Temper: A Novel

by Nicky Drayden

  Kasim’s wicked smile goes soft, his arms wrap around me. “It was fake, Auben. You know that, right?”

  I nod into his chest, but the warm tears stream down even harder.

  “Oh, Auben.” He pats my back. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll take you to that Rashtra place. It’s right around the corner.”

  My mind manages to string together a few words, Thanks, but no thanks, but they come out in an indistinguishable smear of wet syllables.

  “Don’t feel bad. I’ve seen the play. The mystic’s costume was taken straight from it. Really, you could have made a little more effort. And maybe paid your actors better. A couple of homework bribes was all it took to get my revisions worked into the scene.”

  “We were on a budget,” I sulk. “And since when have you been to a play?”

  “I’ve been to every single one of Ruda’s dress rehearsals for the last two and a half years. Made an excuse to get out of class.”

  “You skipped class?” I sit up straight, wipe the wet from my face with my sleeve. “So you’re saying my plan didn’t work because you’re a lying, lecherous, no good cheat of a brother?”

  “Eh. That, and you kept mumbling act and scene numbers under your breath.”

  “Speaking of skipping class, can we call this a scene?” the driver says, sitting up and peeling off his beard and smearing the blood off his coat. “I’ve got a quiz second period, and I’ve still got to get this coach cleaned up and back home before my dad notices.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I mumble. “Can you drop us at school on the way?” I glance sideways at Kasim, my head still spinning. He’s drifting away, so far, so fast, right when I need him the most.

  “Actually,” Kasim says. “I feel awful, and with all the effort you went through, I see how important it is for you to speak with Yeboah. I still think it’s a bad idea, but if we do it now, we can avoid any future theatrics, can we not?”

  “I promise, my stint as an actor is done. No more lies between me and you.”

  Kasim rubs my back. “That almost sounded sincere.”

  “It was.”

  I’ve always imagined that one day I would meet my father. He’d come home to us, one rainy evening after a meager supper, a figure in a dark leather ciki jacket hanging down to his calves and a wide-brimmed hat cocked to the side, standing mysteriously in the doorway. He’d look up, and I’d catch that first glimpse of his face. Handsome, his skin a rich shade of brown exactly between Kasim’s and my own, daring eyes, hard chin covered in rugged stubble. “Sons,” he’d call out in the smoothest baritone voice that’d drop my heart to my feet.

  My father would apologize, saying he’d been away on a secret government mission all these years. It pained his every breath to be apart from us, but even the slightest contact would put us in mortal danger. He would then pull Kasim and me into his arms, his chest broad enough to accommodate the both of us—and all the missed birthdays, all the shame taunts inflicted by my classmates, all the nights we’d gone to bed still hungry would become nothing more than abandoned memories. Then he’d whisk us all off to our real home, in a big glass house with a view of the ocean and servants and meat at every meal and shoes that got replaced well before the soles wore away.

  My fantasy played out a dozen different ways: a famous explorer, an opera singer touring the world, an aquanaut who’d established a secret colony on the ocean floor, even Grace himself, come down from his mountain to partake in a vice or three. But my wildest delusions pale against the truth.

  “We’re here to see Yeboah Mazibuko,” I say, my voice echoing in the chilled air of the atrium of my father’s building. Workers stream in, clutching their cups of steaming coffee, trying to ward off this narrow season that refuses to quit.

  “You have an appointment?” the receptionist asks, though we’re greeted only by the top of her green silk turban, since she apparently can’t be bothered to look up from the pages of her word scramble.

  “No appointment, but—”

  “Sorry, he’s not available. If you’d like to leave a message, feel free.” She pushes a yellow pad of paper to us. It’s titled While You Were Out and has a selection of boxes and corresponding contact options. She doesn’t bother to provide a writing instrument, but I get the feeling our message would end up in the trash bin shortly anyway.

  I press the pad back to her. “I think you can make an exception. You see, we’re his—”

  “Nephews,” Kasim breaks in, rubbing at the tear stains I’d left on the front of his ciki, like streaks of bleach.

  “I was going to say nephews,” I whisper to him.

