Will Do Magic for Small Change

by Andrea Hairston

  “Alternating current. She likes boys and girls,” Marie explained. Klaus groaned.

  “Why?” Cinnamon did a melodramatic dead-person fall into the velour.

  “I went crazy for a moment.” Marie crawled toward her. “You never go crazy?”

  Cinnamon snarled at Marie who stopped crawling just out of range. “Quit moaning, Klaus.” Cinnamon hugged her orca. “You two broke my heart. Not the other way around.”

  “Janice told Klaus guys aren’t my thing,” Marie said. “That’s why he’s mad.”

  “Not only that,” Klaus said. “I —”

  “I made an exception for you.”

  “Danke schon.” Klaus dripped bitter German thanks at her.

  “You happened to me, Klaus, and I didn’t fight it.” Marie hid in her hair.

  Klaus glared at Cinnamon. “Were you making an exception? Only girls for you?”

  “I don’t usually like anybody,” Cinnamon shouted. “It was better that way.”

  This startled Klaus. The wild look drained from his face and cheeks. “Are we breaking up over Janice Fucking Snow White?”

  “Janice will tell everybody.” Marie sounded panicked.

  “Is that all you’re worried about?” Cinnamon shook her head, disgusted.

  “I’m not a coward, but Janice knows my sister,” Marie muttered.

  Cinnamon hissed. “And you’re the good daughter.”

  “Janice won’t tell,” Klaus said. “We know her AC-DC secret.”

  “She doesn’t have to tell. People see us and make up their own minds.” Cinnamon smacked the velour. A dust cloud brought on a sneezing jag.

  “Gesundheit,” Klaus said. “We were trying to warn her about the ASM.”

  “Yeah. You think you know yourself, then you’re kissing someone you don’t even like anymore. How is that possible?” Marie stared at Cinnamon.

  “Why ask me?” Cinnamon stood up. “I was thinking of ditching you both before you ditched me for Janice or somebody cute or just did each other.”

  Klaus stood up and handed her a tissue. “You’ve been waiting for us to —”

  “Betray you.” Marie jumped up next to him.

  “I see how you watch us. Since the audition.” Klaus did Cinnamon’s full body scowl.

  Marie nailed it too. “Yeah.”

  “I was right.” Cinnamon tried to walk around them. They blocked her.

  “You never wanted to trust us,” Klaus said.

  Cinnamon backed up. “But I was right.”

  “Were you?” They said in sync.

  Cinnamon sputtered.

  “We can’t be late.” Marie pulled them out the emergency door. It shrieked at them running along the loading docks to the bus stop.

  Flying

  Star Deer’s studio was spare — hard wood floors, mats, mirrors, and a high ceiling. Windows in the rafters offered natural light. The focus was bodies in space. Star was tanned a deep brown from a trip to New Mexico. Tumbling and flying, she looked fierce and beautiful. She and Daddy had been so close. Cinnamon wondered if Opal was jealous of Star. Jealousy had been a vague notion until this afternoon. If people squandered your trust, what should you do if you still liked them, if you still lusted after them in tight leotards and baggy crops?

  Star tolerated their late arrival, offered Cinnamon a discount-payment plan, and smiled as they fell on their asses. The whole class fell a lot, so the Squad fit right in. Did Cinnamon have a Squad anymore? Klaus and Marie fronted like everything was hunky-dory. Cinnamon should never have come. And why the hell was she running on to Star about the hoodoo spell she wanted to do for Opal, Raven, and everybody — a spell she was no longer sure she could pull off. “Everybody’s stuck on stupid. How can I undo the bad magic if I don’t know the important shit? Like about Daddy getting shot.”

  “A healing ceremony?” Star arched her eyebrow like Marie. “And you come to me because?” She wiped a towel across her face.

  “We found each other doing contact,” Cinnamon replied. “It didn’t look like that today —”

  “We’re usually better,” Marie said. Klaus shook his head, agreeing.

  “You were distracted.” Star blinked slowly, jetlagged. “Focus. You’ll be fine.”

  “So, you’ll help?” Klaus grinned. Did he think she was cute for an older lady? Another fascinating colored girl? The class was full of black and Indian girls —

  “What does Opal say?” Star was Ms. Respect-Your-Elders. “Is she feeling better?”

