Where the Line Bleeds (31 page)

The trowel echoed through the screen: Christophe dug and the earth
came away in wet, slurping chunks. Joshua watched his pile of soil melt
to a muddy pancake. Laila tucked her hair behind her ear and it snaked
back across her face when her hand fell.

"I think she got nice hair," Joshua choked.

Christophe began sliding the spade to separate the plant from the pot;
the steel scraped the plastic. It sounded like a saw, and the plant dropped
and fell to the grass. Cille fingered her own fine, carefully arranged curls.

"I always wanted hair that was a little rougher. Had a little more body
to it, more life. Some people are just lucky, I guess."

"Cille."

"What, Mama?"

Joshua could only see Lailas scalp, each tendril of her hair springing
from her head as if to reach out and embrace the heavy air. The mist had
turned into a light rain, each drop as fine as sand. If she had slumped any
farther in her chair, she would curl into a ball. Joshua looked up at Cille
and could not help the nervous fluttering that had turned to heat in his
stomach: he wanted to slap her. He wanted to shield Laila from those
blinding teeth, that gold.

"Come on, Laila. You look cold as Ma-mee."

Joshua pulled her up and past the swing. Ma-mee was staring in
Christophe's direction, at the bougainvilleas alighting in the yard graceful
as herons, blooming hot pink. Cille followed Joshua and Laila with a
curious look. Her eyes were as bright and patient as a pit's. She was so beautiful it hurt Joshua to look at her. Instead, he kneaded Laila's small,
hot hand in his own, and urged her back to his room faster. He rustled a
T-shirt from his drawer and handed it to her.

"Put this on."

"I ain't cold."

Joshua shoved the shirt into her arm insistently. She tugged it over
her head, and it fell to the middle of her thighs. He grabbed the sleeves
and pulled, and she came to him and stood, small and hard against his
chest. He hugged her.

"Don't pay no attention to her. I don't know why she being so
mean."

Joshua let his hand fall along the curve of her spine down her back,
and he stooped so that his face slid along hers, so that his lips stopped at
her ear.

"I'm sorry."

He averted the thought of Cille, then. He shrugged away his brother
and his bent, resentful shoulders, his lunging digging in the front yard,
and let himself fall into Laila's open mouth. The insides of it were so soft,
her body was small and sweating under the tent of his shirt. He would
walk her home, away from Cille. He walked into the living room and
heard arguing on the porch.

"I'm ashamed of you, Cille. Treating that child like that? I didn't raise
you to be so rude."

"I been raised, Mama. I don't need no more raising. I ain't said nothing
to that girl that ain't been said to her before."

"I won't have you talking like that to that girl in my house."

"I was leaving anyway," Cille said. Before Joshua could tug Laila
forward so it wouldn't look as if they were eavesdropping, Cille entered
the living room and brushed by him and Laila without looking at them.
By the time Joshua and Laila walked to the porch, Cille was swooping
past them again with her keys clattering like small chimes and her purse
clutched in her hand, her face set so hard everything about her seemed
smooth and impenetrable as rock. She walked away with her arms folded
tightly into her sides as she gripped her purse, which made them appear
less like arms and more like wings.

"Mama," Joshua called.

Cille stopped next to Christophe, and Christophe looked up at Joshua.
Christophe was trailing a thin line of fire across the pile of wet foliage
with a lighter set on high. The flame shot out and licked impotently at the
wet plants. Cille waved her hand and spoke without facing them.

"I'm late for a show," she said. She walked to her car, slammed her
door, and Joshua let Laila's hand fall and started after her.

"Let her go." Christophe blinked once and looked back down: Joshua
saw bags that looked like purple bruises beneath his eyes.

"What do you know? You ain't in this." Joshua blurted. Cille started
her car.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Christophe stood and his voice rose with him.
Joshua made as if to run to her car as she began to back out the driveway,
ignoring Christophe. Christophe grabbed his arm. "I ain't the one she
talks to. I ain't the one with the job and the girlfriend. What I say don't
matter because I ain't shit to the house."

"You chose," Joshua bit out. He wrenched his brother's arm from his
own, and stepped toward the retreating car. Cille peeled away. "Everyday,
you choose."

"Fuck you," Christophe said.

"Boys!" Ma-mee yelled thinly.

