Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  Iris’s cooking magic filled the house. The cobbler aroma made Cinnamon’s stomach twist. “You want to go down and see everybody?” she asked.

  “So we’re not going to discuss my hand, directly,” Marie said. “I’m just saying, so we’re clear what we’re avoiding.”

  “That’s not all we’re avoiding.” Klaus edged toward the door and bumped against a poster of Redwood and Aidan from silent movie days. He stroked the title. “Sorrow Mountain?” He was dying to talk to Cinnamon’s crazy elders.

  “Cobbler’s done. Come on down,” Iris yelled.

  “Cobbler, my grandparents and Aunt Iris, then we three can talk, about everything.”

  Marie groaned. “I have homework. Algebra. Word problems. Yuck.”

  “I love math. I can do Algebra in my sleep.” Cinnamon grabbed the orca with The Chronicles inside. The elders might make better sense of the new chapters.

  “I have impossible music to learn.” Klaus gritted his teeth. “Vati will check me. I have to sing well.”

  “We’ll do a Mod Squad trade.” Cinnamon nudged Marie. “Right?”

  Marie stared at her weird-from-another-dimension hand, shaking her head.

  “Don’t worry,” Cinnamon said. “Miz Redwood’s got a storm hand too.” Marie’s eyes got wide. Cinnamon dragged her and Klaus out the door. They wanted to go anyhow. “We’ll do homework and music fast. And then we can tackle a serious detective mission worthy of Disastronauts and Glamazons.”

  Hillbillies and Country Gals

  “Cinnamon’s international family, hot dog!”

  Cinnamon flinched as Aidan twanged the “o” into a long “aaww.” Nobody said hot dog anymore. Too late to tell him that or run back upstairs. The kitchen was cozy and warm from the oven’s heat. It didn’t look as shabby as Cinnamon feared. Iris had covered naked spots where Raven’s paintings used to hang with African fabric and old theatre and movie posters. Aidan’s animal carvings ran along counters and slithered up shelves. Eagles, osprey, water hens, and an ibis perched on the window sills, peeking through dreary curtains. A hurricane mobile hung in the doorway to the living room — a snarl of black clouds flecked with silver glints. When Cinnamon was little, Aidan and Raven cut a hole in the wall by the door to make a kitchen island/service window. She’d helped with sanding and painting. The elders turned this counter into a hoodoo altar. Seashells and bits of glass glittered in the faint light of hand-dipped candles. A worn, once red leather journal was nestled in a sweetgrass basket surrounded by prairie smoke blossoms, spiderwort, devil’s claw, rattlesnake master, and gourds. Black shaggy acorns the size of grapefruits stood guard on either side of the basket. In the kitchen, mismatched chairs had feathered and mirrored scarves from Redwood’s theatre collection hanging on their shoulders. Sitting down, Klaus and Marie oohed and ahhed.

  Aidan put a mound of chocolate ice cream on top of the bowl of cherry peach cobbler in front of Marie. The ice cream melted on the warm crumbly crust. Aidan set cobbler in front of Klaus. Strips of leather coiled through his long white braid. He wore an Indian Power shirt that Raven had silkscreened. It was similar to what ghost Sekou had worn, but this thunderbird’s wingspan went into the sleeves as it grasped a killer whale with blood red talons. As Aidan bent over with a scoop of ice cream, Klaus jerked as if the fierce bird clawed him.

  “Cool shirt, cool braid.” Klaus tried to recover.

  “My son painted this.” Aidan caressed the rough layer of color on top of smooth cotton. “That one too.” He pointed to the shadow of a bird flying above the kitchen island. Raven had been shot before he could add colors and finish details. Opal had talked about painting over the sketch. She never did. “You know the tales of thunderbird?” Aidan flapped his shirt wings, almost lifting off.

  “Not really.” Klaus shook his head. “I know only Winnetou and —”

  “Winnie who?” Redwood wrinkled her brow. “An Indian from that carnie show?”

  “From Karl May. He wrote the Wild West from Saxony, Germany,” Klaus said.

  “Go out, find a thunderbird tale, and bring it back to me.” Aidan clapped Klaus’s back. “We’ll see if it matches up to what I know.”

  Klaus was thrilled by the assignment. “Sure. I’m on this.”

  “Aidan is like the Wanderer.” Redwood held up the journal from the altar. “He been writing down stories in this book since he was younger than y’all.”

