“Oh hey,” said Kenya, feeling bad. She liked the girl, and not only because she found her instantly preferable to the sandy-haired imps.
“Hey, Amandla,” Johnbrown said. “Since you butted your nose in, why don’t you show Kenya how to get up there?”
“I’m sure she knows how to use a ladder, Baba,” Amandla said, wrinkling her brow. “Kenya, they said don’t worry about dinner if you’re tired. We can warm up a plate for you whenever you feel like eating.”
“Well, are you going to have dinner with everybody else, Amandla?” Kenya asked.
“Of course,” the girl said, pushing her glasses up on her small round nose. “I always have dinner with everybody else.”
“Well, then so will I.”
Amandla cracked a smile.
“What’s so funny?” asked Johnbrown.
At dinner, Kenya noted that the kitchen was clearly the heart of the place. She compared it with her mother’s house, where she felt most comfortable napping in front of the television on the pantyhose-colored sectionals when no one else was home. That was no heart compared with the spacious and bright room where she now sat in a very upright chair. Filled to bursting as it was with stuff and people, it was harmonious, or at least controlled. They sat at a thick table, set with matching plates and glasses and an array of colorful cloth napkins, each slightly different.
“Mama made this,” said the imp girl, holding hers up for Kenya to admire.
“That’s very nice,” Kenya said, taking the chance to study the twins, with their hooded gray eyes that made them look older than four. They both had wild hair, the girl’s in a messy ponytail, the boy’s in a shape that evoked Prince with bedhead or a post-concert Little Richard. Sharon had her children’s eyes, thin lips, and strangely small teeth. The three of them looked like frolicsome woodland creatures, though given their golden coloring, Nannie and Dennie could have easily been Cindalou’s children. The person they did not resemble was Johnbrown.
“Mama made all of the napkins,” said the boy.
“They’re very pretty,” said Kenya.
“Dennie and Nannie,” said Sharon. Her tone was corrective, but she grinned. “When you meet someone for the first time, you’re supposed to ask them questions about themselves, not just talk their ears off.” To Kenya she said, “The problem with homeschooling, you see. This one,” she said, indicating Johnbrown, “took the time to teach them about the ancient civilization of Khmet, but he forgot basic manners.”
Johnbrown rolled his eyes with a smile.
“Uh-huh,” said Kenya.
“Kenya?” said Nannie.
“Yes?”
“How old are you?”
“One hundred,” she said. No one laughed. She coughed. “How old do you think I am?” Kenya asked.
Nannie made deliberating noises and played with her counting fingers. She looked at the different people at the table as if that would help. “Mama, how old are you?”
“Well, I’ll give you a hint,” said Sharon with a wink. “I’ve told you about thirty-six times.”
“Ma
ma!
How old are you, Mama Cindalou?”
“Thirty-two. But
I’ve
told you about thirty-two times that a woman who tells her age will tell anything.”
“You’re thirty!” Dennie yelled at Kenya.
“Now, Dennie,” said Sharon, who had turned a blotchy red.
“She’s nineteen, Dennie,” said Johnbrown. “Much older than you, so be sure to listen when she tells you to do something. You, too, Nannie and Amandla.”
Cindalou said, “Kenya, can I get you some more of the green bean and tomato?”
“Actually, yeah,” Kenya said. “Everything tastes really good.”
“Girl, you say that like you surprised,” said Cindalou. “You forgot my cooking?”
“Cindalou puts her foot in it nightly,” said Johnbrown.
“You put your feet in the food?” said Dennie, looking frightened.
Nannie spit masticated chicken onto her plate. “Ewww!”
Amandla sighed. “It’s an expression, you dummies.”
“Enough, Amandla,” said Johnbrown. “
Put her foot in it
, it just means she’s a good cook.”
Kenya was relieved by this scuffle. It meant she didn’t have to remind Cindalou that she’d never tasted her cooking. How would she have, back then? Maybe Johnbrown could have brought home a plate from their clandestine meetings?
“Are you a cook, Kenya?” asked Sharon.
“No, not really.”
“Well, this is a good place to learn if you’re interested,” said Johnbrown.
“Baba, you don’t know how to cook,” said Amandla.
“You sure are sassy tonight, ’Mandla,” murmured Cindalou.
