by Kennedy Ryan
MiMi said we miss most of what’s happening in the world because we can’t see it—that we miss the important things relying only on the evidence of our eyes.
Like when death enters the room.
“I can’t save her,” I tell Aunt Pris. “But there’s one thing I can do for her.”
“What?” Fear twists her ever-pretty face. “Anything. What can you do?”
I take Aunt Pris’s hand, grasping it tightly, and look to my mother dying right in front of me.
“You know who I am,” I say, my voice, in spite of the bold words, shaky. “I’m here to make my judgment known.”
“What are you doing?” Aunt Pris tugs on her hand, but I don’t let go. “I don’t want to be part of no spell. What is this?”
“It’s the power of an unbroken line,” I tell her, keeping my voice calm since her fear is evident. “Two women from our lineage have more power than one.”
She stops pulling her hand away. “And we can save her?”
“No, but I think we can help her along the way.”
“No.” Tears spill over her smooth cheeks. “She can’t . . . you have to . . .”
I slowly shake my head, grip her hand more firmly, and turn back to the bed.
“You know who I am,” I say again. “I’m here to make my judgment known. This woman’s soul hangs in the balance.”
I replay all the things I read to Mama, all the things she never said to me, all the questions I’ll never have answers for. Even if she could answer me, it wouldn’t be enough.
I remember all the pain her actions caused me. I live with the legacy of it still.
I honestly don’t know if I have any influence over this woman’s afterlife. She’s practically a stranger to me. So maybe this is just a show for my aunt to ease her coming grief. Maybe in death, I’m giving May DuPree something she never had in life. Or maybe this is a selfish act, and the words I whisper are not for her in the afterlife, but for me in this one.
“I lay a stone on the side of . . .”
I hesitate over the final word like it really will reverberate in eternity, and then I drop it like a stone in water whose ripples are infinite.
“Peace.”
39
Kenan
I really want to reach my destination before the sun goes down. These backroads and swamps are creepy as fuck. Any minute now, I fully expect Google maps to say, “Really, dude?”
If it fails, I also have the directions Iris sent me. She said the last few miles can get tricky.
“Tricky?” I ask aloud, even though I’m the only one in the rental car. “Feels more like Middle Earth than Louisiana.”
The closer I get to MiMi’s house, or I guess it actually belongs to Iris and Lotus now, the more uncertain I feel. It’s not the backwoods, or the alligators, or the trees that seem animated with arms reaching for me as I drive by. I’m uncertain because I don’t know what state I’ll find Lotus in. No one’s heard from her. The last time we spoke, she was heading to New Orleans to visit her mother in the hospital. I was in China, wishing like hell I was back in the States and could go with her. That was a week ago. The team is still in Shanghai, but the game is over. It’s all goodwill stuff and appearances, so I told them I had a family emergency and needed to return early. It’s still pre-season, so things are looser.
It does feel like an emergency. Iris hasn’t spoken to Lotus in three days, not since she got word that May DuPree passed away. Lotus told Iris she was going home and hasn’t been heard from since. Every call rolls into voicemail, and I’m going out of my mind. This could be a fool’s errand, me coming all the way to the middle of nowhere. What if she isn’t even here?
It’s a chance I’ll take. If she’s hurting, I want to be with her. I would want her with me.
The little house is squat, with a trail of stones leading to the porch, and a blue door. I can’t tell if the yard is overgrown or if it always looks like this—like an extension of the swamp but with no water. Hopefully no gators.
I park, leaving my overnight bag in the car in case I won’t be staying because she’s not here. I knock and wait, but there’s no answer. When I try the knob, it doesn’t turn. There’s no car here, besides the one I’m driving, so I’m not sure how she would have gotten here or would plan to get home. More and more, it feels like I’ve wasted my time.