  Aidan nodded. “Cinnamon’s great grandmama, Miz Garnett… Storying was the hoodoo spell she gave me.”

  Cinnamon perked up. The elders never told tales on Miz Garnett, a powerful conjure woman from back in the day. Opal had banned old timey hoodoo sagas when Cinnamon was a little girl. She’d be fifteen in August and had a mind of her own now. Everybody said so. “Are you going to tell us about Miz Garnett and her conjuring?”

  “You know what your mama say on that,” Iris replied.

  “Opal had me believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.”

  Redwood chuckled. “I don’t know the Tooth Fairy.”

  “She trades dollars for baby teeth,” Marie explained.

  “Quarters.” Cinnamon pouted. “Jesus walks on water, a holy dispensation from physics, so —”

  “OK,” Aidan was laughing, “maybe I’ll tell a tale or two for our scientist.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Redwood thrust the banjo at him. “Ain’t nothing like banjo music to carry a tall tale.”

  Aidan hadn’t really played since he got to Pittsburgh. He’d fussed at the tuning pegs or halfheartedly strummed one hillbilly jig or another. After two minutes he’d put the banjo down, in a funk about empty fingers. Music came to his hands, not his ears. His hands looked full of music tonight. Cinnamon wasn’t sure she wanted him to play. Not everybody loved hillbilly tunes, and what if it was tin-can clatter music? Aidan gripped the banjo neck gingerly; desire was in his fingers, love and fear in his eyes. Redwood’s jaw twitched between a frown and a smile. Tears glistened on Iris’s cheeks. Marie and Klaus gaped at the elders. Cinnamon fought mortification at ancient relatives tricked out like old hippies and silent movie stars. They’d traveled the world doing spells and other wild mischief. Who knew what weird from another dimension they might put on tonight? Aidan plucked a few tentative notes.

  “You don’t have to play, if you don’t want to,” Cinnamon said

  “He know that.” Redwood cut her eyes at Cinnamon. “Don’t need to remind him.”

  “Well, one of my favorite TV shows, Hill Street Blues —”

  “Or give him an excuse.” Redwood talked on top of Cinnamon.

  “No Idiot Box!” Iris stunned them quiet. “We got company, theatre folks. I put my foot down.” She muttered about wasting spirit, the fool school, and learning to be nothing. Tension in the air was thick. When sweet-natured Iris got mad, it felt like the end of the world must be nigh. Klaus and Marie looked as mortified as Cinnamon felt. “Advertisers get a season ticket to your mind. I’m not having it!”

  “Sorry.” Cinnamon hadn’t actually wanted the Mod Squad to meet at her house. It was Marie’s idea. She said Mr. and Mrs. Masuda always hovered. Marie’s parents were both research librarians. A secret society meeting without Mr. Masuda snooping and asking research questions would be impossible. The Squad wouldn’t get more than a moment alone in Marie’s room. Mr. and Mrs. Masuda never met a book they didn’t want to open up and read. Marie wasn’t bringing The Chronicles within a mile of her family. If they got wind of ghosts, aliens, and hoodoo spells, they’d kill Marie. Opal wouldn’t have approved of the sci-fi/superstition/magic slop either, but Opal was still laid up in the hospital. Going over to Klaus’s house never came up.

  “You goin’ sit down and stay awhile?” Redwood was tracking Cinnamon; Iris was too. They read her evil bitch embarrassment, no sweat. Cinnamon panicked. Did they also notice that she had turned into a teenage sex zombie?

  “Take a load off,” Iris said.

  “OK.” Cinnamon set the or
ca by the kitchen island altar and sat in the one empty chair, an uncomfortable futuristic monstrosity, what 1960 thought of 2000. Raven bought it as a goof for Sekou. Nobody sat in it anymore. Where would Sekou sit?

  Iris set baked chicken, quinoa, kale, and a whole grain cornmeal biscuit in front of Cinnamon. “You’ve got to eat some real food before I let you at my dessert.”

  “Iris be a Rasta-fructarian macro-neurotic.” Redwood laughed.

  Aidan poked Iris. “She try to blame that on Northampton, Massachusetts, where the coffee is strong and so are the women, but Little Bit picked that up in Oh-high-oh.”

  “I’ll Little Bit you. Y’all need to hush.” Iris poured one of her soy power drinks into wine glasses for everyone. “Can’t have Cinnamon wasting away on us. What would your mother say?”