  “Mom’s driving bus again. I’m meeting her after work.” Cinnamon had almost chickened out, but Redwood wouldn’t let her. “Mom’s on my side these days.” She hoped.

  Star’s eyes crinkled, tiny lines of joy radiating from a warm smile. “OK.”

  “Before we go —” Marie tugged Cinnamon’s braids — “let me catch you. Come on.”

  “From me to Marie and back.” Klaus bounced on his toes.

  Even in a good mood, Cinnamon preferred throwing and catching people to being tossed. She hated flying at anxious, skinny dancers with her hundred-seventy-pound mass. Mad, she had to be two hundred pounds. “What’re you two trying to prove?”

  “It’s gravity, balance, not size, not brute strength.” Marie took a wide stance. “If we focus, we can do it. Trust me.”

  “We’re not breaking up until after,” Klaus said. “After the celebration.”

  “Who says?” Cinnamon said.

  “We’re not petty,” Marie declared. “We’ve got a mission.”

  “Yes,” Klaus said. “We do right. Two votes to one.”

  “Since when is love a democracy?” Cinnamon almost laughed.

  “Verzeihen ist die beste Rache,” Klaus said simultaneously with —

  “Forgiveness is the best revenge,” Marie said.

  Star pretended not to follow their exchange.

  “This is a conspiracy, right?” Cinnamon ran before they could answer. Klaus lifted her. She flew. Marie caught her for a breath, whirled her over a shoulder. Braids and beads snagged. They both faltered for a second. And then Cinnamon was flying again toward Klaus who tumbled with her through a string of forward rolls dissipating their energy.

  “Again.” Star pulled them up. “Tie your hair back. It’s exactly the move you need.”

  After ten times, muscle fatigue halted the rehearsal.

  “What’s your fee?” Cinnamon asked. “Artists should get paid.”

  Star laughed. “Let me show you what I got at Opal’s infamous tag sale.” She led them to a back room filled with fabric and sculptures. Tapestries covered the walls. The rugs were master artworks too. Four of Raven’s paintings — an open air museum in Paris, Redwood and Aidan at the Chicago Fair, a Wild West Show, and Opal and Raven in a desert flash flood — hung around a giant aluminum foil sculpture.

  “Joe made this sculpture altar from junk he dumpster dives.” Star touched a three-legged bench. “Toilet paper rolls, dead light bulbs, broken furniture, and busted TVs. He wraps stuff in foil or coats it with silver paint. For Eshu, he says, and the spaces between things.”

  “Griot Joe?” Klaus asked.

  “A good friend of Raven’s. He and his crow have been crashing here while I was away. I’m a sucker for hard luck stories.” Star folded her arms over her chest. “He told me Guardians might be looking for him. You three fit the description.”

  “We want him at the celebration,” Marie said.

  “Can we use these paintings in the Home Exhibition?” Cinnamon said.

  Star put an arm around Cinnamon’s shoulders. “Opal threatened to burn what didn’t sell. I bought them for you. Dr. Bug-Man bought two.”

  “Oh.”

  Star sighed. “Raven was painting a science fiction epic — an alien meets the orisha kind of thing. He painted his friends into the major characters. Sekou turned the Rain Forest Lounge into a giant graphic novel, The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer. I danced at the opening, but…” She paused, swaying, unsteady on her f
eet.

  The Squad caught her, defying gravity with their shoulders. They clumped together, breathing heavy.

  “I didn’t see what happened,” Star stammered.” I was in the bathroom. I came out after the shooting was over. Opal can’t forgive me…I get it but…Sorry, sorry, uhm Lexy saw more than anybody. Get him to tell you.”

  Star had no idea when Joe would return. Klaus wrote him a quick invitation. Marie splurged on a cab to get Cinnamon to her rendezvous with Opal on time. Redwood had suggested that she and Klaus go along as backup. They were being so sweet — feeling guilty? Weren’t they always like that? New Chronicles pages glowed in Cinnamon’s orca. Instead of awkward conversation, they read Chronicles 24 silently as the Ethiopian cabbie sang a love song to someone half a world away.

  Chronicles 24: Tree of Forgetfulness

  One gunshot at the Rain Forest Lounge pierced Kehinde’s heart, and left me without love. The bullet slammed into Raven Cooper’s head, and I lost my mind. I scattered. One bullet stole most of the twentieth century from me. Years smear across my memory.

