A Chorus Rises Read online

NaemasNobleman [Metadata: posts (53)] This is about loyalty.

  This is about making a truly safe space to celebrate our favorite Eloko. A place that won’t stretch and a conviction that won’t waver to make space for anyone or anything else, and a membership that refuses to judge her by some new and evolving standard that tries to take away a magic she was born to.

  Naema is #ElokoFirst.

  We are here because no one gets to take that away from her.

  We are the Knights of Naema.

  Chapter XIV

  NAEMA

  I Gets My Way: The Naema Bradshaw Story.

  Subtitle: How to Ensnare a Film Producer.

  When Courtney and I got back to the house, and before his entire family could descend on us for what was clearly going to be an evening-long meeting to assess reunion readiness in anticipation of opening day, I begged off to Carmen’s room to rest. And promptly emailed Leona Fowl.

  Tavia Philips is the real villain.

  How’s that for a killer opening? Controversial. (I guess.) Concise. I know I’d be intrigued.

  I followed it up with some privileged and therefore legitimizing content: some more prom footage that hadn’t been posted or streamed anywhere; a casual confession about the network television interest I’d received.

  Because, you know.

  Folks wanna hear from me, girl, do not hesitate.

  I didn’t tell her about the network or that Tavia and I have more history than the Nina story line showed. I’m exiled, but. I won’t betray the donna. No matter how quick folks are to betray me.

  At the end of the email—and maybe just because I wanna underline the whole I Am Not Nina sentiment—I linked the Knights of Naema forum. Which also served the dual function of subtly setting the standard.

  This isn’t the story of a fallen Eloko yearning for redemption. It’s the story of an attacked Eloko refusing to be demonized.

  To be honest, I think the end of the email goes harder than the beginning. Either way, it got the job done.

  Some people would be deterred by the fact that Leona Fowl hadn’t replied to my first attempt at contact. I knew she’d come calling now. It was a matter of time and, not to be all Oracle or anything, but. I knew it wouldn’t take long. I’m charming, and clever, and convincing—and despite the deluge of praise and rabid bandwagoning, there’s still at least some evidence that other people can see through Tavia Philips.

  So the next day, I’m happy to pass the time between sending the email and getting one back from movie producer Leona Fowl by helping set up the Babcock Family BBQ. Which takes a lot, and which I can personally verify will feed five thousand. I know this because I make sure to help arrange the food, as it is the best way to score a permanent gig beneath the park’s one wooden picnic canopy and stay close to one of the tower fans. The weather hasn’t ceased being sticky and offensive, not that you’d know by watching Aunt Carla Ann pinball back and forth across the park area we’ve reserved, and occasionally literally jog to her car to double back to the house for something.

  Couldn’t be me. I have not acclimated enough to do any of that, sorry not sorry. Like, I’m two seconds away from going inside the throne room that’s been erected for Great-Gram Lorraine when she arrives. It’s a canopied mesh enclosure with an actual recliner someone brought for her—which sounds borderline ratchet but is actually the sweetest—and it’s surrounded by personal fans. The fact that they’re not on yet is the only reason I don’t hunker down in there.

  The swarm of hungry locusts better known as the descendants of Lorraine and Clarence Babcock (and a few assorted baes and besties) begins to arrive, and I’m getting what I would never admit is nervously excited for my first big family BBQ. Courtney says serving food ensures it’ll probably be the largest turnout of the four-day extravaganza, so if I make it through this, I’m golden. I’ve got my name tag, I’ve got my Babcock jersey, I’ve got my phone vibrating my butt every few minutes, which I assume is just Jamie or Gavin, or hopefully Priam. Whoever it is refuses to calm their tits, so eventually I pull off the clear gloves all the food-prep helpers are wearing and retrieve the device from the back pocket of my jean shorts.

  “Yuuuuuusssssss,” I whisper when I’ve opened a message from a number I don’t have in my contacts, but that my phone has labeled Maybe: Leona Fowl. I lightly twerk for a moment or two, and read her message.