  “She’d be happy.” Cinnamon wanted the food, but also liked the hollow hungry feeling that had claimed many pounds in the last two weeks. “Very happy.”

  “Opal ain’t always in her right mind.” Redwood never bothered to varnish the truth. “Half a chicken leg and a spoonful of greens ain’t too much to ask. Eat.”

  Klaus and Marie picked up their forks and shoveled huge globs of cobbler à la mode into their mouths. Their faces crumbled around the good tastes working together in great harmony. They guzzled the power drink and gasped.

  “This is health food?” Marie giggled.

  Cinnamon stared at her plate. She hated eating in public. In private, she didn’t have to put up with folks telling her to push herself away from the table before she sat down, before she got something in her mouth. Even people who loved her ragged on how fast she was blowing up, how she’d never find anybody to love all that belly and booty.

  Aidan kissed the top of her head. The banjo banged against his hip and the strings buzzed. Miz Redwood snatched Cinnamon’s wayward braid and tucked it in with the others. Cinnamon pushed the chicken around the plate. It fell off the bone and gave off a compelling aroma. Wasn’t nothing to do but put a piece in her mouth. She got a bit of biscuit and kale on the fork too. It tasted so good, she wanted to cry.

  Aidan whistled. “Who care if Iris can’t carry a tune? She write books and teach college better than she cook, and her cooking be a hoodoo spell, let you fly up to the evening star.” He never got tired of bragging on Iris or anybody else he loved.

  “Yes, that was delicious. Thank you very much.” Klaus wiped at cobbler juice dripping from his chin. He had wolfed down his whole dish in four gulps. The boy wanted to lick the bowl. “Will you play for us?”

  “I ain’t played in a long while, son. I got to have the feel for it, you know?” Aidan winked at Cinnamon. “Maybe when everybody’s done eating.”

  Cinnamon chewed another scrap of chicken. Her stomach was so empty, swallowing food hurt. “I’m trying.” She got a rhythm going from her plate to her tongue.

  “Music would be wonderful.” Marie savored each nut crumble, peach, and cherry morsel. She wasn’t halfway done either.

  “Hurry up.” Klaus jostled her. “Do you need help?”

  “No.” Marie moved her bowl out of Klaus’s range.

  “That’s not so bad, is it?” Iris put another spoonful of kale in an empty spot on Cinnamon’s plate.

  “That is cloth from Mali, yes?” Klaus pointed at Iris’s tunic and skirt.

  She wore mud cloth similar to Cinnamon’s. “Why, yes it is.”

  “Bògòlanfini, handmade from fermented mud. Vati, uhm, my father, he did a chemical engineering project in Mali last year. He brought the cloth home for us.” Klaus turned on Euro-chic charm. “For many centuries, Bamana people in Mali have worn Bògòlan during major life transformations. That’s what Vati’s colleague in Mali told us. I mean, I don’t really know but…”

  “You got it right.” Iris loved cloth and could talk for days about fabric from everywhere and how much it meant. “Cinnamon’s pattern is basiaba, for young women at the crossroads, the border is ce farin jala, a brave man’s belt.” Cinnamon didn’t remember Iris telling her that. “I’m wearing crocodile fingers, a panther’s skin, and the feet of a tortoise, along with the brave man’s belt.”

  “Ce farin jala.” Klaus and Marie captured the music of the words in one try.

  “Thank you, Professor Phipps.” Aidan turned to Cinnamon, who was watching them anxiously. “I guess we’re doing all right for old hillbillies and country gals. I didn’t say nothing ’bout the fennel Iris put in the greens being good for farts.”

  Chuckling, Redwood sauntered in front of Aidan and plucked his banjo. “Quit cutting the fool. Cinnamon is almost done.”

  “I don’t need dessert.” Cinnamon swallowed the last bite of kale. “They can kill it.”

  Iris heaped the remaining cobbler into Klaus and Marie’s empty dessert dishes. “Seconds don’t count, Aidan. You got to play for us. Quit stalling.”

  The rest of the chicken leg and a ball of quinoa appeared on Cinnamon’s plate. Saliva filled her mouth. She felt light headed. Her pathetic lack of will power pissed her off.

