A Chorus Rises Read online

  Courtney coulda warned me about this nerve-racking interlude. Honestly.

  As soon as I take a seat, a guard steps in, holding a clipboard. They close the door behind them.

  I stand up again. It just feels appropriate.

  “Naema Bradshaw?” they ask, only they pronounce it “Nay-muh.” It may be the first time I’ve heard someone mispronounce my name.

  I say my name correctly, and then grimace a little. Probably shouldn’t have done that.

  The guard flicks their eyes up at me, and catches the tail end of my grimace, so I can’t help smiling a bit. They do not.

  Okay.

  “Date of birth?”

  We went over this at sign-in, but—again—I’m not gonna say that, so I just tell them.

  “Speak up,” they say, and they’re speaking louder, too, as if to show me how.

  I’m in the middle of repeating myself when I catch sight of what looks almost like plugs in the guard’s ears. Which makes no sense, so maybe they’re hearing aids? In which case, it might help for me to step a bit closer, which I try to do discreetly.

  “Step back.” There’s an inflection at the end that keeps it from sounding aggressive but the firmness ensures that it’s definitely authoritative.

  “I’m sorry,” I say through a charming smile, a breath slipping free, an intentional exhale meant to convey an almost self-deprecating whimsy. “I didn’t want you to have trouble hearing me.”

  “I can hear you fine, you need to stand back unless I direct you to approach.”

  So I step back. And I stand up straighter.

  “It says you’re from Portland, Oregon?”

  “Yes.” I answer without any embellishment, nonverbal or otherwise.

  The next question is asked with the guard’s eyes glued to their clipboard, but their voice doesn’t hesitate or break.

  “Are you or have you ever suspected yourself to be a siren, or afflicted with related abilities or aspirations?”

  “Wait.” I yank my head back and blink a half dozen times, like they started actually throwing things at me and I am too confused to raise my hands and fend them off.

  There’s so much to unpack. And I know some of it has to do with that gawd-awful movie. You cannot tell me, a security question reconfirming that I’m native to Portland being followed up by a question about whether I’m a siren has nothing to do with Tavia’s mediocre biopic. Not exactly the impact they were going for, I’m sure, but—as has been made perfectly clear—the whole world is not Portland, and Portland is not the whole world. It is all Upside Down.

  But it’s worse than that. They didn’t even just ask if I’m a siren, they asked if I have ever suspected myself of being one! Because now apparently we have the Thought Police, which on top of being laughable and absurd, forces me to begrudgingly reference the plagiarist George Orwell.

  “Ms. Bradshaw, you are required to answer the question prior to entry.”

  “But I’m already inside.” Best behavior. Best. Behavior. That’s not even the Ancestors. That’s just me not wanting to get tased.

  “Prior to entry into the visitation area,” the guard says, like they are running out of patience.

  I am not accustomed to this, and I’m not talking about prisons and clearances and redundant questioning. I’m talking about the way nothing I do fazes them. It isn’t even like I do it consciously, but I am used to having some effect on people when I interact with them, whether they like it or not, and almost always to my benefit. I don’t know how they’re warding off my charms, but between the fact that this person is probably genuinely unfriendly just as a personality trait and the broken bathroom fan filling the room with incessant cacophony—

  Which is when I realize why the plugs. Why the Black girl segregated for further questioning. Why the fan.

  They’re not just gonna ask whether or not I and every Black woman visiting are sirens. They’re going to operate on the assumption that we are. That’s why the abrupt isolation and destabilizing confusion of being left in the room alone and without instruction.

  The funny thing is, if it weren’t for the noise, the guard would’ve heard my Eloko melody when they joined me in the room. Assuming they know anything about us, they’d know exactly what I am and what I’m not, and that I’m not a security threat, at all. If they knew anything about Portland besides whatever fearmongers fabricated out of Tavia’s being from there, they’d know it’s a hotbed for Eloko, not sirens.

  Not that sirens are particularly known for infiltrating prisons and then inciting riots or revolutions, or whatever is the concern here. Just saying.

