Gaynah half turns, her arms still folded firmly around her stomach. She raises an eyebrow comically. “Really?”
I frown a little, looking at the jumpsuit. “What’s wrong with it? It’s sparkly, and you like sparkly things.”
She rolls her eyes. “You really don’t know me, do you, Clara. I would never touch any of this cheap stuff.”
For a second I get ready to tell her that I know her better than anyone. Sometimes better than herself. I know that she sucks her thumb when she’s nervous, and snaps at people when she’s scared. I also know that my uncle’s clothes are not cheap. They’re more expensive than anything she ever wears. Instead, I clamp my mouth shut and try to count.
I reach ten and feel my shoulders relax. I don’t want to be mad at Gaynah anymore. It’s tiring being this mad all the time, and I miss her.
“You look, then,” I say. “I’m going to find Eldorath.” And I leave the room, still in my wet clothes.
I walk along the hall and turn the knob of the first door I come to. It’s another bedroom. I close it and continue to the next door. I open it: a closet with towels and bathroom supplies. At the end of the hall is the room where we first saw Eldorath’s costumes, when Rudy was so excited to play dress-up.
The wind howls around the house, and there is a cold gust in the room. I shiver, following the hall as it wraps around the stairs. Eldorath stands framed against a large tinted window. I hesitate to approach him, but it’s as if he senses me, and he turns. “Clara.” His face is covered by the shadow of the curtain, his hands clasped in front of him. “Is everything okay?”
I nod, noting how haunting he looks against the window. He walks toward me, and as he reaches me, he whispers, “Come, I have something to share with you.”
I follow him hesitantly as he leads me into the room filled with clothes we visited the first day. Behind the rows of clothes is a door that leads into another room, much smaller than the one before. It has a desk with a chair behind it, and another chair in front of it. He sits behind the desk and fiddles with a pen shaped like a snake. “This is my office,” he explains, waving his hand around at the empty room. “I keep meaning to decorate it, but I just can’t find the time”—he sighs—“or the inclination.” He leans back in the chair, observing me from under his bushy eyebrows.
“Can you keep a secret, Clara?”
I think about this because I don’t want to lie. Maybe I can keep a secret, but what if the secret is bad? Eldorath waits patiently while I weigh the pros and cons of answering his question. If I say no, then I’ll never know what his secret is. If I say yes, something bad might happen.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Eldorath says, sitting forward.
“No, no, no. I don’t want to be trapped in here forever because of your secret.”
He squints at me, confused. “You won’t be trapped here, Clara. You can leave anytime you choose.”
It’s a trap.
“It’s not a trap,” he says, as if reading my mind. Oh God, he reads minds too? This is more than I ever imagined. I knew he wasn’t a witch doctor, but a mind reader? Think of something else. Mango. Think of mango. If he says anything about mangos, then that means he knew everything I was thinking this whole time. Even the bad thoughts. I bite my lip.
I wait.
We look at each other, waiting for the other to speak.
Eldorath sighs, “What are you doing now?”
“Seeing if you can read my mind.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
I sigh with relief. “Okay, so what’s your secret?”
He looks so intently at me, I shift my feet from side to side. “I used to see things, things that most people don’t see,” he says.
My chest rises and falls as I think about the rumors. The stories. Is this it? Is this when I find out if the rumors are true?
“What do you mean?” I breathe.
Eldorath leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the desk.
“Clara, I am just like you. I can see dead people too.”
I turn on my heels and run along the landing. Behind me I hear Eldorath calling me back, telling me it’s okay, there’s nothing to be afraid of, but I continue running along the landing and down the stairs. When I can no longer hear him, I slow down, gasping for breath. I stumble to the glass door, where the heavy rain fills his balcony. My heart is beating superfast and my head feels like it’s going to explode.
I don’t know what he means. I’m afraid to know and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m afraid of being like him. Maybe I knew all along but didn’t want to admit it.
I hear footsteps behind me and groan inwardly.
