The New Moon's Arms (23 page)

W
E PUSHED OPEN THE OLD GATE
. The twisted trees huddled together shoulder to shoulder, blocking our view of what was inside. All we could see beyond the first row of trees was darkness.

Ife got a puzzled look. “But wait,” she said. “I
remember
this. How come I remember it? The pattern of the chicken wire on the gate, and this little picky path, how it jog to the left up ahead. Dadda brought me cashew-picking in here one time.”

My heart climbing up my throat, I shrugged
I don’t know
. Let Ife judge for herself.

“Mummy, this is Dadda’s cashew grove?”

I could breathe again. “It seem so.”

“But it can’t be the same one. How it could be the same one?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

“I remember that tree there”—she pointed—“how it look like a man holding his arms up in the air, with big long fingers, waving for us to stay out.”

“Oh, fuck. Why you had to go and say that?” It
did
look like an angry man with grasping claws.

“Beg pardon. Here. Make the sign of the cross and stamp your right foot two times. Then turn around in a circle—clockwise only!—and say, ‘The Devil can’t touch me, Santa Maria.’”

She demonstrated. I goggled. “Ifeoma Fernandez, where you learn that piece of nonsense?”

“You not going to do it?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me nothing when the Devil grab you and not me.” She smiled her pointy, impish smile, showing all her teeth. That meant she was scared, too.

I kissed my teeth. “Just hold my hand.”

We advanced into the trees. It was hot and close in there. The ground was dappled with sunlight. A breeze ssu-ssued in the trees, and the heat baked the sweetness from the fruits both fresh and fallen.

“I started working for Caroline Sookdeo-Grant’s campaign,” said Ife. “That’s why Clifton’s mad at me.”

“Another project? So the thing where you read people’s minds by watching which direction they look in not working out?” I scraped my hand against my jeans.

“NLP? It’s working fine. Caroline says it could come in handy. She wants me to come with her when she goes to talk to that foreign aid agency. She’s been working with the fishermen. They want to have a permanent shop in the market, but they need start-up capital, so Caroline’s going to try to help them to get a loan from the FFWD.”

“Mm-hmm. You know I don’t pay too much attention to politics. But all that sound pretty harmless to me.”

“Clifton don’t want me working for her. He say I shouldn’t be helping her party get into power, because she want to kick the big hotels out of Cayaba. He’s trying to work a deal with the Grand Tamany to host an annual music festival here, and he say he will look bad if his wife is working for Sookdeo-Grant. He say if the hotels go, then he and me going to be broke even worse than now.”

“Not you alone. Half of Cayaba.” My two fused fingers were prickling. Hot flash coming. Shit. I let go of Ife’s hand to scratch mine.

“But she don’t want to get rid of the hotels! She just think Cayabans should own them.”

“Whoever own them, I bet you a rum-and-water still going to cost ten American dollars at the Tamany.” I rubbed the itchy hand. What was going to appear out of thin air this time? My first training bra with its pointy, itchy cups of white cotton? That Beatles eight-track I used to have, that would change tracks with a clunk in the middle of “Blue Jay Way?” Some things need to stay lost. “Ife, I don’t know what to tell you about Clifton. I never lived with a man more than a few months. If I ever get so lucky, you going to have to teach me.”

That got a rueful laugh. “That would be a first.”

I chuckled. “Your backside.” We tromped on a bit more. “Remember that summer I took you to see Dadda? I think you were seven.”

“You took me a few times. They kind of mixed up in my head.”

“Well, that summer, your grandfather told me that I was a fool for dating the guy I was seeing at the time.”

“Doug,” said Ife.

“Dadda said I was never going to amount to anything if I didn’t finish school and go university. I told him I was making more than he, so he could just kiss my black ass. He invited me to leave. So I took you home. The following Monday, Doug phoned me. Told me had married a girl from Copra Corners on the weekend. Said him and me had only ever been casual anyway, and he hope I didn’t mind.”

Ifeoma kissed her teeth. “I remember Doug. He used to call that girl from your phone when you weren’t around.”

“He did?”

“I heard him. Plenty times. I didn’t like Doug. But he made you laugh.”

“True that. I met the girl afterwards. She seemed like a nice girl.”

“Not like you, enh?”

I grinned into the dark. “Never like me. Nice girls don’t have fun.”

