Early the next morning I had a dream. I was riding bicycles with Sunny Jim Bottomley and Carolina and the Fleur-du-Mal. The Fleur-du-Mal was smiling. His teeth sparkled. Carolina was twelve again and wearing a yellow dress. Her hair was blond and stringy. Sunny Jim wore his Cardinals uniform and cap. He said, “Come on! This way!” He led us into Forest Park, but it was an area I had never seen. The street signs were written in Meq. “Where are we?” I shouted ahead. The three of them were pedaling up the hill in front of me. They didn’t answer and none of them turned around. They crested the hill and I put my head down, pedaling furiously, trying to catch them. My bicycle began to wobble and shake. The spokes bent and twisted and popped loose, flying in all directions. “Wait! Wait!” I yelled. “Come on, Zianno, hurry!” Sunny Jim shouted from over the hill. “Come on! We’re going to Ithaca!”
I opened my eyes.
“Come on, Zano, come on! Wake up, Zano!” It was Caine. He was at eye level and shaking the bed. His dark hair was tousled and tangled from sleep. I remembered his mother waking me in just the same way to go to the World’s Fair. She had called me “ZeeZee” that fateful morning.
“Pancakes,” Caine said. “Granny made pancakes.” He tugged on me and smiled, showing the gap between his two front teeth, which were still baby teeth.
His smile and voice brought on a wave of emptiness and sadness I could not explain or hold back. It was strange. I knew the sudden departure of everyone was not the reason. The reason was a state of mind common to many Meq, more like an infinite ennui that appears out of nowhere. Opari had warned me of it. For the Meq, she likened the experience to a “time disease.” It comes on suddenly and has no focus or form, but if left unchecked, can feed like a virus on the weeks, months, and years to come.
Luckily, my spirits lifted only a few hours later. The date was October 10, 1923. The World Series was beginning in New York between the Yankees and Giants at Yankee Stadium and it was the first time a World Series game was broadcast coast to coast on radio. We gathered in front of Carolina’s big Edison radio and it seemed like magic to hear a play-by-play broadcast all the way from New York. That was the first thing to make me feel better and I knew it would. The second I never expected and it has never been explained to me since. Maybe it had something to do with Zuriaa’s return, but whatever it was, it was a miracle to all of us, especially to the skinny, dark-skinned orphan, now seventeen, from the streets of New York, renamed Oliver “Biscuit” Bookbinder.
Carolina and Ciela (in Spanish) had always included and spoken to Biscuit as if he were an active part of any conversation. However, Biscuit had not spoken a word and remained mute ever since he witnessed Unai and Usoa’s murder on the Orphan Train. He and Jack were best friends and went everywhere together, but Jack did all the talking. Carolina taught him a similar kind of “no speak” communication she and Georgia had developed naturally. Sunny Jim didn’t speak to Biscuit at all when he visited. He didn’t have to. Baseball did it for him. For a boy his age, Biscuit was one of the best fielding shortstops I had ever seen. Sunny Jim spent hours with him and taught him every fundamental of the game. Their conversations together were a pleasure to watch, full of silent power, grace, and balance.
The announcer’s voice boomed out of the radio. Owen Bramley had turned up the volume in the seventh inning. We sat scattered on the floor and in chairs and cheered for the Giants. All of us, particularly Biscuit, hated the Yankees. It was the top of the ninth inning and the score was tied 4–4. There were two outs. The announcer’s voice rose, then almost screamed the next play, which ended up being the winning run. A young player for the Giants named Casey Stengel hit an inside-the-park home run to left center field. While he was rounding the bases, he lost his left shoe and the announcer mentioned it. Without warning, Biscuit stood up off the floor, cheering wildly and laughing hysterically. Everyone else stopped cheering instantly and stared at Biscuit. He was not yet aware he had laughed out loud. He kept cheering and laughing until he suddenly realized he was the only one making a sound. His laughter ceased and he turned slowly, looking into each of our faces. Some were smiling, some were crying. An old invisible wall in his mind had crumbled away and disappeared. “Madre de Dios,” he said.
