Where the Line Bleeds

by Jesmyn Ward

  “What you think you going to do when you see him?” Joshua was tentatively pleased that the conversation was continuing beyond the court. Even though he was angry about his brother leaving him in the car, the way he made him feel responsible for the phone call he didn’t get, it was good to be sitting in the grass next to his brother. Christophe sighed.

  “He ain’t never been nothing to us, and he ain’t never going to be nothing to us,” Christophe said. “Don’t matter what he say. I’ll ignore him just like he been ignoring us all these years—say the least I gotta say, I guess.”

  “You’ll probably see him before I do.”

  “I know.”

  The water was running downhill from where Christophe sat and was pooling around Joshua’s shoes in the grass. “About last night . . .”

  The crickets were waking in the woods rimming the park, seeking each other out. Joshua did not know how to continue, so he paused.

  “What about last night?” Christophe began ripping up small bunches of grass and throwing them in the puddle. He watched his hands.

  “About what you said . . . or what you didn’t . . . I mean, what you meant.” Joshua trailed off. “What you said you was going to do.”

  Christophe crossed his arms over his legs and looked off into the distance. “I done started already.”

  Joshua pushed his fingers into the earth. He tried to think of something to say, but his mind was a blank. The question “What do I say?” echoed through his skull.

  “It’s just weed, Joshua. Not crack,” Christophe said. “I’m not selling crack, Joshua.” Christophe whispered this.

  “You going to keep looking.” Joshua said it like a statement, but both he and his brother knew it was a question.

  “Yeah.” Christophe gripped his calves. “I shouldn’t’ve done that; now I’m going to be itching.”

  “I can keep a eye out down at the dock,” Joshua said. He didn’t want to rub his job in his brother’s face, but there was always the chance that something else would open up. According to Leo, people got into accidents all the time. Anything was possible. He watched Christophe nod slowly and rest his chin on his forearms.

  “I’ll find something,” he muttered.

  On the bench across the court, Remy passed the blunt to Dunny. Marquise was scissoring his arms back and forth in the air as if he were weaving on an invisible loom; he was telling them a story, maniacally. Javon and Bone rubbed shoulders and laughed. Above Joshua’s head, something buzzed and popped, and he looked up to see the court lights had switched on. The wind pushed at Joshua. Christophe had buried his face in his knees; he was curled into a damp ball. Joshua wanted to brush away the conversation like a gnat.

  “So, what’s up for tonight?”

  “Ain’t shit as far as I know.” Christophe’s voice was muffled. “You know how we do, though.” A grasshopper sounded loudly behind Joshua, seemingly from underneath him, and Christophe raised his head in slow alarm.

  “We’ll find something,” Joshua said quietly.

  Christophe blinked, and Joshua bared his teeth.

  Skeetah was standing in front of Christophe, and he was asking him for something. Dunny had handed Christophe a beer around fifteen minutes ago. Christophe had been thirsty and the beer had been cold and biting; he had downed it in gulps. Now, the beer was lapping at him with many tongues and he was sitting in the passenger seat of Dunny’s car and his twin was sitting on the hood of the car looking at him through the front windshield and Skeetah was before him asking for a dime sack with a handful of crumpled bills held out in his hand. Yes, they had found something to get into. Christophe set the can on the ground and kicked it so hard it skidded away and rolled along like a bowling ball pin. The cicadas were all in heat, all screaming it seemed, all buzzing along with the beer through his veins.

  “You got it, right? A dime sack. Dunny told me to come to you.”

  Cigarette lighters and interior lights and lightning bugs lit the dark; they were on one of the many dead-end roads in Bois Sauvage. This one, like many of the others, had no streetlights, and wasn’t ringed by houses or yards, but by pines and undergrowth, and was unpaved. Christophe swore he could see the Milky Way.

  “Yeah, I have it.”

  Christophe looked at his brother. Joshua was trying not to stare at him. He could tell by the way Joshua sat slumped over the hood of the car, by the way he was half-turned, as if he was on the verge of sliding off and walking around the door to his brother. Christophe glanced at Skeetah and away again to Joshua, and had the sure feeling that when he looked at his brother, his brother would look away. Skeetah wanted his dope.

