Nigga, this a diamond.
You ain’t got no diamond, Jess says, laughing, and neither did Aubrey. Anyway, I see the picture and I call her. She picks up and before I can say anything, she’s saying Jess, I’m so sorry. I been meaning to call. I let her apologize for a little bit and then I tell her I know life’s busy. She ain’t the only one what’s busy. So how come I got to find out she getting married on Facebook? She apologizes again. She was going to call. Then I say congratulations, tell her I’m excited for her. Better not hear about that wedding on Facebook though. And she goes, You kidding? You know you’re my maid of honor. You know we’re throwing the wildest bachelorette party. Beer. Four-wheelers. Mudding. Boats. Fishing. Dirt bikes. More beer. Strippers. Maybe back on the bikes.
Y’all going to be sober enough to ride? I ask.
We chuckle and Jess drags on her cigarette. The frogs keep buzzing. Above, the dark, fleecy clouds that rolled in while we were at dinner begin to part. Patches of the sky reveal clusters of stars, small alone but numerous together.
We was just talking, Jess says. We wouldn’t ride drunk. Well, we wouldn’t ride too drunk. So she’s telling me about the bachelorette party and we start laughing and planning. Then I got to go. She says she’s going to make it up to me. Going to call more. This was back when I was working at Sonny’s. I was on my break and stepped out to smoke when I looked on my phone and seen the news and called her. Break was about ending now. So we hang up. But if I’m being honest, I’m still pissed. I mean, we been best friends since middle school. Our moms are best friends. Only picture my mom got in her wallet is me and Aubrey at the beach. So I’m crying and I’m mad and when I’m done crying I tell myself, You’re not calling that girl till she calls you. Sure enough, weeks go by and she don’t call. So I pick up the phone.
You just let it go? I ask.
Hell no, I ain’t let it go, she says. I was pissed. I’m still pissed. But I wanted to talk. So we talked and then I called her again and she picked up and we talked again. Pretty soon we was talking every week. Then she came down. Picked her up from the airport. Drove her to the Publix to get some things. Stopped by the CVS for a toothbrush. That girl forgot a toothbrush.
She never was much good at remembering things, I say.
Or taking care of herself, Desmond says.
I know that’s right, she says.
The low-lying weight of the clouds moves fast across the sky, leaving wisps in their wake, some of which are thin enough to see through. Elsewhere, the star-covered night grows and a half-moon comes into sight.
So then I drop her off at her mom’s. Couple hours later, she calls me. Says she’s at Flagler Hospital visiting her grandma. Her whole family’s there and her pops is being a dickhead and she needs me to pick her up. So I go. Then we go to a bar. Whole week’s like that. She’s with her family until she can’t stand them no more and then we drink. I drove her about five, six hundred miles that week. Drove her everywhere except the night I didn’t.
Jess looks down and shakes her head. I put a hand on her back. Her shoulders tremble; maybe she’s about to cry. We are quiet for a while, until Jess’s body grows still. Then she drags for a long time. The burning end glows a bright pink. The length of the inhale seems inhuman. Time stretches. Then she finally exhales a long plume of smoke, and her breath is the loudest sound around.
Nobody I chill with really knew Aubrey like y’all, Desmond says. Everybody I talk to always be like, That sucks.
As if I ain’t know it sucks, Jess says.
Or they say I’m sorry, I say.
As if I don’t know they sorry, Jess says. Whole damn town’s sorry.
I’m saying though, Desmond says. It fucks me up that ain’t nobody get it.
The night is not clear yet, but the clouds are moving quickly enough that I know it will come soon. For the moment, we are somewhere between an unlit night and one with too many lights.
Well, we here now, Jess says, chuckling as she drops her smoke into a pot.
We do the same. I hear the water running and dishes clanging behind us. The mess we made, like the food we ate, will soon disappear as though nothing happened. As we walk back in to join the cleanup crew, my eyes no longer droop. Jess puts her arm around my mid-section and says, Glad you’re home.
Her eyes are red. She has cooked, eaten, listened to me bullshit, told the truth, and she is still here. Beyond her, Desmond drags his feet, his body struggling to keep up with the night. When we step onto the back porch, we see Egypt and Twig through the kitchen window. Egypt leans against the counter as she washes and Twig sways from side to side as he dries. They are as tired as the rest of us.
