Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  We stopped admiring her charitable spirit the day she was wheeled home with no skeletal structure from her pelvis down. She waved off our horror by claiming she’d been using her legs less and less. When she was down to just her skull, her daughter—my mother—put my grandmother’s head on a marble desk and locked her in the altar room.

  It is legend how my mother kept my grandmother’s eye sockets clean with the pure white feather of a cockatoo. She often sent me to the forest to pick marigolds to stack high around Grandmother’s skull. Grandmother loved the smell of them. She told me so every time I entered the house with an armful of the fragrant weeds.

  After my grandmother’s head had been sitting in the altar room for a month, my mother realized my grandmother was dying—not because of her missing body, but because she was bored. Mother brought Grandmother into the living room and positioned her right in front of the window. There Grandmother sat happily for a week until Dad caught her promising her skull to an epileptic candy vendor.

  Mother couldn’t bear the thought of locking Grandmother up again. So Dad came up with the idea of sitting her in the middle of the living room facing the kitchen. Grandmother didn’t have much visual stimulation, but she could hear the sounds of the street. While staring at boiling pots and waiting for one of us to keep her company, Grandmother amused herself by mounting day-long monologues in response to the whizzing, clicking, and chattering that wafted into the house through the window.

  One November, Trucia decided we should suit up and go down to Earth for the Days of the Dead. The humans make so much mischief during those days, they don’t notice us creaking through on our bones. My costume had seen better days. Trucia said it was my sin that had made me run my robes down into dirty tatters. Lorki doesn’t believe in sin—he doesn’t believe in costumes either. Easy not to believe in anything when you’re always aligned.

  When I started slipping out the door that November night, I swore I heard Grandmother whisper “be ill.” I stopped and looked back, but she was silent. I stared at the cracks that worry their way down the back of her skull, but they, too, were silent. Grandmother said nothing more, so I turned and slipped out the door. Down on Earth, we looked for the cemetery with the most lights. We figured the busiest graveyards were best. While people drank, ate, and cried for their dead, we could sneak in unnoticed.

  We found what we were looking for in Oaxaca, a tiny little desert town in the middle of six kissing mountains. Lorki’s black velvet cape covered us as we rushed into the swirl of activity on a dark, dank wind. The minute we landed I started trembling. That happens whenever I find myself in close proximity to humans. They have the best emotions. Their feelings are so sharp and hysterical and self-propelling. Their auras make me vibrate. With the candlelight swimming around us, the buzz of voices and the emotions flying through the air, I felt a sense of intoxication. A grandeur.

  How can I explain what it felt like to dance with a stilt walker whose stilts were thicker than my femur? How can I tell you about the eerie flesh-like shadow that shrouded Trucia’s cheeks as she laughed at Lorki yanking people’s souls out of their chests and juggling them with one long-boned hand? How can I describe the moist succulence of a tiny child’s fear when it glimpsed my weathered, pocky bones and swallowed the sight of me with undiluted dread?

  Trucia thought it funny to pass her hand through people’s spines. She would reach into their backs until her wrist bone was buried in their flesh. She’d rub the tip of her index finger along their hearts, moaning filthily when their bodies went stiff with pain. While she was enticing me to find a spine to disturb, I felt a sudden chill licking between my fifth and sixth vertebrae.

  When I turned around, I saw a huge child running toward me. “You can’t catch me,” it yelled. The child did not touch me, but the force of it passing knocked me over. I fell across a grave, and a parade of children—yelping in delighted terror—ran by.

  Humans are dirty beings. They never learned how to transcend Earth, especially in their graveyards. The debris kicked up by those murderous little feet covered me in a canopy of dust. This was not the little spray of dirt that, once stuck in Grandmother’s nasal openings, induced her suicidal bone-endowment spree. This was huge clumps of dirt. I was clogged, I was suffocated. I was nothing more than a pile of jammed joints and rigid bones.

  Lorki tugged at the bowl of my pelvis. Trucia yanked at my anklebones, but the debris was stronger than their worry. Trucia pulled harder and harder. But I didn’t stir—couldn’t stir. Every inch of me was paralyzed.