“I love rain, don’t you?” he says, approaching me.
I do love the rain, but it’s hard to focus when I don’t know what he is going to ask me next. Suddenly I wish I hadn’t come here. My gut feels uneasy and my mind is screaming for him to not say anything else. I stare hard at the pellets of rain hitting the veranda outside.
“The community loved my father. He was a loud, friendly man who lived in the big house on the hill. Pastor Brown, your father, your mother, we were all inseparable. This house was our playground.” He trails off. “My father loved to fish; it’s where your father gets it from. He often took us with him—me, your father, Barry. He would teach us what to do, tell us the names of each fish, show us how to find the right spot. One Sunday morning he wanted to go fishing, but I was the only one awake, so we decided to go alone. As we were leaving, Moses, Pastor Brown’s father, showed up. He usually never went anywhere with us, but for some reason he turned up at my father’s door and said he wanted to come too. He’d had a dream the night before that something significant happened on water. He thought God was speaking to him. I wanted to wake Barry, because his father rarely ever did anything with him. Barry spent so much time at our home, he became like family. But Moses said no, let him sleep.”
He moves around me so we are facing each other, and this time I don’t run. I stay to listen. This is the story I’ve wanted to know my whole life. The truth.
He sighs heavily, and he is trembling a little.
“The water was choppy when we arrived, and Moses said he didn’t like the look of it, but my father insisted—he had made these journeys a hundred times, in worse weather, and he had been fine. It was obvious from the get-go it wasn’t fine, but my father was a stubborn man, and he continued to take us farther out. The rain came and it was torrential, and the waves got bigger.” He lowers his head. “Our boat was too small. It couldn’t handle the waves, and so it capsized.”
I inhale sharply.
“We went under, all of us: Papa, me, Moses. The water was cold. It took my breath away. I remember falling farther and farther down until a hand grabbed me out of nowhere and pulled me up. My father saved me, threw me on top of the overturned boat, and told me to hold on tight. Don’t let go, he said. Then he went back under for Moses. I waited for what seemed like hours, in the wind and rain, holding on for my life. But they never came. It was hours later before a rescue boat found me, just me.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“That same night, I saw them both in my room, telling me it was time to go fishing as though it’d never happened. When I told Barry that I’d seen his father, he didn’t believe me. He said his father was in the city, and he would know if he had come to Sycamore. He thought I was lying until the funeral, then he got mad and he stayed mad. Our relationship has not been the same since. He blamed me for his father’s death. He wished I had woken him that day, but more than that, I think when I told him I saw his father after he died, he saw that as the ultimate betrayal, that even in his death, his father still hadn’t come to him.”
Eldorath smiles weakly, shaking his head. “Ever s
ince then he’s been on a campaign to ruin me. He took over his father’s ministry and continued the campaign against me, until finally I gave up. I stopped going out. The stares, the whispers, the rumors got to be too much. Your father tried many times to draw me out of this house. To this day he knocks on my door with a basket of food and invites me to dinner. But why would I want to eat with a community that hates me? I would rather stay here, alone, with my own company.”
My heart feels heavy. I feel so sad for Eldorath in that moment and so mad at myself for wanting to leave. All this time, all the rumors were because Pastor Brown was still hurt by his own father’s death, and he’s been taking it out on Eldorath.
Eldorath moves me into the sitting room across from the piano room. This room is more lived-in, but cobwebs still hang from the chandeliers, and I wonder if it’s because he can’t reach them. A painting of a man stands tall on the wall in front of us. It must be Grandpa, even though I never met him.
Eldorath sits me down on a sofa with pink and white roses stitched into the cover. He takes my hand in his, and it’s warm and soft like sheets after they’ve been washed. He smells of coconut oil. I never noticed that before.
“Clara, your father doesn’t allow you up here because he doesn’t want to admit you are going through the same thing as me. He got into many fights and arguments protecting me over the years. He saw the damage that fear could do. He thinks if he keeps you away, you’ll get better, and no one will ever have to know you see ghosts too.”
