Filter House (3 page)

“What about Cousin Alphonse?” she asked. “How am I supposed to take care of him if I’m in Detroit?”

“You just concentrate on learning to take better care of yourself, young lady.”

Which wasn’t a fair thing for Mom to say.

After dark, Oneida snuck out. She had stayed inside all day, exactly as she’d promised. Now it was night. No one would expect her to slip the screen out of her bedroom window and squirm out onto the fresh-mowed lawn. That wasn’t the kind of thing Oneida ever did. She wouldn’t get caught.

The big orange moon hung low over Lincoln Elementary. Away from the streetlights, in the middle of the ravaged vacant lot, it made its own shadows. They hid everything, the new hills and the old ones. It was probably going to be impossible to find the watermelon vine. If it had even survived the bulldozer’s assault.

But Oneida walked to the lot’s middle anyway. From there, she saw Mercy. She stood stock still, over on Oneida’s left, looking down at something; it was the same way she’d stood the day they found the vine. Except then, the light had come from above, from the sun. Now something much brighter than the moon shone from below, up into her face. Something red and blue and green and white, something radiant, moving like water, like a dream.

Oneida ran toward whatever it was. She tripped on a stone block, stumbled through the dark. “Mercy!” she shouted as she topped a hill. Mercy nodded, but Oneida didn’t think it was because she’d heard her. She ran on recklessly, arriving just as the light began to fade, as if, one by one, a bunch of birthday candles were being blown out.

Oneida bent forward to see better. The light came from a little cave of jewels about the size of a gym ball. A blue heart wavered at its center, surrounded by tiny wreaths of red flowers and flickering silver stars. As she watched, they dwindled and were gone. All that was left was a shattered watermelon, scooped out to the rind.

Magic! Oneida met Mercy’s eyes. They had seen real magic! She smiled. But Mercy didn’t.

“Blue Lady say she can’t take care of Emilio no more. He too big.” Emilio had been thirteen last New Year’s, when he left with Mercy’s mom. Mizz Sanchez hadn’t been so worried about him; bad neighborhoods weren’t so bad for bad boys. But now…

Mercy looked down again at the left-behind rind.

Oneida decided to tell Mercy her own news about going to Detroit Saturday and being on punishment till then. It was difficult to see her face; her beautiful hair kept hanging in the way. Was she even listening?

“You better not go an forget me, ’Neida.”

What was she talking about? “I’ll only be there until school starts! September!” As if she wouldn’t remember Mercy for ever and ever, anyway.

Mercy turned and walked a few steps away. Oneida was going to follow her, but Mercy stopped on her own. Faced her friend again. Held out her hand. There was something dark in her pale palm. “Ima give you these now, in case—”

Oneida took what Mercy offered her, an almost weightless mass, cool and damp. “I can sneak out again,” she said. Why not?

“Sure. The Blue Lady, though, she want you to have these, an this way I won’t be worryin.”

Watermelon seeds. That’s what they were. Oneida put them in her pajama pocket. What she had been looking for when she came here.

She took a deep breath. It went into her all shaky and came out in one long whoosh. Till September wasn’t her whole life. “Maybe Mom and Dad will change their minds and let you come over.”

“Maybe.” Mercy sounded as if she should clear her throat. As if she were crying, which was something she never did, no matter how sad she looked. She started walking away again.

“Hey, I’ll send a card on your birthday,” Oneida yelled after her, because she couldn’t think of what else to say.

Wednesday the Chief of Police put Dad on suspension.

That meant they could drive to Detroit early, as soon as Dad woke up on Thursday. Oneida helped her mom with the last-minute packing. There was no time to do laundry.

Dad didn’t care. “They got water and electricity in Detroit last time I checked, Joanne, and Big Mama must have at least one washing machine.”

They drove and drove. It took two whole hours. Oneida knew they were getting close when they went by the giant tire, ten stories tall. There were more and more buildings, bigger and bigger ones. Then came the billboard with a huge stove sticking out of it, and they were there.

Detroit was the fifth largest city in the United States. Big Mama lived on a street called Davenport, like a couch, off Woodward. Her house was dark and cool inside, without much furniture. Royal answered the door and led them back to the kitchen, the only room that ever got any sunshine.

“Y’all made good time,” said Big Mama. “Dinner’s just gettin started.” She squeezed Oneida’s shoulders and gave her a cup of lime Kool-Aid.

“Can I go finish watching cartoons?” asked Royal.

“Your mama an daddy an sister jus drove all this way; you ain’t got nothin to say to em?

“Limoges over at the park with Luemma and Ivy Joe,” she told Mom and Dad. They sent Royal to bring her home and sat down at the table, lighting cigarettes.

Oneida drank her Kool-Aid quickly and rinsed out her empty cup. She wandered back through the house to the front door. From a tv in another room, boingy sounds like bouncing springs announced the antics of some orange cat or indigo dog.

Mercy watched soap operas. Maybe Oneida would be able to convince the other children those were more fun. Secret, forbidden shows grown-ups didn’t want you to see, about stuff they said you’d understand when you got older.

Limoges ran over the lawn shouting “’Neida! ’Neida!” At least
somebody
was glad to see her. Oneida opened the screen door. “I thought you wasn’t comin till Saturday!”

“Weren’t,” she corrected her little sister. “I thought you weren’t.”

“What happened?”

“Dad got extra days off. They’re in the kitchen.” Royal and the other kids were nowhere in sight. Oneida followed Limoges back to find their parents.

