Claiming T-Mo

by Eugen Bacon

  There was Audax, a big man sweating butter no matter the weather. He was a cheery odd sort, fixing to tell mishap stories to anyone who listened: “Scoundrel givin’ me heaps. Granddaddy rat diggin’ diggin’ under me house near de foundations all nigh’ long. I corners him wit’ de sweeper, put de snare round his neck, tell him I’m not here ta club ya. He be angry as hell, swearin’ at me in rat holler, den he be pleadin’ as hell, tellin’ at me he got de missus an lotsa kids. I says, ‘I knowed dat nose anywhere, ’tis you been givin’ me heaps fer weeks. ’Tis you ate up de wood in me shed two months past, give me a sniff and de bird when I try-n corner you. Repeat criminal, come back agin, we’ll see ’bout a club on de head, won’ we?’ I eases off de noose, let him peddle ta de missus and dem kids. I sees him round de corner, scoundrel has de bold ta stop, sniff and give me de bird afore he bolt.”

  Salem nicknamed Audax, called him Trotter. His manner of walking was nowhere near a trot, it was a trundle—he used his body to drag a broken foot, so that wasn’t why she gave him the nickname. She named him so for the way his mouth trotted out mishaps.

  There were Divine, Glory, Sultry and Spring, four spinsters in the craft shop. The spinsters were not in neighborly reach if you were to count households or shop-holds, but Salem saw them as such. She found excuse to visit the craft shop more often than T-Mo could think to keep count.

  The spinsters were ocher-eyed stockies. A yellow-red richness in each set of eyes distracted you from the bodily voluptuousness of their holder. They could well have been quadruplets, how like their countenances, but hair told them apart. Divine’s was a shoulder-length black; Glory’s was a center-parted chestnut; Sultry’s was a messed-up gray; Spring’s was a close-shaved auburn.

  Character also distinguished them. Divine was a tough one to figure out, often ambiguous in her remarks. Glory was hard as old boots; walked with a big, loping stride while the rest walked like they were saving something, protecting energy. As for Sultry, hers was a gentle heart that held sympathy even for her somewhat vain sister, Spring, whose grace lacked depth.

  The spinsters sold buttons, zips, needles, wool, wallets, curtains, lace, quilts, pots, candles, soap, beads and food. Salem, who had cut her teeth on church fetes, quickly discovered sandwiches, watercress cakes and whatnots in the craft shop on her first visit, found hilarity in the spinsters’ vociferous opinions of who cooked best.

  Sultry made the pumpkin spice drop scones. “Secret to dem babies be de temperature. Chill de bowl, chill de knives to cut dem shapes, chill de milk, de egg, even de butter. Bake dem scones ’til deys all gold; one shade more, one shade less and deys ruined. Frost dem still warm, serve dem still warm, split dem open. Add de cream not too cold, de homemade jam freshly cooked jus’ right, an’ you got bliss.”

  Divine made the meringue cream torte. “Secret to dis baby be de ingredient. Mix mamma’s hazelnut spread wit homemade cream of tartar; whip dem smooth ’til you hide dem bumps, an’ you got cream torte.”

  Glory made the almond honey pound cake. “Ain’ no secret ingredient to dis baby, jus’ de right ingredient. Cut whole almonds, cut dem right for homemade paste. De butter, she be unsalted. Dem eggs, deys from free roamin’ chickens only. A hard squeeze a lemon, an’ you got honey pound cake.”

  Spring made the fifteen-layer crepe cake. “Secret be luv.”

  “Ain’ no thing as luv to bake good,” said Glory.

  “A bit a luv ain’ hurt none, surely,” said Sultry. “And yore secret ingredient Glory ain’ hurt neither.”

  “Secret be luv or me name ain’ Spring. Line dem bakin’ sheets wit’ de luv, swirl de batter wit’ de luv, use dem fingers wit’ de luv, layer de crème wit’ de luv, fold her—”

  “Wit’ de luv,” chimed the other three, “an’ you got bliss.”

  “I s-see you use homemade ingredients,” said Salem.

  “Except Spring,” chimed the other three.

