"Harper! Come on back here, girl. Where you been? I thought maybe you finally gone wasted away t'nothin' and blew off on the wind." His accent was still as thick as breadfruit—full of «de» and «dem» and soft Rs, lilting and bouncing like reggae—though he'd now lived thirty years in Seattle.
I wound through the crowd of family and sat down next to him against the kitchen wall, which was deliciously warm after the exterior chill. "No, Poppy. I still stick to the ground most of the time.”
He uncurled his index finger from the glass and poked me in the shoulder, scoffing. "Barely. I suppose them foolish white boys you date don' know better. Too bad t'see a nice girl like you goin' t'waste.”
I made a mock sad face. "Well, I just have to make do—Hugh is taken.”
His body shook as he roared laughter. He was loud for a little old man in his seventies. He wound down after a minute, chuckling, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Girl, I knew you could.”
That confused me. "Could what, Poppy?" I asked.
"Unfreeze yourself.”
I gaped at him. "What?" I squeaked.
"Harper, ever since you come out the hospital, you been hard and chilly like steel in the freezer—I'm surprised you got a man a' all. You built up some icy walls like you spect someone goin' t'hurt you some more, but when you ain't lettin' nothin' in to hurt, you ain't lettin' nothing in to love you, neither. Then you be stayin' away from here, like you don't need your family no more—'cause you family, even if you are thin like an of broom.”
I stared at him for a while, this old man with sharp black eyes. I hesitated to ask. "You. . can see some kind of wall around me?" If I had erected such a thing, surely I had good reason to keep the world at a distance. And maybe it was the same for Ken—even tough guys can't take it forever.
Poppy laughed and poked me again. "That's a metaphor, little girl! But spiritual walls be just as hard and cold as the real thing. Why you go look so sad now?”
I jerked back, swamped with bleak memory. "My dad used to call me 'little girl. “
"Harper, I'm sorry. I'm not presumin' on him. How long he's been gone?
"A long time. I was twelve when he died. Now there's just me and Mom and we don't get along.”
"That I know. So. . that why you don't be comin' round? We're too clingy?" Then he sat back and winked at me. "Or maybe you don' like Miranda's cookin' no more?”
I snorted a laugh, relieved to be off the subject of me and my wretched family—even if it did mean dealing with the oddities of the surrogate one. "I love your wife's cooking and I'd be twice as fat as you want me to be if I ate it as often as I'd like to. And three times as fat if I ate it as often as you'd like me to. Things have been a little strange since I got hurt and I've been busy. And Phoebe's mad at me.”
"Oh, she don't be so mad as dat.”
A plate of steaming food was shoved onto the table in front of me.
"I am too as mad as 'dat. “
I looked up into Phoebe's scowl. Or rather, her attempt at a scowl that broke up into a smile as I watched. She put down her own plate and sat across from me. One of the family slid some glasses of water onto the table for us as they passed. Another dropped off rolls of utensils and napkins, never missing a beat on the cleaning and prepping for drinks, dinner, and dancing that took over the place on Fridays and Saturdays.
Noises came from the bar area and the front of the dining room as the tables were rearranged to make a dance floor and stage for the band. Shouts and laughter gusted out of the kitchen with every swing of the doors. Phoebe and I had to lean toward each other to speak at a normal volume.
"Hey, girl," she said.
"Hey, yourself. Thanks for seeing me.”
"Oh, like I'm goin' t'hold a grudge. I was mad. But I understand." She had picked up her father's accent again.
I'd already explained myself and resisted any impulse to do so again. "How are you doing?”
"Fine. I'm goin' back to the shop tonight. How's it lookin'?”
"Fine. Your cousin told me I could get Amanda's home address from you. I need to talk to her.”
"Oh, that Germaine! When Hugh told me he sent that good-for-nothing to my store I thought I'd have to strangle him!”
"Which one? Hugh or Germaine?”
"Both of them! How could he do that to me?”
"He's just trying to help.”
Poppy laughed, breaking into the conversation. "He's trying t'make you stop feeling sorry for your own self, girl! You come in here all long-faced a week ago and crying f'your friend. That's OK. That's right. But now you jus' being stubborn-sorry f'yourself. You're like your ma, Phoebe—ya got t'be busy.”
"I am busy, Poppy.”
"You is busy with everything but you. I love you, girl, but it's time you go home." He fixed his sparkling eyes on me. "You goin' t'make her go back t'her own place, ain't you, Harper?”
"I don't know, Poppy. . She's pretty muleheaded.”
"That d'truth!”
"You two! Worse than Hugh and Mamma.”
Poppy cackled.
"Phoebe, you know you should.”
She made a face. "Yes. 'Specially since everyone be bossin' me about it!”
Hugh came by with a tray full of glasses for the bar and bent down to kiss Phoebe on the head as he passed. "You get back what you dish out, big sister.”
One of the glasses did a backflip out of the stack and darted toward me, trailing a familiar yellow strand. I snatched it. Phoebe put it back onto Hugh's tray with care, keeping one eye on me.
"You got you a duppy now, too?" Phoebe asked.
"Just the garden-variety poltergeist," I replied. "Nothing so nasty as a duppy—they are nasty, right?”
"They be the nastiest things ever," Poppy answered for his daughter.
"What makes them so bad?" I asked him, picking at my plate of food—it was delicious, but I couldn't concentrate on eating, my brain going in so many directions: the poltergeist, my dad, psychic walls. .
Poppy leaned back in his seat, gesturing with his water glass. "Dup-pies, they're the spirits what don' make it to heaven. They got lost somehow on the nine nights and they settle back to earth. But they got no heart t'feel with, no brain t'think with—their soul, it be broke in two. Half here, half the other place. They don' feel the Tightness or wrongness o' somethin'. They don' think what happen. They just do what they want. They come slap you or pinch you or make f'break things.”
"How do you know it's a duppy?”
"You see them. Like skeletons wearing fog. The—what they call it here? Willow wisp? — That's the thing they look like. Ancestor spirits, you can't see them—they as pure as air. But the duppy be tainted and evil. And they just get eviler and eviler the longer they hang round. Dogs be howlin' when they about and you feel the spiderweb on your face. That's the duppy sign.”
I didn't know if I would call the yellow thread spiderweb, but I recalled the sensation on my face the first time I fell into it, when I investigated the room; I had thought of the feel of it as cobwebs then, myself. The idea of a ghost that grew more and more evil from a lack of conscience seemed to match the behavior of Celia—and its psychopathic master—to a T.
"Why you keep askin' 'bout duppies?" Phoebe demanded. "Maybe that's why they're botherin' you now.”
I tried to calculate the response to any possible answer, but I'd never been very good at the elusive math of relationships. I stuck to the easier side of truth.
"Mark's project was about ghosts and I think there's a connection to his death. This duppy thing seems a lot like the ghost they made and maybe—”