  Naema! Leona Fowl here! Beyond excited to hear from you. Free to talk if you are? xx

  Hell yes, I’m free! I mean, I’m actually not, and should really not let Courtney see me checking my phone anyway because, for a seventeen-year-old, he’s surprisingly obnoxious in his whole Anti-Phone Or Social Media convictions. Weirdo.

  But BBQs are supposed to be chill, right, so I’m sure I can steal a moment in the near future. Which is to say, I am going to have a phone call with a film producer today, periodt.

  Satisfied that I am a playmaker, a mogul in the making if you will, I check that my ponytail’s still swinging through the back of my baseball cap, with a few strands loose around my face because I do not ever pull my hair all the way back. Beauty tip: always give the breeze—and the boys—something to twirl. I’m pretty sure I gave that exact advice in a livestream once, and I noticed a lot more effort in hairstyles at school that week, so. You’re welcome.

  “Why do you look so happy?” Courtney’s giving somebody a hand lugging the coolers into place, but when they set this one down, he drops onto the top, his sweat-soaked hair in distinct spirals of bleached blond.

  “This is just my face,” I say, but I also snatch the towel from around his shoulders and roughly wipe the glisten from his.

  “Leave the skin, please.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Is it that difficult to admit you’re happy outside Portland?” He snatches the towel back from me when I’m done and slaps it back over one shoulder. “That it’s just better down here, where folks are real?”

  “Yes, Courtney. That’s what it is. Do you need a medic, you sound super out of shape, cuzzo.”

  “Oh, we say ‘cuzzo’ now? And I don’t see you doing any heavy lifting in this heat, girl.”

  “No, I’ve just been arranging hot food because I guess cold cuts and ice tea are too bougie for the Babcocks.”

  “Who serves cold cuts at a reunion, Naema, if you don’t!” He acts like he might stand and then collapses between his knees, laughing. “You don’t make no kinna sense, I swear.”

  I push my finger into his already re-slickened forehead and am preparing to get back to work when he yells.

  “Ay, Clay!”

  Our cousin Clarence is almost back with two big bags of ice, but he nods at Courtney.

  “Sheba said why we ain’t serve cold food for the reunion!”

  The two of them bust a gut, Clarence barely making it back to the slab of asphalt under the canopy before he drops the ice.

  A little dramatic.

  And again. Who tf is Sheba.

  “That’s all right, cuz, we’re gonna show you how to get down.”

  “Mkay.” I turn around and get back to work unpacking the disposable cutlery, but before Courtney can follow Clay back to wherever they came from, I grab him. “What is this Sheba crap?”

  “Sheba? It’s called a nickname, Pretty Bird.” He’s smiling like he knows it’s not.

  “It’s not a nickname if I’ve never heard it, Courtney. When you only use it behind someone’s back, it’s just called name-calling.”

  “And I clearly just said it where you could hear me, Sheba. Family’s gonna poke fun. Don’t take it so seriously.”

  I love the way he keeps driving home the fact that I’m not used to being surrounded by family, and do not know their ways, without neglecting to imply that I’m also an uppity Eloko who he makes fun of.

  Except I quickly learn it’s not just Courtney and Clarence. It’s a whole Babcock thing.

  “Is that Sheba?” someone calls from the parking lot. “Oh my God!”
/>   Like everybody didn’t already know I’m in town. Like Aunt Carla Ann hasn’t told everybody they’re gonna see me at the reunion this week.

  Stop.

  I ignore them when Carmen beckons me, and instead join a group of girls between my age and hers in the grass to learn her latest dance team routine and hopefully sweat out my irritation. As well as life-sustaining nutrients, I assume.

  That’s when it starts.

  At first I don’t even notice something’s happening. I’m used to the idea of a ghost-wind lodged in my core by now, and that there’s a chorus of whispered voices I can’t make out. But something’s different now, because it’s not like I can make out what they’re saying … yet I know things.

  I’m standing in the grass while Carmen and Co. dance around me, laughing and singing along with the music someone’s started blaring. They’re all so loud I shouldn’t be able to hear whispers in the first place.

