by Jesmyn Ward
The yellow of the dress caught the sunlight diffusing through the windows. The color of the dress complimented her: it made her eyes seem lighter in the dark, her skin burnished tan. She knew it; she wore a lot of yellow. It was the color Joshua always saw her in when he thought about her in Atlanta.
“It’s nice,” he mumbled.
He wanted to walk straight to the bathroom and shower, but he felt he couldn’t. He knew that she had probably been waiting on them to get their opinion. Waiting on him. She should know she is beautiful, he thought.
“We need to cut the grass on Saturday,” Joshua said. Christophe was fidgeting, the hand he leaned on shook as he tapped his foot. Christophe nodded against his fist.
“Lawn mower need to be fixed.” Christophe clasped his palms between his shaking knees. “Last time I cut it, the engine act like it didn’t want to crank. I’ma go out to the shed and see what I can do.”
“Christophe, they got mashed potatoes and corn and fried chicken on the stove.” Ma-mee held out her arm to stop him as he passed by her on his way out the front door, but her hand only grazed his T-shirt.
“Alright. Need to see about that lawn mower, though.”
“You have any luck today?” Ma-mee shot out.
Christophe stopped and Joshua heard the hinges squeal.
“Maybe,” Christophe called softly.
The door snapped shut.
“He like cutting the grass that much?” Cille said. She smoothed the dress again and moved closer to Ma-mee. “What you said about the color, Mama?”
“I told you I liked it.” Ma-mee reached out and grabbed at the skirt of the dress, rubbing it between her fingers. “Joshua, how was work?”
“Alright.”
“Christophe told you what he be working on out in the shed? I asked Paul what it look like out there, but Paul say it look mostly the same, like Chris ain’t really moved nothing.” Ma-mee was kneading the weave of her easy chair, plucking at a few stray threads. Joshua was doing the same and then made himself stop. Cille was still standing in the middle of the room, looking at him.
“He ain’t cleaning up or nothing—I mean, nothing to talk about.” Joshua fumbled for the lie. “He be working on them saws and hedge-cutters and stuff. You know.”
Ma-mee seemed so bent in the chair, so old. She looked at him and her eyes seemed more gray than blue, then, harder. She blinked and they watered. “Tell him to be careful in there.” She breathed softly. “Got things that’ll cut you in there.”
“He get cut with something with rust on it, and then he have to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot. Lord knows what he could catch up in there. Y’all grown, though.” Cille flicked the tag over her shoulder. “Messing around with all that junk out there. I’m surprised you ain’t got Paul or Max or one of them to get rid of it since Daddy died.”
“He left that for his sons and these boys here. I ain’t got the right to take what’s left to them.” She shook her head and directed her comment to Joshua. “Go bring your brother some food, please?”
Joshua rose from the sofa and Cille grabbed him by the elbow and tugged him with her toward her room. She left him standing in the doorway.
“Yes, Ma-mee,” Joshua called. Cille’s bed was littered with clothes: bright silks in flower patterns lay strewn across the bed. She held up a red shirt against her shoulders and raised an eyebrow, and Joshua nodded. She smiled and laid it down in a different pile, and then picked up a sky-blue dress and held it against her front. It made her look like a little girl. He nodded again.
“So when I’m going to be able to see this girlfriend of yours?”
Cille was leaning over the bed, folding shirt after shirt; Joshua watched her arms move, fat and smooth as a child’s. She sat on the bed and peered at him. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him: so expectantly, so speculatively. Ma-mee must have told her.
“Well, um, I told her to come by Saturday.”
“Well that’s good, since I’m going to be gone all tomorrow to the festival.”
He wanted to tell her he knew, and that’s why he had asked Laila to come over on Saturday, but he didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Who’s her mama and daddy?” she asked.
“Ozene and Lilly.”
“Hmmm.” She half breathed and snorted, and then looked down at the carpet, where she traced circles with the toe of her sandal. “You like her a lot? Ma-mee says she comes by the house all the time. Say she a sweet girl.”
“She is.”
