Beneath a Meth Moon

by Jacqueline Woodson

  Now here was Moses, strange like Uncle Jimmy, strange like the boys at school in Jackson who had their own club, threw their own parties and wore T-shirts that said NOTHING TO HIDE and KISS A FAIRY, who got beat up sometimes and sometimes beat people up, but everyone just kept on moving, everyone just . . . kept being. Here was Moses, strange and good—dropping money in my hat, bringing me bread, sitting to talk awhile. Here was Moses . . . strange . . . and here now.

  I decided I needed a day off, Moses was saying. Rosalie’s around the corner, if you want to see her.

  I did. I got up from the bench and walked to the end of the street, then turned and walked a little ways more. On the side of a dark gray building, there was Rosalie’s face. She was dark like Kaylee, with beautiful dark eyes. Moses had painted her turned to the side a little, and a tiny dimple showed at the top of her cheek. She was smiling. Not smiling, laughing, and it felt like I could hear her laughing right there on the road—coming at me all high and pretty.

  Something caught in my chest—something that made it hard to take a breath, to swallow. I stared at Rosalie until I couldn’t see her anymore—until her face was melting down off that wall, into the street, disappearing. And then I noticed Rosalie had my same birthday. My same year . . . I started running then, hard—away from Rosalie, away from Moses. Hard and fast as I could, with the hot wind on my face, drying the tears quick-fast as they came. I ran until the buildings disappeared, until the street turned to dirt and the dust kicked up into my throat. But I kept running. Fast as I could . . . away from that wall, my birthday up there for everybody to see me already dead. Running away from being already dead. Knowing I was dead dying gone. Running to keep on living. So, so scared to die . . . home’s a place i used to know

  AUNT G. HELD JESSE JR. in her arms as me and Daddy got in the car for the long drive back to the Pass. It was warm out, blue and clear after the hurricane. Rain was still coming down in the Pass, but I couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine all the water the newscasters were talking about.

  All week long, we’d glued ourselves to Aunt G.’s television, waiting for news about the storm. Over and over, we saw the water washing over Mississippi, watched the people cry about what they’d lost, heard the crash of the levees breaking in Louisiana, followed the eye of the storm.

  And all week long we called home. Don’t worry, Mama said the first night after we left, even as the phone line broke up, sending her voice in a lot of directions at once. We’re. Fine. Here. Dry as bones. And. Having. Ham and rice for dinner. But the next day, no one answered. Every hour, the phone going straight to voice mail. And every other number of all our friends too. Daddy dialing and redialing, slamming down the phone, then dialing again. Pacing Aunt G.’s kitchen, and Aunt G. with Jesse Jr. at the table. It’s gonna be all right, Charles. They got themselves somewhere. It’s gonna be all right. But me and Daddy dialed the numbers again and again, leaving messages till we couldn’t anymore. Till the only voice we heard was the recorded one. The voice mail is full. The voice mail is full. The voice mail is full.

  And the roads washed out and no way home. Whose bad dream am I living? Daddy whispered until the mayor said, Come home and find your people and get your stuff. Then leave again. So we were on our way. Home.

  Ride up front with me, baby girl, my daddy said. So I climbed into the front seat of the car and watched the world coming at me. Green and thick with life. Until the hours passed and we were close to the Pass. And nothing was familiar at all.

  We crawled along slow, cops ahead stopping each car and bending down into it. Maybe an hour passed this way—Daddy with his hand covering part of his face, as though he knew what was coming.

  No outsiders, the cop said.

  We live here, my daddy said, looking straight ahead, his eyes half closed like he wanted to see and didn’t at the same time. For as far as we could see, houses were flattened, roofs were blown off. Cars and trees turned over on their sides.

  You got proof of address?

  Daddy reached into his wallet and took out his driver’s license. We’re coming back for my wife and mother-in-law, he said, his voice shaking.