She’s talked about this place so much. I don’t know what I expected, but I have trouble imagining my vibrant, beautiful girl growing up here, so isolated and removed from everything. But she spoke of it lovingly, even longingly. Maybe it was the woman who lived here who made her love it—the world MiMi made for Lotus that she loved. A world where pink clouds chase the blues away and magic trees make you feel safe. To her, it’s not a swamp, but a wonderland of sorts, exactly what she needed after the hell she went through.
People had nothing to depend on but their faith, whatever form that assumed. That was how they survived.
Lotus said that to me at Sylvia’s when we discussed religion and voodoo. Is that what she found here with MiMi and her gris gris and potions and spells? Maybe Lotus found faith, in whatever form it assumed, so she, too, could survive.
I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.
Her words from our day in Brooklyn come back to me, and I glance at a path worn in the grass leading behind the house.
Worth a try.
I follow the path with no real hope of finding much, but there’s a whole other world I wouldn’t have known existed. A canopy of trees shades the path down to the water. Flowers bloom everywhere, not well-kept, but wild, beautiful. And then I see what must be Lotus’s tree. It’s huge, and I can imagine a little girl thinking she could see the whole world from up there. I search the line of limbs and branches until I catch sight of something bright, something gold.
There’s a rustle of leaves and a shifting of branches. I walk a few feet to the left and have a clear view of Lotus on a limb maybe twenty feet off the ground.
“Lotus!” I yell up at her.
She turns her head, unstartled, and looks right in my face, but there’s no response. Her eyes, even from here, seem vacant, distant, like the girl I know, the one I love and who loves me, has gone into hiding somewhere.
“Baby, come down,” I try again. “It’s too high. I don’t like you up there.”
No answer, but a frown that draws her fine brows together. She shakes her head.
“Dammit, Lotus,” I mutter under my breath and walk to the tree, glancing at my tennis shoes. “Guess we’ll see if these Glads are made for climbing.”
I can’t say I’ve ever actually climbed a tree. I grew up in Philly. I’m a city boy through and through, and never saw the value in climbing anybody’s damn tree, but if I can beat August climbing a rope, I can climb a tree.
There aren’t many limbs between her and me, but there’s a lot of space between each one, and I’m not sure how she made it up here when I’m struggling. I’m one branch below her, close enough to look into her eyes, when she speaks.
“Why are you here?” she whispers.
I’m not sure how to answer that. Obviously I’m here for her, but grief has a way of making things less obvious—make less sense.
“I came for you,” I say simply. “I’ve been worried about you. I’ve been calling you, Lotus. I’ve been . . .” Losing my mind, I finish silently, tightening my fingers on the limb.
“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing, blinking rapidly. “I should have called. My phone died, and I didn’t bother—”
“It’s okay.”
And it is. Face-to-face with her pain, it doesn’t matter that I flew here, drove to some tiny parish in the bayou on the mere hope that she would be here. I’m just glad she is.
“I’m coming up to you.” I reach for the last branch that will take me to her.
“I’m not sure it’ll hold us both,” she says.
I pause, my hand on the branch, my eyes on her.
“Then you could come down,” I suggest.
She looks at me for a long moment before shaking her head, no. “I’m not ready to come down, yet.”
“Then I’m coming to you, and you better hope this tree holds us both.”
Not waiting for permission, I grab the last limb, glad to find it sturdy and steady even when I pull on it, and hoist myself up to the thick limb where she sits. I carefully slide behind her, let my legs fall on either side like she has, and pray to God I won’t die falling from this tree.
I slowly push my back to the bark, find my center for stability, and then put my arms around her. She stiffens at first, resisting, but I tighten my hands at her waist. I let her feel me, hoping I feel as right to her as she always feels to me.
By degrees, her shoulders relax and she sinks into me, until her full, slight weight all belongs to me, leans on me. I pull her closer so her curls tickle my nose and caress my lips. “God, I missed you, Button.”
She turns her head to look at me, and for the first time, she smiles. “I missed you, too.”