My lip trembles as I try to hold myself together. I think about all the rumors I have heard about Eldorath. All the times Mama has told me not to go to his house. All the times I’ve asked Papa if I could go with him and he told me, Another time.
“I’m like you?” I whisper, and the question comes out in a gush of breath that stings my throat. Eldorath smiles and nods.
I can barely look at him. “How do you know?”
“Remember I said I was going to help you?” he says. “That time is now, Clara.” He nods upstairs.
“So tell me what happened to Gaynah. How did she die?”
THERE IS A NEW GIRL ARRIVING in Sycamore. Her hair is in two Afro buns with big white bows, and she is wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses, like a celebrity. That’s according to Gaynah. I haven’t seen her yet, but Gaynah says she saw her get off the city bus by the traffic circle with a woman that looked like her mother, and they are heading up the hill.
But Gaynah says a lot of things. She said she saw an alien once down by Ms. Gee’s guava tree. The alien had eight legs and three eyes and told her not to tell anyone because humans might hurt her. Of course, Gaynah being Gaynah, she told everyone she saw.
While we wait on the grass by the turn of the road, Calvin suggests we think of ideas to do with the new girl, places we can show her. I suggest Fort Charlotte, an old fort by the sea with cannons left over from the war. Calvin agrees this is a good call, but Gaynah shuts it down immediately.
“We’re not playing make-believe,” she retorts. “That’s for babies, Clara. Are you a baby?”
“We don’t need to call anyone names,” Calvin says, intervening. “Let’s just come to an agreement.” This doesn’t make Gaynah happy. She turns her back on me, rolling her eyes. Gaynah has been doing this a lot lately, embarrassing me in front of everyone. For some reason, she doesn’t like our friendship anymore. She’s never told me why. There are only six kids on the hill, plus three babies: the Wilson twins, Anton, Calvin; Gaynah; and me. There are a few older kids, like Anton’s brother, but they do their own thing and are hardly ever on the hill. I have no one but Gaynah, so if Gaynah is going to ditch me for Calvin’s group, I need this new girl.
Turns out Gaynah wasn’t lying. The new girl is real, and she’s everything Gaynah described. Rudy is her name. She came from New York to stay with Ms. Gee for the summer.
We’re supposed to play pick leaf tomorrow, but the excitement of having someone new in Sycamore takes over. We agree to postpone the game for another day. Today we will show her the best of what Sycamore has to offer. Which isn’t much. Gaynah pouts and makes a fuss until my Fort Charlotte idea gets outvoted for the beach. Everyone loves the beach, even Gaynah.
The Wilson twins can’t make it, they have track practice, and for once Anton isn’t attached to Calvin’s hip—he has chores to do and can’t make it either. In the end it is just me, Gaynah, Calvin, the new girl, and the new girl’s mother.
We walk the ten minutes down to the coast with Rudy stopping every few minutes to squeal at the cute roads and the cute houses and so many trees. After a while we get weary of the constant stopping in the scorching heat. Only Gaynah had the common sense to wear a hat. She lets us know this every time someone moans how hot it is.
By the time we get there, the sea is so welcoming, we run fully clothed into the crystal clear water. The new girl squeals as she enters the sea. She tells us she has never been to the beach and she can’t believe how warm the water is. She splashes us, which then breaks into a water fight. Gaynah doesn’t get involved. She sits on the sand under her hat and sunglasses, pretending she doesn’t care to join, but I know she does.
Rudy’s mother has found a shaded spot to read her book and barely pays us any mind except to tell us not to swim out too far.
Rudy whispers that we should sneak up on Gaynah and drag her into the water. That’s when I know I like her. Not many people mess with Gaynah; she has this snotty attitude because her mother is the head of our school. I am the only one brave enough to push her buttons because we are family and we are best friends. She forgives me sooner or later. The new girl doesn’t know that about Gaynah yet, but I admire her bravery. The sun goes in and is replaced by a dark cloud. This doesn’t faze us; it might rain for a few minutes, but then the sun will reappear as if nothing happened.