  I want to blame that bullet for everything, but actually, after we lost Bob and Melinga, America was a chimera, phantom stories… People danced in the streets. Poets turned shadows into praise songs. Bridges arched across rivers and rocky ravines. My gnarled fingers remember working on the railroad or in mines, ravaging the ground for coal to burn and gold to hoard. Kehinde sang for our supper. I disappeared for tips. Chicago exploded every night. It grew taller, wider, louder, sweeter. Buildings climbed on my back and over the treetops, crowding the stars, shifting the wind, and banishing daylight. People burst in from every direction and dimension. Leaving their stories behind, they became night watch on other people’s glory. Underground railroads no longer carried freedom fighters, but day laborers, horn players, revolutionaries, robber barons, and jazz singers. A cacophony of attitudes, smells, and beliefs rewrote my nerves. Everywhere a different truth was spoken. I don’t know who to remember, what to forget, who to believe. So much joy and suffering, it was terrible and beautiful.

  Writing now, I imagine who I might have been. I make a whole cloth of the fragments. Akan weavers unravel the threads of foreign fabrics and reuse the silk threads to make their cloth stories. The Akan say:

  Don’t let me die in the day,

  Don’t let me die at night,

  Don’t let me die at all,

  But let me die.

  Knife Boy

  Klaus and Marie sauntered into an ice cream shop to wait for Cinnamon. Opal parked the bus in a tight spot, like slipping a hand into a glove. She was shaky on her feet coming down four steps to the ground. A few days on the job and she looked wasted. Seeing Cinnamon, Opal smiled broadly and hugged her so tightly neither one of them could get a breath. “You look beautiful. What’re you wearing?”

  “Iris can make anybody look good.”

  Opal fussed over her braids and Celtic buckle. “You styling the world, huh?”

  They went to the deli Daddy used to take them to after Opal finished a shift. The loud traffic faded behind thick glass walls. A ferocious waitress hurled quips at regulars and charmed or scared away newcomers. Cinnamon and Opal sat in a quiet corner. Opal ordered corned beef on rye with hot mustard and a pickle. Cinnamon got a bagel smothered in garlic-and-chives cream cheese. They were both on good behavior.

  “I haven’t been here since before.” Opal wanted a cigarette. She chewed at the pickle.

  Cinnamon had so much she wanted to say, she was suddenly weepy.

  Opal handed her a napkin. “Talk to me, baby.”

  A young white man pushed through the grimy front door. His bright orange hair was a mess. He blew a crooked nose. The waitress barked at him. He pointed at Opal’s back. The waitress shrugged. He strode over. Opal turned and gasped. She knew him.

  “Sorry,” he sputtered. “They told me you come here after work.” He held up the Hero Mom article. “I had to find you.” He threw his arms around Opal. She hugged him back. It was knife boy, in the flesh.

  “You’re real!” Cinnamon hugged him too. Secretly, she suspected that, despite the article, Polaroids, and long knife in Opal’s closet, the bus tale was wishful mythology — like swimming with seals or having two people like Cinnamon the way she liked them. Proof made Cinnamon’s nerves tingle. Knife boy and Opal chatted. His girlfriend had ditched him — not the end of the world. He had a job and was doing graduate work at Pitt. He ate a grilled cheese and guzzled a pop, glad to see Opal looking good. She was glad he was doing fine too. When he left, Opal’s eyes were wet. Cinnamon pretended not to notice and handed her a napkin.

  “Your grandparents, your great aunt, they’re good for you,” Opal said.

  “So are you.”

  “Look at the weight you lost and all A’s.”

  “I always get all A’s.”

  “I’ll be back. When I’m a fit mother again.”

  “You visited Daddy every day. Why didn’t you —”

  “Driving that bus, I get tired out. There’s peace at Becca’s.”

  “You said you burned Daddy’s painting —”

  “I said a lot of crap.” Opal waved at the waitress. “Can we have more pickles?”

  “Did Daddy cheat on you?” Cinnamon drank scalding tea.

  “What?”

  “With Star Deer or some fancy lady?”

  “No.”

  The waitress approached with a stack of pickle spears.

  “Did he cheat on you with a man?”

  “Hell no. Shush.” Opal snatched the plate. “Thanks.”

  The waitress laughed. “You’re paying for ’em. Don’t thank me.”

