Take One Candle Light a Room

by Susan Straight

  “What?”

  “She was sittin up in the car with him for hours. Talkin.”

  I had to be careful. “He’s not a rapper. He’s in college.”

  “Danita’s in college, too. Nursing school in Baton Rouge,” she said. Her lips folded in on themselves twice, while she thought. “And he rode in with Alfonso. What’s wrong with his arm?”

  I closed my eyes. The bullet. No. “He’s been riding with his cousin, and you apparently know what Alfonso’s like. I came to take Victor back to California. He doesn’t need to be with them.”

  “Yeah. Neither does Danita. But she called about two hours ago, and she ain’t answered her phone since. She got my car, and I gotta be at work before five.” She looked at her phone and put it in her pocket. She imitated her daughter. “ ‘Mama, I ain’t never met nobody like him.’ I knew I’d have to hear that someday, but I didn’t want to hear it today.”

  “I have my car. As soon as I take these off and get dressed—” The whole bathroom smelled like a New York hot dog stand.

  “Them jeans outside covered with ants?” She shook her head and laughed one more time. “Damn, that was funny. I’ll get you somethin to wear. And some Benadryl.”

  The huge skillet of jambalaya was nearly done, low flame popping blue under the cast iron. The apricot linoleum was new—remnants of her wash water trembling in one of the seams near my foot.

  In the front room was a living room set, and in the corner was a desk unit with a computer set into a hutch. “That’s where Danita spend all her time,” she said. “She don’t even hardly watch TV now. She was on there this morning, when I went to bed, lookin up this rapper. They got MySpace and YouTube and I don’t know what. I try to keep a eye out, but I work all night.” She turned to me. “He probably do all that MySpace too.”

  The lie went like fishing wire around my throat. Victor didn’t even have what her daughter had, living out in the middle of the cane fields in rural Louisiana, with a mother who worked all night. Victor had nothing. I’d given him nothing.

  “You want some coffee?” She poured me a cup. Community Coffee. The best coffee I’d ever had, except my mother’s. She held her cell phone to her ear and said, “You ain’t answering. It’s been three hours. My car. You got that? My car. You better come to your senses.”

  She sat on the couch, her eyes narrowed. “Why you haven’t called your son?”

  His phone didn’t even ring. I said to voicemail, “Victor. I’m here in Sarrat. With Danita’s mama. And you better call me.”

  She sighed so deeply it was as if she shrank. “Why she like this one? What’s so special about him?” Her arms were folded.

  “He’s so smart,” I said, and then I started to cry.

  She said, “He so smart, why he ridin with Alfonso?” Then she pushed herself up from the couch. “Smart, foolish, whatever. I gotta get to work. Dumb old folks like me gotta pay for everything.”

  I wiped my eyes and looked at the cane outside the window.

  She came back from her bedroom wearing a nursing uniform—light blue pants and a blue smock with yellow sunflowers. She held up a pink sundress for me—that crinkly cotton which never got wrinkled because it was always wrinkled.

  “Damn, you pale,” she said, looking at my legs. “But you got muscles.”

  “I walk a lot.” I slipped the dress over my head, and she handed me fresh underwear. Also pink.

  “Walkin in the cane. If you ever worked in there, you wouldn’t want to walk in it.”

  She had no idea who I was. I held out my arms, but the scars were so faded, and I was so pale from Switzerland, that she probably couldn’t see what they were. I said, “I worked cane here one summer. That was enough.”

  Then she nodded. “I don’t even chew on it, during grinding,” she said. “I just get my sugar at the store.”

  The jambalaya was spicy, full of andouille sausage, shrimp, and chicken. Peppers, onions, and celery. She handed me a plate, but she said, “I eat mine later. Can’t eat right after I cook.” She filled three large plastic containers, snapped on the covers.

  We took the bowl, a metal coffeepot filled with coffee, and a loaf of white bread down the road. I watched the grass and dirt carefully, expecting to see a huge mound where the fire ants lived. I wished I could have covered my legs—they were slathered in Benadryl, and stunk of onions, and still they pulsated with heat and itch.