  “Can you repeat the question?” I ask the guard, mostly because I hope to make them feel as ridiculous as the words they repeat verbatim. In the absence of feeling free to openly mock people, I think of it as a public service to inspire at least a kernel of doubt in them and in the validity of their position. The supposed security question is stupid enough that saying it again should do the trick.

  Except that the guard takes frequent pauses as though for the sake of delayed comprehension.

  “Are you … or have you ever suspected yourself … to be a siren,… or afflicted with related abilities … or aspirations?”

  “Okay,” I say, before flashing my most livestream-able smile. “I think I’ve got it all, here goes.” I clear my throat. “I am not a siren; I’ve never suspected”—I giggle—“myself of being a siren. I, um.” I let my eyebrows break and my cheekbones soar, because, as I’ve mentioned, it’s the Black girl equivalent of blushing, and it’s much easier to fake. “Lemme see, I … don’t think you can have siren abilities without being a siren? Aaand, I’ve never aspired to be a siren, but I don’t think that’d make much difference.” I close it all off with a seemingly nervous titter, and I feel the Ancestors swell like a chorus of Yes, Child. Which is a nice surprise. It’s good to know they like me even after I ignore them.

  It doesn’t matter whether all of it lands or not. The one thing it isn’t is angry, or abrasive, or confrontational. That, I’m not at liberty to be, not while there’s a melody dampening noise being funneled into the room, and not while my Eloko bell is locked away out of view.

  The guard studies me for a moment and then grunts, and I definitely detect some level of amusement. Whether because they bought my performance or because they just enjoyed it, it doesn’t matter. It’s the right response, so I can smile for real now, and lace my hands behind my back while I wait for them to tell me I can get on with the visit—which they do, promising someone will come back to escort me to the right place.

  I nod, still smiling, as they go, leaving the door open behind them. As soon as they’re gone, my smile disappears, and I wait.

  This is a joke. An unfunny, terrorizing joke.

  Because imagine I was a siren. At the very least, I’m pretty sure I’d be sufficiently intimidated. The guard didn’t do anything to really confirm or conclude it, and they couldn’t have; there’s no blood test or physical examination that would tell someone whether or not you’re a siren. There’s no inflammation of the vocal cords, or brain scan that gives it away, and that’s part of the reason networks are able to shield them; because they look just like us. So confirming and protecting the facility against a siren threat—and again, I’ve never once heard of there being one—wasn’t even the point.

  The point was to let us know they’re on guard. They’re ready to engage. Always. They will, at the slightest provocation, and there’s a built-in defense for any potential, and probable, overreaction. Because there’s no way to know a girl isn’t a siren, just like there’s no way to tell when one is. They just have to say they believed it.

  What keeps snagging my brain is how an attack set for sirens could so easily debilitate an Eloko. As long as she’s also a Black girl. Which means, at the end of the day, that’s who this is all designed to confront. Whether she’s a nine-year-old sweetheart like Little Bit, or a ninety-one-year-old great-grandmother with good mobil
ity days and bad ones, like today, when Great-Gram Lorraine must’ve gone through this whole ordeal, forced to answer questions about siren aspirations from her wheelchair.

  The Ancestors speak, and I must be listening, because it’s so clear I say it out loud myself.

  “We’re all in the same boat.”

  Courtney and the others aren’t waiting at the end of the hall for me. When I’m shown to the cafeteria-sized visitation area, not only are they already there, it’s clear they have been for a while.

  At a table off to the side, Clay, Uncle Lorrance, and Kyrie are deep in conversation, and Courtney’s coming back from the microwave with a plate of homemade food for Kyrie, which he swaps for another one in need of heating before heading back. If he had any foresight, he would’ve brought at least two plates at a time so he could be heating the second while he delivered the first, but he’s not as clever as he thinks, so now he’s gotta wait for the microwave to be free again.

  I hurry to his side. The room is too wide to cross on my own at the moment.

