To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky by T. Thorn Coyle

Author:T. Thorn Coyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PF Publishing

21

Jasmine

Doreen and I were in the little sitting room at the front of the house, watching the news. A painting of a mountain lion in dry hills watched over the room. Low bookcases flanked the wooden cabinet that encased the Philco television set. That cabinet TV set was ten years old if it was a day.

It looked a little bit like an old-fashioned radio, but with a screen. Doreen must’ve gotten it secondhand somewhere because I didn’t recall it from her and Hector’s house in LA.

I sprawled out, cup of tea warming my hands, legs slung over the arms of an overstuffed chintz-covered chair, no shoes on my feet.

Aunt Doreen was sitting upright on the loveseat as usual, her only concession to relaxation being that she’d pushed the stack of magazines aside and her feet were on the coffee table, in light blue crocheted slippers.

She was looking better than she had. Less tired. And she had a sleek new haircut that followed the nice shape of her head, coming to curled wisps around her face. It shaved a few years off her, too. Doreen said Patrice had dragged her to the beauty parlor. I was glad.

Doreen needed more fun in her life.

My parents’ house didn’t have a television. My dad and I went to the library once a week to pick up a stack of reading materials, and mother wanted me practicing magic instead of, as she said, “rotting your brain.” Novels were all right, but television was strictly out, despite my flagging popularity at school.

Doreen watched the news in black and white every night. The flickering images of horror coming back from Viet Nam embedded themselves in my eyes and brain. Occasional news items pertained to the Panthers, including the one clip of Huey I wished I could have watched again and again. Mostly, the news showed images of black men in berets with rifles on their backs. Some of them, I knew.

Hook in hand, glasses perched on her nose, and a ball of soft purple acrylic yarn at her side, Doreen was crocheting another pair of slippers for me.

How she could calmly crochet when a weird, magic snake bomb was still smoldering in a tin bucket at the bottom of the garden, I didn’t know. Granted, we’d covered it in salt, and Doreen had warded the shit out of it, but still…I was feeling jumpy.

Too jumpy to leave Doreen for tonight’s meeting, no matter what was on the agenda. No matter how much I was supposed to be showing up so they could see how trustworthy I was.

I wanted to be dealing with the thing in the bucket, but Doreen said we had to do the attic temple up. Deal with it right.

“It’ll keep for now,” she said. And she was too tired to clear the attic for ritual right then.

So here we were, watching TV news.

Then a pasty white, bulbous face filled the screen, leaning over a desk, mouth forming words my ears couldn’t hear over the buzzing that started in my head.

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