  “What you got for me, singerman, besides a fart joke?” Redwood rocked orange silk harem pants with beads and bangles at her waist. Her hair was tucked under a Kente cloth head wrap. Clashing squares and lines of blue, purple, yellow, and green irritated Cinnamon. Nobody had told her what that pattern meant either. And what about the sweetgrass basket with the giant acorns and hoodoo herbs? Too much hidden meaning everywhere and no one telling her what she needed to know. Before mad could bust out all over Cinnamon, Redwood slid her palms along the arm rests of Aidan’s chair and got all up in his face. She murmured darling with a delicious Irish lilt and switched her hips. Talking Sea Island Gullah deep in her chest, she teased him in front of everybody. Klaus and Marie exchanged excited glances while stuffing their faces.

  “Come on, you old swamp dog,” Redwood said, hot and sultry, playing the shameless hussy in plain English. “Conjure me something real good. I want to shimmy shake these old bones.”

  Aidan’s fingers flew up the neck of his banjo.

  “Watch out now! Watch out!” Redwood shouted.

  This music was on a different planet, in another dimension from the fumblings he’d done the last two weeks. Cinnamon polished off the chicken leg and ate a second biscuit without noticing. Her stomach didn’t growl or twist. Marie’s lips turned killer red again. Klaus’s cheeks were splotched with orange as he tried to soak up every furious lick Aidan played. Iris closed her eyes and swayed inside the melody and rhythm.

  Redwood was an elegant dancer. Not a single electron volt of wasted effort. “This ain’t a spectator sport.” She pulled Marie and Klaus up to shimmy shake with her. “You young folks are a tonic. Get us up in the morning right.” She spun and dipped with Marie and twirled Klaus like a top. Her feet turned the floor into a drum. “What I tell you, Aidan? You just needed to play. I knew the music would come on back to you.”

  “Yes, Ma’am, you did.” Aidan had a shit-eating grin. “I was too ornery to listen.”

  “Don’t matter when you see the light, so long as you do.” Redwood grinned too. “You still a conjure man with that banjo.”

  Aidan’s fingers flew into another tune.

  These were the magic hands Cinnamon remembered. When she was little, wound up, wired, a night terror for her parents, Aidan had promised to play her to sleep. Instead of Cinnamon drifting off after a song or two, they’d keep each other up all night, strumming, singing, and howling together, completely off the chain. In the morning nobody scolded or complained. Iris claimed a little night music was good for the digestion. Opal and Raven talked about dancing in sweet music dreams ’til dawn. Sekou usually woke up at 3:00 AM and joined in, playing rhythm. Good for nothing after that, he slept the next day away. Magically Redwood could always do the songs Cinnamon and Aidan had made up in the middle of the night. She’d say —

  “Sing like your life depends on the next note, ’cause mine sure does.” Redwood was saying that right now, wi
th the force of a hoodoo spell.

  “I got me some lyrics now.” Aidan sang with a scratchy, sweet voice.

  Tears filled Cinnamon’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Happy tears for a childhood fairy tale come true. She didn’t care if Klaus and Marie saw her blubbering. Redwood joined Aidan with a tricky high harmony that Cinnamon couldn’t quite catch:

  I see the light, a right bright ole light

  A light at the end of the tunnel

  It ain’t the train, ’bout to run you down

  It ain’t the train, so don’t turn around

  It’s the break of a brand new day, hey!

  I see the light, a burst from the blue

  A spark in the dark for me and you

  I say what you goin’ do?

  Get up off the ground

  Quit messing around

  I say what you goin’ do?

  Hold your head up high

  Spread your wings and fly

  I see the light, a right bright ole light

  A light at the end of the tunnel

  It ain’t the train, ’bout to run you down

  It ain’t the train, so don’t turn around

  Say, it ain’t the train, no way, hey, hey

  Keep on going ’til you find your way

  It’s the break of a brand new day

  The second time through everybody sang the chorus. Cinnamon shook gourds from the hoodoo altar. Marie played silverware percussion. Klaus stroked pitches from the wine glasses. Iris hung onto the melody with folks harmonizing all over the place. Everybody ended on the upbeat, suspended, as if the song went barreling on somewhere without them, as if when it came back ’round again they could get on board where they left off. Marie and Klaus jumped up and down applauding wildly.

  Before Cinnamon could beg for more, Aidan murmured. “That’s all I got tonight.” He set the banjo down carefully. His hands trembled. He rubbed the thunderbird on his chest, or maybe he was clutching his heart. “I ain’t played much for, for…” He was falling into a deep hole. “Let’s see, for —”

  “For four years.” Iris eyes flew open. “Give or take three months…”