by Lex Martin
--Lalah Delia
Iris
One Year Later
MiMi says she was tutored by the bayou, by the Mississippi itself. She says that river is the blood meandering through Louisiana’s veins, and it casts a spell on all who love it.
I don’t know that I ever loved Louisiana. I never knew this Louisiana. I lived in the Ninth. On the bayou, a thick carpet of green grass squishes between my bare toes; in the city there was concrete under my feet, cracked and unforgiving.
An arch of cypress trees shelters the path from MiMi’s small house down to the river, but in my neighborhood growing up, power lines crisscrossed the sky like electric spaghetti. No, I didn’t love the Lower Ninth, but I think I’m falling for the bayou.
There are so many differences between the city and St. Martine. Being here the last year, I understand why Lo saw living with our great-grandmother as a blessing.
How she must have laughed when I claimed to know MiMi as well as she does. What a ridiculous notion. When we showed up on her modest doorstep, I barely recognized her. I don’t know exactly how old she is, but traces of great beauty still remain on her face, even past ninety years old. She has fewer wrinkles than she should, her skin carrying the patina of age, shined to a high polish.
And her eyes—those eyes can see your soul in the dark.
Lo hadn’t told her much about my circumstances, except that I needed to come home. But when I stood on the front porch and the blue door to MiMi’s green house swung open, her eyes probed mine in the dim porch light. That omniscient gaze sliced through the humid, heavy air, narrowing and softening with every new thing she read in my soul and dug out of my heart.
Her thin arms drew me close, and she whispered to me in French. I didn’t understand what she said. I didn’t need to. The power of her voice, the life in her words, winnowed to the bottomless pit where I hid my hurt. Before I knew it, my pain and disillusionment, my disappointment and regret, poured out of me into the silver braid hanging over her shoulder.
“Maman?”
Sarai’s sweet voice startles me and forces me to turn away from the bayou. She’s learning more words every day, half of them French, because people speak that here more than anything else, and the rest of them English, because that’s all I know to teach her.
“Hi, princess.” I bend and scoop her up. “Did you walk down here by yourself?”
She nods, bobbing the pigtails I scooped her dark curls into.
“Eat.” She clumps her fingertips together and presses them to her lips, making the sign.
“Time to eat?” I ask, waiting for another nod. “What’s MiMi got for dinner? Wanna find out?”
The patch from MiMi’s to the river’s edge is short, safe, and well-worn. This arch of trees provides the coolest spot for miles, and I find myself down here every chance I get. In the summer, humidity is the sultry breath of the south. I’ve given up on taming my hair since the moist air coaxes it into tight coils that hang down my back and around my shoulders. There’s a freedom to it.
Caleb liked my hair straight. He wanted everything a certain way. Wanted me a certain way. With distance and time, I realize I probably initially gave in to many of his preferences to make up for the fact that I just didn’t love him. Didn’t. Couldn’t. I’m not sure I ever did. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, Caleb probably would have been “that guy” I dated in college who ended up in the NBA. Maybe we would have had a long-distance relationship for a little while that eventually ran out of steam and followed a path to a natural end.
But I did get pregnant, and everything changed.
I barely recognize the woman I’ve become, so different from that girl, fresh from college, driven to achieve whatever she set her mind to.
“Affame?” MiMi asks, lifting the top from a pot on the stove and smiling through a cloud of steam.
“Yes, starving.” I grab three plates from the hutch against the wall, silverware, and three of the linen napkins MiMi still eats with each night. At two years old, Sarai can barely reach the table, but she strains up on her little toes to set the forks down by each plate. She’s mature for her age. Bright. Observant. And so beautiful.
“Etouffe!” she says when we sit down to eat, her smile pegged with baby teeth.
“Grits,” I correct gently. I raise my spoon to taste and close my eyes to savor. “And shrimp. So good, MiMi. Mine never turn out this good.”
She has taken up my culinary education, which my mother never really bothered to do.
We eat in relative silence for the first few moments, but that won’t last. At MiMi’s age, her mind still races with questions, and her curiosity makes for lively conversation.
