Survive

by Vera Nazarian

  With each street circle we enter, new residents come running out to greet us. Meanwhile, the already present and growing crowds surge from behind, following us along the route on both sides of the walkways, chasing the slowly rolling godateti. Many of the people are swaying and dancing to the pounding drum music that also flows along behind us.

  I throw the iretar coins and the other items as fast as I can, giggling and laughing, breathless with the freedom and joy. My friends do the same, tossing and aiming some things at specific individuals in the crowd as they call out with hands outstretched. Small children streak back and forth across the route before us, fearless of the large bulky godateti, snatching coins and meal bars and candy nearly from under our wheels.

  “Kokayi! Kokayi is back!” the people cry, jumping and dancing. At this point I’ve had enough exposure to Atlanteo that I can understand most of what they’re saying—stumped only by the occasional oddities in idiom and what must be regional slang—but even those slang terms I can guess. “Bay-bean Kokayi Jeet is back! Our Bay-bean is Champion number one! The Games are forever!”

  In response Kokayi laughs and dances in place also, hands upraised overhead, and his amplified voice rolls in echoes down the street. “How you like my party, beans and pebbles?”

  “We love! We love, Bay-bean!” they counter him, in a singsong rhythm.

  “Pebbles, dance! Orahemai!” Kokayi prompts them, aiming and throwing huge fistfuls of candy and iretar.

  And in reply the women and girls in the street start squealing and clapping their hands overhead.

  “Now, Bay-beans, orahemai! Dance for me!”

  This time the men and boys reply with cheers and yells and wild hoots, stomping and dancing also.

  We trace the circumference of the street circle slowly, and when the revolution is done, we enter the next junction.

  This goes on for at least half an hour, and sometimes we end up maneuvering past small shabby carts of local vendors who got caught in the parade route unawares and now try to clear the path for us and get out of the way.

  By now, the crowd noise is deafening, and I’ve gotten tired of laughing, screaming on top of my voice, and throwing. The nearest goodie baskets are now two-thirds empty, so we have to reach down deep inside to grab things.

  Laronda is hyperventilating and Dawn is bent over, both having a laughing fit. Even Anu is guffawing as they pelt him with occasional handfuls of candy or coins. The four Imperial guards and Tuar keep straight faces and remain vigilant, but I can tell they too are enjoying this fun event on some level.

  But while we are still caught up in the craziness of the experience, I don’t miss the fact that the buildings around us are getting more and more dilapidated with each street circle, the deeper we go—and my heart twinges painfully with sympathy on behalf of the residents. There are very few four and three-story buildings now—mostly low two-story or single-story shacks, encroaching on each other like poorly fitting, mismatched bricks in a meandering, crooked wall.

  Finally, we enter a junction of one more street circle, pulling the crowd along with us. And this is where Kokayi brings the Parade to a stop before one squat building with a lopsided roof, nestled between two taller ones.

  The structure is not quite two full stories, but more like one and a half, with a “half-floor” addition of sorts on one side, causing the roof to be angled. Part of it overhangs an unenclosed, open rooftop area filled with plant-growing pots and junk, and from it, anchored ropes and cables extend in all directions to the slightly taller neighboring buildings.

  “Kokayi’s party ends here, Bay-pebbles and Bay-beans!” he cries out in his amplified voice, and uses his gadget to stop the moving godatet. “Continue to dance, while I take care of a little business and make a home visit!”

  And then Kokayi whirls around at me and Tuar, braids swinging, and raises his hands up for attention, signaling the other platform floats behind us. His eyes achieve an even more feverish intensity as he speaks. “Attention, my fellow Champions! We’re here! We’re at the end of the line, and it’s time to come down!”

  Kokayi dips into one basket and fills his pockets with fistfuls of iretar, then continues to grab more, shoving handfuls of coins inside his vest until it’s bulging around the chest and other places against his wiry, lean frame. With a mercurial glance at me, he exclaims, “Come, amrevet! We’re here! It’s time!”

  “Where are we going?” I ask, as my own panting breath calms down from all the laughing, and I sense a more serious change in mood. Laronda and Dawn stop giggling and punching and stare also.