  The cop gave him a long, sad look. The houses along the water gone, sir, he said. There was a hurt sound in his voice—loving, though, like the voice Daddy would use when I was little to convince me there wasn’t a monster under my bed.

  They went up higher, Daddy said. To the Walmart—up off 49. We’re gonna see if they’re still there. Can’t get no answer at home.

  The cop took a deep breath, then pulled a pad from his back pocket and wrote something down. He ripped out the page and handed it to my daddy.

  You might want to go here first, he said real soft. It’s on your way. You can cover all your bases this way—instead of driving around and looking for people to ask.

  Daddy took the paper from him and looked at it, then looked back at the cop without talking for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was tinier than I’d ever heard it, like a small child’s. Why . . . why . . . don’t understand why you’d send me to the morgue . . . Officer?

  The police officer took off his cap and squinted out over the long line of cars waiting to get back down to the water. He put his hand on the back of his neck, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked old and very, very tired. I’m not saying they’re there, sir, he said, his voice coming slow. I’m saying it’s on the way, and it seems to be where most people are looking first. This is the direction we’re sending people. A moment passed and then he said, That’s where they took the Walmart bodies, sir. I’m sorry.

  dream

  IN THE DREAM, my teeth fall out, one by one until there’s no more teeth in my head. Then I wake up screaming, but no one hears me. Again and again, inside the dream, I wake up screaming. Then I’m falling from somewhere high up. I wake up still falling.

  That morning, though, I woke up from my falling thinking about Moses’s Rosalie. Thinking about how you can be thirteen years old and in love with a boy, then be fifteen and dead and gone. And still laughing. Up on that wall, Rosalie was still laughing. I was awake but still falling . . . I climbed up from the floor slowly. My body hurt. Mostly my teeth had that hammered pain in them. The tiny room was hot and dark. I’d gotten used to sleeping on somebody’s left-behind air mattress with no air in it, but the darkness always surprised me—how dark Donnersville could get at night. Pass Christian was more and more becoming just a memory to me, and the memory was mostly filled with light—sun off the water, sun beating down and coloring everything bright white.

  It was raining out—hot, though. Maybe I’d been asleep off and on for two days. Maybe three. My stomach felt hollow. My throat burned. My heart just kept pounding and pounding.

  The room let out into a broken-down yard. I stepped outside and let the rain pour down over me. Opened my mouth to quench the burning. There were some tires against a high fence and a patch of garden that was weeds mostly with some ivy creeping out of it and up the fence wall. I stood in the rain staring at that ivy, watching it climb over that wall and disappear. Some part of me wanted to follow it, keep on moving the way it kept on moving . . . Don’t know how long I stood there with my clothes all wet and sticking to me, rain falling into my eyes, dripping from my hair, running down my back . . . Don’t remember when the rain stopped. When the sun came out. Don’t remember writing the stuff about ivy down on some paper, drinking the rain, until I read about it in my notebook later on . . . I thought you were dead, this time, Moses said.

  I remember turning and seeing him standing there. Being surprised because he never came back here before.

  I got bread and chocolate and oranges, he said. He had on a white T-shirt and long camouflage shorts with pockets on the side. I remember the pockets—how he pulled two oranges out of them and handed me one.

  His hand holding that orange out to me.
r />   And the way the mist sprayed into my face, surrounding me with the smell of orange and rain.

  And us sitting down on that stack of tires, sharing the buttered rolls Moses pulled out of those pockets. Those pockets real big in my memory, never empty.

  It scared me, thinking you were back in that room, dead, Moses said. Kept seeing myself finding you dead. Being the one to have to go to the police.

  Moses opened his roll and put a piece of chocolate between the bread. I watched him without saying anything. He took a bite and looked over the yard.

  What kind of sandwich is that?

  A chocolate sandwich, he said—like he was telling me it was a ham sandwich, something real familiar that I was a fool not having heard about. He pulled another piece of chocolate out of his pocket, unwrapped it and held it out for me to break off a piece. I put it in my roll and took a bite. It was nice the way the chocolate melted around the bread inside my mouth. I must have smiled, because Moses nodded.

