by Yaba Badoe
‘Mama Rose, the daughter of a lord? And Redwood?’ Cobra asks me.
‘Name’s…’ I pronounce it as if I’m deciphering a foreign language, one syllable at a time. The name of a stranger: ‘Cuthbert Xavier Carter the Third.’
Cobra shakes his head, mutters, ‘Whoa … this has to be some kind of sick joke.’
He looks from Miguel to Grey Eyes. Miguel shrugs, Grey Eyes chortles. Barrel Man starts sniggering as well, though he has no idea what he’s sniggering at. Miguel stares at him and in a beat the sniggering stops. Only one laughing now is Grey Eyes.
‘You see,’ he says. ‘Your nearest and dearest are not who they claim to be. If they’ve lied to you about who they are, what else have they lied to you about?’
‘Too true,’ Miguel adds. ‘They could be murderers, terrorists, for all you know. You should be grateful we got to you in time.’
I sniff and jut out my chin as the old certainties of my former life begin to ebb away, along with everything I hold dear. ‘They’re wanted for questioning, nothing more!’
‘That may be so,’ says Grey Eyes, ‘but wouldn’t it have been better if they’d let you in on their secret?’
Cobra catches my eye and I keep quiet.
‘Now, my dears,’ Grey Eyes says, ‘it’s time you called your guardians to let them know where you are. You’re here as our guests, mine and Miguel’s. You’ll attend the gathering we’re orchestrating tonight. We’ll feed you and look after you and you’ll play your part until such a time as your people bring us what we want.’
*
They tell us we’re their guests and then lock us up. Properly. Not with a click-and-spring-easy-to-pick lock, but with a Yale lock, deadlocks at the top and bottom of the door. Barrel Man is on guard outside. He wanders up and down the roof terrace on the look-out for Priss. Scans the horizon, disappears and returns with a hunting rifle. Waves the rifle in the air and when he sees I’m watching him, takes aim. ‘Pow! Pow!’ he croaks. Ugly toad turns and smiles at me.
If I was alone, I’d cover my face with my hands and bawl. Create havoc by ranting and raving, for plain as night is night and day is bright, we’re trapped in this nightmare ’cause of me. I insisted on staying when the Old Ones said no. Found Isaka, but when Cobra said, ‘Hurry, let’s go,’ stood my ground. The situation we’re in is one hundred per cent my fault.
I hang my head in shame, but Cobra doesn’t pile on a barrow-load of blame to add to the burden I’m carrying already. Doesn’t make me more dejected by saying: ‘Told you so! Told you we should get out fast.’ No. He touches the bruises on my chin and lip: Isaka’s punch. The ache around my neck: Barrel Man’s throttlehold. Eyes closed, my eyelids quiver as the tips of his fingers search my skin for twinges. Cobra eases my pain and the kindness of his touch brings tears to my eyes.
I cry hard, my heart breaking, and Cobra holds me, his scent of peppermint and cloves enfolding me. I savour his smell and snuffle it up as he rocks me back and forth, like Mama Rose does when I’m in despair. ‘We’ll be OK, Sante,’ he whispers. ‘I’ve got your back, you’ll see.’
He tries to comfort me but all I can do is wail: ‘What am I to do? I can’t take Scarlett’s place. Can’t see a way out of this. Can’t!’
Soon as I say those words, I hear Redwood talking to me:
There’s no such thing as can’t. Kant is a German philosopher who died in eighteen hundred and four. Of course you can find a way out of this mess, Sante-girl. Think it through, kid, and you’ll work it out.’
‘Thank you, Redwood. Or would you rather I call you Cuthbert Xavier Carter the Third?
‘Do you think they’ll pimp you out as well?’ I ask Cobra.
We’ve already called the number in Granada Midget Man gave us. Left a message on the answerphone that we’re in serious trouble and Mama Rose should get in touch with us as soon as possible. Grey Eyes took our phone. Said if anyone called us back, he’d speak to them directly.
Cobra, sitting cross-legged on the bed, rests his hands on my knees: ‘They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to, Sante,’ he says. ‘They can’t, not when you’re with me.’
‘But I don’t know the rules of the game they’re playing. Do you, Cobra?’
He smiles, one of his slow, reassuring smiles, and says: ‘They do what they want. Whatever makes money for ’em they’re on to it. What they don’t know and can’t understand are the sorts of games we play.’