Joshua pulled Laila, who had stepped beside him, away from Mamee standing with her hands flat against the screen of the porch door,
away from his brother with the arched, fight-ready neck, the stillness of
the harnessing swing, away from the house. When they reached the road,
Joshua looked back and saw that Christophe had managed to light the
pile: it smoked wetly in thick, white puffs, and drifted outward to obscure
his brother.

Joshua didn't talk on the way to Laila's house, and once there, he did
not want to let her walk inside, did not want to walk back to his own
house, to his manic brother and Ma-mee finding her way in the raindrizzled dark. He sat with Laila on her slimy, wet wooden steps, silent.
He left her with the admonition that he'd be back and walked back to his
house to find both his brother and Ma-mee gone: Ma-mee with Aunt Rita
and his brother vanished, the earth showing in bald, wounded patches where Christophe had been. His brother had left the car, so Joshua took
Laila to a poboy place in St. Catherine's to apologize. Joshua paid for the
meal, and was defiantly glad to have a job. He sat across from her at a
small, plastic table with a sticky checkered plastic tablecloth and watched
the condiments from her shrimp poboy slide down the crevasses of her
fingers, between her knuckles, to the wax paper. He vacillated between
teasing her about her messiness and wanting to lick her fingers for her,
to suck the vinegary ripeness of the pickle, the mayonnaise, the salt of
the shrimp and the pepper. They sat in the nearly empty, cool, smallwindowed restaurant until the clouds eased their pressure and gave into
rain, and the sun re-emerged, dim and orange, on the horizon.

After they crossed the bayou to Bois Sauvage and entered the country,
the tops of the trees turned black and swallowed the sun, and Joshua
slowed the car. They were nearing The Oaks. The small, squat, thinwalled nightclub was set to the side of a baseball field: the proprietor
specialized in blues and baseball games, and on Saturday nights, the dirt
field that comprised the parking lot was usually packed with rusty pickup trucks and late-model Mustangs. Joshua saw lights burning between
the cars where small fires made of pine leaves and twigs had been set to
smoking, to drive away the gnats, and he could hear the heavy thumping
bass line of a blues song emanating from the club, even though it had no
windows.

"Hold on a minute. My mama had wanted me to stop by here on our
way back and grab her a plate." Laila grabbed his shoulder. Joshua turned
into the parking lot, and eased the car to the edge of the field. "I'll be
right back," Laila said.

"Here, get Ma-mee a plate, too. Catfish," Joshua added. He pulled
out a twenty. He ignored the blood urge that flashed Christophe's and
Cille's faces into his mind, too; he would not get them food. When he and
Christophe were younger, Ma-mee would sometimes send them on their
bikes to The Oaks on a Saturday with enough money in their pockets for
a fish plate, which Christophe would carry back because he was the first
to learn how to ride his bike without steering with his hands. Laila closed
the door behind her, and the lock barely clicked. Joshua leaned over to
shut the door fully and before the light dimmed, he saw a black and mild cigar on the floor, still in the plastic. He would smoke it, get a buzz, and
it would help him sleep after he dropped Laila off, help him relax so he
would not think about Cille in the other room or Christophe with his
busy, busy hands. He searched for a lighter, but could not find one in the
glove compartment, in his pockets, or underneath the seats. After cussing
and dimming the light, he saw the glow of one of the fires in the dirt lot
glimmering at him through the window. A woman laughed drunkenly
in the dark, and another man shouted "brother-in-law" across the field.
Small gnats pinched his skin with bites. Joshua wove in and out of the
cars and stopped by the closest fire and waved the thick, heady smoke
toward his face and his clothing to shoo the gnats away. He knelt to light
the black.

"What the hell you follow me over here for? You trying to impress
your drunk friends?" Cille spoke sharply, and Joshua looked up expecting
to see her standing over him, her hands cupping her hips, narrowing her
eyes at him, waiting for an answer. By the light of the fire, he saw her
standing almost fifteen feet away from him in the dark, her back to him,
the flames etching her back and her yellow silk dress in gold. Even in the
dark, she shone. Joshua scooted away from the fire and waved the smoke
from his eyes so he could watch her, immediately protective. The person
she was talking to bobbed darkly a few feet away from her, and he shifted.
His face blazed over her shoulder, the fire illuminating him. Sandman.

"You walk by me acting like you don't even know me," Sandman said.
There was authority and force in his voice that Joshua hadn't heard since
he was small.

"I don't," Cille said. In the shadows, Sandman was all lurching
movement, while Cille was still. Suddenly, Joshua knew where Dunny
got it from.

