Expired (27 page)
She recoiled at once at what she saw. “No . . .” She backed away. There was nothing but the couch behind her. She backed into it with such force that she fell down on the couch, still staring across at what she thought might be Raymond.
But there was a problem.
It was a very serious problem. Underneath the savvy Saks Fifth Avenue gear, underneath the slick silk of the suit and the veneer of Raymond's smile, was something else. And it was a crawling and slithering mass.
Tracie closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered again. It seemed to be the only word she was capable of speaking, as though the entire English language had been stolen from her vocabulary.
Tracie's backing away and refusal to step into Raymond's arms had set off a collision course of things. And with her reluctance came great pain.
Raymond's body was broken up in front of her eyes. He was dismembered piece by piece. Then the pieces of him were strewn across the beauty of Anita's Persian rug.
There was no blood; there were only body pieces. He looked the same way he had looked some fifteen years before, lying broken on the concrete of the streets of Harlem.
Tracie couldn't bear it. A scream rose from the depths of her throat, but the only thing that left her mouth was silence. Her mouth gaped open, but no sound came out.
What left Tracie's mouth instead of sound was a stream of alphabets . . . alphabets that made up words . . . words that made up a single sentence.
The words rolled out and hung in the air, one passage written in the Ancient Book of Prophesies: IT IS TIME.
Total silence gripped the room. Even Anita's worn air conditioner ceased its humming. It was silence of a depth that rarely reached human ears. The summons had been issued. The air in the room shivered with unseen life.
Me stood in Anita's foyer like a huge mountain that had appeared out of nowhere, raised out of the bowels of the earth. Tracie lay on Anita's Persian rug, retching over the pieces of Raymond's body.
Someone sneezed.
“What a mess,” Me said.
He stuck out his hand. Raymond's parts were sucked into a funnel, then sucked out through a vent. All that was left was mist.
“What do you want?” Anita asked, knowing the answer all along.
“I have come to collect the host . . . and that which is contained within.”
Anita ran over to Tracie. She knelt next to her, putting a protective arm over her shoulders.
“No,” she said.
Me smiled. He advanced slowly into the living room. He glared at Anita. Her body rose in the air. It slammed against the wall like a rag doll. Then Me shook her while she hung in the air, suspended as though from unseen ropes.
Blood flew out of her mouth. The old woman gagged.
Tracie was having a hard time gathering herself, but the sound of Anita's body rattling in the air, the sight of blood streaming from her mouth, commanded her attention.
Slowly she glanced up at Me. She rose to her feet. She looked at the old woman being shaken and rattled so hard that her teeth were clattering.
Tracie dug deep.
She stretched forth her arm and slowly moved it downward. As she did so, Anita descended toward the floor. Tracie extended her hand in front of her. Slowly she turned her hand palm up. The blood stopped streaming from Anita's mouth; she ceased shaking. She landed on her feet softly on the carpet.
“Leave her,” Tracie said to the bald mountain.
Anita wiped the bloodied spittle from her mouth with a silk handkerchief she took from her dress pocket. Me stared at Tracie in stunned disbelief.
He was under the impression that he had come simply to take what was needed from the street diva. He had known that Tracie was a fighter. He had observed her on the roof with Lonzo.
However, he had thought that was only in the physical realm. He had not known that she possessed spiritual capabilities as well. That information had been hidden from him.
He decided just to disarm her quickly. He would get it over with. He would not play with her. All he needed was one thing: that should be a simple matter. That was all it would take to alter the future.
So Me looked into Tracie's eyes with the intention of stripping her. He peered through her and reached in to get what he wanted.
Tracie matched his look. A simmering glow climbed from the irises of her eyes, blocking Me from seeing anything but the physicality of her.
An echo sounded in the room, like the collective wailing from some African ritual. It rose in volume. Anita crossed herself.
Me was pissed. He exhaled. The windows in the room blew out with the force of an explosion. And then a gentle calm swept through the air.
Tracie stood her ground until the soothing touch of motherhood smoothed a hand through her hair. She turned, noticing as she looked down, that she was standing on rose petals.
“Tracie,” her mother said as she planted a warm kiss on Tracie's forehead. She took Tracie's hand in hers.
“Mommy.”
“Aw, Tracie, it's been a long time.”
Her mother took a long look at her, as though she wanted the memory of Tracie to remain her possession forever.