  Opal waited until the waitress walked behind the counter. “Your Daddy cheated on me with his art.” She looked out the window. “Star kinda helped us get together, out in the desert.” She grabbed Cinnamon’s hands. “I wish you knew me before, when I was… I wasn’t always a mess. People aren’t only the worst things they’ve done.”

  “I know. We’re fixing up the house, hanging Daddy’s paintings, and clearing out the bad energy, so you can come home. When you’re ready. I’m not telling you what to do or anything.” Talking a mile a minute, Cinnamon told Opal about the exhibition and birthday party. Calling it hoodoo would have upset her. “Lexy has two paintings. Star had four. There were twenty-three under your bed. Sorry for going through your stuff. We’re only missing one painting from Sekou’s list. That’s good, isn’t it? My Squad is doing a show at the nursing home for Daddy’s fifty-eighth birthday.”

  “Redwood says you three are something else.”

  “You’ll come won’t you?”

  “Don’t beg me, baby, you know I hate that.”

  “You have to come. It won’t be the same without you.”

  “We’ll see. Aidan loves the song you’re writing. You want this last pickle?”

  Kevin drove Opal back to Becca’s. Marie called another cab for the Squad, supposedly so Kevin wouldn’t have to drive all over creation. Actually, she and Klaus wanted a report and maybe a little more time with Cinnamon. Doing penance?

  “My mom’s cool. She’ll be there.” Cinnamon wanted this to be true. After five minutes of awkward silence she said, “Let’s read Chronicles 25.”

  CHRONICLES 25: Flash Flood

  From Chicago to San Francisco to Pittsburgh, from 1893 to 1942 to 1982, Kehinde and I searched for Bob and Melinga, for love. We never gave up. As Melinga grew older, we looked for her children. Finally, we searched for grandchildren. A good life.

  A clear memory: We first met Raven Cooper and Opal Jones in desert moonlight, kicking sand at the stars. It was 1970, or 1971, in New Mexico. Slogging by adobe houses at twilight, my mind was blank as hot sand. I carried a heavy pack — a few precious possessions, bedroll, food, and water. Kehinde complained about tired blood and achy old joints, yet kept pace with me. Her small pack weighed nothing. The aje modulated poisons to keep Kehinde fit and spry. Praising the dry heat and her stamin
a, I made a stupid joke on flash floods as we passed the umpteenth warning sign. Kehinde wasted no energy laughing. Star Deer, a dancer friend, had scrawled a map to her cabin on a napkin and given us a key. We could use the place, even if she wasn’t there. Our money was low. It was a good option. We’d walked miles; Star assumed we’d be driving. Stumbling over rocks and prickly cactus, I got us lost. The home star was heading for the horizon. The moon rose and clouds rolled in. Ozone tickled my throat. Flash flood warnings weren’t a joke anymore. As the clouds got deep, we scrambled through scratchy ankle growth that turned into a cactus patch. Desperate for an overview, we climbed up to a ledge.

  Internal combustion engines with poor mufflers echoed in the ravine. A stampede of angry machines approached from several directions. We thought to climb down and flag a vehicle when Kehinde spotted a shotgun poking from the window of a pickup truck. The occupants yelled nonsense in a desert English difficult to comprehend. They gunned the engine. We leaned back into the shadow of the sandstone.

  Raven Cooper roared up on a shiny motorbike and halted under us. He hopped from his saddle and bent over a cholla cactus at the end of a bloom. A spiny, barbed mess of purple blossoms caught the last bursts of starlight. Raven was oblivious to everything else. His focus was compelling. Kehinde nodded. We resolved to know him better. A woman dashed through scraggly undergrowth, pumping her arms and flying with each step. That was Opal, running from the truck that snaked along the road toward us. Opal swerved to avoid a collision with Raven, and a cactus smacked her mouth. A barb ripped her lip, and blood flowed. Balance proved impossible; she tumbled onto the ground. Raven let her catch some oxygen then offered a hand. The pickup sped in, spraying dust at them. Kehinde drew a blade, always wary of armed raiders in the night. Opal stood up slowly without Raven’s help. Her spirit was compelling. We resolved to know her also.

  “You fellas lost? Storm’s coming.” Raven waved at dark clouds. Two men grunted in harmony. No sign of a gun. “This ravine will be a raging river soon. You don’t want to get caught messing ’round in that.” Raven sounded reasonable, as if rape and murder weren’t in the air. Opal studied him.