Stormwitch (10 page)

He coughs. Catches his breath. “Dang, Ruba! Get off me!”

I jerk my hand from his throat and sit back. “I—I—am sorry. Please, don’t touch me.”

“Don’t worry about that, ever again!” Clay jumps to his feet and sulks away to sit by a marshy puddle.

Gisele watches him splash the water, and she giggles. “How did you throw him over so easily?”

I gaze into her bright young eyes, and something stirs in my belly. She really wants to know. I can tell by the way her eyes shine. “Like this,” I say, and I show her by taking her arm and using my weight and position as leverage.

Grab. Twist. Push. Hold.

She gets back up immediately and grabs my arm to practice, and I feel the strength in her hands as she twists and pushes. I don’t fall the first time, or the second. Not even the third.

On her fourth try, she tips me backward and drops down to grab my throat.

“Can I be a witch like you?” she begs as she lets me up.

Clay throws a look over his shoulder as I answer. “Yes, little sister. If you learn your foremothers and your
history, and if you trust me. Trust is everything between war women, and between kings and their protectors.”

“Why did the kings want women to protect them anyways?” Gisele asks.

“In Dahomey, many men died from wars with other tribes and nations, so the king didn’t have enough to guard him and make his army, too. And most kings thought women were more loyal, more honest. They didn’t let other men stay in the palace after dark. Only women, their advisers and protectors.”

“Daddy told me about Amazons from Greece or South America somewhere. He never mentioned any African Amazons.” She sits back and chews at her fingernail.

I grin. “British explorers called us Amazons, after the myths. And they are myths. Ba told me those other Amazons are legends—so we’re the only real ones. The whites didn’t know what to make of us, especially when they saw us fight, so they gave us the only name they had for powerful women. Now, see those thorns on that tree?”

Gisele glances where I point, toward the Bodark limbs. Long thorns. Some bigger than the finger I use to indicate them. She nods.

“African kings planted thorny vines like those branches around their palaces. Thorns that large, and larger. In battle, Amazon women ran at those branches and climbed over without slowing down.”

Gisele swallows, staring at the thorns. “I don’t think I could do that.”

“You could with training. Amazons trained all day every day. And they fought. So fierce. So strong! When King Gezo took over, he could not kill the man he stole the throne from, because the old king’s protectors were too strong. King Gezo had to keep the old king in a building on the palace grounds, and send him food. And that old king lived longer than Gezo!”

Gisele laughs. “Serves Geezer right, stealing thrones.”

Clay wanders back from his puddle and plops down between us. “Y’all still talking about silly witch stuff?”

“You the one silly,” Gisele says with a wave. “Ruba’s talking ’bout the African war women.”

Clay wrinkles his nose. “She’s just saying that. Aren’t you, Ruba? It’s stories to scare people, like old slave tales about boogies and ghosts.”

“The Amazons are real,” I tell him. “I’m the last. The French killed all the rest in a war. I guard the spirit and memory of King Agaja, who tried to save Dahomey by closing the slave ports. I hope he’ll help me fight the evil of the stormwitch Zashar, who won’t keep herself in the land of the dead.”

“Stupid,” Clay said. “There’s no such thing as spirits, except in Heaven. And no such thing as witches anywhere.”

I clench one fist and chew my lip. Our beliefs sound foolish when he says those things. But they aren’t foolish. My throat feels tight. I won’t believe they’re stupid or silly or wrong. I can’t.

No.

What Ba taught me, all Ba knew—there’s nothing foolish about those things, at least not to me.

“There wasn’t any such thing as Black Power a few years back,” I tell him. The words sound choked. “But people believed, and it’s real now.”

Clay looks a little guilty. He shrugs.

“King Agaja has a special spirit,” I tell him, working hard not to grind my teeth and make my head hurt. “He lives on to protect Dahomey’s descendants.”

“Why does Aka-jo need to protect us?” Gisele asks.

“Because his son reopened the slave ports.” I draw a line in the mud with my finger and make dots on each side. “Think about it this way. On this side of the line, there was Agaja’s tradition and the Amazons who were my foremothers, including Tata.”