“This is true,” said Johnbrown. “I don’t cook. But
you
don’t know how to wring a chicken’s neck. Each according to need and ability,” he said, pointing a drumstick at her.
“You can wring a chicken’s neck?” asked Kenya.
“I taught him that,” said Cindalou. “This African right here was scared of chickens.”
“I still am! Those mammers act irrationally and they have beaks and claws.”
“Truly, I don’t see how you all do it. I don’t see how you kill them, don’t see how you eat them,” Sharon said, shaking her head. She was eating only corn bread and vegetables.
“You see it nearly every day,” said Johnbrown. “We are some chicken-eating people right here. But for Sharon’s sake,” he said to Kenya, “we did experiment with vegetarianism some years ago.”
“The fried tofu was pretty good,” said Amandla. “I liked that.”
“And the pounds just melted off,” said Cindalou sadly.
“Why’d you start eating meat again?” asked Kenya.
“Oh God,” Sharon said. “Here we go. I was breast-feeding twins!”
“Turns out this one had been sneaking off to eat ribs,” Johnbrown said with a smirk, now pointing the bone at Sharon.
“And bacon!” Cindalou laughed.
Johnbrown laughed, too. “I mean it was a whole swine
binge
. If I hadn’t smelled it that time, she would have got down to chitlins.”
“Enough, enough. We don’t need to talk about chitlins at the table,” said Sharon. “Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it’s wine time. Any objections?”
“None over here. Objections, I mean,” said Cindalou.
“Kenya, do you—” Sharon started.
“Um, I think not,” said Johnbrown, a shadow crossing his face. A similar shadow crossed Sharon’s and she held her tongue.
“What’s for dessert?” asked Nannie. “Are we having birthday cake?”
“Nannie,” Amandla despaired. “Your birthday was”—she counted quickly on her fingers—“seven months ago.”
“It’s okay, my love,” said Sharon to Amandla. “Nannie has a small person’s sense of time. Like you used to. Remember last year you sent away for those stickers and asked me about them every day?”
“They never came,” Amandla muttered darkly.
“Nannie, would you like some peach cobbler?” asked Cindalou. “I made it special for Kenya, but I think it might be almost as good as birthday cake.”
“I want birthday cake,” said Nannie.
“That’s fine, because nobody is getting any peach cobbler unless their name is Johnbrown Curtis,” said Johnbrown.
“No, Baba,” cried Dennie. “Peach coddler is my favorite.”
“Dennie, you’ve never even eaten peach coddler,” Johnbrown said. “You kids are insane.”
“They come by it honestly,” said Cindalou, winking at Kenya.
* * *
After the cobbler with ice cream (homemade, of course), and after she’d sat at the table until she could sit no more, Kenya begged off to the Zen room. As she attempted to scale the bed, she wondered if there actually was some trick Amandla could have shown her about getting up into the loft. Gripping the metal ladder immediately hurt her hands, and one rung shy of the top, she was sure she would fall. But when she finally got up there and felt her bones melting into the mattress, she forgot all of that.
She could hear the noises coming from different parts of the house: a toilet flushing, a sink turned on and off. From the kitchen she heard the clatter of plates, then voices of her father and the women (his women?), the low hum of jazz. She thought she recognized a song Johnbrown used to play.
Space is the place
Space
is the place!
She was wondering how he had kept his records all of these years—in jails, prison, and halfway houses—when her name jumped all the way from the kitchen up the stairs and into the loft.
“…
just like you
,” said Sharon’s voice. “I mean a spitting image!”
“… can see Sheila,” said Cindalou. Then she said something about Kenya’s hair. Kenya could not tell if it was a compliment or not.
Kenya’s body tensed with listening, but now they all seemed to get quieter. She heard her father’s voice, and then only the plucking of bass strings in a long pause. When they began to talk again, it was clearly of other things.
She imagined herself making fun of them for someone, a new, imaginary person—not Zaineb, Commodore, or Sheila, but someone else who could understand just how absurd her father was, from failed revolutionary to imprisoned novelist and finally contented interracial polygamous family man. She imagined mocking Sharon and her strange children with their sharp little teeth and Cindalou, the now-obsolete home-wrecker who was still hanging on.
