Java Sparrow Press

a Bitches Brew – A Novel Excerpt

walker lee

Sep 07, 2026

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Faded helium-filled balloons and drying flower arrangements crowd the living room until there isn’t an empty space to put a coffee cup. Get Well and Happy Healing Balloons are losing their air half-way floating only a couple of feet from the ground. Notes that should be tucked in the dying roses are on the floor with good sentiments written on one side and boot print on the other. The living room looks like a hospital room. Stuffed little animals sit in the empty chair, a toddler sized brown bear takes up one corner of the couch with happy but dead eyes.

I got my robe on because Jayson, my husband, may as well be a woman in menopause the way he sweats and fights about me turning up the heat. I got on two pairs of socks, a tee-shirt with my pajamas and my thickest robe. If I could find a skull cap, it would already be on my head.

He buried a six year old while I lay in the hospital. The elder that came up north from the south two generations ago got buried yesterday before Jayson came to pick me up. Raye, his favorite cousin, had already gathered up all the get well stuff from the hospital room and dropped it off like she didn’t want anything to do with it. It was all crowding the foyer, like someone loved.

There are no funerals today. But I don’t ask either. A funeral director and a police officer needs a break from death every now and again – We are surrounded by it. We never need to talk about a thing that we’re so close to we can taste the copper from the blood and smell the gun smoke left simmering in the air after a fresh kill.

This is week two in a six-week mandatory stay at home to heal my arm. Getting shot twice on the job means I can’t go to work even if I’m not on the streets. My right arm is impaired. I can’t button my pajama shirt so it’s hanging loose. I can’t drive but I also can’t find my car keys.

I’m still bandaged and patched up near my clavicle. If I’m not standing balanced and erect, I am throbbing. I stiffly pour more coffee. The ibuprofen is upstairs. I’m too easily winded to make the journey.

Bacon is on the stove nearly done. I intend to watch it burn. I could turn the stove off but I’m not. This is his third batch of BLT sandwiches this morning. He fried an egg for me and cut mine in four triangles like I’m in daycare. I got three triangles left of bacon, tomato, and lettuce with buttered cream on both sides of the bread. When he went upstairs after inhaling his first bacon sandwich I knew it was to change his tie because I watched the bacon grease drip on it like he was saving it for later.

“I love you.” He teases when he returns, with a mouth full of food. He’s being annoying in that charming, but delicate way trying to hide his worry. But I didn’t just meet him. He’s trying not to piss me off. A decade long marriage leaves nothing hidden.

“Stop and get gum. Skip the onions for lunch.” I tell him. It’s the first thing I smell on his breath.

“Baby – – “

“I’m fine.” I put my coffee down. I wince when I do. He chews his bacon sandwich watching me instead of teasing me. I don’t want to be under his watchful eye. He scans the room of balloons and dying flowers like he’s seeing it for the first time. His eyes fall on that bear sitting on my sofa in my space. “I’m alive. I’m fine.”

He takes another deep breaths straining the last button on his shirt. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a button. I already got a few shirts ready to order for him because he’s clearly bigger. But what can I say? He buried a six-year-old little girl while I was in the hospital unconscious for almost four days. What can I say about him growing out of his clothes?

The game is over. He wraps the two corners of his sandwich in another ziploc bag. No goodbye kiss, not even a hug or a gentle touch on the arm before he leaves. The front door slams knocking a vase of flowers with no water to the floor. It doesn’t break. I leave it there. All of this was more fun when this was just a game we played.

I wake from my nap on the sofa wrapped in the throw with my ‘get well’ bear. I’ve been asleep long enough for my coffee to be cold. The tv is on low, on Law & Order SVU. I’m not alone.

The ceiling is smoky with a sacred heavenly smoke hovering. Maybe it’s frankincense and sandalwood. Lemongrass oil smell like it’s in a pot ready to become soup.

Light brushes of something falls on the back of my hand. Ashes? I don’t think I would be able to feel ashes. What is it? Then I taste it lingering in the air. It’s the sea without moisture.

“Salt? Is it raining salt on me?” It must be Abriel? My father smells like old spice and not a biblical high priest. Nobody else would be making me a sacrifice to place on the altar.

“It’s for protection. This will draw the impurities out – keep dark spirits at bay.” His voice is from another time and place, aged like a barrel of bourbon that’s been outlawed. Gruff and gravel like sandpaper.

“This salt is strong.” I taste a big snowflake that doesn’t melt on the back of my left hand. If I have salt, it doesn’t taste like this salt.

“You have no salt, which explains a lot.” He answers a question I didn’t ask. This salt tastes like it came right out of the middle of the sea. I rest my hand feeling the soreness in my chest go from a nine down to a two. “Let me pray over you.”

