Seth and Samona (2 page)

Samona scowled. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said, but I was thinking, If you’re somebody’s grandmother.

“Bye, Granmè.” I kissed her on the cheek and headed out the door before she could remember that I was supposed to be at my piano lesson.

As soon as Samona and I stepped out into the hall,
she took off the scarf and tied it around her leg. “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

I nodded and we got on the elevator. I never felt quite as comfortable with Samona unless she was being her usual crazy self. By the time we were outside again, she was snapping her gum loudly and jabbering off about something or other. She didn’t seem a bit worried that we might just be heading straight for trouble if Mrs. Fabiyi really was a witch.

W
e started out for Mrs. Fabiyi’s house right away. She lives in one of those three-story houses two blocks down from our apartment. Samona lives in between on Morton Street, which is too close as far as I’m concerned.

We knew Mrs. Fabiyi’s house right away cause it’s in such bad shape. All the gray paint has just about peeled off on one side and the lawn has got so many years’ worth of leaves on it that you can’t see the grass. In front of the house is a big tree stump where I remember there used to be a big maple tree. Just looking at the house made me feel sad. It’s like nobody cared about it.

After we stared at the house for a while, Samona looked at me and asked, “Do you think Mrs. Fabiyi ate Nightmare?”

“What the heck for?”

“Maybe she’s hungry. I’d eat a cat if I were hungry enough. It’s supposed to taste like chicken.”

“That’s ’cause you’re crazy, Samona Gemini. Besides,
as evil as Nightmare is, she’d give Mrs. Fabiyi stomach problems for the rest of her life and Mrs. Fabiyi can’t be all that hungry if she’s throwing vegetable soup at people.” I half-expected something to come flying out the window any minute.

“Well, the only way we’re going to find out is to go in.” Samona marched up the stairs like a general. “Are you coming or not?”

I followed her more slowly. What if Mrs. Fabiyi thought we were burglars and came after us with a baseball bat? Everybody knows she doesn’t like kids.

Samona was reading the mailboxes when I caught up to her. “She lives on the third floor,” she said.

“We already know that.” I was beginning to get the idea that Samona wasn’t as brave as she let on, but she was too proud to show it.

She put her hand on the doorknob and opened it slowly. Inside, I could just make out a dark stairwell and a dusty, narrow hallway. I thought I could hear mice scurrying around. That piano lesson was beginning to look mighty appealing.

“Maybe we should look for Nightmare outside,” I suggested. It seemed like a good idea to me. Somehow I knew Samona wasn’t going to go for it.

She put on one of those patient smiles teachers and doctors use to explain things to little kids. “Then we don’t get to see her house. You scared of the dark or something?”

“Me? Scared?” I walked into the hallway with a stiff
back and a stomach that felt like it had lead marbles in it.

Samona closed the door behind us and we started up the stairs. It was so dark I could barely see where I was headed. I felt sticky cobwebs brush against my face. When we reached the last flight of stairs, the steps began to creak. Each step had a different kind of creak to it and each one was louder than the one before. So much for burglars. These steps were loud enough to wake the dearly departed. I was glad to see the third floor was lit by a tiny lightbulb.

Samona, however, had a spooked expression on her face as she looked around. “There’s no door.”

True enough, there wasn’t anything but walls around us.

“Guess we’ll have to go,” I said cheerfully.

Samona grabbed the back of my shirt as I started down the stairs. “I didn’t come all the way up here for nothing. There must be a way to get into her apartment. We have to save Nightmare.”

Samona put her hands on her hips like she was trying to think of something, then walked over to one of the walls and began banging hard and loud on it.

Just as I was about to stop her from getting us both in more trouble, I saw the wall behind Samona opening up from nowhere and Samona falling down at the feet of an old lady dressed in nothing but a sheet and a scarf wrapped around her head. She also had the meanest look on her face.

“Ah-ah! You!”

Samona’s eyes bugged out of her head from where she was lying on the floor as Mrs. Fabiyi began talking fast and loud and pointing and screaming. The marbles in my stomach had turned to bricks and all I could do was stand there and stare. I couldn’t make out a word Mrs. Fabiyi was saying ’cause she was screaming in some other language but I could see the long stick she was waving in the air over Samona’s head. Either she was going to hit us or put a spell on us.

“We came to bring you some food,” I whispered finally, holding up the bag of food. “For your sickness.”

“Sick?” The way Mrs. Fabiyi said it made it sound like “seek,” but at least she was speaking English now. “What for?”

“So you don’t have to eat cats,” I blurted out before I stopped to think.

“Cat! You is sick one, boy.” Mrs. Fabiyi shook her stick again. “Go!”

Samona stood up, rubbing her sore bottom. “We’re not leaving until I get my cat back!”

Mrs. Fabiyi looked at her closely, then started cackling. I could see her red gums clear as could be. She must have forgotten to put her teeth in. Just like Granmè. And she had finally stopped waving that stick. Suddenly I wasn’t so scared anymore.

“I know you?” Mrs. Fabiyi asked in a low whisper after she had finished laughing.

“You threw vegetable soup at us on Halloween,” I reminded her.

Mrs. Fabiyi started cackling again. “Ah-ah! I remember! So much fun. Trick or treat, you! Nobody else come that night.”

