New People

by Danzy Senna

  The woman is not Susan. She has dark hair and skin the same shade as Maria’s. It must be Consuela. The real Consuela, like the Real Roxanne. Maria edges closer to get a better look. She is startled to see a much older woman, heavy-set and middle-aged, with gray streaks in her hair. She is a woman of a certain age, with coarse plain features, pockmarked skin. Maria tries to remember what she herself looks like, but she draws a blank. Her eyes sting as she backs away from the sleeping woman, and she turns away and heads toward the bedroom. It’s a mess. The bed is piled with clothes and baby paraphernalia. Maria glances in at June. She’s asleep in the squalor, on her back, her face tilted up to the ceiling. Maria can see she’s grown since the last time she saw her. Susan has at least been feeding her.

  Maria doesn’t dawdle. She has to get to the poet. She starts toward the window, but midway there she steps on something and laughter fills the room. It’s a Monchhichi doll. She has somehow stepped on a talking Monchhichi doll. The laughter dies out after some seconds, but it’s too late. June is awake. She begins to whimper.

  Maria stands frozen, waiting for the baby to fall back asleep. She has to fall back asleep. But the whimper is turning into a cry.

  Maria leans over the crib, trying to shush her with a finger to her lips, but at the sight of Maria’s face June begins to cry harder, a bleating, angry sound.

  Come on, Maria whispers. Come on, mi hija. She says it with a Spanish accent. She picks up a nubby pink blanket and tries to lay it over the baby, thinking it might comfort or warm her, but she fights it off.

  Sighing, Maria picks up the baby. She lifts her up and down, swings her around in a circle. She attempts a smile. She sings. Welcome, welcome all of you, we’re so glad you are here with us. It’s that song from the album, the children’s cut, the one she has been listening to for years. She pretends they are having fun. But the baby only screams louder. It is the sound of the biggest mosquito in the world. Maria swings June around in a faster, wider circle, her hands gripping beneath the baby’s armpits, so that the legs dangle free. The baby looks shocked by the motion, but only stops screaming to take bigger gulps of air and start her shrill siren wail all over again.

  She picks up the rubber giraffe that lies nearby. She tries to put it in June’s mouth, remembering from last time that the baby liked to suck on it, but June bats it away and screams louder. Hers is a war cry. She must have learned it at that Beijing orphanage. The survivors cry the loudest. Maria taps the giraffe against June’s lips, saying, Take it, come on. Just take it. June turns her head from side to side, sneering, squawking, as if offended by the peace offering. Nothing is good enough for this baby. Maria feels the tightening sensation in her brain. She shakes the baby, jostles her, whispering to her she needs to be quiet. She just wants to surprise her out of her fury, the way men in old movies slap the hysterical woman across the face. She thinks if she can just startle June she will calm down and understand that she’s acting crazy, that it’s not an emergency. She will know that Maria was just passing through the bedroom, not even planning to hang out. She shakes her, saying, calm down, just calm the fuck down.

  The baby does go quiet then. Maria holds her in the stillness, feeling the warmth and weight of her body in her arms, smelling her own pungent odor rise up around them.

  On the last night at the hospice, Gloria returned to herself. Her other personas, the aging anthropologist, the New Age sass, dissipated, and she was Gloria again. She seemed to recognize Maria too, though it wasn’t entirely clear. She lifted a bony arm and pointed weakly at her where she sat at the bedside and said Oh, oh, it’s you. She patted the edge of her bed and Maria climbed into her mother’s bed and lay beside her under the sheets. Gloria was so tiny in her last hours. Nobody had ever told Maria how people disappear in stages. Every moment Gloria seemed to grow smaller. In her delirium, she kept calling Maria ‘Mama,’ and crying to her about some fig tree she’d fallen out of as a child. She kept asking, Where did you go? Where did you go all this time? Maria held Gloria like a baby and stroked her brow and said, There, there. She patted Gloria’s back as if she were her real mother, telling her lies like a real mother. Everything’s going to be all right. It’s going to be fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  The night was long and full of false stops and machines beeping in the dark and at some point Maria fell into a dreamless sleep. She woke to find Gloria stiff and cold beside her, her eyes wide open like she’d been startled. The nurses came to tend to the body and told Maria she was free to go. On her way out of the hospice, they gave her a clear plastic bag holding Gloria’s belongings. Her Birkenstocks inside looked like giant dog chews.

  Maria senses a presence. The gray thing. She is not alone. There is somebody here with her. But when she turns around she sees it is not the gray thing at all. It is Consuela. She has risen finally from her Beaujolais slumber and is watching Maria from the doorway, her eyes large, fingers held over her lips. She asks a question in Spanish, then some fog falls away and she rushes toward Maria and yanks the baby out of her arms. She backs away, stroking June’s hair, half crying, and disappears into the other room. Maria can hear her picking up the phone, punching in numbers.

  Maria goes to the window and climbs out onto the fire escape, the way she did before. She pulls the window shut behind her. The night air feels cold against her skin. She stands panting for a moment, searching the sky for a pinprick of light. An airplane moving west. She sees nothing, just darkness in all directions.

  Distantly, she hears a siren. She crouches low and crawls along the metal landing until she is outside of the poet’s window. It is open a crack and she pulls it up and climbs inside, sliding the window closed behind her.

