Claiming T-Mo

by Eugen Bacon

  • • •

  I was yet to learn my powers as an enchantress. I knew only to levitate and ventriloquize. My friend Hunt I could not save. Ma Space had only midwifery to show me but that was not my calling, and the amulet Miss Potty had given me, the one with the face of a rook that brought me comfort in shadows, was unusable against the gluttonous feeding that sank Hunt’s screams. A leg twitched long after he went silent, then all that was left were his pupils woven from gold dust and a scatter of his sunflower hair on the ground.

  I recount this story because it is a memory of my quest and it leads to how I found magic.

  The amulet kept me unseen in the shadows until the Tot’lins, chuckling and replete, bounded—not toddled—away. I lurched barefoot into a whooshing wind, my eyes filled with tears, in what seemed like a tall journey to a colorless world that I later understood to be Tafou. While my acquaintance with Hunt was short-lived, the tragedy of losing him in so merciless a manner drew me back to the solitude of my existence, rekindled my harsh longing for T-Mo. The day I walked out on Novic, left my child, I walked out on a part of me: a lung, a kidney, a chamber of my heart.

  Each step from Fosoids enhanced the searing in my throat, knifed my heart anew. I found a cliff that had a ledge protruding like a tongue above a howling bowl of water that sighed and roared, water that bucked untamed. The wind that humped the water also whipped my face, tugged the tendrils of my hair. Giant hearts beat in the stormy bowl with such impulsion, froth jetted up like volcanic ash.

  I sat legs down, adangle at the cliff. I wept for my lost childhood, my lost child, Ma Space. Sobs heaved my breast, my ribs felt as if they would crack, but even tears could not scatter the bulk in my chest. When my weeping was done, jolts of fierce hiccups should have thrust me to the roaring jaw, the water’s fury, but something stayed me. This water did not want me, the abandonment absolute.

  Long after the heaving in my chest subsided but my throat stayed raw, I found another emotion that reminded me of Miss Potty and her reliable laughter. It was then I realized that night was a black wall, indifferent to my state.

  I thought how, betrothed from infancy, I never bonded with my brothers. They were just . . . my brothers. I had no special childhood memories to reminisce about, no clear names to warm my heart. My siblings remained a blur wrapped in a noun: brothers. B a soft sound, lips closed. Small r with a strong tongue; a tight throat, no trill—just a straight sound. Even the th is smooth not popped, tongue just behind the front teeth. Brothers. That is what they were to me, situated sounds. Rusty, Hedge, Dash, Kit, Blaze, Footloose, Bluey, Tiny, Boxer and Donzo. Not objects like doors or windows or chairs because a door or a window or a chair has a reason. I had no reason for my siblings, and they had none for me except when they took advantage of my being the youngest. Bring me, give me, fetch me, get me and sod off in the end. That’s the little I remember of them. They also wrangled, boxed, wrestled with each other, never me, because unlike me they were free to childhood. Destiny did not hand-pick them from a cot.

  Novic, he was my destiny. I remembered the glow in his eyes when we were wed, how he measured me, black gold in his eyes. Did he wait to consume me, consummate the marriage (such fury in his taking), out of respect for Ma Space? Or was it so no one could accuse him of being a child taker? I remembered the pale champagne of my wedding dress, its intricate folds, delicate draping, floaty fabric light as air. Ma Space beside me put a hand to my shoulder, guided me to my spouse at the altar. It was the beaded straps on my shoulders, not Ma Space’s touch, that burnt.

  I should have felt beautiful inside those crisscross threads that left my back naked, inside that empire waist so tight I could feel my heart and my throat. The gown was designed to give curve to my boyish frame before birthing gave it form. A train of silk fell down my back past the invented curve to conceal my bare feet. At the altar, Novic eye’s swept from my feet up the pleat and sequin embellishments, rested at the padded breasts, then up a bejeweled neck collar to find my trembling lips. Our eyes never met.