  Michelle pointed to a grayish bare spot in the grass where my mother’s house had been—“See? Ants. I’ll tell Albert to put the poison on em. He has to do it every week, and they come right back. Them and the roaches—once we all gone, they’ll still be here. And the termites eatin up New Orleans.”

  Albert wasn’t inside Henri’s house. Neither was my father.

  Henri sat in the recliner, with a fan blowing the air so hard that his hair waved gently. The TV was on, but he faced the window and the road. A violin lay on the couch.

  “Albert and Enrique venez a Baton Rouge. Get some truck.” He smiled at me. “Mo pas travai vec no engine.”

  “Why they need a truck?” Michelle asked, bringing him a plate of jambalaya.

  He shrugged. In the kitchen, she said, “After he eat, he’ll sleep. Naptime at the daycare. Same where I work, bout this time. Then they stay up late, watchin TV.”

  My father and Albert on the road. She saw the flyers on the table and said, “This where she went? ‘U Know Whut U Got 2 Do’? She ain’t that foolish.” She glanced at her phone again. “She got about a hour before I tear her up.”

  I was maybe a few minutes away from seeing Victor. From figuring out how to get him in the car. If he was with Danita, maybe it would be easy.

  It sounded like she’d fallen hard. For my son.

  Michelle drove the Corsica. My legs throbbed so hard I couldn’t think. She said, “If they lookin for pretty girls, maybe she went to her cousins.”

  I couldn’t ask her about Danita’s father. Then she’d ask about Victor’s.

  We drove along Bayou Becasse Road for about three more miles. I said, “Albert’s got a lot going on.”

  “Albert come and go. But he’s good. He watches Henri for a little while every day, and at night, he checks in on Danita, till I get home.”

  She turned down a road and in to another collection of old houses and trailers. Michelle said, “Hold up,” and ran into a wooden house with a new tin roof and pepper plants around the porch. A heavy woman wearing a black tank top and black shorts came outside behind her, peered at me, and said something to Michelle. Then she reached up and ran her fingers along Michelle’s forehead, pushing the baby-hair waves into place.

  “My cousin,” Michelle said, back in the car. “She just did my hair yesterday. She said she ain’t seen em.”

  We drove along Bayou Becasse Road until we came to a clearing. A huge weathered house, with blank eyes of empty dormer windows above the long porch railing, and dead vines twined around the pillars like something out of Sleeping Beauty. No old rusted car. No one. I turned to look back.

  “Seven Oaks,” Michelle said, frowning. “I thought you been here before?”

  “I never saw it.”

  “Lady I watch used to live there. After her uncle died. Say somebody killed him. Everybody round here used to work his fields, and after he was gone, somebody else bought the land. They had to get off.”

  “Get off?”

  She pointed down another narrow road. “Used to be houses back there, too. Seven Oaks people. But somebody from Baton Rouge owns all this now. Plowed over the houses and the graveyard. Planted cane. Before I was born—my maman told me.”

  Did my father know? He knew. It didn’t matter. He was saving my mother. And Glorette’s mother.

  “Where’s your maman?” I asked.

  “She fell asleep drivin home from New Orleans one night. Partyin down there for Mardi Gras and drove into a tree. Ten years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”


  At a brick ranch house, a young woman answered the door. She had a flyer, which someone had handed out at the community college in Baton Rouge. Cane Razor. The website address. I said, “Damn, we could have looked it up on your computer. Maybe it would have said where they were meeting. Is there an Internet café around here?”

  “Are you crazy?” She shrugged. “If they in Baton Rouge, we gotta go back down to the highway. No bridge over here.”

  “Albert doesn’t have a phone?”

  “He’s outta minutes.”

  We drove in silence until she pulled into a wooden grocery store that said PAT’S PLACE.

  “I need some aspirin.” Michelle rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

  Under an ancient fan, a white woman said, “Quo fa, Michelle?” Just like my mother.

  “That girl, Miss Pat,” Michelle said.

