Ramadan Ramsey

by Louis Edwards

  No—there was only one person he could think of who would understand the wild adventure he was envisioning. Only one person he knew who believed he had both the imagination and the power to do whatever he wanted to do. Only one adult who would encourage him and maybe help him go through with it.

  Just after six thirty that evening, he tucked his packed suitcase under his bed and left the house. Standing on the porch, he paused. He hadn’t been out here since returning home from the hospital. Looking down at the place where two weeks before he had lain injured, unaware of having been betrayed, he took a deep breath. Then he tiptoed down the right edge of the first steps avoiding the illusory outline of his own crumpled form. But then, thinking better of this careful descent, which struck him as cowardly, he decided to skip the three lowest steps altogether and leaped to the ground. The landing jolted him a bit, but being airborne had felt like a little prelude to tomorrow—flight. He gathered his footing and jogged into the French Quarter.

  At the St. Ann Street corner of Jackson Square, spent from eight blocks of running, he leaned against a lamppost in the shade of the Presbytère building, letting his pulse settle. The cathedral bells intoned the three-quarter hour, and his body relaxed into that moment’s dual feeling of calm and anticipation, his ambitions synchronizing with the most sacred sounds of the city.

  When he stepped into the square, Miss Bea’s back was to him. Her day’s work was coming to an end, and he watched her through the shadowy movements of the passersby as she gathered her things—a block of amethyst, two small votive candles, and her cards. She placed these items in a black canvas tote bag, whose side was adorned with a golden winged lion holding a book, and the word Venezia. When she picked the bag up and placed it in her chair to finish her load-out, Ramadan recognized the building depicted on the other side of the tote. Even if Roma hadn’t been printed below it, he would have known it was the Colosseum. Seeing her bag emblazoned as it was with the markings of travel made him think she might be more sympathetic to his cause than he’d dare hope. Encouraged, he walked toward her, dodging a hand-holding, middle-aged couple in matching Alabama Crimson Tide football gear, tipsy with a tourism to which he aspired.

  Still not facing him, Miss Bea was about to remove the cloth draping her little folding table, when she suddenly stopped moving. Maybe it was the breeze rustling the banana leaves that alerted her. Or maybe some inexplicably keener sense of smell, or hearing, or knowing. Are there logical explanations for mysticism? Is all magic—like the perplexity of life itself—just a science the world has yet to decode? Whatever the mechanism of her divination, the fortune-teller was compelled to stop what she was doing and then, after a pause, stand up straight, her spine stiffening as Ramadan got nearer. He was only a few feet from her when, with a flourish, she whirled around.

  “I’ve been waiting for you!” she said. “I knew you’d come back to me.”

  She removed the bag from her chair, sat down, and waved him over with both hands. Ramadan had not known what he would say to her, but Miss Bea’s greeting him this way relaxed him. He rushed to the table and sat down. “You knew?”

  Her smile melted and her eyes went moist, as if she’d been spritzed like an orchid. “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Oh, it’s—” He stopped and gave her a quizzical look. “How’d you . . . ?”

  She reached into her tote bag, pulled out the front-page coverage of his shooting, and placed it on the table. 12-YEAR-OLD SHOT AT PARADE, the headline reported. “You’re the only Ramadan I know,” she said.

  Touching the newspaper with her finger, she said, “This thing tells the past. I tell the future. Not to judge—we all have a job to do.”

  “I wasn’t twelve yet,” he corrected the headline, rubbing his shoulder even though it wasn’t hurting him. “But now I am.” After a pause, he said, “Mama Joon is gone.”

  “Yes, well . . . not really,” Miss Bea said. “I bet you hear her voice all the time.”

  Remembering sitting with her in his closet last night, he smiled.

  “See!” Miss Bea said. “Just as I suspected.”

  He pulled out his phone and looked at the background image, the photo he had taken of them in the cathedral. “So I’ll always have her with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I believe you. But the problem is, I don’t think she can help me now.”

  Miss Bea said, “Help? You need help?”

  He looked away but immediately felt the fortune-teller’s hand on his chin guiding his face back to her. She leaned in, and Ramadan blinked from the pressure of her stare. Then she released him and leaned back in her chair. “So—this is all about what happened to you, isn’t it?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Yeah. But I—” He couldn’t tell her what he knew about his shooting any more than he could tell the cops. He’d have to implicate his family. His telling wouldn’t be as dishonorable as what they’d done to him—and were still planning to do—but he didn’t like the way even thinking about tattling made him feel. Then he looked back at the big middle steeple of the cathedral, and he felt certain there was no future in that either. He scrunched his face. For a few agonized seconds, he considered Miss Bea’s powers and, turning back to her, he asked, “Can’t you guess, Miss Bea?”

  She looked at the newspaper headline haunting her table, then into his eyes, and she spoke his truth, as, for a seasoned soothsayer, reading this twelve-year-old’s mind was simply child’s play.

  “You’re afraid it’s going to happen again.”

  “Yes!” he yelled. “Yes!” Miss Bea was now a prophet—it wouldn’t have surprised him if she had proceeded to call Romeo and Julius by their names. Maybe it was his youth that left him so vulnerable to her charms, or maybe just desperation.

