“Me neither. I think I know where it came from, though. I just didn’t figure General Gun for having a considerate bone in his body.”
“I dunno, Abs. Suppose it’s actually surveillance? Maybe when we fall asleep tonight, an army of teeny-tiny Greek soldiers is going to come out of it and try to conquer us.”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “Can you not crack any more jokes today, do you think? Can you at least pretend to be taking this whole thing seriously?”
I put my pen down on my sheets of cross-referenced lists of stuff we needed for the wake the day after tomorrow. “Excuse me? What part of me rolling my sleeves up and pitching in with you to help this funeral happen strikes you as me not taking it seriously?”
She growled, “The part where you act as though you’re doing me a favour. He was—is your father, too, you know.”
Ouch. I stood up. “I’m gonna make myself a sandwich. Want anything?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“You betcha.”
There was a big blue bowl on the kitchen counter. It had a wavy raised pattern on it, and it was full of shrimp, scallops, and snow peas in a coconut curry sauce. The blue of the bowl offset the warm yellow of the food perfectly. I could see kari leaves in the sauce, and narrow strips of red sweet pepper. A smaller bowl beside it held a mound of fluffy white rice. There was enough to feed me and Abby each at least twice. The aroma of the steam rising off the curry made my tummy rumble. This morning I’d gotten right to work on funeral arrangements. I didn’t remember having breakfast. “Abby? Did you cook?”
“Did you see me cook? I only got in a few minutes ago. What’s that smell?”
“Hang on a sec.” I put the bowls onto a tray along with a couple of plates and some cutlery. I carried the lot out into the living room.
“Oh, my,” said Abby as she saw what I’d brought.
“I know. Who d’you figure made us this offering? Aunt Zeels, or Grandma Ocean?”
“Maybe both of them. Gods in heaven, but that smells good. Put it down onto the table already, nuh? I’ll take Dad’s ashes elsewhere.”
She took the urn over to the coffee table that was in front of the couch and set it there. Butter, curious, got up onto her hind legs and touched her nose to the urn. Then she caught the scent of the seafood. She sashayed over to the living room table, nearly tripping Abby a couple of times on her way. For the duration of the meal, Butter trolled under the table, sliding seductively against our legs and churring hopefully at us. She was the only one doing any conversing. Abby stared down into her plate and chewed and swallowed mechanically. Though the food was so good that it practically made me light-headed, I couldn’t enjoy it, either. I might as well have been eating from the urn of ashes on the coffee table.
Abby said, “I’m gonna finish my plate in my room.”
“Uh-huh.”
Butter went with her. So then the only noise was that of the occasional acorn hitting the front door. Yup, Abs and I sure were getting along well since we’d cleared the air the other night. No need for me to break away from our holding pattern at all, no sirree.
Well, the details of the funeral the day after tomorrow were pretty much all arranged now. And Abs clearly wasn’t enjoying my company, any more than I was revelling in hers. Good thing I hadn’t changed my plans for moving into Cheerful Rest tomorrow. I’d be doing us both a favour.
I took my plate to the kitchen. I scraped the uneaten food on it into the garbage. Dessert was a couple of painkillers from the bottle of them that I’d taken to carrying around in my pocket. Life was definitely being a big pain in the neck at the moment.
When we were little, Abby and I used to have a ball fooling people into thinking I was her. I’d dress in her clothes, use her crutches. Even though our heads were shaped a little differently and she was smaller than I was, most people who knew us would be fooled, unless they were Family or other black folks we knew. But the last time I’d wanted to play pretend like that, Abby’d nixed it. “It’s not fair,” she’d told me, pouting. “You can be me, but I can’t be you.” I’d argued with her, tried to convince her. But I didn’t fight for it as hard as I could have. She’d looked so vulnerable, little kidney-bean-and-matchsticks body propped up with child-sized crutches.
The next day, I woke up late and gritty-eyed with that flu-like ache you can get after too many stressful days in a row. In the bathroom I swallowed a couple of painkillers. I opened a bottle of the nasty medicine from my dwindling supply. Dad needed to get his ass out of Quashee and into a functioning human body so that he could make me some more of it, pronto.