  But when I look at each of them, the piece of wind that stayed behind throbs faintly in my chest, and I know who each of the dancing girls is.

  Like I know precisely how we’re related.

  Whispering aside—as much as you can compartmentalize the transient ghost spirits that became whispering voices inside you—I need to know if I’m imagining this. Because the knowing isn’t chaotic or cluttered at all, despite being so sudden. It’s like recall, except … did I know this before? Did someone tell me at some point, and I just can’t remember?

  I discard my baseball cap like my brain needs to breathe, and as I step away from the dance, and Carmen claims it despite the sweat—I realize. It for sure isn’t just my own memory. Looking around the park, I know exactly how I’m related to every face I see. There are Babcocks of every surname, shade, shape, and height, and even though the safe bet at a reunion this size is to greet each other as Cousin, I don’t need to. I know anyone who qualifies, whether by blood or adoption, whether legal or spiritual. I know my family.

  “How’s your mom doing?” someone asks without introducing herself to me.

  Her name’s Patrice, seventh-born, daughter of Gerald, second-born, son of Clarence and Lorraine Babcock.

  Patrice was born in 1985, making her a few years younger than my mom, who would be her first cousin. Making her my first cousin once removed.

  This is wild. The way the ghost-wind got lodged in my chest and became whispers, the way the accompanying throb doesn’t last long enough to possibly transmit that information to me in words. Like it’s just to alert me that now I know.

  She’s got what I now recognize as big Babcock eyes, and she’s tall like her aunts. Carissa, third-born, and Tina, fifth-born, daughters of Great-Grandpa Clarence and Great-Gram Lorraine, got their dad’s height, so it’s weird that Patrice’s height gets attributed to them and not him, but.

  Family’s weird.

  Says the girl hearing voices. I mean, it’s pretty widely known that aural hallucinations are a sign of something very serious, but I know there’s nothing wrong with me. I may not have the benefit of a question-answering, Eloko-protecting collective, but I know when something gives me calm.

  Especially after everything that’s gone down in Portland.

  This feeling, the one I get whenever the ghost throbs in me or when now the Carol Of The Voices tells me something new, is the closest thing to peace I’ve had since before junior prom. There’s something familiar about it, about the idea that being Eloko is familial, and the voices are telling me family things.

  It makes sense.

  “Mommy’s good,” I answer my cousin Patrice like none of that happened. “Pregnant again,” I say, even though a second pregnancy doesn’t impress much in these parts, but Patrice only has one child so far herself, I now know. “Didi can dance.”

  “Oh yeah.” She looks like she wants to get back to wherever she was leading the conversation, but mentioning someone’s kid causes an obligatory search. She’s gotta find her thirteen-year-old and lay proud eyes on her before we go any further. Or apparently she can multitask. “She and Little Bit are always at it, you can’t keep those girls still. Or apart. But that’s what family’s for.”

  For dancing?

  “It’s good to have your cousins, they’re your first best friends. It’s good for them to be so close.”

  I shrug because I’m genuinely amused now. Why ever did I move my family all the way up to Portland? Oh, that’s right, I’m seventeen, and had no say in a decision made before I was born.

  “My first best friends were just my best friends,” I say, trying not to giggle because that might give away that I’m being obtuse on purpose. “But I guess in about ten years, maybe me and my little sister or brother will be best friends, and that’ll be almost as good as cousins.”

  Patrice recoils, and it’s not even about my snark. “Simone don’t know if she’s having a boy or girl?”

  “Oh yeah, in Portland, no one finds out ahead of time,” I say, because I can make up whatever I want about my city, and no one’ll know better. They don’t visit us any more than we visit them. “And that’s not really the part we care about anyway.”

  I don’t say Eloko, but she cuts her eyes at me, and mhms. She gets it.

  “Lemme set aside a few hot links so they’re not gone before Daddy gets ready to eat,” she mutters, waving back at someone before ditching me for the food I helped Aunt Carla Ann shop for and then helped her husband, Uncle Deric, get on the grill.

