The Living Blood Read online

  Critical acclaim for

  TANANARIVE DUE

  THE LIVING BLOOD

  “Smart, soulful, crafty Tananarive Due deserves the attention of everyone interested in contemporary American fiction. In The Living Blood, this young writer opens up realms of experience that add to our storehouse of shared reality, and by doing so widens our common vision.”

  —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Mr. X and Ghost Story

  “Tananarive Due continues to thrill, intrigue, and frighten us with her special brand of fiction. No one else can capture the particular hum and beat of her vision, which extends from South Florida to South Africa. Tananarive Due is creating classics.”

  —Tina McElroy Ansa

  MY SOUL TO KEEP

  “I loved this novel. . . . It’s really big and really satisfying, an eerie epic that bears favorable comparison to Interview with the Vampire.”

  —Stephen King

  “One of those rare gems that hook readers from start to finish.”

  —USA Today

  THE BETWEEN

  “A finely honed work that always engages and frequently surprises.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Due masterfully maintains suspense all the while delineating her characters with a psychological realism that makes the unbelievable credible.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  Thank you for downloading this Atria Books eBook.

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  for my husband,

  Steve,

  who led me past the Shadows

  acknowledgments

  Thanks to all of the readers who continue to surprise and overwhelm me with their love for My Soul to Keep. This book is for you.

  This book was among the most challenging I have ever written, so I feel deep gratitude for those who helped me with research along the way. Mistakes within this text are mine, not theirs.

  There is nothing more personal than a parent’s journey in the treatment of a sick child, so many thanks to Mary Jones for describing her ordeal with her son Jason’s battle with leukemia. I am very, very thankful for his recovery here in the real world, where God’s real miracles occur every single day. Many thanks, too, to baseball great Rod Carew, whose public sharing of his family’s private loss—particularly a photograph of him holding his daughter Michelle’s hand while she was in her hospital bed—served as an inspiration to me in the course of writing this book. I am registered as a potential bone marrow donor, and I particularly encourage other African-Americans to register through the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).

  Also, heartfelt thanks to oncologist Steve Gorton of the Western Washington Cancer Treatment Center, who spent precious time with me. Both your mind and heart were invaluable. Again, any mistakes in the text are mine alone.

  Thanks to retired hurricane specialist Gilbert Clark—for whom real-life Hurricane Gilbert was named—for being open-minded enough to navigate my more fantastic scenarios, separating fact and fiction.

  Thanks to Blair Underwood, for sharing his vision, souvenirs, and memories of the magical city of Lalibela in Ethiopia. Your film version of My Soul to Keep will be phenomenal, and I can’t wait to see Jessica and Dawit brought to the big screen.

  Thanks to Clifton Lewis, for letting Lucas “borrow” her beautiful Tallahassee house. Thanks to Caseline Kunene, for her helpful hints about South Africa; and to Fae Marie Beck and Mark Willoughby, for sharing their parts of the world, too.

  Thanks to Peternelle van Arsdale, the editor who bought my very first novel, for giving me important advice about an earlier version of this book during a very trying time.

  Thanks to my agent, John Hawkins of John Hawkins & Associates, who has stood by me during bleak moments and always helped make them brighter.

  Thanks to Pocket Books and my editor, Jason Kaufman, for his enthusiasm and feedback, and for believing in me. And thanks to Suzanne O’Neill at Pocket, who has worked tirelessly to help give birth to this book. Your work is appreciated.

  Thanks to Luchina Fisher and Olympia Duhart, for being like sisters. Thanks to Blanche Richardson, for making me feel like I have a second home. Thanks to Janell Walden Agyeman, a fine literary agent, for her continued sisterhood. And thanks to E. Lynn Harris, who feels like the big brother I never had.

