by Nisi Shawl
“Little man, you are all flat on one side. Didn’t Nurse pick out your hair this morning?”
“Oh, that one danced his heart away at lunchtime today!” Jahs says. “He danced so much, so hard, he fell asleep under the beards of the cypress and just slept the whole afternoon through. That’s why his hair is ruint. We were loud loud loud, quartersawing the good mahogany into planks. But even that noise couldn’t wake him.”
Savary snuggles and whispers; Jahs calls to Redamas.
“Watch out, my baby doesn’t go dancing over the edge of this roof. Exca senyora éeu vamos abajo um ratinho.”
Redamas says, “Um ratao, mas bien,” and grins and winks at Jahs. Savary laughs out loud. He reaches and she reaches back to take his hand; their fingers squeeze, then let loose. Mamans go downstairs to the big bedroom to be alone together. Jahs never goes to be alone with Redamas, and Savary goes much more with Jahs than she does with Redamas.
“Papa?” I feel I shouldn’t ask, but I must know. “Would it make you sad if Ma Savary and Ma Jahs loved you only half as much as they love each other?”
“Oh, no. It would make me very happy. Half as much is a lot!” Redamas laughs. “You don’t understand, my son—everything here makes me happy. More than anything I wanted to have family. A daughter, a son: so it makes me feel up to the very top of happiness that two women chose me. I was just the loneliest across-bayou, you can’t even imagine. Do you know how lonely the gods are? We are so lonely, there are so few of us, that ghosts are our teachers. Ghosts are our friends. We…open a box, and ghosts come out to tell us the things we need to know. Where are the people? Where are they? Only ghosts!”
“DI. Discorporate Intelligences.”
Redamas smiles. “Yes, DIs, like you said. I shouldn’t call them ghosts. We know better, you and me.”
“Why are you laughing, Papa?”
“Your Johnny accent, it’s very funny. I really should speak more to you in the language of the gods. But it’s so sweet, it’s funny, the way you say that.”
“Do a trick for me now, Papa. I like it when you do magic.”
“What should I do?” Redamas lifts a hand, all conjure and flourish. “Maybe I will make you go to sleep.”
“No, don’t! I hate that one. Don’t make me sleep, Papa!”
“Are you sure?” Redamas twinkles his fingers. “My DI always said it’s my very best trick.”
“No. I hate it. Please!” I grab his hand tight and hold his fingers still. “Do another. Something else!”
“All right, all right.” Redamas shakes his hand free; he smiles. “How about this?” As glowing coals in a fire are steeped with richer color than the fire itself, so, pale as moonlight, a shine appears in the air around Papa’s head, and where his naps grow, not black but indigo-color, round the edges of his hairline, the widow’s peak, sideburns, and kitchen: every curly strand fills with brilliance, the way hot coals do, but this light makes no heat, and it shimmers, blue as the sky at noon.
“More! Brighter! Like a strike of lightning. The way you did that other time!”
“Oh, I can’t, little man. Not tonight. All day long it was so cloudy, I hardly got a taste of sun.”
Because he’s sitting I can stand there and pat his hair while the blue light dims between my fingers and goes dark. When it’s gone, I ask another question.
“Now I want to know something important. Batalha has blue in her hair—”
“Your Papa never dreamed he’d burden any son or daughter with divinity, little man. But you are every bit as much my child as Batalha. Now I explained this to you: Ma Savary has a little divine inheritance, as it turns out. That’s why, with her recessive allele, only daughters and not sons…”
“Yes, yes, Papa. I know, I know. You said before. The thing I want to know is, when my hair is all white as sand, my face wrinkled-up like dry fruit, and I need two canes, one for my right hand, one for my left: will you, Papa—you and Batalha—still have all your strength and all your youth? Is that true?”
“Who said those words? Who? Where did you hear such things?”
“Kéké at the boatyard. He said when I am many many years drifting in the sea, just some old bones eaten up by fishes, even then you will be as young and fresh as you are today.”
“Well…we are all here now, little man. Ma Jahs, Ma Savary, Batalha, you, and me. The night is good. Why should we worry so much about tomorrow? You are very young; we have a long, long time.”
“But is it true, Papa?”
