by Jesmyn Ward
“What you come back here for?” The question sounded sharply in the air, like a slap.
“Miss Lillian.”
For a second, the way Samuel slid side to side on his feet reminded her of him as a teenager. She saw his face as it had been: wide, generous smile, brown-black eyes, a weak jaw, and a sandy-brown, curly afro. Something about the way he stood reminded her of the twins. She felt a twinge of sympathy for him then in her stomach, like a small insect turning and burrowing in the earth.
“How’s the boys? They eighteen now, huh?”
“They just graduated.” Ma-mee remembered Samuel’s last official visit with the twins; it was their sixth birthday. He’d bought them matching pairs of shoes. They were blue high-tops and had small puffy decal stickers of robots on the sides. The twins had worn them religiously for several weeks until the decals had fallen off. Samuel stayed for an hour or so, gave them their presents, refused cake, and then left. He’d twitched the entire time and looked out the window frequently. Ma-mee had wanted to catch him in the hallway on one of his trips to the bathroom, and away from the boys, to shove him against the wall and wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze and feel his damp neck give.
Lucien had only died two years before, and she knew she was a little crazy, that loss had made her a stranger to herself. Her grief at Lucien’s passing had burned through her; it had left her black and fallow as a stretch of forest burned by lightning—a landscape of cinder and truncated, spindly pines whose bodies were twisted black as their tops were still waving and dull green. A year after Lucien had died, Cille left, and the only thing that kept her sane were the twins; how precious their round, large, curly-haired heads, their gap-toothed mouths, their constant questions had been to her. Ma-mee could not understand how Samuel could not love that. They had been bewildered in the beginning, and she’d had to make excuses for Samuel, but then they’d gotten older, and they’d learned how not to miss him. They’d stopped asking about him. They’d spent their time running around the neighborhood in packs with Dunny and the other boys, shooting BB guns and riding their bikes and playing basketball. She was glad she hadn’t had to lie anymore. “Joshua got a job down at the pier. Christophe’s looking.”
“Oh. Well, alright.” Samuel pushed away from the shaded cool thrown by the eaves and retreated to the glare of the sun. The light seemed to diminish him so that his outline was smaller than the effluent, leafy azaleas, so that he was all spindly arms and legs; a naked bush. “Can you just tell them that I’m home now and that I’ll be around?”
“Sure.” It had never made a difference whether he was around or not. After that sixth birthday, Ma-mee knew he had still been around the neighborhood. Paul would see Samuel around, tell her about it, always begin his sentences with, “I saw that sonofabitch. . . .” Ma-mee knew jailhouse fervor when she heard it. She barely resisted snorting, and instead picked up a piece of flattened, thick, layered newspaper from a small card table near her chair and began fanning herself.
“Thank you, Ms. Lillian.” There was nothing more she wanted to say to him. “See you later.”
“Goodbye, Samuel.” The light ate at him, pared him away in pieces as he walked away, until he disappeared when he hit the road. Ma-mee fanned herself faster, noticed, and then stopped. She wouldn’t tell the boys; part of her felt that telling them would be giving something to Samuel. She smelled wisteria and crepe myrtle, and she tried to relax, to shake the encounter away with the heavy musk of the flowers. He had made her feel dirty. Even if he had just completed some kind of rehabilitation program, he still had that jumpiness about him, that anxious, unsettled air. She thought of her niece Iolanthe, who came over every week or so to borrow sugar or cornmeal, and Blackjack, one of her cousin’s children, who would sometimes wander over in the day and offer to cut her grass for five dollars, and other drug addicts around Sandman’s age in the neighborhood who were addicted to drinking and all kinds of dope. They all acted the same; all moved as if they were perpetually waiting for something astounding to happen: a tornado, a flood, an earthquake.