Gisele nods. Clay grumbles something I can’t hear.

“On this other side, there was Agaja’s bad son and his stormwitch Zashar. They fought against my foremothers, and didn’t honor Agaja’s beliefs and traditions. So, the people on our side of the line got killed.”

I rub out all the dots on our side, except one. “This dot
is Tata. She got thrown in the ocean and ended up on the island of Haiti.”

Then I rub out all the dots on the other side except one. “All of these people got killed, too, because the slave trade made Dahomey weak, and other African nations, and the whites, especially the French, tore it apart. This dot, Zashar the stormwitch, watched her king fail, and she watched her country die. She started to hate white people, and she hated my foremothers, too, for being right about what would happen if those ports got opened again.”

I rub out the last dot. “Then Zashar died, too, only her spirit isn’t at peace.”

“Ruba—” Clay begins, but Gisele cuts him off by popping his thigh with her hand.

I rub out all the lines and dots, make a new line, and put a rock on either side. “Now there’s just Zashar’s evil spirit.” I point to one rock. “And me, the last Amazon.” I point to the other rock. “Zashar uses her magic to send spirits into storms, trying to kill my family and me, and trying to kill white people. It’s her revenge for slavery, and for the ruin of Dahomey and her king.”

Real fast, I pick up both rocks and bash them together. Gisele jumps. Clay jumps, too, but he tries to act like he didn’t.

“I have to fight her magic to save my life, and to save
innocent people. I have to send the spirits back to the land of the dead, so hurricanes will be just hurricanes, and not do any more damage than they have to.” I put one rock down and smash it with the other, two hard blows, until it breaks into three or four pieces. “One day, I’ll fight Zashar herself and beat her, I hope.”

“There’ll be one rock then,” Gisele says as I place the stone that’s still whole in front of her dusky folded legs. “And no evil in the storms.”

“Right. Zashar will be finished, and the Amazon spirits can rest in peace.” I smile at her. “And I can train a few new Amazons, to keep our history alive.”

“I never heard such stupidness,” Clay growls. “You’re scaring the child.”

I ignore him and focus on Gisele. “Boys have no soul for these things. Don’t mind him. After she came to this side of the world, to Haiti, Tata guarded Agaja’s spirit and beliefs to her grave, as was her sacred duty, sworn as a girl no older than you. So it’s up to you, believe or don’t, Gisele, but out on the sea—the storm is coming this way, and Zashar the stormwitch is using her magic to make it worse. If you listen, you’ll hear the evil inside the wind sooner or later.”

“It’s a tropical storm,” Clay argues. “It’s weather. Science! Not magic. It’s a hurricane, maybe, and it probably won’t hit us.”

“It will hit.” I keep my voice even despite nervous twists in my belly. “And when it does, it’s my job to turn the evil back, so the storm is just the storm nature intended. Otherwise, I might die, and lots of people who never did wrong to anyone might die with me.”

But what if
I’m
wrong?

What if Clay’s right and I
am
imagining things?

No. No! I know what I know, and his doubts can’t change what I know is real
.

“The storm’s coming,” I say again, stronger, with a little less worry. “It’ll hit here and not long from now, and Zashar’s dark magic will destroy us all if you don’t trust me.”

Clay wipes his forehead with his shirt, then lies back on the ground. “I believe you’re some kind of witch, Ruba, because I saw what you can do. But I’m not believing some bad ghost is strolling across the ocean, all the way from Africa, because some dead black Amazon worked a spell and put that spirit in the wind to do evil. I’m going to sleep.”

“We gonna spend the night here beside the shipyards?” Gisele asks him.

“Yeah,” Clay says. He hugs himself and rolls over. “I’m not going home to get arrested. Maybe by tomorrow, Officer Bolin won’t be thinking about us.”

Gisele shrugs. She questions me about Haiti and
Africa until it’s so dark we can’t see each other, and finally falls asleep in my lap, her head resting on the journal in my pocket. It’s a comforting feeling, the book against my crocodile tattoo, and the slight weight of Gisele as she dreams.

