“Does Curtis Roberts still have family in the area?” asks the doctor.
“A sister, and his son lives somewhere farther south, maybe Hattiesburg.”
“What about his ex-wife?”
“Oh, I don’t know about her.”
Billie watches him like somebody hungry. He pretends to clean his glasses.
Dr. Hurley looks at Billie and nods, then stands. “We won’t take up any more of your time.” He and Jim shake hands.
Billie trails them as they walk to the door, but before she goes out she lowers her voice saying, “Please.”
The rattle of insects leaks in from the open door and the hot air creeps over the threshold. If only he could tell her that he’s protecting her.
“What is it, Billie?”
“Did anyone hurt him?”
“It was an accident, Billie.” That’s true too.
IN THE KITCHEN JIM POURS A CUP OF COFFEE GONE COLD. HE DUMPS the rest in the sink and rinses the pot out. The old house is quiet. He always imagined that it would be crowded with voices, kids scrapping over who gets what, lots of little hands looking for eggs on Easter. But that’s not how it turned out.
Those two days of a toddler and a newborn were about as wild as it got. But then Pia flew into Memphis and drove down in a rental. Jim was upstairs when he saw her running from the car to the front door. Billie was in the kitchen, having a snack at the table with Marlene, Harlan was upstairs, finally milk drunk and asleep. Billie’s hair was wet from a bath and dripping into the back of the smallest T-shirt Marlene could find, a pink one she’d bought at Orange Beach the summer before the pregnancy. Billie had been playing with some of the toys Harlan was way too little to use, but when she saw her momma, the light hit her face like sun on a mirror.
After a little bit, he got Marlene to take Billie in the living room and go read some kiddie books. She loved the Busytown ones and wanted to know what all the animals “dos.” Pia wanted to talk in the foyer where she could still see Billie, but he told her it wasn’t something they wanted a child to hear. It wasn’t easy to peel Billie off her mother, but he had to talk to Pia alone, make sure she hadn’t told anybody she was here, get her acquainted with the situation before things got worse. Already he knew he was coming under suspicion, but nobody had seen what he’d done except for Dee. Jim didn’t know what kind of woman Pia was, her upbringing, if he could trust her to handle everything. He’d barely seen Cliff in the past few years, let alone this woman.
He’d been brewing coffee and he poured her a cup. She didn’t want cream. She was a blonde, which surprised him because Billie’s hair was dark, and she was tiny, but well made like a gymnast. That afternoon her face looked half dead from tears, her eyes pink. He didn’t know where to start, what to tell, and what to keep.
“The child’s gonna need lots of love and attention after what she’s been through. The sooner y’all get away from this place, the better.”
Pia nodded, listening to Billie try to jump on the couch in the living room. Then she talked about needing to go see Ruby and Dee, the funeral. “I was coming to get her in another week. I was going to take her to the shore. Cliff, he wanted—” Her voice cut out. She swallowed and looked away. “It was important to him that she learn how to swim.”
There was no time to ease into it. “I mean you need to take her away now and never come back.”
She stared like she couldn’t see. He went to her as she groped for the counter. “What is it?” she said.
“Listen, I don’t know what Billie might have seen, or what people might think she did. All you got to know is that her daddy got caught up in something and it’s not safe for her here or for any of that family while she’s here.”
Pia leaned against the counter. “But she’s a baby.”
He led her to a chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t know if I can put it past them. I just don’t know. Come sit down.”
“I need to think.” She lay her forehead on the table, quiet for a while, then turned her face to where he was standing. “I thought this kind of thing was over, or that at least it was a little different now.”
“It’s different and it ain’t. They get to say what happened.”
“But you’re one of them. You can tell people the truth.”
“I’ve done all I can. More than I should. You have to go now.”
She sat up. “I have friends who are lawyers.”
“If that’s your intention then you do so at your own risk and the child’s and Miss Ruby’s and Dee’s. But I’m warning you, no good can come of it.”
