Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History

by Tananarive Due

  Loretta and I used to stand at the river’s edge sometimes and watch the sky reflecting on the water. Did it through all types of weather, but a pleasant March day was definitely a reason to be out. Felt I was safe from the river when I was with her, like it wouldn’t dare open up and devour me whole.

  What if you die, she asked on this day when Amber had missed another payment to Mr. Washington, putting all of us who worked for him in danger. What if they kill me?

  I didn’t look up from the river. Amber’s falling apart, I said.

  And he should fall apart, she replied. Baby, this is not your problem. He made this happen. Brought it all down on himself. So you gotta fall on his sword? My cousin, he in St. Louis, we could go up there. I could work for him and you could find a job–

  Shining white people’s shoes again? The type of job I got is the only way a negro can live decently. At least negroes who came up poor like us anyway.

  On her face I could see the passing hellfire that she – an angry God – was condemning me to for all my mistakes. I suppose I have to take some credit or some blame, as it were, for how things happened. I’ve been known to blame Loretta for eventually leaving me, or Miss Susan – it was her Little Book of Love Numbers that got all those thoughts cranking through our heads. I’ve blamed Mr. Washington for his harshness and even the whole society of water-women and their wicked nature. But really, if I had left the whole business behind like Loretta wanted, how could things have been any worse? Truth was, I couldn’t leave Amber, the one who was destined to sit on the throne if only he could do something as simple as overcome heartbreak. His face sweating constantly now. His limbs shaking. This damn compassion. This damn empathy.

  A March breeze passed over Loretta and me. It was filled with heat and something that made me feel like a lover, like I could take Loretta into the water and after we finished she’d trust my word forever. Loretta kicked at the river with her bare feet.

  Still cold, she said.

  St. Louis, huh? I said, pitching a rock into the water. Can’t put your feet into the Cross River in St. Louis.

  You worry about the silliest things, she replied.

  Girl, you know Elder Mr. Hawkins called me a poet when me and Amber met with him. He say that ’cause I like to daydream. I never rubbed two words together and made them rhyme, but he right, you know. I wonder how he know I’m a poet at making love, though?

  We talking about our future and you want to make jokes? Even if Amber get himself together and you do move up in the organization, you want to end up a dirty old mobster like Elder Mr. Hawkins?

  I knew Loretta was right – at least somewhat right; Amber did bring this problem on himself – but I could never give Loretta her due.

  I took a deep breath while Loretta lectured me; the sound of my own breathing helped to cancel out her voice. The day was one of the spring’s best, but I didn’t expect the air to be so floral and I mentioned it to Loretta. Then I said what had been on my mind in the last several months:

  I ain’t never been nothing and nobody ever expected anything from me at all. Not you. Not even my mother. You all think I’m not that smart and that’s OK. I’m the underdog. I stick with Amber I could be up there in the organization in the number two spot like Elder Mr. Hawkins. Shit, I could be the next Mr. Washington if Amber don’t make it. Don’t doubt me. You could be the Washington Family First Lady. How about that, Loretta?

  If that’s what matters to you then–

  In my memories, Loretta turns to white dust mid-sentence and blows away, leaving behind the sweet scent of flowers in bloom. My mind is so damaged I can’t tell memories from hallucinations; daydreams from nightmares.

  3.

  Mr. Washington was so furious over the Little family killing that he carved up our territory and threatened to give over our remaining operations to Philemon if we couldn’t pay a $5,000 fine and restitution to the Littles.

  Elder Mr. Hawkins delivered the news coldly and sternly in January – the very top of 1919 – at the funeral for Frank and Tommy, Amber’s best shooters.

  Who the fuck am I supposed to pay restitution to? Amber asked. The Little family is dead! And Mr. Washington didn’t have to kill Frank and Tommy–

  I canceled Frank and Tommy, Elder Mr. Hawkins said. I laid their bodies out by the river myself. They were stupid enough to follow your order to cancel Joyce’s peoples, they had to – trust me, Amber, it was best for you that they go.

