Expired

by Evie Rhodes

  “Why?” Tracie inquired, although she thought she might know the reason.

  Oddly enough, the old woman took Tracie’s hand in hers and said, “Because I’ve been given real sight . . . just as you have.”

  Anita lapsed into her southern twang without even realizing it. “And I ain’t no longer got to rely on false symbols or trickery, Tracie. There ain’t no falseness in the eternal living God; everything about him is real, and so I ain’t got no need of those things anymore.”

  Tracie nodded, thinking about the cards Anita used on the streets of Harlem.

  “I ain’t got no more use of the cards, either,” Anita said. “None of that. What I got myself is a pure sight now, and forgiveness by the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ll see what he gives me to see and I ain’t gone be peering through little glass balls or cards to do so anymore.

  “I found out those things ain’t of him, and they stirs up the wrong spirits, girl. I had a real gift all along, and I ain’t never needed them there things. I just didn’t know it. If the Lord wasn’t merciful, I coulda lost what gift I been given.”

  Me suddenly surfaced in Anita’s mind. She heard him say, “I have come to collect the gifts.”

  Anita shivered.

  So, the pearl was shining through the peeling, Tracie noted. Tracie covered Anita’s hand with her own and smiled. But as she did, Anita drew back as a sense of impending doom swamped her being. When she looked down, she was no longer holding Tracie’s hand but instead she was holding a piece of fabric, a piece of the patchwork quilt, a black patch—and it was alive with movement.

  Anita raised her head.

  Tracie Burlingame was staring at her with eyes that had become as wide as Frisbees. The whites of her eyes glowed pure in their color. Her pupils flashed hazel-green with golden specks. She said not a word.

  But she was gripping Anita’s hand to the point that her nails, which were buffed and manicured but not colored, were slicing into Anita’s flesh.

  Sensing a presence, Tracie looked over at a beautiful French covered chair to see two things. Anita’s black, silky-looking rabbit Pesky was the only rabbit in sight. He had taken refuge under an old wooden desk. The hairs on his back were standing straight up like the hairs of a cat.

  The second thing she noticed was her dead husband, Raymond, sitting in the chair, looking at her. He had a look of such profound longing in his eyes that it knocked the wind out of Tracie.

  Her body became one tight spasm of pain.

  Tracie loosened the grip on Anita’s hand at the sight of him.

  “Raymond?”

  Raymond crossed his legs. He sat back in the chair. He had always been a sharp dresser, and today was no different. He was Saks Fifth Avenue from head to toe. His trousers had a razor sharp crease that matched the grin that he gave Tracie.

  “I’ve missed you, Tracie.”

  Tracie was stunned. She couldn’t believe Raymond was sitting in front of her. She ignored the part of her brain that was trying mightily to yank her back to her senses.

  “Raymond, I . . . I’ve missed you, too.” Tears sprang to Tracie’s eyes but did not fall.

  “Come to me, baby.” Raymond sat forward in the chair. Tracie rose from her seat.

  “No,” Anita said.

  Tracie halted.

  She looked at Anita as though she were in a trance. “Ms. Young, this is my husband, Raymond. He’s my children’s daddy.”

  Tracie’s voice dropped to a pained whisper. “I’m so glad to see him. I’m glad he came to visit. I haven’t seen him in such a long time. You of all people should know this is possible.”

  “It ain’t so, Tracie.” Anita grabbed her arm, but Tracie pulled loose from her grip.

  Raymond stood up. He looked at Tracie endearingly. No more words were needed. He held his arms out to her. Tracie’s heart soared. She took a step toward him.

  Anita was bugging. She was willing Raymond’s presence to leave the room, but she discovered she had no power here to do so. The only person who could do that was Tracie.

  Tracie halted once again.

  She tilted her head. When she did, the shining sheet of black hair fell over her shoulder, creating a cloud of illuminating beauty.

  “Mommy . . .” The voice sounded as though it was far away, as though it were coming through a tunnel. She recognized it instantly as Rashod’s.

  “Fight, Tracie. Fight.”