  Kokayi’s gaze is burning with excitement, and he points with one finger at a raised porch before a peeling wooden door. “We’re going in through there, right now, to visit her—my own Mamai!”

  We descend the platforms and follow Kokayi as he skips the three steps altogether and jumps directly onto the porch with acrobatic ease. He pounds on the door twice, dramatically, then simply opens it, revealing a dark interior, and turns around to glance at us as we all crowd below—all Ten Champions and our entourages—and beckons.

  One by one we enter.

  I’m not sure what to expect, as I step inside after Tuar and Kokayi. A narrow corridor with a low ceiling greets me. Dirty peeling paint, scratched walls. Several closed doors on both sides.

  “Come, come!” Kokayi calls out from the very end, and then turns the corner. I can hear his light footsteps on what must be very creaky stairs, going up.

  When I reach the tiny, narrow stairwell, there’s only room on the stairs for one person at a time. I’m in line directly behind Tuar as he heads upstairs—compressing his shoulders and making his large frame as small as possible, keeping his head down so as to not bump the low angled ceiling—with Laronda directly behind me, followed by the others. We sound like a herd of cattle going up the flimsy stairs, and for a moment I wonder they don’t collapse under our combined weight.

  On the second floor there’s an even tinier corridor, and just two doors opposite each other, while the corridor itself opens directly onto the roof.

  Tuar and I watch Kokayi as he stops before the door on the left, pausing momentarily. He almost appears to hesitate. . . . His face has lost its lighthearted joy and now reveals a grave expression. I notice how he straightens his posture and adjusts the airy scarves around his neck and shoulders, then runs the back of one hand over his forehead. At last he takes a deep breath and knocks loudly on the door. “Mamai! Open up!”

  There are a few moments of silence.

  The door opens a crack. Then it opens wide and a skeletal-thin, tall, middle-aged woman with brown skin, a dingy grey dress, and a twisted bandana around her head, leans out into the hallway. In a sunken face her very large black eyes glare at all of us, then her glare rests on Kokayi.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” she says in a loud, harsh voice, speaking very thick Atlanteo.

  Kokayi does something with his shoulders and neck. And suddenly his own Atlanteo thickens and becomes almost incomprehensible. “What do you mean who am I? It’s Kokayi! Your son is here to see you!”

  The woman snorts. “I have no son. You must have the wrong door. Go away!”

  Kokayi’s jaw drops. “What crazy talk is this? It’s Kokayi Jeet!”

  “And who is Kokayi Jeet?” The woman steps outside all the way and puts her hands on her hips menacingly. “Is it the same useless Kokayi Jeet who dances and shakes his buzuu for a living and brings me a pitiful few iretar to barely pay for the roof over my head? Or is it Kokayi Jeet who went crazy and decided he was better than his hag and all other hags and their beans, and left me with his trash and no iretar, disappearing all these months, who knows where—leaving me to deal with the drunk Hoturi downstairs, and no one to water the vegetables, no one to make sure the door was locked, no one to clean the drains—”

  “Mamai-Jeet! Enough! I was gone because I entered the Games of the Atlantis Grail!” Kokayi exclaims. “And I won! I won, hag! I’m
here now because I am a Champion! Not just any Champion but the first place Champion!”

  “What? What?” the woman says in a rising voice. “What lies are these? Did you fall on your head, Bay-bean?”

  “Lies? Lies?” Kokayi starts to shake his head, his long earrings and braids swaying in outrage. “You’re not so deaf that you can’t hear the party noise outside! What do you think it is? That’s my Parade, old hag! These crowds of people are making happy noise thanks to me!”

  “Don’t you weather at me, Bay-bean!”

  “Weather at you? I brought all the other Champions of this year’s Games! Don’t believe me? Let us come in and I will show you!”

  The woman makes a sound of disgust. She then shrugs and steps aside, pointing with her bony hand to the interior, in the most ironic gesture of welcome possible. “Come in, then, all of you shar-ta-haak. What can a hag do but let you come in. . . . Well? What are you waiting for? The door is open, might as well use it! Or have you forgotten how to move?”