  “Well, here; here it is.” Skeetah held out a handful of bills to Christophe. Even in the weak light coming from the ceiling bulb in the Cutlass, Christophe could see they were torn at the edges and fuzzy with wear; worn from hoarding. Christophe put both hands in his pockets, one lined with lint, and the other bulging with a green egg. He worked his finger around the tie in the bag and pulled out one of the dime sacks; the weed felt like a nest in his palm. He pulled it out and held it in front of him inches away from Skeetah’s hand.

  “Alright, then.” Skeetah grabbed the sack and gave Christophe his money. “Thanks, cuz.” Where his hand touched Christophe’s, Christophe felt pads of thickened skin calloused from the constant rubbing of leather dog leashes. The dollars were sturdier than they looked; they were hot from Skeetah’s pocket and coarse and durable and real in his hand and he realized this was the first money he’d received in over a month. He took the money. The bulge of the weed and the bills, crumpled into a ball as they were, scratched at him through the thin film of his pockets. He crossed his arms and rocked back in the seat and laughed.

  Joshua woke the next morning before his brother; his stomach was hurting. He had watched Skeetah round the car, slip a cigarillo out of his pocket, juggle a dime sack in his other hand, and bend over the hood. Joshua had gripped the beer can in his hand and over the give of the crackling metal, he had glanced over and saw his brother laughing with his head thrown back and his eyes shut in the car. His face seemed frozen in a grimace, and if Joshua hadn’t heard the laugh, he would have thought his brother was in pain. Joshua’s beer was salty and warm as blood. He and Christophe had stumbled into the house ringed by the rustling, slithering call of cicadas. They supported each other mutely, drunk. Christophe’s grip on Joshua’s shoulder had hurt him. The way he’d laughed after he’d sold the sack, like it was easy and good, hurt him.

  They had kicked off their shoes, peeled off their T-shirts and shorts, and fallen into bed. In the morning light, Joshua saw that Christophe had kicked his sheet to the floor in the middle of the night. Joshua wanted to go back to sleep, but he had to pee. He picked the sheet up from the floor and laid it on the bed next to his brother, his face turned away from Joshua and into the pillow. Joshua gathered dirty clothes from the floor. In the bathroom, the hamper was overflowing. He could not hear Ma-mee in the house. He sorted the clothes, making three mountains of them, and when he was done, he dumped the whites into the washing machine on the back porch off the kitchen. Everything smelled of sweat and alcohol. On the front of the magnet-freckled refrigerator, a note greeted him in round, fat handwriting that he recognized as Aunt Rita’s: Took Ma-mee to the grocery store with me this morning. Will be back later this afternoon. Love—Aunt Rita. Joshua began to go through the pockets of the darker clothes, picking out bits of forgotten items like ticks. He would check to see if Ma-mee needed him to make more corn bread for the leftover red beans; he’d eaten half the pan the day before. Joshua pulled a wadded piece of paper from some of Christophe’s shorts; it was an old, water-smeared receipt with an illegible name and a phone number scrawled across the back. Joshua set it beside him on the sofa. He would probably need to make more rice, too. Uncle Paul always ate all the rice. He reached into another pair of pants and pulled out a small wad of bills; they were Christophe’s pants from the night before. From the other pock
et, Joshua pulled out a sandwich bag; it was a dub sack. Joshua wondered what would happen if he didn’t cover this time, didn’t shove the money and weed under Christophe’s pillow, when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Joshua.” The woman cleared her throat.

  “Yeah?” He squeezed the sack.

  “It’s Cille.” His recognition of her voice slammed into place in his chest. How long had it been since he had talked to her?

  “Hey, Cille.”

  “Is Ma-mee there?”

  “Naw, she not here right now. She went with Aunt Rita to the grocery store.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “I was ’sleep when she left this morning.” The phone was slippery.