  Why was Rashod saying that? Where was he? Tracie looked around like a person who had been stranded on a desert island, who was seeking help.

  “Look at him, Mommy. Please, Mommy. Just really look at him,” Rashod said.

  Tracie did.

  She recoiled at once at what she saw. “No . . .” She backed away. There was nothing but the couch behind her. She backed into it with such force that she fell down on the couch, still staring across at what she thought might be Raymond.

  But there was a problem.

  It was a very serious problem. Underneath the savvy Saks Fifth Avenue gear, underneath the slick silk of the suit and the veneer of Raymond’s smile, was something else. And it was a crawling and slithering mass.

  Tracie closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered again. It seemed to be the only word she was capable of speaking, as though the entire English language had been stolen from her vocabulary.

  Tracie’s backing away and refusal to step into Raymond’s arms had set off a collision course of things. And with her reluctance came great pain.

  Raymond’s body was broken up in front of her eyes. He was dismembered piece by piece. Then the pieces of him were strewn across the beauty of Anita’s Persian rug.

  There was no blood; there were only body pieces. He looked the same way he had looked some fifteen years before, lying broken on the concrete of the streets of Harlem.

  Tracie couldn’t bear it. A scream rose from the depths of her throat, but the only thing that left her mouth was silence. Her mouth gaped open, but no sound came out.

  What left Tracie’s mouth instead of sound was a stream of alphabets . . . alphabets that made up words . . . words that made up a single sentence.

  The words rolled out and hung in the air, one passage written in the Ancient Book of Prophesies: IT IS TIME.

  Total silence gripped the room. Even Anita’s worn air conditioner ceased its humming. It was silence of a depth that rarely reached human ears. The summons had been issued. The air in the room shivered with unseen life.

  Me stood in Anita’s foyer like a huge mountain that had appeared out of nowhere, raised out of the bowels of the earth. Tracie lay on Anita’s Persian rug, retching over the pieces of Raymond’s body.

  Someone sneezed.

  “What a mess,” Me said.

  He stuck out his hand. Raymond’s parts were sucked into a funnel, then sucked out through a vent. All that was left was mist.

  “What do you want?” Anita asked, knowing the answer all along.

  “I have come to collect the host . . . and that which is contained within.”

  Anita ran over to Tracie. She knelt next to her, putting a protective arm over her shoulders.

  “No,” she said.

  Me smiled. He advanced slowly into the living room. He glared at Anita. Her body rose in the air. It slammed against the wall like a rag doll. Then Me shook her while she hung in the air, suspended as though from unseen ropes.

  Blood flew out of her mouth. The old woman gagged.

  Tracie was having a hard time gathering herself, but the sound of Anita’s body rattling in the air, the sight of blood streaming from her mouth, commanded her attention.

  Slowly she glanced up at Me. She rose to her feet. She looked at the old woman being shaken and rattled so hard that her teeth were clattering.

  Tracie dug deep.

  She stretched forth her arm and slowly moved it downward. As she did so, Anita descended toward the floor. Tracie extended her hand in front of her. Slowly she turned her hand palm up. The blood stopped streaming from Anit
a’s mouth; she ceased shaking. She landed on her feet softly on the carpet.

  “Leave her,” Tracie said to the bald mountain.

  Anita wiped the bloodied spittle from her mouth with a silk handkerchief she took from her dress pocket. Me stared at Tracie in stunned disbelief.

  He was under the impression that he had come simply to take what was needed from the street diva. He had known that Tracie was a fighter. He had observed her on the roof with Lonzo.

  However, he had thought that was only in the physical realm. He had not known that she possessed spiritual capabilities as well. That information had been hidden from him.

  He decided just to disarm her quickly. He would get it over with. He would not play with her. All he needed was one thing: that should be a simple matter. That was all it would take to alter the future.

  So Me looked into Tracie’s eyes with the intention of stripping her. He peered through her and reached in to get what he wanted.

  Tracie matched his look. A simmering glow climbed from the irises of her eyes, blocking Me from seeing anything but the physicality of her.