  Luther Vandross is no longer playing. There is no music. She can hear a shower running. The apartment looks somehow duller, more ordinary than it did the first time. She sees a girl’s ankle boots lying on the floor beside the sofa, a purse open there. She goes to the purse and opens it. She takes out the wallet, looks inside, though she already knows whose face she will see on the photo ID. She stares at the face behind the plastic. It’s not a good picture. Lisa’s hair has been hot-combed to straightness. She looks ordinary, sullen, plain without the curls, without the objet d’art head wrap. She doesn’t look anything like the doll Khalil and Maria had made in her image, the doll by Ceres Dalton.

  She puts the wallet away and heads toward the sound of the shower. The bathroom door is open a crack. Maria peeks inside. The air is so steamy; she can just make out human shapes behind the frosted pebbled glass. She hears their laughter and whispers beneath the steady stream of water. They don’t see her. They don’t sense her. She wonders what would happen if she went inside and stepped up to the glass and pressed her face against it. At what point would they notice her there?

  Out in the building’s corridor there are sounds of a commotion. Official footsteps, a police radio, a woman speaking in Spanish. Then a sudden and stern knocking on the poet’s door.

  Maria turns and ducks into the poet’s bedroom. There is a space between his dresser and his desk. She slips inside the space and crouches there, hugging her knees. She can hear everything from here. The shower turning off. The glass door sliding open. Their voices. His and Lisa’s.

  Are you expecting somebody?

  No. Wait here.

  The poet’s footsteps crossing the apartment, the front door opening, his voice speaking in low tones to the police. Consuela is out in the hallway too. Maria can hear her saying something about a bruja. That’s the word she uses. Bruja. Other neighbors have come out into the hall to see what is the matter. Bewildered questions fly. Beneath it all, Maria can make out another sound, a familiar gnat-like buzz. Baby June. Hers is a survivor orphan’s warrior cry.

  The poet raises his voice, trying to be heard over the wailing: No, officer, nobody came around here.

  The sound of the baby awakes something inside of her. She
must think. She must act. She crawls on all fours toward the poet’s bed and scoots underneath. It is a shallow space. She is still holding the rubber giraffe in her hand. She can hear Lisa out there. She has somehow emerged from the bathroom, dewy and clean, to join the conversation at the front door. Maria imagines her wearing the poet’s bathrobe, the head wrap discarded, her curls dripping wet around her face.

  The conversation in the other room goes on for a long time. Until finally it is over. She hears the door click shut. She hears their voices in the kitchen. They are having a midnight snack together. A refrigerator door opening and closing. Their voices speaking in low serious tones. Pouring drinks. Clinking glasses. A sound of chairs scraping the floor.

  They return to the bedroom. Maria holds her breath. She can see their bare feet beside the bed—his long and flat, hers smaller, with a high arch, the toenails painted burgundy. They are kissing. She hears the sucking noises. They fall on top of the mattress, which sinks lower over Maria’s face. They roll around, slurping each other. Maria has to turn her face to the side to avoid her nose getting bruised in the sexual games that follow. It is disgusting to her what they do. Wholesome. It is not the best sex she’s ever heard, but it’s not the worst either. It’s real sex with real people. There is tender sighing and rhythmic grunting. She bites on the giraffe to keep from screaming. Her mouth fills with the taste of rubber.

  She thinks about the men who were the first to arrive by helicopter. They said it was unclear what they were looking at from up above. They said it looked like the world’s largest patchwork quilt spread out on the ground. They said it looked like a giant used car lot—all those specks of bright color. So many different colors. It was only when they got down to three hundred feet that the smell hit them. Unmistakable.

  Above Maria’s head, the sex is over. They are talking. Pillow talk.

  Do you think someone really tried to steal that baby?

  I doubt it. The nanny probably made the whole thing up.

  Why would she lie?

  Maybe she was losing her shit. I wouldn’t blame her. I had to listen to that baby cry day and night. I mean, I’ve almost called the cops on that baby a few times myself.

  You’re bad.

  Roll over. Let me spoon you.

  The mattress shifts, sinks lower so it is touching Maria’s nose.

  Hey, he says.

  Yeah?

  You’re real cool people. I’m—I’m glad you’re here. You know?

  More wetness. Sucking. Finally, silence. Their breathing deepens into sleep.

  From beneath, Maria can see the poet’s desk, his computer, a stack of books, manuscript pages. She can see their clothes strewn on the floor, pants legs entangled. She can see the dusky light, half blue, half gray. It is the hour between—still dark enough that she can crawl away. She can still go back. But she is so tired. Her bones feel heavy, ancient, like those of a much older woman. She closes her eyes, thinking she will just rest for a moment, and drifts off into another time and space. In the dream, she is there with all the people. They are watching the sky for the airplane that will take them home. In the dream, there is still time. But when she opens her eyes, she sees it is too late. The night has passed. A white light fills the room.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Danzy Senna’s first novel, the bestselling Caucasia, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association’s Alex Award, was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was translated into nearly a dozen languages. A recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, Senna is also the author of the novel Symptomatic, the memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, and the story collection You Are Free. She lives in Los Angeles.

  danzysenna.com

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