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“I want to apologize,” we say in unison, and then laugh.

  “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I say, and she stops me.

  “No, please let me say this,” she says. “I left you stranded. I didn’t say goodbye. It was rude. I’m sorry. And you didn’t deserve to be ghosted.”

  “You’ve been avoiding me too,” I add softly.

  “I’m sorry for avoiding you.”

  “That’s it?” I ask, and she rolls her neck a bit at my tone, a little nonverbal WTF. I quickly backtrack. “Nah, nah, it’s not like that. I’m just stopping you ’cause you know you don’t have anything to apologize for. I should have never suggested the dance in the first place. I wasn’t paying attention to what you wanted, and I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I need you to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “You’re not gonna ice me out anymore?” I ask.

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just saying I accept your apology. How long did it take for Brianne to tell you where I went?”

  “Brianne! That’s that girl’s name!” I shout as I slap the steering wheel. “I’ve been trying to remember her name for days. Uh, I don’t know, two songs, maybe three. It was unseemly what I offered her to tell me where you went, but she didn’t break.”

  “Brianne’s cool, despite her choice of best buddy. You and Joo looked good together.”

  I pull the car back into the church parking lot and turn to face her.

  “Joo could sprout wings and I wouldn’t fly anywhere with her. You know that.”

  She chews her bottom lip, trying to keep the smile she’s suppressing from cracking wide across her face. Her eyes meet mine for a second, and there’s that thrum in my chest that starts to warm my entire body. It makes me want to touch her, sit next to her, and think unholy thoughts on holy ground.

  “I’ve got a lot going on, Fay. It’s not fair to you that—”

  “You don’t get to decide what’s fair to me. I do. I’ll make that decision. Flip the coin, roll the dice, I’ll always choose you. Even if I have to sit through Pastor Roberts’s warbling through ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

  “That sound ain’t sweet at all,” she laughs, but there’s something sad in her eyes. I want to press, ask questions to make sure that I’m still on her good side, that everything is smooth now. But I’m afraid that this truth is as fragile as the soap skin on sink bubbles.

  “C’mon, then,” she says, and opens the car door. “I’ll get a stack of envelopes and let you pass notes to me through the service.”

  “What if I want to listen?” I joke.

  “I stopped listening a long time ago.”

  “Then why do you keep going?” I ask, knowing how hard it is to hold on to your faith once God takes away something you thought was a given.

  “The motions, bae. Sometimes you just have to go through the motions.”

  4 TAMAR

  THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU think you have time. When you’re in high school, every minute before graduation feels like hours as you wait for your real life to start. But that’s not the case for me. I look into my future and all I see is a brick wall.

  I haven’t talked to Fay in weeks, hoping he’ll move on, dreading the day he will. We rode to Bible study together a few times before he left for the spring break trip. And one time he came over to binge-watch reruns of House, but I had a coughing fit and we had to call the EMTs and it was too much. Not for him. For me.

  He keeps calling but I don’t pick up. He texts but I don’t reply. At first it was just questions asking how I’m doing or what I’m doing. Now he just checks in with updates about what he’s doing and how much he misses me. He’s written a few letters, too. I read them under the covers with a flashlight, afraid that even the fluorescent beams of my bedroom lights might bear witness to my cowardice.

  Aabidah’s sensible gray Camry rolls to a stop in front of a squat cement building way past the county line. It’s attached to what looks like a dilapidated dollhouse. Gravel pops like ’hood Fourth of July as Aabidah and I let our eyes settle onto the grim facade in front of us. I scrunch my nose up so bad that I have to readjust my oxygen line. My sister notices immediately.

  “Don’t do that, T. I asked around. She’s supposed to be the best.”

  “According to who? Backwoods Weekly? Meth and Homemade Biscuits Times?” I joke.

  Aabidah rolls her eyes and opens the car door; the scent of diesel fuel and honeysuckle wafts in on a hot breeze. Dolly’s Mirror is a dive bar—I can tell that much from the yellowed and cracking road sign out front. Couple that with the SUV-sized American flag whipping above our heads and Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” spilling out from the screen door and you’ve got my country nightmare come to life. Aabidah opens the door for me and pulls my oxygen tank out so I won’t have to lift it. I hoist myself out of the car, though. I need that little bit of agency, the tiniest morsel of control over my body.