  An echo sounded in the room, like the collective wailing from some African ritual. It rose in volume. Anita crossed herself.

  Me was pissed. He exhaled. The windows in the room blew out with the force of an explosion. And then a gentle calm swept through the air.

  Tracie stood her ground until the soothing touch of motherhood smoothed a hand through her hair. She turned, noticing as she looked down, that she was standing on rose petals.

  “Tracie,” her mother said as she planted a warm kiss on Tracie’s forehead. She took Tracie’s hand in hers.

  “Mommy.”

  “Aw, Tracie, it’s been a long time.”

  Her mother took a long look at her, as though she wanted the memory of Tracie to remain her possession forever.

  “Sit down.” She pulled Tracie down next to her on the sofa. “Tracie, why didn’t you listen to me long ago?”

  Tracie tried to run from the memory, but there was no escaping it. She could almost feel the chastity belt cutting into her flesh even now.

  Her mother had come from an old, old school of thought. When so many of the teenage girls in Harlem were turning up pregnant, Tracie’s mother had gone away for a short time and had returned with the dreaded belt. The belt that would protect her daughter’s virtue—or so she thought. Tracie had caused her a lot of pain.

  Tracie Burlingame had been a beautiful, vain, and arrogant young girl with the spirited actions of a newborn calf. Sandra Gaines regretted the day she had been born. She had known that a barren womb, for a black woman, was a blessing in disguise. But she had not been blessed with such. Tracie was her cross to bear.

  However, there was nothing that said she couldn’t intervene and ensure that Tracie didn’t birth what could be nothing more than seeds of pain and hardship.

  Tracie had rebelled. She hated the projects. She secretly hated her mother and all that she stood for. More than that, she hated the chastity belt—with a passion. She decided she would have none of it.

  She wanted to love and be free.

  With Raymond’s help she had gotten rid of the belt. She had obtained her freedom and married him, without ever looking back at her mother and her timeworn beliefs. And the babies had come freely and abundantly, one right after the other.

  After the birth of Rashod, Tracie had secretly gone to visit her mother, thinking that this sweet bundle of a bouncing baby boy would soften her heart. That she would realize that she was wrong. She didn’t. Her actions had left Tracie harboring a secret that had never been revealed until this moment, when her mother appeared in Anita Lily Mae Young’s apartment.

  Sandra Gaines had taken one look at the glowing, fat cherub of a baby that Rashod Burlingame was, one spirited look into his eyes. Her eyes had met Tracie’s with a fear that Tracie had long ago buried deep inside herself.

  “He is a sacrifice,” she had said to Tracie. “What have you done?” And with that, she had been stricken. She dropped dead of a major stroke at Tracie’s feet.

  Now she glanced into Tracie’s eyes. “Why did you kill me, Tracie?”

  “I didn’t.” Tracie wrenched her hand away in horror as all the horrible old feelings of guilt began to invade her being.

  She had always felt that in some way she was responsible for Sandra’s death, just as surely as if she had put a gun to her mother’s head and pulled the trigger point-blank.

  With the little bit of money her mother had left her, Tracie had tried building a legacy to her through her salons. But even that gesture, a legacy to a poor black woman who died in the projects, hadn’t absolved her. It had only made her more driven.

  And it hadn’t stopped the constant nightmares that woke her up in the middle of the night, sweating. She would see a vast ocean of water. Sandra was trying to swim to shore, but Tracie would grab her ankles from underneath the water, pulling her under and drowning her in the process.

  It was the same old dream, all the time. That was until she began to receive the one about the black babies falling through the atmosphere. That dream had taken precedence and erased the nightmare that was Sandra.

  Now Sandra peered at her and asked her again, “Why did you kill me, Tracie?”

  Tracie began to sob. “I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean it.” Tracie collapsed in tears. Sandra took her in her arms.

  “Just give him what he wants, Tracie. It’s the only way. You never should have carried the eggs anyway. I warned you, but you didn’t listen. Now look what you’ve done. You’ve stepped on the wrong toes. If you’d never been a carrier, if only you’d never produced these babies or allowed your womb to be fertilized, this never would have happened.”

