Stormwitch

by Susan Vaught

  “Mississippi is my place now, at least for a time. Why shouldn’t I fight like you did, to make it better?”

  Something like understanding weights Grandmother Jones’s voice as she says, “When all’s said and done, I know you’ll fight, no matter how I feel about it. Thing is, I don’t want you hurt, Ruba. I—I don’t think I could stand that.”

  Tears streak down Grandmother Jones’s cheeks. She looks worried, like someone who has seen many terrible things she would like me not to see. I lift my arms, and she leans down. Lets me hug her neck. Her hair smells of powder and the ham she cooked for my breakfast.

  When we move apart, Grandmother Jones lifts her apron and dries her face, and leaves without a word.

  The warmth from her hug lingers even as the sound of her car’s engine fades.

  I get up, holding my hand to my cheek, and face the window.

  Bullets came in through that glass, Grandmother Jones said.

  I turn to the wall. Walk up to it.

  And I see them immediately.

  How could I’ve missed them? Right there, between and under pictures, level with my neck and head.

  Five bullet holes, in a jagged line.

  If I had been here then … if any of them had been standing in front of that window …

  On close inspection, I see the bullet holes have been smoothed but left as a part of the wood. Each one has a cross sketched next to it, and the same date. As if someone simply accepted such a risk, wanted to make a record—and knew more bullets might come.

  I touch the holes, feeling frozen and hot all at once.

  Holes made by hatred, in a wall so solid I can’t imagine it falling, no matter the loose nails and creaking supports.

  Grandmother Jones’s rock face makes sense to me now. It’s not hatred or lack of feeling, anger, or even distress.

  My grandmother wears the stern expression of a warrior, simple as that.

  Chapter Nine

  Friday, 15 August 1969: Afternoon

  Clay, Gisele, and I again walk the white-only beach. Most people ignore us, but a few take the time to glare. My journal’s in my pocket, but today I don’t feel like I have to touch it every few seconds to stay alive.

  “You hear any more about that storm on the way?” Gisele asks. “Daddy says it’s getting worse.”

  “No,” I say.

  Clay only snorts. He doesn’t seem concerned. I’m learning that Clay pays attention to the Panthers and the television, national news and music. The rest he ignores.

  Near a lifeguard stand, a young white boy with freckles on his face, maybe five or six years old, lets me put my ear to his radio and listen for the weather report. When his mother sees, she screams and chases us away with handfuls of sand.

  We ease away from her and keep on walking.

  She rants and swears behind us. We continue without looking back or changing our strides. Pushing, not shoving, I tell myself.

  “Get used to us,” Clay mutters every now and then. “You folks better get used to us.”

  Gisele does a lot of skipping, sometimes throwing up sand and trying to blow it away before it hits her face. She doesn’t seem to care if anyone gets used to us or not.

  We walk all the way to Blankenship’s. No one is at the soda counter when we sit down. Still, the man at the register glares when we place our order.

  “Thank you,” Clay says when the man brings our drinks—in paper cups, the kind we’re supposed to take and leave.

  The man slams the first drink down in front of me so hard I’m surprised the cup isn’t crushed. Soda sloshes on the counter. He does it again in front of Clay, and a third time in front of Gisele.

  I smile and wipe up the spills, never taking my eyes from his. My refusal to look down seems to make him madder than anything, and he storms off to clean a milk-shake machine.

  We take our sodas out of the drugstore without sitting at the counter and head over to Gisele and Crazy Sardine’s back porch. In that private place, screened in to keep out mosquitoes, we relax. We even listen to a radio no one will scream and throw sand at us over, or snatch away. The Four Tops sing “It’s the Same Old Song,” and I tap my foot.

  Grandmother Jones comes home from work. When she glances in our direction, I wave. She gives me a flip of her hand. Soon, I should go and help her with dinner, but the afternoon feels warm and lazy.

  Gisele plays quietly by herself, and I can’t help noticing her doll is white. I tell her I plan to make her a Haitian doll, and some proper fetishes, too.