She banged her fists on the table. “I thought she was missing! They told me she was missing . . . A million horrible thoughts in my head, over and over until I heard your voice. It was worse than death.” She pressed her hands over her face, inhaled, then said softly, “What about Cliff?”
“I told you I don’t know everything that happened, what he did.”
“None of this is right.”
“Right don’t matter when you’re dead. You do what you need to for your family.” He waited. She wouldn’t look at him at first, but then she said, “Where are her things?”
He called the TV station and they stopped running Billie’s picture.
In the living room, Pia took her from Marlene. “Listen to Mommy,” she said, holding Billie up in her arms. “What did you see at Daddy’s house?”
“The policemen.” Billie looked at him.
“Eyes,” Pia said.
Billie looked at her. “Daddy went away.”
“Where, where did he go?”
“He went to heaven.”
Pia put Billie down and took her by the hand. “You’ve been telling her things.”
“Well, we had to tell her something,” he said.
He walked them to the car. Pia carried Billie like she was a smaller child, cupping the back of the little head and pressing it to her shoulder. Once she got Billie strapped in the back and the door was shut, he put a hand on Pia’s shoulder. “Remember you were never here. We never met. I never told you nothing. And I will swear to all that on the Bible.”
She looked at his hand. He let go. They looked at the wrinkles he had left on her beautiful silk shirt. He wanted her to listen. He wanted her to believe he was a good man.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said.
She snorted. “Neither of us are willing to do that. I just hope he can forgive me.”
“There’s nothing he can’t do.”
She looked at him with narrowed, furious eyes. “Not god, Cliff.”
Dr. Melvin Hurley
BILLIE IS NOT AT HOME. BUT THEN NEITHER IS THE DOG, AND WHEN he calls her phone it goes straight to voice mail. She’s never missed one of their meetings. He has always found her inside with a book or sitting out here on the porch in a wrinkled T-shirt that would have made his mother cringe. Of course, it’s possible he’s mixed up the time, though he doesn’t believe so, and now that he thinks of it, she always answers his calls. Even lately when she’s been upset with him about the whole article snafu.
For a while he sits in the driver’s seat with the car turned off and the door open, taking out an essay reexamining Addison Gayle’s The Black Aesthetic, a book that coincidentally came out a week before Cliff’s death. If this one is a flop, he has Isaac Hunley’s essay “The Formation of the Outside Agitator” as a backup.
Of late there has been some suggestion that he should make his much-discussed essay “The Art of Reclaiming Blackness: The Radical Desire of the Black Arts Movement” into a book. But with this project coming back to life, and something else, a pervasive little whim . . . after Billie mentioned Mae Cowdery, he started thinking about all of the fascinating women writers in and around the Harlem Renaissance who have been largely forgotten or excluded or even silenced, and how he could begin by developing a course that would focus primarily on Jessie Redmon Fauset, Gwendolyn Brooks of course, then Marita Bonner, maybe take a look at one of Regin
a Anderson’s plays, read Esther Popel, whom he knows absolutely nothing about (but what a name), Pauline Hopkins, Nella Larsen obviously (though technically both she and Zora Neale Hurston have been “rediscovered”), the reclusive Angelina Weld Grimké (why exactly do so many of these women end up recluses?), and then wouldn’t it be interesting to include Nat Turner’s granddaughter, Lucy Mae Turner. Oh, and perhaps Pauli Murray could be worked in at the end as a bridge into the civil rights era? A visit to the Schomburg Center would certainly be in order. He’s been away from New York for far too long.
It could eventually become a larger project. He’s always had a penchant for the unknown lives and obscured works of marginalized writers. As a kid, he wanted to be a renaissance man. It was something his father used to say before going out to his card game. His father, though entrepreneurial by nature, tended to accept that his eldest son preferred going to the library on a Saturday as opposed to playing baseball.
An hour passes, but the landscape is silent except for the occasional truck or bird. He can’t help but feel that something has gone terribly wrong.
