It does feel like an emergency. Iris hasn’t spoken to Lotus in three days, not since she got word that May DuPree passed away. Lotus told Iris she was going home and hasn’t been heard from since. Every call rolls into voicemail, and I’m going out of my mind. This could be a fool’s errand, me coming all the way to the middle of nowhere. What if she isn’t even here?

It’s a chance I’ll take. If she’s hurting, I want to be with her. I would want her with me.

The little house is squat, with a trail of stones leading to the porch, and a blue door. I can’t tell if the yard is overgrown or if it always looks like this—like an extension of the swamp but with no water. Hopefully no gators.

I park, leaving my overnight bag in the car in case I won’t be staying because she’s not here. I knock and wait, but there’s no answer. When I try the knob, it doesn’t turn. There’s no car here, besides the one I’m driving, so I’m not sure how she would have gotten here or would plan to get home. More and more, it feels like I’ve wasted my time.

She’s talked about this place so much. I don’t know what I expected, but I have trouble imagining my vibrant, beautiful girl growing up here, so isolated and removed from everything. But she spoke of it lovingly, even longingly. Maybe it was the woman who lived here who made her love it—the world MiMi made for Lotus that she loved. A world where pink clouds chase the blues away and magic trees make you feel safe. To her, it’s not a swamp, but a wonderland of sorts, exactly what she needed after the hell she went through.

People had nothing to depend on but their faith, whatever form that assumed. That was how they survived.

Lotus said that to me at Sylvia’s when we discussed religion and voodoo. Is that what she found here with MiMi and her gris gris and potions and spells? Maybe Lotus found faith, in whatever form it assumed, so she, too, could survive.

I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.

Her words from our day in Brooklyn come back to me, and I glance at a path worn in the grass leading behind the house.

Worth a try.

I follow the path with no real hope of finding much, but there’s a whole other world I wouldn’t have known existed. A canopy of trees shades the path down to the water. Flowers bloom everywhere, not well-kept, but wild, beautiful. And then I see what must be Lotus’s tree. It’s huge, and I can imagine a little girl thinking she could see the whole world from up there. I search the line of limbs and branches until I catch sight of something bright, something gold.

There’s a rustle of leaves and a shifting of branches. I walk a few feet to the left and have a clear view of Lotus on a limb maybe twenty feet off the ground.

“Lotus!” I yell up at her.

She turns her head, unstartled, and looks right in my face, but there’s no response. Her eyes, even from here, seem vacant, distant, like the girl I know, the one I love and who loves me, has gone into hiding somewhere.

“Baby, come down,” I try again. “It’s too high. I don’t like you up there.”

No answer, but a frown that draws her fine brows together. She shakes her head.

“Dammit, Lotus,” I mutter under my breath and walk to the tree, glancing at my tennis shoes. “Guess we’ll see if these Glads are made for climbing.”

I can’t say I’ve ever actually climbed a tree. I grew up in Philly. I’m a city boy through and through, and never saw the value in climbing anybody’s damn tree, but if I can beat August climbing a rope, I can climb a tree.

There aren’t many limbs between her and me, but there’s a lot of space between each one, and I’m not sure how she made it up here when I’m struggling. I’m one branch below her, close enough to look into her eyes, when she speaks.

“Why are you here?” she whispers.

I’m not sure how to answer that. Obviously I’m here for her, but grief has a way of making things less obvious—make less sense.

“I came for you,” I say simply. “I’ve been worried about you. I’ve been calling you, Lotus. I’ve been . . .” Losing my mind, I finish silently, tightening my fingers on the limb.

“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing, blinking rapidly. “I should have called. My phone died, and I didn’t bother—”

“It’s okay.”

And it is. Face-to-face with her pain, it doesn’t matter that I flew here, drove to some tiny parish in the bayou on the mere hope that she would be here. I’m just glad she is.

“I’m coming up to you.” I reach for the last branch that will take me to her.

“I’m not sure it’ll hold us both,” she says.

I pause, my hand on the branch, my eyes on her. “Then you could come down,” I suggest.

She looks at me for a long moment before shaking her head, no. “I’m not ready to come down, yet.”

