“A hoodoo gal what can conjure herself here and there got an unfair edge,” he said.
“You a conjure man, ain’t you? Tracking haints, catching demons in bottles, talking to the ancestors, and I done heard you sing, so you can’t lie.”
In his wild youth, Aidan had pleasured many a woman, even loved a few. He usually got as good as he gave. He’d only really been ’fraid the first time. Even then he forgot fear quickly, or perhaps named fear passion. This night in a bedroom fit for a king, in a noisy, smelly city on the other side of the world from his home, with a woman that was swamp fire, a queen of Dahomey, a hoodoo wonder dancing with lions and bears, all his backcountry passion terrified him. He had never loved anyone this much.
“I ain’t goin’ stand still and make it easy for you,” she said.
“So get going.” On the move she’d be easier to find, but he wasn’t telling her that.
Tracking her breath, her warmth, her sweet scent, he headed toward the sound of bare feet on the carpet. He slipped his hands around her belly. She was tense as a banjo string. Her heart pounded as if she’d been running.
“You smell of railroads and motorcars.” She shied away from him, but not too far. “Making me itch.”
He wiggled out of his scratchy shirt and pants, and she came close again. The cool touch of her skin made him ache and burn, as did the softness of her tiddies, pressing against his chest with each breath. His leg slipped between her thighs. Her hair was soft as peach fuzz, the skin buttery, and as she moved/danced slowly against him, his manhood swelled against her hips. She was suddenly still, breathless.
“Are we going too fast?” he said. “Six years between us, and —”
“I don’t know how long I been wanting you and so ’fraid you didn’t want me.”
“I been loving you since probably before I should have.”
She grunted at this confession. “Given the male appetite,” she sounded like Clarissa, “you’ve shown great restraint.” She flinched. Her words hung in the air.
He touched a soft cloth on her shoulder and another at her waist. “What’s this?”
“Bandages. That she-lion got a tongue like sandpaper. She licked a bit of my shoulder off and clawed my ribs.” Her voice cracked. “She-cat didn’t mean no harm, dying and couldn’t help herself.”
“You must have been a great comfort to her in the end.”
She took a step back.
“Where you going? Don’t…”
His daddy told him, a woman who wants you isn’t waiting for you to fall down and fail. She wants to make the world new again, with you. It’s nothing you can know ’til you do it together. Standing in the dark, the house shifting and sighing ’round them, he didn’t know what Redwood wanted.
A wild-eyed black stallion galloped down the empty night street, pausing at Redwood’s window to rear and neigh. Aidan worried it was a haint ’bout to bust in the room, ’til a man grabbed the loose reigns. Redwood took a ragged breath. She was lost somewhere and standing right next to him.
“What’s wrong?” He stepped close.
She grunted at his foolish question. He didn’t need an answer. Jerome was riding her in the dirt, breaking a hole in her heart. She wanted to conjure herself far from that.
“Don’t go,” he whispered, “don’t go where I can’t follow.” He kissed her neck, and she trembled like before.
“You remember the World’s Fair?” she said.
“How could I forget? They tamed lightning into E-LEC-TRI-CITY. We danced to the music of Cairo Street — or you did, shimmy-shaking like a snake charmer, then we looked out on the whole world from atop the Ferris Wheel.”
“We had us a time, didn’t we? From the swamp to the White City.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Bugs tried to eat you alive.”
“Wasn’t so bad. You read me the story of Okefenokee.”
“Walking down the Midway Plaisance, you was as pretty as them royal ladies from Abyssinia.”
“Dahomey. You said they were regular folks, like us.” Redwood’s storm hand was against his chest. “Sometimes, I don’t believe we were really at the Fair.”
“I got proof.” He kissed the cleft of her collarbone. “We can do that together again.”
“What?” She lifted his face to hers.
“Dream up what we want to do with ourselves and believe in it.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was a trickle of water in a streambed going dry. “I just don’t know anymore.”
“We can make that all-colored romance, with you the leading lady,” he said. “Sounds grand.”
“Ain’t it close to first fruits? Who we got to forgive? When can we light the sacred fire anew?”