  “Ten dollars for your future. That’s a steal!” I wheeze, letting the sarcasm sweeten the sight of me straining for air and wincing with every step. My birthday’s coming up. I’ll be eighteen. It’s supposed to be great. I’m supposed to be excited about going off to college, getting to vote, being an almost grown-up. I should be planning an all-out bash with my friends, but I haven’t seen anyone outside church since the Valentine’s dance two months ago. And they say Tauruses are supposed to be devoted and responsible. Hardly. Too many doctors’ appointments, too many hospital visits. Pity overload for the one girl in a hundred thousand who came out on the other side of a pandemic with the lungs of an eighty-year-old. But hey, there’s hope; there’s.…

  “What’s her name?”

  “Rose,” Aabidah says as her eyes go wide at the Confederate-flag doormat.

  “We’re already here, Aabidah. We might as well go in,” I mumble.

  Her head moves from side to side, searching, like all Black people do in a new place, seeking out another Black face. We don’t find one, but we do see something that simultaneously surprises and reassures me: a child. A little girl about ten years old is pouring a beer into a frosted glass for a man in a pristine Carolina Gamecocks hat and matching T-shirt.

  “Readings in the back! Put your ten dollars in the jar at the end of the bar,” she announces without looking up. So much for Southern hospitality.

  The jukebox switches to “Jolene,” and somebody in one of the corner booths starts singing along… badly. When we walk through the curtain that separates the front area from the back room, the crooner is cut off mid-verse. Silence swallows us so completely that the squeak in the wheels of my oxygen tank echoes through the hallway. I nudge my sister forward with my elbow. She stumbles a bit but puts one foot in front of the other. This was her idea, after all.

  The smell of sage mixed with boiled peanuts, briny and sharp, hits me as Aabidah knocks tentatively on the doorframe of the only open room in the hall.

  “Y’all come on in. Take a seat on those cushions. I’ll be right with you,” a woman’s voice says through the beaded curtain. We make our way in and sit down, taking in everything around us: the candlelight and tapestry-covered walls. A literal shrine to Dolly Parton is in one corner, complete with burning incense and a fish tank with two goldfish swimming lazily in and out of a tiny church.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Aabidah says, nearly chickening out.

  “Suddenly scared she might be the real deal after all?” I ask.

  “No. It’s just… this place is… I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling. Why are you so calm, church girl?”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m out of options, I guess.”

  Aabidah stopped going to the church after Mama died. I worry about what she’ll have left if… when something happens to me. Sour bile rises up in my throat. I swallow it back down and then it starts, the bone-rattling coughing fit I’ve been trying to avoid for the last hour.

  The psychic, a thick white gi
rl in a beautiful form-fitting white linen shorts set, rushes over and shoves a steaming cup of mystery into my hands as I try and fail to catch my breath. My sister nearly knocks the thing to the floor as she tries to pry it out of my grasp.

  “That won’t help!” Aabidah grunts through her teeth, and pulls a handkerchief from her purse—one of Nana’s old ones—and pushes it into my palm to catch the bloody phlegm.

  “It’s not for drinking. Sweetheart, put this cup under your chin and see if you can calm yourself enough to let the fumes get in your nose.” She taps the cup with a blood-red coffin-shaped acrylic nail. “You’ll have to pull that tube out, though.” She holds up her hand and gives us a small wave. “I’m Rose,” she says, and smiles.

  “Like hell,” Aabidah says as she struggles to open the sterile plastic bag holding my oxygen mask so I can get more air.

  It feels like my chest is packed with hot rocks, but you know what, why not? It is almost my birthday. Ripping off my oxygen tube is the closest thrill I’ll get for the foreseeable future. I pull the tubing back, settle myself enough to attempt to breathe in, hold the cup under my chin, and inhale. I don’t expect anything, really. I’ve given up on expectations. But when I draw in a deep breath, it’s the first full unhindered breath I’ve taken in nearly a year. It’s clean and minty, energizing and cooling, and a tear falls from my eye before I have a chance to catch myself.