  “Well . . . I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your graduation. I couldn’t get the time off.” Cille’s voice was different from Aunt Rita’s. Deeper. He didn’t know how to respond to her apology, so he gave her the answer he thought she wanted.

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it’s not alright. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.” He felt like she was waiting for him to say more. What else could he say? He accidentally kicked the pile of shirts and pants. Her clothes always smelled of perfume. He remembered that.

  “So, what have y’all been up to?” What did she care? Did she care?

  “I got a job down at the pier.”

  “So, the car coming in handy, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He should be more grateful. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. How you like your job?”

  “It’s alright. It’s work.”

  “It’s always work, no matter what kind of job you do.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” He breathed hard into the receiver. “I’m just happy I got a job.”

  “Well, me too. What about Christophe?”

  “He ain’t got one yet.” Joshua clenched the baggie of weed and cash. “He working on it, though.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he is. So, that mean y’all doing alright as far as money go, right?”

  “Yeah.” His answer was automatic. He would never ask for it. They had never asked for it.

  “Well, that’s good.” He heard her pull the phone away from her mouth to murmur to someone else. He wondered where she was; whether she was at her apartment or on her cell phone out at the store or in her car. It was a quiet whisper, and it seemed intimate. “So, I was calling to talk to Ma-mee to tell her that I was thinking about coming down to visit in a month or so. We got a three-day weekend coming up, and I thought it would be nice to come down and see y’all.”

  “Okay.” She sighed into the phone; it sounded like a hurricane in his ear. He pulled the phone away and barely heard her voice when he pressed the phone back.

  “They got a blues festival that weekend, too, in New Orleans, and I thought . . .”

  “Oh.” He almost wished he hadn’t pressed it back so quickly.

  “So, just let her know when she come home, okay? Tell her I’ll call her in about a week.”

  “No problem.” She made a small noise in her throat; she wanted to get off the phone. “Alright, then,” Joshua said.

  “Well, take care of yourself and I’ll call back in about a week, okay? Maybe I’ll be able to talk to Christophe then.”

  “Alright.” He would hang up the phone first. He didn’t want to be too slow, to hear her line click dead while he was still waiting for her to say something else. He would hang up as soon as she said goodbye. He waited. She was quiet.

  “Did anybody take pictures?” It took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about.

  “Yeah. Aunt Rita took a lot of them.”

  “Good.” Her tone was higher. He realized his grip on the phone was a little painful, so he relaxed his fingers. “Bye, Joshua. I’ll talk to you soon.” Click. He was too late. He eased the phone onto the cradle. From the wall in the kitchen, he heard the clock then; the minute hand was tapping its way around the face. A dark blue T-shirt slid down the slope of the pile at his feet, a loose rope of wind wound its way through the screen and against his leg, and a fly, fat and noisy, buzzed its way around his head like a small airplane. Joshua let the fly land on his arm, and wondered why he could not hear the ticking all the time; why did it jump out at him during the oddest moments? He watched the fly wipe its face and shuffle forward; he glared at it, willing it to be still. He wanted everything to stop. The fly shook its wings and took flight from the damp, pitted, pale-brown surface of his arm with a hiss. Joshua picked up the pile and a pair of basketball shorts slid from his fingers and puddled on the floor. He heard the fly buzzing sonorously as it circled the room. It probably shitted on me, he thought.

  8

  MA-MEE HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO start the collard greens. The most she’d accomplished was washing them in the sink, where she felt the dirt of the garden at the back of the house give underneath her fingers like the silt of a riverbank and wash down the drain. Joshua had done the laundry while she was grocery shopping with Rita, and when she walked in the door, the house smelled of comet and fabric softener; he had cleaned the kitchen, too. She found a bushel of greens in the sink. Joshua had picked them. He said the heat was wilting them. The twins had jumped up from the floor to run outside and get the groceries from Rita’s trunk and when Joshua brushed her on his way to the counter with a bag, her chest hurt. She did not want to tell them about Samuel. The twins snorted laughter at the TV, and she could not bring herself to take out the pot, to cut the seasoning, to begin cooking. She sat down next to Joshua on the sofa. Lying on the floor, Christophe rolled over to face her.