“Sit down.” She pulled Tracie down next to her on the sofa. “Tracie, why didn't you listen to me long ago?”
Tracie tried to run from the memory, but there was no escaping it. She could almost feel the chastity belt cutting into her flesh even now.
Her mother had come from an old, old school of thought. When so many of the teenage girls in Harlem were turning up pregnant, Tracie's mother had gone away for a short time and had returned with the dreaded belt. The belt that would protect her daughter's virtueâor so she thought. Tracie had caused her a lot of pain.
Tracie Burlingame had been a beautiful, vain, and arrogant young girl with the spirited actions of a newborn calf. Sandra Gaines regretted the day she had been born. She had known that a barren womb, for a black woman, was a blessing in disguise. But she had not been blessed with such. Tracie was her cross to bear.
However, there was nothing that said she couldn't intervene and ensure that Tracie didn't birth what could be nothing more than seeds of pain and hardship.
Tracie had rebelled. She hated the projects. She secretly hated her mother and all that she stood for. More than that, she hated the chastity beltâwith a passion. She decided she would have none of it.
She wanted to love and be free.
With Raymond's help she had gotten rid of the belt. She had obtained her freedom and married him, without ever looking back at her mother and her timeworn beliefs. And the babies had come freely and abundantly, one right after the other.
After the birth of Rashod, Tracie had secretly gone to visit her mother, thinking that this sweet bundle of a bouncing baby boy would soften her heart. That she would realize that she was wrong. She didn't. Her actions had left Tracie harboring a secret that had never been revealed until this moment, when her mother appeared in Anita Lily Mae Young's apartment.
Sandra Gaines had taken one look at the glowing, fat cherub of a baby that Rashod Burlingame was, one spirited look into his eyes. Her eyes had met Tracie's with a fear that Tracie had long ago buried deep inside herself.
“He is a sacrifice,” she had said to Tracie. “What have you done?” And with that, she had been stricken. She dropped dead of a major stroke at Tracie's feet.
Now she glanced into Tracie's eyes. “Why did you kill me, Tracie?”
“I didn't.” Tracie wrenched her hand away in horror as all the horrible old feelings of guilt began to invade her being.
She had always felt that in some way she was responsible for Sandra's death, just as surely as if she had put a gun to her mother's head and pulled the trigger point-blank.
With the little bit of money her mother had left her, Tracie had tried building a legacy to her through her salons. But even that gesture, a legacy to a poor black woman who died in the projects, hadn't absolved her. It had only made her more driven.
And it hadn't stopped the constant nightmares that woke her up in the middle of the night, sweating. She would see a vast ocean of water. Sandra was trying to swim to shore, but Tracie would grab her ankles from underneath the water, pulling her under and drowning her in the process.
It was the same old dream, all the time. That was until she began to receive the one about the black babies falling through the atmosphere. That dream had taken precedence and erased the nightmare that was Sandra.
Now Sandra peered at her and asked her again, “Why did you kill me, Tracie?”
Tracie began to sob. “I'm sorry. Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Mommy. I didn't mean it.” Tracie collapsed in tears. Sandra took her in her arms.
“Just give him what he wants, Tracie. It's the only way. You never should have carried the eggs anyway. I warned you, but you didn't listen. Now look what you've done. You've stepped on the wrong toes. If you'd never been a carrier, if only you'd never produced these babies or allowed your womb to be fertilized, this never would have happened.”
Sandra paused, holding Tracie at arm's length so she could look into her eyes. “If you'd never opened your legs in the first place, heifer, this wouldn't have happened.” She whipped back her hand with the speed of light. She slapped Tracie Burlingame soundly across the face. The sharpness of the slap crackled through the air like a gunshot.
Anita lunged toward Sandra Gaines, trying to protect Tracie. Sandra gave her a read-the-hand motion that stopped her dead in her tracks. She had no feeling in her legs; she was paralyzed in her spot.
The slap had awakened Tracie as though from a long slumber. She saw the many black babies sailing through the atmosphere. And suddenly she knew it was her job to protect them. That was why she was here.
The future of that generation was in her hands. Sitting before her was nothing more than a mirage of evil. A mirage of evil that had put its hand on her, even long ago.
Tracie rose up from her place on the couch. She stormed over to stand in front of Me. When she reached him, she turned her back on him.
