by Ivy Pochoda
The interior of the church is dim. Its walls are the color of putty and the gaudy stained-glass windows forbid daylight. It smells of old clothes and bedding from the basement rummage sales.
The church is too large for the parish. In winter it’s drafty and in summer, dank and airless. Today, even at a fraction of its capacity, the building feels stuffy. There are too many pews for the small congregation, and the empty spaces are filled with shadows that stretch from the dusty niches and dark rafters. Near the entrance, Val’s mother pauses to light a devotional candle in a red glass holder.
Paulie Marino walks down the aisle first, clearing a path for his wife and daughter. He checks both sides of the aisle, silencing gossip and whispers with his stare. Jo drapes an arm around Val’s shoulder. A few of Jo’s friends stand up and take Val from her mother, pressing her into their bosoms, filling her nose with their sweet, floral perfumes. June’s grandmother sits by herself in the front row, a small woman in a simple dark dress with her dyed black hair wound into a wispy bun.
Jo rubs a hand on Val’s shoulders, soothing her. She wipes Val’s dry cheeks. Val has yet to cry over June. If she cries, it will mean June isn’t coming home. The tears hide behind her eyes, sharp, stinging nettles she blinks away.
Girls from Val’s class at St. Bernardette’s are sobbing, their faces puffy and blotched. The upperclassmen dab their eyes with handkerchiefs, expertly wiping away streaks of mascara. These girls have rolled the waistbands of their skirts to lift their hemlines. In the back row are the boys who struggle to keep their eyes downcast, longing to stare at the girls in the front rows, hoping that they can get them alone later. Val suspects her schoolmates’ grief is all show—especially that of the older girls.
Val’s presence in the church is a reminder to everyone of June’s absence. She has no friend to beckon her over, no one to hold her hand, fill the space at her side. She knows that when the congregation looks at her, they are thinking of June, that she will always remind them of her missing friend. If June does not return, her absence will deform Val, make it impossible for others to see what is there, not what is gone.
An easel with a large photo of June mounted on poster board stands next to the pulpit. It’s a bad picture—the same one that has been circulating since she disappeared. For her school photo June popped several buttons on her blouse so her cleavage is suggested by deep shadow. She wears too much makeup, and her face shines unnaturally.
Expecting a bigger crowd, the priest has brought a microphone to the altar. His voice booms through the church urging the group to pray. His “amen” is drowned in feedback. Val resists the urge to cover her ears. The congregation struggles through a couple of hymns that are supposed to be uplifting but sound like dirges.
Val keeps her eyes on the ceiling. If she ignores the proceedings in the pulpit, if she tunes out the words of the priest, the sniffles of the congregation, if she can will her mind to stay blank until the hymns are over, June will come home. If she can predict the precise moment, by counting to ten, when the priest will close his hymnal, June will walk into the church and all this will be over. While the congregation is singing, Val organizes all the hymnals in her row, making sure they are right side up and evenly spaced. If the hymnals are evenly spaced, June will come home.
A group of Val’s classmates approach the microphone. They hold hands and warble the ballad from Titanic. The singers trill nervously and breathe heavily, their voices tangling with the scratchy PA system. One of them puts a hand over her heart, steps forward, and tries a vibrato solo.
No one bothered to consult Val. No one asked her what June would have liked. By surviving she has forfeited any claim to June’s friendship. She grips the pew until her hands cramp.
This is your fault. June’s voice rises above the roar of blood in Val’s head. Val cries out. She opens her eyes. The girls from the next pew are looking at her.
This is your fault, June says again.
Val clenches her jaw. She squeezes her eyes shut. She will not cry. She cannot cry or June won’t come home.
This is your fault.
“No,” Val blurts. The word is thrown back at her from the arched ceiling. The girls up front stop singing.
Jo widens her eyes at Val. She puts a finger over her lips. The congregation shifts in their seats, resettling after Val’s outburst. Whispers whip from row to row. Val swipes the back of her neck, brushing away the stares that are boring into her nape.
This is your fault, June says.
Val is on her feet. Her leather-soled loafers hammer the aisles as she runs for the exit and bursts into the daylight. If she keeps moving, she won’t be able to hear June. If she keeps moving, she won’t have time to cry.
The crowd in the park has thickened. The air is rich with the sweet smell of caramelizing meat. The music from the sound system is louder, drowning out June’s reprimand.
Val dashes toward the park, hoping to escape from anyone who might pursue her, hoping to hide in the crowd where June’s absence will be less obvious.
There’s a man standing directly in front of her calling her name. It takes her a moment to recognize Mr. Sprouse, the music teacher who found her under the pier. She slows to a halt a few feet in front of him. Their eyes meet.
“Valerie,” Mr. Sprouse says.
He will take her back inside. He will remind everyone that she is safe while June is gone.
Val turns and rushes into the crowd. A group of girls are doing a dance routine in front of a small stage where a DJ is spinning. Old men whistle and clap from a nearby bench. Boys Val’s age move in a pack, assessing groups of girls in skimpy summer clothes. The girls tease them in a rich singsong chorus.