  Miss Pat shook her head and said, “Twenty like kindergarten now, oui? Thirty they still live at home. What y’all want?”

  “Oyster po-boy for Miss Titine. She was sick last night, but she’s workin today.” The woman nodded at me. “This Fantine. She from California.”

  The woman handed the wrapped po-boy to Michelle. “How Miss Irma?”

  “Turn ninety in September,” Michelle said. “She got her shows.”

  We drove back along the river, and she turned on another state road. “Palmetto down there a ways.” I was completely lost.

  My father had never mentioned a Miss McQuine.

  A brick ranch house stood behind a circular dirt driveway. She stopped the engine and looked at me. “So he smart, huh?”

  “He graduated from community college with honors. He’s going to USC. Next year.”

  She looked out the windshield. She thought her daughter was in love, just like that.

  I looked straight ahead as well, at the oak tree near the house, branches spreading like black rivers in the air. “He wants to be a music writer. That’s why he knows so much about rap. But he’s not a gangster.” I rubbed sweat from my eyes.

  “A writer.” She gave me a look. “Danita said they went to get tattoos. But your son said he already had tattoos where no one could see em and he didn’t need any more.”

  ———

  Tattoos? I was still trying to figure that out, and just inside the door was Miss McQuine. She sat folded into her recliner like a flattened paper doll, but her breasts still rose and fell under her knit dress with each breath. She had to be his niece—Mr. McQuine. The living room was dim and cool, the cream-colored drapes drawn over the big picture window, and the old TV in the corner was like a blue fire. Her hair was cotton candy. She smiled at me and Michelle, her eyes black under long soft eyelashes. “You a new girl?” she said. “What a bright dress!”

  Michelle said, “She just dropping me off, Miss Irma. This is Fantine.”

  I said, “Nice to meet you, Miss McQuine.” Not, “Do you remember my father?”

  She pulled me toward the chair. Her hand was hard and small. “You can stay a while,” she said. “The news comes on after Ellen.”

  “She cain’t stay, Miss Irma,” said another woman, coming out of the kitchen. “County don’t low no guest. You know that.” Michelle was bent near the walker, which stood by the recliner. I imagined her here last night for twelve hours, with no one but the tiny woman and the television.

  “You put some WD-40 on that wheel so it stop squeakin?” Michelle murmured.

  I slid my hand from the cool dry palm of Miss Irma. The other woman took the bowl of jambalaya from Michelle and said, “She taken her medicine.”

  We followed her into the kitchen. “You must be Titine,” I said. She nodded and sat down at the Formica kitchen table to unwrap the po-boy. She was about fifty, with large flat brown arms in the short-sleeved green uniform. A white silky headscarf. She said, “Thanks, baby,” to Michelle. “For workin last night.”

  “I got you,” Michelle said, going to the sink.

  My phone rang. “We got service here,” Michelle said, while I struggled to get the phone from my bag.

  “I’m sorry, Tony!” I said, and both women grinned and shook their heads.

  I ducked into the doorway, but the old woman smiled at me, and so I wheeled around to the hallway.

  “Uh-huh. That must be her husband,” I heard Michelle say, and I wish I could have laughed, but the sound of Tony’s voice made everything worse—the bites on my legs, my headache, the endless worrying about Victor. I was standing in a dark hallway with wood paneling and old black-and-white photos and murky carpet.

  “You just fucking disappeared, FX,” he said. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Louisiana. I’m not in a town, or a village, so don’t even ask where. I’m in the middle of a cane field.”

  He was still pissed. He said, “What the hell’s going on? I’ve been trying to call you and you don’t pick up.”

  Muted noises floated down the hallway, and I saw faces above me. A photo of Mr. McQuine. It was him. In a suit. A huge man with black hair combed back from a square forehead. Fleshy lips and perfect teeth. In front of a white pillar. A porch. With a tiny woman. Miss Irma. I started to cry.

  “I got bit by ants. My nephew has a bullet in his arm,” I said through my tears. “I wish we were in Naples.”

  I ducked my head and moved away from the photos above me.