“Then I’m coming to you, and you better hope this tree holds us both.”

Not waiting for permission, I grab the last limb, glad to find it sturdy and steady even when I pull on it, and hoist myself up to the thick limb where she sits. I carefully slide behind her, let my legs fall on either side like she has, and pray to God I won’t die falling from this tree.

I slowly push my back to the bark, find my center for stability, and then put my arms around her. She stiffens at first, resisting, but I tighten my hands at her waist. I let her feel me, hoping I feel as right to her as she always feels to me.

By degrees, her shoulders relax and she sinks into me, until her full, slight weight all belongs to me, leans on me. I pull her closer so her curls tickle my nose and caress my lips. “God, I missed you, Button.”

She turns her head to look at me, and for the first time, she smiles. “I missed you, too.”

Those are the last words we say for a few minutes, but I’ve got my girl back. She’s safe and she’ll be okay. Whatever hell seeing her mother took her to, she’ll come back to me.

And if she doesn’t, I’ll go get her.

“I always felt safe here,” she finally says. “MiMi called this my magic tree. When I was sad, I’d climb this tree and somehow feel better.”

“Then it’s good you came.” I link our hands at her waist and tuck my chin into the curve of her shoulder and neck.

“Mama never woke up,” Lotus says, shaking her head. “I always thought it would be me asking her questions, getting answers that would make the pain go away, but it doesn’t.”

“The pain doesn’t go away?” It’s killing me to hear that because it kills me to see her hurting—to know I can’t make it stop.

“Not all at once, no,” she says softly, but turns to smile at me, her face radiant despite the hurt, the tears lingering in her eyes. “But I’m getting there.”

“And I’ll be right here, baby,” I whisper.

Her fingers tighten on mine and she nods. “I love you, Kenan.”

My throat is on fire. I have no idea what it is about this place, about this woman that turns me inside out, exposes my raw places, but when she tells me that, I could cry. Me, the Gladiator. Known as one of the toughest guys in the NBA, broken down by one tiny woman telling me she loves me

“I love you so much, Lotus.”

“And you’ll always come for me, won’t you?” she asks, a smile in her voice.

“Yes,” I promise. “Always.

“I’ll always come for you, too, Kenan,” she says and then points to the sky. “Look.”

I follow the line of her finger and almost want to thank the sky for its perfect timing.

“Pink cotton candy clouds,” she whispers. “Chasing the blues away.”

40

Lotus

Angel’s wings.

White sheets are pinned to the clothesline, flapping in the wind. MiMi used to call them angel’s wings. I glance around the backyard, opening the door to all the memories the two of us made here.

It rained my first week living with MiMi, and something about the fierceness of the storm, the ominous sky streaked with silver lightning, had called to me. I’d gone to the back porch, not caring when the rain whipped at my clothes and stung my face. The drops had run through my hair, still pressed from the family reunion, until it returned to its original state of waves and crinkles.

“Some people are afraid of the storm,” MiMi had said, walking up beside me.

“I’m not,” I’d said defensively, still resentful of her. Of this boondocks place. Of being separated from Iris. Of being exiled from all that was familiar to a place and with a woman I didn’t know.

“Of course, you aren’t afraid of the storm,” MiMi had said with a smile. “You are the storm.”

I’d had no idea what that meant and frowned at her, not asking the question.

“Lotus.” She had looked from the dark clouds overhead to my face. “We haven’t really talked about Ron.”

My stomach clenched, knotted at his name. Fear rose in my throat and my nostrils had once again filled with the rot of a forgotten sugar cane field.

“I know you said you didn’t want to talk to the police, but—”

“No,” I’d protested hastily, panic gripping me. “Just . . . no, please don’t make me.”

She’d watched me unblinkingly for a moment, her eyes filling with a dark promise.

“No police,” she’d finally agreed. “But there are other ways.”

I hadn’t thought about what that meant, but just felt relief that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone or see Ron again.

“Now your hair’s a mess,” she’d said briskly, her smile and eyes bright again. “Let’s wash it.”

She’d washed it and let it dry on its own. That night, she’d laid the comb on the red, livid eye of the stove.

“No,” I’d said, my voice hushed. “I don’t want my hair pressed.”