No One Is Coming to Save Us

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  “She won’t talk to me. She won’t even let me text her.”

  “I never did like you, Henry. I knew from the minute I laid eyes on you that you were the wrong one for Ava. You have some weak in you. I can’t stand weak.”

  “Is JJ the one?”

  “Of course not. Oh dear god. Of course not.” What a sad piece of man Henry turned out to be, all hangdog and dirty, a pleading beggar in front of her. She did feel sorry for him against her better judgment, but that’s all she could feel. Her pity was almost the most accessible, most enduring emotion she could ever call up for Henry. She’d never liked him, never wanted to get to know him, and surely never understood him. He was a handsome man, a man with a job and few dollars, and nothing but his own warped mind holding him back. But always sad. If a man with most anything couldn’t find happiness, who else had a chance?

  “See what I’m talking about. I just said you are weak and all you can think about is what I think about JJ. You need to work on yourself. Get yourself together. I just hope you will do right by your child. That’s the main thing. Children have to have somebody expecting them to do better. If you don’t expect much you won’t get much. Can you understand that?”

  Sylvia was embarrassed, like she’d done something wrong. If she could have found a way to love weak-ass Henry, maybe she could have saved Ava some heartache. A sob almost escaped from her chest as she continued to search for food.

  “I won’t see you much from now on.”

  “Take care of your child. Nothing else matters now. You hear me?”

  “You’ve never cared about me, Sylvia. I don’t blame you. I didn’t look like much. I still don’t. I’m sorry you have to be in all this.”

  “You made your own bed, Henry. Just don’t ruin your life.”

  “You are a good woman. You should know that. You made a good woman. I probably won’t see you anymore. How long have you been waiting for me to say that?” Henry sighed. “I’ll get my stuff some other day or maybe never. I don’t care about it. I hope you make it all right,” Henry said as he opened the front door to leave. “You take care.”

  The figure Henry cut in the world was of a confident man, so handsome, so sure in his body, a natural coolness that made him look like he belonged anywhere. A man like that you expected to be haughty, a player with a player’s mind. That he was an insecure fool didn’t make Sylvia like him better. It should have, but somehow his most significant failing was failing to be what he seemed.

  Sylvia rushed to the doorway. “Don’t ruin your life, Henry. You hear me?”

  “I ruin everything, Sylvia. You know that.”

  38

  For a few panicky seconds when she awoke that morning Ava was unsure where she was. Death is an empty house hollow and echoing. She quickly calmed herself and sat up from Jay’s bed while the morning still crackled awake, the air cool like an exhalation on her skin. She heard the manic whir of a lathe in the back of her brain that meant Jay was already building something in his workshop. She’d fumbled for her jeans, slid her cool, bare feet into tennis shoes. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She considered never speaking another word. It was too early to be awake and stirring, but Ava walked outside to the front of Jay’s house into the yard, bald except for the dandelions and wild onions that had already taken root. Before her was the kind of vista you might see in a romantic movie. A stately house surrounded by tall pines at the top of a mountain. In the movie, sheets would hang from a clothesline and billow like sails in the breeze. The white girl in the scene would walk between the sheets, her shift dress clinging to her thin frame with the blustery wind, her hair flapping behind her, like at any moment she might take flight. Ava stepped into the yard. In two steps her shoes were covered with a thick sole of red mud. She cried at the sight of her ruined shoes. Couldn’t she have one moment safe from the threat of ruin? Ava then cried because the damn shoes made her cry in the first place. After her brief commune with nature she had planned to get back in the bed and stay there all day, but her mother called. Henry was on his way to her.

  Henry had parked far away from the door and from their cars, like he hadn’t wanted to intrude. He blew the car horn and turned off the engine. He’d considered driving to Pores Knob to the lookout, maybe walk one of the trails, maybe get lost somewhere in the woods. He’d been to the mountain only once before on a church trip, but the view, the highest in the Brushies had made him feel strangely powerful like he was in on something few other people knew. Henry took out a coin and let it roll on his knuckles, back into his palm and onto his knuckles, one to the other again and again. Though he had wanted to be a magician when he was a kid, even checked out books from the public library, this was the only trick he’d learned. The idea of being in front of an audience, begging for their approval, trying to make them forget that he was an ordinary man unable to harness even the most ordinary powers of the universe, made him self-conscious and ashamed. Nobody wanted to watch a shamed magician.

