Ayida #2
"Everything surprising you right now," Chiana said gently.
"You been living between two worlds too long.
You can't stay half here and half there forever.
" Her words hit like truth wrapped in honey.
They stung before they soothed. "I don't know how to stop," I said.
"If I stop... I'm scared he'll fade." Amina squeezed my shoulder.
"He not fading. You keeping him alive in every breath you take.
But you gotta live too, Ayida. You hear me?
“I nodded, though I wasn't sure if I did.
The house felt heavy again, but not the same kind of heavy.
This was real weight, human weight. They held me until the shaking stopped.
My sobs turned to quiet hiccups, then silence.
My throat ached, and my eyes felt like they'd been rinsed out.
My phone buzzed on the table, skittering against the wood like it wanted to run away.
I glanced down and saw Auntie Celeste's name flash across the screen.
My stomach pinched. Celeste was my mama's sister.
She was sharp-tongued, starched, and hard in the way women get when they lose too much early.
She hated my mama for the choices she made.
Hated me for marrying a St. Jean. We didn't talk.
Not like that. Her calling me was strange enough to turn the air.
I put her on speaker. No greeting, acknowledgment, or care.
Just her voice, Creole thick and unbothered: "Madame Laurent ap mande w.
" Madame Laurent is asking for you. Silence hung between us.
"Okay," I said finally. She ended the call without goodbye.
That was Celeste, she'd drop a stone in your water and don't watch the ripples.
I spent the next couple hours with my girls, letting the world slow to the speed of women in a kitchen, washing plates, retelling the same story three times on purpose, like a prayer that needed to stick.
Chiana rewrapped my cut and painted my nails with a soft color.
Nia refolded blankets and laid fresh ones at the end of the couch, patting them like she was smoothing the bed for joy to lie down.
Amina stood at the sink and stared out the window long enough to make me ask what she saw.
"A good ending," she said. "I don't know how long it takes to get there, but I see it.
" When they left, the house felt less empty, like their shadows stayed behind to hold the corners up.
I grabbed my purse and slid my keys in my pocket, kissed two fingertips to the altar picture frames "Suiv mwen," follow me. I murmured and locked the door.
I drove until the asphalt turned to rough country and then to dirt that hummed under the tires.
Live oaks lined the road, their arms hung low with Spanish moss like old ladies' hair after church.
The lake showed up on the left without warning, a long dark eye with a memory too good for comfort.
The cypress knees rose up from the water like fingers ready to count.
I passed slow, the car shivering at a patch where the road dipped.
The swing in front of Madame's place moved a little in the wind before I even parked, creaking like it knew my name.
I cut the engine and sat there a second with my hands on the wheel, breathing steady like I was trying to talk my heart off a ledge.
Last time I stood on those steps, we'd argued like we were both the one chosen to save a house from fire.
I had told her I was marrying Noles. She had told me, "Si w renmen dife, pa rele lè ou boule.
" If you love fire, don't shout when you burn.
I went and did it anyway. I married him, loved him, burned bright.
Now here I was, still burning, just in a quiet place.
I found myself standing in front of her porch feet not moving to climb the steps.
"Child come on in here," her voice floated through the screen door like she'd been standing behind it the whole time, eavesdropping on my bones.
I climbed the steps. The porch boards remembered my feet.
Inside smelled like it always did, lemongrass and dust and something sweet baked into the walls from a hundred years of sugar and sorrow.
I walked the narrow hall where black-and-white saints and sepia ancestors crowded the frames, every face watching without blinking.
I made my way to the kitchen. Madame had her back to me, braids pinned up under a scarf, gold bangles and stacked rings talking every time she lifted her wrist. A kettle hissed on the stove.
A small pot breathed steam, the tea inside probably the color of old honey.
Little plates with lemon slices and cassava biscuits sat ready, neat, and deliberate.
"I didn't sleep with you last night," she said without turning, voice dry as lint.
"Ou pa salye lè ou antre lakay moun. Ou bliye?
" You don't greet when you enter people's houses.
You forget? "Bonjou, Manmi," I said, switching speaking Creole that came easier in her presence. "Pardon." Good morning, I'm sorry.
She turned then. Her eyes ran over me slow, as if I were a letter she needed to read twice before deciding what answer it deserved.
Something in her body language shifted, her jaw softened, her shoulders widened to make room.
She came toward me and kissed my forehead.
"Come here," she murmured, pulling me into her chest. .
I let out a heavy pent-up breath. She smelled like tobacco she did not smoke, "Sit," she said, guiding me to the little table by the window where afternoon light made a square on the floor.
"I'm making tea." She moved around the stove with the kind of grace you only get by surviving, measured, exact, not one step wasted.
She dropped a stick of cinnamon into the pot, crushed a few dried orange peels between her fingers, and added a pinch of something she didn't name but the air bent for it.
She sat across from me and slid a cup my way before sipping from hers.
The china clinked soft against the table's wood.
"You look tired, child," she said, voice steady but low enough to be a warning and a prayer.
I wrapped both hands around the cup, letting the heat seep into my palms before I lifted it.
"I just want my husband back, is all." The tea was bitter, earthy, like it had been grown in the same soil as sorrow.
I sipped anyway. "That's all I want." Madame didn't speak.
She just stared at me, eyes deep and unreadable, her face still except for the small pulse at her temple.
The silence stretched until I felt it crawl over my skin.
She was looking through me, not at me. She was searching for the truth underneath my words.
Without warning, she reached across the table and grabbed my hand.
Her touch was cool and dry. My first instinct was to pull back, but before I could, I felt that rush, like wind spilling down a hallway, like doors opening all at once.
She was reading me. I tensed. It was like she'd cracked something inside me, letting my spirit speak on its own.
Images rushed up. The hospital's fluorescent light, the candles burning down to their bones, the smell of smoke that clung to my veil.
I tried snatching my hand back, but she held on firm, nails pressing into my palm just enough to anchor me in place.
"How long you been having them dreams?" she asked, eyes narrowing until her gaze felt surgical.
I swallowed. "They started the night it happened," I whispered, staring down at the table so I wouldn't have to see her reaction.
My voice shook, even though I tried to hold it still.
"The night Noles got shot, I felt it, before I knew it. Saw it before the phone even rang."
The words scraped coming out. I took another sip of tea to keep my hands from shaking, but it didn't help.
"I was asleep," I said. "Everything was dark.
The only image I saw was his face before it was snatched away waking me up.
" I blinked, tears rising fast. "When the call came through ten minutes later, apart of me already knew what it was.
" Madame's face didn't move, but her thumb began tracing a slow circle in my palm, a rhythm meant to steady me.
"Mwen tande w," she said softly. I hear you.
"Every night since," I continued, "the dream comes again.
That day becoming more clearer, showing me images of the scene, bullets riddling his body.
Sometimes I think I can change it, like if I move faster in the dream, maybe I can stop it this time.
But it always ends the same." I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper.
"I hear the voice giving the order, clear as day.
Telling Bone where they are. But I never see his face.
Every time I get close, I wake up shaking.
Breathless. Crying." Madame nodded once, her eyes lowering to the table.
"The voice, what it sound like?" she asked.
I shivered at the memory. "Low. Calm. Like it wasn't murder, it was business somewhat personal.
" My voice felt small in that old kitchen.
I lifted my gaze, meeting her eyes. "It wasn't a stranger. That voice knew him."