"Oh, you know me alright." Sandman's voice slid from taunting
to hushed sincerity, deep and gentle. "You can't not know your babies'
daddy."

"Samuel, what you want from me? That was finished a long time ago.
You left me with them kids after my daddy died. You never cared."

"That ain't true. I was young and dumb...."

"Well, I wasn't. I dealt with it, and you didn't, Samuel." Her
voice rose.

"Love don't just go away like that, Cille," Sandman said.

"It do."

The arch of the smoke turned, and he heard Sandman turn nasty in
the haze.

"You couldn't live without me then."

"This ain't then." Cille stepped away from Sandman toward her car
and through the curling smoke. Joshua saw his father drawn tight, one fist
closing over the air where Cille had been.

"Cille!" Sandman shouted at her back as she slammed her car door
shut. Under the sound of the bass thumping in the club and the nighttime
insects, Cille's car prowled away from the fire and the weak lights under
the eaves of The Oaks.

Sandman lurched upright, took one tottering step, and stood staring
off into the night after Cille. Joshua looked down at his feet and wondered
if he looked like that, always staring, always waiting for her to return. The
smoke scratched his throat, the black faded to unlit in his hands as he
felt his way to his car to wait for Laila. He kissed her in the car in front
of her house. At home, someone was watching television: Joshua peeked
through the window and saw a flash of a young Pam Grier pointing a
gun towards the audience, quivering furiously. Joshua snuck through the
back door. He placed the fish plate on his dresser and sat in bed, drunk
with smoke. Christophe slept with his back to the room. The television
stopped, and he heard a light tread: Cille. Her room door closed, and still
he waited until he could hear nothing but the meeting of the bugs outside
before he tiptoed to the kitchen, dumped the plate into the refrigerator,
and fell smoke-tinged and dizzy into bed.

When Joshua woke in the morning, he was surprised to find that
the sun had barely risen, and Christophe was still asleep. On his walk to
the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, he heard Cille and Ma-mee,
already awake. He paused in the hall.

"I saw they daddy last night. I came back early from the city and
stopped at The Oaks and he was out front with some of his old buddieslooked like shit. He used to be so-but I guess that was the problem,
though. People that fine and know it, and then get things so easy, with his
mama and his daddy babying him, never come to good anyway."

"He came by here. Christophe hate him." Ma-mee lowered her voice,
and Joshua could smell biscuits. "You can't come in here treating them
boys like that, Cille. One minute on and the next gone when they not
who you want them to be."

"I still say Joshua could do better."

"You upset Christophe, too. I know he need a kick in the ass: busy
for no good reason, still ain't got a job yet. But you can't be hard on him
all the time, Cille. You got to show him something."

"I know them boys." Cille said. Her voice was tight.

"You got to give them more, Cille. Same way I gave you."

"You raised them, I know." Joshua heard Ma-mee stutter to stroke
the argument, and Cille spoke over her again. "But they still got more of
me in they blood, and I know my blood." Cille's chair scraped back. "I'll
be back later. I got an extra week in my schedule." She paused. "Regional
office called and told me they having some electrical problems with the
store, so they going to shut it down for a few days." Ma-mee coughed. "I
figured I'd stay if that's okay with you."

"Yes, Cille." Cille's footsteps sounded and she was gone. In the
kitchen, he heard Ma-mee's stillness spread and make thick the room.

EFORE MA-MEE WOKE ON MONDAY, BEFORE DAWN, CHRISTOPHE
crept out to the shed to make up his sacks for the day. He had
greeted Cille's announcement at their stilted Sunday dinner that
she would stay for an extra few days with nothing but a silent surmise
that he would go to Javon's. He remembered the mornings when they
were still in school: Dunny's car leaden with smoke, the sun searing the
sky a bright yellow, the marsh grass snapping in the wind. In those days, it
always seemed as if it were spring, and everything was a new, tough green.
Then, he had known things. Now, he parsed weed into sacks and the heat
in the shack hovered and billowed with the rising sun, and he watched
his hands clenching and pinching and pulling and tying, and he did not
know anything. He did not know who he was. He rolled up a blunt there
in the shed, plucking a cigarillo from the stash he kept for distributing
to his loyal customers, and he succumbed to his weakness for a morning
smoke. He did not want to go to Javon's house again, did not want to see
him or hand out nuggets of crack, but he knew he would. After only four
or five days of selling, he had made so much he could slip all of the helpmoney into Ma-mee's purse himself.