Sister Mine Read online

  The guardian should have carried Abby to the crossroads right away. Instead, he took her to my mom’s room. He’d taken a shine to Mom, Uncle had. A real shine. The kind that sets brother against brother, starts family feuds.

  Mom was still dopey from the anaesthetic, but uncle took care of that. Plain ol’ unconsciousness was no challenge for the being who shuttled humans from life to death like beads on an abacus. Even in her half-sleep she’d been begging to see her babies, and now she was fully awake. This was her first time seeing Abby, but when she clapped eyes on my uncle carrying a gasping bundle whose little mouth pursed like my dad’s, she figured out pretty quickly that the baby was one of hers.

  The guardian’s impartial. He has to be. Normally he wouldn’t be put in the position of herding family across the borders between life and death, since the rest of that lot don’t die. Not permanently, anyway.

  Mom begged him for Abby’s life.

  He replied, “There isn’t enough of her to survive on this side of the gate.”

  Mom was having none of it. She began to make promises. But what does a human have to offer a demigod? She tried to swear her lifelong obedience. Uncle shook his head. In a way, he already had that, from every mortal on this plane and the next. But he didn’t leave with Abby. Mom’s arms ached to hold her baby. She promised sex, the best he’d had, and he’s had some good stuff. He’s not just Lord of the Grave, my uncle. All that borning and dying business has given him a taste for some of the sweetest gifts of the flesh. My mom was fine, they tell me. All blackberry sweet juice. And she knew what to do with what she’d got. How d’you think she managed to catch the eye of not just one celestial, but two?

  Thing is, Uncle, for all his lechery, is pretty professional about his job. He shook his head, turned towards the door. But Mom spied the tear twinkling in his eye, and she knew she’d underestimated him. Sure, he liked doing the nasty plenty well, but—“Save her,” Mom said wildly. “And I’ll love you.”

  Uncle stopped, one hand on the door’s crash bar, the other supporting Abby’s one-and-three-quarters-legged little rump. He knows lies, Uncle does. There’s a propaganda machine that makes him out to be the prince of them, but that’s some bullshit. Those are the same people that won’t let their kids borrow fiction from the libraries. Stories aren’t lies, people. Some of them are truer than any autobiography. But Uncle does know how lies taste; refined sugar-sweet, not molasses-sweet like truth, with its sulphurous backbite. Mom was telling the truth; the room was treacly with it. If he saved her daughter, she would love him. She would love Death itself, fiercely and hotly. What parent wouldn’t, under the circumstances?

  Uncle looked down at the child he was holding, at her piecemeal body and oddly canted face. Her jaundiced skin going blue. She had my mom’s eyes. We both do. Uncle turned. Mom reached her hand out, took his in it, her eyes brimming with hope, with love enough to fight for her child, and more.

  Uncle whispered, “I can’t do it. She needs organs, tissues that I can’t give her. I’m a ferryman. I can’t make her live.”

  “Allyou need me for that,” said my dad. He walked into Mom’s room. Uncle tried to snatch his hand away from Mom’s, but she held on and looked Dad full in the face. A mother’s love is fierce with pride, and Mom was never one for regrets.

  Dad read the signs of what had gone on between them, like spoor in the room. “You want this?” he asked Mom.

  “Yes.”

  “Brother mine,” said Dad, “give me my child.” His two eyes made four with Uncle’s. In that moment, Dad’s eyes in his bark-brown face were green, the bright green of new spring leaves. Gently, Uncle handed Abby over. Gently, Dad took her. His first time holding his baby. That was the moment that Uncle violated the border between this side and the next, for once he had taken a soul to himself, he wasn’t ever supposed to hand it over until he had delivered it to its destination.

  If Uncle is a ferryman between the worlds, Dad is a gardener. His talents are growing, grafting, and pruning. “Lewwe go then, nuh?” said Dad to his brother.

  “What?” said Mom. “Where’re you taking her?”

  Dad replied, his voice full of loss, “Can’t fix her up here. We have to go to the next side. You stay and see to Makeda.” He tried on a smile. “We going to bring her sister back to you before you could say Jack Mandora.”