He rubs my knees. Soothes my trembling and says: ‘Take what happened to the dagger downstairs. Did you see what I saw? Did the dagger rise and fly into the wall?’
I’m wary of where this is going.
‘Do you know how that happened, Sante?’
I shake my head.
‘Nor do I,’ he says. ‘But it worked for you. Somehow you were able to harness that power and use it to get the truth out of Isaka.’
‘But I don’t like ’em, Cobra. I don’t like those spooks around me.’
‘It was a bit like that with me and snakes to begin with,’ he says. ‘Didn’t understand what was going on, but then I learned to use my gift.’
I take Cobra’s hand, lay it on my cheek. He closes his eyes and as his breathing deepens, I sense he’s doing what he does best: delving into himself to summon snakes. Seen him do it in forests, moorland and plains. Dry lands, wetlands. Cobra sits down, closes his eyes and serpents crawl to him out of nowhere. Happens in the sea and rivers as well. Sea serpents and eels slither to where he is. This time, in a rooftop prison in old Cádiz, as Cobra’s scent gradually fills the room, my senses twitch and I listen to the wind.
A breeze swings clothes on a washing line. Line wheezes, a chesty old woman struggling up a hill. There’s a tinkle of piano music in the air. Courtly, classical, same passage again and again, as someone practises. Down below a woman gurgles at her baby, calling him precious, delightful, her treasure. Coos at him, then sings him a lullaby as the wind dances over rooftops, past windows and balconies, tickling the leaves of creepers and trees.
Sounds around me disentangled, I discern a hiss of movement, the crackle of paper. From my rucksack, propped on the wall, Bella and Scales, Cobra’s oldest, most faithful snakes emerge. A brown snake and a black snake. I had no idea he’d brought them with us. They slide and coil on the floor, up a leg of a bed, over a blanket on to Cobra’s lap.
He caresses them: ‘Bella and Scales,’ he says, ‘I’m asking for your help. Find your friends. Bring them here. Listen for the music of the flute and come back in your hundreds to dance with me.’
Cobra opens the window in our room, opens it a crack, and Bella and Scales slip into the noonday sun.
14
By the time Concha arrives at seven o’clock, my nerves are jangling. Concha – the woman who’s going to get me ready for Miguel’s party. She came earlier this afternoon to size me up. Took my measurements, wondered out loud if she should buy me a padded bra to make me look bigger on top. Made me walk up and down the room to see if I could manage high heels. I said no to both. Cobra laughed at the expression on Concha’s face when I told her the only boots I’ll be wearing tonight are my biker boots.
‘It’s easy for you to laugh,’ I said. ‘They’re not going to dress you up and parade you like a puppet in front of strangers.’
‘Oh, but they are,’ Concha tells us. Wipes the smile off Cobra’s face and then takes his measurements as well.
I’ve been walking up and down the room ever since, thinking and plotting, while Cobra stretches on the bed resting, preparing for what lies ahead. Up and down a hundred times over, thinking about Mama Rose and Redwood. Hard to imagine that those closest to you can pretend to be someone they’re not for so long. Say as much to Cobra, who replies:
‘Let’s hear what they have to say before we make up our minds.’
Cobra isn’t one to leap to conclusions. Not that my mind’s made up. No, sir! But that first whiff of suspicion puts a new slant on our past. And the more I walk, the more
the past begins to look like a different place.
‘What Grey Eyes said sort of makes sense,’ I tell Cobra. ‘All that moving about, all that hiding out in wild places. What if we’ve been living off the grid not because of what’s good for us, but ’cause of them? They’re missing, wanted for questioning. They don’t want to be found. Don’t want anything to do with the police.’
Cobra swings his legs around. ‘Could be our interests coincide with theirs. Could be living off the grid keeps all of us safe. “Could be” has a million faces, Sante. Let’s see what they say next time we talk to ’em.’
‘But they’ve lied to us, Cobra!’
I walk up and down, down and up, round and about in a circle, as frustrated as Priss would be in a cage. I miss the swoop and swell of her, the strength of her talons on my wrist, the smell of her. Heart pounds and I start to sweat. Shiver and shake like a fox in a trap. I trample the ground, gnawing at my tail until Cobra says:
‘Sante, you’re not going to get out of here any quicker by making a furrow in the floor.’
He puts a hand on my shoulder, turns me around and holds me.