  On top of the fines, Mr. Washington stripped us of half our territory and reassigned much of Amber’s personnel. And still we were responsible for kicking the same amount to Mr. Washington every week.

  The debt became a millstone dragging Amber’s operations to the bottom of the Cross River. It’s as if Mr. Washington didn’t want to see us live. Like the folks high up could no longer abide by Amber’s success after the death of the Little family. I wondered why Mr. Washington didn’t just put a bullet in him. Would have been more merciful than this slow usurious homicide.

  Amber sent a fleet of prostitutes into the juke joints and commissioned truck hijackings, but it was never enough. Never did he look less like the heir to the throne. When all seemed lost, Carmen shot into our lives, a little brown-skinned bolt from a cannon. Woke us up when we didn’t even know we were sleeping. I was never clear on where he found her. It seemed as if she had always been there on his arm.

  Carmen was a pretty number. From a certain angle her head appeared perfectly round. Her hair – shiny, black and smooth – stopped where her head met her long neck. Carmen stayed draped in a green dress. Said it was the color of spring. And the spring of Carmen indeed felt like a rebirth.

  It was an April afternoon and Carmen’s green dress had been on my mind for several hours. Three sets of ledger books sat before me – Amber asked me to make the numbers work, but there was no making sense of these numbers so I daydreamed and when I got tired of that I leafed through Miss Susan’s Little Book of Love Numbers. When I got to the chapter titled, “Can A Woman Make a Man Lose His Mind?” I was damn sure for a few minutes that Loretta and Joyce were water-women. They made you fall so deep you never wanted to ever gasp for air again and then they disappeared, leaving you disoriented with your mind buzzing with madness until the end of your days and that’s if you’re lucky. Everyone else they lure to the Cross River and persuade to bury themselves beneath the waves. Loretta and Joyce hid their gills well. I thought of the creased skin beneath Loretta’s breasts. Where was Carmen hiding her gills? They could shift shapes, you know. Maybe Carmen was Joyce returned. No. Amber walked into the office holding tight to Carmen’s hand and her sweet smell deranged every thought I had of the water-women until the images slid from my brain into my throat and tasted like the smoothest ice cream.

  You got time to be reading that witchcraft? he asked. Amber moved as if he had no control over his body and fell into the chair across from me, breathing heavy and sighing before speaking again. What my numbers looking like?

  I couldn’t immediately answer him. I noticed Carmen’s slant smile. Amber too had grinned when he walked through the door, but talk of business had twisted his lips into a grimace.

  I’m not sure how we’re gonna make Mr. Washington’s payments again this month, I said.

  It was a fair enough guess. With the reduced territory there were fewer businesses to intimidate, fewer lottery customers, and Amber had fewer people working for him bringing in any revenue.

  Carmen rested her soft hands on the back of Amber’s neck.

  You need to get yourself a woman, Amber said.

  I’m sorry I can’t get these numbers to make sense, I replied. I’ll keep try–

  I’m talking about what’s really important in this life and you stuck on business. I don’t remember you being this stiff. Didn’t my father call you a poet or something?

  Amber was telling me about Loretta, Carmen said. You been out with anyone since then? Amber’s a good guy, he asked about my friends for you. I got a w
hole army of nice girls. You don’t like one, the next one will be better. They all could use a guy like you.

  See, what I’m talking about, Amber said. This is a firecracker of a woman. What you think of my woman?

  I looked up at the sweep of her hair resting on her cheeks. The black, breathing lines beneath her eyes.

  She hides her gills well, I said.

  Amber and Carmen laughed. I’m glad they took it in the spirit of a joke. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was going to make Amber lose it.

  You know there’s no such thing as water-women, right? Carmen asked with her slant-smile lingering and hanging over me. I didn’t reply.

  Loretta wasn’t no water-woman, Amber said. She just ain’t like your ass no more. Same thing with Joyce. We got to live with that. It takes a special woman to be with guys in this life. Loretta and Joyce wasn’t special enough, but my baby Carmen – he grasped her by the waist and pulled her tight – my baby Carmen ain’t going nowhere.