  He heard me crying. “I’m supposed to be shooting in Palm Springs. But how close are you to New Orleans? I’m getting a ticket right now.” The soft hollow clicking of laptop keys. “Can you e-mail me your hotel?”

  “I have no hotel. No e-mail. Nothing. I’m about two hours from New Orleans.”

  “Wait,” he said. “There’s a hurricane circling out in the Gulf.” More clicking. “They can’t tell the path yet. Okay—got a flight. I’ll be there tomorrow around four. This is enough mysterious crazy shit.”

  I said, “Tony, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Always something. Never nothing.”

  I said, “Tony—” I wanted him to say, “I got you. I got you.” Like my brothers. Like Michelle had just said.

  “Shut up,” he said. “Don’t say you love me. Because you’ve seen the whole New Orleans scene, so you know how much I hate it.”

  “I’ve never been to New Orleans.”

  “We did that piece about five years ago.”

  I wouldn’t look at anything in the hall but my toes. “No. You have, but I’ve never been.”

  “Look, I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”

  ———

  “You in trouble now,” Michelle said, but her voice had gone detached. She thought I was married. Whole different story.

  “That’s a friend,” I said. “From work. He’s worried because I hadn’t called him.”

  “Your son’s daddy?”

  I shook my head, and she smiled.

  “You want some coffee before Danita get here? Miss Irma always has fresh coffee at six when we change shift so I’m fixin to make some.”

  Titine said, “Lemme get the paperwork.”

  They sat down at the table to mark off boxes on a form. The coffee smell filled the kitchen. I stood in the doorway. Titine said, “She didn’t want me to do her hair. She want you.”

  The hair was soft and white. How did Michelle do anything with it? “She got her appointment tomorrow at the beauty parlor.”

  Parlor? Maybe it was because women in the past had their hair done in someone’s house. “Once we braided it,” Michelle said to me.

  I was startled, imagining cornrows radiating from the pale forehead. Miss Irma called to my shadow, “They got dancing on Ellen!”

  “Two braids around the top, like the old days.”

  Two braids of white. Twenty braids of black. Same movements of finger and wrist.

  Michelle’s phone rang on the table. “Let me put this girl on speakerphone so we can finish up.” She pushed a button and said, “You better be here in five minutes.”

  “M
ama!” her daughter said. Voice low and scared. “I didn’t know they had guns.”

  “Get outta there,” Michelle said, standing up.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m right next to the stage. The car’s blocked in here. I can’t get out. And Scholaptitude’s friends got guns, too.”

  “Danita,” her mother hissed. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Past Highway 77 is Maringouin Road,” Michelle said. “About fifteen miles.”

  I drove as fast as I could on the winding river road along the levee, back to the highway, and took the narrow road that followed along Bayou Maringouin, through another forest of endless cane. Maringouin—a place named for a mosquito, my father told me years ago.

  A black Hummer raced up ahead of us and turned down a side road into the cane. Then a van with VIP Productions painted on the side. A cloud of dust rose from a place in the fields. Three motorcycles—red and yellow and black—sped around the corner of a clearing, and Michelle said, “Right there.”

  An abandoned set of buildings. An old cane mill with cars and trucks everywhere in the weedy lot. We had to park at the edge of a field, my tires slipping in the loose dirt near a cane row. Then another clearing in the cane, and a rough stage set up in the distance. Soda cans and big white go-cups everywhere on the ground. Music thumping from the speakers—a stuttering drumbeat, staccato handclaps, and a deep hoarse voice shouting, “Cut em down! The choppa or the chete! Cut em down! The Benz or the Chevy! Cut em down!”

  We threaded our way through the maze of cars. On one side, the three motorcycles were doing doughnuts in the dust, while a cameraman filmed them. There were young girls dancing everywhere, like they’d taken some drug that made them stand slightly bent, their feet planted, while their breasts and butts shook and bounced as if electrified. A white cameraman with a brown braid down his back was roaming around filming the girls dancing, close-ups of their behinds. He zoomed in on a girl in short shorts—the long lens like a wasp getting ready to land.