Those are the last words we say for a few minutes, but I’ve got my girl back. She’s safe and she’ll be okay. Whatever hell seeing her mother took her to, she’ll come back to me.
And if she doesn’t, I’ll go get her.
“I always felt safe here,” she finally says. “MiMi called this my magic tree. When I was sad, I’d climb this tree and somehow feel better.”
“Then it’s good you came.” I link our hands at her waist and tuck my chin into the curve of her shoulder and neck.
“Mama never woke up,” Lotus says, shaking her head. “I always thought it would be me asking her questions, getting answers that would make the pain go away, but it doesn’t.”
“The pain doesn’t go away?” It’s killing me to hear that because it kills me to see her hurting—to know I can’t make it stop.
“Not all at once, no,” she says softly, but turns to smile at me, her face radiant despite the hurt, the tears lingering in her eyes. “But I’m getting there.”
“And I’ll be right here, baby,” I whisper.
Her fingers tighten on mine and she nods. “I love you, Kenan.”
My throat is on fire. I have no idea what it is about this place, about this woman that turns me inside out, exposes my raw places, but when she tells me that, I could cry. Me, the Gladiator. Known as one of the toughest guys in the NBA, broken down by one tiny woman telling me she loves me
“I love you so much, Lotus.”
“And you’ll always come for me, won’t you?” she asks, a smile in her voice.
“Yes,” I promise. “Always.
“I’ll always come for you, too, Kenan,” she says and then points to the sky. “Look.”
I follow the line of her finger and almost want to thank the sky for its perfect timing.
“Pink cotton candy clouds,” she whispers. “Chasing the blues away.”
40
Lotus
Angel’s wings.
White sheets are pinned to the clothesline, flapping in the wind. MiMi used to call them angel’s wings. I glance around the backyard, opening the door to all the memories the two of us made here.
It rained my first week living with MiMi, and something about the fierceness of the storm, the ominous sky streaked with silver lightning, had called to me. I’d gone to the back porch, not caring when the rain whipped at my clothes and stung my face. The drops had run through my hair, still pressed from the family reunion, until it returned to its original state of waves and crinkles.
“Some people are afraid of the storm,” MiMi had said, walking up beside me.
“I’m not,” I’d said defensively, still resentful of her. Of this boondocks place. Of being separated from Iris. Of being exiled from all that was familiar to a place and with a woman I didn’t know.
“Of course, you aren’t afraid of the storm,” MiMi had said with a smile. “You are the storm.”
I’d had no idea what that meant and frowned at her, not asking the question.
“Lotus.” She had looked from the dark clouds overhead to my face. “We haven’t really talked about Ron.”
My stomach clenched, knotted at his name. Fear rose in my throat and my nostrils had once again filled with the rot of a forgotten sugar cane field.
“I know you said you didn’t want to talk to the police, but—”
“No,” I’d protested hastily, panic gripping me. “Just . . . no, please don’t make me.”
She’d watched me unblinkingly for a moment, her eyes filling with a dark promise.
“No police,” she’d finally agreed. “But there are other ways.”
I hadn’t thought about what that meant, but just felt relief that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone or see Ron again.
“Now your hair’s a mess,” she’d said briskly, her smile and eyes bright again. “Let’s wash it.”
She’d washed it and let it dry on its own. That night, she’d laid the comb on the red, livid eye of the stove.
“No,” I’d said, my voice hushed. “I don’t want my hair pressed.”
She’d looked at me, looked through me, and seen things I hadn’t even known.
“Let’s braid it,” she’d said, sitting on the couch, and pointing to a spot on the floor between her knees. I’d sat down and her fingers, still nimble for a woman her age, worked steadily through my hair for an hour, maybe more. When she was done, she held up a mirror for me to see.
“This is . . .” I’d touched the swirls and patterns she’d created. “It’s pretty.”
“You’re pretty,” she’d said it like she was reminding me. “And now, your hair reflects who you are.”
