Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin (16 page)

^{i parked the car}
outside St. Raymond’s cemetery in Throgs Neck, far enough away that nobody could see it. A hum came from the expressway, but the closer I got to the graveyard the more the smell of fresh- cut grass filled the air. A faint whiff of the Long Island Sound.

The trees were tall and the light fell in shafts among them. It was hard to believe that this was the Bronx, although I saw the graffiti scrawled on the side of a few mausoleums, and some of the headstones near the gate had been vandalized. There were a few funerals in progress, mostly in the new cemetery, but it was easy enough to tell which group was the girl’s. They were carrying the coffin down the tree- lined road toward the old cemetery. The children were dressed in perfect white, but the women’s clothes looked like they had been cobbled together, the skirts too short, the heels too high, their cleavage covered with wraparound scarves. It was like they had gone to a strange garage sale: the bright expensive clothes hidden with bits and pieces of dark. The Irishman looked so pale among them, so very white.

A man in a gaudy suit, wearing a hat with a purple feather, followed at the back of the procession. He looked drugged- up and malevolent. Under his suit jacket he wore a tight black turtleneck and a gold chain on his neck, a spoon hanging from it.

A boy who was no more than eight played a saxophone, beautifully, like some strange drummer boy from the Civil War. The music rang out in punctuated bursts over the graveyard.

I stayed in the background, near the road in a patch of overgrown grass, but as the service began, John A. Corrigan’s brother caught my eye and beckoned me forward. There were no more than twenty people gathered around the graveside but a few young women wailed deeply.

—Ciaran, he said again, extending his hand, as if I might have forgotten. He gave me a thin, embarrassed smile. We were the only white people there. I wanted to reach up and adjust his tie, fix his scattered hair, primp him.

A woman—she could only have been the dead girl’s mother—stood sobbing beside two men in suits. Another, younger woman stepped up to her. She took off a beautiful black shawl and draped it on the mother’s shoulders.

The preacher—a thin, elegant black man—coughed and the crowd fell silent. He talked about the spirit being triumphant in the body’s fall, and how we must learn to recognize the absence of the body and praise the presence of what is left behind. Jazzlyn had a hard life, he said. Death could not justify or explain it. A grave does not equal what we have had in our lifetime. It was maybe not the time or the place, he said, but he was going to talk about justice anyway. Justice, he repeated. Only candor and truth win out in the end. The house of justice had been vandalized, he said. Young girls like Jazzlyn were forced to do horrific things. As they grew older the world had demanded terrible things of them. This was a vile world. It forced her into vile things. She had not asked for it. It had become vile for her, he said. She was under the yoke of tyranny. Slavery may be over and gone, he said, but it was still apparent. The only way to fight it was with charity, justice, and goodness. It was not a simple plea, he said, not at all. Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That’s why they became evil. That’s why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn’t matter—it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

The preacher nodded, then looked up toward the high trees. Jazzlyn had been a child who grew up in Cleveland and New York City, he said, and she had seen those distant hills of goodness and she knew that one day she was going to get there. It was always going to be a difficult journey. She had seen too much evil on the way, he said. She had some friends and confidants, like John A. Corrigan, who had perished with her, but mostly the world had tried her and sentenced her and taken advantage of her kindness. But life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty, he said, and now she was on her way to a place where there were no governments to chain her or enslave her, no miscreants to demand the wrong thing, and none of her own people who were going to turn her flesh to profit. He stood tall then and said: Let it be said that she was not ashamed.

A wave of nods went around the crowd.
—Shame on those who wanted to shame her.
—Yes, came the reply.
—Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking

someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.
—Yes.
—That bad life. That vile life. In front of you will stretch goodness.

You will follow the path and it will be good. Not easy, but good. Full of terror and difficulty maybe, but the windows will open to the sky and your heart will be purified and you will take wing.

I had a sudden, terrible vision of Jazzlyn flying through the windshield. I felt dizzy. The preacher’s lips moved, but for a moment I couldn’t hear. He was looking at a single place in the crowd, his vision fixed on the man in the purple hat behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. The man was biting his upper lip in anger and his body seemed to curl into itself, coiling and getting ready to strike. The hat shadowed him but he looked to have a glass eye.