“Don’t.” His voice shook. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not.” Her fingertips traced the blood flowing from his heart, down ’cross his stomach, to his groin. She wiggled her fingers through curly hair and soft skin, holding the weighty stones of his manhood, and then she kissed him. He was startled by her boldness and fell back on to the bed with her landing on top of him. The bed rocked and swayed with the weight of them.
“I know a thing or two,” she said. “Sang in a bordello and learned all sorts of tunes.”
“I guess you did.”
He reached down and kissed her mouth, his tongue tangling up her next words, his hands searching ’cross her skin, following blood and shivers to the source of pleasure, but when he found his way inside her, she was vanishing again.
How did they hold onto each other and trust when the going got rough?
He stopped abruptly. “You still with me?”
“I wish.” She mumbled something he couldn’t hear, close as he was.
He wanted light. He wanted to see her face. “Is it me? Something I’m doing?”
“No. I thought, I hoped for…”
“What?” He slid out of her.
“You goin’ run away from me now?”
He smacked the wall with the palm of his hand. “What you say?”
She flinched away from him. He pressed his forehead into the headboard ’stead of cussing out loud. It took a whole lot of breathing to pull the desire back. Hot and feverish, he bumped into her ice-cold foot. She was trembling.
“The bed ain’t big enough for us to be so far apart,” he said. “I’m your friend, remember, since that day you caught the storm.”
Hearing that didn’t seem to help. She curled up in the pillows and moaned. Aidan sucked air in and out ’til he had enough to hum the melody he sang earlier. Calmer, he kissed her shoulder, then gathered her in his arms and rocked her.
“I’m no baby like Iris.”
“I know. A grown woman need tender too.”
He sang to her, wondering if she might cry again or what, but she didn’t do anything. She was so quiet and still, he just ’bout couldn’t stand it. Then, when his throat went dry and his voice was ready to give out, she added a harmony. Singing, they drifted into sleep.
Banging on the door startled Aidan awake. He looked into Redwood’s sleepy eyes as in strode Clarissa without a by your leave. She wore a knee-length skirt over loose pantaloons and no corset under a colorful jacket — bicycle clothes.
“Mr. Wildfire…I…uh…Well now.” Clarissa swallowed shock as Aidan clutched the blanket to his neck. She’d only expected to find Redwood.
“A woman needs your help, baby won’t come.” Clarissa said. “I’ve arranged an automobile from Mr. Wildfire’s Persian friends.”
On a raggedy bed in a tenement in Chicago’s Black Belt, George’s other woman, June, sweated and groaned, her stringy yellow hair a knotted mess. She clutched a mojo pouch of good luck charms that Redwood had given her: nine strands of Devil’s Shoestring and a lodestone from a lightning strike. Clarissa and Abbaseh, the Persian woman Aidan said was a musician, stood at the head of the bed, holding June’s arms, breathing with her. Redwood was crouched between her legs. The room was smaller than it looked fro
m on the railing. The ceiling was low; the dirty walls leaned in too close. June’s three children, two boys and a gal, watched anxiously but quietly from a doorway. Iris hovered over them, stroking the youngest gal who was ’bout to break out in tears. She looked at Redwood with naked hope.
Redwood hung her head. June’s baby didn’t want to come. Redwood couldn’t argue with that tonight. Why be born to lies and misery? You could be beloved by the spirit in everything; you could pull pain, snatch lightning out the sky, ride comets through the night, even hear the ancestors telling their stories to the wind, and still, it wouldn’t be enough to save you. With all her hoodoo power, could Garnett Phipps really change anything, make anything better? Acting, singing her heart out, healing folks, Redwood had been running. Running won’t set you free. What about her soul?
Aidan Cooper had walked back into her life with Baby Sister, both of them grinning at who she used to be. Lying in bed, Aidan hugged and squeezed a memory; he kissed the gal who rode the Ferris Wheel, had fireworks in her eyes, and conjured a bright destiny. Redwood wasn’t that gal anymore. She’d snapped a man’s neck and turned into a haint. She didn’t dare feel herself, didn’t dare feel Aidan. Running won’t set you free. On the loose and-a acting brave, in shackles you just don’t see.