I put the phial to my nose and grimaced at the smell. I braced myself for the taste. I used the dropper to suck up a dose of it. I opened my mouth and squeezed the dropperful of tincture into it. A flash fire of fury grabbed me. Before I even knew that I’d done it, I’d flung the dropper against the bathroom wall, the spat-out mouthful of medicine not far behind. The dropper shattered into tiny pieces, leaving the black rubber squeeze bulb to drop and bounce erratically on the bathroom tile.
“Maka?” came Abby’s voice from the direction of the kitchen. “Everything OK?”
“Yeah.” Damn. I’d hoped to be packed up and out of there before she woke up. I looked at the half-full bottle of medicine. I didn’t want Dad’s fucking mojo. But I needed it. I swigged my dose right from the bottle.
As I was on my way back to my room, Abs called out, “Do you want some lunch? I made fiddleheads and bacon.”
My favourite. Miss Thing had been trying to be nice to me since yesterday. Well, I guessed I could stay long enough for a meal.
“Maka?”
“Yeah, I’ll have some.”
The smell of greens and bacon cooking wafted at me in a cloud. I retched. My nose was saying yes, yes, yes, but my stomach was saying hells to the no. “Did you burn it?” I asked.
“No.” She sounded puzzled. “Come and eat.”
The smell assaulted me again. “On second thought, maybe later.”
“Oh,” she replied, disappointment and disapproval clear in her voice. “It’s going to get cold.”
“That’s all right.” I went into my room and closed the door before any more of that smell could get in. What’d she done, cooked it in bat piss?
I looked around at my worldly possessions. Not much there. I bet I could get it all packed up in an hour or so. First, though, I needed boxes. And a moving van to load the whole lot into.
Holding my breath against the reek of lunch, I crept out into the hallway. I could hear the sound of running water from the kitchen. Abby was running through her scales as she did the dishes. It hurt my head to listen to her. Man, was the world ever ouchy today.
I crept into Abby’s room. Her handbag was on her bedside table, as usual.
My cell phone said the time was 12:32 p.m. Abby had physio at one thirty. I clambered gratefully back into bed. When Abs knocked gently on my door a few minutes later, it was easy to feign sleep. Not long after that, I heard the car pull out of the driveway. I hoped she wouldn’t need to show her driver’s license today for any reason. Or use her credit card.
I got out of bed and peered out the window. Looked like a sunny afternoon out, though with the crisp cold of a Toronto spring. I dressed in jeans, socks, heavy sweater. In the front entranceway, I dragged on my boots and shrugged myself into my light spring jacket. The ten-minute walk to the subway would probably clear my head a bit.
I was right; the whole thing hadn’t taken much time at all. A couple hours later, I pulled up outside Cheerful Rest in the rented van. My few boxes of stuff rattled around in the back. I took two of the smaller ones up the stairs. I put them down and stuck my sparkling new key into the lock. It caught a little as it turned.
When I opened the door, a dark, muscular wad of fluff slid past my ankle and into my unit. The fuck? I stepped inside and felt around until I found the light switch on the wall near the door and flipped it.
&nb
sp; Yoplait sat in front of me, watching me with a calm yellow eye. “Cat,” I said, “Where’s your daddy?”
“Yoplait!” called a voice from behind me. It was Brie, standing in the doorway I’d left open.
“He’s in here. Come get him.” I moved aside to let Brie in. He was in full dress uniform: black torn T-shirt, et cetera. He looked really good. Still, if I found out that he’d slipped something into my drink that night… I was pretty sure it’d been mojo, though. I was dying to know what Brie was.
“Yoplait,” Brie said, “Get out of here! What’re you doing, bugging Makeda like this?” It was echoey in the empty unit. Living with Abs had taught me to notice things like that. Brie snatched the cat up. From what I’d seen of Yoplait, anyone else who’d tried that would’ve lost a body part. But with Brie, Yoplait satisfied himself with a brief, disinterested yowl. Point made, he settled himself comfortably in Brie’s wiry arms.