  “You should see your own black face in your dolls, just like in the mirror—and be proud,” I say.

  “Right on, Sister.” Clay tilts back in his rickety wooden chair and glances at cloudy skies.

  The song ends.

  “Motown’s finest,” the announcer says. “And what about that weather? Gonna have rain today along the Gulf, our first gift from Tropical Storm Camille. She may be a hurricane soon, and she’s heading for Cuba.”

  The announcer moves on to other news, then introduces Martha and the Vandellas. “Nowhere to Run.”

  I’m not sure I like that title.

  “You ever been to Cuba?” Clay asks.

  “Cuba Ruba,” Gisele says. “Cuba Ruba gonna get herself a tuba.” She giggles.

  “I’ve been to Cuba,” I say. “Ba took me to the markets. It’s a crowded place.”

  “You see Fidel Castro?” Clay asks.

  I laugh. “You’re funny, Clay. Castro’s face is everywhere in Cuba.”

  “Daddy says President Kennedy tried to blow Castro away, Cuba Ruba,” Gisele says.

  “I know.” I sigh. “In Haiti, we have Papa Doc. People either love or hate men like Castro and Papa Doc, Ba said. She also said a country’s business is their own.”

  “Who’s Papa Doc?” Clay asks.

  “François Duvalier, Haiti’s president. Say a word against him, and the Tontons Macoutes take you away.”

  “The Tonton-what?” Gisele swats a fly on her arm.

  “Papa Doc’s police,” I say. “The police in Haiti work for the president.”

  “Sounds more like a king than a president,” Clay mutters.

  I shrug. “He’s president to us, or he was. When I came here, he was sick. Probably his son will take over soon.”

  “Cops around here, they aren’t always honest, either,” Clay says. “Leastwise not for black folks. Even with the Movement and all, it’s real easy for us to disappear. Turn up lynched, or floating in the swamps.”

  “Tonton Macoutes.” I shiver. “You disappear in Haiti, nobody finds you. But Papa Doc’s strongmen never pestered Ba.”

  I don’t say that even military police feared the war women, the storm chanters. Most people stayed far, far from our stretch of beach.

  “Glad there ain’t no Tontons ’round here,” Gisele says, but a siren rises in the distance before she finishes her sentence.

  We stop talking. Clay turns down the radio.

  The siren creeps closer. And closer.

  Clay straightens. I hug myself with shaking arms.

  Gisele drops her doll. “If they coming after us, I don’t wanna disappear.”

  “They aren’t coming after us,” Clay says.

  But the siren, it’s coming closer still. Nearby now.

  “We’re only children,” I tell Gisele.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Clay says. “A five-year-old boy got put in jail over in McComb. For waving an American flag at a trooper.”

  “Don’t scare Gisele,” I say. “Meanness helps nothing.”

  “I’m telling the truth!” Clay jumps up and glares at me. “That boy was only five.”

  The siren turns down our dead-end road. Flashing lights make the screened porch flicker blue.

  “Clay, why are they comin’ here?” Gisele asks.

  My heart pounds. I think of my war clothes. My bow and arrows—all hidden in my room at Grandmother Jones’s next door. But she’s home. I could never get them out wit
hout her seeing, and I don’t think I could stand making her angry. At least I have my journal.

  Clay grabs my hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Hide. Hide!”

  He opens the screen door and darts out, pulling me along with him. Gisele follows, clinging to her white doll. We slip behind trees and bushes until we have a good view of the police cruiser.

  The cruiser’s siren wails. Its blue lights twirl and flash as it pulls slowly into Grandmother Jones’s driveway.

  We watch behind curtains of hanging moss and vines as Grandmother Jones answers the side door to a young white man in a black uniform.

  I see her sag when she greets him, like she’s tired. But I know the truth, from her own words. Grandmother Jones is afraid. Immediately, I don’t like the policeman.

  “What can I do for you, Officer Bolin?” Grandmother Jones asks.