  A little girl approached me. Her arms were full of marigolds. She started framing me with them. She stuck some through my ribs, a few under my jawbone, six or seven around my skull. When the earth under me started shifting, Lorki and Trucia couldn’t bear it. They didn’t stay to see the dirt seizing bits of bone to feed the grave beneath me. They went home.

  When my body was completely dissolved, I became something else. The spirits that haunt these graves say I am one of them. They roam the confines of the cemetery, licking leaves, drinking morning mist, and planting crazy notions in human flesh.

  Lorki and Trucia will never return to witness the proof that there is breath beyond the bones. Yet, when the spirits retire to their graves, I find what’s left of me grasping at sticks to scratch symbols in the dirt. Grandmother may never understand the shrieks I now use to communicate, but I must conjure a way to tell her the truth.

  She must discard her skull.

  We are more—so much more—than elegant skeletal spectacles. I will find a way to whisper it to Grandmother—may your cranium be eaten away. There is something else beneath the bone. Something indestructible. Something nothing, not even debris, can destroy.

  Rosamojo

  Eyes half closed, I see the dark of daddy’s pants. My bedroom door swings open. Light rips into my room, then disappears. I am alone now. Daddy’s footsteps get softer and softer. I can’t relax ’til I can’t hear him no more. I turn my face to the wall. My neck is sore, but that’s better than it being broke. My breath goes from fast to slow. Then I start to notice other things. Like the moon glowing outside my window. My leg shaking so hard I can’t stop it. My fists clenched tight.

  I open one hand. It’s empty. I hold my fingers up to my face. It’s dark in my room, but I can see two white marks my fingernails made when they were digging into my skin. I squeeze the other hand tighter. A soft springy clump of daddy’s hair shifts in my palm. It would tickle if I let it. But I don’t. I can’t laugh while I still hear daddy’s voice whispering that I’m his favorite.

  Sunlight creeps under my eyelids, climbs into my eyes. I curl over on my side and draw my knees up to my chest. Don’t want to move, not ever. I hear mama screaming at Lola to hurry up in the bathroom, and my heart catches in my throat. Benny is crying at the top of his lungs. I know I better get up, unless I want mama to know. I jump up and pull my nightgown over my head. At first I go to throw it in the dirty clothes hamper, then I stop and shove it under my mattress instead. My head feels dizzy, but when I hear mama’s voice in the hall, I know I gotta make everything look right.

  I stumble over to my dresser and pick out a clean nightgown. The new nightgown is soft on my skin. It smells like soap powder. I wanna go lie down again and close my eyes. I wanna sleep with the fresh smell, but I don’t. I yank the edges of my sheets and tuck the corners under the mattress. I climb on top of the bed and throw the top sheet high up so it’ll fall down flat. Before the sheet reaches the bed, I see them: two dark streaks—one short, one long. I go to pull them dirty sheets from the bed, but then I start thinking ’bout how far away the clean sheets are. Be smarter to hide the stains from mama, than try to get some fresh ones from the hall closet. I grip the edges of the top sheet and pull it smooth. If mama comes to check on me now, she’ll be real happy with how tight I made the bed. She’ll be so proud, she’ll never even see the stains.

  When I peek out into the hall, nobody’s looking. I run straight t
o the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Before washing up, I wipe a warm washcloth between my legs. When I look at it, I see the same dark red streaks that were on the sheets. I rinse the washcloth and wipe ’til it shows no more red. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth.

  Mama is already at the stove when I sit at the table.

  “No kiss for me this morning?” she say.

  I don’t move. I just sit at the table still as a stone.

  “Rosamojo, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” mama laughs. Then she comes and kisses my cheeks.

  Daddy kisses me on top of my head like normal. I sit on my hands because if I didn’t, I’d scratch his face and mama would know something’s wrong. Mama drops my plate down in front of me. The two huge yolks of my eggs is still jiggling from their journey from the stove. I don’t say nothing. Not even when Benny start to tease me ’bout how long it take me to get out of bed. Not even when Lola steal two pieces of bacon from my plate while looking me dead in the face. Not even when mama says “Rosamojo’s having a bad day,” and puts cheese on only my grits. Lola look at me and squint her eyes. When mama go back to the stove and daddy go to the coffee pot, she ball up her fist and say, “You better not be doing no magic.”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t do no magic, I swear.”