“Don’t worry,” Clarissa said to June. “Redwood Phipps is a powerful midwife. She knows just what to do.”
“Well…” Redwood had too much on her mind to be bringing a new life into the world. And this baby was turned the wrong direction, kicking with fat feet against being born to misery. Redwood wiped at sweat dripping into her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe you should get a doctor. Dr. Harris —”
“Naw,” June said. “Doctor kill my last baby. I ain’t having him kill another one.”
“Dr. Harris is not a murderer. Don’t talk like that,” Clarissa said.
“Ain’t his fault. Somebody jinx me.”
Redwood glanced at Clarissa and then back to June’s frightened eyes.
“I found cross marks, wavy snake lines of salt and red pepper, hemp rope, and sulfur, buried at the bottom of my steps. I don’t know how long me and everybody who come here been walking over that mess.”
The struggling baby kicked Redwood’s searching fingers, and June groaned at a painful contraction. By the time Dr. Harris got here, this child would be dead, maybe June too. Redwood had to clear her mind and focus, like for a show with a difficult audience, or else — “From what I feel, this baby’s coming in by the foot. That ain’t no jinx. It just happens.” She cracked an egg into a glass half-full of water, careful to keep the yolk intact. She dropped a needle in it. “We need you on your hands and knees.”
“You doing a good spell for me?” June said.
“What you holding in your hand?” June waved the mojo charm at her. “See what I’m putting under the bed? If someone want to do you wrong, this’ll take away their anger.” Redwood set the glass along with Aidan’s Maskókî hunting knife under June’s belly. “Can’t pull the pain, you got to feel what you’re doing, but cutting through it. Ain’t no evil spirits goin’ touch your child.”
“They say you a witch, but sometimes that’s what a good woman need,” June said.
“I guess so.” While Redwood washed her hands in hot soapy water, Clarissa and Abbaseh wrangled June into the new position.
“What y’all doing? I ain’t a cow dropping my calf in the barn.”
“Ain’t nobody thinking that,” Redwood said. “Better for the baby.”
“Robert if it’s a boy. Violet if it’s a girl,” June said. “Oh sweet Jesus. I gotta push.”
“Then go on. You feel wide open,” Redwood said.
June’s water broke and the baby’s toes appeared. After twenty hours of hard labor, the baby’s legs and buttocks came so easily. “I’m pushing,” June said.
“Yes you are.” Redwood supported the baby’s bottom as she spiraled out of her mama.
“It’s a girl,” Clarissa said. “God has blessed you with a baby girl.”
“That’s my Violet coming,” June shouted.
Redwood let Violet find her way, gently untangling her arms and guiding them out before her head. With a final push from June, Violet’s wrinkled face emerged. June turned over and sank into the bed. Redwood held up the newborn, and June cried a gush of tears and snot. Violet’s sister and brothers cheered and then hugged each other. Iris beamed at them. Clarissa cut the umbilical cord, and with a final contraction the afterbirth came. Redwood tapped the baby’s back. Nothing happened.
Abbaseh spoke in Farsi. “This baby is not breathing.”
Redwood cleared the gal’s mouth, listened to her heart.
“What you saying?” June gripped Abbaseh. “Is my Violet dead?” She grabbed Clarissa. “What she say?”
With a breech birth, a baby could get tangled in the cord and suffocate. A woman labored a child into the world only to bury it. Redwood had seen this happen too many times. She didn’t have the heart to say this to June.
“I don’t want my baby to die,” June shouted. “Don’t let my Violet die. You said no evil spirits could touch her. Didn’t she say that?”
Redwood squirmed. Subie always told her, don’t ever say you can do what you can’t.
“Who want to cross a little baby like that?” June repeated this over and over as Clarissa and Abbaseh held on to her.
Wrinkled little Violet looked so peaceful, so beautiful. Why mess in that? Why —
“Violet ain’t gone yet,” Iris said. “She just not quite here. You gotta call her.”