  Henry’s gauntness made him look shifty, like he could easily dart in and out of places. He was dirty and unkempt, like he had not seen himself for days, like he’d turned out to be a person nobody gave a damn about. Henry got out of his car and leaned against the passenger’s side door. Ava stepped out of the house with Jay right behind her.

  “Did your mama tell you I was coming?”

  “You know she did, Henry. What are you doing here?” Ava said.

  “I guess she figured,” Henry said. “I didn’t tell her I was coming here.”

  “What do you want from me? I don’t want to see your face.”

  “I just wanted to talk to you, Ava. I need to talk to you a minute, one minute. That’s all I ask.”

  “But I don’t want to talk to you, Henry. Did you ever consider that? I get a say in this and I say no. Not right now and not ever.”

  “Will you get in the car with me? One minute. I swear to God and then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “How I got stuck with you, I’ll never know. I don’t want to talk to you. You need to hear me, Henry. I know all you have to say. I’m tired and I’m tired of you. I’m tired of your depression and your problems. And then on top of all that you betray me. Do you think I owe you? Don’t be a dick all your life. People get tired of that.” Ava turned to go back into the house.

  “I’m going through a slump, Ava. This is not me.”

  “You better get some help,” Ava said.

  “I should have told you about Zeke, Ava. Things got out of control.”

  “You killed me!” Ava screamed. “But what do you care? Everything is always about you.”

  “You’ve been in a doctor’s office for the past eight years and everything is about me? Is that what you’re saying, Ava?”

  “Shut up, you fuck. I can’t believe you won’t even let me be mad at you. I hate your ass.”

  “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m a fuckup. I know it. You think I don’t know it. But we had a good thing. I know you felt it. I know you did.” Henry held on to the top of his head like he was being arrested.

  “Why are you here? Nothing ties me to you. Nothing at all. I can’t wait to never see you again.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “I’m so glad, Henry,” Ava said.

  “Look, Ava,” Henry said as he riffled through his pockets. “I brought my paycheck. I want you to have it. I’ll move out. We can still keep talking. This doesn’t have to be over. I know what I did.” Henry took out his pay envelope full of bills and held it out for Ava to come get it. Ava rushed to Henry, greedily took the money out of the envelope, and threw it up into the air. The three of them watched the money, too little money, float onto the ground.

  “You are so funny, Henry. You don’t even realize how hilarious,” Ava said. “You think I care about your pitiful little money?”

  “Okay, this is enough, Henry. You need to leave,” Jay said. “Let’s go, man.”

  “I brought a gun,” Henry said and did h
is best to ignore Jay. If he didn’t acknowledge him then he and Ava could work it all out. “Do you believe that? I brought a gun with me,” Henry said as he pulled out the gun from his pocket and held it on his pants.

  “Oh my god! I never thought I would hate you Henry. What a shitass you are,” Ava said as she turned around to walk back into the house.

  “Ava! Ava! Come back.” Henry wasn’t sure what he expected from Ava or what the proper reaction should have been, but he never thought she’d be furious. It didn’t occur to him that she might just walk away. He’d miscalculated everything. Again.

  “Baby, baby, I’m not trying to scare you. I’d never hurt you. Never. I swear to God,” Henry said. “I don’t have any more choices.”

  Ava stopped and turned around to face Henry. “I am walking in that house and you are getting the hell out of my sight. Don’t you think you’ve hurt me enough?”

  “I do,” Henry said and put the gun to his head.

  “Henry! Stop it!” Ava stared at Henry like she wasn’t entirely sure who he was. It only then occurred to her to be afraid. “Stop it,” she said with more calmness than she thought possible. “Nobody gets what they want.”