“You mustn’t worry about such things. That Kéké is not a very nice boy. I’m going to go down to the boatyard and have a talk with him tomorrow.”
“Oh, don’t, Papa! Kéké is very handsome.”
“But, little man, that’s not a good reason to let him say mean things to you.”
“I don’t mind, though. It’s all right, really. Don’t come down to the boatyard and scare him, Papa. Please!”
“Because you say so, I won’t make him scared. But I must go and say something to him, I must. I just don’t like what he said at all. Pass your Papa the palm wine jar there, will you?”
φ
[Nights yet]
“Batalha! That short Johnny, the one who trains you miliciales with the spear, I heard him tell Papa you’re the best by far of the bunch. And Papa said to him, ‘Yes, but you must never say so to Batalha; her head’s that big already.’ Papa said the gods once all had such, such ‘mesomorphy and kinesthesia’ as you. He said that you’re a—what did he say?—‘throwback sport’ to those days before the gods intermarried so much. When Batalha grows up some, Papa said, and comes into her—he called it ‘perjuvenescence,’ then she will be a match even for the paladin of the Godspear.”
Batalha smiled down at him, and all her teeth showed. As if against a monster, she brandished some imaginary weapon—nor could the paladin himself, with his spear all ablaze with sun-stuff, have outmatched her gallantry. Batalha said, “You heard him? Papa said that?”
“Yes. But then Papa said, oh, you’re a grief to him, and ‘Among all hardheaded daughters of the world, chief of them, because my Batalha just will not practice her psionics properly.’ Papa said you could be a great adept if only—”
“Chaw!” Batalha sucked her teeth, dismissing the rest with a turned-up palm. “I do not care about any damned psionics. Nothing in this world is more boring than sitting all day long, numb-assed, trying to think no thoughts at all. One-pointed concentration! O my brother, I sure hope you feel lucky, that Papa never bothers you about magic and stupidness!”
In fact, the least whiff of fatherly impatience or motherly frustration wafting his way tended to suffocate him like smoke, to choke off his capacity for disobedience or even dissent, until his own desires clogged in his throat, voiceless and caught. Batalha, though, argued for what she wanted. They could say, No, You mustn’t, You’re too young, and all of it was like nothing to Batalha—silliness, easily crushed with one hand. Her fierce words slapped parental “Nos” out of the air like gnats. Only train with the full-time miliciales? Ha! Batalha wanted to be a Johnny soldier! Her spear, her sash, her cuirass. And who of them rode better? Not even Papa! Yes, the big mean stallion: that one should be hers! Batalha had only to set her sights, and soon she would be getting her way.
Now she wanted to drink the wine of Sea-john’s nights, and no little cup for her, and no watering, either. Just like the other miliciales she could walk the waterfront late late late through the drunken crush, in blackest night, and kick the ass of any bully hassling the sugar girls and beaux boys. Oh, he worshipped his sister; of course he did! Who, so young, was more mighty, had more swagger? Pick anyone from the whole wide world: there was no one else, only Batalha! So much the warrior was she that her old name fell away for this nom de guerre.
“I don’t care, let them!”
“But my brother, you—”
“Stick a knife into somebody with blood and soul and dreams inside? No, Batalha! I will never nev
er never do that. Some Maman loved them, some Papa picked them up and put them on his shoulders. So let them, whoever they are, go on living. I will die instead.”
“But don’t you understand the horrible things pirates do when they come to Sea-john? They are bad people, brother. No people are worse!”
“It makes no difference how bad they are, Batalha. They are just people to me. I couldn’t hurt them.”
“You are clever, ermano mio, and clever people won’t do something that seems wrong if they cannot understand why they must. So come. Come, sit down with me here. I will explain why Johnny mamans-and-papas want their boys and girls to learn the knife.
“It’s because the laws and taxes of the Kingdom don’t hold over here in Sea-john. It’s because we Johnnys are free—Jaúnedi mar libre!—and so we Johnnys are on our own. No armies of the Kingdom, no garrison at the citadel: nobody will ever lift a finger to help Sea-john. When the pirates raid us from the Gulf, when they loot and rape and murder and burn, what are the people doing over in the Kingdom? They’re yawning. They turn over. They go back to sleep. Ruff yoof come over here from the Kingdom, and what for? To beat up Johnnys. In every corner of the world, the people know us because we are so beautiful, because our music is the best, because quí e festa. They all want to come for a visit. And half the time, it’s true, those roadboys who guard caravans, saltdogs who guard ships, and soldiers from the Kingdom, come just for a good time, to have some fun. But then a penny drops: they turn into villains. They turn cruel and strange. I see them forcing kisses, grabbing breasts and ass, so you would think any pretty Johnny belonged to them.