“Well, do you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
It felt good to say it to someone, even if it couldn’t be his brother. He thought of the way Christophe skirted him when he and Laila were on the sofa or in their room, the way he felt guilty watching his brother scuttling sideways like a crab, averting his eyes away from them until he was out of the room. Joshua saw Christophe walking out of the door, away from him and Laila, off the porch and out into the sunlight where the light ate his dark silhouette until he disappeared. Joshua would remember a biblical word then, forsaken, and he could not help pulling away from Laila, from regretting how he’d peppered Christophe with questions about jobs until he either shrank or blurted out “fuck.” He was angry at Christophe’s palpable loneliness, his withdrawal, and his own guilt.
“Is she cute?”
“She pretty.”
The rasp of the words in his throat made him blush. He could hear the caress in them. He could see Laila’s flushed face, her pink mouth, and then he focused on Cille.
“Well.” Cille stood and he knew it was a dismissal. “Just make sure I meet her.”
“Alright,” Joshua said.
Cille pulled up a green silk shirt. He nodded and she laid it on the bed. He moved away from the door as she made to close it.
“You look better in yellow,” he said.
Joshua did not think Cille heard it before she closed the door. He felt his breath against the wood. He could hear Ma-mee fiddling with the television. He walked in to see her turning the volume down and standing by the window that faced the garage; she grasped the curtains with her hands and palmed the glass before she moved back to the TV and turned it only high enough so that the voices whispered. Joshua fixed a paper plate of food and walked it out to the shed. Christophe sat before the lawn mower, his face almost smashed into the black steel of the engine, stabbing it with a flathead screwdriver. He shifted and Joshua saw a dark bulge, thick as a brick, shoved into the waistband of his pants. It stuck out beneath his thin white shirt. Christophe did not look up at him.
“Ma-mee told me to bring you some food. I’ll set it right here.”
Joshua set the plate on the top of a steel drum. Christophe jabbed the screwdriver, and Joshua heard the squeal of metal. Christophe closed his eyes so tightly his entire forehead wrinkled, and he sucked his lips in a grimace. He bent down so that Joshua saw only the crown of his head.
“I’ll get it,” Christophe said.
Joshua wanted to sit with him but Christophe was not looking up. His brother did not want him to stay. Joshua’s skin was itching, and everything was hurting. He walked back into the house. After showering, he dragged himself to the sofa again, to Ma-mee. Laila called, and she sat patiently on the phone as he translated the moving images on the screen to Ma-mee. The sun set, and the night grew loud outside. Christophe switched a light on in the shed. On the screen, Forrest Gump was playing: he was running through the desert, his hair long and nappy, shadowed by a large group of people. When his love interest in the movie said Forrest’s name, she reminded Joshua of Laila. Ma-mee hardly laughed at all, and when she did laugh, it was always at the wrong part. When sleep began to grab him with dark, delicious snatches, he got off the phone with Laila. The movie went off and Ma-mee kissed him and walked to her room. Cille was quiet. Joshua only woke when Christophe walked past him. Joshua followed him to the room and fell like a downed animal to the bed.
Christophe woke the next morning to the sun glazi
ng the room a milky white. It was wrong. He looked at the alarm clock, jumped from the bed, and croaked, “Shit.” Joshua’s eyes opened wide with the movement, and he turned his head and saw the time on the clock and blinked hard, testing the vision, before he jumped up and began pulling on clothes from the floor. At the same time, they heard Ma-mee’s bed rustling, heard the press and pull of the metal springs. They’d all overslept.
“What’s the fucking chances?” Joshua said. Christophe shrugged and slapped the steering wheel. When he didn’t speak, Joshua listed asleep, head butting the window and dozing. Once they arrived, Joshua stalked tiredly away from the car.
After Christophe drove off the lot, he didn’t even bother trawling for Help Wanted signs. Christophe saw the asphalt, the salty sea rimming the straight road, and followed the line of cars. He watched for white-and-blue cop cars: they liked to sit in the piney median and wait for speeders. They would search him if they stopped him. He knew it. He took the quickest route to Bois Sauvage, and when he got there, he circumvented Ma-mee’s house again, and drove to Javon’s. He knocked at the front. His pocket was bulging with a green bag: he’d brought twice his usual supply to Javon’s. He had pored over his stash the night before, removing the stems and seeds, breaking it down and bagging it. Javon hollered at him to enter. It was as if Javon hadn’t moved. Christophe could not be sure that Javon had changed clothes. The same videos were on the television, and later, they played the same video games. The same people came by: Marquise, Tilda, Bone, others. Christophe thought the slabs of crack could be the same that Javon passed to him to hand along. They felt the same in his hand: light, and hard as stone.