So, she wouldn’t tell the twins. It was quiet; there were no boards creaking, no breathing sounds, no doors creaking open or closed. She raised her face to the air, knowing that she probably looked like an animal, like the stray dogs in the neighborhood did when they caught the scent of a rabbit that had strayed into a yard from the wood. Would she rather have Samuel approach them in the street and casually mention to them that he had come by and talked to her? She didn’t want to lie to them like that; protect them, yes, but leave them to be surprised, no. She had heard them talking about him. She had noticed how they hated to say his name. She would mention it to them and not make a big deal of it. She’d prepare them. Ma-mee ran through a list of ingredients in her head; she would make corn bread. She would set it on the board above the sink and let it cool so it would be sweet and light, and she would defrost the red beans she’d frozen. The evening would be quiet, and outside in the dark, even the insects would be sated. Ma-mee would ask Christophe to play those tapes on the radio during dinner. The ribbon of Al Green’s voice would tie the evening. Perhaps she could tell them a couple of funny stories about Lucien; perhaps she could make them laugh. Then she would say it.
The seagulls meandered in threesomes through the air over the dock. They paused to alight on the concrete railings bordering the water, and pecked inquisitively at the asphalt, at sodden lumps of paper and flapping wads of napkins and hamburger wrappers. The sun was so bright it blanched the surface of the water crystal. The glare hurt the eyes as it shimmered and rebuffed the sun. When the birds flew out away from the dock over the water, they disappeared. Even so, Joshua heard them calling in rough, scratchy voices to one another as they skimmed over the salty, distended waves.
Joshua knew that there were some places in Alabama where the water was blue, where it was clear enough to see the sandy bottom, but here in Mississippi, it was so gray. He was grateful for the sun in that way; it threw a glamour over the water and made it appear to be something else. Joshua picked up another twenty-pound sack of chicken, loaded it on a pallet, and grimaced as he wiped away a splatter of pasty bird shit from his forearm. He’d stuck to Leo’s back, squinted against the violent shine of the man’s orange overalls, and stooped so he could hear Leo over the clanging of the ships’ bells, the waves, the gulls, the grind and churn of the cranes and lifts and men as Leo trained him. He’d been loading sacks for close to an hour. He smelled of sea salt and sweat salt and musk. He bent to pick up another sack when he felt a hand grip his elbow; he hadn’t heard anyone call his name. Leo stood at his side.
“You can go take a break, now. I’ll have you load a few more pallets when you done, and then you can leave for the day. We don’t want to tire you out too much—we want you to come back tomorrow.” Leo smiled; one of his front teeth was chipped. Leo must have seen Joshua looking, because he gestured to his mouth with his gloved hand and said, “Got this in a dirt bike accident when I was sixteen. Glad this was the only thing I broke.”
Joshua ducked his head, a gesture he knew probably seemed like a bow to Leo, and walked to the office building to retrieve his lunch from his narrow gray locker. The air was so cold and dry in the building that it shocked him; he started shaking and had trouble fitting the thin key shaped like a heart into the lock. There was a small cafeteria with long wooden tables and metal chairs in the building, but he didn’t feel like eating there. He was hungry, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to eat inside; he could see himself sitting on a hard chair by himself in a corner of the room, his shoulders rounded as if to block out the room, the men quietly joking and shoving spoons into their mouths. He walked outside and turned from the building and followed the seawall away from the boats and men and the work and climbed up and perched on the edge of the wall facing the sea. All of it was an unpleasant rumbling to the left of him.
Joshua heard the seagulls screaming above him, and he watched them land a few feet awa
y from him. They dropped gracefully from the air to palm the hot, tarry asphalt. He pulled his sandwich from the bag and was surprised to see that it was flat. He hadn’t had anything else in his locker; he had no idea what could have smashed it like that. The locker had been cold, but even so the jelly had melted and slid out of the sandwich to smear against the plastic bag; the peanut butter bubbled away from the sides of the doughy, mashed bread. The sandwich had been small and meager that morning, but it was all he had time to fix, and now, smashed as it was, it seemed even smaller and more meager, and his stomach was a sucking black hole. He hadn’t made more because he hadn’t wanted to eat the last of the bread.