“So you see, brother? That’s why you must learn the knife. All of us in the hills should carry one. Too many don’t. It’s such a good thing for you to know, ermano mio, so very good. I wish you would consider.”
For love of her, he did consider, and thought again: No.
But they forced him to learn to hold the knife, made him know where to stick it should pirates come again to Sea-john, should he get snatched up in the rape-and-loot. Papa took his hand and pulled him along to many tedious practices, where you must draw and stab and slash in the same way, over and over. They could make him do these things, but they couldn’t make him remember to carry the knife. Where is your knife? Redamas would shout. Listen to me, boy, listen. When the pirates come, they come all of a sudden. There will never be time to…. Savary would shout: Go right back to the house and get it now! Every time I see you without your knife, Jahs would shout, I will always always always send you back again until you….
With mamans-and-papas, things must always end in tears, there could only be sobbing. Batalha would look down at his belt where the sheathe was meant to hang, and raise her eyebrow. It made him smile in a guilty way, sick in his belly. But then his sister would only cluck her tongue, shake her head, and let the matter drop. Somehow the fiercest Johnny of Sea-john was the only one who understood him, the softest.
Such a night in the house, sometimes, because of the boatyard, mad hours finishing a yacht for some fils-de-roi, or because of the orphanage, ten abandonini all come down with stomachache, fifteen boys and girls with grippe, or because of a fire in the hills, or for some bad ruckus on the waterfront, and Papa mustering the militia out. These moments, quick, ask whether you could go out nightwalking with Batalha, and more than likely some harried adult hand would wave you off: yes yes yes, boy, but you listen to your sister. On other nights Ma and Ma always said, Papa would say, your sister is thirteen and big and wears her knife, you are small and seven and won’t wear yours. No, you cannot go roaming in those rough nights on the waterfront, down under the Mother. Stay round here on Dolorosa.
Take my hand. The way down is dark here.
A slender moon, hardly giving them a candle’s light; it was the last moon: waning crescent before the new. Stars and planets, and the white parallels of waves breaking over the reefs, distinguished the blackness of sky from sea. So much going on over at the bottom of the Mother. Such lights, such crowds and music on the waterfront!
“I know the way here, Batalha! They let me go round on Dolorosa!”
“How many brothers do I have? Just one, only you! So if you won’t mind me, I’m taking you right back to the house. I must keep you safe.”
He took her hand.
On the waterfront were people too poor for soap, who washed only with water, stinky of armpit, ass. Caramel spirits and pineapple juice. The day’s catch grilled over the driftwood yield of shipwrecks. “Got that sweet fish, right here! Salt’ with sailors’ tears!”
Everybody not foreign was sugar or beau. Battle scars, sailors in breeches, and those black robes they wore in the Kingdom were mainstays. Johnny men glory-burned, Johnny women with art scars, some just boys and girls, metal hoops piercing their bodies and glinting, not so much older than himself on second look. Men and women of Sea-john dressed the same, in shirts and wraparounds, but here the shirts gapped from neck to navel, showing the soft swells of bosom and belly, smooth panes of chest and youthful abdomen. No need to guess, it showed plain: her waist so small and hips so wide, whose ass was big, some handsome man’s excitement. All these wraparounds were just that short and tight. Up and down the cobbles of the Board, out on the beach, down the docks, and all around the many fires, drummers and guitarristas and the world’s loveliest people dancing.
“When I’m big, I’m going to come down here every single night and dance. I’ll be a beau boy and strangers will give me money!”
