Ancient, Ancient

“Rosa, honey, please promise me you’ll at least think about forgiving me.”

“I will,” I say tiredly. I ain’t got no more fight left in me.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

And I’m still keeping that promise to this very day.

Battle Royale

It is something about the feathers, how they fall about his bare shoulders. Not bunched on rawhide around the neck, nor bundled on a cord around the waist. Instead they hover cape-like around him, each one undulating like a dark glossy wave every time he shifts. I pretend not to notice his eyes returning again and again to the ugly scar that wings across my chest. Those eyes have a dangerous glint that softens each time it encounters the smooth stretch of broken cells that rises from my skin.

The nasal twang of the European rings out just behind my back, causing me to return my attention to the room. Daylight filters through the window behind a puffy judge. The benches and tables in the room are thick, wooden, oppressive. Other men of my color sit in rows shackled behind me. The tiny hairs at the base of my scalp quiver and stiffen. What crime have I committed?

Words like prevalent and supersede grate against my ears as the European tries to explain why the work of the House of Burgesses has changed so radically since me and my kind arrived. I imagine that nasal twang sputtering to a halt upon discovering the true details of my arrival. I did not come on massive creaking ships along with my fellow laborers. I came clinging to the shifting seeds of time. This was my punishment, to drink the terephthalic acid, mount the compo, and travel to a time that Grandfather warned me would make me cry for another chance to obey him back home.

I knew he’d be right (he always is); I just didn’t know how right he’d be. This scar has become something I caress obsessively as if it were your komboloi, the worry beads you lashed to my wrist while I leaned my head back to drink the acid. Whatever terrible act that begat this scar is long forgotten; yet as I circle my fingers over its contours, I know its presence on this body is no accident. Grandfather must want me to know that ripped flesh— cells forced to separate, then claw their way back together in a lumpy uneven embrace—is the life I escaped. History has been the grace that allows my body—my true body—to remain strong and unscarred. Virtually.

Virtually unscarred.

The Battle Royale is not supposed to maim. If you’re good, you never get hit. You duck and dodge, slipping away just seconds before a blade or a heel or a stick hits. It’s a dance, the razors were added for flash, to make the game prettier. You get a lot of bruises, a few players have lost chunks of flesh, but only one death.

“It’s safe,” I told Grandfather.

“Battle Royale,” he muttered under his breath and went back to his beakers and chemicals and explosions.

I was forbidden. I was forbidden to battle, but you were there. If I didn’t dance, someone else would have dazzled you with their blades, and I would have disappeared before your eyes.

So I got cut. Yeah, I bled. But I didn’t break anything. I didn’t have to go to the hospital. I walked all the way home. Trailing blood, and you behind.

When Grandfather saw me he was shaking. Not from fear, but from anger. Grandmother protested that I needed to heal, but Grandfather would not listen. He dragged me down into the basement, pulled me over the threshold of his lab, and pushed me onto the compo. He was so angry he didn’t notice that my blood had spilled all the way down the stairs, and you behind.

I drank. I didn’t have a choice. He raged about whipping posts and ignorance. He questioned my right to be free, and you cried. You, who had never even touched my cheek, who I had never even kissed, you cried for me and wrapped your worry beads around my wrist.

Grandfather has a bad habit of creating the poison before the cure. Now that I am sitting here watching feathers hanging in air, listening to the buzz of legal speech, fingering a scar placed on this body before I entered it, I wonder when Grandfather will bring me back, if he can bring me back. If I will fall faint or asleep and open my eyes to see Grandfather’s face hanging over me—you behind, praying that I survived.

I hear the man in the feathered cape whisper, “Uexolotl,” and I know it is a curse. A lance thrown down the throat of the haughty European. But the European does not respond; he continues his speech. The realization comes to me slowly, but I grasp it. The magic-cape man—with his brown skin and his shiny black hair—he cannot be seen by the European.

“He and his kind are dead,” a voice whispers. I look around, but there is no one here. No one who would have whispered such a thing. The men surrounding me do not whisper. Their voices insist and impose. They flail dark-robed arms and toss white-wigged heads. The men shackled behind me are silent.

“Dance,” the voice whispers.

“What?” I ask with dry lips.

“Dance,” the voice whispers again. I listen harder. I may be crazy, keeping company with dead, feathered men. I may be crazy, hearing words on the wind. I may be crazy, but I am certain this is your voice. You, who are not here, but I think you must be reaching for me. I imagine you peering through Grandfather’s murky liquids, whistling into beakers, wondering how you can bring me home.

I stand.

“Now dance.”

Before I can move a muscle, the scar starts to screech.

“Dance the Royale?”

The scar wails in guttural tones, begging me to sit. It speaks in a language I can’t decipher, but fear needs no words to be understood.

“Dip.”

I don’t know where this scar came from or how it was born, but I know you. I have been waiting to dance for you since the moment I met you. Before you can whisper another word, I dip. My hands flick helplessly, no razors to grasp. A club blurs toward me, and I slide back, snaking my hips low. It crashes against my knee, but it doesn’t matter. I’m in the Royale now.

They surround me—black robes, rotten teeth, anger. They surround me, but they can’t catch me. The Royale has me. That ancient vibe has slipped into my skin and nested down into my chest. It guides me, showing me the gaps, and I glide through, ducking just when they think I’m captured. Then just like that, the Royale leaves me. It rolls up behind me and shoves me forward. I stumble under the force, and then I run.

I scramble over benches and climb through an open window. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I take off running. I hear sounds behind me: explosions and shouts. I feel tiny fires shooting past me. The Royale pants behind me, low and fierce. Every pant is like a heartbeat. I dare not still my feet.

Out the corner of my eye I see feathers flying next to me. They rush, creating a wind that pushes me faster and faster. I run beyond my pursuers. I run beyond the trees. I run beyond the Royale. Then I hear the gritty sound of time grinding into a different gear, or year. My limbs go liquid and lose their speed.

Intense heat is the first thing I feel, then exhaustion. I feel it down to my bones. Muscles like mush, as if I’ve been walking for miles. To the right and left of me are sand dunes, notched with hypnotizing ridges where the wind has kissed them. Before me is a woman’s back, her head hangs low as she plods along a footpath. I look behind me. More women, a long line of them snaking back further than I can see. They all wear dingy white robes and tattered headwraps. I hold up my arms. The same dingy cloth covers me.

My eyes swing back up to the woman’s neck. Foreign memories flash in my mind. Men with black-lined eyes breaking into a family camp. A man—who must be this new body’s father—bloodied but fighting. A woman—who must be this new body’s mother—lying with her throat ripped open, a bloom of blood haloing her head. The bite of sand on palms and knees as this body crawls to safety, crawls like a dog, choking on fear. I shake the scene from my head and stare at the back of the woman’s neck again.