—The snakes will perish with the snakes, said the preacher. —Yessir, came a woman’s voice.
—They’ll be gone.
—Yes they will.
—Be they out of here.
The man in the purple hat didn’t move. Nobody moved. —Go on! shouted Jazzlyn’s mother, contorting herself. She looked

like she was strapped down but she was wriggling and squirming out of it. One of the men in suits touched her arm. Her shoulders were going from side to side and her voice was raw with rage.

I wondered for a horrific moment if she was shouting at me, but she was staring beyond me, at the man in the feathered hat. The chorus of shouts rose higher. The preacher held his hands out and asked for calm. It was only then I realized that Jazzlyn’s mother had kept her arms behind her back the whole time, shackled with handcuffs. The two black men in suits beside her were city cops.

The man in the hat waited a moment, stretched upward, gave a smile that showed all his teeth. He touched the brim, tilted it, turned, and walked away. A small cheer went up from the mourners. They watched the pimp disappear down the road. He raised his hat one time, without turning around, waved it in the air, like a man who was not really saying good- bye.

Ciaran steadied my arm. I was feeling cold and dirty: it was like putting on a fourth- hand blouse. I had no right to be there. I was treading on their territory. But something in the service was pure and true:
Behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.

The wailing had stopped and Jazzlyn’s mother said: Take these goddamn things off me.
Both cops stared straight ahead.
—I said take these goddamn things off me!
Finally, one of them stepped behind her and unlocked the handcuffs.
—Thank Jesus.
She shook her hands out and walked around the open grave, over toward Ciaran. Her scarf fell slightly and revealed the depth of her cleavage. Ciaran flushed red and embarrassed.
—I got a little story to tell, she said.
She cleared her throat and a swell went around the crowd.
—My Jazzlyn, she was ten. And she see’d a picture of a castle in a magazine somewheres. She went, clipped it out, and taped it on the wall above her bed. Like I say, nothing much to it, I never really thought that much about it. But when she met Corrigan . . .
She pointed over toward Ciaran, who looked to the ground.
— . . . and one day he was bringing around some coffee and she told him all about it, the castle—maybe she was bored, just wanted something to say, I don’t know. But you know Corrigan—that cat would listen to just about anything. He had an ear. And, of course, Corrie got a kick out of that. He said he knew castles just like that where he growed up. And he said he’d bring her to a castle just like it one day. Promised her solid. Every day he’d come out and bring her coffee and he’d say to my little girl that he was getting that castle ready, just you wait. One day he’d tell her that he was getting the moat right. The next he said he was working on the chains that go to the gate bridge. Then he said he was working on the turrets. Then he’d say he was getting the banquet all squared away. They were gonna have mead—that’s like wine—and lots of good food and there was gonna be harps playing and lots of dancing.
—Yes, said a woman in spangled makeup.
—Every day he had a new thing to say about that castle. That was their own little game, and Jazzlyn loved playing it, word.
She grabbed hold of Ciaran’s arm.
—That’s all, she said. That’s all I have to say. That’s it. That’s fucking it, ’scuse me for saying it.
A chorus of amens went around the gathered crowd and then she turned to some of the other women and made a comment of some sorts, something strange and clipped about going to the bathroom in the castle. A ripple of laughter went around a portion of the crowd and an odd thing occurred—she began quoting some poet whose name I didn’t catch, a line about open doors and a single beam of sunlight that struck right to the center of the floor. Her Bronx accent threw the poem around until it seemed to fall at her feet. She looked down sadly at it, its failure, but then she said that Corrigan was full of open doors, and he and Jazzlyn would have a heck of a time of it wherever they happened to be; every single door would be open, especially the one to that castle.
She leaned then against Ciaran’s shoulder and started to weep: I’ve been a bad mother, she said, I’ve been a terrible goddamn mother.
—No, no, you’re fine.
—There weren’t ever no goddamn castle.
—There’s a castle for sure, he said.
—I’m not an idiot, she said. You don’t have to treat me like a child.
—It’s okay.
—I let her shoot up.
—You don’t have to be so hard on yourself...
—She shot up in my arms.
She turned her face to the sky and then grasped the nearest lapel.
—Where’re my babies?
—She’s in heaven now, don’t you worry.
—My babies, she said. My baby’s babies.