  Uncle embraced Dad. Their circled arms protected Abby. Mom had to look away from the brothers then. Their aspects were already changing, preparing to cross over to the other side. Mortals cannot look upon that celestial shift for long. It’s like looking directly into the sun. Between the glory that was the brothers, dying Abby was a fleeting scrap of dull flesh. Then the three were gone. Mom clambered back into her bed, closed her eyes, and prayed for both her children. No point imploring the Big Boss. He has more important things to look after. As so many claypickens do, Mom prayed to the celestials more directly involved in the affairs of this plane; in this case, to her lover and to his brother.

  I was right; when fuelled by audience energy, Soul Chain was the fucking bomb. They had a full house that night. They’d been playing for maybe a couple hours. Brie stepped up to the mike, grabbed it and screamed into it, fast and angry:

  “Suck all the juice this life will give!”

  The crowd roared a refrain back at Brie. I couldn’t make the words out. Maturity’s signing animated her whole body, a silent explosion of tough. She punched and clutched at the air, snarled at life, kneed and kneaded it, sucking its juices. Jeff’s axe kicked in again with a rubber-burning road rage of riffing. The dance floor exploded for the umpteenth time into people bouncing and body-slamming to the music. Cleveland and Hallam were doing some crazy mix of go-go dancing, tutting, and turf. They were all over the stage and it was all, as far as I could tell, improvised. Brie played call-and-response with us. I finally heard the words of the response when a brush-cut white guy not much taller than me spat it out right into my ear:

  “The pretty ones are too good to live!”

  It was all incredible. The mass of people, pulsing simultaneously with one heart and with many. The competing whiffs of sweat, cologne, weed, beer. The body heat, the sheer aural assault of the music. I’d pushed my way to the centre of the room, where I wasn’t so much dancing as being shoved back and forth by the tide of bodies as the crowd contracted rhythmically around me. My feet ached, I needed to pee, and there was sweat running down the crack of my ass. I didn’t give a fuck. Brie was pushing his voice to the limit, screaming and roaring at us, playing chicken with that knife edge that could do permanent damage to his vocal cords. Abby would have been wincing if she were had been there. Which she wasn’t. I pumped my fist in the air and shouted triumphantly along with everyone else, “The pretty ones are too good to live!” The stage lights picked up verdant highlights on Brie’s face and hands.

  I worked my way over to the side to give my empty beer bottle back. I caught a glimpse of frizzy brown hair flecked with white; Fleet, swaying drunkenly through the crowd, clapping sloppily in time to the music and slurring the words in a spitty howl. Her face had that damp, bleached-out look that pale people can get when they’ve been running too hard and too long. It could have felt weird, seeing someone her age body-slamming in a mosh pit full of twentysomethings, but she wasn’t the only middle-aged person here. Asian guy over there, wizened as a walnut, belt pulling in a good eight inches of slack on the waistband of his jeans. Stylin’ jeans, too, for an old man. And cool haircut. Bobbing along like everyone else. As I watched, he slowed down, panting. He wobbled his way over to the side, where he crouched with his hands on his knees, sucking in air. Man, what if he flatlined right here? I chuckled to myself. At least it’d mean I’d get to say hi to Uncle. Bet he’d be surprised to see me in this place. Even Milo my new landlord was here, rocking a screaming Hawaiian shirt, jammers, and rubber flip-flops, staggering around the periphery of the crowd and occasionally bopping along for a few seconds. Man was an embarrassment to hi
mself, fashion-wise. I bounded back into the fray, fought my way front and centre to give Brie and the rest of the band a thumbs-up. Brie looked down and saw me. He came forward, leaned down, and grabbed me by the wrist. He was strong. I shook my head, laughing, but I didn’t fight too hard as he pulled me up onto the stage. But then he put the mike in front of my mouth. I batted it away. He laughed, put the mike back in its stand. “OK, then,” he shouted, his mouth close to my ear. His lips buzzed pleasantly against my skin. He was still holding my hand. He took me to the front of the stage again. “Jump with me!” he said.

