“The children ogled the empty houses and sagging porches, fascinated by the veil of abandonment that smothered everything around them.”
The trees stood silent, lining the street in stately rows. Survival was in their lineage. When the whipping winds, surging foodwaters, and battering rain had come, they had tightened their roots, clung to the dirt, and withstood their breaking stoically. They had been gravely dishonored—their majestic heights and impressive widths diminished, their boughs battered, their signs of growth erased. Now nature was parading some of its oddities before them.
A double-file line of children—heads capped with globed skull masks and bodies surrounded by swirling winds—stumbled past, following a thin man in a skeleton suit. The bedraggled trees tensed their roots, but there were no atmospheric disturbances to cause further alarm. The absence of tornado, hurricane, or windstorm confirmed, the trees rustled what leaves they had left and turned their attention skyward.
Oblivious to the awareness of trees, the children ogled the empty houses and sagging porches, fascinated by the veil of abandonment that smothered everything around them. The tallest of the children scooted close to the Bone Man.
“How come they still got houses over here?” she asked. Her voice was indignant.
“Water wasn’t as bad here.”
“So it ain’t the whole city that collapsed?”
“Nope,” the Bone Man said.
“What’s that nasty line on all the houses?”
“That’s the water line—how high it got.”
“And that?”
The girl lifted her mask and pointed at a spray-painted circle violently scrawled across the front of a house. An “X” separated each circle into quarters. “That’s how they counted us. How many they found alive, how many was dead.”
Watching the hard fortress of the girl’s face, the Bone Man’s heart hurt. Children shouldn’t have to make themselves a little more dead to survive.
“Let’s have some fun,” he said, suddenly veering off the sidewalk and bounding up the cracked walkway of a pale pink house.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked, rushing up behind him.
“I’m doing what the Bone Man do. Waking everybody up on Mardi Gras morning.”
The girl stared at the Bone Man as he flung aside a splintered screen door and banged on it.
“Ain’t nobody in there.”
The Bone Man cupped his hands around his mouth. “It’s Mardi Gras morning,” he yelled. “You been good? If you ain’t, I’m coming for you!”
When there was no reply, he slammed his hand on the door. Both he and the girl jumped as the door swung open. The rank scent of mold rushed out of the house and exploded in their nostrils. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, the silhouettes of objects slowly made themselves known: water-stained couch, overturned lamps, a splintered coffee table.
“Mold,” the Bone Man gasped, then stepped inside, his arm pressed against his nose and mouth. He pointed to the wall. There, stretching across the ceiling, spreading along the top of the walls, was black mold flourishing in large lacy clusters.
“You see that?” the girl asked. She took a step toward a plume of smoke rising from the corner. The Bone Man jerked forward. His body contracted as he was seized by an uncontrollable cough. “You better get out of here before your throat close up,” she said.
The Bone Man hesitated, then staggered out of the house.
“You might as well go ‘head and get on out of here too,” a gravelly voice said.
The girl jumped. The voice cackled at the sight of her fright. A clicking sound rang out, then a burst of light exploded from a lamp. In the lamp’s glare, a thin woman—gaunt and sharp-eyed—reclined in an overstuffed chair. The girl eyed the woman in silence, staring at her cheeks reddened with too much blush and a short blue dress that looked brand-spanking new. The woman took a noisy suck on a pristine cigarette and exhaled another plume of smoke.
“Tell the Bone Man ain’t nobody studying no Mardi Gras.” She flicked ash on the floor and crossed her legs, showing the girl a flash of large white satin bloomers.
“A lil’ raggedy parade in Treme can’t do nothing for me.”
A rush of loyalty overwhelmed the girl. She put her hands on her hips. “It’s better than sitting up in a broke-down house hiding in the dark.”
“Mardi Gras ain’t gon’ do nothing for you either.”
The girl crossed her arms. “How you know?”
The woman lifted her hand and stiffened her fingers to make a flat surface. She slowly slid it across her throat. Her hand went straight through her neck as if she were made of air.
“I ain’t dead,” Trina yelled, and turned on her heel.
The lamplight flickered. In a flash, the woman materialized in front of the door, blocking [End Page 62] the exit. “Prove it,” she goaded.
The girl squeezed her fingers together and pressed them to her neck. She pushed as hard as she could against her skin, but her hand would not enter her flesh.
“I told you,” the girl said, and stuck out her tongue. “I ain’t nothing like you.” Then she sprang forward, darting straight through the woman. She slipped out of the house and took the stairs at a sprint, the woman’s yells of “Carnival ain’t gon’ save you!” ringing in her ears. When she caught up with the children, she tapped their shoulders, one by one. Their skin was cool beneath her fingertips, but like her they were solid.
“So?” the Bone Man asked. “You find anything in that house?”
“Nothing but a ghost. A grown woman dressed up like a doll.”
The Bone Man clapped his hands. “Don’t nobody cut up on Mardi Gras like the Baby Dolls. She coming out?”
“She . . .” the girl paused. “She a ghost. But I’m not.”
The Bone Man looked down at the girl, pity and sadness plain on his face.
“No, I’m not. See,” she said, and pushed her hands against her neck. “I can’t put my hands through my body—but that Baby Doll, she can.”
“But I . . .” the Bone Man reached out to touch her and his hand went straight through her body.
She folded her arms. “Just because I’m a ghost to you, don’t mean I gotta be a ghost to myself.”
“Good,” the Bone Man said with a nod. “Don’t never let nobody tell you who you are.”
The girl stood there still as the trees. She shivered as the winds circulating around the children wailed out in grief. The questions whipped through her—as violent and unyielding as the storm. Who, she wondered, was right? Should she keep drinking from the Baby Doll’s bitterness or dive into the Bone Man’s Mardi Gras mania? If she accepted the balm of tambourines and Mardi Gras songs, would it weaken the terrible loss pulsing through the city? What were they supposed to do with their tomorrows?
She watched the Bone Man bang on another door. This time, the door swung open and a teenager with neat cornrows and faded jeans stood in the doorway. A rustling rang through her when the Bone Man reached out to slap hands with the teen in greeting. The syncopation of the handshake washed over her like a balm. She looked at the children and wondered if they could feel it too—the spark of life, zinging between clasped hands. She imagined it whooshing through them before nesting in her—a silent but electric whisper of memory, an undeniable current of survival jumping from body to body like the quiet communication of trees.
K. Ibura is the author of two speculative fiction collections, Ancient, Ancient (winner of the James Tiptree Award) and When the World Wounds, and a novel for children, When the World Turns Upside Down. She is the coeditor of the Infinite Constellations anthology and author of an ebook series about writing. Learn more at kiburabooks.com and kibura.com.
Header image: Galactic, K. Ibura, © 2022. Paper Collage.
NOTES
- “A Girl, a Man, a Storm, a City” is adapted from the novelette “Because of the Bone Man,” originally published in K. Ibura’s short story collection When the World Wounds.