Something rustled from deeper inside the grove. Ifeoma gasped. “What’s that noise?”

“Don’t squeeze my hand so hard!” I said.

“You squeezing mine!”

“You want us to turn back?”

“No.”

We took a few more steps. I stumbled on a rock. Ife held me up. Then she walked face-first into a tree. My breathless giggle had an edge of hysteria to it. She cut her eyes at me. She looked over my shoulder, and frowned.

“What?” I asked. The skin on my back was crawling. But I wasn’t going to look behind me. “You trying to psych me out, nuh true?”

Ife shook her head. “I know a way to see if this is really Dadda’s grove.”

“How?” I was beginning to get warm.

“Come over here.” She led me off to the left, then through two trees standing in each other’s arms. She stopped again. “I trying to remember… I think we go this way now.”

The core of me flared like a wick. “No, it’s this way.” I pointed.

“How you know?”

“Let’s just say it’s like playing hot and cold. You coming?”

“You even know what it is I’m looking for?”

“Not a clue.”

But she followed.

I took us right, then left. Less sunlight here. My eyes were taking their sweet time adjusting. “Damn it, I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“Mind your mouth.”

“I’m fifty-three years old. I will swear if I want to swear.”

Something bonked me on the head. I nearly peed myself with fright. A cashew apple.

My left hand started to burn like I’d stuck it into a nest of fire ants. Then the other hand began burning, too. “All right,” I groused at them. “Jesus.” I backtracked us a bit and took a different turn. The itching eased.

“You still talk to yourself,” Ife said.

“Yeah, man. If I want intelligent conversation.”

“You are so weird.”

“Then I guess Cayaba is right where I belong. Go left here.”

Ife gasped. “Look it there.”

“What?”

“Just come, nuh?”

A few more feet, and we stood in front of yet another cashew tree. It was gnarled and half its branches were dead. Ife reached out and touched its bark. “Don’t touch it!” I said.

“Lord have mercy,” she said in a whisper.

I screwed my myopic eyes up and stared at the tree as hard as I could. The bark was studded with the heads of iron nails. “What kind of obeah this?” I asked Ife.

“Dadda did it.”

She put her palms flush against the nail heads. “It’s Dadda’s wish tree, come out of the sea.” Her voice was reverent.

“What you mean, ‘wish tree’?” He must have done this after I left. Chastity knew the cashew orchard like the back of her hand, and she’d never bucked up something like this in there.

Ife leaned her cheek gently against the nail heads. “He said to me, ‘Iron is magic, Ife. And living wood is magic.’ And then he gave me a nail and a hammer. He showed me how to put the point of the nail against the bark. ‘Hold it good,’ he said. ‘Don’t make the hammer mash your hand.’”

“And all of that was in aid of what?”

“He told me to think about something I wanted real bad, to wish for it as I was driving the nail into the tree.”

“Dadda was like you that way.” I kicked through the undergrowth at the foot of the wish tree. Nothing. “Always some little ritual, some superstition.” I scrubbed my hands against the thighs of my jeans. “Jesus fuck, if my hands don’t stop itching me soon, I’m going to scratch them right off!”

“You allergic to something?”

“Menopause.”

“For true? Yes, I guess you about the right age.”

“No age could be the right age for this kind of botheration.” If Ife could be brave, I could be brave, too. I touched the tree. The itching faded to a tickle. I took my hands off the tree. The sensation ramped back up to burning. “Awoah. I get you now.” I started feeling up the tree itself.

“Mummy, what you doing?”

“When I figure that out, you will be the first to know.”

My hands found a hole. “Ah, look at that. Your wish tree is hollow.”

The burning was telling me to stick my hand down into the hole. “You must be mad,” I muttered. “You know what could be waiting in there to bite me?”

But apparently the burning did know its own mind, for it sped like bush fire up my two arms and blossomed into a power surge. “All right! Crap.” I looked around the ground until I found a good, long stick. I stood as far away from the hole in the tree as the stick would let me, and poked the tip of it down inside.

“Jeez, Mummy; be careful!”

“Doing my best.” The burning in my hands had faded to a faint pins-and-needles. I poked about inside the hole. Nothing, nothing. Then the tip of the stick jammed up against something soft and yielding. I dropped it and jumped away.

“What happen?” said Ifeoma. She was at my side in a second.