Abriel spreads his hands over me without touching me. He sprinkles more salt after moving imaginary clouds. He waves his staff around me, the bottom of his leather jacket looks like a cloak – swaying without a breeze.

“You are Earth. Springtime and the Fall. You are made up of Lucy, Gilda, Savannah, Sadie, Bernadette, and Lorraine. The Caribbean, Philadelphia, Georgia, and Mississippi; Liberia and Egypt.” He exhales a grated and gruff sigh.

The smoke from the incense is low and curling. The lemongrass is a balm. I feel like I’m the prayer, poetry, and the altar; this deserves more respect. When Abriel gathers more clouds, I close my eyes. “Iron, salt, wildflower, Jupiter and Neptune. You are made of beginnings and endings. You’ve been spared to return to this body, once more. There’s more life left in you. You are not done here yet.

“There is only one you. You must save some of you for yourself. The world will devour you and have no mercy. Remember where you come from. You’re only human. Save the world? No. Just save yourself.” He makes it rain salt crystals in my hair. “Water yourself.”

“Amen.” I whisper. Abriel hums it’s Springtime Again, by Sun Ra. I try to remember why I know it when I don’t remember hearing it before. He draws the clouds over me like a blanket to cover me.

“Say their names. All the spirits and gods don’t mean you goodness. Be sure you’re in benevolent energy when you call them so that you receive them that are for your highest good.”

“Abriel.” I say, being funny.

“You need more than me, Nina. You need the women you come from. They’re waiting on you to call them. It’s past the time. Call on your mothers. They know your voice even if you have no memory of them. You need help. Ask for help.” He sprinkles more salt. It lands like small pellets. “I should have come sooner.

“To leave your salt behind?”

“You need to balance your sweetness, Nina. Too much honey, you draw more than just bees. Even predators like sweetness. It’s no longer a secret, is it? More salt, you hear?”

“More salt.” I say in agreement.

Abriel comes around the sofa to stand in front of me, done with his salt dusting rain dance. He clears the air before he opens a small vial of something. It smells like cedar, orange spice, and camphor. He rubs oil in between his first finger and his thumb then massages it on my temple.

“Anoint your head with oil.” He touches between my eyebrows next. After he stands closing his glass vial he waves his arms around fanning the scent. Before long, he’s looking around like he needs more stuff to sanctify and purify. His eyes land on my rocks glass on the table, half-filled with a golden brown drink since last night. “That be your altar or something?”

“No, Sir.” I smile to myself.

“Get one. Spirits cannot live on Whiskey alone.”

“Brandy is what that is.”

“Brandy either.”

“I got cornbread.”

“Add Chicken and Dumplings to that.”

I haven’t made chicken and dumplings since I was a teenager, with my grandmother. For some reason Abriel has forgotten I don’t have the use of my right arm.

“There’s more life in you. Don’t just give it away so freely.” He grabs his staff again which looks like a long wooden cane with a cobras head at the top of it. “Serve and protect ain’t the same as sacrifice. That’s not why you here.” He gathers more clouds and the scent of all his smoke and oils blend into another civilization entirely. Chicago disappears in the scent. Something is said in another language that I don’t understand and am caught off guard by. The voices are familiar to my being. “Breathe. Breathe deeply. Hum and breathe them in. They will let you know they are there.” I take a deep breath and the soreness in my arm is gone. “Something is coming. No. It’s here. Don’t give yourself to it. Rest. Live.”

I slowly sit up and salt moves and falls like dandruff flakes while Abriel gathers his things. I wince when the stiffness and the soreness returns.

“Take your time, healing is required. Be gentle.”

“Pops?”

“Set your alarm. You didn’t hear me come in.”

“Pops?”

“No more Brandy. The mind and the body must be clear for what’s coming.”

“I got five more weeks in this house, what am I going to do?”

“Create. That’s what you do, it’s what you come from.”

He sits in the chair by the door having put all the small gift bags on the floor. He put all his things in his bag and he’s just sitting there looking around. I’m trying to scratch under my cast but my arm is too sore. I can barely move it.

“Put some distance` between you and Miles.” He says a thing that he didn’t want to say. I look at him mid-scratch, having caught my breath. “As much distance is between strangers.” My mouth falls open and the breath leaves my mouth dry. “You’re sweet. Too sweet. He’s going to take all your sweetness. That’s the line of men he come from. That’s what they do. It look like love and admiration on the outside but on the inside, it’s siphoning. He’s going to drain you dry then blame you for it.” He grabs his bag and stands up. “While that husband of yours is preparing the dead have him clean this stuff up, you ain’t dead. This is all for mourning. You alive. Get dressed. You need fresh air.”