The Chaos (22 page)

“What you weeping for, girl?” asked Maryssa. She was poking about in one of the cupboards above the sink
(same cream-colored, ice-cream-thick enamel paint, same brass handles). She took out a plate and set it on the counter. As she moved around the kitchen, the two Horseless Head Men stayed with her, floating a quarter inch in the air above her shoulder. They were beginning to grow on me.

I pulled a chair out from the table and sat down (the seats matched the ugly pattern on the table, only in vinyl, half of them torn down the middle). I sat down. “Mum and Dad are going to kill me. Rich is missing, and it’s my fault. One of my best friends isn’t talking to me.” My eyes were welling up for real now.

Maryssa turned and gave me a measuring look, but she didn’t say anything. She spooned rice onto my plate from one of the two pots on the stove and ackee and saltfish from the other. She plonked the plate down in front of me. “Some have meat, but cannot eat,” she said.

Was that supposed to mean something? Everything Maryssa said seemed to have another meaning woven into it, like the ribbons Mum used to plait into my hair. The salty smell of the plate of ackee and saltfish in front of me made my mouth water. “My favorite!”

She went over to the fridge and opened it. “Your favorite food is any food.”

I picked up the fork she’d put down beside the plate and started shoveling the meal into me. Creamy yellow lumps of ackee, bits of salt cod, tiny green leaves of French thyme, and of course, plenty of pepper. It didn’t taste quite right, though. It needed something else. Maybe I could sneak some plastic wrap when she wasn’t looking.

Maryssa was slicing into an avocado she’d taken from the fridge; a Jamaican alligator pear, as big as a cantaloupe, with smooth, bright yellow-green skin. Not those tiny, bumpy-skinned avocados from the regular grocery store that barely lasted two
bites. She put two huge wedges of it on the side of the plate. I stuffed one of them into my mouth right away, even though I was still working on a mouthful of ackee and saltfish. Through a mouthful of food, I said, “So, like I was telling you—”

“Manners,” she said, and clucked. “Don’t talk at me with your mouth full like that.”

“But Rich—”

“Is a grown man. He can look after himself.”

“Oh. I guess so. I kind of forgot.” So I continued about the serious business of chewing. God, the taste. I finally got the whole mouthful down, and said, “Ackee is kind of like if scrambled eggs were a vegetable, you know?”

She snorted. She sat down at the table, across from me. One of the Horseless Head Men floated over to inspect my meal.

“Shoo. Auntie Mryss, didn’t you say you were going to feed those things?”

“They been feeding right here sitting on me the whole time.”

Okay, so they weren’t growing on me after all. “You mean like . . . vampires or something?” Did the nasty little things have fangs?

She laughed. “In a kind of a way, I am the blood and the life,” she replied, “but these don’t want neither from me.”

“Well, thank goodness for that.”

“Though if they wanted it,” she said, her face serious, “I would give it.”

“Auntie Mryss, don’t. You’re creeping me out.”

She only smiled and took one of the Horseless Head Men off her shoulder. It sat purring in her palm while she stroked its head. The other went and floated in the sunny window, purring too, like some kind of levitating cat. Hard to believe the two of them had been strong enough to keep her from drowning.

I kept eating. I wanted to hear about Spot. Plus I was hungry.
Plus it was good food, even if a little bit funny-tasting. “I wonder what’s happening with Mum and Dad,” I said to Maryssa. “They must be worried sick.” Maybe if I eased into it. What was happening to me. Rich’s agonized voice on the phone.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, looking grim. Uh-oh. Bad topic. It really pissed her off that Dad didn’t visit her more often. I came a lot, though. It kinda pissed me off that I wasn’t enough for her.

“You’re managing okay?” I asked her. “I mean, after being in the lake and everything?”

“Poco-poco, you know? Poco-poco.”

She said that a lot. I’d asked my dad what it meant. “So-so” in Spanish, he said. I had a thought. Didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before this. “Hey, Maryssa?”

She glared at me.

“I mean, Aunt Mryss? How come you say that? You know, ‘poco-poco.’ How come you say it in Spanish?”

She kissed her teeth, rolled her eyes. “Pickney-gyal, you nah know that Jamaica was Spanish one time? So what all that book learning you do in school good for?” But I knew what it meant when the corners of her eyes crinkled up like that. She was pleased that I’d asked her.