  “Give me the gun, Henry.” Jay walked toward Henry’s.

  Jay was too close, Henry could not ignore him any longer. He lowered the gun to his pants, thought better of it, and placed the gun on his temple and pulled the trigger.

  “Henry!” Ava screamed

  Jay’s father, Frank Ferguson, threw plates to the floor, the crash of them loud enough to bring the children into the kitchen. Get back in your room, his father yelled. His sister fled, but Jay waited in the hall. He was not a child. He imagined that he knocked his father to the floor, that he took his father’s beating while his mother ran. Or maybe, he whisked his mother out of the yard and out of the house and into a future. He and his mother in the car on the way anywhere else. But Jay had not moved from the hall. He did not see but he heard his father’s booming voice, his mother’s protests, their two voices strained and taut, coiled together like wires, both of them on the verge of tears. He had never heard a gunshot before. A country boy like him but he could not remember ever hearing the sound of a handgun. He flinched but he did not move. He knew without question what had transpired out in their poor people’s yard. At what felt like the very same moment he heard the boom from the gun he heard his father’s noisy sobbing, his screaming so loud everyone on the street came out to witness it. “Donna, please get up! Please baby, get up!”

  Jay waited for the noise, the boom. There had been a click, but no other sound. Wasn’t there supposed to be sound? The gun didn’t go off.

  “Henry? Henry?” Ava asked like she expected him to have an explanation.

  Henry stood in place comically holding the gun to his head. He looked more surprised than anybody. Before he could gather his senses, Jay swatted the gun from Henry’s hand and banged his head repeatedly against the hood of the car.

  “Stop it JJ, stop it!” Ava screamed.

  Jay didn’t hear Ava screaming until her felt her hands on him pulling him away from Henry.

  Jay backed away from the car. He had not meant to hurt him, but he’d grabbed him before he knew what he was doing. Ava put her hands on Henry’s forehead to staunch the blood trickling through his hair and down his face. “Take off your shirt,” she yelled to Henry who pulled the shirt over his head like an obedient child.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ava screamed at Henry through her tears. “I hate your fucking guts.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you. Everything got away from me.” Henry said.

  “Don’t,” Ava said and grabbed his shoulders, squeezed until her fingers hurt. “Don’t say one more word, Henry. I won’t be able to take it if you say another word.” Lines of blood slid down Henry’s cheeks.

  “Don’t be cruel to me, Henry,” she said. “Not another word. Get in the car.” Ava pointed Henry to the passenger seat in Henry’s car.

  Jay checked the chamber of the gun. There were bullets there, but none of them had emerged. He tossed the gun into the woods. “Ava, please stay here,” Jay said, his hands on the driver’s door.

  Ava hesitated for a moment. The resignation on Jay’s face almost made her stop and return inside with him. “I’ll be back. I’ll take him and I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll go, Ava. You stay here.” But Ava had already started the engine, a mournful sound.

  Jay did not turn around as he walked the muddy steps to his beautiful empty house.

  Ava and Henry drove the few miles down Brushy Mountain Road and to the house where they lived their lives together, where Sylvia waited at the kitchen table for them to arrive.

  IN THE COMING DAYS when Ava considered what had happened to the three of them, she wondered why she left with Henry down the mountain. There were moments she thought that the feeling of total loss like she had felt at the end of her pregnancies would ultimately consume her. As much as she tried tamp it down, a part of her looked forward to the day the feeling would eat her alive. The more pain the better. They say same knows same and the fact of Henry’s desperation drew her to him. Other times she recognized that she was likely looking for an opening in the fabric of the world she had carelessly slipped into with Jay. Henry had given her an easy escape. Mostly she knew that the scared shitless keep moving. To dwell is to die. Where do you stay Ava? Is there somewhere, anywhere, that you live?