‘We’re going to be OK, Sante. Long as we’re together we’ll be fine.’ He pulls me to him and hugs me. Then, suddenly, his mouth is searching for mine, and before I can pull away, every single bit of me is crying – eyes, heart, body, soul. I’m sobbing and all of me is reaching out and clinging to Cobra as he kisses me.
So this is what he tastes like. My body wants to stay in the pit of his warmth. Wants to hold on to him for much longer. His scent of peppermint and cloves sweetening my mouth, I tear myself away to clear my head. Didn’t know a kiss could touch the bottom of an ocean as deep as this, drag everything up, and yet feel so good.
Eyes shining, Cobra dangles his fingers in the palm of my hand, lifts it, and kisses it: ‘Stay close to me tonight,’ he says. ‘We can look after each other.’
‘Stay together, look after each other.’ I repeat his words. I’m about say them again, a spell to bind us and keep us safe, when Barrel Man barges through the studio door.
Sniggers at Cobra, his arms around me, and laughs. ‘Better make the most of the time you’ve got now, lovebirds. Who knows who you’ll be with by daybreak!’
Concha, behind him, shushes him and shoos him away. She’s already dressed for the party: black lace, bare shoulders, black hair swept under a hat with a veil that floats over her face. Tall and elegant. In her hands, a polythene-swathed dress and suit, which she balances on a hinge of the door.
She turns to me, clapping her hands and says: ‘You’re beautiful.’ Concha steps closer and smells the stench of fear on me that even Cobra’s kiss can’t hide. ‘I’ve got a little something to help you, my dear.’
She opens a huge bag that’s even bigger than Mama Rose’s and brings out a flask. Pours me a cup of hot, brown liquid. ‘Drink it.’
Don’t want to drink it. Could be laced with liquor, or worse: a liquid something that eats away at me so they can do with me as they please. ‘No thanks.’
‘You’ll feel better.’
I grit my teeth but in a flash she pries my lips open, raises my chin, and pours the liquid into me. Empties half the glass down my gullet before I start to gag, and then passes what’s left to Cobra. I wipe my mouth and taste a residue of thick sweet chocolate with a zest of orange and a trace of something I can’t quite place. Warmth floods through my body. Nerves tingle with relief. Body yawns and sighs, stretches, a skylark flinging back its head about to sing.
Within two shakes, I feel as if I’m warbling, then up in the air gliding, higher and higher, on skylark wings.
Concha pushes me into the bathroom. Turns on the taps and when the bath is almost full sprinkles bergamot and lavender oil in the water. I scrub myself and my mind empties. No more visions of shipwrecks. No more pitter-patter of the restless dead or bam-clash of Isaka and Barrel Man mauling me.
All too soon, Concha hauls me out again, yet the hot chocolate and scented water are still working on me. I’m humming to myself, moving from one moment to the next as if I’m waltzing weightless in a dream.
Concha slips a black petticoat over my head, sits me on a stool and applies make-up to my face. Steps back to examine her work: ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, a glint of ice sparking her eyes. ‘They’ll only be looking tonight. Looking, not tasting.’
She piles my hair into a bun. Twists it, pins a posy of red hibiscus flowers at the side. Takes down the dress, pulls away the polythene and shows it to me.
I shake my head.
‘Try it on,’ Concha urges, unzipping the dress. Then, a glint of steel sharpening her voice, she says, ‘It’ll be much easier for both of us if you don’t make me force you into it.’
I put on the dress. Concha zips me up, turns me around. Red silk pinches so tight, my bum sticks out. I stare at the reflection before me. I twist and turn. My likeness twists and turns as well. My reflection echoes me and yet isn’t wholly mine. Arms on hips, I look over my shoulder at the apparition staring back at me. Something doesn’t fit. And I don’t mean the peel-me-off dress I’m wearing. I dress up every day when I’m working, and at times, playing with Cat, I pretend to be older. This is different, disconcerting, as though I’m looking at a version of myself I’d rather not see; a presence that’s revealing itself at the same time as it draws me in.
Then it comes to me: it’s the face that’s tugging at my heart. A face I vaguely recollect from my dreams. Perfect oval, high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, ebony skin with a lustrous sheen. And those lips! They look every bit as luscious as the cherry-black fruit they’re coloured in. I twist and turn some more. Smile and those eyes smile back at me, as if to say: ‘I knew it! I knew I’d see you again. Come closer. Let me look at you.’