  “Oh, you’re his nephews! Why didn’t you say so?” She looks up, shoots us a tight-lipped smile. “There’s a special form for that.” She scrawls a box under the printed ones, and next to it writes the word nephews.

  I heave a sigh. “Thank you for your time,” I say.

  “Whatever,” she mumbles.

  Cusses swim about the saliva in my mouth, but I swallow them back. My temper won’t do us any good here.

  That’s only because you don’t know how to wield it properly, the whisper says enticingly.

  I shove my hand into my pocket as we walk away, and grab a fistful of glass shards. Squeeze. The pain inflames against my existing wound.

  The whisper recedes, along with quiet ideas of burning down the building.

  “Auben!” Kasim says, pointing to my pant leg. The haze of agony parts, and when I look down, there’s a bloodstain blooming below my pocket.

  I pull my hand out, a pulpy red mess. Kasim takes it gently, and rushes me through the atrium as we leave a trail of blood droplets behind us. We enter the restroom, and he runs my hand under cool water, washing and rubbing and rinsing away the blood with his hands. Bright red swirls circle the drain, and the pain must have me on the verge of hallucinating, because I swear my blood is sort of . . . glowing.

  Kasim shuts off the faucet, pats my hands dry with a towel. I look at my palms, nearly completely healed, minus a few shallow scratches no more significant than paper cuts. But it was not paper that cut me.

  “It must have looked worse than it actually was,” Kasim says with a shrug.

  Maybe, but my nail gash from two days ago is completely healed over, and ten minutes ago it was well on its way to a full-blown infection. “I thought we weren’t lying to each other anymore,” I say straight at him.

  Kasim mouths at words that he can’t find.

  “It’s okay. I’ll go first,” I say. “I’ve been changing lately, in strange ways that are hard to explain. I suspect that something similar is happening to you. Have you been hearing—”

  “Voices,” Kasim admits. “I heard the first one two months ago.”

  “Me, too. Telling you to do things?”

  Kasim nods. “All the fucking time.” He exhales, and it’s like the weight of the world has finally dropped from his shoulders.

  “The lechery, the lies, the cheating, the cussing. I knew something was off with you, but I was so caught up with my own mess that I hadn’t even thought that something could be driving you to vice. You can’t imagine what I’ve had to endure . . . that voice is what made me punch you. And that isn’t even the worst of it.” I think of Ruda and the terror behind her eyes. “Just now it wanted me to burn down this building. I’ve been resisting as hard as I can. Pain helps.”

  Kasim goes stiff. “I’ve been resisting, too, but it’s not like that.” He won’t look at me directly, but manages to meet my eyes sure enough in the reflection of the mirror before us. “The voice in my head is telling me I can do better. That I can be better. Nothing is good enough, and there’s always room for improvement. It’s bad, Auben. It’s analyzing my every thought for deficiency, judging not just my actions but also my precise intent. I’m not even safe in my own dreams.”

  “So you’ve basically got Mother living inside your head.” I shudder. I’d take Icy Blue over that any day. “Any other tricks up your sleeve? Besides heal
ing?”

  “Well, there’s this . . .” Kasim climbs onto the granite countertop, then jumps. Something catches him inches before he hits the ground.

  He hangs there, floating in the air, like he’s made from cloud vapor. “Whoa,” I say. “I guess that explains your catlike dismounts from the top—”

  The door to the restroom swings open. Kasim glances back, then drops to his feet.

  The silhouette of a man fills the door. He is wearing neither a leather ciki nor a wide-brimmed hat. He is not handsome, and is a brown closer to that of dried mustard. His eyes are beady, his chin clean-shaven and weak. But his voice . . . his voice is a smooth baritone that stands my hairs on end. “I got a page from the receptionist. She said someone came by claiming they were my nephews, then left a blood slick over the floor.”

  “Just a bad paper cut,” I say, holding up my hand. I might have sworn never to lie to my brother, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lie to my own father.

  Uncle Yeboah suspiciously eyes the bloodstain on my pants. “Well, you’ve already ruined my morning agenda. Might as well come up to my office.”