—They’re just fine, Till, said a woman near the grave.
—They’re being looked after.
—They’ll come see you, T.
—You promise me? Who’s got them? Where are they?
—I swear it, Till. They’re okay.
—Promise me.
—God’s honest, said a woman.
—You better fucking promise, Angie.
—I promise. All right already, T. I promise.
She leaned against Ciaran and then turned her face, looked him in the eye, and said: You remember what we done? You ’member me?
Ciaran looked like he was handling a stick of dynamite. He wasn’t sure whether to hold it and smother it, or throw it as far away from himself as he could. He flicked a quick look at me, then the preacher, but then he turned to her and put his arms around her and held her very tight. He said: I miss Corrie too. The other women came around and they took their turns with him. They were hugging him, it seemed, as if he were the embodiment of his brother. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows, but there was something good and proper about it—one after the other they came.
He reached into his pocket and took out the keyring with the pictures of the babies, handed it to Jazzlyn’s mother. She stared at it, smiled, then suddenly pulled away and slapped Ciaran’s face. He looked like he was grateful for it. One of the cops half grinned. Ciaran nodded and pursed his lips, then stepped backward toward me.
I had no idea what sort of complications I had stepped myself into.
The preacher coughed and asked for silence and said he had a few final words. He went through the formalities of prayer and the old biblical
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
but then he said that it was his firm belief that ashes could someday return to wood, that was the miracle not just of heaven, but the miracle of the actual world, that things could be reconstituted and the dead could come alive, most especially in our hearts, and that’s how he’d like to end things, and it was time to lay Jazzlyn to rest because that’s what he wanted her to do,
rest.
When the service was ended the cops put the handcuffs back on Tillie’s wrists. She wailed just one single time. The cops walked her off. She broke down into soundless sobs.
I accompanied Ciaran out of the cemetery. He took off his jacket and hung it over his shoulder, not nonchalantly, but to beat the heat. We went down the pathway toward the gates on Lafayette Avenue. Ciaran walked a quarter of a step in front of me. People can look different from hour to hour depending on the angle of daylight. He was older than me, in his mid- thirties or so, but he looked younger a moment, and I felt protective of him, the soft walk, the little bit of jowliness to him, the roll of tubbiness at his waist. He stopped and watched a squirrel climb over a large tombstone. It was one of those moments when everything is out of balance, I suppose, and just watching an odd thing seems to make sense. The squirrel scampered up a tree trunk, the sound of its nails like water in a tub.
—Why was she in handcuffs?
—She got eight months or something. For a robbery charge on top of the prostitution.
—So they only let her out for the funeral?
—Yeah, from what I can gather.
There was nothing to say. The preacher had already said it. We walked out the gates and turned together in the same direction, toward the expressway, but he stopped and went to shake my hand.
—I’ll give you a lift home, I said.
—Home? he said, with a half- laugh. Can your car swim?
—Sorry?
—Nothing, he said, shaking his head.
We went down along Quincy, where I had parked the car. I suppose he knew it the minute he saw the Pontiac. It was parked with its front facing us. One wheel was up on the curb. The smashed headlight was apparent and the fender dented. He stopped a moment in the middle of the road, half nodded, as if it all made sense to him now. His face fell in upon itself, like a sandcastle in time lapse. I found myself shaking as I got into the driver’s side, leaned across to open up the passenger door.
—This is the car, isn’t it?
I sat a long time, running my fingers over the dashboard, dusty with pollen.
—It was an accident, I said.
—This is the car, he repeated.
—I didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t mean for it to happen.
—We? he said.
I sounded exactly like Blaine, I knew. All I was doing was holding my hand up against the guilt. Avoiding the failure, the drugs, the recklessness. I felt so foolish and inadequate. It was as if I had burned the whole house down and was searching through the rubble for bits of how it used to be, but found only the match that had sparked it all. I was clawing around frantically, looking for any justification. And yet there was still another part of me that thought perhaps I was being honest, or as honest as I could get, having left the scene of the crime, having run away from the truth. Blaine had said that things just happen. It was a pathetic logic, but it was, at its core, true. Things happen. We had not wanted them to happen. They had arisen out of the ashes of chance.