  I threw myself into the air right away. “Hey!” he yelled, surprised. I caught a glimpse of him leaping to join me. Then I landed in the arms of a bellowing, happy crowd. I’d always wanted to do a stage dive. I thought it’d be like flopping onto a bed of springy green boughs. Not so much. More grabby, ouchy, and confusing. Hands squeezed my arms and ankles too hard, pulled me in too many directions at once. Someone’s searching fingers slid between my be-jeaned thighs. “Hey!” I yelled, inaudible under the music. The hand withdrew, grabbed my thigh instead and helped to body-surf me along the top of the crowd. Hands took my shoulders and supported my head. A voice murmured a friendly, “Here you go, love” as I was passed on. Hands patted my bottom. I tried to swat them away, but my arms weren’t my own. They had become handles for people to use to propel me along. Fingers tweaked a nipple. I probably shouldn’t have liked that as much as I did. Briefly, my knee twisted painfully. I pulled my leg out of the hold. It hung for a second at an uncomfortable angle until more hands lifted it level with my body. I took a light punch to the kidneys. Felt like I’d connected with someone’s bobbing head. I thought I heard the person yell, “Sorry!” but I was already many body-lengths away. A stranger’s sweat flew into my eyes. I blinked the salt sting away, laughed, and gave myself up to it all.

  Brie was being wafted along nearby. Fizzy bubbles of excitement danced in my veins. I giggled. Brie grinned back at me. I yelled, “What a freaking high!”

  He yelled back, “Fucking right! See why I love this stuff?”

  The rest of the band kept kicking, driving the energy higher, faster, more frenzied. A guy the size of a bear hollered happily at me, grabbed me by the waist, and lifted me over his head, even higher than the reaching arms of the crowd. I hallooed with glee at the roller-coaster feeling of being swooped aloft. I bellowed, “We’re flying!”

  Brie gave a triumphant howl as he was spun through the green aura of the stage lights. “You’re amazing!” he yelled at me. “You just jumped right in!”

  I felt amazing. I threw my head back and let the caterpillar hands of the people below me propel me where they would. The blood in my veins carbonated with a wild, diving joy. I yelled, “Higher! Take me higher!”

  And then there was nothing.

  2

  THE BABY WOULDN’T STOP CRYING. Nothing Suzy tried was working. Winston’s diaper was dry, he was fed, he didn’t have gas, there was nothing poking into him, he wasn’t teething, he didn’t seem to be sick, and he certainly had all Suzy’s attention at the moment. But still he kept up a disconsolate sob, his little hands curled into angry, helpless fists.

  Naima stuck her head around the corner. She’d been happily playing some kind of six-year-old game in the living room. “Mommy, the crows are cawing,” she said.

  “That’s wonderful, darling.” Suzy rocked the baby. The baby cried. “Mommy’s kind of busy right now.”

  “But what’s wrong, Mommy? The crows are cawing, and Wheedle’s crying.”

  “Call him Winston, sweetie. It’s his real name. You wouldn’t like it if we made fun of your name, would you?”

  And Wheedle cried.

  “The crows are unhappy like Wheed—like Winston’s unhappy,” Naima responded. She stood and twiddled one of her plaits for a bit. When Suzy didn’t reply, she wandered back to the living room. Not a minute later, there was a huge crack, then a slushy crashing sound from outside. Suzy rushed out. On her way, she checked to make sure that Naima was still safely in the living room. She was.

  The crows had gone silent now. Suzy realized she should have listened to Naima. Cawing crows; around here, that meant something bad was coming. When the crows stopped cawing, now; that meant something worse. It meant the bad thing had just happened and the crows had hightailed it out of there.

  Suzy couldn’t quite get out the door. The way was blocked by branches. The big old tree in the yard had cracked near its base and fallen over onto the house.

  Which meant that something had gotten loose from the cage of the tree’s roots. And Suzy could guess what or who it was. When you were a steward to the celestials, you saw a lot of family secrets.

  “Oh, dear,” Suzy said to the baby, “this isn’t good.”

  Winston abruptly stopped whimpering. Instead, he stared, mesmerized, as a tendril of kudzu whipped around one of the branches closest to both of them, lengthening as it went. Suzy’s scalp crawled, fright winning out over flight. With the speed of a striking serpent, the kudzu reached for Suzy’s wrist. Suzy shouted. She took a step backwards and slammed the sliding door shut. Her heart leapt in her throat like a live frog, desperate to escape.

  The kudzu vine pressed itself against the glass, its frustrated leaves spread flat and handlike against it. Suzy managed to croak out, “Papa B.? That you?”