“Call her?” Redwood sputtered. How was she supposed to do that? “Well, Mama say, blow breath into ’em if they don’t wanna take it themselves.”
“Do it then! Blow! Do something!” Everybody jumped at Clarissa’s harsh tone. “You can’t let bad spirits have this child.”
Abbaseh nodded. The children stood silently in the doorway. Iris had her arms ’round the little one. Through the window Redwood spied the boneyard baron, ambling down the street, tapping a diamond-tipped cane on cobblestone.
“You gotta hurry,” Iris said. She saw the baron too.
June cried and thrashed. “Please.”
You can act, can’t you? Subie’s voice made the baron waver. Act like you believe what you’re doing and you will.
Redwood blew in Violet’s mouth several times. “Violet, if you swinging between life and death, trying to make up your mind, this place be ready for you. This place is your home. This place got good people who been waiting on you, who love you, your mama, your sister, your brothers, all of us, and that sure do make life beautiful. Don’t go on your way ’til you know love.” Redwood’s throat clenched. She’d been talking to herself as much as to Violet. She blew again.
A distraught June slapped Clarissa in the mouth trying to struggle out the bed. Abbaseh managed to hold both of June’s arms while Clarissa stumbled away from her. Redwood was ready to blow one more time, but Violet opened her eyes and gurgled.
“She’s alive,” Clarissa said.
Violet’s powerful voice filled the room.
“What I tell you?” Iris said.
Trembling, Redwood placed Violet on her mama’s belly.
Chattering away, Clarissa, Iris, and Abbaseh raced down the steps into the alley outside June’s place. Redwood was moving slow. She paused in the doorway, feeling heavy, exposed, all inside out. The boneyard baron pushed an empty swing on the porch. It banged her hip and went still. “No one for you to claim this time.”
Clarissa came back for her. “What a pretty speech you used to call Violet. Poetry. What do you mean, you’ve lost your good magic?”
Redwood grabbed Clarissa’s arm. “What you do against June?” Clarissa squirmed but Redwood wouldn’t let her go. “Tell me.”
“I asked you for a charm to hold George. You wouldn’t give me one,” Clarissa said.
“I won’t help you cross nobody.”
“Mambo Dupree said it was jus
t to keep George in my bed instead of June’s.”
“That woman ought to be shamed of herself. Shame on you too.”
“I know it’s not Christian, and I would never, never buy a charm to hurt that woman or her baby, but I was desperate.”
Redwood sighed. “Violet coming that way wasn’t your fault.”
“Really?” Clarissa sniffled. “It could have been.”
“You have to talk to George. Work this out. You can’t conjure nobody into loving you the way you want.”
“Is that so? Mr. Wildfire was in your bed the first night.”
Redwood’s face stung. Clarissa might as well have slapped her.
“Oh my goodness.” Clarissa covered her mouth. “He didn’t change anything for you, did he? You still can’t —” She waved her hand.
“You should have knocked.” Redwood stormed away.
“I did, but, I’m sorry. I…don’t know how to be anymore.”
They hurried to catch up with Iris and Abbaseh who were already in the motorcar.
“Why you carting colored folk ’round?” Iris said as Mr. McGregor opened the door for Clarissa.
“No one else would hire me. I have a dark past,” he replied.
Iris looked enchanted. “Will you tell me ’bout it sometime?”
“You certainly shall not, Mr. McGregor.” Clarissa put on a face for everybody’s questioning eyes. “You must thank your husband for loaning us his automobile in the middle of the night,” she said to Abbaseh, who smiled in reply.
“Is the wee one all right then?” Mr. McGregor asked.
“Why yes, she is,” Clarissa stepped inside. “My sister-in-law is the best midwife I have ever seen.”
Redwood fell to her knees. She shoved her fingers in the gravel. A sudden wind blew dirt through her hair as she clawed the ground and split her skin on stone. Stunned, Mr. McGregor offered her a hand, but she smacked him away. Iris squealed. Abbaseh jumped up, speaking Farsi too fast for sense. Redwood rubbed dirt against her chest. She couldn’t stop herself — felt like a demon had taken her over.
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