Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,65
live?”
Dr. Tijou takes her face out of my abdomen and straightens her back to alert the room she’s about to say something important. “Either you, sir, are a very lucky man, or someone has gone out of their way to keep you alive.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The doctor instructs Victor to take my vital signs, listens intently as he lists off the numbers, and then tells him to do it again. “And you say this is more or less baseline for the patient?” Her Creole accent seeps out even more now that she’s alive with the thrill of a well-placed blade.
Victor nods. “Slightly lower than usual, but yes, that’s what he tells me. That’s how I first found him, actually.” He starts in on the story of how we met, Dr. Tijou punctuating with little hmms and oohs. I can’t focus on any of his words though. They just seem like vague amoebas floating above our heads. It occurs to me I’ve been holding on tightly to my life force, keeping it close to my core the way I did my secrets when I was around Sasha. It’s wearing me out. “I think . . . I think I . . .” I hear myself saying. I’m probably trying to tell them I’m about to pass out, but then I just do it instead.
* * *
I wake up to the sound of an R & B joint bursting tinnily through someone else’s headphones. The bass is so loud that whoever’s listening to it will definitely be hearing impaired in about ten seconds. It’s raining out. Those pitter-pattering footsteps slosh steadily against the window, and a mellow blue-gray light filters into the room.
Kia.
Kia’s the one blowing out her own eardrums. She’s tinkering around in the kitchen. “Coffee,” I mumble. Of course, she can’t hear me because some preteen is trying to seduce her point-blank at four million decibels. I grab something off the little table by the couch and launch it across the room. Turns out to be a small potted plant, which explodes against the far wall and sends Kia flying up into the air with surprise.
“What the fuck, Carlos!”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was . . .” I stop because saying so many words has worn me out. “Coffee . . .” I mumble.
“No, man. Both Baba Eddie and Dr. Tijou said no coffee for you. You have to recover. Your pressure’s low even by low-ass Carlos standards, and you lost a lot of blood. Coffee’ll fuck you up even more.”
I’m slightly alarmed by the brush of maternal tenderness that comes over Kia’s voice. I must be truly messed up if she’s actually deigned to be concerned.
“Okay. No coffee. Fuck.”
And I’m out.
* * *
First I hear humming and the gentle swish of water. A voice I don’t know; a large, older woman from the sound of it. It’s a melancholy call-and-response, each line repeated, but she’s doing both voices.
Then I hear Kia say: “Like this?”
The older woman grunts an approval and keeps humming.
“That’s the song for the herbs?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It makes them happy?”
“It makes them work,” the woman says. “Prayer puts the world to work. The action you take is your expression of intent. The world listens. And then works. Go get me some more iced tea, baby, okay?”
“All right, Iya.”
I keep my eyes closed.
* * *
Kia’s sitting in the easy chair next to the couch when I come back around. She smiles—not the fuck-you, I’m-winning smile I’m used to from Kia but a real one, full of warmth and . . . what’s that? Kindness. She’s still in her whites, a long skirt and button-down shirt. Her hair’s wrapped up in a white head tie, and a million multicolored bead necklaces peek out from behind her collar. She looks like a whole other person. It’s still raining, and I have no idea how much time has passed.
“How do you feel?”
“Better. A little. Don’t think I can move though.”
“Don’t. We haven’t done the cleansing yet. Baba had to run out to take care of some stuff. It’s better you get a chance to recover some first anyway.”
“Who was the woman?”
“Oh, from earlier? Iya Tiomi. One of Baba’s people. We were making some herb washes for you.”
“Figured something like that.”
“Apparently, you’re some kind of medical freak. Dr. Tijou was really amazed. She kept running around the place squawking about how she’d never seen anything like it in her career.” Kia affects a pretty on-point Haitian accent. “‘Even in Port-au-Prince! Sacrebleu!’”