  Kokayi exhales with a shudder and then enters, past the narrow threshold, past his Mamai, and the rest of us follow.

  Inside is just one room, cluttered with old flimsy furniture. Two beds—basically, wide planks, each one topped with a thin mattress and blanket—are pushed against two opposite walls, serving as both sleeping and seating area, with a curtain strung above that can be closed off for relative privacy. A skinny long table, some shelving, and many pots piled all around. A single wooden stool. A tiny stove and sink in one corner, and a toilet hole in another (reminding me at once of the Safe Base toilets in the Games).

  The only thing that seems out of place is a smallish smart screen display on one wall, propped up on a shelf. I stare at it dumbly, while Kokayi’s mother squeezes in past all of us—even as we continue filing into the room as more and more people arrive up the stairs.

  “Who all these big, ugly shar-ta-haak? Who are these pebbles? What you doing in my house?” Mamai-Jeet glares up at the nearest Imperial guards surrounding me, gives me a withering look, frowns at Laronda and Dawn, and starts complaining. At this point more than a dozen people are stuffed into her living room, and more are still coming.

  “You’ve watched the feeds, you know who they are,” Kokayi responds, backing himself up against the long table, and then starts individually pointing out those of us who are the Champions. “Look who’s in your house! This is the White Bird himself, Hedj Kukkait!”

  “Eh, I don’t know him,” Mamai-Jeet insists, making a disdainful motion with her head. “Never seen him before in my life. I don’t watch those feeds, I know nothing about any bashtooh Games. What are these Games? What do they matter to me when I need iretar?”

  Kokayi makes a frustrated sound, then slams his fist against the table. “You need iretar? I give you iretar!” He reaches in his pockets and throws a handful of coins on the tabletop. “Want more? Here’s more!” And he reaches in his vest and starts throwing the money all over the room, striking the wall and the furniture. The coins clatter and roll underfoot, and the rest of us watch in stunned or mesmerized silence.

  “I have more than ten million iretar!” he cries, shaking with emotion. “And I’ve just thrown thousands of iretar out there, riding in my Parade, to the people—”

  “And you’re a fool, exactly as I know you to be!” Kokayi’s mother interrupts, shrilling, waving her hands in his face. Her own face is contorted with equal emotion, and spittle starts flying. . . . “Only a fool would throw iretar around when we don’t even have a spare blanket! Look at you! What’s this face paint, what’s these colored scraps you wearing?”

  “Why you screaming, old hag? I brought you everything! I won the Games, I can give you more iretar than all your pots can hold and more! Isn’t it what you want?”

  “Don’t you weather at me! You think I drop gravity for this?”

  “No, no, you never drop gravity for your son, I see now! Kokayi is never good enough for you, not even now! I can’t believe what I’ve been through, thinking that maybe, if I won, you’d think differently. But you’re just a broken, malicious old hag—” Kokayi cuts off on a high note, and goes silent. His expression closes up; the fire in his eyes dies out.

  Ukou and Kateb watch with sympathy, Brie frowns, clearly confused about the Atlanteo vocabulary of what’s being said, and Leetana shrinks back sadly without meeting his gaze. Another moment and Kokayi suddenly pushes past us and rushes outside, slamming the door behind him.

  There is petrified silence.

  “This was unfair,” Mineb Inei says at last, from the back. “Your son tried to please you. Why treat him this way?”

  “And what business is that of yours?” Kokayi’s mother turns in his direction. “Who are you to come into my house and tell me what to do?”

  “He’s a Champion of the Games of the Atlantis Grail,” I say coldly, in slightly stilted Atlanteo, and without any intent on my part my voice starts gaining power. “And so am I. So are nine of us here, standing right now under your roof—all because your son invited us here. And he is the tenth. He is a Champion, and he is the best of us!”

  Mamai-Jeet fixes her suddenly burning gaze on me. “Don’t you think I know that?” she says in a surprising, soft voice, and I see that her eyes begin to glisten.