Then, in the dark, I see her. Aubrey’s standing in front of her locker facing me, her dark eyes wide and her lips half-pursed, half-grinning. She looks like she might say something and I want to say something too and to hold her, but I know that’s not where this memory leads. I’m grateful to have seen her so vividly and to have felt and to feel so strongly about her that I want to change the laws of time. Jess tightens her grip on my waist and I know I’m not dreaming alone.
Afterlives
As we leave Jess’s, my limbs feel elastic, the way they did after warming up at track practice. Tonight, their lightness stems from a little to eat and a lot to drink. To my left and right, Des and Twig grin wide from some joke Des made about my lineup, and I let the liquor carry me away.
Des, Twig, and I circle each other on Jess’s lawn. We swing and back away without breaking our smiles. Des talks a lot of shit about how lucky we are that we aren’t actually scrapping. Twig manages a few words in response. I am breathing too heavy to say anything. Soon enough, this light jogging strains my lungs and I stop to spit phlegm. While I wipe what remains from my lip with my fist, I feel a hit and fall. Twig has tackled me.
Dogpile, Des screams. He taps his elbow, mimicking a professional wrestler, and leaps at us. When he lands on his side, Twig’s arm lingers for a second around my midsection and the three of us are a tangle of limbs in the night. Twig and Des stand up. I stay staring at the starry night. They pull me to my feet and usher me into the car.
We leave Jess’s and joyride. With each turn, liquid sloshes in my stomach. We plan for the remaining hours. Twig says he knows a place nobody knows; he has something to show us.
How we get there? Desmond asks.
Ninety-five or Old Kings, Twig says.
Let’s take Old Kings, I say.
Desmond shakes his head and says, Man comes home and thinks he’s in charge.
Bro, tell me why Baby D always thinks he runs shit, says Twig.
Thinks this his car and shit, Egypt says.
Like he bought this shit, Desmond says.
Like he owns this town, Twig says.
Like we a bunch of no-good niggas without him, Egypt says.
All right, fuck y’all then, I say. Just won’t say nothing at all.
They ain’t teach you how to laugh at that big fancy school? Egypt says. Ain’t they teach you about cracking?
Oh, so now I’m dumb, I say.
Nigga, you been dumb, Egypt says.
We keep joking as we ride down Old Kings. I look for the town’s changes: The ABC liquor that used to be an abandoned lot, the Moe’s that used to be parking, the paved-over grooves in the McDonald’s lot where the Greyhound used to stop. Everyone keeps talking, but my buzz makes it harder to follow the conversation. The ride, the streets, and the twinkles in the night blur.
Before I realize it, we’re far south on Old Kings, and I say, Y’all think Coach Howard still lives down here?
Egypt kisses her teeth and says, Don’t remind me.
Des shoots me an angry glance in the rearview. I suppose Egypt finally told Des about Coach Howard and Tati. Des turns the music up.
Twig directs us into one of the housing developments they abandoned after the 2008 crash. There are no streetlights. The moon tints everything blue. We follow a winding road, grass encroaching on both sides. As we make
our way in, the trees recede and the lots flatten, leveled a decade ago by some ambitious contractor. Greenery sprouts in their midst.
Everyone gets out. Twig pulls fireworks from his bag. We shoot them at the sky and they streak yellow, orange, and pink. We aim roman candles at and run from one another. We laugh in the high pitches of prepubescent children. My stomach swells with glee and my heart pounds from the gasps for air. I call a time-out to bend over and catch my breath. My head spins. The ground tilts one way and then the other. The ecstasy in my gut turns into nausea. I burp and smell whiskey. I wrinkle my nose, stand up, and walk to Egypt, who sits on the hood of Des’s car.
Scared? Egypt asks.
Who? Me?
I don’t know who you fronting for.
Her regal cheekbones and large eyes shine in the moonlight. She watches me with caution as though she knows what’s on my mind.
Thanks for coming with us, I say.
We friends, ain’t we? she says.
Still. Can’t help but feel like I been dragging y’all around.