  She sighed, basking in the fruits of her grand empathy. He needn’t know her secrets. The real trick of her trade. He hadn’t yet learned—most never do—that if you care enough about people, you can read the human heart.

  “It is going to happen again,” he said. “Unless . . .”

  She sighed and leaned toward him again. “What kind of help do you need?”

  “I have to get away. It’s dangerous here.”

  “It’s dangerous everywhere, Ramadan—but you already know that.”

  “Yes. But when you know a storm is coming, you have to evacuate.”

  Miss Bea raised her hands up and said, “Preach!”

  Ramadan picked up his phone and showed his itinerary to Miss Bea, explaining what he needed her to do. When he was finished, she looked at him and said, “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s so easy. Anyone could do it, really. Just . . . leave.” Her tone had turned wistful. Was Miss Bea, he wondered, filled with some longing of her own? Was, as she had just implied, everyone?

  He asked, “Do you—do you want to come with me?”

  “Oh, no! My traveling days are over. Besides, who would feed my cats? No, I have to stay here. That way, you’ll know you have someone waiting for you when you come back home.”

  “Miss Bea, will I come back home?”

  “You know, Ramadan, I’m not so sure we ever really leave.”

  * * *

  Dear Aunt Clarissa,

  I know everything.

  I’m not afraid but I’m going away for a while. Far away. Please bring in the mail. If you see a letter from school, open it. If I miss the beginning of school, make up an excuse for me. Tell them I’m still recovering. Something like that. That really is the truth. If they call, cover up for me. Cry to make sure they believe you. You know how to do that. If Mr. Willie asks about me, tell him I am ok. Lie. You know how to do that too.

  I think my phone will work. Mama Joon always knew I would travel. She took care of everything. Almost. But don’t call me. When I get back, you and me I will talk.

  Now I have something to tell you. Something I never told you
. Something I never told anybody. Not even Mama Joon. She knew. But not like this. I still remember the day you told me about my daddy. Remember that? The day before the storm. That was a big day for me. I’m sorry about the way I acted when you told me. I threw a big fit. Remember? I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at the world. Mad at not knowing who my daddy was. Who he is. But I was happy at the same time because all of sudden it was like I knew he was real. I guess I knew he was before then, but crazy as it seems, I didn’t really know. It’s hard to explain. I mean, do you know your daddy? Anyway, half of me was kind of dead before that day. Dead as whoever shot me wanted me to be. But when you told me about my daddy, the dead part of me woke up. To tell you the truth, I don’t have too many memories before that day. That’s why I had a fit. I was like a newborn baby. You know how they come out crying. Mad at the world because it’s strange. But happy to be out of the dark. That was me that day.

  Nobody had ever told me about my daddy. But you did. You. And I never thanked you for that. So THANK YOU! Thank you for making me feel alive!

  Love,

  Ramadan

  He was folding the note and writing Clarissa’s name on the outside when it occurred to him he had something important to ask her. He unfolded the note and wrote:

  P.S. When you get this, text me my daddy’s name. Just that. If you don’t know it, then don’t send me anything.

  * * *

  IT WAS ALMOST five a.m. when Ramadan turned off the porch light and crept out of his front door. He was clutching his suitcase and strapped with his backpack, which was filled with a few toiletries, an extra T-shirt, and the letter from Aleppo. He tiptoed to Clarissa’s side of the house and placed the note in her mailbox. To avoid the risk of waking anyone up, he had told Miss Bea to pick him up a block and a half away, at the corner of St. Philip and Rampart. He could see the intersection from the porch, and when he spotted the old red Volvo station wagon she had described coast by and veer to the right, he jumped off the porch and ran down the street. He almost turned to look back at the house, just in case he never made it home, but he decided what was in front of him was more captivating.

  “Good morning, Ramadan!” Miss Bea said as he scooted into the front seat. “You got everything?”

  “I think so.” He didn’t bother to remove his backpack, and he slid his suitcase onto his lap.

  She was about to tell him he could put his gear on the backseat, but she could see having his belongings in his possession was giving him a sense of security. “Okay, here we go,” she said, pulling off.

  They rode along the quiet streets listening to National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Miss Bea shook her head and sucked her teeth, as the show offered updates on the big news story of the day, the Syrian Civil War, detailing casualties and the mounting chaos in Damascus. Thinking Ramadan, still so close to his own episode, would be agitated by hearing about violence and bloodshed, she reached for the dial. “Maybe some music would be better.”

  “No!” Ramadan yelled. “It’s about my people.”

  “Your people?”

  “My father is from there.”

  “From Syria?”

  “Yes.”

  They looped onto the interstate, cruising to the airport. Her eyes darted from the road to Ramadan, sneaking glances at him listening to the stories of rebellion and roadside bombs. When a reporter said, “Yesterday another fifteen hundred Syrians fled their homeland. Seeking refuge, they crossed the border into Turkey on foot,” she said, “I see.”

