us write our own story.”

  We donned fine cloth, hung polished metal from our necks, arms, and ankles. Kehinde slung a cooing Melinga on her back. Liam wore a tall hat and a clean waistcoat. Bob relented and put on Yoruba robes. He covered tight red curls and hid pink spots to become Bamidele, a merchant Akewi, storyteller, from Yorubaland.

  The Fair was a spectacle of moving walkways, moving pictures, talking discs. The Krupp Weapons Building had a 248,000 pound gun bigger than a railroad car. Edison stuffed electricity in a bottle — for nightlight. Ferris’s giant Wheel spun 2164 people through the air. As we toured the Fairgrounds, dark-skinned Americans complained about Africans “acting the monkey and bringing the colored man low.”