I’d looked in the mirror again. “What do you mean?”
She’d traced the patterns, telling me what each represented. “This is your courage,” she’d said, touching the pattern on the right. “And this is your kindness.”
She ran her fingers over the whorls in my hair on the left. “And this is your discernment.” She touched the pattern in the back. “The eyes in the back of your head to see what others miss.”
“And what about this one?” I’d asked, touching the pattern on top.
“That, my beautiful girl,” she’d said, smiling, “is your crown. Your pride. Your self-esteem. The glory of knowing who you are, and that it’s enough. No one has to tell a queen to wear her crown.”
Her words, all the things she told me in this backyard, whisper through the oak trees. Her wisdom flaps in the white sheets pinned to the line and blown by the wind.
Angel’s wings.
I washed the sheets so Kenan and I will have something to sleep on tonight. Last night, we ate from the snacks and sandwiches I brought with me. We talked and laughed.
I cried.
Telling him about the hospital and my mama, I cried, and he held me until we fell asleep on the couch. We’ll leave tomorrow, but we have one more night here alone, and I’m determined we’ll sleep in a bed on clean linens. I’m pulling the last of the sheets from the line and into the laundry basket when strong arms scoop me up from behind and whirl me around.
“Kenan!” I screech and laugh. “Put me down right now.”
He keeps one arm around my waist and uses the other to grab a sheet from the basket, tossing it to the ground.
“I just washed that,” I protest, frowning at him over my shoulder.
“Good.” He lays me down on the soft cotton, looking down at me. “I like clean sheets.”
I reach up to trace the bold planes of his face, the sensuous curve of his mouth, the thick feathering of lashes against his hard cheeks.
“You’re magnificent,” I whisper. “I think in another life you ruled a planet. You were the king of your own galaxy.”
“And in this other life,” he says, the laughter fading from his eyes, “were you my queen?”
In this place where I learned about all the things our eyes ignore, the dimensions teeming with life jus
t beyond the evidence of what we see, I could conjure up our existence together before or the one to come, if that’s a thing. I’m not sure what’s true sometimes.
“I’ll be your queen in this one.”
We stare at one another across centuries, across continents, across time and space, and I actually believe that I would have found him anywhere. There is no place, no spot on the continuum of time that could have hidden this man from me.
He smiles, lifting some of the weight from the moment, and coaxes the hem of my dress up past my knees and over my thighs.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my breath snatched when his fingers caress the inside of my thigh.
“Fucking my queen out in the open,” he breathes in my ear. “How often will I get to do that?”
Dirty things on angel’s wings.
I should resist, but who am I kidding? He presses into the cove between my thighs, and our gasps mingle. Even through my panties and his sweatpants, he’s hot, hard. I’m wet. Ready. He lowers his head, his chin nudging aside the neckline of my dress to worship my nipple with his lips. He slides sure fingers into my panties, and I stretch my neck in unmitigated pleasure. I come in seconds. My eyes drift closed and I bite down on my lip, but my whimpers escape into the air. I fill the backyard with the sounds of my ecstasy.
When I open my eyes, he’s watching me. “I never get tired of seeing you like that.”
His kisses start gentle, soft as clouds on my cheeks, drizzled like raindrops over the bridge of my nose. But then our mouths, our bodies collide like two bolts of lightning in the sky.
You are the storm.
He pushes the dress above my waist and I urge the pants down past his ass. He slots his lean hips between my thighs, and slides my panties aside, entering me in one powerful thrust.
“Home,” he rasps.
He’s big. There’s no denying that, and I have to spread my legs wide to accommodate his body. His cock is thick and hard, and even soaked and stretched, that first thrust knocks the wind from me. Then he eases in deeper until he hits that spot only he seems to have ever found inside me, and I moan. I rock into him, answering the rough, quick motions with the roll of my hips, the tightening of my thighs. My most intimate places put a demand on him.