  “I take it your mother finally told you,” Uncle Yeboah says, all business, as soon as the double doors to his corner office are shut behind us. It’s like we’ve stepped into a hunting lodge. Floor to ceiling, the entire office is lined with a rich deep red zebra wood. His conquests hang on the walls neatly, like trophy mounts from a safari: his Gabadamosi Preparatory Certificate, his degree from Primways University, an oil painting of Aunt Cisse, one of his family, and one of Grace Mountain. Like he needs a painting of Grace Mountain with the view he’s got of it outside his window.

  “No,” I say. “She doesn’t know that we know. We found one of Uncle Pabio’s books.”

  “I thought I’d burnt all the copies,” Uncle Yeboah grumbles. He heads to his liquor cabinet, pours himself a glass tumbler of Effiong, and plunks in three ice cubes. He takes a long and loud sip, then exhales against the sting as he sets the drink down on his desk. Uncle Yeboah looks at us, like he’s ready to entertain all of our questions, but my mind is so busy processing what had happened in the restroom. What is this I’m feeling? Envy because the demon possessing Kasim is more badass than mine?

  “Does your family know?” Kasim asks.

  “No, and they can’t find out. It’s senseless to ruin a family over a single mistake eighteen years ago.” Uncle Yeboah clears his throat. Even he realizes how insensitive that was. “Indiscretion would be a better word,” he adds, though there are no apologies to accompany it. He goes to the framed oil painting of Grace Mountain and swings it to the side. There’s a wall safe behind it. Uncle Yeboah fidgets with the dial until it clicks open. He rifles through stacks of paper.

  As he does so, I look at the ice cubes in his drink, thinking back to my night upon Grace Mountain and how all those flowers had frozen over. A neat enough trick. I’ve spent nearly all my life trying to hold back the queasiness in my gut with a steady flex of ab muscles and mental energy. I release, giving the thin leash I hold upon Icy Blue a bit of play. My insides go cold, and his smile slides across my lips. I press my hand on Uncle Yeboah’s desk. A narrow slick of ice crawls across the surface until it reaches the glass tumbler. It frosts over, nice and cool. I look to Kasim, raise my brow. He’s noticed my quaint performance, and his eyes have gone wide. I take a silent bow, as I flex muscles back into place. They’re weaker now.

  Uncle Yeboah shuts the safe door, spins the dial, and returns the painting to its original position. He holds a thick envelope in his hands. Even from where I’m standing, I can see it’s filled with money.

  “We didn’t come here looking for a payoff,” Kasim says, definitely not speaking for the both of us.

  “We don’t want this secret out any more than you do,” I say, playing along, “but we do deserve the truth.” I keep my chin held high, hoping my voice won’t start to quaver. “How could you let your own flesh and blood suffer like we have?”

  “This isn’t a payoff,” Uncle Yeboah says.

  He hands the envelope to me. I flip through. Most of it is large denomination djang, but there are several yellowed Money Mate certificates among them, dated at the year of our birth. A dozen of them in all, each tucked in their own thin envelopes. I take one out. It’s addressed to Mother, with Return to Sender written in the script I’ve learned to forge so well over the years.

  “I want you to understand: I tried to do what was right in this tough situation, but your mother didn’t want me involved as a father, financially or otherwise. I wanted to come clean to Cisse, too. We were just married, and didn’t have the kids then, and yes, it would have been hard to bounce back from, but there was a possibility that things could have worked out. Your mother dragged her feet for so long, though, afraid of the backlash, afraid it would end their relationship. You should have seen them back then. Close as twins can be. By the time your mother worked up the nerve to tell the truth, Cisse was pregnant, and I couldn’t risk losing another set of kids.” Uncle Yeboah clears his throat, and goes for his drink. When he tilts it back, the whole frozen mass slips out and clinks against his teeth. He looks at it, more irritated than perplexed. “In any case, the money is yours. Three hundred fifty djang set aside for every month you’ve been alive. For each of you.”