“You like Jerome, eh?” MiMi’s silver brows lift and fall suggestively over mischievous eyes. “He likes you so much, he may start delivering the mail on Sunday soon.”
“Oh my God.” My cheeks flush with embarrassment, and not from the heat in the non-air-conditioned house. “He’s our mailman, MiMi, so I like him fine as far as mail goes, but nothing else.” I attempt a stern tone, but my lips twitch at the corners and so do hers.
“You are beautiful, young.” MiMi narrows one eye at me before taking a bite. “You have needs.”
“I have needs?” I cock a dubious brow. “So . . . Jerome, the only man I see on a consistent basis, qualifies to meet these supposed needs of mine because he delivers our mail on time?”
There’s nothing like MiMi’s laugh. It starts as a cackle then swells to a guffaw, the sound booming from her small body and floating through the air like bubbles that settle around you and pop with energy. It’s the kind of laugh that invites you to join in.
“Besides,” I say when our laughter fades and we turn our attention back to dinner. “I don’t know if I do have those needs. I’m satisfied with a good meal and my princess.” I lean over to kiss Sarai’s silky mop of curls.
“You buried your needs with your pain,” MiMi says, her voice sobering and her eyes probing. “But they are still there.”
“Are they?” My index finger makes a circuit around the porcelain rim of my bowl. “Maybe once, but . . .”
I shrug and hope she’ll leave it alone. I have aches and scars from my life with Caleb, some visible and some hidden from the naked eye. This body kept all my secrets. My shame took sanctuary in its crevices and cracks. I’m not sure this body’s capable of pleasure anymore.
“Tell me,” she persists. “Your boyfriend, he hurt you, yes?”
The scorching summer’s day and boiling soup in the kitchen make the air like a wool blanket around my shoulders, hot and heavy, but I still shiver. Caleb is far away and has never so much as sent a text to the pre-paid phone only Lo knows about. He doesn’t have my number, and I don’t think he knows to search here, but I find myself on alert.
Some people are afraid a gator will crawl out of the swamp and emerge as a threat. My nightmares star a different predator. I dream Caleb will rise out of the bayou some day and eat me whole, and next time I won’t be able to pry his jaws open and escape.
“He took from you.” MiMi says it like she knows for sure. She probably does. “He took, and you think you’ll never want a man again.”
I glance self-consciously at Sarai, but she is too young and oblivious, chewing on crusty bread with her little teeth and eating the grapes I put on her plate.
There was a man I wanted once, but if he knew all that’d happened to me . . . God, the thought of August finding out about Caleb and all that he did. I touch my neck. The idea of wanting a man again is hard to swallow when I still feel Caleb’s hand at my throat. Only it’s not his hand cutting off my breath, choking me. It’s shame.
My spoon drops, clattering in the bowl. I’m shaken by my memories, so visceral that after a year, I still feel Caleb shoving inside me like a battering ram. The sting of his belt buckle biting into my hip is still fresh. Yesterday’s regrets make today’s sorrows.
“You’ll want again.” MiMi covers my hand with her
weathered one, the ringed fingers squeezing mine. “You need to be cleansed.”
She’s right. I’m dirty. How could I not be after that animal was inside me? After he subdued me like a rabbit he only left alive for sport? Even so, I don’t put much stock into the rituals MiMi thinks will make a difference.
“Meet me in the back after her bath.” She nods to Sarai, whose long, drowsy blinks send shadows on her cheeks.
After bath with bubbles in MiMi’s claw-foot tub, Sarai insists on a story. She loves fairytales, and I don’t have the heart to tell her that sometimes Prince Charming turns out to be an abusive asshole like her father, and sometimes his kisses bust your lips. When her lashes flicker and her breath slows into sleep, I turn off the lights in the small bedroom we share. Funny. We lived in a mansion, and every day I felt caged, claustrophobic. Now we live in a four-room house out in the middle of nowhere. We share a bedroom whose walls I can practically touch with each hand when I spread my arms, yet the sense of freedom is like none I’ve ever known.