His shirt was losing the coolness it had taken on while he was in the building. The heat was squeezing him again, squeezing him as it had when he was lifting and throwing those sacks. His hands had felt like they were going to spontaneously combust inside those thick, padded suede gloves. He had wanted to punch Leo in the face while he was coaching him, punch himself in the face for taking this stupid, hard job, had wanted to strip off his pants and the heavy, cumbersome boots, and walk home. Collapsing of heat stroke while dodging traffic, hitching a ride, anything had to be better than this: anything but facing Ma-mee and Christophe and feeling like he had failed. He licked jelly from his finger. He would endure it.
“You know we got a cafeteria, don’t you?” Leo had snuck up on him again. Joshua shifted on the seawall, away from the glassy sheen of the water, to answer.
“Yeah, I know. It’s too cold in there for me.” How in the hell did he sneak up on people when he was such a big man? “What you think so far?”
“It’s alright.” Joshua swallowed and glanced back toward the water.
“It gets better once you get used to it.”
“Yeah?” Out on the horizon, the islands were dark, thin fringes. They reminded Joshua of eyelashes.
“Yeah. The first day is always the hardest. Your muscles got to get used to the work. Pretty soon, you won’t even think about it.”
“Oh.” A seagull flapped its wings next to Joshua’s head and landed on the seawall. Joshua shooed it away with the sandwich. The bird didn’t seem to mind. It squawked, nodded its head several times as if it were stabbing the air with its beak, and hopped toward him again. Leo yelled “Hey!” and waved at the bird. It fluttered backward and away, startled. Leo yelled again, and it took to the air.
“Flying rats,” Leo spat. “Well.” Leo was looking at Joshua as if he was waiting for him to say something. Joshua didn’t want to talk—he wanted to leave. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Alright.” Joshua shoved the last bite into the hollow of his cheek, and chewed. Leo walked away across the parking lot. Joshua watched him go and eyed the birds hopping about on the asphalt. He wondered if the pavement burned their feet. They danced closer to him. He folded up the paper bag: he could reuse it. One of the birds, perhaps the one that had just landed on the seawall next to him, swooped down a foot away from him and shrieked. Joshua didn’t wave it away. He squinted at the bird and its followers. He was bracing himself against the heat: his neck tense, his shoulders stiff. That was the wrong way to go about it. He forced himself to loosen his chest and inhale the air, to invite it to him. It was bearable then. As he walked through the cluster of birds, they hopped behind him a small way from the wall, like a posse. They stopped and called to him when they realized he had nothing to offer them. He looked back to see them fluttering away toward the garbage cans; they floated haphazardly along in tandem with the blowing napkins. He wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. He didn’t agree with Leo; they weren’t filthy, and they weren’t flying rats—they were just scrabbling and hungry, like everything else.
Christophe woke to a furtive scratching sound, the sound of a fingernail against wood, and then a soft tapping. He opened his eyes and remembered it all: the drinking, the smoking, the admission, the blackout, the blurry, drunken drive he’d taken the morning after dropping Joshua off at work, the weekend he’d spent running from his brother like a darting deer, this morning’s silent, long drive. He’d sat in the parking lot of the Oreck vacuum company until the time had come to drop off applications only to be told that they weren’t accepting any because there were no open positions. Back at the house, he’d snuck into the back door while Ma-mee was on the porch. It was late in the day, and here he was in the bed with no job and no prospects and his brother was gone. He slid the pillow, cool on the underside, over his face and pulled it to the side so he could see out one eye. Laila stood in the doorway, ready to knock again.
“Hey, Chris,” she said softly.
“Hey, Laila.” Christophe managed to grind this out through his parched, closed throat. He blinked at her with his one open eye, shut it, and pulled the pillow back over his head. She was bright and clean and pretty and wearing short shorts, as always.
“I came over to do your hair.”
“What?” Christophe spoke into the pillow and instantly regretted it. His mouth stank.