It’s strange to Val to see so many kids her age in the park at the end of her street yet know so few of them. Her parents have their church, their VFW clubhouse, their own block parties. They act as if the Houses are in a different neighborhood with a different set of problems. Even when she and June attended the local elementary, she barely saw her classmates from the projects outside of school. It was known from as early as kindergarten that the white girls were just marking time until fourth grade when they’d head to Catholic schools on the other side of the expressway. Only headstrong Rita had crossed the divide between front and back, bringing Cree to the Marinos’ house. His cousin Monique tagged along as an afterthought.
Among these kids Val feels anonymous, which is what she wants. In the projects, no one will look for her. She passes the small playground, skirts the basketball courts, avoids the kids who are skipping through a fountain, sending prisms of water toward the sky. Then she’s out of the park and into the first courtyard in the Red Hook Houses.
“Valerie!” Her name ricochets off the projects’ walls. She refuses to look back.
The courtyards are filled with people on their way to the park carrying coolers and bags of buns.
She emerges onto a small side street. The doors of the Red Hook Gospel Tabernacle are wide open. Val has never been inside before. The interior is bright. The linoleum floor shines. The walls are hung with airbrushed paintings of Jesus and Mary in ornate plastic frames. The church smells of sweat and fresh air.
Val stays next to the open door. The congregation is seated. The women wear sateen dresses in pastel shades. Some wear hats with netting and fake flowers. The elderly men stick to drab jackets and blazers, while the younger ones wear suits in bright colors—green or deep purple, even bright orange. Several have matched their ties and vest to their suits.
A large man in a white robe is bellowing into a microphone. His bible is balanced on a wobbly stand. Perspiration wreathes his forehead. Next to him, Monique sits on a folding chair. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and her head is turned away. She casts a lazy glance over the congregation, then fixes her eyes on Val. The folding chairs scrape as the congregation rises. Monique takes the microphone. Her white dress is wet at the bodice and under the arms.
She sings with her eyes c
losed. Her voice is confident, full of knowledge and secrets. She sings over the congregation and they lift their voices to meet hers. As they do, she sings louder, dominating the small room with her song, remaining just beyond the congregation’s reach. It seems to Val that Monique is taunting them, making them eager to follow her and cling to her words. The congregation sways. They strain toward Monique, rising and falling—clapping and stomping.
If Monique sings for June, June will come back.
Her song ends. Her eyes remain closed as her breathing slows. The congregation exhales and sits. Monique opens her eyes and steps away from the microphone. Ignoring the women who shake their heads in awe and pleasure and try to squeeze her arm, she walks up an aisle between the chairs and catches sight of Val.
“Got tired of your own church?” she whispers as she passes.
Val looks at the congregation. Four young men in suits the color of Orange Crush are getting ready to sing.
“Came all this way and nothing to say?” Monique says. She pushes past Val onto the street.
Monique looks older than fifteen. She has golden-flecked hair and amber eyes that startle from her dark skin like bright pennies. She’s Val’s height but with a softer shape—round, polished cheekbones and generous adult curves.
Val follows Monique out of the tabernacle.
“They had a vigil for June,” Val says.
“Yeah?”
Monique’s dress makes her look as if she’s playing some sort of perverse dress-up—squeezing a childish dress over a woman’s body.
“June would have liked it if you’d sung something.”
“No one asked.”
“Remember when you’d sing in my basement when we were little?”
“Not really.” Monique fidgets with the lace bodice of her dress.
“One time we sold tickets to people passing by?”
“That sounds whack.”
Monique hadn’t thought so at the time. She had let Val and June dress her up in Rita’s clothes—a black crushed velvet dress and patent leather pumps. At ten, Monique already came close to filling out Rita’s party clothes.
The girls turned the Marinos’ vestibule into a stage and hung a red blanket over the front door. Val and June hit the pavement, drumming up customers for the “Best Voice in Brooklyn.” Four people, one of them June’s grandmother, paid fifty cents each to hear Monique. When the audience was assembled, Val whipped back the curtain and Monique sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” As she sang, more people gathered. When the song was over, Val demanded that the new arrivals pay up. She handed Monique the kitty.
It was a few weeks later that Paulie dragged Cree onto the street and shamed him in front of the block for being a bad influence on Rita. After that neither he nor Monique returned to the Marinos.
“Maybe you could sing something for June sometime?” Val says.
“Talking to the dead is Cree’s mom’s business, not mine.”
“Who says she’s dead?”
Monique tugs at the neck of her dress, letting some air onto her skin. “I’m done with singing today,” she says, walking off. “I’m gonna get my groove on elsewhere.”
Val half listens to the men’s quartet, trying to make up her mind where to go. Her head is beginning to hurt, an ache that rises from the spot at the back of her skull where a large Band-Aid hides a row of stitches.
She’s about to head off when she feels someone take her arm. She turns and sees Cree James. He’s wearing a brown sateen suit with sleeves that ride down to his palms. He looks good, sharp. His shaved head shines with some tropically scented oil. Cree’s not much taller than Val, with a round face and a wide smile that comes easily.
“Sorry about Monique,” he says. “Some days she’s too big for herself.”