I push back the curtain, studying MiMi’s “back room” with interest. I’ve seen people enter distraught and leave clutching their newfound peace and a mason jar or bottle of something from MiMi’s shelf of solutions. I don’t understand all that MiMi does—the potions people from town come to buy, the rituals she performs in the back of the house behind a curtain. I don’t know all that she does, but I believe every word she says.
She lights the last in a line of candles on a table against the wall, glancing up to find me paused on the threshold.
“Come,” she says. Even her voice is different here. Brusque, but not stern. Soft, yet impersonal. Gentle and firm.
She has work to do.
Work on me that I’m not sure I’m ready for. Once I climb on that table, I don’t know what will come next. Delaying, I browse the bottles crammed onto shelves lining the wall, a restless tactile exploration with my fingertips. I hesitate over a bottle with an unfamiliar symbol.
“Don’t touch that one,” MiMi says with her back turned to me.
How did she . . .?
I’ve stopped asking questions. There’s an omniscience to my great-grandmother. Some days, when her shoulders droop and her bustling steps slow to a shuffle, I wonder if she’s tired of knowing all the things she’s learned. If maybe soon, she’ll weary of living in a world that no longer holds mystery and set off for a new adventure.
She’s bent, looking for something under the table. Still nervous, I ease open a drawer, surprised to find a pocket knife. The handle is curved and ornate. It’s delicate, designed for smaller hands. I pick it up, caressing the jeweled button that opens it. I press, and with a snap, it unfurls a sharp, wicked length of blade.
“Touch a lady’s knife,” MiMi says, some humor sprinkled in her words, “you better be prepared to use it.”
I glance up, then catch the slight smile on her lips and return it. The simple connection spreads warmth over me as effectively as a physical embrace. MiMi communicates more with fewer words than anyone I’ve ever known. It feels like we learn as much about each other in glances, touches, and smiles as we do with the things we say.
“I was surprised to find it,” I admit, replacing the knife and closing the drawer.
“Well, a woman in this world has to keep her wits about her and her weapons at hand.” MiMi measures me from head to toe with a glance. She gestures for me to climb on the table. My nerves stretch so tight I’m sure I’ll tear in half.
“You must breathe,” MiMi whispers. Her words float above me, shrouded in the candles’ aromatic smoke. Below, my body’s held by a cloud of pillows. I should feel safe, secure, settled, yet I feel exposed. I’m so vulnerable, I close my eyes and cover my heart with my hands.
“Hands down,” MiMi commands gently.
Lowering my hands, I lock eyes with my great-grandmother and draw in deep, scented breaths.
“Breathe out.” Her eyes never leave mine as the breath pushes past my lips, and the longer she looks into my soul, the sadder her gaze becomes, shimmering with tears. “Oh, ma petite.”
Can she see? See past the fragile façade I’ve erected to cover the ruins? Can she see that last night and all the nights before? How he ravaged me? Does she know that I feel plundered, like a picked-over battlefield littered with dead bodies? That some days I am dead, and that Sarai, taking care of her, is the only thing forcing me through the motions of life? When MiMi looks in my eyes, does she see?
Her hands pass through the air above, covering me in scented breezes. Her words migrate from Spain, from France and West Africa, all the places that made us and mix in our blood, in our heritage. The syllables fall from her lips, foreign and familiar, as tossed and varied as the gumbo she taught me to prepare.
“Breathe out the lies,” she says. “That it was your fault. That you failed. That you are what he said you were.”
When her words sink in, when they drill down to my core, a sob explodes, detonating through my belly and chest, and blasting open a wall of deceit I didn’t know was there. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and I’m so damned tired of tasting my tears. The image of Caleb pressing his thumb into my mouth that first night, soaked with my tears, flashes through my mind. The night his wicked trap caught me.
“Breathe in truth.” Her hands are busy in the air over me, slicing through lies. “You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.” She leans closer, her whisper as sharp and fierce as the knife in her drawer. “He can’t hurt you.”