  We must have sat there for a long time, because my memory of the day goes from rain to sun. From day to near dark. My memory of it that’s biggest, though, is how me and Moses sat and talked and talked and talked. And it wasn’t till near night that I realized I had gone the whole day without the moon. Gone the whole day with bread and chocolate and oranges, and Moses, like this was how it’d always been. And always would be.

  donnersville moon

  MOSES WASN’T THERE in the morning, when I grabbed a stranger’s sleeve and begged him for money. Wasn’t there when the man looked in my face, and in pity dropped a twenty-dollar bill in my hand—then pushed me hard away from him.

  Moses wasn’t there when I ran drug sick to the small cabin in Donnersville, where the meth heads went, where the people who weren’t me smoked the moon right outside, not caring. He wasn’t there when I handed the strange kid hanging from the window the money, stood there hugging myself, my face and hands feeling like a million bugs were crawling all over me. He wasn’t there as I stood there scratching till the blood ran down.

  Wasn’t there to see me crowded next to the meth heads, smoking the moon up until I couldn’t breathe, until I couldn’t see. Until the world disappeared in a white-hot light of pain and noise and my own voice screaming out, I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe. Somebody help me. I can’t breathe anymore!

  And then . . . nothing at all.

  Where are you, Moses?

  I’m looking for you.

  Where is your bread? Where is your chocolate?

  I’m looking for you, Laurel. I’m looking for you.

  another second chance

  AND WHEN I WOKE UP in the hospital room, Daddy and Kaylee and Jesse Jr. were there—standing at my bedside, their eyes red and swollen, their smiles trembling. My head hurt, and my chest felt thick and heavy.

  You messed up your heart, Laurel, Jesse Jr. said, coming to the edge of my bed. But it’s still working.

  And when I tried to move, I couldn’t. And when I tried to hug him, I couldn’t lift my arm.

  You have to rest, my daddy said. He looked old standing there, more gray than I remembered, broken and unsure. You got another long road ahead of you, baby girl.

  And for a moment, we just looked at each other, his eyes pleading, Please make it this time.

  Does your heart still work to love me? Jesse Jr. asked, his tiny face so close I could smell the applesauce that he’d eaten.

  It still works, I whispered, the words hurting as they came out of me, my throat burning, a new unfamiliar burn.

  They had to incubate you, Jesse Jr. said.

  Intubate, Kaylee said. You’ve had a tube down your throat for a week. Did you feel it at all?

  Kaylee picked up my hand. There was a tube running up from my wrist along the inside of my arm. I couldn’t tell where it stopped. I tried to squeeze Kaylee’s hand.

  You okay?

  She nodded. I’m not letting you leave me out in the country by myself again. You know that, right?

  I squeezed her hand again.

  How about you? You gonna live to tell the story?

  I smiled but couldn’t answer her.

  My daddy collapsed into the chair beside my bed and took a long, hard breath.

  She’s okay now, Daddy, Jesse Jr. said, patting my daddy’s shoulder while Kaylee held tight to my hand. There was the sound of Daddy’s tears and the sound of something close by beeping and the sound of nurses calling over the intercom, asking doctors where they were. The sound of life going on—and me there, in it.

  Me there in it.

  I’m okay, Daddy. I’m gonna be okay now.

  She’s gonna be okay, now, Daddy, Jesse Jr. echoed.

  My father took deep breaths and nodded. He looked at me, his eyes so full of so many things I had to look away.

  Is Moses here?

  Who’s Moses?

  I closed my eyes. How would they know him? How would anybody know anything about that world I walked in? So far away from this one?

  Is he the guy who found you? Kaylee asked. They said somebody called the ambulance, said you were from Galilee.

  I was looking for you.

  Are we in Galilee?