  Never before had I been the center of such attention. Even Ma Space glowing in her green crepe and a gold belt did not command the eyes I got. Another priest from 180C sanctified our marriage. It was the same thoughtless priest who returned to visit and took liberty to covet me, and a demon flowed out of Novic—he put a sizzling rod in my eye. The Novic I wed was a priest and a demon, one entity. A creature of the kind to throw a grenade, and do so without curiosity or bemusement, just potent oblivion to the aftermath. Someone else would be curious, excited, scared. Not Novic. Outside the oval windows of the temple, soft rain gentle as a dove gave way to a thing of monstrosity that clasped hands with thunder and clapped and roared its way from the clouds straight into our hearts.

  Legs dangling, tear-washed eyes peering into giant hearts in the water, I wondered whether I was ever anything to Novic, the lustful brute, anything more than a soft pleasure with a womb. I remembered how at first his distance when he did not crave me was solid like a club until I learnt to be solid back and match it. I pondered my life and the lacking, the absence, the missing initiated by the vagueness of Ma Space, sustained by the absence of Runaway—my migrant father unable to match his new sanctuary, amplified by the disjointedness of my marriage, sealed by the puzzle of T-Mo and Odysseus. Miss Potty, she understood the missing. She taught me with her dependable laughter and offhand words to reorient myself, to unpick the solitude and embrace it, to untether the pain that was a need and revive it to a fullness that was enough.

  There, right there, on the ledge, I finally unhooked from my past, resituated myself and found a place complete inside me. So complete that I ignored the warmth on my nape, the waft of shifting smells around me, the crisp thinking in my head that drowned into formless thought. So complete that when a shadow stirred to my left and grew more shape until I saw her where she stood, a tall figure one and a half times my length, a tot on her hip, I ignored the apparition. I curled on the crag, closed my eyes and slept to a scent of storm, to a darkness that no longer felt foreign.

  I woke to waters now mute, to a colorized world alive with chirruping, squealing, groaning. I cast an eye to the night’s howling bowl—it was calm. A rainbow of fish, a magnificent brilliance in their sidewise eyes, swam in the waters below. Rock stumps wearing the faces of gargoyles guarded the water’s edges. A stunted tree, also on the edge, climbed giant-like and I could touch its leaves from the ledge. Above, the sky was an azure sheet and a flock of butter-colored birds followed another flock of striped birds. Out yonder, a volcanic mountain coughed smoke above a labyrinth of trees into a rising sun.

  And there she was again, to the left of me, a tall figure with a tot on her hip. There was something unforgettable in the ridges and contours of her thinned face, calm lips, flat nose, and her nakedness that was as natural as dawn. I moved my eyes from breasts perched perfect on her chest and found her gaze that went and went into my soul.

  Without planning to do so, I found the child’s eyes and felt no heart-wrench. Because he never relaxed his eyes he did remind me of T-Mo. This baby had wide, never-blinking eyes on a pockmarked face, eyes that were white as white and full of snow. Despite his stare, his body was playful on his mother, hands clasping, legs flexing, chin dimples dancing, mouth forming sounds and shapes. A flutter-fly startled then amused him, he burst into big laughter that finished with squeals and a hiccup.

  My gaze returned to the tall woman, who also had a pockmarked face. The pupils in her eyes were full of pulses, diamond dust in them. Her dark skin glowed as if reflecting the sun. There was a dignity about her, in the set of her jaw, the angle of her chin, even the way she held Baby. A well-shaped elbow hooked Baby to her torso. The texture of skin on it . . . such beauty on an elbow . . . Her mouth stayed calm, soft as the diamond dust in eyes that contemplated me, the coveter of elbows. Baby moved his fat hand to clutch in a possessive way the handsome elbow.

  Silently s
he approached, touched my arm. It burnt where she touched, something inside me doing flips. She wore a scent of tree, something oaky, not harsh. And then she smiled. It was a smile that made me think of something exotic, of a mirror full of flowers, of Miss Potty and her exotic worlds.

  Keera of Tafou. She taught me to use magic.