The weed in Christophe’s pocket disappeared at a faster pace. He was almost happy until someone else knocked on the door and walked in without waiting for Javon’s yell: Sandman shuffled toward the kitchen. Javon glanced at him, then stood and beckoned to Sandman. Christophe could not move his legs: they were crossed at the ankle, outstretched, immobile as two pine trees felled by a storm. He looked at them, their color turned dark from his days at the park, the same as his hands, the same as Sandman’s face, and his ashy, scaly-skinned wrists, and he hated the color. Christophe stared mutely at the television, his eyebrows drawn, and refused to move; inside his chest, he quivered as if a driving rain was running through him, a storm pulled from deep in the gulf, a storm the same gray blue as the water.
“Could move out the way, young cat,” Sandman mumbled.
“Could shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone, old man,” Christophe spat. The words erupted from him. The quivering had moved from his insides, and he dropped the joystick and stood.
“Sandman! Don’t let me have to slap the shit out of you again.”
Javon snapped the remark like a wet towel from the kitchen. Sandman skirted Christophe and loped into the kitchen. Christophe sat down. He let the music play on the game, and Sandman appeared again at his left. His hat was pulled so low Christophe could only see the line of his jaw.
“Don’t be coming up in my house starting no shit,” Javon barked at Sandman as he opened the door. Sandman shrank further into his shirt, and slid out the door. When the next knock sounded at the door, Javon paused the game. He handed the crack to the person himself. The minutes passed by the dim VCR light and Christophe wondered if he would see Sandman again this afternoon after picking up Joshua. He wondered if Sandman had sold that paltry bag of sand-logged cans to pay for what he had just bought, or if he was hoarding the cans like a skinny gray squirrel hoards acorns. Christophe sold the last of his weed and his virtual football team went to the playoffs.
Tilda walked in and she and Javon disappeared around the corner, but instead of clustering in the kitchen, he heard them walk to the rooms at the back of the house. Christophe stared at the paused game. He went to the bathroom to pee and heard an arrhythmic bumping in the room next to the bathroom, and murmurs. He retreated to the living room but did not reach the door quickly enough to escape Tilda and Javon emerging from the hallway, musty with sex, and Tilda combing her red-peppered hair back into her bun with her fingers. Her hands were almost as plump and smooth as Cille’s. Christophe left.
Christophe scanned the side of the highway as he drove to pick up Joshua, the beach and the sandy dunes, the pines and the pristine sidewalks and mansions on the other side. He did not see Sandman. He squinted past Joshua’s nodding head and slack face as he dozed against the window and saw no skinny man on a bike. He forsook the shed and watched his brother sleep curled to the wall on his twin bed, and in the weak light coming in from the hallway, thought his brother looked more like his father now that he was skinnier. For the first time since they were both children, Joshua’s face curved in at the cheeks. Christophe walked past Cille’s empty room and wondered briefly where she was, who she was with at the festival, if she was safe. He pictured drunk men accosting her on Bourbon Street, saw her spinning and falling against neon lights; he shook the image away from him. She was a grown woman: shit, they were all grown, he thought.
Joshua woke to find the room as dark as it was when he’d fallen asleep the evening before, and momentarily he was confused: drowsiness, like a fine green fishing net, was tugging him back to sleep. He rose to peer out the window: gray drizzle, almost a mist, sifted through the air. He saw a dim white sun glowing palely in the sky, and he knew that it was morning. Laila would be coming by: he had grass to cut and bougainvilleas to plant. He heard voices on the porch. She was already there. Cille sat next to Ma-mee on the porch swing, and Laila sat in Ma-mee’s chair that had the clams etched into it. Laila saw Joshua standing in the doorway. She smoothed her hair self-consciously, and his heart clenched nervously. Cille followed Laila’s gaze. She wore yellow again, and she sported an entire row of gold hoop earrings in her ears; she’d curled her red-gold hair into a bun, and he thought she looked as young and pretty as any girl.