  Sandra paused, holding Tracie at arm’s length so she could look into her eyes. “If you’d never opened your legs in the first place, heifer, this wouldn’t have happened.” She whipped back her hand with the speed of light. She slapped Tracie Burlingame soundly across the face. The sharpness of the slap crackled through the air like a gunshot.

  Anita lunged toward Sandra Gaines, trying to protect Tracie. Sandra gave her a read-the-hand motion that stopped her dead in her tracks. She had no feeling in her legs; she was paralyzed in her spot.

  The slap had awakened Tracie as though from a long slumber. She saw the many black babies sailing through the atmosphere. And suddenly she knew it was her job to protect them. That was why she was here.

  The future of that generation was in her hands. Sitting before her was nothing more than a mirage of evil. A mirage of evil that had put its hand on her, even long ago.

  Tracie rose up from her place on the couch. She stormed over to stand in front of Me. When she reached him, she turned her back on him.

  “Oh, God,” Rashod shouted out involuntarily. He was scared. His mother had turned her back on the demon.

  But Tracie was not afraid. She hit the reservoir and came up with strength. “It’s time you left, Sandra.”

  The whites of Tracie’s eyes shone as she spoke the final words, “In the name of the Almighty Savior Jesus Christ, be gone!”

  Sandra turned to ash.

  Tracie saw her hourglass sitting in the destroyed window. She wondered how it had gotten there. When she saw the ash being swept into the hourglass, and it turned upside down as the ashes slowly sifted through, Tracie knew it would be a time for new beginnings.

  And Anita knew that Tracie Burlingame had come into her own.

  Tracie looked at Anita. Life returned to her paralyzed legs. Anita smiled.

  Yes, Tracie Burlingame was a princess—a black princess warrior.

  She had been chosen long ago.

  53

  Tracie turned her attention to Me. She was standing so close to him that she could feel the rumblings of the spirits he held inside him. She also saw something else.

  The spirit of her son, Rashod, was hovering in back of Me.

  So that was
where her son’s voice had been coming from. He had her son. Rashod put a finger to his lips to warn Tracie not to tip off the bald demon mountain to what she was seeing, but she knew better anyway.

  Tracie blinked.

  Me’s innards opened up to her like petals on a flower. Tracie could not stifle the gasp that rose up and tumbled out of her mouth. In him were housed many spirits. Some of them were famous legends that were hanging in portraits on Anita’s very walls—some old, some young, some in between, but they were all there. And now Tracie knew what had happened to the fifty slain boys in Harlem. Then Tracie saw a face she recognized. It was Ms. Virginia.

  “Oh, my God,” Tracie echoed Rashod’s earlier words. She looked at Me.

  Me was disturbed because he could not get access to her thoughts. It was as though he was experiencing a power failure. The generator was not kicking it. Me looked into Tracie Burlingame’s eyes. For the first time, he felt real fear.

  There was something behind the surface, and it was strong. It wasn’t vulnerable. Vulnerability was what he had plied his trade on over the centuries.

  He poked and probed, but he could find no weakness in her. Tracie decided to take another look. Something was disturbing her, something she needed to see but had missed. Looking again, she saw them. The murdered boys—their spirits were being housed in a secluded section.

  They were scared and confused.

  When they saw Tracie looking, they stretched out their arms to her in unison; they spoke in one voice: “Release Us!”

  Tracie shook her head at the impact of what she had seen. She turned to Me and said, “There is forgiveness in the holiness of the imperial blood. The gifts will be restored. The future generation will learn how to use them to glorify the Almighty.”

  Me stared at her. “I have come to collect the gifts.”

  Tracie stared right back. “So you have. And I have come so they might be reclaimed by the one to whom they really belong.”

  Tracie thought for a minute. “Me, isn’t it?”

  Me took a step back. How had she known his name?

  Tracie didn’t keep him in suspense. “I know all about you, Me. You’ve been . . . shall we say . . . jacked, haven’t you? Jacked, played, and used by your master. I know there’s someone else, cuz you don’t have what it takes.”