“Madre de Dios,” Ciela echoed, then crossed herself three times.
As Opari had predicted, Star cabled from Oslo as soon as she learned about Zuriaa and the events at Lambert Field. She said she was returning home at once. Alone, she set sail for New York, stopping briefly in London to meet with Willie. She arrived in St. Louis on Thanksgiving Day and I went to Union Station alongside Carolina and Caine to welcome her and take her home.
The moment Star stepped from the train, I was stunned by how physically attractive she had become, and she had lost her naïveté completely. She always possessed an inner confidence. Now there was a maturity and grace in her movements and expressions that had not been present before. She still looked like Carolina’s twin, with freckles across her nose and cheeks and tiny gold flecks in her blue-gray eyes, but she had surpassed her mother in sheer beauty. She wore a long fur coat and her hair was cut short and “bobbed” in the style of the day. Except for a small amount of lipstick, she wore no makeup, and yet, Star could easily have launched a thousand ships. And there was no doubt about her love for her son. She picked up Caine, who ran to her the instant he saw her, and held him as close and tight as she could, spinning in a circle, kissing him, repeating over and over, “Mama loves you, Mama loves you.”
During the drive to Carolina’s, Star noticed Sailor’s ancient lapis lazuli hanging from a necklace Caine now wore around his neck. “Why is he wearing the blue stone?” Star asked her mother, who deferred to me.
“Sailor said he should have it with him at all times,” I said. “He didn’t tell me why, but after the air show, I think I know why—as a talisman for protection.”
Star nodded and held Caine closer, only letting go when he finally said, “You’re squeezin’ me, Mama.”
On Christmas Eve, Mitchell Ithaca Coates returned to St. Louis, bringing along at least a dozen presents for Caine and a half dozen for everyone else. He had been living in the city for which he was named, Ithaca, New York, through the summer and fall of 1923. He went there to be with his long estranged father, who was dying of lung cancer. He stayed by his father’s side until the end, which came sometime during the night of December 10. After settling affairs in Ithaca, Mitch headed straight for St. Louis and Carolina’s home. He was slightly thinner than the last time I had seen him, but otherwise seemed the same. His easy smile and buoyant spirit were still intact and he was wearing his familiar black tuxedo and black tie. He looked handsome and prosperous, which he was. Carolina said he had made a fortune in the first two years following Prohibition, then got out of the business completely when he learned his father was sick, well before he had made any serious enemies, or been arrested, or lost his money. Now he was the semiretired co-owner of two businesses: the St. Louis Stars, a charter member of the Negro National League, and a nightclub on West Pine called Chauffer’s Club, one of the hottest spots in town for black musicians. Mitch didn’t expect me to be at Carolina’s, but he handed me two presents anyway and said, “Merry Christmas, Z. I missed you, man.”
“Me, too, Mitch,” I said. “Me, too.”
A deep snow fell on New Year’s Day and we celebrated by having a small feast. Ciela made a huge pot of Cuban-style black-eyed peas with onions and peppers and chunks of smoked ham throughout, served with cornbread and great quantities of sweetened iced tea. It had been a long time since I had seen snow and I stood by the window watching the snow fall all day on the big oaks and maples, covering them and silencing the whole neighborhood. Nothing moved except the snowflakes. I watched them falling, drifting, piling up like white time. All I saw were seconds, minutes, hours, years…years and years. At one point, I heard a voice nearly as silent as the snow and turned around. No one was there. Less than a whisper, the voice sounded like Opari, but it was not. It was another. She spoke to me as if we had already been engaged in conversation. She said, “Is it innocence we are compelled to save and keep from harm’s way at all costs? No! It is experience. We must protect it, preserve it, and shepherd it from hill to hill, heart to heart, like fire in a frozen world. Experience alone is our power, the source of our magic, our deep knowledge. We can only learn in increments, degrees, drops, and small pebbles of truth, often random in meaning, backward and forward in time. Eventually, one by one, these pebbles will be collected and a path shall be revealed. Then we must ask the obvious: to where? The answer awaits us at the Remembering. All hands shall be extended, unasked and unannounced, and the Window will open.”