“ ’Bout time you woke up, sleepyhead,” Cille said.
“My boy was tired,” said Ma-mee. “I figured he could use a good sleep.”
“I couldn’t sleep at all,” said Cille, “with your brother out here cutting and digging soon as the sun rose.”
“He ain’t left nothing for you to do,” Ma-mee said as she rubbed her forearms. Joshua could see gooseflesh ripple in a current along her skin like wind over a muddy puddle.
“You need a sweater or something, Ma-mee?” Joshua asked.
“I got this,” Christophe yelled, his voice like iron spiking into the earth.
He was on his knees in the grass, and he was digging a hole: the dirt was black and veined with red clay. Joshua saw dark handprints across Christophe’s shirt where he had wiped his palms. It looked as if a crowd had attacked his brother, pulled at him, and then let him go. The grass was already cut. Christophe had lined up the bougainvillea along the porch, and he was digging holes to plant them.
“What time is it?” asked Joshua.
“Ten,” Cille said. She was crossing her legs and looking at Laila as she spoke. “Your brother was up cutting grass at six. By the time I got up he had trimmed the azaleas.”
Joshua saw a pile of tree branches, twigs, and cut grass that Christophe had raked into a pile. It glistened with droplets of misty rain. Christophe stabbed at the earth with a small red trowel, ignoring them.
“Ma-mee wanted me to let you sleep, so I had a chance to talk to Miss Laila before you had a chance to warn her about me.” Cille laughed and flipped her head. Her earrings shivered.
Laila sat with her palms folded together: her legs were shaking. Joshua sat in a chair next to her. He barely resisted the urge to pull her closer, to reach out his leg and slide it against hers.
“Hope you didn’t scare her too much,” Joshua said.
“Scare her? Of course I didn’t scare her. She was telling me about her mama and daddy and the rest of her people. Found out I used to date her uncle in junior high school. He looks a little like her but he’s taller and thinner. Handsome, too.” Ci
lle turned to face Ma-mee and touched her arm. “You remember Alonzo, Mama?”
“No, not really. You and Rita had so many little boys after y’all I had to beat them off. You more than Rita,” Ma-mee said. “They got grits and sausage on the stove, Josh.”
“I ain’t hungry,” Joshua said.
He brushed Laila’s forearm: her head was down. The humidity had frizzed her curls and made them coil like vines away from her scalp: they fell forward and shielded her face. Still, he saw her staring intently at the patterns in the chair as she traced them with her finger.
“Then I realized her mama was on the homecoming court with me the year I got queen. She had her daddy walk her, right?” Cille said.
“No, ma’am. She had her uncle walk her because my granddaddy wasn’t around,” Laila replied.
“Well, I thought it was her daddy for sure.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You ain’t got to call me ‘ma’am,’ Laila. Makes me feel old.” Cille laughed, and Joshua marveled at how her gold and her white teeth and her hair seemed to sparkle, about how she seemed brighter than them all against the dreary canvas of the day.
“Yes, ma—I mean, Ms. Cille.”
“I was just saying how Laila looks just like her mama. Same hair and everything, like her mama just spit her out.”
The trowel echoed through the screen: Christophe dug and the earth came away in wet, slurping chunks. Joshua watched his pile of soil melt to a muddy pancake. Laila tucked her hair behind her ear and it snaked back across her face when her hand fell.
“I think she got nice hair,” Joshua choked.
Christophe began sliding the spade to separate the plant from the pot; the steel scraped the plastic. It sounded like a saw, and the plant dropped and fell to the grass. Cille fingered her own fine, carefully arranged curls.
“I always wanted hair that was a little rougher. Had a little more body to it, more life. Some people are just lucky, I guess.”
“Cille.”
“What, Mama?”
Joshua could only see Laila’s scalp, each tendril of her hair springing from her head as if to reach out and embrace the heavy air. The mist had turned into a light rain, each drop as fine as sand. If she had slumped any farther in her chair, she would curl into a ball. Joshua looked up at Cille and could not help the nervous fluttering that had turned to heat in his stomach: he wanted to slap her. He wanted to shield Laila from those blinding teeth, that gold.