  Mean-fucking-while, I said. Philemon is the toast of the family.

  Outrageous! Amber slapped the desk. What would happen if I walked right up to him and shot him in his face right in front of Mr. Washington?

  You know something, Carmen said, looking up to the ceiling, her voice all distant and spinning with childlike innocence. There hasn’t been a good firebombing since your dad ran the streets, has there?

  In a different world, Carmen could have run this organization, I’m sure. I feared her and I wanted to devour her.

  To us this was nothing serious; just a prank like streaming lines of toilet paper through his trees. We didn’t mean for it to happen, but Philemon’s house burned. Perhaps I daydreamed too intensely about Carmen’s green and put too much gasoline into the Molotov Cocktails. No one was hurt, but Amber yelled at the old-faced teenagers we hired to do the job: What was in that shit, sunfire?

  He never gave them the second $10 he promised and still they kept their mouths shut and everyone assumed the Johnson Family did it as retaliation for Philemon moving into their Northside strongholds.

  Mr. Washington took Philemon’s advice and ordered all guns turned on the Johnson Family in a sort of unbalanced warfare. When they largely retreated, most of our crew leaders were left with bigger territories, except for us. Somehow our territory shrank and we found ourselves scrounging for every dollar we came across.

  Amber shrugged it all off. I still have this vision of him with his feet up on a table in the office, staring at the air above the ledger as if the numbers were twirling before him, nodding, grimace-smiling, saying, Carmen got this all figured out. Every damn piece to the puzzle. Every piece.

  4.

  Shortly after I began working for Amber, before he became translucent to me – the way Josephus appears in my dreams – my mother sent me to see Miss Susan. She had seen Miss Susan before she married my father (and probably before she started seeing Elder Mr. Hawkins) and said everyone should see her when they think they’re in deep with a lover. I hadn’t even been paid yet and was still living off shoe-shining so my mother gave me money for that old witch. Miss Susan told me to go into the Wildlands and bring her three roots. My mother said, That witch crazy if she think I’m sending my only boy into that old spooknigger forest. She went down to the market and bought three roots and ground them into the dirt so they looked fresh.

  Ms. Susan stared at me. She fingered my naps. Squeezed my face and then she turned my roots in her hand. I had heard rumors that she made you drop your pants and she stared right into the eye of your penis. I silently prayed she let me keep my pants on and thankfully, she did, but, God, the power of this woman! She looked nothing like the grinning old crone they had pictured on her books. Miss Susan looked young and serious. Smooth-skinned. I would have done anything she asked just because of the forcefulness of her voice. So, I said, is Loretta the one? She looked up from my roots with her glowing gold eyes and said, You’re in danger.

  You know who I work for, I said. You not telling me nothing I don’t know.

  That’s not why you’re in danger. It’s your heart. If you know what’s good for you, you’re gonna stay the hell away from the river.

  I left with a bunch of her books and walked straight to the river to sit and read. And that’s when I heard them calling me. A wispy sound rustled in my ears and I felt drunk, pleasant drunk without the anger or the bitter taste on my tongue or the physical burn of liquor corroding my insides as it passed through.

  The world looked wavy, but I saw it – that diamond island rising from the Cross River like a ghost ship out the fog.

  And those water-women dove from land and swam to me. They rose out the water, brown and nude, their skin shining with the life-giving water of the river.

  Numbers-boy, the water-woman in the front said. Hey, Numbers-boy. You got a number for me?

  All those women turned into one. She reached for me and caressed my face. You’re beautiful, she said. Anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful?

  She grabbed my hand and placed it on her naked hip.

  Don’t be afraid, she said. When I looked into her eyes, we lived a whole life, from awkward first steps together to deep deep commitment. I could never look at another.

  Loretta, a voice called from the island.

  Your name is Loretta? I asked. Like my Loretta?

  No, she said. I’m better than your Loretta.