  Kaylee shook her head. Donnersville Hospital. She bent down to kiss me on the forehead, her hair falling across my face. I tried to reach up to hold her. But couldn’t. So I pressed my face against hers. Give me your sun, Kaylee, I wanted to say. Take this pain away from me. But only tears came.

  elegy for mama and m’lady

  THE MORNING WE LEFT Pass Christian, my mama came into my room and whispered, You behave yourself at your cousins’ house, Laur. Ask to help with dishes and make your bed without Aunt G. having to ask you, you hear me?

  I woke up slowly. It was still near dark outside. My mama had her hand on my face, looking down at me. Jesse Jr. had just turned three months old and was asleep in his crib across from me. He stirred, making tiny baby noises.

  C’mon, Laur, time to get up now. I have to get the baby up and dressed. Get y’all on the road.

  It wasn’t until she was buckling Jesse Jr. into his infant seat that it hit me she wasn’t coming. I had heard them talking late into the night. I’d heard my daddy fussing with her. I’d heard M’lady saying, I don’t need anyone staying here with me. And then I’d gone to sleep.

  Soon as the rain is done, Daddy’s gonna bring y’all back here, my mama said. She kissed the top of my forehead.

  But, Mama—

  Hush, Laur. Don’t you wake that baby and start him to crying.

  Jesse Jr. was just a baby, so I didn’t know if Mama’s tears were about him leaving her for the first time or seeing the tears in my own eyes. But she turned away from us, wiped her eyes real fast, then turned back again.

  I don’t want to hear that your aunt had to ask you to make your bed.

  I nodded but couldn’t speak. Couldn’t look at her. M’lady sat swinging on the front porch.

  Just gonna be a day or two, she said. Don’t know why you all falling apart so.

  That was the last time we saw them breathing.

  daddy

  I WANT TO SAY I remember leaving the hospital, remember the drive back to Galilee, my father in the front, humming along to the radio and me beside him. Jesse Jr. in the back talking nonstop, like he wanted to fill me in on everything I missed. I want to say I remember the way the sky turned clear blue as we drove and when I looked up into it, I thought, This is what’s beautiful about living—the way the world seems to go on and on. I want to write that I left that hospital not wanting the moon, entered that rehab already done with it. But what I remember most is how it hurt to not feel my moon pipe against my lips, how the scratching scars on my face reminded me for a long time how the moon had made me itch and cry out. H
ow, late some nights, I wanted to run from rehab back to the House, any House, and erase, erase, erase.

  How I dreamed M’lady saying, The moon will stand beside you with the Lord . . . But what comes clear to me each day is the morning my father came into Second Chances and handed me my knapsack, smiling. It was the first smile I’d seen on his face in a long time.

  Your friend Moses brought this by, he said. Bet you didn’t know we’re the only Daneaus in Galilee.

  Moses came to our house?

  He said he wanted to make sure you got your stories back. He . . . saved . . . he saved . . . he saved you. My daddy’s voice caught, but he shook his head, took a breath. I know I keep saying it. Feel like I have to so I know it’s true. He’s going to come by here. See how you doing. I hope that’s okay.

  Yeah, Daddy. I want him here. I want Moses to come see me. Tell him please come . . . We got quiet for a minute. My daddy’s hands on my face, looking hard in my eyes.

  He never did the moon, I said. His mama did, but not him. I don’t want you thinking—

  I know, sweet pea. I didn’t at first. When he rang our bell and had that bag, I was ready to kill him, ready to go to jail with all the mad inside of me. But he stood there, said real clear, “Mr. Daneau, my name is Moses. You don’t know me, but you can find my name in the Donnersville hospital records.” And that was all he needed to say before I threw my arms around that boy. Hugged him hard.

  I nodded, not able to speak. My daddy kissed my forehead, like he used to do when I was little.

  My hands were shaking as I unzipped the bag. It was filthy and smelled like the room I’d stayed in—musty and damp and meth-smoke sweet. I felt my stomach creeping up as I opened it, watching the months of notebooks and envelopes and paper bags and pieces of paper fall out.