“Joshua didn’t tell you?” Laila stuck her fists into her shorts. “He asked me to come over today and do your hair.”
“Oh.” Christophe wanted to cover his face with the pillow again and go back to sleep, to tell Laila and her legs to go away, but who knew when she would be able to braid his hair again. Only she could do it well; he imagined it was because she braided his twin’s hair regularly: her fingers familiar and fond of his brother’s hair. He shouldn’t be jealous, but he thought about Joshua again, and knew one of the reasons she liked him so much was because of his light eyes, his easier-to-braid hair. His hair had to be neater; prospective employers would think him lazy and unreliable if he wore his hair wild and curly. “Alright.” He sat up. “It’s going to be a minute, Laila.”
“It’s alright. I’ll be in the living room with Ma-mee.”
Out of the shower, Christophe threw on whatever he pulled out of the drawer first, grabbed some moisturizer and a comb, and walked to the living room.
Laila was sitting on one of the sofas. Ma-mee sat across from her in her easy chair. They were watching The Price Is Right on TV. People were cheering in a messy, colorful blur. He shuffled over to Ma-mee and kissed her and barely caught himself from tumbling into her chair. She gripped his arm and smiled. She wasn’t squinting; something about the smile seemed off. Christophe thought to say sorry, but as he opened his mouth, she squeezed him again and let him go. He was still clumsy with sleep. He sat between Laila’s knees.
“Did you bring rubber bands?” Laila’s question surprised him. No, he had forgotten the rubber bands in the room. Her kneecaps were marked with thready scars.
“No.”
“It’s alright. I brought some.” Christophe felt her shift to pull them out of her pocket. The scars drew closer before moving away. “They’re brown. Joshua likes them brown . . . so I figured you did too.” She hesitated. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah.” Christophe wondered about Joshua then, wondered if he was sweating out his own braids at the pier.
Christophe felt the fine tail of the comb like a finger on his scalp. It divided his head into sections; it traced rivers of forgetting on his skin. It felt good. He started to doze, and then Laila’s hands jerked him awake. She was shaping the first braid. It hurt like hell. She yanked each section of the braid tight; it was like a lighter burned along his scalp. He was tempted to pull away from the pain, but he knew that if he wanted the braids to look glossy and to last, he couldn’t. He was vain about his hair, but most boys his age who sported long hair were; it was a point of pride to sport the most unique, the tightest braids, and when his hair was done, it was like wearing a new outfit; he felt rich, almost. From Ma-mee’s chair, he heard a soft snore.
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind grabbing me a piece of bread out of that loaf of bread on the table?”
“Um, yea
h. You sure you don’t want nothing else with it?”
“Naw.” Christophe slumped into the sofa.
“Okay.” Christophe leaned forward and Laila threw her leg over him and stood. She walked to the table on her toes with her arms out to the side and her palms flat as if she were walking across a balance beam. He found himself watching her ass, her shorts pulling tight and smooth with every mincing step she took. She had such thick hips. Christophe closed his eyes and only opened them again when he felt Laila softly nudge his shoulder, and he smelled the doughy bread. He took it from her and shoved a piece into his mouth. Laila sat behind him. At least she was nice; he guessed that if Joshua had to be messing with somebody, at least it was someone who would be considerate enough not to wake Ma-mee from her nap, and who would do his hair for free.
“I saw your daddy today.”
The bread turned dry as sawdust in Christophe’s mouth. He looked at the ragged piece of bread in his hand, and he could not take another bite.
“Who you talking about?” It came out sharply. It cut through the drowsing of the crickets filtering in through the windows. He would not have thought he had it in him, to be that loud and that mean.
“I’m talking about Sandman.” She was whispering and he was sorry that he had yelled at her. Her hands were still. Shit, she’d only done one braid. God, he was an asshole.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” She shifted, and he leaned away to give her room to settle herself, to move her delicately traced knees away from him. When he leaned back, she resumed braiding.