Maroons: A Grievers Novel


 
 
 
 adrienne
 maree brown
 MAROONS
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 About
 With the Black Dawn series we honor anarchist traditions and follow the great Octavia E. Butler’s legacy, Black Dawn seeks to explore themes that do not reinforce dependency on oppressive forces (the state, police, capitalism, elected officials) and will generally express the values of antiracism, feminism, anti­colonialism, and anticapitalism. With its natural creation of alternate universes and world-building, speculative fiction acts as a perfect tool for imagining how to bring forth a just and free world. The stories published here center queerness, Blackness, antifascism, and celebrate voices previously disenfranchised, all who are essential in establishing a society in which no one is oppressed or exploited. Welcome, friends, to Black Dawn!
 “We must transform ourselves to transform the world.”
 —Grace Lee Boggs
 
 
 MAROONS
 
 
 Section 1: The Dream of Every Cell is to Become Two 
 
 
 Chapter One: Night
 In the new moon dark, a small child slipped, alone, through the iron gates of the Warren community garden. It was cold enough for snow, but the air was dry. The child wore an adult’s sweater that hung down to his ankles, over toddler leggings that were shorter each day. His head was wrapped in a scarf. 
 He moved stealthily between the deflated, wildish rows of leafy shadows, looking for anything familiar. He finally started pulling at everything he could touch until he found shapes he recognized—long pointy carrots, rock-hard beets, fat dense cabbage, bulbs of garlic and onions, and something else plentiful that might be green beans or peas. 
 He rolled up the bottom of his sweater, creating a pocket in front of him. Storing his small harvest like a baby kangaroo, he crept to the edge of the garden and slipped back out to the street. He looked left, toward home, and the way was clear. To his right, beyond a muted streetlight, there was something. 
 It was too black at first to see it, but the dark in the darkness moved closer to him. The child got very still down to his cells, the way he knew to disappear in plain sight. The darkness got still too—but there was breath visible in the air. Finally the darkness stepped into the pale beam cast by the streetlight. 
 The shadows relinquished a dog who looked like it was smiling at him, medium sized, furry, tail wagging slowly. This was unusual—since humans became scarce, creatures usually ran from Jizo. Sometimes they looked at him with hunter eyes and he had to spread his adult sweater arms wide to make of himself a menace. 
 But faced with this friendly creature, the child smiled back, opening the hand that wasn’t holding his sweater, letting the dog come to him. The dog sniffed the boy’s outstretched palm, then his neck, arm pits, crotch, down to his feet. The boy stifled a giggle. He took a few steps toward home and looked back. The dog was right behind him and caught up quickly. The boy was grateful for 
 Chapter Two: The Radio
 “Welcome, welcome one and all—and I mean every single one of y’all—to the Everything Awesome Circus, yes absolutely named after the best movie of all time, The Lego Movie! It’s. So. Fucking. Wonderful to be here with you, each one of you, again, here in this small and seemingly empty but possibly, and probably, abundant place, this palace, this palatial place I still and now call home. If you can hear me that means nearly nothing at all about you, you fucking feds … but you? Yes, you! If you can comprehend, I mean truly integrate this wisdom and magic pouring through me, this cosmic-conduiting-then/no-farce-now, no shitting, there is no end to how amazing this day can be. This only-day-we-have, this only-moment that has no end except the constant end in that funky blend of reflection we call moonlight that comes every night—and these days with no man-made competition it’s so bright it’s nearly a fright. A beautiful fucking fright! Except on these silent killer new moon nights where there’s not a solar reflection in sight—now there are no babies here, but you and me? We know the worst things don’t just come out at night and I will tell you why, no lie: it’s a fucking nightmare out there! Be one with the suffering of this real world my friends. You have to see the grim shadow level of the inferno we face out there, it will not be denied.
 “But in here? Yes, in here everything is truly and completely and totally awesome! It’s a parallel universe of joy through reckoning! And I? I am your host with the most in this sunset and dark matter ghost town where wonders abound and the good life can be found roughly anywhere. So pull up a chair and prepare to have your minds, hearts, and souls blown open with my own grand imaginings—dreams taking wing from my mouth up south in the Motor City where we don’t take your pity for a Gawd. Damn. Thing. I sure am glad you came and by the end of this broadcast or whenever they really turn the power out, I hope