Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

Trucia thought it funny to pass her hand through people’s spines. She would reach into their backs until her wrist bone was buried in their flesh. She’d rub the tip of her index finger along their hearts, moaning filthily when their bodies went stiff with pain. While she was enticing me to find a spine to disturb, I felt a sudden chill licking between my fifth and sixth vertebrae.

When I turned around, I saw a huge child running toward me. “You can’t catch me,” it yelled. The child did not touch me, but the force of it passing knocked me over. I fell across a grave, and a parade of children—yelping in delighted terror—ran by.

Humans are dirty beings. They never learned how to transcend Earth, especially in their graveyards. The debris kicked up by those murderous little feet covered me in a canopy of dust. This was not the little spray of dirt that, once stuck in Grandmother’s nasal openings, induced her suicidal bone-endowment spree. This was huge clumps of dirt. I was clogged, I was suffocated. I was nothing more than a pile of jammed joints and rigid bones.

Lorki tugged at the bowl of my pelvis. Trucia yanked at my anklebones, but the debris was stronger than their worry. Trucia pulled harder and harder. But I didn’t stir—couldn’t stir. Every inch of me was paralyzed.

A little girl approached me. Her arms were full of marigolds. She started framing me with them. She stuck some through my ribs, a few under my jawbone, six or seven around my skull. When the earth under me started shifting, Lorki and Trucia couldn’t bear it. They didn’t stay to see the dirt seizing bits of bone to feed the grave beneath me. They went home.

When my body was completely dissolved, I became something else. The spirits that haunt these graves say I am one of them. They roam the confines of the cemetery, licking leaves, drinking morning mist, and planting crazy notions in human flesh.

Lorki and Trucia will never return to witness the proof that there is breath beyond the bones. Yet, when the spirits retire to their graves, I find what’s left of me grasping at sticks to scratch symbols in the dirt. Grandmother may never understand the shrieks I now use to communicate, but I must conjure a way to tell her the truth.

She must discard her skull.

We are more—so much more—than elegant skeletal spectacles. I will find a way to whisper it to Grandmother—may your cranium be eaten away. There is something else beneath the bone. Something indestructible. Something nothing, not even debris, can destroy.

Eyes half closed, I see the dark of daddy’s pants. My bedroom door swings open. Light rips into my room, then disappears. I am alone now. Daddy’s footsteps get softer and softer. I can’t relax ’til I can’t hear him no more. I turn my face to the wall. My neck is sore, but that’s better than it being broke. My breath goes from fast to slow. Then I start to notice other things. Like the moon glowing outside my window. My leg shaking so hard I can’t stop it. My fists clenched tight.

I open one hand. It’s empty. I hold my fingers up to my face. It’s dark in my room, but I can see two white marks my fingernails made when they were digging into my skin. I squeeze the other hand tighter. A soft springy clump of daddy’s hair shifts in my palm. It would tickle if I let it. But I don’t. I can’t laugh while I still hear daddy’s voice whispering that I’m his favorite.

Sunlight creeps under my eyelids, climbs into my eyes. I curl over on my side and draw my knees up to my chest. Don’t want to move, not ever. I hear mama screaming at Lola to hurry up in the bathroom, and my heart catches in my throat. Benny is crying at the top of his lungs. I know I better get up, unless I want mama to know. I jump up and pull my nightgown over my head. At first I go to throw it in the dirty clothes hamper, then I stop and shove it under my mattress instead. My head feels dizzy, but when I hear mama’s voice in the hall, I know I gotta make everything look right.

I stumble over to my dresser and pick out a clean nightgown. The new nightgown is soft on my skin. It smells like soap powder. I wanna go lie down again and close my eyes. I wanna sleep with the fresh smell, but I don’t. I yank the edges of my sheets and tuck the corners under the mattress. I climb on top of the bed and throw the top sheet high up so it’ll fall down flat. Before the sheet reaches the bed, I see them: two dark streaks—one short, one long. I go to pull them dirty sheets from the bed, but then I start thinking ’bout how far away the clean sheets are. Be smarter to hide the stains from mama, than try to get some fresh ones from the hall closet. I grip the edges of the top sheet and pull it smooth. If mama comes to check on me now, she’ll be real happy with how tight I made the bed. She’ll be so proud, she’ll never even see the stains.

When I peek out into the hall, nobody’s looking. I run straight to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Before washing up, I wipe a warm washcloth between my legs. When I look at it, I see the same dark red streaks that were on the sheets. I rinse the washcloth and wipe ’til it shows no more red. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth.

Mama is already at the stove when I sit at the table.

“No kiss for me this morning?” she say.

I don’t move. I just sit at the table still as a stone.

“Rosamojo, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” mama laughs. Then she comes and kisses my cheeks.

Daddy kisses me on top of my head like normal. I sit on my hands because if I didn’t, I’d scratch his face and mama would know something’s wrong. Mama drops my plate down in front of me. The two huge yolks of my eggs is still jiggling from their journey from the stove. I don’t say nothing. Not even when Benny start to tease me ’bout how long it take me to get out of bed. Not even when Lola steal two pieces of bacon from my plate while looking me dead in the face. Not even when mama says “Rosamojo’s having a bad day,” and puts cheese on only my grits. Lola look at me and squint her eyes. When mama go back to the stove and daddy go to the coffee pot, she ball up her fist and say, “You better not be doing no magic.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t do no magic, I swear.”

“What you said, sweetheart?” daddy ask when he hear my flat voice.

“Nothing, daddy,” I say and stir the cheese into my grits.

Benny and Lola are loud in the backyard. Daddy and mama been left, but I’m still sitting at the table, dirty dishes spread all over the tabletop. Lola runs into the kitchen with a knobby piece of branch. Benny comes in right behind her carrying two sticks. Lola bangs the branch on the floor.

“Wanna go scare some neutra rats?” she ask.

I just shake my head no.

“We got you a stick,” Benny say.

I shrug my shoulders.

“We goin then,” she say. “And I don’t wanna hear nothin ’bout them dishes.”

I shrug my shoulders again.

Lola looks close at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she ask.

I don’t say nothing. Lola bang her stick on the floor, suck her teeth, and turn away.

“Come on, Benny, let’s go to the canal. Rosa’s actin all funny today.”

It feel like the air around me is thick and I gotta move real slow. My favorite overalls be the only thing I can think of to make me feel better. I put them on before I jeck the sheets from my bed. In the tub, I wash out the dark spots. I bring the sheets down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, through the kitchen to the back door. Just when I’m ’bout to step outside, I see nosy ole Mrs. Roberts looking into our yard. I back up, arms still full of sheets. If Mrs. Roberts see me hanging up a sheet with a few wet spots, she gonna ask mama if I got my cycle. And mama gonna come asking me questions like she did Lola. So I go back upstairs to my room. I let the sheets fall out of my arms onto my bare mattress. Then I sit on my bed a while, thinking and staring out the window. Real quick like, I get an idea. I jump up onto the mattress with my slippers on. I strain to lift the windows and struggle to get the screens out. I hang the flat sheet out one window and the fitted sheet out the other. Them wet spots should dry real quick. I just know I better get them screens back in before mama gets home.