“Do you have time to finish?” Joya asks, ignoring me.
I shoot Joya an irked look. She’s supposed to be sitting outside, guarding against Candace’s big ears. But then Kai started to tell “The Red Seed,” and I invited her in. I thought Joya should hear it, especially since a new kid has moved into our cabin. Kim is a hulking girl with heavy, scowly eyebrows, and she’s posse’d up with Shar and Karice. The odds have shifted against the Gotmamas. Shar is giving Joya stink eye every time their paths cross. Shar still owes Joya plenty for her earlobes, and Joya’s mama has completed rehab and moved into a halfway house. Shar is running out of time to pay her back.
There is power in my mother’s tales, and this story is a mighty call to rally; I wanted Joya to have a share. “The Red Seed” is the story I hoped for the day those Paulding County white girls named me Fatty-Fatty Ass-Fat. If Kai had told it that day, I might have gone back to school with bells on my wrists, ready to take on the world. Instead, Kai told “Ganesha’s Mouse,” and I called 911.
“She needs to get off the phone, before she gets in trouble,” I tell Joya, loud enough for Kai to hear me plain.
“But I want to hear the end,” Joya says.
“Every story has a thousand ends,” Kai says. She sounds calm, or maybe she’s just tired. “I could tell you an end that even Paula doesn’t know.”
“Oh, please?” says Joya, and now my interest is piqued. I like to stop when Kali wins the battle, but Kai likes romance. There is no third ending that I know.
“Long ago, right now,” Kai begins, “Kali has a newborn boy—”
“Wait, she what?” I say.
I’ve never heard a tale where Kali is a mother. She’s The Mother, sure, the one who burns the ancient forests down. After, from the charred ground, the new grass grows in sweeter and greener than ever before. But I can’t imagine Kali as some mommy, using two of her many hands to change a diaper while the human bones tied to her wrists rustle and scrape.
“She said Kali had a baby. Shut it,” Joya says, and Kai begins again.
Long ago, right now, Kali has a newborn boy. But Kali is drunk on the Red Seed’s blood. She dances her victory so violently against the earth that the big bells at her waist sound like artillery. Her finger bells ting so high they hurt the ears, and the bells on her wrists bark and clang. She dances so hard, the world begins to crack at its foundation. The cities shake. The oceans churn and foam.
The bravest soldier snatches up her tiny son and brings him to the battlefield. He creeps as close to Kali as he dares and sets the baby gently on a pile of Earth’s fallen soldiers. Then he runs. The bodies are cold, and the baby is naked. He is unhappy to find himself alone and so chilled. He opens up his tiny mouth and wails, a bare scrap of sound.
But Kali hears. She stops dancing, and her bells fall still. In the silence, everyone can hear the baby cry. She goes to him, running quick and light. The oceans calm, and the Earth shivers back together, knitting at the seams. She lifts the baby up and sits down on the heap of corpses. She begins to nurse him, rocking and singing. The bells chime sweet and quiet with her gentle movements. All around her, the white chaff of the demons begins to settle, landing in drifts like new snow. It blankets the carnage until all the world is covered, remade fresh and faultless. The only colors come from Kali and her son, nestled together on a white hilltop.
Kai stops speaking, and it is very quiet. This is the right way to end the story for the Gotmamas. This is the end where you are cold and all alone, and your mother comes and gathers you up. Even Joya’s eyes have pinked. She breathes out a sigh, and then, outside the pantry, we hear a muffled sniffle.
I recognize the sound; it’s that damn Candace, come to steal more of my conversations. Her allergies have betrayed her. Either that, or she’s feeling some emotion that she has no right to feel. Joya is up in a flash, leaping out of the pantry with murder writ large on her face. I hear Candace retreating at full gallop, hollering, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no!” and the pounding of their feet as they race across the rec room.
I take the phone off speaker, and in the quiet, I can hear Kai’s breathing has constricted.