Virginia Hamilton Page 9

  Now Justice stood in the Jefferson house surrounded by carpeted floors of evergreen and the cabbage green of pictureless walls. A huge floor-to-ceiling mirror made portraits of whoever stood where Justice was standing.

  Clay pots of crinkled ivy were crammed on end tables. And the tables, in turn, crowded the spring-green couch on which Dorian sat with hands tightly folded, waiting for Justice.

  She sensed that the plants welcomed her, that they understood her as they did Dorian and his mother. She felt them empty her of all the silliness of her years. All of the nonsense.

  No, please! she begged them. I want to stay myself.

  The green of plants crowded her vision and gripped her mind. She was given a keener awareness. She became a receiver.

  Justice was prepared.

  And found herself seated on the couch next to Dorian.

  “I never knew I moved from the doorway,” she told him, surprised.

  “Justice, you,” he said evenly. But he looked apprehensive and gave her a guarded little smile.

  “I been here long?” she asked him.

  “Not too long. You only just come in a minute ago.

  “You sure of that?” she asked.

  “Maybe you been here a little while, but not long,” he assured her. Holding himself still and straight on the couch, he was unwilling to look at her more than a few seconds at a time.

  She folded her hands, feeling them pulse and tremble. She leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes, only to see a swell of green behind her eyelids. They fluttered open again.

  “You can let it be,” softly Dorian reminded her. “Nothing’s not going to get you hurt in here.”

  “I know that,” she mumbled, and was quiet before she said, “Your dad’s still asleep.”

  No need for Dorian to answer. His dad slept through the morning on into afternoon so that he could be alert for his night shift at his job.

  Justice had the sensation that time wavered green, and changed. She sensed that it would escape. She often had trouble keeping it.

  There was an arch between the front room where she and Dorian were sitting and the kitchen and dining area. She could see through the arch to the back door, which was curtained in aqua lace with a green blind beneath. To the left of the door was the round dining table where the Jeffersons ate their meals. Only half the table was visible behind the wall separating the two rooms. Justice knew who had to be seated there at the table, out of view.

  A wind came up in the front room, causing plant runners to skittle over the floor like crabs. Dust was shaken by the wind from the fronds of a wild palm.

  There can’t be wind here, she thought.

  But the wind lifted her with Dorian at her elbow, steering her. It sailed her from the couch through the arch. There were voices with her on the wind. She sensed they came from miles and miles away. Insistent voices echoing in the new clarity of her mind. One voice was particularly at a loss.

  Justice whirled on the wind. “Where—how far away are you?”

  She knocked into the dining table in the kitchen. She could see only green. The confused sound of voices was like thunder swelling and rolling in.

  Hands from across the table grasped her arms. The hands trembled with fear, but still they firmly held her. At once, she and Dorian were seated at the table, side by side. The wind escaped under the back door and through cracks of the house. The voices died away to a hum, like the sound of a refrigerator.

  “Can you hear me, Justice, you?” said Leona Jefferson. “Baby Justice, come on back now.”

  “I was sailing!” Justice said, shocked. She had difficulty seeing through a green mist. Her heart pounded, shaking the table. A surge of frightening beats filled the house.

  “Mama!” she heard Dorian cry out in terror.

  “Shhhh!” Leona’s voice saying, “She’s not going to hurt anything. We can keep it in, but you can’t be afraid and you have to concentrate!”

  Hands touched Justice’s face, smoothed back her hair. They pressed hard on each side of her head at the temples. She felt herself quake inside and she wanted so much for the hands to make her feel safe. But they were like so many flies. She was able to knock them away without even moving.

  “Mama?” Dorian whispering.

  “Shhhh!”

  “How did I do that?” Justice asked. “It’s scaring me—make it go away!”

  Hands flew back, pressing her head again.

  “Stop it!” Justice cried out. Then, quite suddenly, she gave in: “No, let them be. Let the hands alone.”