Perhaps he’s committing another faux pas, but it’s not a question of whether or not he should make this call but when. Billie hasn’t done it, he knows. There are so many questions that are likely to go unanswered, that have been buried with the dead, but a little information would move them much closer to sketching out a more accurate picture of what happened.
The phone rings, a man answers. “Yes?”
“It’s Dr. Hurley. Please, don’t hang up. This is vitally important. I can’t find Billie.”
There’s a pause and then Dee says, “I ain’t her keeper.”
“She knows that you’re mad at her about the article. I sincerely hope no one has harassed you over it. I want you to know that it wasn’t her doing, and that she had no idea it was being published until it came out, and that she was quite upset on your behalf.”
Dee sighs. “I ain’t mad. When’s the last time you seen her?”
“Yesterday. But it’s unlike her to miss a meeting.”
“You two best friends now?” Dee clears his throat. “I don’t see that there’s much to worry about. She’s grown.”
Melvin waves away a mosquito dancing toward him. “So I shouldn’t be concerned that anyone would have done something—run her off the road for instance?”
Dee does not respond.
Melvin climbs out of the car, pacing the length of the porch. “I want to tell you something about our discovery. The chapter the article alludes to is a Chapter Two of an unpublished work, which leads us to believe that there is a Chapter One, but what also is of importance to me is that we found it among Pia’s belongings.”
“My momma sent it to her.”
“But were they, were they on good terms?”
“My mother was a saint. She sympathized with Pia because Cliff left her and my momma knew how that felt.”
“Did you ever see the first chapter? Does it exist?”
“Listen, Doctor, you said yourself it ain’t safe for Billie round there. If you can get my niece to go on back to Philly, then I will see if I can help you out with that chapter.”
Melvin stops. “Why would I—why would I believe that you would do that now after all your resistance?”
“Don’t worry about whether or not to believe me, man, just get her out. It’s time.”
Billie
THEY’VE BEEN TO THE DOG PARK BEFORE. TODAY AS SHE PARKS IN the gravel outside of the tall chain-link fence, there are no dogs in the open field. It is starting to rain ever so slightly and the overcast light is oddly sharp. Rufus paces the backseat and when she lets him loose, he takes off, tongue flapping. She hangs the leash on the fence near the entrance and tucks her bun under her baseball cap, then walks deep into the field, dodging hardened dog poop, a filthy tennis ball in hand.
She tosses the ball, lobbing it wildly. Soccer was her sport and she was always bad at throw-ins. A truck pulls up next to her car. Rufus abandons the tennis ball and races across the field. She walks after him so he won’t crowd the entrance, but the truck doesn’t have any dogs in it. Maybe they’re lost. Rufus barks, duped into excitement. Maybe they’re pulling over to make a call.
“Rufus!”
Two men in sunglasses and ball caps get out of the truck. Both heads turn to her. They want her to see them seeing. She stops. The dog park is secluded. It is down a gravel road lined thick with trees. There are no houses, no other roads. One man goes to the back of the truck and takes out a rifle. She sprints forward. If she gets to the gate before them, she can try for her car. Whatever they want, anything is better than being trapped. Rufus trails the men along the fence, barking. But the one with the gun gets to the entrance first, jabbing at the dog with the butt of the rifle. Rufus bears down and snarls.
She slows, tripping against her own feet. “Shit. Rufus!” She fumbles for her phone. “Rufus, come!”
The 911 dispatcher answers. “What is your emergency?”
“I’m at the dog park—shit—I don’t know what it’s called! There are two men. One has a gun. Rufus!” The man swings the rifle at Rufus, who refuses to back down, the other man laughs. “Stop it! Leave him alone!”
“What is your full name?”
“Billie James.”
“What is the dog park near? Can you give me a town?”
“I don’t know! Greendale, Greendale.”
“Stay on the line. Are you able to leave the park? Ma’am?”
“No,” she says. “They’re coming this way.”