* * *
Even before she got to the farm, Kenya had been waking up confused about where she was. In the moments before opening her eyes, she didn’t know if she was a small girl in her tiny bedroom in West Philadelphia, if she’d slept over at Zaineb’s, if she would wake up to the yellow walls of her room back at the Ardmore Arms. Now she was alarmed when she opened her eyes and found that she was way above the floor—and that someone was standing in the doorway.
“Good morning,” said Amandla. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay,” said Kenya.
Amandla looked down, studying her sneaker.
Kenya said, “You can come in.”
“Amandla!” called Cindalou. “Let that girl sleep!”
“She’s already up,” Amandla called back.
“I’m glad you woke me,” said Kenya. “If I sleep too long, I start to have bad dreams.”
“Me too!” said Amandla.
“Amandla!”
“Shouldn’t you go see what she wants?” said Kenya.
“I’ll go in a minute.”
The night before, when she’d studied her at dinner, Kenya had seen Amandla as a browner Cindalou. But now, looking at the girl’s jaw, she saw Johnbrown as a preteen girl. She had his slanted eyes behind her glasses, and shared his faint air of disdain. She looked somber for someone wearing a T-shirt bearing a large pink flower at the center.
“Did you sleep well?” Amandla asked.
“Very well, thank you. What about you?”
Amandla made an
okay, not great
motion with her hand. Because of Barrett, Kenya thought
comme ci, comme ça
.
“Do you ever sleep up here?” Kenya asked.
“Once when I was sick I got to sleep up there with my mom.”
“Well, maybe we can have a slumber party sometime. I mean, not if you’re sick.”
“Really?” said Amandla.
“Why not?”
“Well,” Amandla said, with a frown, “Nannie and Dennie might want to come, too, and we can’t all fit up there.”
“Why can’t they just sleep in the woods with the other fawns and foxes?” she asked.
“What?” Amandla said, but she giggled anyway.
It occurred to Kenya that she was being reckless with the little girl. But perhaps not as reckless as some had been with her.
* * *
For a week, Kenya ate, slept, and observed her father’s new life at what they jokingly called Curtiswood. She noted the changes in Johnbrown, who was now the type of man who could build a loft bed. His outdoor work here had tanned him more deeply brown than she remembered, and his arms looked powerful. He also had gray hair at his temples and a paunch packed with Cindalou’s food.
Kenya thought of her father’s old daily schedule when she saw the large, complicated chart that hung in the TV-less den, where the family often gathered after meals. According to the chart, everyone except Dennie and Nannie took turns waking up early to milk the lone cow and tend to the chickens. Cindalou cooked and did the shopping, and she was also in charge of household finances. During the fall and winter, Johnbrown homeschooled the children, but in the summer he took care of the crops alongside local and migrant workers hired during planting and harvesting seasons. Sharon was a working artist. Otherwise, she yelled at the kids to make their beds and pick up their toys, and she made the house presentable for the woman who cleaned every week.
The kids had chores, and even though it was summer, Johnbrown had loaded them down with reading and math exercises. They also had to take cooking lessons with Cindalou and do art with Sharon. Everyone had time in the day, at least forty minutes, when they were permitted to do whatever they liked. Nannie and Dennie played little games in the woods; Kenya imagined them reverting to a wild state, snarling and howling. Amandla, whom Kenya wrongly assumed to be an avid reader as she had been, wandered about the house, appearing to play hide-and-seek with herself and singing endless made-up songs in her flat but appealing voice. Sharon used Kenya’s room if she wasn’t in it to stretch or meditate. Johnbrown was still working on The Key. She wondered if he was still making up stories about the butler but felt shy asking. Their meeting in the prison visiting room seemed so long ago, as if they had been children who had since become orphans.
Each afternoon during her siesta, Cindalou fell asleep on the couch in the den with a book. One late afternoon, Kenya noticed that it was
Remembrance of Things Past
.
“Ugh,” Kenya said when she saw it. “We were supposed to read part of that in French class this year. But our teacher, Mademoiselle Lambert, said we were trampling it up like ignorant elephants and we wound up reading a children’s book.”
“That must be some school you went to. I’ve been reading this on and off for about—is that right?—five years. One of your father’s recommendations. I could tell he thought I wouldn’t finish it.” She rolled her eyes.
“We were just reading part of it.”