  She pauses, then takes a deep breath and exhales with a shudder, and takes a staggering step, grasping the corner of the table. “I know,” she repeats. “I know everything—Imperial Lady Gwen. My son . . . my Bay-bean left, and he never came back. And then I saw him in the Games, just like his father, and I knew he was never coming back again. No matter what happened, he was dead already, win or lose. Yes, I watched every moment, waiting for him to die, and that’s how I lost my son . . . to the Games.”

  The woman inclines her head to me in a strange gesture of powerlessness.

  “I’ll go after him,” Kateb says, breaking the painful silence. “To make sure he’s okay.”

  Kokayi’s mother nods. She then sits down on the narrow cot, and her pinched face twists as she begins to cry without a sound.

  While Kateb goes looking for Kokayi, his wife sits down next to the older woman. “Mamai-Jeet,” she says gently. “It’s all right to grieve for your son. But he is not his father. And he won. He has come back to you. And it’s a reason for celebration.”

  Kokayi’s mother nods. She then sniffles loudly, wipes her face, and tries to compose herself. A few shuddering breaths later, she looks up at us, at me, and says. “Don’t you dare tell him. It’s for his own good. Don’t any of you—”

  “We won’t,” Brie says in lousy Atlanteo. “But you need to stop being such a chazuf to him, even for his own good.”

  Kokayi’s mother shakes her head pitifully, sniffles again, then gets a grip and shows us her very bad teeth in a blooming smile.

  “You, White Bird!” she says to Hedj Kukkait, who immediately attends her with amusement. “You go bring my Bay-bean back here! I don’t trust that other one—the Inventor with the big spinning blade weapon, he is too quiet, not firm enough, look how he got mistreated by Deneb Gratu—”

  “Yeah, hag was definitely not watching the Games.” Brie rolls her eyes and starts laughing.

  A few minutes later, we’re being offered a boiling kettle of some kind of soup. Mamai-Jeet stirs the contents with a long wooden spoon and tells us she has fewer dishes than people present.

  “Thank you, but no need, we’re going soon,” Rurim Kiv says.

  “Before we go, please make your son understand how you really feel about him,” Rea Bunit says, leaning over the kettle and speaking near the old woman’s ear.

  “Of course, I am proud of my Bay-bean!” Mamai-Jeet sputters. “All the neighbors know—”

  In that moment Kokayi himself enters the room, followed by Kateb and Hedj.

  His mother immediately freezes up and drops the spoon into the deep kettle, so that it sinks in the bubbling liquid.

  “Mamai . . .” her son says, his long braids
swinging with his every graceful movement as he approaches her. “You really mean it?”

  She snorts, in a semblance of her earlier “weather,” then comes up to him and stops to look up into his face. Both mother and son are willowy and tall, but the son is taller. “Ah,” she says, speaking for the first time without abrasiveness. “Morning in your head?”

  “Morning in my head.” Kokayi nods, hanging his head with a sigh of infinite relief.

  That’s when Mamai-Jeet slaps him smartly upside his forehead.

  Chapter 28

  “Wait, ‘Eos in my—’ Is that ‘Morning in my head?’ ‘Morning in his head?’ What? What are they smoking?” Brie leans in and mutters to me in English. “What the hell kind of crazy Goldilocks talk is that?”

  “I’m guessing it’s local street slang or something,” Laronda says, right next to me.

  “Yeah, it’s Bay slang,” Anu confirms, standing right behind Laronda, so that he’s practically breathing in her ear.

  Laronda turns around and nearly bumps heads with Anu. “Eew, back off,” she says to him and squeezes in closer to me, since the room is still ridiculously crowded.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Anu steps a little away from her and ends up almost hugging an Imperial guard.

  I hold back a smile and turn around to exchange amused glances with Dawn who’s right there, trying to make her way past Brie, as she edges closer toward me and probably the exit.

  We continue to crowd the room politely for a few minutes more, watching Kokayi interact with his mother—now that things between them seem to have warmed up.

  At some point I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn and there’s Kateb, together with his wife, trying to approach me past the Imperial guards. I nod and move toward them both with a smile.