“I’m really sorry,” said Brie. “I was feeding him, and when he heard you go by, he rushed out of my place before I could stop him.”
“No worries,” I replied cautiously.
“You finally moving in?”
“Uh-huh. Hang on; is he purring?”
“Yeah. He sometimes remembers how.” Brie gruffly knuckled Yoplait’s head. Yoplait half-closed his eyes and turned his head so that Brie could reach the itchiest spots.
“Wild. Listen, sorry to run, but I gotta empty the van and get it back before the rental place closes.” Abby would figure out soon enough that I’d put the cost of it on her credit card. I didn’t want to saddle her with a late fee into the bargain.
“Sure. Lemme just put Yoplait back inside, and I’ll help you off-load your stuff.”
“No. It’s fine. Thanks, though.” I was going to play it cautious until I could find out what was up with Brie.
He drew back in surprise. “Really?” Then he grinned. “Tough chick, huh?”
“Yup.” He left, and I locked the door behind him. I stepped through the entranceway, just to have a quick look at the space. I still couldn’t quite believe it was mine. I smiled up at the ceiling-scape of clouds in a haint-blue sky. I had finally broken free. My eyes welled up, blurring my vision a bit. For a split second, the clouds seemed to actually be moving against the sky.
I poked my head outside my unit. Brie hadn’t gone into his place yet. He was standing outside its closed door, still cradling Yoplait, looking forlornly in my direction. “It’s no trouble to help,” he said. “Really.”
“I said I didn’t need help.” I left the unit and locked the door. Pointedly tested the lock by twisting the handle and shoving my weight against the door. It held.
“But that’s your van parked outside, right? I peeked inside. No way you’re gonna be able to get that mattress up these stairs by yourself.” He grinned. “Even if it is a single.”
“It’s a three-quarter. Why the hell were you snooping inside my van?”
The door to the unit at the other end of the hallway opened. It was the old Asian guy I’d seen dancing at Soul Chain’s show. He came towards us and headed for the stairs. Seen in the light, he looked frail and a little shaky on his pins. His B-boy jeans and hoodie seemed to hang even looser on him than they had the other night, and he had a bit of a stoop. Hard to believe he was the same man who’d been pogoing like a twenty-year-old a few hours before. “Brie,” he said, “You kicked serious ass last night, man!” It wasn’t just his clothes; his voice sounded like a young man’s, too.
“Thanks.” Brie replied. “This is Makeda; she’s new. Makeda, meet Win.”
“Wayne…?” I said uncertainly.
The old man replied, “Win, as in full of. Brie, you doing a show tonight?”
Full of win. Well, check him out, with the youthful hipster references.
Brie, mock-bashful, cocked his head and said, “I dunno. Looks like Makeda didn’t like it. I may never sing again, Win.”
Win glared at me so fiercely that I actually took a step back. He noticed. He tried, unsuccessfully, to turn the snarl into a grin. “Hah, Brie, such a kidder. No, for real, dude; when next you guys playing? I could really use a lift, nahmsayin’?”
I raised an eyebrow at the black American street slang coming from a Chinese-Canadian octogenarian. Not that I would say shit to him about it. When your elders are millennia-old demigods, you’d best take the injunction to respect your elders seriously. I could no more backchat an old person than I could open a bottle of white rum without pouring the first drops into a glass and setting it aside to feed the spirits.
Brie replied, “Whoa, guy. It’s great that we have fans, nahmsayin’?” Did I imagine a bit of mockery in the way he said that word? “But dude, you gotta give the well time to refill. We can’t perform every night.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Win.” Brie put a steadying hand on Win’s shoulder. “Come check us next weekend, OK? That’s only a few days away. And stop making like such a fanboy. You’re freaking Makeda out. Understand me?”
Win seemed to finally remember that I was there. “Sorry, miss,” he said, shamefaced. He shook Brie’s hand. For a second, he almost looked as though he were going to genuflect in front of him. “OK. Next weekend. I can wait.”
He hitched his jeans back up onto his hip bones and shuffled painfully down the hallway, holding on to the wall with one hand. He struggled a little with the fire door that was in front of the stairway. Brie called out, “You need a hand there?”