  SALEM

  • 15 •

  He refused to admit it, but for once, this pregnancy thing put T-Mo out of his depth. At Salem’s insistence they went to prenatal: the Tambo Clinic. Quite an eyeful it was, limewashed walls, graffiti all over. It could well have been an artists’ hangout. The clinic stood three stores from the pick and shovel museum on Fisk Street. The graffiti on its walls comprised images: an old man’s head on young shoulders, lips smoking a cigar, giant lashes on a woman’s eyes, a model on a catwalk surrounded by a mischief of rats. It had words in tear-drop art, stamped-art, stained ink art:

  Peace train for your ride

  Conked out, yeah

  Staple my fingers

  Ghetto is a state of mind

  Cringe to touch

  Fixin’ to mess you

  It had names scrawled rebel style, boasting an artist behind each work: Con. Plate. Hammer. Willow. Homie. Diag. Anarchy. Comet. Vigil . . .

  As if the graffiti were not enough, the Tambo Clinic had artists for practitioners. The doctor who ran it had a sentence for a name. He was a man with a goatee and a pair of bright shoes, and his smile was all teeth. Miss Louden—the nurse, the midwife or both—was a gypsy with big everything: hair, scarf, earrings . . . She touched Salem with worker hands, poked her with busy questions: Last period? Miscarriages? Abortions? Genetic conditions?

  Salem looked at T-Mo.

  In a room labeled “Birth without fear,” Miss Louden prepared tools for screening. She wanted urine, didn’t want stool, charted height, weight . . . She was slow like a sloth in her examining but prompt as a sneeze in her lifting Salem with strong arms onto a hospital bed. Firm hands (big) pushed aside Salem’s modest hands but the examination turned out to be fully external. A slow rub of gel, now she administered ultrasound.

  The waiting room enclosed more artists: a teen toying with a purpled braid across her shoulder, her bare midriff branded with tattoos; a boyfriend with loud sunnies—looked the type who wouldn’t talk until Christmas; a very pregnant woman with skimpy shorts. The woman with shorts made it her mission to size up T-Mo. So he prowled the room, then took himself to a window. He stood watching outside. Tilted his face to the wind, stood there, a presence you couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t the length of him or the honest shoulders or eyes that offered up little on a face that shouted scars. Perhaps it was the liquid in his motion, the oddity of his stillness. He was a radical man of extremes. Whatever it was, it made people edgy and they yammered, like the woman in shorts now did.

  “Eatin’ fer three,” she said. “Twins secon’ time. Deys hungry all de time. I eats eggs, chickpeas, popcorn—it got de fiber. Walnuts—deys allergy feed, ain’ givin’ dem dat. You an’ yore missus: new folk?”

  T-Mo’s gaze stayed level.

  Inside a private room with a poster that read “Bellies to babies,” the gleeful doctor whose name was a sentence confirmed what T-Mo must have known. The bub Salem carried was not a tadpole of a thing but something big and moving, by human standards it was growing triple rate.

  Listening, T-Mo’s gaze shifted. His eyes glowed.

  • 16 •

  Salem wondered: other than the obvious, how much role she had in getting pregnant. You know . . . how a thought planted, you fantasized about it, then your body acted it out? She had wondered how it might be having a child with T-Mo close to the months it happened, then it happened. If she hadn’t nurtured the thought, she pondered, would she have porked? Again laughed at the word.

  Baby kicked any time, dusk or dawn, T-Mo touched Salem’s belly.

  He forebade her from drinking tea, anything fizzy, whatever thing liable to bring headiness.

  “How w-would you know what pregnant people should or shouldn’t d-drink?” protested Salem.

  “I know.”

  He went all jumpy if she approached certain mollusks or fish, in particular the fish snake. He was fully picky with his wilderness treats. Still came and went, an object in the sky, flying at speed from stillness to return with hover and a sackful. Sometimes he flew east until out of sight, and Salem would watch from the patio as something pulsed in the sky, changed color from cerulean to bloodshot. Sometimes he flew out in a flame that made static noise, like the one some electrical things made, then he streaked out, formed an orb and disappeared. But his modus operandi was speeding out in spurts, taking off fast and leaving no tail in the sky. When he flamed out, his whole body blazed like burning cotton, and suddenly—without noise or lights in the sky—he reappeared with “soul food” as he called it. Things like jolly berries from the Nether Realms to indulge her cravings.

  He stayed discreet, reflective, each visit to the Tambo Clinic, when Miss Louden talked them through Salem’s exercises, including the breathing ones. The doctor with sparkles in his shoes, whose name was a sentence, made sure baby was maintaining the rush to grow. Salem, amenable to most things, would hear nothing of testing the bub for genetic abnormality when the cheerful doc suggested it.

