Chapter Four Malcolm Davenport
CHAPTER FOUR
Malcolm Davenport
I brace myself as we tumble through time, my sister’s hand locked in mine.
Colors swirl around us, dripping like slick grease.
I fight the pull and look over my shoulder in time to see the fiery door slam shut and vanish as we escape the past. My grandmother’s words are a commanding drum beating through me: “Always be sure to clean up after yourselves. Never leave the door open behind you.” Bursts of starlight flash.
The air smells like cinnamon and candied yams. The wind whips Jayla’s fingers away.
I snap my head in her direction. Her blue dress and brown body flip and roll in the starlight until she steadies, floats.
Jayla’s hair flies, and her arms spread wide as she flutters through the sky.
She’s silent, her expression almost drunk.
My body folds forward, and a chill climbs up my spine. My mouth opens wide, but no sound falls out. Instead, air rushes in, flooding my lungs till my eyes water and my chest feel like it’s gonna lock up.
My vision is scarred black-and-white. Time blinks forward.
I squint hard, trying not to miss any of it.
Beneath us, the blurry bones of old buildings crumble down, and new ones climb up in their place.
The sun rises and sets. Seasons pass. But life, even at this speed, is beautiful.
God was just showing off when he made a world like this.
Things slow as we get closer to where we’re headed.
Steam crawls on the ground, and red streetlights glow, making the city look like it’s bathed in glitter.
The breeze blows us toward row homes that stand in the distance.
They’re small at first, like houses on a game board.
We fly over Lanier Park, the playground at Twenty-Ninth and Tasker Streets.
A puddle on the asphalt below shines under the streetlight like black ice.
As we fly, the rain starts again, and drops turn to steamy coils as they sizzle on my sister’s skin.
The world gets gray as ash, then it’s bathed in a holy gold gleam.
We are definitely back in Philadelphia, and the new baseball field tells me we got the year right.
It’s 2024. We soar around a corner, our bodies flinging wildly as color slowly bleeds back into the world below.
And finally, we near our house. A brick two-story with white trim and black shutters.
It looks middle-class, nice, and sensible.
It’s little at first, then it grows, gets so big and close that I can see a bushy brown squirrel run across the asphalt shingles of our roof.
My arms and legs are spread wide as a starfish, and I’m tossed downward.
My sister is bent nearly on all fours, her spine arched.
Another door of gold-purple flame appears below us, about three feet above our yard.
The door flings open, spitting us out and tossing us onto the grass in front of our house.
I hit the lawn with a burst of pain. We roll across the small square of grass and dirt.
I push myself to my feet while Jayla catches her breath.
Jayla picks leaves out of her hair. I laugh at how many are tangled up in her coils. She dusts herself off. “Ugh!” she yells, standing on wobbly feet. “That’s it. Fate ought to be ashamed, ripping a dress that makes me look cute.”
I spot the tear at the bottom of her gown. “Why are you blaming God for your clothes?” I guide her up the cement stairs to our town house.
She smirks. “I ain’t hollering about God. I’m sure that girl’s too busy running the world to worry about my dress. I said fate. Fate’s so messed up, it must be a man.”
I chuckle and pause on the porch. “You know, if you would have worn more layers tonight, I might not have had to argue with that dude for disrespecting you.”
“Yessuh, massah,” she says, mocking me. “No wonder you’re single. Ladies stan a king who doesn’t slut-shame.”
“I don’t. You look great. There’s just a lot of jerks in the joint sometimes, so I worry. Sometimes it feels like the world is a mess our broom isn’t big enough for. But tonight feels good. Feels like we saved folks.”
She grins. “See, you need me.” She turns the doorknob, and we enter the foyer.
No sooner do we get inside than the light flicks on. Our brother Charles comes out of the study. He sets some papers on a table next to the cypress cuckoo clock in the hallway and glares at us.
“It’s 2:08 AM, Malcolm Davenport,” Charles says. “Where or when on God’s green earth have you been?”
I don’t say anything. Jayla stands beside me, but she’s quiet too.
“I asked a question.” The lines in his forehead seem deeper under his dreadlocks.
I smirk at his blue button-up shirt and matching pants.
Since Dad died, my older brother acts like he’s everybody’s father, but those shoes are way too big for his feet.
He might be older, but he can’t fill that hole left behind in our family.
“I can’t even finish charting the new route for the show because I got to worry about you neglecting your training,” Charles whines. “Now you want to run off alone, too?”
“Isn’t Jayla next to me?” I reply.