  “Feels nice, don’t it?” Rose says as she turns the knob down on her boiling peanuts and settles on an embroidered cushion in front of us. She’s covered in floral tattoos from neck to ankle, and her fifties-style red hair is tied up in one of those dollar-store handkerchiefs you see gang members wear in movies from the nineties. A Boyz-n-the-Hood-but-make-it-fashion sort of vibe.

  I take another deep breath in. This time the cooling sensation flows from my lungs down to the pit of my stomach. Goose bumps erupt on my skin, and it starts to feel like I’m floating.

  “Are you okay?” Aabidah asks, but she sounds far away. I turn to look at her and it’s like she’s at the far end of a tunnel, or I’m looking up at her from the bottom of a well. Shit, it’s happening again.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Aabidah asks Rose, the urgency in her voice muffling it into a desperate whisper.

  “She’s fine. She’ll be back soon,” Rose says calmly, winking as she drops a pillow behind me just in case I teeter.

  I try to grab on to something before I fall, but there’s nothing to grab on to when you’re falling into your own mind.

  5 Gao, Mali, 1325

  TAMAR

  HAL ’ANT BIKHAYR?”

  I blink hard against the sun and turn to the auntie who just asked after my welfare. “I’m fine,” I say quickly, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself. “I… I lost my train of thought. I must have been daydreaming.”

  Al-Kawkaw is my city. I know the market, its beating heart, like I know the lines etched into my palm. My claim to her as my own is as valid as any girl born here, even though I was not. As its adopted daughter I know when I am being fleeced. I shake my head at the woman in front of me.

  “It’s too high a price, even for cloth so fine,” I say, and turn the corner of the linen over with my hand. Iyin’s ring, a half-moon agate set in gold, catches the light.

  “Fine ring,” she says, testing the waters to see if I have stolen it. I meet her gaze head-on. Yes, a slave has no use for fine jewelry, but neither does a girl whose fingers have grown too thin to wear it. It was a gift, but I don’t owe this woman that story.

  “Your mistress, daughter of an old family, a respected family, can’t be seen in rags,” the old woman says as she smooths the fabric with her wrinkled hand. I can only see her eyes, but they hold mischief. She could do this all day. I don’t have even five minutes to spare.

  I give her a short, dry laugh. “Rags? Is that what your competitors peddle?” I wave my hand at the stall at the end of the lane, where a man is hanging out some of the finest linen I’ve seen brought in since the last rains. The quality is not as good as what she has to offer, but the possibility of losing a sale is enough to make her bend.

  “One week. I will have it ready for you,” she says begrudgingly.

  “That long?” I reply, and feel a twinge of guilt as the old woman’s movements grow stiff with disappointment at her haggling skills. Iyin would have been fine with paying twice the price we have settled upon, but with the better deal, I can purchase food for the week, and food is worth more than envy. While Iyin is well versed in the price fluctuations of silks and linens, she couldn’t tell you how much you’d need to purchase six eggs.

  “I know cowrie is the expected payment, but I have been to every corner of the market today, and I might have been a bit impulsive. Will you take a trade? I purchased this scroll of poetry for my mistress, but now I’m sure she already owns the piece.…”

  She nearly snatches the scroll from my hand. “Tomorrow,” she says again, this time with more enthusiasm. She knows she’s gotten the better end of the deal.

  “Poetry, Khala Farheen? Had I known I could get away with paying in pretty words, I would have sung you all the ballads of Gobir,” a young man interjects in an odd accent, plucking the scroll from her fingers and raising his eyebrows in flirtation. The old woman laughs.

  “What do you know of poetry? All you soldiers understand is blood and war,” she replies.

  The soldier straightens his back, clears his throat, and takes a step further into her tent, his arm raised toward her… in a flourish.

  “ ‘All through eternity / Beauty unveils His exquisite form / in the solitude of nothingness; / He holds a mirror to His Face / and beholds His own beauty. / He is the knower and the known, / the seer and the seen.’ ”

  The candlemaker in the adjacent stall claps.