  “What you said, sweetheart?” daddy ask when he hear my flat voice.

  “Nothing, daddy,” I say and stir the cheese into my grits.

  Benny and Lola are loud in the backyard. Daddy and mama been left, but I’m still sitting at the table, dirty dishes spread all over the tabletop. Lola runs into the kitchen with a knobby piece of branch. Benny comes in right behind her carrying two sticks. Lola bangs the branch on the floor.

  “Wanna go scare some neutra rats?” she ask.

  I just shake my head no.

  “We got you a stick,” Benny say.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “We goin then,” she say. “And I don’t wanna hear nothin ’bout them dishes.”

  I shrug my shoulders again.

  Lola looks close at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she ask.

  I don’t say nothing. Lola bang her stick on the floor, suck her teeth, and turn away.

  “Come on, Benny, let’s go to the canal. Rosa’s actin all funny today.”

  It feel like the air around me is thick and I gotta move real slow. My favorite overalls be the only thing I can think of to make me feel better. I put them on before I jeck the sheets from my bed. In the tub, I wash out the dark spots. I bring the sheets down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, through the kitchen to the back door. Just when I’m ’bout to step outside, I see nosy ole Mrs. Roberts looking into our yard. I back up, arms still full of sheets. If Mrs. Roberts see me hanging up a sheet with a few wet spots, she gonna ask mama if I got my cycle. And mama gonna come asking me questions like she did Lola. So I go back upstairs to my room. I let the sheets fall out of my arms onto my bare mattress. Then I sit on my bed a while, thinking and staring out the window. Real quick like, I get an idea. I jump up onto the mattress with my slippers on. I strain to lift the windows and struggle to get the screens out. I hang the flat sheet out one window and the fitted sheet out the other. Them wet spots should dry real quick. I just know I better get them screens back in before mama gets home.

  In mama and daddy’s room everything is cool and quiet. It’s like they room ain’t part of the rest of the house. It’s so dark in there I can’t see my reflection in neither of mama and daddy’s two mirrors. I get real close on them, but I can barely make out my face. Then I start snooping around. I don’t even know what I’m looking for until I see it: daddy’s favorite harmonica sitting on top the dresser with mama’s combs and jewelry. I slip the harmonica into my side pocket. On the floor next to daddy’s side of the bed is the sports section. I crouch down and look at it. It’s all marked up with inky black fingerprints. I roll it up and stick it in my back pocket. I go down the hall to the bathroom and stand on the step stool. In the medicine cabinet, I see lots of little bottles with words I can’t read. Then I see daddy’s toothpicks. I put a handful in my front pocket and go to the kitchen with my pockets loaded.

  Beneath the sink is a burlap bag full of daddy’s favorite coffee. I grab the bag by the edges and drag it out the kitchen, through the living room to the front porch. Back in the kitchen, I find the metal bowl mama uses to soak burnt pots and pans—I bring that to the porch too. I stick the toothpicks in the harmonica holes and wrap the harmonica in the newspaper. My hand twitches. I look at it and suddenly remember—daddy’s hair! I run upstairs and scoop up the hair from my dresser drawer. On the porch, I unwrap the newspaper and stick daddy’s hair into the harmonica holes too. Then I wrap the whole thing up again. I put it in mama’s metal bowl and set the whole thing on fire. As I squat, watching it burn, my lips begin to move. Words come spilling out of my mouth, spelling out a protection prayer I never even knew I had in my head.

  When the fire burns out, the whole porch is cloudy with smoke. I use a dishrag to pick up daddy’s burnt things and shove them deep into the coffee beans. It seem like it take forever for me to drag that bag of coffee upstairs, but I do it. By the time I stuff the bag under my bed, my arms are wet with sweat.

  When Lola and Benny come home, all the smoke from the fire is gone. I’m back sitting at the kitchen table, looking like I didn’t move. My pockets are stuffed with cotton balls I took from under the bathroom sink.

  When Lola sees the dirty dishes still spread over the table, she punches me hard.