I step closer and a distant memory flexes and stirs. I feel the soft curves of a woman’s body, smell the scent of mangoes on her breath, as a voice from my past says: ‘Asantewaa, my, how you’ve grown. My princess! My little princess.’
I look around me, trembling as Concha pulls a pair of killer-heel stilettos out of her bag. Dangles ’em in front of my nose as if I should be excited. As if this is my reward for being pliant, my special treat for letting her paint and shape me.
‘No,’ I say. I say no a second time, then a third. And each time I say it, emboldened by that memory of a distant past, I say it louder and more determined than the time before. That forgotten muscle stretches and yawns, warming up for what is yet to come. If resolve has a face, I reckon it’s mine. Concha puts the heels away, I pull on my biker boots, and I’m done.
15
Cobra and I walk into the party hand in hand, Concha and Barrel Man either side of us. Cobra in white tuxedo, bow tie and black jeans, as if we were going to a school prom. Concha pushes us in. Straightens my back, by standing straight as a rake herself. Lifts her chin and all eyes turn to look at her, then at Cobra and me.
We’re used to folk staring at us. Step into the ring and heads swivel. This feels different, the room especially. What looked light and airy in daytime is cramped, crowded with indistinct shapes and a combination of smells: wisps of cigar smoke and the salt tang of the sea underlined by a heady crush of sandalwood. Room’s dim, candles flicker in silver candelabra and chandeliers. Faces, distorted by wavering shadows, loom and leer, while the eyes of strangers weigh us up, like lumps of meat they’re planning to eat.
My heart skitters. Cobra’s fingers tighten around mine but I can’t stop trembling. In my mind’s eye I complete the rituals I go through every time I perform. Kiss Priss, touch her feathers for luck, rub sawdust on my hands, and I’m on. Shoulders back, big confident smile. I sense a change in Cobra as his chest expands and his greens light up. He catches my eye, smiles and flashes open his tuxedo. Tucked in the inside pocket is Mamadou’s flute.
I pull Cobra closer and kiss him on the mouth. All it takes is a single kiss, a quick nip of his lips and my trembling eases and the party fades away. I make-believ
e it’s just me and Cobra telling the whole wide world, and anyone else who cares to know, that we’re more than friends, and better than kissing friends, we’re together.
‘Enough of that,’ says Barrel Man and pulls us apart.
He hauls Cobra to the far end of the room while Concha, hand on my elbow, guides me to an alcove by the balcony. Barrel Man hurries back and stations himself in front of where I tried to escape a few hours earlier. Ugly toad has no idea what we’ve got planned for tonight, no idea at all. None of ’em do.
Midget Man and Mimi are always telling me that the best way to take the measure of a dangerous situation is to listen to it. Listen to the wind and you’ll sniff any trouble coming your way. Sniff it out, and you’re better prepared to deal with it; better prepared to fix your gaze on it and slay it.
I close my eyes and the room presses in on me and reveals itself in a tinkling of glasses and clink of ice. Slugs of liquor swill down gullets. Tongues slither and slurp, scooping out oysters. Liquor. Seafood. Insidious chatter. Beneath the insistent buzzing of old men and women are the nervous tweets and twitter of young ones. The wind never lies. Even before I open my eyes to try to understand what’s going on, I sense that I’m eavesdropping on predators and those they prey on.
My eyes open and what was dim becomes clearer as a blur of colours riot around me: sombre, evening pigments in purple, burgundy and blue. Sudden flashes of jewellery: pearls, diamonds, rubies. Pendulous earrings on sagging earlobes, lumpy necklaces around scrawny necks, and on thin, limp wrists, ornate bracelets of a bygone era. Gaunt-faced women, hair topped with tiaras, open their arms. Fusty-looking men lick their lips. And all of ’em, every single one of the old folk at the party, swarm like bees over young ones. At the heart of the proceedings, a ringmaster orchestrating the event with the help of Miguel, is Grey Eyes.
A glass of whisky in one hand, a cigar in the other, he moves in the shadows from one group to the next. Flicks ash on the floor and I notice that the little finger sticking out from his glass is much smaller than the other. I study him closely as he makes connections, introductions. An elderly man kisses the hand of a flaxen-haired teenager. Her eyes flinch, even as her lips open in a smile. She offers the old man a drink, sits down beside him. Strokes his legs, paddles her paws in his.