“No, brother—not that! The best dancers, don’t you know they go into one of the top jukes and dance there? Sugarcane, Blue Moon, or the Tropica? Up front of everybody, and the crowd loves them so much that guards must keep them safe? And for the very best dancers? Some herald will come over from the Kingdom, all in silk and dripping jewels, to beg the virtuosi out of Sea-john, beg them to come over and dance in the Kingdom. Those dancers make shows for the Court, all the fils-de-roi and great ambassadors, the tycoons and courtesans. Johnnys stay up there at Court, sometimes, and take a lover, settling down rich. It’s true some boys and girls in the jukes sling booty; but others just dance. So a juke’s much better, you see. Ma Jahs knows everybody. Talk to her. She will know somebody to get you into the troupe at a juke.”
“Oh. Why didn’t I know these things? About jukes? About the Court?”
“You are young. Why should you know? I didn’t know myself at seven. Ask Ma Jahs to take you around the top jukes so you can see them all dance, then pick a troupe you like. The dancers in the jukes are very very good, ermano mio. Oh, they can dance! But many of the bailarines are not as good as you.”
“I will do it, Batalha. Just like you said! That sounds twice as good as beaux boying here on the waterfront. All I want is to be in a juke and go to Court!”
“Better that way, yes. Then you can dance all you like, they pay you for it, and you don’t have to fuck some strange dude every night.
“I’m hungry, do you want one of these too?”
“Yes.”
“Put two on for us,” Batalha said to the man squatting by his grill. She got coins of her own nowadays from Ma Savary, and so had one to give the Johnny fisherman. He ducked out shrimp from his bucket, stabbed them onto a sharp stick, and lay the skewers over golden coals. Turning them once, plucking them up: he dipped them through the bowl of lemony pepper, and passed the skewers to Batalha.
Angry thunder broke over the surf of merry noise. Harshly shouting, some Kingdom man, not far away, wanted to know how all this nasty Johnny sugar thought it could just wave up under a man’s nose and then get snatched away. He wasn’t having it—No!—so just bring that fat tricky ass here. Against the hard threats, there rose sweet screams of a pretty boy hindered from flight.
Batalha, already as tall as Papa, had a clear view over the heads of the crowd, to some sight that lit her up with rage. Her hair electrified, blue-white, in a momentary flash. “Fucking roadboys!” she said, handing the skewers to him. “Hol
d mine, brother, and stay right here. Stay put. I’ll be back in no time.”
Batalha thrust through the crowd and vanished. Someone thin, all musk and funk and black as Papa almost, passed by with a guitarra; and someone else too, more naked, with long, locked hair and skin no darker than palms and soles, like browning butter. Both young bodies tattooed, somehow, in phosphorescence.
Reggaezzi. He’d never seen any before, hardly heard of them. But he knew at once. A boy and a girl. The boy one sat in the sand and tuned his guitarra. The girl one touched her toes, no, she was laying her hands flat to the packed sand and going up in handstand, falling over in bridge, and coming up to stand again. One leg she lifted obtuse the standing, grasped that ankle, and brought up the shin to kiss. In the murk of night, the glowing curlicues on their skin pulsed marine green—not tattoos after all, but something—alive? Bright mites, infinitesimal, crept over their skin, either down in it, shining through, or glittering on top in some vexed way impossible to figure out.
“Oh, they’re young!” he said. “They don’t look much older than my sister.”
Some Johnny in the crowd forming up answered back, “How you don’t know, boy? Reggaezzi all die soon. Hardly none make twenty.”
Dressed badly for the brisk waterfront, they wore only shirts and loincloths. The reggaezza had torn off the sleeves of her shirt, and he knew why in the same way no one had ever taught him to breathe: so the line of her beautiful arms showed better.
The boy one began to play.
Strumming in rasjeo so fast and rich that a second player seemed to harmonize with him, even at times a third; and though there was none, a drummer seemed to keep the beat: the reggaezzo struck and tapped the guitarra’s inlay of clapwood while he played. He sang too.
The hoarse falsetto lacked the glories of his guitarrismo, but that voice was still a marvel of feeling. The song, in the language of the gods, was hard to follow. A mother, no, a great grandmother, had a new baby at her breast. This baby so precious so beautiful but sick and fragile with—time and space? The baby somehow growing older than the mother herself, a great grandmother to her own mother, the world upside down, reversed. What on earth? The lyrics fit together so strangely he couldn’t make sense of them. But the song was loving as a lullaby and yet triste, a lament. The reggaezza danced.