  “I got something to tell y’all.” She had made a mistake in not sitting in her chair. A fly was buzzing a slow funeral dirge around the living room. It would die soon. She hesitated.

  “We already know,” Christophe said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Laila told me and I told Joshua. It’s okay. He had to come back sometime.”

  “Who told you?” asked Joshua.

  “He came by the house.” Christophe sat up. Joshua scooted closer to her. She laid her hand over his and began making small circles on the back. It was the way she’d rubbed his back as a baby. She made herself stop. “It’s alright. He came by and asked after y’all. He wasn’t bothering me none.”

  “He didn’t ask you for no money, did he?” Christophe was on his knees. The fly had stopped buzzing. Perhaps it had died.

  “No. I just don’t want y’all to be surprised.”

  “I should’ve been here,” Christophe breathed.

  “You can’t be here all the time, Chris.”

  “Maybe I should say something to him. Make it so he won’t come back over here and bother you.” He paused. “He on that stuff again. I heard.”

  “Naw.” Joshua was almost off the sofa. Ma-mee’s hand fell to her side. “Just stay around. He know Uncle Paul be coming home for lunch.” Joshua swallowed, then said it. “He wouldn’t steal from his own blood.”

  “Ain’t no blood. He a junkie, Jay. You know how that go.”

  Ma-mee made a shushing noise. “Don’t let him bother y’all none. He just a sad man.” She closed her eyes and saw his younger face; that lovely face so like her boys’ own, but sneaky, shifty, as if it lacked the integrity of bones underneath. “Just a sad, lost man.”

  “So you don’t want me to say nothing to him, Ma-mee?” said Christophe.

  “I’m sure.” She patted Joshua’s arm and sat in her own chair. She let her hands hang over the armrests. “Felt like I done walked some miles.”

  “Cille coming.” Joshua said this. He looked folded into the sofa.

  “You talked to her?”

  “She called the house while you was gone. Say she coming down in around a month—at the end of July or around the beginning of August, I guess. Some music festival or something happening then, too. Or, something like that.” Joshua’s voice dwindled to a slow, piecemeal hal
t. Christophe was rocking back on his heels. He must have not known.

  “Well, that’s good. Been a while. It’ll be good to see her.” The twins were looking at her. The joints of her fingers and her wrist were suffused with pain, and she grabbed her wrist and tried to squeeze it out. She wanted them lying on the floor and lounging on the sofa together. She would cook them a big meal, make them lazy and easy with food. Pain arced through her kneecap. She would make them forget.

  She rose and walked slowly, limping to favor her tight knee, and palmed Christophe’s head. “These greens ain’t going to cook theyselves.” She touched his face. “I could use some help though.” He rose, and his cheek slid down and away; the bone was sharp beneath his skin. Joshua rose and she palmed his cheek as well, felt the bone heavy and dense beneath the soft fat of his face. They cooked.

  Christophe began waking up before his brother. He’d never been an early riser, but now he found himself suddenly, painfully awake every morning at 5:30, when he’d feel something like a cramp in his stomach. Each day, he heard Ma-mee easing her way down the hall to the bathroom, and he’d realize that the ache in his stomach was his bladder, and he couldn’t go back to sleep because he had to pee. Then Christophe would do something he hadn’t done since he was little. He’d rise and walk carefully out of the room, stepping lightly to ease his bladder, and creep out the back door. The morning would be gray, the air lukewarm, and the grass at his feet always. He’d force it out, quickly; he was ashamed that he was peeing off the back steps like some five-year-old who couldn’t hold it. They used to do it all the time when they were little, when Cille or Ma-mee or Aunt Rita or Uncle Paul or someone else in the family was in the bathroom, hogging it. Back inside, he’d turn off the alarm clock and lie back in his bed and listen to Joshua snore and Ma-mee slide shuffle back to her room to wait for 5:45, when he would rouse his brother. Ma-mee would make them a quick breakfast, and then he’d bring Joshua to work. By the end of Joshua’s second week of work, it was routine.