  So now she understood Ramadan’s venture more fully: he wasn’t just running away from something—he was running toward something. How had she not figured that out? Ramadan had made his spiritual inclinations clear the first day they met, when he had pronounced the big steeple of St. Louis Cathedral as the future. Though she looked up at that central conical, architectural wonder every day, she had never drawn that conclusion. If anything, like most people, ensnared by the here and now, she thought it was the mighty present. But Ramadan knew better—at least for himself. She knew this much: a boy who could look up at the highest point of a church and see his future was blessed. Ramadan was blessed. There. She’d said it. If nobody else knew it, she did. Yes, this was the reason she knew everything was going to be okay. Sometimes messages came to her like this, from wherever—she couldn’t help it. In the past tense. As if written somewhere long ago. Already recorded. There was no taking it away, no making it untrue: Ramadan was blessed.

  And now, with her help, he was about to jet into his tomorrow. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and sped toward Louis Armstrong International, hitting almost eighty miles an hour, her aging Volvo wagon trembling in its eagerness to satisfy an urgency rarely demanded of it. Focused and determined, Miss Bea drove as if, without her best effort, a prophesy would go unfulfilled.

  * * *

  AT THE AIRPORT, as she watched Ramadan walk up to the kiosk in the Delta terminal and print out his ticket, she found herself repeating, in amazement, the same thing she had said to him yesterday when he presented his plan: It’s so easy. Then again, when the helpful, unsuspecting Delta agents assisted her with filling out the “Unaccompanied Minor Program” form authorizing Ramadan to travel alone. It’s so easy.

  “’Scuse me, ma’am?” one asked.

  “Nothing,” she responded. “Nothing at all.”

  She was a woman who in many ways believed in magic, yet she had never witnessed anything more convincing than watching this child tap his phone and press buttons on the freestanding machine that spat out his boarding passes. She had never felt the power of the pen she experienced when the inky scribble of her own signature on the authorization form liberated Ramadan from the shackles of childhood. (She was so thrilled with her participation in his escape that she slipped the Delta Airlines pen she’d used into her purse as a memento.)

  As she escorted Ramadan down the long corridor to his gate, another airline rule, she again mumbled. It’s so easy.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, we’re now ready to begin boarding Flight 799 to Atlanta,” the agent at the gate announced only about ten minutes after they had checked in and sat down.

  Ramadan, holding his suitcase, stood up. Miss Bea rose as well and said for the last time, “It’s so easy.”

  “Special needs passengers and children traveling alone may now proceed to the boarding area.”

  Reaching into her purse, Miss Bea said, “I have something for you. Unaccompanied minor—hah!”

  Extending her hand, she said, “Take this.” With a snap of her fingers, she flicked into view the tarot card that had flown from the deck during his reading: the Magician. She wasn’t about to be outdone by smartphones, touch-screen ticketing units, and the lax authority of the adult world that was, all around her, passing for magic.

  “But, Miss Bea, it’s yours,” Ramadan said.

  “No—it’s yours. Take it. That way you will not be what they call ‘unaccompanied.’ And—there is nothing, absolutely nothing, ‘minor’ about you.”

  Ramadan took the Magician and inserted it between the cover and first page of his passport, face-to-face with his own photograph. Then he embraced Miss Bea with a tenderness he had only ever bestowed upon Mama Joon.

  “Thank you!” he said, his breath warming her cheek and neck.

  Miss Bea had known many satisfied customers who had shown their appreciation in a variety of ways, but she had no experience with such a physical expression of gratitude. People had shaken her hand and even high-fived her. Some had tipped her hundreds of dollars for her kind of compassion. Many had written letters of praise, warming her as if she’d been held. As if. But Ramadan’s show of affection was not as if. It was. He was not a customer, not anymore, if he had ever been at all. She lived alone with three cats—Dante; Faith, a nutty Siamese; and Sam, the jet-black, yellowed-eyed captain of the ship. All of her years of cuddling these fine creatures, touches she had built her life on, unspooled into the ether, the emotional safet
y net of her entire existence unraveling in an instant. Like a crocheted afghan undone by a mischievous claw, her security blanket was reduced to a pile of yarn. On some level, she had always suspected the truth, and this was the trouble with cats—far from liberating you from the need for serious human attachments, they rendered you even more susceptible. With one hug, Ramadan, however unintentionally, had ruined her.

  When they separated, Miss Bea, implausibly grateful for her own devastation, rubbed the side of Ramadan’s face and said, “Go!”

  He did as she commanded, turning and walking away. Just as when he had left the house, he refrained from looking back.

  But then she called out to him. “Ramadan!”

  He turned to see a look of panic on her face. And she was panicked, stricken with the fear that she might never have that feeling again, Ramadan’s embrace. Dante had run off once, gone missing for three days. His absence—and the suspension of the nighttime nuzzling he preferred and to which she’d become accustomed—had frazzled her nerves. She had been unable to sleep; lost her appetite; made a useless, embarrassing, teary phone call to the police. When, late one Sunday afternoon, he slinked back into her apartment through the French doors that opened onto her private courtyard, purring at her feet as she stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes, she had broken a glass, cut her hand, bled with relief. Cats come back. But what about kids? She couldn’t see the answer. She had no idea what was going to happen to Ramadan or, if he didn’t come back, to her.