  Thanks, as always, to my family for their unwavering support: my father, John Due; my mother and manager, Patricia Stephens Due; my sister Johnita P. Due; my sister Lydia Due Greisz; and my grandmother Lottie Sears Houston. Thanks to my stepdaughter, Nicki, who welcomed me into her life with a beautiful heart and an even more beautiful smile. Also, thanks to Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Walter for their support; and my cousin Muncko Kruize and his wife, Carol, for their friendship. Thanks to my nephew, Justin, and Muncko’s daughter, Jojo, my first godchild—just for Being.

  And, last, thanks to my husband, novelist Steven Barnes, who is extraordinary. I’m sorry I always fought so fiercely against every scrap of advice, but I’ll be forever grateful that you were patient enough to give me exactly what I needed. In every conceivable way.

  [email protected]

  www.tananarivedue.com

  Spake I not unto you, saying,

  Do not sin against the child;

  and ye would not hear?

  —Genesis 42:22

  If living were a thing that money could buy,

  You know the rich would live and the poor would die.

  —“All My Trials” (antebellum and West Indian spiritual-lullaby)

  prologue

  Miami, Florida

  December 22, 1997

  A woman’s cry of pain floated from the house.

  The house sat at the end of Hibiscus Avenue, on a web of residential streets a half mile from the clogged din at Pro Player Stadium, where thousands had converged to watch the Miami Dolphins’ Monday-night game. The cement-block house had been built in 1964, when the area had been ringed by cow pastures and there had been no such thing as the Miami Dolphins. The little house’s only striking feature was its lemon yellow exterior, with neatly painted white awnings and matching railings that wrapped around a large porch shaded by bowing palm trees. An air conditioner jutted out of the front wall, but it was a cool night, so dozens of rows of jalousie windows were open to welcome the evening breeze.

  A half-open rear window offered another scream to the night.

  Inside, the house was filled with the smell of cooking gone cold. The meal was hours ago, at midday, but the dining-room table was frozen as if people were still sitting in the straight-backed chairs. Four plates were littered with half-chewed rolls and tiny bones from Cornish hens strewn across shallow puddles of congealing green-bean juice. In the living room, a television set blared to an empty sofa. A man had been sitting on the sofa an hour before, and the TV Guide he had been reading still marked his seat, but the man had finally left to go outside and take a walk because he didn’t have the stomach to listen to Jessica’s pain.

  Jessica Jacobs-Wolde had known her baby would be coming as soon as she’d woken up, at dawn, even before the slightest pains began. The mound in her belly seemed to have shifted while she’d slept, inching downward to press a little more urgently against her bladder, as though overnight it had crawled steadily toward where it knew it was supposed to be. Not every woman would have noticed, maybe, but Jessica had. It’s time, she had thought. She hadn’t panicked. She’d only asked her mother to fix a special meal to celebrate the occasion. S
he’d called her sister, Alexis, and told her to bring her appetite and her medical bag. And the mother, her daughters, and the old man had sat at the dinner table, eating in silence, simply waiting.

  The old man, her mother’s brand-new husband, wasn’t yet privy to their family secret—he didn’t know about the strangeness pulsing in Jessica’s veins—so when he’d asked why they were so quiet, Jessica just told him her baby was on the way. She’d said no more because he needed to hear nothing more. She could have told him that her baby would not, could not, be an ordinary child. But instead, she’d been silent.

  Jessica was used to keeping silent by now.

  That was why she was glad her sister was a doctor. When it was time, they had decided, the baby would be born in this house. This was the house Jessica had first called home twenty-eight years ago, the first home she’d known. This was the house Jessica had chosen as her sanctuary eight months ago, after the Bad Time, when her dreams had melted and her heart had died.

  Jessica’s husband and daughter were gone, and a big part of her had gone with them. Her husband, David, had simply disappeared, leaving only questions and breath-stealing heartache behind. And poor Kira, her little girl, was buried in a pitifully small plot at Miami Gardens Cemetery, five miles away, beside the grandfather she had been born too late to meet. Kira Alexis Wolde had Gone Home to Christ, it said on the granite headstone that marked her five years on this earth. Jessica’s mother had chosen that inscription, because soon after Jessica had discovered her child was dead—that, in fact, her husband had killed her—Jessica hadn’t been able to make many decisions for herself. For hours on end she had only listened, wondering, to the sound of her own beating heart.