  “That’s right,” Leona said soothingly. “We got to keep it in, mostly. Let it out a little at a time.”

  Justice turned her head this way and that; the hands turned, also. Wherever she looked, objects moved, slid and jumped, and rustled in a sudden wind.

  “I thought all the wind had gone,” she said. No one answered.

  But hands were helping to calm her down, although a huge pounding continued in the room. She couldn’t imagine what it was. Her own heart beat now—tinka-tink, tinka-tink—racing small and insignificant. Yet, ever so slowly, the pounding diminished. Perhaps the hands absorbed it. They did seem to draw it off, Justice felt, the way creeks catch and hold the run-off of water from a flash of hard rain. The hands were so soothing.

  She sensed the room settle down. The three of them were seated comfortably at the round table. Justice and Dorian were closest to the arch, with Leona Jefferson across from them.

  There were no hands touching Justice. She hadn’t noticed when they stopped pressing her temples. Now she saw in the center of the table a large round pan some three inches deep. She stared at the familiar-looking tin, but found no memory of it.

  “You practice on the small things,” someone said. “That’s how you learn.”

  “Huum? Is that you, Leona?” Justice asked. “Why is it sometimes you sound just like some teacher?” She sat with her chin in her hands, looking into the tin. It was full of smooth white sand. There were little piles of yellow, blue and red sand on top, like bright buttes or cones.

  “Baby child,” Leona said, “I can sound any way I need to sound, you know that.”

  “Uuum.” Justice felt fine and ever so relaxed, as though her eyes were closed. “You are the Sensitive, aren’t you? But I don’t know—”

  “You do know, honey,” Leona said soothingly. “Why you want to fight it so long and hard?”

  “Fight it?” Justice said.

  “Because there’s not only the one kind, like Child and Child,” Leona said.

  “My identical brothers,” Justice said.

  “There is born mind and mind. There is born a child and power!”

  “Oh, no,” Justice said.

  “Powerful Justice!” said Leona, her voice wavering with feeling. “And no one might not never know. But the Sensitive always know.”

  “No,” Justice said again.

  “Without me to bring you together with it, you wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “Together. It makes me so afraid,” Justice said. There was a thin veil of green behind her eyes. She sensed it would be with her so long as she stayed inside this house.

  “One day, everything will change for you,” Leona told her, “but you mustn’t let anyone know for a while.”

  “I’m so afraid of Thomas,” Justice said.

  “And not the other one, the Number Two Child?”

  “Levi wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Justice said.

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Yes. But Thomas can hurt and hurt somebody,” Justice” said.

  “You’ll have to beat him one day, and beat him for good,” the Sensitive said.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Justice told her.

  “You won’t, baby, not unless you have to.

  “Look,” said the Sensitive. “Look at the sand.”

  Justice and Dorian leaned low over the table so that their eyes were level with the rim of the pan. She willed
herself and Dorian inside the pan, where the white sand became for them a vast, arid land of heat. Their size had diminished; they were made small.

  Brilliant-colored buttes rose like isolated mountains to tower over them out of the surrounding white sand. They skirted the red butte, holding hands. Standing still, their hands lifted in the air and their arms stiffened, as a divining rod.

  Justice was holding hands with someone else on her right. She sensed it was Levi, although he was not visible to her. But their arms stiffened also, rodlike again.

  Clasped hands of the three of them pointed at the butte. At once, they heard the immense, the deafening grind of a mountain moving. They moved the red butte over the sand. But the enormous gap it left behind showed them nothing useful.

  They moved a yellow butte. And three hundred feet below the gap left by it, they found what they needed.

  Justice withdrew herself and Dorian from the pan. And again they leaned low at the rim. The experience had left Dorian trembling from head to foot. His shoulders jerked uncontrollably and his breath came in shallow pants.

  “Concentration,” said the soft, determined voice of the Sensitive. She placed a hand on Dorian to calm him. Soon, he was quiet at Justice’s side.