  “You coulda warned me,” I say, pinching the tender, exposed meat at the back of his arm.

  “Hey,” he yelps, snatching his arm out of my reach, and then apparently realizing for the first time that it’s me. “Sheba, where the hell were you?” He puts the offended arm around me now, having transferred the plate of food to the other hand.

  “I had to go for the siren check that nobody told me about.” I pinch him at the waist now.

  “Will you stop,” he says, taking back his arm and elbowing me to a safe distance. “What siren check? I didn’t understand why they sent you to a different room, but I for real was not expecting it to take that long.”

  “You could’ve come looking for me.”

  “For real? In prison? Sheba?”

  “So much for chivalry and solidarity, but whatever.” I wrap my arms around myself and find that I’m close enough to him again for my elbows to rest against his side.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m whatever. Just. Don’t bring Little Bit here.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t gonna happen anyway, but just till she’s older.”

  “Yeah, well.” The microwave is free and we step up to use it. “Maybe until they stop profiling.”

  “Naema, look around this room. I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon.”

  The food is ready, and I return with Courtney to his table.

  “Ayyy,” Kyrie says when he sees me, and he stands. He’s about Courtney’s height, with his dark brown hair in a nice neat fade, and he’s clean-shaven so I can see how strikingly similar he looks to our Great-Uncle Gerald at that age. The Ancestors speak and I’ve got a picture of Gerald at twenty-four in mind. It sends a rush of warmth through me, just to know that Kyrie’s got the same square chin, and the same chestnut skin. In my image of our great-uncle, however, he’s rocking a flamboyantly retro butterfly collar, and Kyrie’s wearing a neat tan button-down with a white belt and slacks in the exact same shade of tan, just like the other inmates.

  “How are you?” I say into his neck when my cousin wraps me in a bear hug. I almost choke on the words, I’m so caught off guard by the sincerity and warmth in the embrace. I mean, I think I’m a good hugger, but Kyrie is better. There’s the slight rock, which runs in the family, but there’s also the pressure and the way it eases up just a little before reengaging. Like he was gonna let you go, but can’t. It feels like a legit massage, and I am more relaxed than I have any business being given where we are and what just happened.

  I don’t remember Kyrie very well, but there’s a choir of voices reminding me that I know him, and that he isn’t forgotten. I don’t exactly know what he did, or how long he’s locked up, and I’m not curious. I’m just glad I get to see him, so I hug him back, Johnson-style.

  Chapter XX

  That evening, no one’s ready to go back home. Between Courtney, Clay, his sibling yet another Lorraine, and me, no one wants to go back inside a set of walls just yet. Instead we drive out to the desert, and I realize that everything I thought I knew about it is a lie.

  Fine, not everything. Weatherwise, I was pretty dead-on, so movies and television aren’t entirely useless. But I could have sworn the desert that Wile E. Coyote runs around in is brown on brown on brown. I was not prepared for the colors, and the foliage; the yellows, whites, and greens. The mountain range that begins and ends in a circular formation in front of me, that looks like it just recently sprang forth from the ground, and also might be a human-made monument. The castle-city remains of a bygone dynasty of giants.

  I certainly wasn’t ready for the way the sunset washes over the stone in the most unnatural-looking shade of red.

  Like. What does Portland even do. Does the sunset even try?

  “What’re you thinking about?” Courtney asks me as I stare up at the mountains, transfixed.

  “Nothing, mind your business.”

  Instead, he pretends to wipe a tear from my eye, and I shove him from where we’re sitting on the open door of his car. Now I’m thinking about how it’s just absolutely terrible looking, and its manufacture is inexcusable.

  “I feel so strongly about the wrongness of this car, Courtney.”

  “You’ve mentioned.”

  “Why did you buy it, though? Like, how come?”

  Clay and Lorraine both laugh, so I know it’s not just me.

  “Whatever. I wanted something with more character than a truck, but I still need to haul my bike and gear and stuff when I go hiking or camping. Plus, look.” He gestures at me on the door. “Built-in seating. You’re welcome.”