  But she’d made a decision about her new baby. Her baby wouldn’t come into the world in a hospital, where both of them would be subjected to tests. Above all, Jessica was afraid of what the doctors would find if they examined their blood. There couldn’t be any tests, not ever.

  She and her baby would be safe with her mother and sister, Jessica knew, and she wondered if this might be the only safe place for them in all the world. For the first time in as long as Jessica could bear to remember, everything was exactly the way it should be.

  Except for the pain. She hadn’t expected so much pain.

  “God . . . dammit,” Jessica said, screaming a curse almost foreign to her lips. That last stab of paralyzing pressure had blotted her reluctance to use the Lord’s name in vain, despite all recent indications that God’s touch was very, very real. Too real, sometimes.

  “Jessica, please,” her mother said, her brow in a knot.

  Jessica tried to push her pain away, tried to think of anything else. She suddenly heard the theme music for the football game playing from the living room, too loudly. The music enthralled her because her brain was begging for distraction, and her muscles relaxed.

  “Concentrate, Jessica. You have to push,” Alex said.

  The Dolphins against the Patriots, the television was trumpeting. Jessica couldn’t remember what city the Patriots were from, but the squall of celebration made it sound as if they were battling for possession of the world. She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror across the room on her closet door, still bearing the Y-100 radio bumper sticker she’d loyally pasted across the top fifteen years ago. For a moment, she was startled to realize she was no longer the same eighth-grader she’d been then; the wiry pigtails were gone, replaced by her mussed crown of short-bobbed hair glistening with perspiration. And her eyes were wild and scared, a way they’d never been then—or ever, before this awful year.

  The room seemed to be pulling away from her sight, as if she were sinking. Maybe it was all just a dream, she thought, and she felt her chest swell with weak hope.

  “Hon, are you focusing? You better focus, hear? Don’t make me call 911 and drag you to the hospital. You don’t want that, do you? Then focus. We’re almost there,” Alex said.

  Because of the voice’s urging—and that was all it was to Jessica at this point, a lone, disassociated voice—Jessica pulled her mind back to the pain. She shrieked, hoarse. She felt as if she were pushing a ball of flames through her insides, and she wanted it gone. Her muscles heaved with their own mind, straining so furiously she believed she might fling herself from the bed.

  “Almost, almost, almost. One more time. One more.”

  Then, all of the sound was stolen from the room. Just silence. Jessica saw her sister’s lips moving and her mother exhaling slowly, her mole-dotted cheeks puffing because she was nervous, but it was all in a hush. In that glorious instant, even the pain was gone.

  It is a dream, Jessica thought with certainty, amazed and grateful. That meant Kira had to be still alive. And David had never given her and her new baby this strange blood. David, then, was really just an ordinary man the way she’d believed he was when she married him, not some kind of monster who would kill his own daughter and turn Jessica into—

  Jessica felt herself sucked into a tight, dark tunnel. No air. Just blackness. She struggled against the slippery walls for footing, for something to grab with her hands, but she couldn’t find anything familiar. Nothing to hold on to. Helpless terror smothered her thoughts, and she believed she had to be screaming, though she could only hear a loud, rhythmic pounding in her ears. And the horrified mantra of her thoughts: can’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathe can’tbreathe

  Help me, she thought from deep inside herself, lost in confusion. Oh, God—

  Light. Yes, light. Ahead. So, so bright. Am I dead?

  Push, a muffled voice said from somewhere.

  can’tbreathe can’t breathe

  Help me, God.