  Salem was a sheltered girl, not one easy to make new friends. But she tried with Moni, with Trotter, with the craft shop spinsters and found it worked. These friends added to her fulfillment. She held them close to her heart. The rest of the townsfolk were neither quick nor keen to make friends with fresh residents, in particular not with T-Mo. They sensed if not saw his unearthliness. Even Salem sometimes felt the weightlessness about him and at times touched him and felt magnets that were more than chemistry. He was magnetic, moved quick too, mind you a dangerous quick. That was T-Mo. By the time he met Salem, the bark in his skin was obvious but it was the kind that aligned itself with mist through trees to take on new forms. He was to her always a mystery, an ultimate mystery. A grand oddity outside her knowing, more than ever in those moments when jungle replaced the space of rainbow in his eyes.

  Those same eyes gazed at you in a personal way, passion and stillness in that gaze, as it measured you and determined a fact about you. The fact stayed unclear to you, and all you understood was acceptance, dismissal or nothing. Those same eyes had considered and dismissed Ike’s preacher face the day he said to them: You are both strangers to me. Get out of my house.

  While Salem wasn’t too busy with furnishing to find her pick of neighborly friends, she failed to catch a skip in her period. By the time she discovered that a second and then third period had skipped, she also started to notice how much she had “porked.” She laughed at the word. It wasn’t like she was eating her feelings—she had never been happier.

  The sense of emptiness that had haunted her at East Point was but a bad dream. Still, sometimes she recalled church pews that filled up every Sunday, chimed in her head one or the other song from that not long-ago hymnbook:

  Give you thanks, Hallelujah!

  My Lord, my Lord.

  Her Lord. T-Mo. She smiled.

  Attributed her porkiness—again she laughed—to the rarities T-Mo brought home after his wind-swirling flights and descents from a seeming softness of cloud. Salem’s appetite was undoubtedly healthier. First time he said, “Back in a sec,” he was really back in a second. Appeared suddenly and at speed, bedraggled, but back. He carried a carcass.

  “Look out of s-sorts,” said Salem.

  “Me or the boar?” He laid the meat on the table top. Skinned it, chopped it. “I’m your personal butler.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “See how I cook this.”

  “You’ve certainly t-talked it up.”

  His cooking was a disaster. The bisque he served looked and tasted like something filtered through mucky socks. Things floated inside it and Salem spat out something chewy, rubbery—or was it elastic?

  “Remembered to pull out intestines?” asked Salem.

  “What intestines?” His face a calm stone.

  “A whole b-boar. Ruined.”

  “I know . . . don’t. Back in a sec.”

  A whole five minutes passed. Salem looked at the mantle-piece clock, an antique that wore a face gilded in bronze, two dragons embossed on its body looking at you with lit rubies. With a sigh of wind, T-Mo flew in from the northerly west. Looked wrecked but held out something that was half snake, half fish.

  “Needs no cooking,” he said. “It’s organic by neglect, the work of nature.”

  It tasted like something an animal had shat.

  “You’re special,” said Salem.

  “Special as in: Class, Jake is special. Be ‘nice’?”

  “You were home s-schooled; how would you know what t-teachers say in a classroom?”

  “So I am special?”

  “I d-don’t think your cooking will get any better.”

  He smiled. “Best I could do.”

  “We’ll have to get more f-food.”

  “Body’s a bit rough,” he said. “See the size of that boar?”

  “Saw the size of the f-fish snake.”

  “Not going back out there.”

 
Salem took the remainder of the fish-snake, already it smelt like a moth’s nest. She pushed T-Mo out of the kitchen and flew through her cooking. When T-Mo hovered, was a nuisance, she struck him with a wooden spoon. “B-back off that little bit.”

  Her spread boasted color and taste. She had taken the moths out of its natural flavor, replaced them with a blend of chocolate and spice.

  “Whipped up posh nosh, huh?” said T-Mo.

  “Exclusive l-luxury,” said Salem. “Next it’s molecular f-food.”

  “Mozarella di bufala?”

  “N-never heard of it.”