Boy, you don’t never learn. Ain’t nobody come who ain’t want to come.
My cheeks burn. I turn away from her and watch Des and Twig weave around the lot, shooting roman candles at each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Egypt smoke one of Des’s cigarettes. My thoughts blur and my memory of the time since Jess’s comes in patches, as does the shame of risking Des’s life and lying to everyone for so long. The heft of keeping secrets presses down once more, and I imagine telling her everything about my father, about my brother, about Aubrey and see myself bent over crying in her arms. When I turn to her, before I can say anything, she speaks up.
You ain’t got to apologize to me, Daniel.
But I want to.
Well, I ain’t a priest and this ain’t a confessional.
Almost wish it was.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Egypt takes a long drag of the cigarette and keeps watching the boys. Then she turns to me and continues, It ain’t my job to tell you if you a bad person. You want to swap stories or pour one out, I’m here. But you got to go somewhere else with all that other shit.
Figure you’re right, I say, stroking my chin’s stubble. Don’t know how I survived so long without you giving it to me straight.
The weight you put on, looks like you figured it out all right.
Watch it now.
No, it look good, Egypt says. In high school you was just bones in a skin bag. Looking like you might fall through your jeans one day if your legs wasn’t so damn big. You the only one whose speed suit ain’t fit.
You remember that one meet when I wore boxers and they was too big for me so the plaid was just sticking out the bottom?
Your knees all ashy like you been rolling around in dirt and your boxers falling out your speed suit. Remember me and Tati was screaming, Let’s go, Ashy Larry! the whole damn race. Had everybody in the stands rolling.
As we talk, the ground feels unsteady beneath my legs. I sit on the hood and think Aubrey would be happy that we are all together. Egypt hands me a bottle of water and makes me drink. Its cool distracts for a moment, but the feeling of being on a dinghy tossed by a ship’s wake returns. My mouth sweats. I wander away to one of the undeveloped lots. I spit. Liquid keeps pooling in my mouth. I exhale, feeling fine for a moment, and in the silence, I remember the day Aubrey and I rode the flood. Something gathers in my eyes. I close them. In the dark, my head spins. My body seizes as I drop to my knees and vomit. Between the pain of my sore throat and clutching stomach, I barely feel the liquid pouring out of my mouth, the mucous from my nose, or the tears on my face. Everyone gathers around me as I spew my insides onto the grass. When I finish, Egypt hands me the tissues from her purse, and I wipe the vomit and the tears.
My face still cold from the liquid, as I fade out of consciousness in the front seat of Des’s car, I recall the story Mom told about her ancestor, a tale she heard from her grandfather, who heard it from his wife. My ancestor followed the enslaved preacher Archer Sharpe in Montego Bay in the 1820s. Sharpe traveled the island, teaching the enslaved in huts on the outskirts of farms after long days of harvesting. In one of those homes, Archer told my ancestor’s congregation that, to be reborn, they must be baptized in a river, where the spirits of protection lived. They must clear the land of European witchcraft. Only then would Jesus return to deliver them from the whip.
In the early 1830s, he changed his name to Samuel. Shortly thereafter, he and his brothers stole a British newspaper and read about Parliament’s debate on abolition. They claimed it granted them freedom. They spread the word in late December. Close to the anniversary of the birth of the Lord’s son, they went on strike. The enslavers alerted the Colonial armed forces, who attacked the enslaved people to strike fear into their property. The survivors assaulted their aggressors and burned their crops. The sweet sugarcane fumes blanketed the air like gaseous molasses, the smoke visible from miles away.
Over the next two weeks, the enslaved people killed fourteen enslavers, and the enslavers killed over two hundred of the enslaved. After, the enslavers imprisoned and executed three hundred more, including the preacher, Sam Sharpe. When they held him at gunpoint on the gallows, a noose around his neck, he repeated the words he said not long before: I would rather die among yonder gallows than live in slavery.
The rope snapped Daddy Sharpe’s neck. His head hung in some inhuman direction. But as his jaw rotated behind his shoulders, it opened. Through the gap between his yellowed teeth, his spirit rushed upward like the smoke of the sweet burning sugarcane sent heavenward on the back of the wind.