“Spanish? When?”

She shrugged. “Centuries. But never mind that. What is this thing you keep trying to tell me?”

Oh, bite me. I’d started it. I had to finish it.

“Auntie, I go places in my dreams. Last night I think I did so for real.” What would she say? It was so hard talking to adults about real shit, important shit.

“Finish your food. You been finding yourself on sojourn in a strange land.”

Sojourner. Visitor.

She looked out the window. “Heaven forgive,” she said, “but I wish it could be me.” She sounded so wistful about it. Then she smiled down at the Horseless Head Man in her hand. “But lo, mine own have come to me.”

“You don’t want to go where I went, Auntie.” I took a deep breath, put down my fork, pushed the sleeve of my left arm up, and exposed the black, tarry patch. I showed it to her. “And on top of that, look what else is happening to me.”

Her eyes went wide and she leaned forward to see better. “Holy shit. What the rass that is?”

Another time, I would have laughed. Aunt Mryss was always saying things you didn’t expect to come out of her sanctified mouth. Instead, I rolled up my left pant leg, showed her my leg. “Remember those spots I was getting? Well, they’re spreading. And then I got Rich to touch that weird light that came out of the ground, and bang! I was dreaming, only awake. And then Rich was gone.” I was blabbering, the words coming faster and faster, the tears starting again. “And when me and Punum woke up, the whole world had changed and all this horrible stuff was happening, and this black stuff is spreading everywhere on me, and people are dying, and Auntie Mryss, suppose it was all my fault? Suppose I made all of this happen by getting Rich to touch that thing? And what am I going to do when I’m one big blemish from head to toe? If the whole world hasn’t blown up by then, or, I dunno, if a big space monster hasn’t gobbled down the whole planet like a muffin?”

“First of all,” she said, “don’t worry ’bout Rich. He called me just now, before you reach here.”

My heart did a somersault. “For real? Where is he? Is he okay? Did he report to his parole officer?”

She frowned. “Though, come to think of it, he sounded strange.”

My heart crashed back down into my chest. “Strange how?”

“I don’t exactly know. Like his mind was on something else.” Lightly, she tossed the Horseless Head Man into the air. It chirped happily, took itself on a sail about the room. Auntie pointed a finger at me. “Second thing. You call your parents yet?”

“Yeah. But we got cut off. My phone ran out of minutes.”

She nodded. “Awoh. You going to call them when you finish eating.”

“Yes, Auntie.” Mom would come and get me in the car. If the car still existed. If the highway still ran in the same direction. I found I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, in my own house.

“Third thing,” said Mryss.

“Yes?”

“So you’re changing. You mean to tell me you don’t already change every day?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everybody change every day. Change is hard.” She put an
h
in front of each “every,” and took it away from the front of “hard.” “You grow bigger, you grow taller, you get fat, you get maawga, you grow titties, the boys-them start to smell good, maybe even the girls, ee? You young people. In my day, we wouldn’t talk that out loud.”

I could feel myself blushing. “But not like this! I’m not supposed to change like this!”

Just then, the house rocked with the force of something outside hitting it. I cried out, “What the hell was that?”

Auntie Mryss was already up out of her chair, the Horseless Head Men zipping around her. She rushed to the kitchen window, threw it open, and yelled, “Spot! Stop that! Stop it, now!” She turned to me. “Sorry, darling. But now she turn flesh, like she can’t behave herself any at all. She want to go out, she
want to come in.” She shook her head, smiled. “She want to see all there is to see, frighten all them that could frighten.”

Well, that frightening thing was working on me, anyway. I stood up. “She just about killed that huge bird!”

“Yes, well, me and she had a little talk about that. She going to behave from now on.”

Right. “All the same, I think I’d better go now. Thanks for the meal, Auntie.”

She stood up, too. “Well, come and meet her, then, nuh? Now that you don’t have to pretend you can see her?” Her eyes twinkled. Damn. All these years, she’d known I was humoring her.

“Spot,” said Maryssa, “time for din-dins, sweetie.”

More banging. Something large in the backyard was throwing itself repeatedly against the kitchen door.

Auntie called out, “In through the cat flap, Spot! Like I showed you!” Auntie’s old cat, Plato, had died last year.