  A few helpings later, he allowed Salem was a finer cook. Not in those words exactly.

  “Right now, I am outclassed,” he said.

  “R-right now?”

  “Yes, today. I’ll have a bit more—”

  “J-just finish it.”

  Wilderness ingredients worked well for Salem. She had a knack for meats that were neither beef nor goat nor lamb. She didn’t ask what they were; wasn’t surprised with whichever texture or essence they presented, even when something she thought might be savory came out tasting scorched-toffee.

  “Who’s the b-better cook now?” she couldn’t resist, perhaps with spinsterly influence.

  “I refuse to confirm anything.”

  “T-taught you quality.”

  “Through personal embarrassment, yes.”

  After more feasts—sweet, sour, spicy or foreign—Salem looked at herself naked one day in the mirror, saw her bulged breasts, her swelled belly, and begged T-Mo to stop. But the next time he put daylight between him and the universe, he returned with fruits and vegetables of a kind she had never seen. Like the pomegranate thing that tasted of sweet potato, or the apricot that was actually a grain . . . or the caramel-tasting tomato with agreeable impurities of spice that teased your tongue . . . “H-how much for all that?” she joked.

  “Sorry, set price. Don’t haggle.”

  One day he found a plant that soon became an important member of the family. It was large leafed, tolerant, wore tints of scarlet and bronze. Salem placed the exquisite thing by her bedside and named it Red.

  By the third missed period, Salem knew it was not a simple matter of being porked so she broached the delicate topic with T-Mo. “I d-didn’t see the moon this month.”

  “Been there all the time.”

  “The . . . b-birds and the bees—”

  “Birds and bees gone where the moon is now?”

  “The s-stork . . .” she tried.

  “Woman,” he threw his hands, “storks don’t follow the moon. Have you eaten one?”

  “A p-pig more likely. I d-didn’t get the cycle . . .”

  “Right.” The blankness of his gaze confirmed it had found no facts.

  “M-my period skipped.”

  “Right.” Still no facts.

  “Don’t they l-learn you anything in G-grovea? We’re having a b-baby!”

  His jaw dropped, she panicked. Then he laughed, scooped her. “Are we now? How about that. Preacher’s gal zapped by a Martian cowboy.”

  She pushed him away. “It’s not f-funny.”

  “Best news I heard in years.”

  SILHOUETTE

  • 12 •

  The traveling one, Novic had said. Had he anticipated how the roaming bug might crunch not just into Odysseus but T-Mo as well?

  How do I know about the roaming? Ma Space was the daughter of an enchantress born in a family where women became midwives or witches and it ran for generations. Tssk. I am not a midwife. I always could ventriloquize and levitate. Found comfort on the mansion’s rooftops to escape Novic’s rages and needs.

  Many times when unseen I found him in his roaming, and I wanted to reach out to my son. Sometimes I imagined our reunion, how it might be. Each time, the bearing of our conversation halted me. My first worry: what if T-Mo did not recognize me?

  And I said: “Son.”

  And he said: “You’re mad, woman.”

  What if he met my approach with accusation or derision, loathing that unfurled in his words: “You left.”

  “I’m sorry,” I would say.

  “Look like you mean it,” his eyes a prohibition.

  “I’m sorry.” Pause. “Son—”

  “Best clarification right there: son.”

  I would reach for his hand. “Let’s talk.”

  He would shrug my touch away. “Talk? Here?”

  “Where else?”

  “You left.”

  “A part of me stayed.”

  “I was a child, a child.”

  “Your eyes were ancient.”

  “Why return now?”

  “To see.”

  “See what?”

  “See why.”

  “What, why, when does it matter?”

  What if we met and spoke with easiness: easy words, easy eyes of friends?

  • 13 •

  Where-am-a-go?

  I walked alone to the edge of Grovea past a copse of trees, the rising moon a smear in the sky. In a yawn of silence past a small stretch across a meadow, down a vale, up a hillock—three consecutive vales and hillocks—I came into another canopy of trees that pushed me into an alternate world. Literally pushed me: a low hanging branch touched my bottom and, with a tremor, pushed me out of the blanket of trees into a cascade of sound.