“Don’t give me that crap,” he says. “She went after you. Where’d you go?”
“1904.” I walk toward the stairs, a new wave of exhaustion hitting me.
Jayla follows. “He was protecting the people in Loot’s place. Don’t be mad.”
“Mad? If he wasn’t Ma’s favorite, I’d knock him straight out.”
Jayla tilts her head and gives Charles a yeah, right look.
Tired of hearing his mouth, I close the distance between us and get right in his face. “Is that a threat? Test me, and I’ll knock you out.”
“Calm down, twin.” Jayla pulls my arm, yanking me back. We all know Charles is just talking mess. He’s the brains in the fam. I’m the muscle.
“Look, I wasn’t trying to fight,” he admits.
“Nah, you were trying,” I reply.
“I-it’s dangerous to travel alone,” he stammers.
“You could have been shot or even killed. When Uncle Joe went out by himself, we had no idea where he disappeared to till twelve years later when we read about his death in an old newspaper archive. If you died back in 1904, where would that leave Ma? All of us? Your actions affect more than just you, Malcolm—”
Yeah, but if anything happened to me, Jayla would go through heaven and hell to fix it. “If I didn’t do anything, they would’ve died.” I head back to the stairs.
“They’re already dead!” Charles shouts.
“I’m saving people, so you can save the lecture. I ain’t got time for it,” I yell, before stomping away and up to my room to sleep off Loot’s moonshine and the night.
SPLASH!
“What the hell!” I sit up in bed, shaking. Freezing-cold water drips down my face. My sheets are wet and stuck to me. I look over. A figure stands between a hazy Tupac poster and a poster of the Roots. My eyes adjust to the light, and I see Charles holding a bucket.
“Are you serious?” I shout, my mind waking up and realizing what this jerk has done. My black velvet bedspread looks like wet dog fur. I spring out of bed ready to fight.
Jayla rushes through the doorway and blocks me.
Charles scrambles out of the room.
“Big-Mama wanna see us,” Jayla says. Her cat-eye glasses glisten in the light.
Behind them, her brown doll-like face is stern.
Her eyes are colored with blue eye shadow, and rhinestones are stuck by her lashes.
She got on blue lipstick, too. And for some reason, she’s wearing a metallic silver catsuit. Did she go somewhere this early?
“Ma-a-an,” I say, trying to get around her. “Grandma needs to see me after I lay hands on him!”
“Now.” She puts a firm palm on my chest.
I glance at the tattoos on her hands as steam clouds up around her thin fingers.
She presses me back. Hard. “Look.” Jayla takes her cell phone out of her pocket, swipes at the black screen, and points it in my face.
I know she’s trying to get my mind off fighting, but curiosity makes me glance down anyway.
“There’s nothing online about the folks in the juke joint dying anymore,” she says.
A smile spreads on my lips.
“Bet you feel like a room without a roof, huh?” Jayla adds. “You look about as happy as Pharrell Williams. You should be. I went to the library. No record of it in the archives or microfilm there either. We did it, Malcolm. All those folks are gone die when they’re old now.”
“And Loot?” I ask, hopeful.
She shakes her head. “The Klan conjured another reason to kill him.”
My shoulders sag, and my stomach knots. “Ma-a-an.” I’m sad, but not surprised. We’ve run into things we couldn’t fix before. But we keep trying to win this brutal cosmic game against fate.
“Hurry up,” Jayla says. “You know Big-Mama don’t like waiting.”
I put on black jeans and a matching shirt along with my vintage Jordans before I head downstairs.
I find Ma and the family seated around our long mahogany table. Ma’s dark hair is piled in a bun. The gold feathers at the base make it look like a dark rosebud. Matching jewels grip her neck, and a dress made of black feathers clings to her. Clearly, Jayla helped dress her today.
Ma’s light brown face breaks into a smile when she spots me.
She’s been cooking again. There’s cheese eggs, pancakes, French toast, bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy, and all kind of eats spread out, surrounded by gold candlesticks with black flames that flicker and shine.
So I ignore Charles’s ugly mug and sit down next to Ma, who hands me a plate.
My grandma, Wilhelmina, who we call Big-Mama, scowls at us from the head of the table. Even upset she’s impossibly beautiful. Jet-black skin, thickly coiled hair, and eyes that command attention … and respect. Jayla sits by Pop-Pop and Charles. I pile bacon on my plate.
“Stop!” Big-Mama looks my way.
I freeze, because it’s a fool’s errand not to listen to my grandmother when she uses that tone.