  The officer removes his hat, uncovering dark bristles of hair. “Sorry to trouble you, Maizie. I’m looking for your granddaughter and her friend Clay Potts.”

  “Maizie,” Clay grumbles. “Bet if I called his grandmother by her first name without permission, he’d slap me silly.”

  I wonder if I can slap the officer and run fast enough to avoid capture. Would that be a push or a shove?

  “What do you want with them, if you don’t mind me asking?” Grandmother Jones’s eyes have gone wide. She stands straighter now. Tense, and wary.

  “I need to ask them some questions, Maizie.”

  “We don’t make trouble, Officer. Ruba didn’t make trouble on purpose. She’s not from here, you know. She’s learning.”

  In my mind, I see the officer as a growling dog, challenging a mother with a pup. I see my grandmother rolling over and exposing her belly. Submitting, with her downcast eyes and calm words.

  “I didn’t figure her for too much of a troublemaker,” Officer Bolin allows. “Kid stuff, really, because she’s hanging around with Clay Potts and all his loud-mouth ideas. But Mrs. Mack says Clay, Ruba, and Gisele stole her radio at the white-only beach today.”

  I cut my eyes to Clay, who turns up a palm. We don’t know a Mrs. Mack, and we didn’t take any radio. I think about the freckle-faced boy and the woman who hit us with sand, and just then Grandmother Jones speaks.

  “Is this some meanness from Leroy Frye?” Grandmother Jones asks, still in her quiet, submissive voice. “Mrs. Mack’s mighty good friends with him, and he’s angry with Ruba.”

  Officer Bolin doesn’t react except to say, “Will you bring those children to me when they come home? I need to clear this up.”

  A moment’s silence, and then Grandmother Jones flaps her apron once. To the side. In our direction, as if to say, “Shoo. Get out of here.”

  She turns her back to us without a glance. A cloud of flour dust from her apron sprinkles the ground near the policeman. “Of course,” she says. “As soon as I finish cooking, I’ll go find them, so justice can roll down like water. Would that satisfy you?”

  I gasp, recognizing my grandmother’s play on words. From Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, that she reads aloud at least once a week.

  “When will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities … No, no, we are not satisfied…”

  The officer seems clueless about this little jab. He just nods his head and walks back to his car.

  Clay punches my shoulder. “Come on, Ruba. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Ten

  Friday, 15 August 1969: Night

  We ease away from our hiding place in the bushes behind Gisele’s house as the officer climbs into his car. Rain mists as we run deeper into thickets of vines and trees. We’re heading away from the main road and the beaches, leaving behind the sounds of waves and engines.

  Clay leads the way down dirt paths and occasional side streets, half a mile, then maybe a mile. We slip around board homes and through hedges. We even pass a few white-columned mansions. They seem misplaced so far away from the sand and brilliant ocean views.

  Gisele takes three steps to my two, but she keeps pace. Clay leads the way without looking back.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I don’t know!” Clay’s head turns from side to side, as if searching for a good hiding place. “Over toward the shipyards? We can wait in the trees until after dark.”

  A warm smatter of rain hits my nose. “Good as any, I suppose.”

  We dodge cars and trees until we reach the woods near the shipping docks. This far back from the beach, two miles at least, the coast is more marshland than forest. Waterlogged banks and soggy trenches stretch as far as I can see, and cypress knees—the roots—lift like reddish-brown warts above the brackish surface.

  Clay and I settle on the solid ground between two trenches while Gisele tries to collect two green horse-apples from a Bodark tree’s low-slung branches. Osage orange is what they call that thorny, thorny tree in reference books, but I know it now by its Mississippi name. Gisele isn’t afraid of the thorns at all. She hops and grabs until she gets what she wants, then bounces back to us, drops on her knees, and starts rolling the horse-apples back and forth to me.

  I stretch forward to catch one, and she gasps.

  “Why you got a alligator on your leg?” Gisele points, and I startle as I realize my cotton dress has scooted up to show part of my thigh. My Amazon tattoo shines like a blue light on my dark skin.