“Are you hurt? Tell me exactly what is happening.”
The man with the gun steps back and shoots. Billie screams, forgets the phone. Rufus drops like a toy dog whose batteries have gone dead. Both men look at her. She drops to her hands and knees, looking for the phone. Forget it. She scrambles up, running right toward the fence. She can climb it, jump down, and run just run. The bigger man, the one without the gun, is coming after her. Her thighs burn. She hurls her body toward the fence, the heat of him behind her. Mud splashes up her ankles as the fence looms closer. She can almost touch it. A hand wrenches her shoulder back and smashes her to the ground. Her tongue fills her mouth with blood. She can’t breathe. Hands drag her up by the hair. She tries to rip them off and the man whacks her in the face. She curls into a ball on the ground. He kicks at her hands. She howls and pulls in tighter. Pain cracks the top of her head. A white pain too big to stay inside her body. The man yanks her up, spitting in her face. “Go home, you fucking bitch.” Then the other is there, gangly with a young man’s beard, pressing the barrel of the gun into the side of her head. Far away, her phone is ringing.
“Please don’t.”
They laugh. Their teeth, voices unknown to her.
“What do you want?” she screams.
“Leave us the fuck alone.” The rifle drops and a fist hits her face.
HOW LONG HAS SHE BEEN LYING IN THE RAIN, FACE UP TO THE OPEN sky. Mom. The sky leading into the stars but there is bitterness in the white. Mom. She turns her head; a wave of nausea buries her. Is she there? She vomits. It’s better to lie still. Her right hand gently discovers her chin. There’s something wrong with the other hand. Is she here? It’s better to sink into the wet. The puddle is eating her hair into cold, tight curls. A sound is close. Someone crying. Everything is dripping: the rain, the birds, the sirens in the distance.
Rufus. It is agony to roll over and push herself up onto her elbows. She stands, half crouched, and drags herself to him.
“Hey boy.” His belly is dark red fur. She kneels and strokes his head. He whimpers. She carefully pulls her shirt off over her head, dabbing at his stomach until she sees the mouth of blood, and presses her shirt to it. “Hold on, boy. It’s gonna be okay.” But it really isn’t, is it?
The sirens are getting louder. A white ambulance barrels down the road and into the parking lot, the red and blue lights falling over each other onto the trees.
THEY’VE KEPT HER OVERNIGHT TO MONITOR HER CONCUSSION, THIS mild brain swelling that makes her the one in the hospital for a change. A trip to the bathroom with her IV shows her a half-closed eye, a split bottom lip, a shorn patch on her head for the stitches, and blood-colored cracks over her nose. Let not this body be a true reflection of the self.
In all of her dreams, she is younger. The nurses call her honey and child. They want her to tell them how things are at home, assuming she’s been beaten up by a father or a boyfriend. A cop has come in to ask questions, so it must have gotten back by now to Sheriff Oakes. If he knows the two men, then they know she’s here. They could work in the hospital as orderlies, their girlfriends could be sitting at the front desk.
As the drugs wear off, the pain becomes electric, snapping whenever she moves. Her mother always said that pain is trying to tell you something. But what did it tell Mom other than that she was dying fast.
Unwise to go back to the house. They must know where she lives. But she needs to get the gun, some clothes, at least her father’s manuscript. The best thing would be a motel. Somewhere surrounded by other motels, strangers, security cameras, out-of-town plates.
And then? Hard to think now that her brain’s been bounced off the sides of her head. She feels wrung out, her thoughts taste of chalk. The officer looked sympathetic. But he was young. Probably a rookie. No leverage. Think, think, think. What next?
She just screamed and cowered and cried like a helpless fucking thing. Didn’t fight for her life like the dead women do on crime shows with their defensive wounds. During the Black Death, some Christian towns blamed their Jewish community, so they massacred them, sometimes burning them in their houses. Jewish women threw their children in the fire, then themselves rather than renounce their faith.
The Gone Dead Page 15