  “You know all cars have that, right?” I ask.

  “Roasted,” Lorraine says, and shakes their head. They look like Clay’s twin, except I know the two are a couple years apart. Their hair is in a similar, coily flattop, but Lorraine’s tips are dyed green and they’re wearing a color-block snapback that covers all but the front fringe they’ve intentionally left visible. They have a stud piercing underneath the right corner of their mouth, and another one on the opposite side of their nose, neither of which seems to go without being remarked on whenever the older family members are around. Which makes it even more passive-aggressive when they inevitably conclude, “But Lorraine’s grown, so.” Because Lorraine, or Lo, as their brother is allowed to call them, has to be about twenty-five.

  As an aside, I do not think my Babcock elders were built for Portland, if a very subdued hair color and facial piercings get their blood pressure up. How very ’90s, I assume.

  “You tell Sheba you tried to get the whole family to do a hike to close out the reunion?” Clay says over his sibling’s laughter. Apparently the idea is ludicrous, and I can’t help smiling. “Thought Great-Aunt Tina and Cousin Wilbur an’em was gonna follow you out here to their deaths.”

  “My dude, it is the dead of summer,” Lorraine piggybacks on their brother’s clown. “You’re lucky I’m out here now. Youths, man.”

  “Why Wilbur make fifty look so old?” Clay derails, and the two are laughing so hard it’s almost impossible to understand him now. “I thought he was finna keel over at the doggone picnic!”

  “Where did his hair go in such a hurry, though?”

  “Lo!” Clay collapses against his sibling, and they give up on words.

  “My parents totally would’ve hiked with us,” I admit, nudging Courtney with my shoulder. The relentless teasing is easier to appreciate when it’s doled out indiscriminately, but I still feel the need to side with him. Maybe because of our visit with Kyrie today, and the way Courtney doesn’t seem to notice or want recognition for everything he does for his family. In his experience, they’ve always been there, but it doesn’t make him complacent; he adores them still. In a way, he’s the personification of the Ancestor phenomenon I’ve been experiencing. He’s the same warmth and reverence.

  Which makes me think he must’ve been pretty hurt all those years ago when I never came down and stayed with him lik
e he did with me. And I only came this time because I needed to get away. Which he’s never brought up. No one has, actually. They tease and roast me about plenty of things, but not what sent me running toward a place I didn’t give a second thought before.

  “You know how weird you look without your phone in your face?”

  “That’s what I get for having good thoughts about you, Courtney.” I had completely forgotten about my phone. I turned it on Do Not Disturb before locking it up for our visit, and never turned the feature off. “And why don’t you have a nickname?”

  “Why don’t who have a nickname?” Clay’s head swivels like he has the dexterity of an owl. He and Lorraine have wandered toward the mountain range, squatting to study whatever ungodly things live between the surprisingly diverse plant life, and occasionally pretending they’re shooting a desert music video. I just assume that’s what they were doing; Lorraine kept starfishing standing up, and Clay would immediately drop into a squat, and they’d just hold for a moment. Siblings don’t make sense.

  “Did Short-ney say he ain’t have a nickname?” Lorraine squawks, eyes big, like a shocking secret is forthcoming. But I’m pretty sure the secret is Short-ney.

  “You was a Little Bit?” I ask, exaggerating my swoon and grabbing at his cheeks.

  “Yes, Naema.” I have never seen his face so blank, even with me pinching it. “Because I was once a child.”

  “But like a toddler-sized child,” Clay interjects.

  “And before that a fun-sized toddler,” Lorraine adds, their finger in the air like this is a Point Of Order.

  The two of them are like Great-Grandpa Clarence and his older brother, Frederick, born in 1925. A rush of whispers swells into a moving image of the pair, and they are wearing the highest waisted pants I have ever seen in my entire life, Great-Grand-Uncle Frederick falling forward on a folding chair, and his brother collapsing in tearful laughter on his back.