“Oh, God,” Rashod shouted out involuntarily. He was scared. His mother had turned her back on the demon.
But Tracie was not afraid. She hit the reservoir and came up with strength. “It's time you left, Sandra.”
The whites of Tracie's eyes shone as she spoke the final words, “In the name of the Almighty Savior Jesus Christ, be gone!”
Sandra turned to ash.
Tracie saw her hourglass sitting in the destroyed window. She wondered how it had gotten there. When she saw the ash being swept into the hourglass, and it turned upside down as the ashes slowly sifted through, Tracie knew it would be a time for new beginnings.
And Anita knew that Tracie Burlingame had come into her own.
Tracie looked at Anita. Life returned to her paralyzed legs. Anita smiled.
Yes, Tracie Burlingame was a princessâa black princess warrior.
She had been chosen long ago.
53
T
racie turned her attention to Me. She was standing so close to him that she could feel the rumblings of the spirits he held inside him. She also saw something else.
racie turned her attention to Me. She was standing so close to him that she could feel the rumblings of the spirits he held inside him. She also saw something else.
The spirit of her son, Rashod, was hovering in back of Me.
So that was where her son's voice had been coming from. He had her son. Rashod put a finger to his lips to warn Tracie not to tip off the bald demon mountain to what she was seeing, but she knew better anyway.
Tracie blinked.
Me's innards opened up to her like petals on a flower. Tracie could not stifle the gasp that rose up and tumbled out of her mouth. In him were housed many spirits. Some of them were famous legends that were hanging in portraits on Anita's very wallsâsome old, some young, some in between, but they were all there. And now Tracie knew what had happened to the fifty slain boys in Harlem. Then Tracie saw a face she recognized. It was Ms. Virginia.
“Oh, my God,” Tracie echoed Rashod's earlier words. She looked at Me.
Me was disturbed because he could not get access to her thoughts. It was as though he was experiencing a power failure. The generator was not kicking it. Me looked into Tracie Burlingame's eyes. For the first time, he felt real fear.
There was something behind the surface, and it was strong. It wasn't vulnerable. Vulnerability was what he had plied his trade on over the centuries.
He poked and probed, but he could find no weakness in her. Tracie decided to take another look. Something was disturbing her, something she needed to see but had missed. Looking again, she saw them. The murdered boysâtheir spirits were being housed in a secluded section.
They were scared and confused.
When they saw Tracie looking, they stretched out their arms to her in unison; they spoke in one voice: “Release Us!”
Tracie shook her head at the impact of what she had seen. She turned to Me and said, “There is forgiveness in the holiness of the imperial blood. The gifts will be restored. The future generation will learn how to use them to glorify the Almighty.”
Me stared at her. “I have come to collect the gifts.”
Tracie stared right back. “So you have. And I have come so they might be reclaimed by the one to whom they really belong.”
Tracie thought for a minute. “Me, isn't it?”
Me took a step back. How had she known his name?
Tracie didn't keep him in suspense. “I know all about you, Me. You've been . . . shall we say . . . jacked, haven't you? Jacked, played, and used by your master. I know there's someone else, cuz you don't have what it takes.”
Me was angry now.
“I swallowed the gifts. Just like I will swallow your egg. Just like I will leave you dead in this house. This is your final resting place, Tracie Burlingame.” Me's tone had turned into a growl of blackness.
Tracie turned to Anita. She was tiring of the game. No, actually she was becoming bored with this beast and the games being played. “Enlighten us, Anita. Enlighten the bald mountain here, who obviously hasn't been told all by his leader.”
Anita came over to stand next to Tracie. The old woman stood beside her, with her shoulder touching Tracie's. A great pride rose up inside her. She, too, had been deceived, had been made to use her gift falsely. Now she had an opportunity to atone for that.
“Me, today you ain't gone leave her with nothing.”
Me gave her a look that normally would have shriveled her. But the image of Christ Jesus and his grace kept her standing.
The thought of possible deceit kept Me listening.
“Tracie Burlingame here and I have been dreaming the same dream. In that dream there are many li'l black babies sailing through the atmosphere. Droppin' like sweet tomatoes from a branch, from between a woman's legs,” Anita spoke softly and with total conviction.
Tracie looked over at Anita. She gave her a warm smile. Never in Tracie's life had she felt as she did at that moment, when she was being bathed in the light of Christ and his awesome magnificence.