It was hot; the oven was on. Big Mama was rolling out dough for biscuits and heating oil. She had Oneida and Limoges take turns shaking chicken legs in a bag of flour. Then they set the dining-room table and scrounged chairs from the back porch and when that wasn’t enough, from Big Mama’s bedroom upstairs. Only Oneida was allowed to go in.

It smelled different in there than the whole rest of the house. Better. Oneida closed the door behind her.

There were more things, too. Bunches of flowers with ribbons wrapped around them hung from the high ceiling. Two tables overflowed with indistinct objects, which pooled at their feet. The tables flanked a tall, black rectangle—something shiny, with a thin cloth flung over it, she saw, coming closer. A mirror? She reached to move aside the cloth, but a picture on the table to her right caught her eye.

It was of what she had seen that night in the vacant lot. A blue heart floated in a starry sky, with flowers around it. Only these flowers were pink and gold. And in the middle of the heart, a door had been cut.

The door’s crystal knob seemed real. She touched it. It was. It turned between her thumb and forefinger. The door opened.

The Blue Lady. Oneida had never seen her before, but who else could this be a painting of? Her skin was pale blue, like the sky; her hair rippled down dark and smooth all the way to her ankles. Her long dress was blue and white, with pearls and diamonds sewn on it in swirling lines. She wore a cape with a hood, and her hands were holding themselves out as if she had just let go of something, a bird or a kiss.

The Blue Lady.

So some grown-ups did know.

Downstairs, the screen door banged. Oneida shut the heart. She shouldn’t be snooping in Big Mama’s bedroom. What if she were caught?

The chair she was supposed to be bringing was back by where she’d come in. She’d walked right past it.

The kitchen was crowded with noisy kids. Ivy Joe had hit a home run playing baseball with the boys. Luemma had learned a new dance called the Monkey. Oneida helped Limoges roll her pants legs down and made Royal wash his hands. No one asked what had taken her so long upstairs.

Mom and Dad left right after dinner. Oneida promised to behave herself. She did, too. She only went in Big Mama’s bedroom with permission.

Five times that first Friday, Big Mama sent Oneida up to get something for her.

Oneida managed not to touch anything. She stood again and again, though, in front of the two tables, cataloguing their contents. On the right, alongside the portrait of the Blue Lady were several tall glass flasks filled with colored fluids; looping strands of pearls wound around their slender necks. A gold-rimmed saucer held a dark, mysterious liquid, with a pile of what seemed to be pollen at the center of its glossy surface.

A red-handled axe rested on the other table. It had two sharp, shiny edges. No wonder none of the other kids could come in here.

On every trip, Oneida spotted something else. She wondered how long it would take to see everything.

On the fifth trip, Oneida turned away from the huge white wing leaning against the table’s front legs (how had she missed
that
the first four times?) to find Big Mama watching her from the doorway.

“I—I didn’t—”

“You ain’t messed with none a my stuff, or I’d a known it. S’all right; I spected you’d be checkin out my altars, chile. Why I sent you up here.”

Altars? Like in a Catholic church like Aunt Elise went to? The two tables had no crucifixes, no tall lecterns for a priest to pray from, but evidently they were altars, because there was nothing else in the room that Big Mama could be talking about. It was all normal stuff, except for the flower bunches dangling down from the ceiling.

“Then I foun these.” Big Mama held out one hand as she moved into the bedroom and shut the door behind herself. “Why you treat em so careless-like? Leavin em in your dirty pajamas pocket! What if I’d a had Luemma or Ivy Joe washin clothes?”

The seeds. Oneida accepted them again. They were dry, now, and slightly sticky.

“Them girls don’t know no more about mojo than Albert Einstein. Less, maybe.”

Was mojo magic? The seeds might be magic, but Oneida had no idea what they were for or how to use them. Maybe Big Mama did. Oneida peeped up at her face as if the answer would appear there.

“I see. You neither. That niece a mine taught you nothin. Ain’t that a surprise.” Her tone of voice indicated just the opposite.

Big Mama’s niece was Oneida’s mother.

“Go down on the back porch and make sure the rinse cycle startin all right. Get us somethin to drink. Then come up here again, and we do us a bit a discussin.”

When Oneida returned she carried a pitcher of iced tea with lemon, a bowl of sugar, and two glasses on a tray. She balanced the tray on her hip so she could knock and almost dropped it. Almost.

It took Big Mama a moment to let her in. “Leave that on the chair seat,” she said when she saw the tray. “Come over nex the bed.”

A little round basket with a lid and no handles sat on the white chenille spread. A fresh scent rose from its tight coils. “Sea grass,” said Big Mama in answer to Oneida’s question. “Wove by my gramma. That ain’t what I want you to pay attention to, though. What’s inside—”

Was a necklace. Made of watermelon seeds.

“A’int everybody has this in they backgroun. Why I was sure your mama musta said somethin. She proud, though. Too proud, turn out, to even do a little thing like that, am I right?”

Oneida nodded. Mom hated her to talk about magic. Superstition, she called it. She didn’t even like it when Oneida brought books of fairy tales home from the library.

“How you come up with these, then?”

“I—a friend.”

“A friend.”

“Mercy Sanchez.”

“This Mercy, she blood? Kin?” she added, when Oneida’s confusion showed.

“No.”

“She tell you how to work em?”

“No.” Should she break her promise?

“Somethin you hidin. Can’t be keepin secrets from Big Mama.”

Her picture was there, on the altar. “Mercy said they came from the Blue Lady.”