“Whatever,” Val says. It was always June who was more hurt by Monique’s indifference.
Cree steps away and takes off his jacket, revealing a cream-colored silk shirt stuck with sweat to his skinny frame. Val’s aware of the looks she’s getting from people coming in and out of the church. They take in her uniform and her lanky frame—her pale skin and unremarkable hair. A drab piece of flotsam lost in the sea of Sunday color.
Cree unbuttons his collar and shakes his shirt free of his skin. “It’s true you don’t remember what happened?”
“Nope,” Val says. She turns and shows him the bandage at the base of her skull.
“That’s a trip,” Cree says. “What’s it feel like not remembering?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“You remember seeing me on the boat?” Cree asks.
“Of course.”
“You told the police?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Cree wipes his smooth head. “I’m just asking. What else did you tell them?”
“Nothing,” Val says. On top of everything else, she doesn’t need his accusations. But when she starts to walk away, Cree keeps pace. “You’re not afraid my dad will see you?”
“That was a lifetime ago,” Cree says. “I’ve got better things to do than be afraid of your dad.”
“Why are you following me?”
“To make sure you don’t do anything foolish.”
Val stops walking. “Maybe I want to do something foolish.”
“Well, do you?”
“You coming?”
Val walks quickly in the direction of the water, Cree at her side. It feels good not to be alone. Just having Cree close is enough to distract people from June’s absence and from her part in it, Val thinks. All she needs is one friend, one person to stick by her. One person to make her feel less alone and less at fault.
She skirts the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the VFW. Noise from Coffey Park wafts through the neighborhood—a sustained echo of the ongoing party. She takes side streets to avoid anyone she might know. The afternoon is emptying out. Red Hook’s few shops are shuttered. People are returning home for Sunday afternoon cookouts or heading to the bar to keep the weekend going.
Except for a couple of dog walkers, Valentino Pier is empty. June’s shrine is already weathered. The pastel flowers have turned brown. The teddy bears are matted with grime. Val walks to the end of the pier. She grasps the railing and stares at the last spot she saw June. There’s a dark spill on the water, a shadow rising from below.
The railing is hot. Behind her Red Hook is unnaturally still. Val flings off her school blazer. She kicks off her penny loafers. She imagines that by now the vigil has let out and the VFW is beginning to fill for the reception. They will be unwrapping foil trays of lasagna and manicotti. The place will be sweltering. The men will drink more than usual. They will talk sports and pensions. They’ll go on about the neighborhood’s newcomers.
The high school girls will sneak plastic cups of Chianti and cigarettes in the small concrete yard. The boys will congregate on the far end, near the wall. Soon these two groups will meld. Parents will ignore their children who are pairing off and slipping away. And June will be out there somewhere, maybe not far from where Val is standing now.
It’s your fault.
“Shut up,” Val says.
“I didn’t say anything,” Cree says.
Val starts unbuttoning her blouse, popping off two of the buttons in her haste. Cree put a hand on her arm to stop her, but she brushes him off. He looks away as if her childish bra embarrasses him. “What are you doing?”
She continues to undress.
Cree holds up his suit jacket, shielding Val even though there’s no one around. His silk shirt is untucked. His sweat has brought out the paisley pattern hidden in the fabric.
Val lowers the zipper on her skirt. She knows she looks like a little kid in her cotton underwear. The late-afternoon sun hits her belly and the tops of her thighs. She hoists herself over the railing and stands on the lip of the pier.
The water is the color of slate.
“Don’t act crazy,” Cree says.
Val doesn�
�t look back. She feels Red Hook fall away behind her as she disappears into the water.
The water smells like Brooklyn. She dives deep and swims away from the pier, combing away the light debris that clouds the bay. She plunges until her lungs feel pummeled and the water turns cold.
Then she feels arms around her waist and she is dragged to the surface.
“Jesus. Were you planning to come up?” Beads of water, like translucent ladybugs, are suspended on Cree’s shaved scalp.
Val slips from his grasp and continues swimming, pulling toward Jersey. But Cree catches up and restrains her. “Hey, hey, you know the rules. Watch out for the Governors Island current. Don’t get tangled in the pylons. Then you can swim in the bay.”
If Cree kisses her, June will be found.
They tread water side by side. The Staten Island ferry crawls into view, inching across the bay. A tugboat chugs out of Erie Basin and begins to cross toward the East River—a small boat, green paint, the letter B on its stack. Its wake knocks Val and Cree together. Her head rolls back onto his shoulder. Cree wraps his arms around her for support. His fingers slip across her skin like a school of fish. She feels him loosen his grip and before he does, she pulls him closer. Then she turns and kisses him.
They plunge beneath the surface, their arms and hands sliding over each other, moving freely, frictionless. Val wraps her legs around his waist, feeling his stomach muscles tighten as he works hard not to sink.
June used to tease Val by telling her that if she didn’t practice, when the time came she would embarrass herself. But kissing Cree comes easily. It’s as natural as holding your breath underwater.
Through the green-brown water she cannot see how her body is and how she wishes it were. Cree doesn’t seem to care either way. Val swims a few strokes, but he’s right back behind her, holding on.