  Without another word, she turned and dived back into the river. Perhaps she didn’t have all of me. Some of me was back with my Loretta because I realized this was a trap. This was exactly how Miss Susan described water-woman seduction in her books. So many lovers, like the poet Roland Hudson, dived to their ends after these deadly tricksters. I took a step toward the water. Then I stopped. Self-preservation kicked in and I remembered they weren’t even women or human, but evil-intentioned beings with secret gills tucked away somewhere.

  The island descended from mid-air into a thick fog, sinking slowly into the black water. And even though it nearly caused my death, the feeling I had there by the Cross River was the greatest feeling any man could ever experience. I cried hot tears that night waiting for the water-woman’s return.

  I knew nothing in life would ever feel like staring into her brown eyes, touching the warmth of the flesh at her hip. Nothing. I would chase women, try to experience bliss in all things, but no experience I ever had could fill my soul this way. But if I ever returned to the river and that island decided to rise up, I knew I would die.

  Not a bad way to go, huh? Drowning in a water-woman’s light.

  5.

  Carmen disappeared, not by train, but by wind. To hear Amber tell it, they had spent the afternoon downtown on the way to purchase a ring when she walked out ahead of him. She smiled, not the slant-smile, but a broad true one and then she stretched out her arms like a bird preparing for flight. Oh, Amber were her last words before the soft brown of her flesh turned into a fragrant white powder. When the breeze came, scattering pieces of Carmen throughout the town, Amber grabbed clumps of her powder and tried to put her together, but the grains of Carmen slipped between his fingers, leaving traces of her in the creases of his hands, embedded between the threads of his clothes and curled always in the coils of his hair.

  It’s like my dream, I said the night of her disappearance. Water-women. A plague of them.

  I need to smoke, he said, walking to the door. Come and get me in ten minutes so we can finish the ledger. Business first, right. I’ll be OK by then.

  It only took two minutes to figure out that he was going out into the pitch of the night to find Carmen by the river. He had left the car, so I figured he was walking briskly south toward the bridge. Their voices would soon be screaming through his head, crowding his lonely thoughts.

  Turns out there couldn’t have been a worse time for Carmen to blow in the wind. I took two steps into the street and felt a hand grab my arm: it was Fathead Leroy, a guy who took numbers for Amber over on the Southside.

&n
bsp; Man, he said. I got rolled for my numbers slips. I don’t know that shit by heart like Amber.

  Who got you? Somebody with the Jacksons?

  Naw, look, you know Todd who work for Elder Mr. Hawkins? Him and a guy I never seen before. A white guy. I think he from Port Yooga. They looking for you and they looking for Amber. Told me to tell you not to burn nothing you can’t pay for. Cracker punched me and threw my betting slips into the river. I don’t got the standing to do nothing against someone as high up as Todd. You and Amber gotta get this right for us out on the streets.

  I looked over Leroy’s shoulder. It started to play as a setup. Not too far in the distance I saw Todd with a big white man who stomped toward us like a gorilla. How could I leave the office without my piece? Loveblind Amber probably hadn’t spent two thoughts on packing. I dipped my head and turned from Leroy before breaking into a jog. Perhaps they ran behind me, but I wasn’t willing to spare a glance. The shadows of the Wildlands called. When I entered them, the dark grew heavy and I swore as I dashed through the stream that pieces of the dark flaked off and covered me. I came out into a clearing and could see the gleam of the moon casting down on me. This was a circuitous route to get to the Hail Mary Bridge, but it would keep me alive long enough to find Amber. I imagined him standing above the waters, waiting for Carmen to beckon him beneath the choppy surface.

  The closer I got to the river, the louder the buzzing vibrating in my head. I felt as if something kept lifting me into the air with every step. It was a beautiful tone shooting from the depths. My skin grew warm, suddenly flush with blood. Part of my mind called me to turn around to save myself. Who would I be if I bowed to the gods of self-preservation when Amber was in danger? But Amber could already be a bloated corpse, the beasts of the river tearing at his dead limbs. What a liar I am. This death march felt good, that was the truth. That’s why I plowed deeper into the forest. It felt just like floating on my back beneath the sun in an ocean that rocked with a loping rhythm. All that remained was for me to dip my head under.