Rudy sits next to Gaynah in the sand and does exactly as I instruct her: she takes an interest in Gaynah’s bag. Gaynah falls for it, of course, while me and Calvin sneak up on her from behind. Before she knows what’s going on, I grab her arms, and Calvin grabs her legs. We drag her kicking and screaming across the hot sand and dump her in the water. She goes under, then comes up spluttering and screaming. Her bag is ruined. We forgot to take the bag off her. She is furious and lunges at me.
“I’m sorry,” I shout, ducking her flying hands. I can’t help but laugh because she looks so funny snarling at me with her hair and clothes soaking wet. All the things she takes pride in.
“Now, that’s not very nice, is it?” Rudy’s mom calls from under her shade, but she doesn’t move to stop us. She’s too busy fanning herself and gulping down a bottle of water.
Calvin gets away from Gaynah by swimming out of reach, but she’s not mad at him; she’s mad at me. My laughing turns to frustration that I am the only one she’s angry at. We begin to argue. She demands that I buy her a new bag.
“Okay,” I say dryly, “let me just get on my private jet and fly to America.” I pretend to climb into a plane and buckle myself in. This infuriates her even more. So I dive into the water and swim away, knowing Gaynah doesn’t like to go too far out.
But she doesn’t give up that easy when she’s mad at you. She follows me along the sand, screaming, “I hate you, Clara!”
The entire sky is black now. A normal sunny afternoon now looks like a stormy evening. Out of the corner of my eye I see Papa returning with his boat, which is unusual because he normally stays out longer. He is waving and shouting something, but I can’t hear what he’s saying, so I wave back.
I continue to swim, now toward the rock face, to get to the beach on the other side of the rock. I want to get as far away from Gaynah as possible. This side of the beach is known for its strong currents. Surfers are here every day to ride these waves. Today, though, it’s empty because the sea is calm. Not just calm, it’s flat; there are no waves, not even a ripple. It’s
weird, and for a second, I stop swimming and check the sky.
Maybe that is more than just a rain cloud; maybe it’s a storm. There were no warnings on the radio this morning. Mama always has the radio on when she’s making breakfast. Papa didn’t say anything about a storm either. If there was even a slight threat, he would not have left this morning except to secure his boat.
I hear Gaynah and turn to see her swimming toward me. “Really?” I shout. Was she that mad at me that she would get back in the water and chase me down? Gaynah is not one for deep water—she likes to be able to touch the ground—but we are just far enough out for the sandy bottom to be out of reach.
She’s gasping when she catches up with me, and struggling to talk and stay afloat. “Your father…says…a storm’s coming….The current is too strong round here. You have to come back.” I look over her shoulder, and Papa is running into the water, waving his arms. I look toward the rocks. I am nearly there.
I tell Gaynah to go back, but she shakes her head. “You’re not strong enough!” I scream at her.
Her face screws up as she treads water. “You’re not better than me, Clara. I can swim just as well as you.”
“Fine,” I shout. “Do what you want.”
I swim as fast as I can around the rock because I know once she sees how deep it is, she will turn back. Out of the corner of my eye I see her pass me. She disappears around the rock, and I hear her scream before I see her. She is pulled into a whirlpool and is desperately trying to swim out, only to be pulled back in.
I am frozen. I can’t move forward, and I can’t move backward. I don’t know what to do. The whirlpool appeared out of nowhere. I have never seen anything like it. My feet paddle frantically underwater.
I have to help her. She’s not a strong swimmer; she can’t get out by herself. I stretch my arm out to swim toward her when I am grabbed from behind. It’s Papa.
“No.” He grabs me, kicking and screaming, turning me onto my back. “People are coming,” he says into my ear. “People are coming.”
When Life Gives You Mangos Page 10