  “Must I concentrate?” Justice asked the Sensitive. When there was no answer, she sighed and did as she was told.

  “Your sight must be no wider than a pin,” said Leona. “Use only the right eye.”

  Justice covered her left eye with her palm and concentrated on the white sand.

  “Now. Move the colored sands where they belong.”

  She first moved the red butte.

  “Careful!” whispered the Sensitive.

  Justice refocused a pinpoint of sight out of her right eye. She lifted the miniature cone of sand. Dorian, with his weaker sight, helped to hold it steady as she reduced and directed the energy she needed. Next, she took over from Dorian to move the red butte into place above its gap.

  Then Justice worked the yellow sand cone, setting it smoothly down and leaving no trace of the hole it had made, nor the fresh water beneath it.

  The whole time, she had the feeling of motion and power, of clean strength swelling to engulf them. It frightened her and it filled her with awe.

  “You did the yellow cone real good,” said the Sensitive. “Now, Baby Justice, tear the red apart.”

  Justice separated the red cone into particles and swirled them into a red sand devil.

  Dorian let out a sharp cry, and drew back in fear.

  “Shhh!” the Sensitive cautioned him.

  A furious red cloud danced over the miniature desert. Easily, Justice had made it a tiny cyclone, using no more energy than it took an eyelash to twitch. When told to tear the red apart, she could do it and add her own creation of the dance as well. Justice sensed her power to live in each particle and that each lived in her.

  The red cyclone was following her thoughts, but it did not stop its swirl.

  Then, suddenly, Justice commanded it merely by thinking: Quit your dance.

  The cyclone hung still above the sand. Justice could see each of its red sand dots that made circles—so tiny and glowing. Each had obeyed her command and was at ease, waiting.

  “You did that on your own?” spoke the Sensitive, her voice full of wonder.

  “I did it,” Justice said. She swallowed several times, for her mouth had gone dry.

  “Can you do other things with it, on your own?”

  “Yes. I can,” Justice said.

  “Can you move the blue cone while holding the red cyclone still?” whispered the Sensitive. The kitchen was still, utterly, as Justice thought.

  She needed only to remind herself of the blue butte for it to become alert to her as the other cones had.

  “I can move it,” she said, and moved the blue over the sand toward the rigid red cyclone. “Now I can do with them without even looking at them.”

  She closed her eyes, lifting the blue cone with just her thought. She whirled a ring of the red cyclone and she held the yellow peak at bay. She poured blue sand over the red cyclone until the single moving ring grew heavy and fell to the ground.

  “I didn’t tell you to do any of this,” said the Sensitive.

  Justice opened her eyes, staring at the sand. “You’re thinking I’m changed,” she said.

  “Yes,” said the Sensitive cautiously.

  “I am still changing,” Justice said.

  “I think you must be pulling together inside,” said the Sensitive.

  “I don’t want any of this,” Justice told her.

  “It’s not to be your choice,” said the Sensitive.

  “I want it to go away.”

  “It won’t. You will have to live with it, and we have to prepare you,” said the Sensitive. “There’s no other way.”

  “But where does it come from? What is it?” Justice asked, in anguish. As she spoke, a part of her kept the sands in place and was quick to strengthen them if they seemed to falter. It was this part of her that spread sadness out over the miniature sands.

  “We don’t know the answer to that,” the Sensitive was saying, “and we may never know.”

  “Mrs. Jefferson, I’m tired, I want to go home,” Justice said.

  “Soon,” said the Sensitive.

  Justice felt relieved. She removed the blue sand from the red and poured it back into the shape of a blue butte. She moved it to the far side of the pan, where it belonged, and put back the rigid red cyclone in its own form and place.

  An unspoken moment in which the Sensitive entered Justice’s thoughts and there read the trouble with Thomas. She let Justice know she had been there.