“It’s all right. I just jumpy.” I picked up the stick, poked around in the hole in the tree some more. The thing in there yielded when I prodded. “Feel like a pillow, or something.”

“Not a dead animal?” asked Ife.

“Jeezam. Could be.” The skin on my arms went into goosebumps. I drew the stick out. A loop of heavy cord was snagged around it. “Huh. If it’s a dead animal, it have its own leash.”

“Euw.”

I untangled the cord from the stick and pulled on it. After a little resistance, a dingy canvas duffel bag came out. It was knotted tight shut. Something had been stuffed inside. The bag wasn’t as heavy as I would have expected.

“What is that?” asked Ife.

“No idea.” My hands felt normal again. “I know about the bag, at least. Was Dadda’s.” It had probably been white once. But even when I was little, it had had this same stained cement colour. “He used to take it when he went fishing.”

The hot flash faded. Chills not too bad this time. I rested the bag on the ground and worked at the knot. Ife felt the bag. “Whatever’s in there is soft. Feel like cloth, or something.”

“Pity. I was hoping it was my inheritance.” I was joking, but my mind was running riot. Mumma’s clothes in there, maybe. The ones she’d worn on that last night, soaked in her own blood.

I finally got the knot undone. I pulled the mouth of the bag open, but in the twilight under the trees, I couldn’t make it out.

“Empty it out,” suggested Ife.

So I upended the bag. Something furry fell out and landed silently on the ground. I gave a little squeak and stepped back. I put the stick to work again. I unrolled the balled-up thing. “It’s some kind of animal hide,” I told Ife.

Stretched out, it looked to be at least six feet long. I couldn’t smell any decay. I threw down the stick and laid a hand on the pelt. It was supple. Good tanning job. I crouched down to see what I had caught. “I think it’s a fur coat,” I said. “Why, though?”

I picked it up. It was lighter than it looked. I shook it out. “Ife, you ever see a fur coat where they leave the head on?”

“I never see a fur coat, full stop. Not in real life, anyway. No, I lie. Sometimes hotel guests have them.” She came and looked at it. “Oh, God.” Her voice was sad. “This is a crime. Who would do something like this?”

I could make out the flippers now. I dropped it back onto the ground and wiped my hands against my shirt. “It’s not a fur coat yet, is it.”

“No. Monk seal pelt.”

“Why you figure Mumma and Dadda had a sealskin?”

“These fetch a
lot
of money. One time, police came to the Tamany and broke down a guest’s door. Took her right out of there in handcuffs. Confiscated two seal pelts she’d bought on the black market here. She was going to take them back to foreign and sell them.”

I had a sudden, sickening thought. “Oh, milord. Cashew bark.”

“Come again?”

“You use it to tan leather.”

“Euw.”

“Maybe they fell out over this, Ife! Mumma and Dadda. One of them wanted to tan seal hides to sell, and one didn’t.”

“Or they were arguing over the money.”

“My parents,” I whispered. “You think you know who people are.”

“Christ. Let’s just bury it,” said Ife.

“I will go you one better,” I told her. A bilious anger was bubbling up in me. “I’m going to burn the damned thing.”

I snatched up the pelt and wadded it into a bundle. I stuffed it back into the duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Ife was staring at the wish tree.

“Dadda said I didn’t have to tell him my wish. So I only whispered it. Dadda never heard what I said.”

I thought she wouldn’t tell me, either. But then she said, “I wished for you and him to stop fighting. I wished we could go and live with him, not with Doug or Carlyle or—who was the boyfriend before that?”

“Nathan.”

The tears just sprung, no warning. I put my arms around Ife. She hugged me back and held me till I was quieter. “I have a hair clip in my pocket,” she said.

“I don’t follow you.”

“It’s made of steel, but steel is iron and something else, right?”

“Yeah. Nickel, chromium, or tungsten.”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Go ’weh. You just jealous because my memory better than yours.”

“You making this wish or not?”

The clip was short and wide, its two halves hinged at one end. It was sturdy enough to drive into the wood without bending.

Ifeoma pulled out the pin that held the hinge together. She handed me half of the clip. “One wish for you, one for me.”

“You go first.”

We searched around until we found a rock to use as a hammer. When we lifted it, earthworms writhed away from the open air. Ife squealed.