  Then, the world exploded into colors, sounds, and smells. Jessica closed her eyes against the light, which burned like the core of the sun. Oxygen smacked her face and skin, making her limbs tremble in the cold air. She had never been so cold.

  “I got her! Jess, I got her, hon.”

  Yes. Breathe. Safe.

  Jessica felt herself submersed in a giddy relief. The terror that was so real before, so engulfing, was forgotten. She was safe. Finally. Her relief was so great, she began to laugh, a boundless laughter from a place she did not know.

  A dream. Yes, it had all just been a horrible, unspeakable dream.

  But a voice interrupted her laughter, like wind dispersing a mist.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Jessica’s mother was saying in a whispered vibrato, squeezing her hand. “Oh, we do thank you, Lord Jesus. Please bless this child. Lord, bless this baby girl.”

  The pain suddenly returned, but it was less raw. A faraway voice inside Jessica told her that the pain didn’t matter because, by morning, her body would have repaired itself of the birthing tears. The blood David had given her would fix everything. Always.

  Jessica’s essence began to seep slowly into her pores, bringing other small enlightenments. She blinked, staring at everything in front of her as if she were a stranger to herself. Again, she saw the faded Y-100 sticker on the mirror. In the reflection, she saw her legs raised before her in the stirrups Alex had fitted to the bed. Fascinated, Jessica watched her sister grasp a pair of scissors, which glinted from the yellow, petal-shaped lamp on the nightstand, the same lamp that had been in Jessica’s room nearly all her life.

  “Is this a dream?” Jessica asked, surprising herself with the huskiness in her voice. For some reason, she had expected to sound like a little girl, a young child.

  “No, child, it’s no dream,” her mother said, pressing her warm, steady palm against Jessica’s forehead. Her voice sounded heavy, bittersweet, because Jessica knew her mother wished with all her heart she could say, Yes, child, all of this strangeness was in your head, and everything is back like it was. “You have a baby girl. She’s your little miracle, Jessica. Forever. Remember that, hear?”

  “Let me see her,” Jessica said, blinking to stanch her hot tears. Some of the tears were from her joy at being a mother again, but most
of them were for Kira and David and the part of her that wanted so badly to be dreaming.

  Through her tears, all Jessica could see of her baby was a slick, little curled fist, like a porcelain doll’s fist, or an impossibly small old woman’s. Jessica heard a small sound from the baby. Not crying, exactly—maybe gurgling would describe it best—but a reassurance that she was alive, that there was air in her tiny lungs. She was breathing. She was safe.

  “She’s beautiful,” Jessica’s mother said.

  “Why is she so small? Let me see.” Jessica lifted her head from the drenched pillow.

  “She’s just a little underweight, hon. She’s fine,” Alex said.

  Jessica wanted to feel the warmth of her child’s loose-fitting skin, count her digits, wipe away the glistening fluids from the uterus, bundle her in a blanket to shut out the cold. But she did none of those things because she was lost inside the softness of her new daughter’s wide-open brown eyes. Had Kira begun her life with such clear, seeing, open eyes?

  Rooted to Jessica’s gaze, the naked, tawny-skinned child made a sound again, more loudly this time, and Jessica’s world, once again, rocked to a halt.

  The baby was laughing. Still wet from the womb, the child was laughing in peals as delicate as strings of spun glass. Whether it was because of exhaustion or something she didn’t dare name, Jessica felt the joints at her elbows, shoulders, and knees trembling violently where she lay.

  She understood now why she’d thought she was dreaming during the birth: Somewhere, somehow, this baby had tangled its little mind with hers, like a vine strangling the trunk of a tree. For crucial, awesome moments, Jessica had not been herself—she had been her own infant, struggling toward the light.

  What in the name of sweet Jesus has David’s blood done to this child?

  In the living room, the television announcers said the Dolphins had recovered a fumble. Through the house’s open windows, Jessica could hear the roar of thousands of nearby strangers cheering as if the skies had opened to reveal the kingdom of God.