“I wonder why,” Samona muttered. “You got my leaves all wet.”

Samona had dressed up like a tree for Halloween, with real leaves pasted to her head. It took her mama two hours to wash the glue out of her hair. Then Mrs. Gemini wrote a poem about it.

“Trick or treat make you mad?” Mrs. Fabiyi looked a little upset. “I was—how you say—making fun.”

“Where’s my cat?” Samona put her hands on her hips.

Mrs. Fabiyi chuckled. “Big, black cat? He play with my Egusi. You come in. You are welcome.”

Samona followed her through the door in the wall while I looked around a little more. The opening
was
a door. It was painted black like the rest of the wall, which seemed like a strange color to me, and it didn’t have a doorknob on the outside. This was a pretty weird house.

I had to go through one of those slimy, slippery bead curtains, that was just hanging right inside the doorway. Then there was a small hallway leading to another room. I followed it, holding in my breath and saying a quick prayer. Who knew when I was gonna come back out—or if I was. What I saw there made me wish I
hadn’t wasted my breath. There weren’t any bats in the corners or animal skeletons pinned to the walls or anything a witch is supposed to have in her house. All that was there were some normal-looking wicker chairs and some wood carvings on the wall. One of the carvings looked like the African masks our art teacher had showed us in a slide show last week. They were the only interesting things in the room.

I followed Samona’s voice to the back porch, where she was petting a small tabby cat—Egusi, I guessed. Mrs. Fabiyi turned to me and made another one of those gummy smiles. In the daylight I could see that she wasn’t wearing a sheet at all. It was a long blue and green and black dress that touched the floor. The scarf was made of the same material. Mrs. Fabiyi looked younger than Granmè. She had black skin that was smooth and didn’t have a wrinkle in it. “Well, you. What you see?”

“There aren’t any toad’s eyes or voodoo dolls or even a stupid love potion.” Here I’d come all this way and Mrs. Fabiyi turned out to be nothing but a regular old lady. Manmi was gonna kill me when she found out I skipped another piano lesson.

Mrs. Fabiyi’s eyes twinkled. “You think I obeah-witch woman? Ah-ah! More fun to scare little boys like you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” I said, turning away.

“Mrs. Fabiyi hasn’t been sick,” Samona said, cuddling
the little cat. “She went to see her sister in Nigeria.”

“It good for you to come see about me. You come again. I promise no more soup.”

Samona put Egusi on the floor and picked up Nightmare. “That’s very civilized of you, Mrs. Fabiyi. And I guess I don’t mind if Nightmare comes over here to visit Egusi either.”

Well, I was tired of this. No one was going to eat or kill us here. I hadn’t even seen a kitchen knife around. Papi was right: You can’t believe everything that people say. It’s just like some of the kids at school who think that all Haitians are boat people and only eat frogs’ legs. I should have known better than to believe the stories about Mrs. Fabiyi. People like to think all kinds of bad things about you just ’cause you come from someplace different.

“It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Fabiyi. I’m leaving, Samona. You can come if you want to.” I headed for the front door.

Samona stuck her tongue out at my back. “You can throw soup at him anytime, Mrs. Fabiyi. Seth Michelin! Wait up!”

“You are welcome,” Mrs. Fabiyi called after us. “And you right, Samona. Cat taste good as chicken.”

Samona looked back at her with wide eyes before chasing me down the stairs. “See! I told you!”

I didn’t pay her any mind. I started walking as fast as
I could once we got outside. The bright sunlight hit me in the eyes and made me squint.

Samona caught up with me, huffing a little and squeezing the life out of Nightmare. “What are you walking so fast for?”

I stopped. “Look, Samona. I don’t have any time to be wasting with you.”

She shifted Nightmare to her other arm. “Well, ’scuse me. Where’s the fire?”

I glared at her. “I got places to go, okay?”

“I got places of my own to get to,” Samona sniffed.

“Like what?” I asked as scornfully as possible.

“Well …” Samona bit her lip. “Matter of fact I have to go to the city hall today and register for the Little Miss Dorchester contest.”

My mouth fell wide open. “You’re off your rocker. You can’t win that contest.”

“Oh yeah? Wait and see.” Samona pointed to my open mouth, then turned and walked away. “Better watch out for them flies.”

S
amona’s fool idea about entering the beauty contest went right out of my head later when I opened the door to our apartment. I had my nose all wrinkled up ’cause they had just mopped the hallway and it smelled like ammonia. I knew it would stink like that for days. Sometimes Manmi smelled like that when she came home from work at the hospital. When she smells like that, it means she got stuck washing the floors all day and she usually has to go straight to bed ’cause her back hurts so much. I was wishing for the hundredth time that we could live in a real house like my cousin Enrie when I walked through the door and knew something was wrong.

For one thing, it was so dark I could barely see in front of me. All the shades had been drawn to shut out the sunlight. If it wasn’t for the tiny lamp lit up in the corner of the living room, I would not have been able to make out Tant Cherise, Tant Renee and Monnonk Roddie setting up a low murmur in Kreyol on the
couch. There wasn’t any sign of Granmè or Manmi, and that started to make me nervous.