A grin stretching my cheeks, I look at Des, who asks, You feeling better?
Crackers helped.
Think you’re going to vomit again?
Nothing left in my stomach.
Good, he says. They asleep back there?
Des tilts the rearview mirror to get a better look. I turn around. Twig slouches against the door, his legs stretched along the floor. Egypt lies still, curled in on herself, her head leaning against the window and her feet on the seat. Soft purple eyeshadow, a shade I suddenly wish I was wearing, covers her closed eyes, which flutter whenever we hit a bump.
They asleep, I say.
I take the cord from Egypt’s phone and plug in my own. Because I have heard this song so many times, it sounds like a memory. I stare out the window and watch Flagler passing by until I hear Des rap along with Tupac, the two addressing some young gun, trying to hide from all attention, who has forgotten that he is one of the hopeless. Lines collect on his forehead. Brown streaks of dirt cake the thin straps of his white tank. The moonlight reaches through the trees and catches his face, which shines. I’ve been watching him for a while, but he doesn’t look back at me. I want to tell Des what’s on my mind now that Egypt and Twig are asleep, but my gut remains shaky.
That girl falls asleep so easy, boy. I’m telling you, Des says. She be falling asleep head bobbing in the car or in her chair. Swear to God, we was at this club in Daytona and she fell asleep standing up.
You lying.
How I’m lying?
She ain’t never fall asleep standing up in no club.
Swear to God, bro. On my mom.
Out the window, Spanish moss hangs low from branches overhead. The bases of the trees beside the road are obscured by muck. In late summer, when the thunderstorms roll in daily, this is all swamp. After a heavy rain, its waters lap against the road like the ocean storming A1A in a hurricane. The water beneath our wheels would carry us away.
This my favorite drive in all Florida, I say.
Who you telling? Des asks. Been known this was your favorite.
We turn left on Old Dixie. Down here, it’s a small patch of road connecting US-1, I-95, John Anderson, and A1A. It’s a short detour connecting better-traveled highways for those racing north or south, hoping to escape Flagler County, a scenic route between scenic routes in this suburb of a suburb. We e
ase to a stop behind a line of cars whose taillights blare red. The Intracoastal’s waters splash against the dirt-sand shore in the distance.
Always got to wait for this goddamn drawbridge, Des says. He rolls down his window, lights a cigarette. I exhale and my nervousness is still there. I look out the window, inhale the swamp. Finally, I turn to Des and say, You believe in an afterlife?
Before he responds, the image returns, a newly freed ancestor, older now, taking her daughter to Myal rituals in the town center. The Myal men proclaimed that British witchcraft was killing their crops. At dusk, they began dancing and chanting. Near the night’s midpoint, I imagine my ancestor’s daughter stole away to nod off under a tree. When my ancestor found her, she carried her home and put her to bed.
Months later, the Myal men’s rituals spread. In their wake, the freed Jamaicans assaulted their former enslavers and burned their property. Fearing another Christmas Rebellion, the constables raided the huts on the edge of the farms where the newly free worked for their former masters. They killed all my ancestors except the one who had slept through the Myal ritual months before.
When the bloodshed ended, the survivors cleared the debris and scrubbed blood out of what they could repurpose. Then they rearranged the remaining furniture and flipped over their mattresses so the newly arisen duppy wouldn’t recognize their homes. By the time their hands ached, they had to leave. My ancestor’s daughter followed them to her first day of fieldwork.
In the evening, everyone prepared food, gathered what little alcohol they had stashed away, and carried both to the clearing in the middle of their huts. They ate and drank and shared stories about their families. As the night darkened, at a moment of silence between tales, my ancestor’s daughter sang. Everyone joined in a ritual they continued for eight nights.
On the ninth night, they piled food on a table for the rootless, hungry duppy. Some of the living beat their drums to the rhythm of a horse running, which moved them to dance until the oldest turned away from the festivities. The elder stared openmouthed at the horizon and said she recognized a duppy, her husband. She greeted him. The word spread through the party, the dance ended, and everyone joined in. My ancestor’s daughter said goodbye to her father and her mother as she watched them drift skyward to join the billowing cloud of the others, who were catching the wind that would carry them to Africa.
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