  “Abnormal?” She cradled her belly. “Something that k-kicks like this?”

  The baby was alert to T-Mo, communicated all the time with him from Salem’s womb. When he spoke, a limb stretched in his direction. The devotion was reciprocated. Never minding carpenter Zok, T-Mo built a rocking chair and matching medicine cabinet for the nursery.

  Salem, who by now felt more than porked, her body was a dumpling, protested: “The child has your constitution, why plan it to be s-sick?”

  Pending fatherhood sometimes befuddled T-Mo. He frazzled over the color of the nursery, the furniture to put in it, the diaper pail that worked best . . . It didn’t help that Salem’s new friends, the neighbors, visited multiple times and brought with them multiple opinions.

  “We bake good,” announced Sultry, holding out a sweet whiffed hamper. “Couldn’ have did a better job. Dem spice scones make de baby boy.”

  “But I’m not h-hungry,” said Salem.

  “Follow yer hunger woman,” said Glory. “Honey cake make de baby boy too. Sweet food for de boy; savory food for de gal.”

  “I don’t m-mind a girl.”

  “First boy bring luck.”

  T-Mo fumbled around the neighbors, was too discomfited to pick out details on their faces, to determine a secret fact about each of them. To one or the other he said the wrong thing, stated the obvious. When the spinsters came to gift Salem with new baking “for de boy,” T-Mo got everything mixed up. Thanked Divine for her pumpkin spice scones, Sultry for her meringue cream torte, even mistook Spring for Glory.

  The spinsters ignored his discomfiture, made themselves at home: they ransacked Salem’s kitchen, confiscated the melons.

  “You silly or bluffin’?” said Glory. “How you gone push big baby head if you gone eat melon?”

  “She got baby brain. Clear mind out de window.”

  “Good thing she ain’ got squid in de kitchen,” said Divine. “It twist de baby cord.”

  “Why you talk ’bout squid, bring bad luck?” said Spring.

  “Yeah, we all knows it twist de cord!” said Glory.

  “I jus’ says she ain’ got none—how dat bring bad luck?”

  Having settled that quarrel, they ran Salem a bath, nearly drowned her with opinions:

  “Secret be de temperature.”

  “Water bath too hot, it burn baby lips.”

  “He get cleft lip.”

  “Burn baby bottom too.”

  “He get witch mark.”

  The other neighbor Moni—Petrolhead’s wife—also had ideas about th
e baby. “Stomach dat low, she a gal. See how down de belly button sit?”

  As if the looks they gave her were not enough to shut her down, the spinsters gave a good go at more:

  “You dumb?” said Glory.

  “Been drinkin’ more like. Belly button sit like boy,” said Spring.

  “Stomach dat low be nothin’ but Salem holdin’ farts,” said Divine.

  “Let deys fart go, gal,” said Sultry.

  “Shoot dem out.”

  “Hold an’ de burn give baby de mark.”

  “Burn big as dey farts you hold.”

  “Worse’n cleft lip.”

  “Worse’n witch mark.”

  “C-calmer you are, the better,” suggested Salem to gentle Moni who the spinsters had managed to ruffle.

  The spinsters were not a cheap laugh; could be funny but their words carried loudness and opinions, as well as bite. No wonder Moni found reason to escape as soon as they arrived. “Might push out now,” she’d say.

  Trotter, who was always smiling it up, surprised Salem. She couldn’t tell if he was a pal or a pervert when he looked at her fat stomach and said, “Kin I haves a feel?”

  First time the spinsters visited, they gave themselves a tour of the house. Found Red the plant, even saw with loud bewilderment that squeezing a leaf made it sing.

  Ye la freak squeak ma leaf

  Buttons cartons pots bored

  Spinsters sweetsters freaksters

  Ye la freak squeak ma leaf

  The plant seemed to know something about its squeezer. Chimed about kindheartedness for Sultry, bigheadedness for Spring and a tune that went “Ol’ boots hard as boots” for Glory.

  When the spinsters stood to take leave, T-Mo fumbled with doors, mumbled, “Leaving us for the shop?” like it needed an answer.