My shoulders shake and my head tips back, emotion stretching me wide, arching my back, elongating my neck, and wrenching my mouth open in a wail, a warrior cry. And in a smoky room filled with shadows, those parts of me Caleb scattered, I reconvene. All the pieces he splintered, I mend. And everything he stole from me like a petty thief, those things, every single one of them, I repossess.
“Yes.” MiMi’s affirmation infuses the air with power. “Strength. Dignity. Courage. All these things belong to you. Take them back. Your soul is yours. Your heart is yours. Your body is yours. Yours to keep and yours to share.”
Yours to keep and yours to share.
The words summon a memory I haven’t allowed myself in months. Breathing in and out, I indulge in thoughts of August. His carved profile and soft, full lips. His thundercloud eyes and gentle hands. A body of granite covered in taut, velvet skin. The urgent want smoldering between us. His hunger so palpable, I felt it stroking me everywhere. His tongue delving inside, seeking, giving.
“Oh, God.” A gasp transports me, and my eyes drop closed until we are alone again, he and I. Back in that closet, the door shut, sealed off from the world. Our mouths meld and our breaths tangle, and I can’t gather enough of him on my tongue, can’t reach enough of his body. I press into him until our bones touch, until our souls kiss, until every part of me, from the inside out, I’ve shared with him.
And I break.
I break like a storm on the Mississippi River, a relief from the cloying weight of summer heat. I’m a deluge, drowning my doubts and washing away my fears. I stiffen with a catharsis so spiritual and sensual, so pure and carnal, that for a moment, I’m not of this world. I’m above its cares, outside of its confines, divorced from my body and untethered from the earth.
“Breathe in,” MiMi says softly. “Breathe out.”
Her words slowly reel me back, returning me to the small room behind the curtain. They ground me in a fresh sphere with a lightened body and spirit.
“What was that?” My breath comes in pants and my hands shake. “What did you do?”
At first I think she’ll only answer with a smile and an otherworldly light in her eyes, but she reaches back to answer my question from before.
“These,” she says, waving her hand at the bottles on the shelves, “don’t tell me what you need. They don’t tell me what to do. You do that. You, ma petite, you needed the truth. I gave it to you.”
I’m still not sure what she actually means.
> I sit up carefully, expecting my head to spin, but the room is steady and I’m not weak-limbed.
“A few moments with the truth don’t chase away the lies forever,” she says, pushing back the sweat-dampened hair clinging to my face. “Lies don’t give up easily. You’ll have to remind yourself and heal yourself over and over, every time they come.”
“You mean I need to talk to a therapist?” I ask. I’ve thought of that and probably will at some point.
“Yes.” Her smile is that of a younger woman, knowing, teasing. “And sleep naked sometimes. Soon, you’ll want again.”
We share a husky laugh. Recalling August’s kiss, I wonder if she’s right. I slide off the bed and touch my bare feet to the floor, reaching for her.
“Thank you, MiMi.” I blink at my tears with my head tucked into her long, silver braid. “I feel so weak sometimes, and you make me feel strong.”
“Struggle does not make you weak,” she whispers back. “Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.”
That night, with the soft sounds of crickets and swamp creatures drifting through my window, I sleep better than I have in months. I sleep so deeply that by the time I wake up, the sun is higher and brighter than usual. I reach out and find the space beside me empty.
“Sarai!” I bolt up, my breath caged and flapping in my chest. I fumble through the sheets, stumbling out of bed and into the narrow hall.
My daughter’s sweet voice drifts back to me from MiMi’s room. My smile comes full and wide. I’m so glad we’ve had this time with my great-grandmother; the experiences I missed as a child, Sarai will be able to treasure.
“Wake up,” she cajoles in that sing-song voice she uses to stir me on mornings when it’s hard for me to rise. MiMi usually beats the sun up and, at more than ninety years old, is making coffee and cooking eggs and bacon before I’m awake. Last night must have worn her out, too. I lean my shoulder into the doorjamb, running my eyes over MiMi’s small bedroom, stuffed with furniture too big for the space and photos, many black and white, crowding the walls. The room is set to burst, a larger-than-life woman squeezed between the walls.