  “You know Rumi,” I say, astonished that a soldier would know anything besides the price of wine.

  “All he knows is death and gambling, girl,” the old woman says with a sigh. “Ignore him. This place will be free of his kind soon enough.”

  “Oh, but I will miss you the most, Auntie. And who would I give my winnings to? Will you tell this girl that cloth is not all that you sell?” he says, his eyes dancing.

  The woman throws up her hands and lets loose a monsoon of Idoma that I can’t quite follow. Other than market visits, I am not allowed to talk with anyone outside the household, let alone travel to Enugu to pick up enough Idoma for conversation. While they joke and argue, I step away. I’ve still got to renegotiate the price of our weekly millet order, visit the midwife for an adjustment to Iyin’s prescription of herbs, and hopefully find someone who can sell me a bit of that lemon-scented honey she loves from Timbuktu. I know of one peddler, but being the zealot he is, he refuses to sell to a girl shopping on her own. I tried to explain there were no sons in our household, but he wouldn’t budge. So why give our coins to such a rude man anyway?

  I smell my way, as much as I walk from memory, toward the fishmongers closer to the River Niger’s edge. The newer stalls are more likely to be set up here. With the arrival of Mansa Musa’s retinue, there’s always something new to see, even if it is a bit more crowded. A sharp voice spooks a horse tied to a stall on my left, and a cart of melons spills to the ground from its flailing front legs. In a blink I’m off-balance and heel over head with no control over my body, bound for certain disaster. But in the next heartbeat strong arms cradle me and set me on my feet again.

  “You must have a lot on your mind if you did not see that coming,” the arms say as they spin me around. The Rumi soldier.

  My first thought is to check my hair. It’s wedding season, and Iyin was so generous as to allow me to have my hair styled along with hers. Braids no wider than flower stems bloom from the crown of my head and loop again and again, finally gathering in a lush ball at the back of my neck. Glass beads that flash green and gold dangle from their strategic homes on each braid and could easily slip out of place, but I needn�
�t have worried. He caught me like it was his job to catch—a fisher of silly girls. His hands squeeze the flesh of my arms in a way that sends a shiver across my skin, followed by an internal desire I’ve never felt before. I snatch my arms loose. If he’s offended, his smile doesn’t show it.

  I clear my throat, afraid the pitch in my voice might give away the nervousness churning in my belly. I have never been this close to a man I do not know, and I most certainly have never been touched by one. “Thank you,” I rush, almost forgetting my manners.

  “My pleasure. I am here to serve,” he says and bows his head low.

  I look around me to see if anyone is watching, prying eyes that might send a word to Iyin or her father about my inappropriate behavior. They would be lies, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Thankfully, everyone is preoccupied with calming down the horse and the river of melons rolling down the street.

  “Tamar! Are you all right?” a woman’s voice cries close to my ear.

  “Yaa, Adaku,” I reply, and, seeing that I’m telling the truth, the midwife’s daughter takes the opportunity to share the life story of her cousin who was once kicked in the head by one of the sultan’s horses and never recovered. I have to squeeze her arm to stop her.

  “Ndo, sorry. Who was that man?” she asks.

  I turn my head. I expect the young man to introduce himself, but he’s gone. “Nobody, just a soldier,” I say, and loop my arm in hers so she can lead me to the midwife. Hoping with each step that I can shake the feeling of being in the soldier’s arms.

  6 Sumter County, South Carolina, Present Day

  TAMAR

  T-TAMAR!” AABIDAH YELLS.

  “Jesus, why are you so loud?” I complain, and move the still-steaming cup of tea to my left hand and push it as far away as I can.

  “You zoned out and I’m not that loud. What’s in that stuff?” Aabidah demands as she shifts her scrutiny from me to Rose.

  “It’s my own blend. As I mentioned, you can’t drink it, but hell if it don’t open you up. Mentally and physically. I’ll admit it’s got a bit of a psychedelic edge, if you know what I mean,” Rose replies, and adds a little shoulder shimmy for emphasis.