I kept cleaning the dashboard, rubbing the dust and pollen on the leg of my jeans. The mind always seeks another, simpler place, less weighted. I wanted to rev the engine alive and drive into the nearest river. What could have been a simple touch of the brakes, or a minuscule swerve, had become unfathomable. I needed to be airborne. I wanted to be one of those animals that needed to fly in order to eat.
—You don’t work for the hospital at all, then?
—No.
—Were you driving it? The car?
—Was I what?
—Were you driving it or not?
—I guess I was.
It was the only lie I’ve ever told that has made any sense to me. There was the faint crackle of something between us: cars as bodies, crashing. Ciaran sat, staring straight ahead through the windshield. A little sound came from him that was closer to a laugh than anything else. He rolled the window up and down, ran his fingers along the ledge, then tapped the glass with his knuckles, like he was figuring a means of escape.
—I’m going to say one thing, he said.
I felt the glass was being tapped all around me: soon it would splinter and crumble.
—One thing, that’s all.
—Please, I said.
—You should have stopped.
He thumped the dashboard with the heel of his hand. I wanted him to curse me, to damn me from a height, for trying to calm my own conscience, for lying, for letting me get away with it, for appearing at his brother’s apartment. A further part of me wanted him to actually turn and hit me, really hit me, draw blood, hurt me, ruin me.
—Right, he said. I’m gone.
He had his hand on the handle. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and stepped partly out, then closed it again, leaned back in the seat, exhausted.
—You should’ve fucking stopped. Why didn’t you?
Another car pulled into the gap in front of us to parallel- park, a big blue Oldsmobile with silver fins. We sat silently watching it trying to maneuver into the space between us and the car in front. It had just enough room. It angled in, then pulled out, then angled back in again. We watched it like it was the most important thing in the world. Not a movement between us. The driver leaned over his shoulder and cranked the wheel. Just before he put it in park he reversed once more and gently touched against the grille of my car. We heard a tinkle: the last of the glass left in the broken headlight. The driver jumped out, his arms held high in surrender, but I waved him away. He was an owl- faced creature, with spectacles, and the surprise of it made his face half comic. He hurried off down the road, looking over his shoulder as if to make sure.
—I don’t know, I said. I just don’t know. There’s no explanation. I was scared. I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough.
—Shit, he said.
He lit a cigarette, cracked the window slightly and blew smoke sideways out of his mouth, then looked away.
—Listen, he said finally. I need to get away from here. Just drop me off.
—Where?
—I don’t know. You want to go for a coffee somewhere? A drink?
Both of us were flummoxed by what was traveling between us. I had witnessed the death of his brother. Smashed that life shut. I didn’t say a word, just nodded and put the car in gear, squeezed it out of the gap, pulled out into the empty road. A quiet drink in a dark bar was not the worst of fates.
Later that night, when I got home—if home was what I could call it anymore—I went swimming. The water was murky and full of odd plants. Strange leaves and tendrils. The stars looked like nail heads in the sky—pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall. Blaine had completed a couple of paintings and had set them up around the lake in various parts of the forest and around the water edge. A doubt had kicked in, as if he knew it was a stupid idea, but still wanted to experiment with it. There’s nothing so absurd that you can’t find at least one person to buy it. I stayed in the water, hoping that he’d leave and go to sleep, but he sat on the dock on a blanket and when I rose from the water, he shrouded me with it. Arm around my shoulder, he walked me back to the cabin. The last thing I wanted was a kerosene lamp. I needed switches and electricity. Blaine tried to guide me to the bed but I simply said no, that I wasn’t interested.
—Just go to bed, I said to him.
I sat at the kitchen table and sketched. It had been a while since I had done anything with charcoal. Things took shape on the page. I recalled that, when we got married, Blaine had raised a glass in front of our guests and said with a grin:
’Til life do us part.
It was his sort of joke. We were married, I thought then—we would watch each other’s last breath.
But it struck me, as I sketched, that all I wanted to do was to walk out into a clean elsewhere.