  “Why you didn’t clean the dishes, stupid?”

  I give her the same evil look she give me this morning, and she backs off. She hates my magic. She liked it better when she could beat me up. Now she be a bit more careful.

  “Come on, Benny, let’s do the dishes,” Lola says.

  “Yeah,” Benny says, like doing the dishes is a treat.

  After mama tucks me in and turns out my light, I grab the cotton balls and put them under my pillow. Then I sit on top, and those prayers start coming out of me again. This time, they come so fast, it’s scary. I sit there for hours, mumbling to myself, waiting for daddy to come home. When I hear daddy’s car creep into the driveway, I jump out of bed and drop down to my hands and knees. As the front door opens, I grab hold of the burlap bag and yank it hard.

  Daddy’s footsteps are on the stairs. I’m tugging on the bag, but it don’t come free. I got to get it unstuck somehow. I catch a tighter hold of the burlap, but it still won’t come loose. I hear daddy’s footsteps at the top of the stairs, and I just panic. I run to my desk and snatch my scissors from the desk drawer. I stab the scissors into the bag. The bag splits and coffee beans spill out. I jam my hand into the coffee and make wild grabs, feeling around for daddy’s stuff. He’s so close now, I can almost feel him breathing down my neck. ’Stead of my door, I hear mama and daddy’s door squeak open. I let out a little sigh, but I don’t relax. I keep searching ’til my fingers touch something hard. Then I grab it—the burnt bundle of daddy’s stuff.

  Mama and daddy’s door squeaks again. I listen for a second, thinking maybe daddy just got in bed, but no, I can hear the clunk clunk of his footsteps. I stick my hand under my mattress and feel around for my magic pouch. Daddy’s footsteps stop in front of my door, and it feel like my heart stops. I turn the pouch upside down and shake it wildly. Marbles, gum, and a picture of Ronald, the boy I have a crush on, spill to the floor. Daddy’s turning the doorknob now. My fingers are shaking as I reach for the cotton. I stuff a little cotton into the bottom of the pouch and drop the bundle of daddy’s things on top. I turn to face daddy as I fill the pouch up with cotton and a handful of coffee beans.

  Daddy’s face is confused. He stands in the doorway as I tie the pouch closed and hang it around my neck. When I am finally still, he starts to walk toward me.

  “Don’t be scared, baby,” daddy says.

  I put my hand out in front of me and daddy stops short.
I turn my palm up to the ceiling and imagine daddy’s heart resting in my grasp. The second I feel the weight of his heart in my hand, I snap my fingers shut. Daddy gasps and bends over. I squeeze until the thing stops beating. Daddy stumbles away.

  The next morning, mama’s not in the kitchen. Me, Lola, and Benny go to mama and daddy’s room. Lola pushes the door open, and me and Benny creep in behind her. Mama is sitting on the bed crying. She don’t ask about the missing bag of coffee or her burnt metal bowl. She don’t even notice how I bent the screens. The only thing she notice is daddy. He’s lying next to her breathing heavy. His hands are shaking. His skin looks gray.

  “Lola, honey, go call a ambulance. Your daddy is sick. Benny, come with me downstairs. Help me make daddy some tea. Rosa, stay here with your daddy. Call me if he starts to lookin worse.”

  I nod my head, but I can’t speak. When everyone leaves I’m too frightened to move. I stay with my back against the wall, close to the door.

  “Rosamojo,” I hear daddy whisper. “Rosamojo.”

  I don’t say a word.

  “Rosa, make me well.”

  Tears start to drip out my eyes, but I don’t make a sound.

  “I won’t do it again, Rosa, give me my heart back.”

  “I didn’t mean to, daddy,” I whisper.

  “Can’t you see how upset you makin your mama?”

  I put my hands over my ears.

  “Daddy, I didn’t mean to,” I say a little louder.

  “Take the hex off me, Rosa, please,” daddy says.

  But I can’t. My mind is blank. Nothing comes. Not like the protection prayer that just spilled out my lips. Not like I knew exactly what to do to grab hold of daddy’s heart. I can’t think of anything at all. When mama gets back, I’m crying hard.