  There was no easy explanation. Maybe the same reason Ava stood with Henry in the driveway a couple days later when he carried his two duffle bags to the trunk of his car. The same reason she threw her hand up in a wave that looked like a blessing as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road. She’d told him she wished he’d find what he wanted and she meant it. For a few moments as she watched him leave, she felt like a sucker, a fool. Women forgave the shitasses in their lives anything, took it all on themselves, let them slide with any sad mess they brought to their unsuspecting doors.

  But soon and in clearer moments she knew she had made her own choice not to lose him or at least not to lose all of her memories of him. She wanted the past where they lived and struggled and loved each other. A past that couldn’t and shouldn’t be erased. The possibility of the past, if it is a good one, or even if it has good moments, is that it can be alive, if you let it. All of it alive, not just the terror, but the beauty too. And the young encompassing and smothering love she’d felt for her lovely man—all that alive too. Otherwise all those years, her years, her life had not meant a thing.

  39

  In the backyard Ava and Devon run through the grass, they are children again. The game is tag or run or follow me all at the same time. Don never got around to putting up lattice on the back of the small trailer, so every ball they own has rolled under there in the dark. The children do not retrieve them from the place where anything could lie in wait. But they do not consider dark places today. Devon’s feet are bare the way he likes, and when he runs they touch his behind; he is elastic. Ava follows him, mirrors him the best she can. Don has brought the large boom box outside, and the plastic click of his rummaging through homemade cassette tapes softly punctuates the day. He is looking for the right song to thread through the air, set the tone, be the music they feel smoking through their brains, the particulars of the day probably lost, but the feeling, the feeling, snatched back when the song plays.

  Sylvia sits on the unstained deck watching, but in this dream she has gotten up and is making her way down the rickety deck steps. Her clothes are large and unflattering, a long-sleeve shirt over a long dress, even here in the heat of summer. She grabs onto the deck railing, and slowly makes her way down the stairs, balancing her bulk, the redistribution of her weight making her waddle. She is winded from the descent. Ava turns as her mother approaches. She is dreaming she knows for sure because she sees her mother, not just glances at her in her periphery but she feels her mother’s struggle to reach them to play with them the
nonsense game in the grass. Sylvia’s face is twisted into embarrassment. How had Ava ever missed that struggle? In the way of dreams she cannot talk to her mother, cannot signal to her or touch her. But she can watch. Again and again and again her mother gets up from the lawn chair, holds on to the railing, takes the steps slowly, with the care of a large woman, always on her way to stand with her children in the sunshine.

  40

  “Where are they?” Henry asked and took the seat to Ava’s side at the back of the dance studio. He had texted her to say he would be late, but the class had barely started. Ava pointed to the children.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it.” Ava moved her pocketbook from the chair for Henry to sit. A few other parents, cell phones in hand, stood or sat along the back wall. Ava put her hand over Henry’s and looked at his face. He’d lost weight. It had been a hard year and he looked older maybe. Or probably he looked like he was supposed to. Not seeing him every day had made his face strange, unlike itself. Ava was most likely seeing Henry as the rest of the world had always seen him.

  After a couple months of searching Henry had found a steady job (still mostly part-time, but that could change) at East Carolina University, helping admissions call and then put together and send out materials to prospective students. From Goldsboro Henry was a couple of hours from the white bubbles popping on the shore like living things. He couldn’t smell the clean but slightly metallic fish smell of the sand, but he liked the change. What was most surprising to him was that he didn’t miss the hilly landscape of the North Carolina piedmont, a place he thought was imprinted on his brain as home. On the drive there, almost to his nephew’s house where he would be staying, turtles had dotted the road washed up by a heavy rain. Henry tried to drive but he couldn’t stand the idea of popping them under his tires and stopped his car to watch them plod their way past. Henry didn’t like turtles especially, but it made him hopeful to think that nature still interested him, moved him enough to make him stand still and look. Just maybe he wasn’t as unreachable as he feared. He still lived with his nephew’s family, and he felt like a pet, the unloved cocker spaniel, that tried not to beg at the table. But he could see the end of that. In a month or two he’d get a room of his own and really start over.