  Kasim and I gawk at each other, each of us doing the arithmetic in our heads. Nearly seventy thousand djang. Each. When I’d put together this plan, my goal was to squeeze a couple thousand djang out of Uncle Yeboah—enough for an exorcism and a little pocket change left over.

  I’ve never held so much money, and yet it fails to excite me the way I thought it would. It feels wrong in my hands. Sure, we could invest it, live off it for fifteen or twenty years easily. Buy nice clothes, nice toys, a nice place to live. Sneak some to Mother, of course, without raising suspicion. And now there are dual exorcisms needed, and I’ve got a feeling that a run-of-the-mill, buy one, get one fifty percent off exorcism won’t be sufficient for either of us. Voices and strange visions, sure, but levitation and healing and ice powers . . . not so much.

  But the money feels wrong. The ice, though . . .

  The ice feels right.

  Maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty to try to rid ourselves of these afflictions. Maybe we need to learn more about our demon possessors. With the proper resources, we could learn to quiet our minds, and still be able to use these powers, and perhaps learn how to tap into others. There’s only one place I can think of that has the knowledge to get us there, and that gives me an idea.

  “We don’t want your money,” I say.

  “What?” Uncle Yeboah asks.

  “Yeah, what?” Kasim parrots. He snatches the envelope from me and holds it against his chest, no longer high and mighty. I guess everyone has their price.

  “We want you to get us into Gabadamosi Preparatory instead.” I point at the gold pin on Uncle Yeboah’s lapel with tiny cut jewels that represent the great stained-glass symbol of his alma mater. Of the school Chimwe and Chiso currently attend.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Uncle Yeboah says.

  “And completely unnecessary,” Kasim adds. “If you don’t mind,” he says to our father, “my brother and I need a private moment.”

  Uncle Yeboah sucks his teeth and busies himself in paperwork. Kasim grips my shirt and drags me to the far corner of the office.

  “What are you doing?” he says, slamming the money into my chest. “We’re going to take this. He owes us this. There’s so much good we can do with this money.”

  And so much evil, come the thoughts in my mind. At this point, I am not sure if they are mine or Icy Blue’s. “We could take this money, fix whatever has gone wrong inside of us,” I say, “and then go on to lead comfortable yet unremarkable lives. Or we could learn to manage the voices and use our powers for good. You think seventy thousand djang could help people? Imagine what these could do.” I take his hands in mine. “Heal the sick, the wounded. What pr
ice can you put on that?”

  Kasim’s mind churns over this. He does not agree with me, but he can’t disagree either.

  “Gabadamosi has the biggest library in the Cape,” I tell him. “There has to be something there that can help us. And if we can’t figure it out, or if the voices become too strong, we can go straight to the Sanctuary, the one with the capital S.” We’ve heard the cousins talk—our half siblings, it now hits me—about the Sanctuary, a place that still uses blood sacraments instead of wine, and defting sticks made of human bone instead of wood or ivory.

  “But Yeboah said it’s impossible. You remember how frantic he was, worrying if he’d be able to get Chimwe and Chiso admitted, and they went to the best private schools. How in the world is he going to get a couple of comfy-educated secular boys in?”

  “He’s the one that runs a multibillion djang corporation,” I say, gesturing to his panoramic view of the fog-blanketed coastline. “We’ll make that his problem to solve. All we need to do is add the proper motivation.”

  Kasim’s eyes look one off, and I’m willing to bet his voices are speaking to him. He curses under his breath, and then concedes. “So we’re going to blackmail him?”

  “The best kind of mail. Won’t even cost us a stamp.”

  Doubt

  “I feel like a drone in an ant colony,” Kasim whispers to me as we follow the curve of a gravel pathway, weaving through swarms of students and passing the big brown mounds of school buildings set into the base of Grace Mountain. Knowing Kasim’s fixation with bugs, he doesn’t mean this as an insult, but I’m sure taking it that way. This is Gabadamosi? I’d expected something grand. Big glass buildings, daring feats of architecture, a place that exuded knowledge from every nook and cranny. This place looks so ancient, so tribal, and not in a good way. Doubt hits me like a punch to the ribs. What have I gotten us into?