  “So what about him, then?” Justice asked her.

  “I’ll take care of him, that’s not hard,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “You’ll remember none of this, as always. Oh, and it’s a great power you’ve shown here today! And now you have the will to protect yourself and the Number Two Child.”

  “Levi,” said Justice. “I will protect him.”

  “Yes, you will watch out for him for his own protection. And when it’s time,” said the Sensitive, “you’ll remember everything. You’ll know what to do.”

  “I want to go home,” Justice said. “I want my mom.” But she made no move to leave.

  “Course you do, baby.” Mrs. Jefferson was her own self again, completely. A woman, somewhat odd, who lived her life down the field from Justice.

  Still seated at Justice’s side was Dorian, like a ragamuffin child, always full of nerves. Yet, inside this house, no matter how much Justice’s extraordinary power might frighten him, he was her friend, and faithful to his mother.

  Justice felt as if she were coming in from a place beyond herself. She watched Mrs. Jefferson take a large bowl of fruit salad from the refrigerator and mix in whipped cream from a smaller bowl. Next, Mrs. Jefferson spooned the fruit mixture into separate bowls, serving them to Justice, Dorian and herself. Once again, the three of them sat together at the table, this time eating delicious fruit.

  “Uuum! I like the taste so much,” Justice said. By the time she had finished, she was herself again. Looking all around, seeing the kitchen as if for the first time. The last thing she remembered clearly was getting up from the couch with Dorian. She suddenly felt confused. In alarm, Dorian turned from her to his mother.

  Leona was quick to sense Justice’s uneasiness and entered Justice’s mind without her knowing, as was her Sensitive’s ability. She wiped away partial memories of power and gave Justice a sense of peaceful quiet. She wove through Justice’s memory a calm conversation at the table. Justice would believe they had talked over her problems and that there was now nothing to worry about.

  Leona was feeling confident. She had been summoned to live in this community. Her unceasing ability to weave her will through the mystery of time and space had uncovered power here. Eagerly, she had come to live here, only to discover surprisingly less power, full of petty anger and cruelty. Y
et it had been power all the same, and it belonged to the Number One Child called Thomas. And she sensed there was true power somewhere deeply submerged. She had waited, scanned and searched. Finally, she had uncovered it, the source for good. Just today, she had been able to help Justice become a rock without frightening her unduly. Here in this room she had taught the child a valuable lesson in directing power and conserving its energy.

  Leona allowed Justice to sense the interval that had passed, the length of a good visit.

  “What time is it?” Justice asked abruptly.

  “Oh, about quarter past two,” Mrs. Jefferson told her.

  “I gotta be going,” Justice said. “My mom’ll be coming home.”

  “Glad you came by,” said Mrs. Jefferson. “I missed you this week, what with y’all preparing for a snake race.”

  “How’d you know about that!” Justice could hardly speak, she was so shocked. And turned an accusing look on Dorian.

  He fidgeted nervously, staring from her to his mother.

  “You think nobody can hear the Number One Child with his drums in the field?” Leona said. “He can yell loud enough for the whole town to hear him. But I don’t guess else folks take the time. I happen to get a kick out of spying.”

  “Well,” Justice said, “you won’t tell on us, will you?”

  “Not much to tell, even if I cared to,” Leona said. “Y’all chil’ren have to dare the jeopardy.” She smiled primly.

  Such a queer sort of parent Mrs. Jefferson was, Justice couldn’t help thinking. It was funny how sometimes she spoke with a Southern accent and other times—Justice couldn’t recall exactly how she did sound at other times.

  Different, though, she thought, and eased herself up from the table. Dorian and his mother stared at her as she turned and headed for the front door.

  “Bye,” she called back to them.

  Through the room of plants, so green. Painstakingly, Dorian had taught her what all of the green things were called. She still remembered them now. And seeing the plants quieted her completely. As if they were calling her, paying their respects with their runners: