Say You're Sorry

by Sarah Shankman

  But Parnell had noticed, and he hadn’t liked it, not one bit.

  “You don’t need that whore teaching you tricks, Blanche,” he said. “Unless you planning on turning pro.”

  “Parnell! You know Lou and I’ve been friends since we were girls!”

  “I know what you been. You think I didn’t grow up in this very same neighborhood? But Loubella works for me, woman. She’s my whore. Just ’cause she don’t punch no time clock don’t mean she ain’t on salary. And the lady of the house don’t fraternize with the help.”

  Well. Blanche hadn’t believed a word of that. She knew there was something more tiptoeing around in Parnell’s big head. She also knew that he sampled the goods from time to time, like a moonshiner sipping his own whiskey, and she guessed that included Loubella too. But then, she enjoyed a taste of other sweetmeat her own self now and again, so she wasn’t about to be calling the kettle black.

  And every once in a while, like naughty children ignoring all warnings, she and Loubella still slipped off to have a good visit, and whatever quick and dirty passed between her husband and her friend was no part of that.

  But then there’d been Loubella’s Fourth of July birthday and the paddleboat and—worse than catching them in bed together, because what would that mean, after all, a little roll in the hay between two people who trafficked in flesh—she’d seen their eyes meet.

  Again and again throughout that afternoon, she’d watched that connection between them, as simple and direct as plugging in a lamp. Their glances crossed and caught and held, and Blanche had to turn her gaze away, for if Parnell had leaned over and slowly licked Loubella’s naked eyeball, the act could not have been more intimate. Everything else in the entire world, including her, oh yes, including her, fell away. And Blanche, who had never had that kind of communion with another human being in her whole life but recognized it when she saw it, hated Loubella from that very afternoon to this.

  So she’d punished her, hadn’t she, she’d punished her good. Planted a load of dope in her room, then called the cops to raid her own joint. It was hers by then, Aces having already pulled the trigger that morning so long ago, pulled the trigger that had blasted Parnell’s head and sent it rolling and tumbling like a child’s ball down Front. She’d married Aces right after that, before they sent him up for a little stay in Angola.

  Now she looked up at Loubella from the edge of her violet-sprigged coffee cup and all the years fell away. There before her was the face of the little girl with birthday candles shining in her eyes, the little girl she’d loved as her own. Parnell had been dead for so many years, and he hadn’t been worth shaking a stick at, anyway. What had all that been about? Blanche wondered what would happen if she reached out and patted Loubella’s cheek and said, “I’m sorry I was so mean.” Would Loubella understand that if she could do it all over again she’d do it differently?

  Loubella caught her look and that old communion of spirits that ran between them straighter than the string of a child’s tin-can telephone told her what Blanche was thinking.

  She smiled and her gold tooth twinkled. Blanche’s heart lurched. That tooth had always reminded her of Parnell’s with his diamond, but no, no, forget Parnell. He was what had brought her to this pass in the first place. Maybe that had been her problem all along, paying attention to men, my God, there had been so many of them, when there were other folks, plenty of other folks, her family, her children, all those women who could have been her sisters, sitting right there in her face big as life—hell, maybe they were life—and she had looked right through them like they were water, past them to whatever man was waggling his dick like it was a magic wand that would turn her into a fairy princess with its touch. Well, you been touched by them wands plenty times, ain’t you, woman, and you ain’t no princess yet. But here was Loubella smiling at her. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “You gonna come in the house and sample some of my cake or not?” Loubella was asking.

  “Why, I’d be proud to,” Blanche answered, rising from her chair and feeling like she was floating. Something had been released in her, and she felt light and wispy as a pink cloud. “And by the way, happy birthday, Miss Loubella.”

  “Thank you, Miss Blanche.” Loubella ducked her head as if she were suddenly shy. Why, yes, Blanche thought. The little girl is still there. We can start over. It’s not too late.

  Blanche watched Loubella bustling around her neat kitchen, and suddenly the two girls of long ago had swapped places. Now Loubella was the momma, the momma Blanche had never really been to anyone. For the small acts of mothering Blanche had practiced on Loubella had not followed her into adulthood. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember ever plaiting her own daughters’ hair, though she must have. And she’d certainly never taught Jesse to swim. Who had done all those things—washed their clothes, cooked the countless meals her children must have eaten—because indeed they had grown up. It all seemed like such a blur now, those years of their childhood. She remembered a few snatches, but the pictures in her mind were duplicates of the pictures she’d pasted in a photo album. The kids standing in front of one of her new Cadillacs. All three of them lined up on the porch of River City. Jesse in a new white suit for one of her weddings, she couldn’t remember which.

  But there were no photographs of the three children sitting with Blanche reading or storytelling or fixing a hem. Did their grandmother Lucretia have pictures like that in her photo album? she wondered. Did people take pictures of a woman serving dinner to her family?

  Well, they ought to. Not that she would ever be caught dead in one, but look now, here, at Loubella putting food on the table in front of her. Those sturdy hands carefully placing the little violet-sprigged dessert plate that matched the cup and saucer, they were delivering more than a piece of cake, more like a gift of love.

  “Loubella!” Blanche exclaimed suddenly, for her eye had finally caught the diamond sparkler upon Loubella’s left hand, and her mind quickly jumped from its maternal meditation back to the more familiar territory of earthy goods. “Good Lord have mercy, where did you get that pretty thing?” And in an instant Blanche, with an eye accustomed to weighing and assessing, had its value appraised as precisely as if she’d examined it with a scale and a jeweler’s loupe.

  “Isaac.” Loubella smiled. “It’s Isaac’s birthday present to me.”

  With that, Blanche remembered why she’d come in the first place.

  “Where is Isaac?” she asked, looking around the room as if he might be hiding behind the sugar canister or underneath the table with its plastic lace tablecloth.

  “Oh, he slipped out the back to get some Scotch. Said we ought to have a proper celebration and I’d just run clean out. But I’ve got some bourbon. Could I sweeten your coffee with a little nip?” And before Blanche could answer, Loubella had poured her a generous dollop, filling her coffee cup to the brim.

  “But I thought you said he was here, inside. Didn’t you say that a little while ago?”

  “He was. He’ll be right back. Go ahead, Blanche, drink up.”

  Blanche took a sip and then another. The dark, sweet coffee and the alcohol warmed her blood even hotter on this July delta night. She could feel it coursing right down to her toes. And the warmth distracted her for a moment from the other questions that had popped into her mind. Like, what did Isaac want? What was the deal he had mentioned? Why had he given her Loubella’s address? And what was it between them, anyway, his giving Loubella a diamond as if she were a decent woman?

  Loubella answered that last one even before Blanche threw it out.

  “That Isaac, he is the sweetest man. We’ve been keeping company, you know, for quite some time.”

  “Well, I swear. I never knew that.”

  “Honey, there’s lots of things you don’t know about Loubella. It’s not exactly as if we been in touch.”

  Blanche lowered her gaze then. Here it comes. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.


  But in a moment all was calm again. She’d mistaken a passing cloud for a storm gathering. And before she knew it, Loubella was sweetening up her coffee again, and they were leaned back in their chairs, Loubella tucking her feet up, her legs in the circle of her arms, and it was like they were back on the service steps of River City gossiping about folks like Parnell had never come between them, as if his head had never rolled down Front.

  “Tell me ’bout your children. What’s Jesse up to?”

  “Well, I guess he’s doing all right. Married. Uh-huh.” She paused a moment, thinking about that. And then with pride in her voice said, “He called me today just to say hello.”

  “He lives in California, doesn’t he? They come and visit you?”

  “Uh-huh. Once. Stopped by my house.” She put her cup down, and this time Loubella didn’t even bother with the coffee, just filled it with bourbon, straight up. “Why, I think that day they said they’d been by to see you too.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can’t say as I thought much of her.”

  “Why not?”

  Blanche just shrugged. You’d have to be mother to a son to understand that.

  Loubella rose then, steady as a rock, for no alcohol had passed her lips, just coffee and a few bites of cake. As she skirted the back door, she reached out and tested it, just to make sure. Before Blanche came, she had locked that dead bolt from the inside and dropped the key in her garbage sack. Of course, Blanche didn’t know that.

  “Way things are these days, you can never be too safe,” Loubella said.

  Blanche nodded. “Ain’t that the truth. Why, just last week, I was reading in the paper about some crazy boys downtown grabbed a woman on her way home, arms full of groceries and…”

  Loubella wasn’t listening, except to a plan she’d run through her mind so many times that it had become a script. She couldn’t hear Blanche because she was following that script. Now she read the line that said, “Excuse yourself,” and she did.

  “Bathroom,” she said.

  “Sure, honey. Me too, after you.”

  Loubella closed the kitchen door behind her and headed down a little hall to her bedroom where she picked up the red five-gallon can of gasoline she’d earlier placed inside. She tipped the nozzle, splashed the bed, and began a damp trail that followed her as if to her mamaw’s house. In the living room she locked the front door from the inside and hid that key, too, beneath a cushion of her favorite chair. Then she doused the chair, the sofa, the faded Persian rug. After that she did what she’d said, went into the bathroom and relieved herself. For she wanted to be perfectly at ease for this last best part, the cherry on her ice cream sundae.

  Then she rejoined Blanche, who had been sitting there drinking another couple of fingers of bourbon that she didn’t need. Loubella frowned. She wanted Blanche slowed, but not so drunk that she missed a moment of the impending horror show.

  “Honey, I been thinking about what I said about Jesse and that girl, his wife, uh…”

  “Lily,” Loubella said.

  “That’s right, Lily, and then I was thinking about you and Isaac. You did say—” And then she stopped. “Jesus Christ, Loubella, what is that smell?”

  Loubella settled herself back at the table and plopped down the can she was still holding, planted it on the floor.

  “Gas,” she answered.

  Blanche jumped up, holding a hand to her breast. “The line’s busted!” She reached for Loubella’s arm. “Come on, honey, we got to get out of here!”

  Loubella smiled at her as serenely as if she’d just gotten up off her knees from prayer and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her supplication had been answered.

  Blanche saw that and suddenly her blood ran cold.

  Well, forget Loubella. She was getting out of here. She pushed past her to the back door and jerked at it. It didn’t open. She jerked again. “The door’s locked!” she screamed.

  Already she was hysterical. This was better than Loubella had even dreamed. She just kept on watching as if Blanche were a picture show, a movie she had waited a long time to see.

  “Aren’t you going to do something? You just going to sit there?” Blanche’s voice shrilled with terror and disbelief.

  Of course, Blanche had always thought that nothing very bad was going to happen to her, and up until now, she’d been right.

  As if in answer, though without saying a word, Loubella stood, picked up the gasoline can, which until now Blanche hadn’t spotted, and heaved it toward her, splattering Blanche’s baby-blue dress.

  Blanche screamed. She stood in one place with her hands in fists atop her head and screamed. You would have thought she could already feel the flames.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like, Blanche?” Loubella’s words were slow and calm. “I’m killing you. Actually, I’m killing us both.” And with that she reached over into a cabinet drawer and pulled out a revolver and placed it before her among the violet-sprigged china and the near-empty bottle of bourbon and the remains of birthday cake. The gun didn’t look very much at home.

  Blanche was jumping around now as if a fire were licking at her underpants. She whirled and raced out of the room. Loubella could hear her battering at the front door.

  “It ain’t no use, Blanche,” she called. “The doors are locked, and Isaac put bars on the windows last year. You might as well come on back in here.”

  Blanche blundered around a while longer before she did as she was told.

  She was whimpering. Big tears were rolling down her face. “No, no, no,” she whispered over and over.

  “You think you can always get your own way, don’t you, Miss Blanche? Well, this time you can’t.”

  “Why?” Blanche wailed.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why, Blanche, I can’t believe you don’t know how much I hate your guts.”

  Blanche reeled around the room, scrabbling at the things on the kitchen cabinet, grabbed a dishtowel, and dabbed at the front of her dress.

  “Don’t worry about it being stained, honey. Ain’t nothing of it going to be left.”

  Blanche began to scream again. Someone would hear her. Surely someone would.

  But it was the night of July Fourth. Hardly anyone was home. And those who were, were mostly drunk. Besides, nobody ever paid much attention to a woman screaming in this neighborhood. They figured whoever she was she was getting what she deserved, and if she didn’t, she either ought to get the hell out or pick up a skillet and show the man what for.

  “I didn’t mean any of it, Loubella, I’m sorry.” And she started to cry again, not paying any attention to her dripping nose. “I was gonna tell you tonight, just a while ago, that if I had to do it all over, I’d do it different, I swear.”

  “That may be true, but those years are already long gone.”

  “Oh, Loubella.” Blanche fell to her knees, scratching on the floor at Loubella’s feet. “Please, don’t do this.”

  “Remember when you baptized me in the river?” asked Loubella in a faraway, dreamy voice.

  “Yes.” Blanche was sobbing, her face buried in Loubella’s knees.

  “Remember how you prayed that if we drowned, the Baby Jesus would take us straight to heaven with no stops in between?”

  “Yes.” Blanche’s answer was muffled. But in it was just a whisper of hope. Maybe if Loubella could remember those days, when Blanche had been kind, she could find a bit of mercy in her heart.

  “Remember how you poured the water over our heads with that old broken cup?”

  Blanche nodded. And with that she felt liquid pour all over her hair, dribble down her neck.

  But it wasn’t river water. It was gasoline—high test.

  Blanche jumped up and screamed. And screamed. And screamed. She couldn’t stop now. Liquid ran down her legs too. Gasoline and urine mixed together, for Blanche had completely lost contr
ol of herself.

  “You never should have done what you did, Blanche. Parnell may have loved me, but he married you. He would have given you anything on earth you wanted.”

  “I know. I know,” Blanche moaned.

  “He was too good for you, bitch. You know, you’re the one who was the whore. I did it ’cause I had to. You did it ’cause you liked it. ’Cause you wanted everything. You always was a greedy gut, even as a girl. ‘That’s mine,’ you’d say. Licking a biscuit so nobody else would touch it. ‘Mine,’ no matter what.”

  Blanche kept on moaning. She had stopped twitching around the room and had fallen back in her chair as if she’d returned for another cup of coffee, another drink, except that her head was down on the table buried in her arms, and the liquid running down her face was a mixture of gasoline and tears.

  “And Parnell was yours. But those years you took from me—those eleven years, six months, and nine days—that quarter of my life I spent in jail, those wasn’t yours to take. Those were mine.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Say you’re sorry, Blanche.” Loubella’s voice was very soft and very cold.

  Blanche’s head snapped up.

  “I am sorry.”

  “But not as sorry as you’re gonna be.”

  At that, Loubella reached into her wrapper pocket and pulled out a box of wooden kitchen matches. She struck one and dropped it. The floor burst into licking tongues of red and yellow.

  In that moment, Blanche saw her chance. Quick as a snake, her hand grabbed the revolver sitting on the table and she fired it without thinking, striking Loubella in the breast.

  Loubella reeled backward. Laughter poured from her throat while crimson pumped from a hole in the pale pink wrapper, from right near the spot where her cancer was now cheated from its slower march toward death.

  “Thank you, Blanche,” Loubella whispered, and even as she died, she struck and dropped another match.

  It was then that Blanche realized, too late, far too late, that she had shot the wrong person. She should have shot herself. For a bullet through the brain was much quicker—why, it hardly compared to burning to death.