  A rope of kudzu, nearly as big around as Suzy’s wrist, thumped against the glass. The door rattled in its track.

  Suzy fought herself back from the brink of panic. She was a mama. She had these little ones to keep safe. She knew who could do for that kudzu for her. “Naima,” she shouted, “get over here!”

  Naima whined something back about wanting to stay and have tea with her dolls. Tiny curls of smoke began rising up from the outer glass of the door where the kudzu was touching it.

  “Girl, don’t give me your lip right now; get over here, I said!”

  Wheedle—Winston—peacefully sucked his thumb and watched the rampaging kudzu. He pointed at it, looked up at Suzy’s face to see whether she had noticed the fascinating new thing, too.

  “Yeah, baby, I see it. Don’t worry, I won’t let it hurt you.” Winston wasn’t the one who was worried.

  Naima came pouting around the corner. The clip had come off the end of one of her pigtails. The braid had begun to unravel, her springy hair blowing out into a puffball at the braid’s tip. Her pink Dora the Explorer T-shirt had a smear on its chest that clearly showed the imprint of Naima’s hand where she’d wiped it clean of heavens knew what; Little Bit was always getting her curious fingers into one thing or another. Suzy’d pay mind to that after they got this bigger mess cleaned up. Naima was so small! Suzy’s heart ached for her eldest. She hefted Winston closer to her body and said to Naima, “Sweetie, you gotta call Mister Cross. Now.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Hush. Now, I said. And I’ll let you have a cookie after.”

  Naima brightened up. “If I call him real real quick, can I have two?”

  A giant kudzu tentacle was curling up the glass. What if it got in the upstairs window? “Baby girl, if you can get him here lickety-split, I’ll give you one for each finger on your one hand.”

  “OK,” replied Naima. “Fetch me a pillow please, Mama. And the bones.”

  She plopped down right there on the floor, suddenly all business. She was an uncanny child; some part of her six-year-old self understood that her job as living telephone was serious. She tucked her feet under her and rested an upturned palm on each knee, ready to receive the bones. Suzy scurried to fetch them from the carved, lidded calabash on the side table in the living room. There was another thump from the direction of the sliding glass door. Suzy yelled, “Old guy or not, don’t you break that door! Do you want broken glass to hurt these children?”

  The kudzu left off its raging. Maybe there was enough of Daddy Wood left in there to remember to step careful around growing things when it wasn’t their time yet. Please, let
it not be anyone’s time in this house today. Her cell phone was on the table next to the calabash. She ached to call Roger, to hear his voice, but other humans couldn’t help her and her children in this moment.

  One-handed because of the baby, Suzy took the lid off the carved calabash and put it down on the side table. She fumbled around inside the calabash until she felt the smooth, warm bones. She snatched them up quick. Small aerial roots were growing, white and twisty as maggots, from the kudzu limb. They were tugging at the tiny space between the sliding door and its jamb. As Suzy pulled her hand out of the calabash, Winston playfully yanked on her hair. She jostled the calabash. It tilted, rolled. With an armful of Winston, she wasn’t able to move quickly enough to stop the calabash from teetering, then falling over the edge of the table. She gave a little cry. The calabash hit the ground and shattered. The sound made Wheedle jump and start to cry. For a second, Suzy just stared at the mess of calabash shards on the floor. She wanted to cry, too.

  “Mama, hurry!” called Naima.

  There was a gleam of white in among the beige and brown pieces of broken calabash. Suzy opened her hand that was holding the bones and did a quick eye count. Ah. Mister Cross had had Winston do her a favour by making her break the calabash, because in her haste, she’d gotten the two hand-carved bone dice, but not the all-important third bone. Nearly sobbing, she muttered at Mister Cross, “If you know you’re wanted, why don’t you just show, then?” Seemed like everything had to be a production around the old guys. The kudzu had taken to thumping over and over on the glass. No time to soothe Wheedle; Suzy bent and picked the thin, bleached bone from a black cat out from among the calabash pieces. She dashed over and put the two dice in Naima’s right hand and the cat bone in her left. Naima had already closed her eyes and begun the breathing that Suzy’d taught her: slow and careful, in through the nose, letting the breath fill and expand her tummy, then out through the mouth. Dandling a sobbing Wheedle, Suzy asked, “You doing your picturing?”