I sit, eyes wide, protecting what’s mine.

Her breathing is slight, like a bird. Like a little crow. Ba had great respect for crows. Said they were as smart as monkeys. Crows defend their young with a fierceness like our own, and they have big families. When a crow dies, other crows mourn. I suppose crows see those holes in the sky, where stars should be. They miss their grandmothers like I miss Ba.

I feel tired. Of fighting. Of losing. Of thinking about dead people more than live people. I’m even tired of being mad, but I keep right on feeling that way. Part of me wants to relax, fall asleep, and wake up believing in Grandmother Jones’s peace, that violence is like Dr. King said, “impractical and immoral.”

The other part of me, maybe the part that still belongs to Ba and Dahomey and the Amazons, likes what Clay quotes, from Malcolm X.
A Negro is within his rights to use any method to remove these injustices for racial discrimination
.

Gisele stirs in my lap, and I hug her to me, sad that her mother’s dead. If I had been there when she died in a Civil Rights march, I would have wanted to use any
method to remove her killer. To right that injustice. But Gisele is alive, and so is her father. Nonviolence won at least that victory. Perhaps Crazy Sardine might have been killed—and Grandmother Jones, too—if they had shoved instead of pushed. I might have had no family left at all.

Then again, if they had used “any method,” I might be living in a Mississippi with more proud black leaders like Malcolm X. Gisele might have a black doll instead of a white one if the protesters had been more militant. If they had fought like Amazons. But, when the Amazons met the French Legionnaires in 1892, it didn’t matter who the better warriors were. The French had better weapons, and the Amazons died.

My belly twists again.

Perhaps I will do as my foremothers did. Shave my head, file my teeth to points, soak my nails in brine until they turn to spikes, and slay as many of the enemy as I can find. Show the white man Africa’s woman heart. Make men like Leroy Frye understand that we’re warriors, and we haven’t been broken. Ba would be proud, but Grandmother Jones would be crushed.

A battle bound to last my whole life …
That’s what Grandmother Jones told me. I think of the bullet holes in her wall. Bile surges up my throat, and I cover my mouth.

It rains and rains. Soft, warm water, keeping the
clearing damp and chasing away the bugs—but chills run through me. I feel so wet. So uncomfortable and stiff. Sometimes I sway with sleep, but I always snap back to alertness. My muscles ache.

The hours stretch and stretch until the rain ends. Only then do I dare to take my journal from its dry place in my pocket. I’m grateful I have the book to keep me company.

16 August 1969

Dearest Ba
,

I’m in the marshes near a shipyard, hiding from American police. I’ll have to face them soon, and I don’t know what will happen
.

The morning moves unquiet around us, Clay, Gisele, and me. At sunrise, I heard whispers in the wind. For a moment, they filled the air and rattled my spirit. The storm is moving fast now, almost here—but I’ve never heard anything like it
.

Loud, bellowing wind
.

And the voice inside, it’s colder than any we’ve dealt with before
.

Soon, I’ll have to go home no matter what. I have to get my bow, my oils… so many things to gather! I have to be ready to fight the evil in this storm. Every time I look at Gisele or Clay, or think about Grandmother Jones and Crazy Sardine—I know I have to protect them. I can’t let them be killed because the storm witch is sending a spirit after me
.

I think Gisele feels the winds, but without you I don’t know if I should train her. Yet, if I don’t train anyone, and I die right away, who will guard the memory of King Agaja and speak for our history?

Listen, Ba. Listen to the moaning whirlwind in the sea. I may fall, just as you did. Your hand, it rested wet in mine, and so slippery! I couldn’t grip it. I couldn’t hold when you needed me
.

Sometimes I have a flash, the tiniest glimpse of that moment your fingers left mine
.

Lightning in your hair… thunder in Agontime’s footsteps far away, thunder in Agontime’s words… rain … so much rain and wind…

Why did you start smiling?

What did you say?

Zashar’s storm is coming, and I need to know
.

The hurricane’s coming, Ba
.