The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson Read Free Book Online

at the window.
    I could only point. My extended hand shook. Rooted on the cliff as though it had always been there was the almond tree from my childhood. “That tree.”
    “That tree?” Gene echoed.
    “It just appeared out of nowhere.”
    “It just appeared?”
    Pique was better than terror. “What, like you turn Polly parrot?” I said, trying to sound teasing instead of scared no rass. “Yes, the tree. It just came there now. Wasn’t no tree there before.” I grabbed the window ledge to hide my shaking hands. I’d spent the morning up in that tree the day that Mumma was really gone for good. Now I was cold and shivering, damn it all to hell. I stepped into the lee of Gene’s body for some of his warmth.
    Gene stared out the window, frowning. His face was creased with sleep and puffy with weeping. He looked like an old man. How I come to find myself knocking boots with a senior citizen?
    “I don’t quite follow you,” Gene said. “That tree. You never see it before?”
    I nodded, my mouth open. “I saw it,” I whispered. “It wasn’t there, and then it was. Is from Blessée. Went down when the island went down.”
    Gene stepped completely away from me; turned and began gathering his clothes off the floor. “You need to get some rest,” he said.
    “You think I imagined it!” I fought to keep my teeth from chattering. I was shuddering with the chill.
    Gene stepped into his underwear, pulled up his pants. “You will feel different after a good night’s sleep. Grief make a person see and do strange things.” He zipped up.
    I made myself turn my back to the window. “You mean like bringing some strange man home and screwing him in my father’s house?” I meant it to sound like a challenge, but the words came out trembly, half shame, half plea.
    Gene stopped buttoning his shirt. He shook his head. “No, that’s normal.” His voice sounded so ordinary, the way you might say that of course it rains after the rain flies come out.
    I glanced back out the window. Tree still there. “ Normal? How you can say that what we just did was normal?”
    “Funeral sex.”
    “What?”
    He came over to me, took my two hands in his. “I said, funeral sex. Never happen to you before?”
    “No. People don’t drop dead on me regularly.”
    He gave a wry smile and let me have my hands back. “You must be younger than me, then. Two strangers at the same funeral find themselves in bed right after. Don’t feel bad. It’s a thing grief does. I see it before.” I hated the compassion in his voice. “It just never happen to me before,” he said sadly.
    I asked him, “You know what else never happen before?”
    “What?”
    “That tree, damn it! It wasn’t there before!”
    “I know that’s what you believe.” He went and flicked on the light. I squinted in the sudden, painful brightness.
    “ I know that’s what you believe, ” I mocked him. “You don’t know. Don’t you dare patronise me in that mealy-mouthed kind of way!” I found a nightie in my dresser, pulled it over my head. “You sound like Ifeoma. I didn’t see that tree before because it wasn’t there before!”
    A hardness came over his face. “Calamity, you’re hallucinating.”
    I strode over to the bedroom door, yanked it open. “And you are leaving.”
    “Damned right.” He brushed past me. From the hallway he said, “Drink a lot of water and try to get a good night’s sleep.”
    I leaned out the door and snapped, “Don’t you tell me what to do!”
    He glared at me. Stomped out into the living room. I stood in my bedroom. Every time I looked towards the window, I got the shakes. Gene came back into the bedroom.
    “I told you you could come back in here?”
    He made a face, squared up his shoulders. “Sorry for trying to give you orders,” he said. “Bad habit.”
    Just like that.
    “You’re a strong woman. I can see that. Looking after Mr. Lambkin all those years. But who looking after Calamity?”
    He wasn’t going to