She shivered at the raw power of his being.
She had known that this woman had the answers, and so she had spoken to her, to reveal them. By her faith and belief, and by the power of the spirit of the Holy Ghost, Tracie knew that it would be.
“There's a force, Me, that's been sweeping some of them there babies away. I think you know who that is. But there's also a force that's been wrappin' them little old black babies in pure white swaddling. Hmmph, now, I'm sure that wouldn'a been you.”
Anita made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and great distress.
“Yes, Me. You've been so busy just swallowing up the gifts. You could never had done that if our people hadn't misunderstood, thinkin' that all they had, all their talents, was of they own doing and came from them, while they was wrecking destruction among our own people.
“If they had any inkling of how to tap into their true power, you wouldn'a been able to touch them. Just like you can't touch Tracie Burlingame and me right now. Can you, Me?”
“Me can do all things.”
Anita couldn't help it. She laughed. “You can do only those things that you are given the power to do. I'm an old woman, Me. I told you before, don't play with me. I done figured it out, Me.
“Throughout the centuries some of our people have been trying to tell on you. In bits and pieces they've been sorta revealing you over time. You were afraid that one day somebody'd come along and piece together all the broken pieces.
“That's why you stole the words from the books in Ms. Virginia's bookshop and in the Schomberg Center. Explains why you desecrated the authors' pictures in Schomberg, too. They each tried to warn the people, here and there.
“I guess what you ain't counted on was one thing: all things come to an end, sooner or later. There's a beginning and there's an end. The woman in the dream from whose legs those li'l black babies is falling is standing in front of you, Me.”
In Me's eyes devastation flickered.
He hadn't been aware of that. She was just the host from whom he needed the eggâthe one he needed to destroy. But the implications of the old woman's words began to loom large in his mind.
He felt the very earth shake under his feet. He knew that soon there would be a shift in things.
Anita ignored his reflections and continued. “Those li'l black babies that are being caught in the pure white swaddling represent a new generation, Me. A generation that will be born with understanding. A generation who will honor the Lord God Almighty and his Son, Christ Jesus!
“Which means that your trickery and treachery will no longer destroy our people so easily as you and those of your pattern have done in the past. John the Baptist spoke once and said God is able to raise up these grains of sand to worship him.
“I know you is familiar with them there words, Me, cuz that's the only book you could never swallow the words in. You ain't swallowed those words, cuz you can't hold that which is holy. Cuz you are the unholy. Spawn from the enemy of God. Spawn from darkness.”
Roz's words sounded off in Rashod's head. “Why I been gathering the souls for my brother Jesus. He can't hide them from Jesus.” Rashod suddenly knew. His eyes opened as the scales fell from his sight.
He looked at Tracie. He projected the vision of Dre and Michael kneeling in prayer in the church, before the altar with the Bible on it. Both flames of fire were flickering beside it.
Rashod had given them understanding. He had taught them how to fightânot with the weapons of street warfare, but in the spirit. As the two live boys who remained to Tracie Burlingame, it had been imperative that they become of one accord while this battle took place.
It had been imperative because there could be no link through which Satan could move or which he could use to disconnect Tracie Burlingame.
Jesus had promised he would not forsake his people. If they believed, he would be there.
Through his faith and belief, Rashod had been able to assist in bringing his brothers through that fold. Michael had already been somewhat prepared, and so had Dre, through his dealings with Souljah Boy.
They had decided to become true warriors and to learn what being tough and not being a punk was
really
all about. The preacher had been on standby. He had baptized them immediately after they accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. They had risen up from the holy water, in one accord with the spirit. It had been a sight to see.
really
all about. The preacher had been on standby. He had baptized them immediately after they accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. They had risen up from the holy water, in one accord with the spirit. It had been a sight to see.
That was shortly after the Reverend King had found the old preacher dead, lying in the sackcloth and ashes after his three days of repentance for Tracie Burlingame and her seed.
The spirit had spoken unto him, “Baptize the boys, and leave the body be.”
So he had left the old minister where he was and had gone to do as he had been instructed. Now he knelt beside them in a vigil of prayer, as the war that had been thus declared before any of their times raged on.
He hadn't gone back to the old preacher's room since the spirit had thus spoken to him. So he had no way of knowing that the body of the old man was no longer there. Neither were the sackcloth and ashes, nor the ancient trunk.
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