The snap was blurry, and the artifacts were still dirt encrusted. But all that dirt and muck couldn’t hide the gem nestled within its golden necklace that was etched in Adinkra signs. A gem that shone the deepest of blues that I’d seen before. Signs I knew the meanings of, lived by every day. Drew them on my body during ceremonies. They were the same as the ones engraved in the arm cuffs tucked away in the box locked in Nana Ama’s drawer. And centered in each cuff, two deep blue gems.
As blue as the flash in the picture Naira took before her boat disintegrated into a million and one pieces in the Atlantic. The screen faded to black as a bunch of loose threads began knitting together into something ugly. Nana’s warning, the storm, Naira missing… and whatever happened to her was definitely connected to the Isle and to me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I made one stop before I left. Elder James opened his front door, glowering at me and then pointedly at the watch on his wrist. I apologized for the time, praying he wouldn’t send me packing. I could have asked Sekou to meet me, but it was easier and quicker to make the surprise stop and hope he wasn’t out.
Elder James let me in with a wary look and a warning to make it quick. I apologized, rushing up the stairs to Sekou’s room.
“Ada?” He was startled and just out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his long torso and another around his neck, which he used to dry his freshly cut temp fade. He craned his neck through the doorway at the stairs. “Uncle James let you in?”
“I told him I’d be quick,” I said. I eyed him. “Do you mind?” I gestured to his towel and went back to the living room while he got dressed. When he came back out, dressed in gray jogger sweatpants and a pink tee, I gave him the quick rundown of what I was planning.
“What the hell?” His voice was like a foghorn.
I slammed my hand over his mouth. “Shhhh, your uncle is down there!”
Sekou peeled my fingers off his face. “This is the worst idea. You can’t be over there alone. Nana Ama… I don’t even want to think about the bricks she’ll shit.” His whole vibe was one big, blaring stop sign. “I get the news about Naira is hard. Hell, I don’t even want to believe it, but the cops couldn’t find anything. So how will you?”
“I’ll figure it out,” I said. “I have my ways.”
He scoffed. “What ways? It’s not the Isle. It’s Charleston. You know, big city, lots of crowds and noise. Plus, you don’t know what’s out there.” He hesitated. “Can’t you just talk to her?”
And tell her I was on the hunt for the truth behind Naira? That I thought Nana had something to do with it?
“That’s a no. She’ll keep me from going.”
“Not a bad idea,” he grumbled. He switched to plan B. “Then I’m coming with. Naira’s my friend too.”
I shook my head. “No. One of us needs to be here when shit hits the fan and they realize I’m gone. You can tell them I had to deal with her loss on my own before her Homegoing. They’ll believe you. You gotta stay here.”
Because I can’t lose you too, I didn’t finish.
I held up an envelope, and he took it. And then he grabbed me up and pulled me in. I’d never felt as vulnerable and as strong as I felt the moment Sekou hugged me. And when I felt wet drops soaking through my shirt, I was undone, completely. Entirely. We stayed like that until Elder James said it was time for me to go home.
The next day, when I knew Nana was distracted with Isle business and then working in her shed, I left my island home. The weight of what I was doing, the stand I was making against my grandmother wasn’t lost on me. I was going against my grandmother’s wishes. I was leaving a place that had been my safe haven.
I didn’t know what was waiting for me, but I was taking a leap of faith, reversing the course my ancestors took when they fled their captors. They’d seen the beacon of light from the Isle and they’d used it to find their way. I had no light guiding me as I sped away.
Even if I came back empty-handed, having learned nothing new about my best friend, knowing that I hadn’t given up on her would be enough for me. I had tried, even when the weight of it all felt too much to bear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As soon as my feet hit sidewalk, I began walking away from the pier and into the city.
With the Homegoing happening in days, I didn’t have a lot of time. The first thing I needed to do was find Luke’s sister, Hailey. From Naira’s journal, I knew that Hailey and Luke lived together.
I plugged her address in my phone, which I’d found in one of Naira’s earlier entries from a Valentine’s day gift Naira had sent to their house, and began my walk away from the Old Slave Mart.
As many times as I’d been to Charleston to drop off and pick up ferry passengers, this was the first time I’d really walked the city.
Charleston had been one of the largest markets of enslaved people. It wasn’t so long ago when our ancestors walked these same uneven cobblestone sidewalks and passed mansions behind wrought iron gates. Churches and ancient cemeteries punctuated the city, where you could walk through and read the carved tombstones and mausoleums dating family lineages going back centuries… All of it was beautiful. And yet, so much ugly historycreated this beauty. Golden Isle was a place of freedom and light. Charleston was the opposite.
I had time to kill, and after getting a kick out of watching tourists explore Charleston on carriages with huge horses clomping through the streets, the blinding white building of the Mother Emanuel AME Church rose before me, forcing my steps to a stop. Without thinking, I had come here like a ship to a beacon in the night. I let out a slow breath looking up at one of the two staircases to the front door, and all complaints about the overcrowded city and the drain on me fell away. As if pulled by some invisible force, I began up the steps. A strange hum rose in my chest as if it recognized something in me as I did in it. It refilled my depleting well. The door creaked opened and a warm energy flowed from it. The energy was attuned with my own, like the same kind of transference I had with Nana Ama. The oneness I shared with this place confused me, having never deeply considered other religions and belief systems than what I’d been taught and practiced. This was more refined, whereas mine was older and of the land. I was practically at the door when a small elderly lady with graying dark hair twisted in a bun and warm eyes appeared, opening the door, and the energy within it, wider. She noticed my hesitation and gave me a serene smile. Like she knew.
“No matter what you believe, child, you are welcome here.” She answered my unspoken question. “Everything God, gods—whatever names we bestow on them—see the same light in us.”
“But I’m not—”