  I do notice I’m getting quite a bit of side-eye for someone everyone’s been dying to see. Not to mention for a spoiled brat who’s been extremely helpful leading up to opening day. When Courtney jogs past me with a water bottle that looks freshly fished out of the cooler, I snatch it out of his hand so he’ll stop.

  “So, how many of these people live in or around the area, would you say?” I ask, snapping the cap and drinking half the bottle in one go while he protests.

  “I don’t know,” he whines, looking back toward the coolers like they’re desperately far away. “A bunch of ’em?” He reaches for what’s left of the water, but I swing my arm away from him and guzzle the rest.

  “Right.” I smack my lips to really signal that the water is gone. “So I’m the prodigal cousin Sheba—”

  “Oh, you tryna own that now?”

  “—who thinks she’s too good to come from her Portland throne, but these locals just roll up to a function they didn’t help organize, eat up the food though half of them probably didn’t send in the contributions Aunt Carla Ann has been sending polite reminders about for the past six months—”

  “Yeah, no, about four people pay for these things, to be really real.” He looks around the crowded park and nods, like everything’s in order.

  “—and two of them are my parents, but that’s cool.”

  “I mean. Basically. Some folks do help, but it’s my mom who makes sure we even have these anymore. They show up and that’s the only part she cares about, so it’s good.”

  “Mhm.” And I decide I’ve been exceptionally well behaved.

  I have earned a phone call.

  “You finna replace that water you drank or nah?” Courtney calls after me, as I take off for the outskirts of the BBQ for some privacy, and to call Leona Fowl.

  On the other side of the park, I’m giving myself a minute to get all the way to neutral, to light and delightful, before I push the call button. When I speak to her for the first time, I plan to channel the bubbly and carefree Naema of my LOVE account. I plan to make it clear that, yes, Tavia Philips came for me, but I remain unimpressed. So while I walk, I breathe evenly, stretch my neck, and take in the natural beauty around me. Despite their varied cooling devices, away from the concentration of Babcocks and their dancing and laughter and Necessary Hot Food, the air is actually slightly cooler. Which probably means the sun is starting to set.

  Listen. It’s not that the sunsets in the Southwest aren’t ridiculously, unfairly gorgeous. They’re glamorous, I’m the first to admit that,
and for a few moments every day, I think maybe people living down here makes sense. It’s just that immediately following that consideration, a legion of bloodsucking insects descends upon me, specifically, and I remember they have spiders the size of parking meters, and I know in my heart that this place is cursed.

  Not to mention the sounds. When I’m far enough away from milling humans, I start to hear the various clicks and snaps. The mysterious, horrifying, taunting sounds from beasts I cannot identify because the Pacific Northwest is bleary and wet—not nearly as much as it gets credit for, but fine—but guess what.

  Zero scorpions.

  Oregon also isn’t home to thirteen of the eighteen species of rattlesnake, if you can believe it.

  So there are differences.

  I’d told Courtney to watch the clock to make sure this shindig wraps before the sun goes down. I probably don’t need to tell you he laughed at me. I’m still gonna need a ride home when it gets dark, cuzzo. Mess around if you want to. After this phone call, I’m out.

  “Naema!” Leona says as soon as she answers, and her voice is not at all what I’m expecting. She’s from LA so I guess I assumed it’d be airy and sort of valley. Instead she has a nice rasp, but she also sounds like she’s eternally on her way out the door. “Thanks for making time to speak with me today, and I apologize for not replying to your first email, which I totally intended to do, and was incredibly thoughtful, not that I’m surprised.”

  Ew.

  I’m not one to judge too quickly, but producer or not, I immediately do not like this chick. Plus, beside the whole I’m Super Disingenuous thing, she’s the one who wanted to speak to me, right? So why does her rushed monologuing make me feel like I need to be considerate of her precious time? Do not appreciate.

  “So I was going to start by assuring you that it was always our intention to tell the story of the Stoned—is that term offensive, by the way, you let me know what you’d prefer to be called—and while … Naema? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” I say, but make sure it’s carried by an obvious exhale.

  “Oh. Did you hear my question?” Something rustles on her end, like she’s doing a dozen things at once.