  Crowned birds cawed and scratched at the ground, pecked for dusk crawlies and hoppers. A flock of yowlers clouded the immediate sky. Chirpers, croakers, laughers, wailers and rustlers lifted the chorus of that noise and ran with it. I saw for the first time the buzzless—Ma Space had told me about these flies, silent as they were bright—and I was grateful for their non-contribution to the godawful din.

  The ground was here and there studded with sprouts of olive grass, the rest of the place bare. I walked along the bare patches, thinking of Weed and his care for plants. To take one life is an outrage; to take two in an instant is carnage. I was shaking those thoughts of Odysseus and his bloodthirst from my head when the ground suddenly humped in the middle of my step. I quavered, felt empty.

  Empty and alone in all this world. Where-am-a-go?

  The ground at my feet had more heart than I did; it pulsed with something that suggested malice and slowed my tread. Soon as I rested my heel on firm ground, it humped or collapsed and made sure that I fell.

  A tree rose from a sudden mist to stand solid a meter away. It was black stemmed and wispy-leafed. Weary with walking and loneliness, I put my arms round its trunk and rested my pounding head. A branch caught me and lifted me to a bough. Ahead of me was a sweep of plain, but my eyes were too worn to explore. My mind flitted back to Nene, Corio, Anakie, Blanket, Norlane and Ma Space.

  She drop a baby, not her rights.

  Yeah. Our job be pull out her baby, not her rights.

  I hated Novic for a whole moment, how his snakelike self stayed stealthy and coiled, striking without notice. How he manipulated things, beings—who gave him the right? Thoughts of Odysseus hurled in from nowhere. Where did he go when he disappeared? What if there were other bodies, tidied away or left abandoned for scavengers? I willed my mind to easier thoughts, like the sound of a wilderness full of life; like the sight of the buzzless, silent as they dazzled as Ma Space taught me; like the plain that returned an echo of chirpers, croakers, laughers, wailers and rustlers.

  As night closed in, the bloodred moon against a sooty firmament gave this world a mauve backdrop. I rested my cheek against the bough. The tips of the tree’s leaves gyrated like dancers. I smelt rain before it poured. I gazed for signs of its onset in the sky and found instead the face of my T-Mo.

  He was my . . . rainbow. My spectrum of light in the sky. With T-Mo I felt illuminated, full circle. With Odysseus I felt shadowed, full broken. My eyes sought
T-Mo’s megawatt smile in the sky but in its place was . . . nothing. I prayed that T-Mo would not harbor resentment of the kind I might guess from Odysseus, whose distance from me had grown day by day into a weapon. I considered the strength, the clarity of his rejection, so flawless. So transcendent it was deadly. What-am-a-do?

  I understood now that I never knew how to relate to Odysseus. He never approached me with a need, a request. Never sought motherliness as a child. And he snatched my T-Mo.

  T-Mo could turn into Odysseus inside a sentence.

  • • •

  Odysseus once tripped on his leg at the top of a staircase in the northern wing of Novic’s mansion. I was dusting and Odysseus was flicking a penknife with the skill of one who knows the use of a blade. My dusting cloth followed the fine fingers of the balustrade, a glimmering palisade that curled in stable craft and profound refinement, weaving itself ground up to my chambers where Novic completed his fixations. I had reached a column of fingers that locked into fists to command an elegant post when Odysseus tripped.

  He rolled downward headfirst in fetal position, down and down. I flew after him, leaping several stairs at a time down and down. We reached the bottom jointly and I leapt, skidded, avoided a land on his head. My impulse was uncontrolled when I fell to my knees and cradled him to my breast.

  His stillness frightened me. I put a finger to the side of his head and found a pulse. I searched his face for evidence of life, and found life. While already I knew that his knowledge about people and their feelings ran on minus, I wanted to know how the boy saw me. I wanted recognition from him that I was his mother. His eyes froze me, pinpoints bright as crystals and lifeless as doornails. Puts a shiver down my back even now thinking of it. Suddenly I was ice—frigid, dense, unclothed.