Win mumbled a no back. He made it through the door. I could hear the first few thumps of him descending the stairs until the door whispered shut, closing the sound away. Yoplait jumped down from Brie’s arms and stood expectantly at the door to his unit. Brie said, “Just a sec, boy.” He turned to me. There. Right by his head, out of the corner of my eye; the green flash again. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about peeking into your van like that. But it’s not like you’d blacked out the glass or anything, right? Anybody walking by can see your stuff in there, just like I did.”
“Well…”
He ducked his head. “It’s just that I’m really happy to finally have someone in this building I can relate to, you know? I mean, the people in here are mostly fine. But I swear, most of them probably think George Clinton was the forty-second president of the United States.”
I laughed. “I wish.”
“I’m serious! Last week, Erin from downstairs asked me how long it took me to do my ‘braids’ every morning.”
I gaped at the spiky Koosh ball of his short dreadlocks. “You’re serious? Actually, never mind, I know how it is. I was humming ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ at the restaurant last week, and the other dishwasher asked me if I was singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ ’Cause you know, a black woman’s singing a song, so it must be a hymn. I mean, I know I’m as tone-deaf as a cat with a head cold. I could have been singing anything, but really? His eyes almost fell out of his head when I told him it was the Stones.”
“I know, right?”
This was great. If I’d tried to have this conversation with Abby, she’d be falling over herself to point out to me the two black people she knew who’d made the same mistakes. So beside the point.
The corners of Brie’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled, kinda like Uncle John’s. “All right,” he said, “I’m offering for the final time, and then I’ll back off.”
I considered. “All right. You can help me.”
He chuckled. “I knew my winsome ways would work their magic on you.”
“Seems so.” My dad’s side of the Family could do shit like control the weather, for crying out loud. I could handle one skinny, overeager brother.
With him helping, moving in was a breeze. He was easy to work with, laid back but not lazy, chatty but not too chatty. It went quickly. Looked like I would easily get the van back before the late fee kicked in.
Out the back door of the van, Brie handed me two knotted garbage bags. My clothes were in them. I slung them over my
shoulders. He said, “Only one box and your workbench left. How be I take the box and you and I come back for the bench?”
“Good by me.” I went on ahead, with Brie following. Yoplait met us at the top of the stairs, just outside my unit. “Wow. How does he get out like that?”
“My guess is there’re holes in the walls that I haven’t found yet. Cat, quit it! You’ll trip me!”
Yoplait was weaving around Brie’s ankles. I said, “I’ll let him into my place. That should keep him interested for a minute or two.” I opened the door and reached in to flick the light on. With a tiny, satisfied mew, Yoplait scampered in ahead of us. I stepped through the short entranceway and into the main body of the unit. I yelped and dropped the full garbage bags I was carrying; Butter was crouched on the sill outside, pressed against the glass of my lone window. “Butter,” I yelled through the glass, “get down from there!”
“What?” asked Brie, coming in behind me.
I pointed at the window.
“Holy shit,” he said, “we’re two floors up!”
“She got up there by herself,” I said. “She can make it down again.” Yoplait, purring, watched Butter with a cattish lack of concern. Moving slowly so as not to startle her, I picked my way through my junk, over to the window. Butter wove her head to follow me as I moved. I mouthed “Stop following me!” at her. She had her face pressed against the glass to see inside better, the tattletale. Her eyes were taking in everything.
Brie said, “If that little guy falls, he’s toast.”
“Yup. Butter on toast.” I sniggered. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ll bring her inside.”
But the window was the type that swung outward from the bottom. Opening it would push Butter off the ledge. “Oh, crap. I have to go outside to get her down. Wait here.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll be right back.” I clattered down the stairs to the outside, ran around the corner of the building to where my second-floor window was. I looked up. There was the dang cat, sprawled on the narrow ledge as though she were on flat ground. “Butter!” I hissed. “Come down from there this minute!” I’d left her locked in the basement. Goddamned feline escape artists.
Sister Mine Page 14