Something wedged a big nose in through the cat flap. That was all that could fit. The nose snuffled around eagerly. It was a damp, sticky nose, matte black. I could hear the rolling calf’s yowping bark, the rattle of chains. The Horseless Head Men were hovering on either side of the nose, taunting it by tapping on it; first the left side, then the right. I said, “I wish they wouldn’t do that.” The nose twitched in curiosity. The rolling calf shoved at the door, which rattled on its hinges. Maryssa put a bowl down near the door. It was her cake bowl; the big aluminum one in which she stirred the batter for the rum-soaked, fruity black cake she made every Christmas. The thing on the other side began to scrabble, to whimper. I think I was whimpering, too.

“Stop that,” Maryssa ordered the rolling calf. “Just come in.” She winked at me. “She trying to get me to open the door for her, so she don’t have to small herself up. Think I don’t have the brains God give a guinea hen.”

There came another scrabble, a final whimper. Then the nose heaved itself through the cat flap, and along with it, the rest of its body. At first I thought Spot was just oozing her melted tar self through, but as she came, she kind of shrunk. By the time she had poured herself into the kitchen, she was a three-legged black kitten, barely big enough to fit into my two hands. She looked at Maryssa, at me. Her eyes were red. She had a delicate chain around her neck. “Mew,” she said, in a tiny kitten voice. Her small mouth was black and wet inside.

Maryssa chuckled. “‘Mew’ yourself, Madam Spot. You nah fool nobody. Koo your food there.” She pointed to the bowl, which was a good two times bigger around than the kitten, and full to the brim.

The kitten’s ears perked. She trotted over to the bowl. She had to go past me. I sat down and lifted both my feet up, so there was no chance of her touching me. Her missing front leg didn’t slow her down much. She began to lap up the dark brown syrup inside the bowl. When she lapped, she sounded like a much larger animal lapping. Say, like a three-legged monster that came up to my waist. The bowl was half-empty in two-twos.

“What’s she eating?”

“Rolling calf food; molasses.”

“It smells really good.” It did. My mouth was actually watering. It didn’t smell exactly like molasses. More like molasses manufactured in heaven. “Can I have some?”

“After you call your parents.”

The kitten was done with her meal. Quick as thought, she leapt up into my lap. I yelped and stood up to toss her off. One of the Horseless Head Men swooped down and caught her up by the scruff of her neck.

“Sojourner!” said Auntie. “Mind your manners!” She took the kitten from the Horseless Head Man.
“I told you, Spot not going to hurt you. See?”

She held her hands out. The kitten had tucked herself into one of her palms and was diligently licking itself clean. She was purring.

“Take her.”

My heart was pounding, but I reached out and tried not to flinch as Auntie Mryss put the kitten into my hands. Her fur was, well, furry. And soft. A little damp; one or two fine hairs stuck against my hand for an instant, but that could have been because she had been cleaning herself. I could feel her tiny body vibrating with the rhythm of her contented purring. I put her in my lap. I stroked her with a fingertip at first. Then with my whole hand. She looked up at me, half-closed her eyes. She was zoning out on food and stroking. “Aw,” I said, “she’s cute.”

“Didn’t I tell you so?”

“It’s so weird that I can see her now.”

Auntie gave the kitten a bemused look. “I tell you true, Sojourner; I never used to be able to see her either.” She raised her eyes to mine. “A lie is a sin, so I must tell the truth; all this time, I knew full well I was only making believe that I had a dog.”

I laughed.

“And I never pictured her as a rolling calf.”

Uh-oh. “As what, then?”

“A dog. A big brown and white dog. I was so surprised this morning when I called for Spot and this is what came in through the cat door. And when I let her back out into the yard and she grew to her full size . . . Lawdamassy! I nearly dropped my drawers, I was so surprised.”

“Uh, Auntie, then how do you know this is Spot?”

She frowned. “Come to think of it,
I don’t, you know.”

I’d been rubbing under Spot’s chin. I pulled my hand away. She narrowed her eyes at me and coughed. A black gobbet flew from her maw and landed on my wrist. Immediately, it began to spread. “Jesus Christ!” This time I did dump her from my lap. She landed on the floor with a light thud. I ran to the sink, turned on the water, tried to scrub the new blemish off. It wouldn’t budge. It was spreading up my forearm. “Look!” I screamed at Auntie Mryss, showing her my arm. “Look at what she did to me!”