  “It’s a crocodile,” I tell her, snapping my hands near her face. “Jaws stronger than rock, and white daggers for teeth. All Dahomey Amazons wore this mark.”

  Clay turns to look at me, leans forward staring at the tattoo, and for the first time ever, he makes as if to touch me. I barely see the movement of his finger as it stretches toward my thigh.

  I react with no thought. Grab. Twist. Push. Hold.

  In seconds, Clay lies on his back, a victim of my long years of training.

  He coughs. Catches his breath. “Dang, Ruba! Get off me!”

  I jerk my hand from his throat and sit back. “I—I—am sorry. Please, don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t worry about that, ever again!” Clay jumps to his feet and sulks away to sit by a marshy puddle.

  Gisele watches him splash the water, and she giggles. “How did you throw him over so easily?”

  I gaze into her bright young eyes, and something stirs in my belly. She really wants to know. I can tell by the way her eyes shine. “Like this,” I say, and I show her by taking her arm and using my weight and position as leverage.

  Grab. Twist. Push. Hold.

  She gets back up immediately and grabs my arm to practice, and I feel the strength in her hands as she twists and pushes. I don’t fall the first time, or the second. Not even the third.

  On her fourth try, she tips me backward and drops down to grab my throat.

  “Can I be a witch like you?” she begs as she lets me up.

  Clay throws a look over his shoulder as I answer. “Yes, little sister. If you learn your foremothers and your history, and if you trust me. Trust is everything between war women, and between kings and their protectors.”

  “Why did the kings want women to protect them anyways?” Gisele asks.

  “In Dahomey, many men died from wars with other tribes and nations, so the king didn’t have enough to guard him and make his army, too. And most kings thought women were more loyal, more honest. They didn’t let other men stay in the palace after dark. Only women, their advisers and protectors.”

  “Daddy told me about Amazons from Greece or South America somewhere. He never mentioned any African Amazons.” She sits back and chews at her fingernail.

  I grin. “British explorers called us Amazons, after the myths. And they are myths. Ba told me those other Amazons are legends—so we’re the only real ones. The whites didn’t know what to make of us, especially when they saw us fight, so they gave us the only
name they had for powerful women. Now, see those thorns on that tree?”

  Gisele glances where I point, toward the Bodark limbs. Long thorns. Some bigger than the finger I use to indicate them. She nods.

  “African kings planted thorny vines like those branches around their palaces. Thorns that large, and larger. In battle, Amazon women ran at those branches and climbed over without slowing down.”

  Gisele swallows, staring at the thorns. “I don’t think I could do that.”

  “You could with training. Amazons trained all day every day. And they fought. So fierce. So strong! When King Gezo took over, he could not kill the man he stole the throne from, because the old king’s protectors were too strong. King Gezo had to keep the old king in a building on the palace grounds, and send him food. And that old king lived longer than Gezo!”

  Gisele laughs. “Serves Geezer right, stealing thrones.”

  Clay wanders back from his puddle and plops down between us. “Y’all still talking about silly witch stuff?”

  “You the one silly,” Gisele says with a wave. “Ruba’s talking ’bout the African war women.”

  Clay wrinkles his nose. “She’s just saying that. Aren’t you, Ruba? It’s stories to scare people, like old slave tales about boogies and ghosts.”

  “The Amazons are real,” I tell him. “I’m the last. The French killed all the rest in a war. I guard the spirit and memory of King Agaja, who tried to save Dahomey by closing the slave ports. I hope he’ll help me fight the evil of the stormwitch Zashar, who won’t keep herself in the land of the dead.”

  “Stupid,” Clay said. “There’s no such thing as spirits, except in Heaven. And no such thing as witches anywhere.”

  I clench one fist and chew my lip. Our beliefs sound foolish when he says those things. But they aren’t foolish. My throat feels tight. I won’t believe they’re stupid or silly or wrong. I can’t.

  No.

  What Ba taught me, all Ba knew—there’s nothing foolish about those things, at least not to me.