Where the Line Bleeds (4 page)

Now, Christophe swiped his hand through his hair and curled it
backwards. According to what Fresh had told him about six months
ago, Sandman was in Alabama, where he'd gone to stay with his brother
and enter rehab. Christophe put on lotion, and walked in a towel to the
bedroom. He passed Joshua and punched him in his shoulder as Joshua
brushed against him in the narrow hall on the way to the bathroom.

"Hope you left some cold water for me."

"Ha."

Christophe shut the door and began to dress, pulling on jeans, a Polo
shirt, his new Reeboks, and greased his hair with pink oil moisturizer
so that it curled close to his scalp. He'd be clean, look nice for his aunt
and uncles so they could watch him cross the stage, grab his diploma,
and throw his tassel across the cap. He wanted to hug Ma-mee with his
diploma in his hand and smell good for her, smell clean with soap and
cologne. He sprayed a little on himself from the bottle he shared with
Joshua, and then went out to the living room to sit next to Ma-mee on
the sofa, to move as little as possible to guard himself from sweating
unduly, to talk to her about the day, about the cookout at his Aunt
Rita's, about whether she cared if he had a beer once they were there even
though he knew he'd probably drink regardless of what she said: he'd just
hide it. Christophe fleetingly thought that Sandman might show up, but
then he told himself that he didn't give a damn if he showed up or not. Crackheads were known for taking credit where none was due. Most of
them were a little crazy. Christophe would rather that he didn't show up.
Christophe decided that if he did appear out of some misplaced sense of
pride or because he was trying to fulfill some stupid rehab self-help shit,
Joshua would have to stop him from punching Sandman in his face.

On the way to the graduation, Ma-mee sat in the front seat with
one arm out the window. While her fingers felt at the seam of the glass,
her unseeing eyes turned to blink watery and half-closed at the bayou
as the wind pushed thick and heavy as a hand at her throat. Paul drove,
his blue short-sleeved button-down shirt fastened to his neck, his hands
careful on the steering wheel as he slowly followed the curves; his fists
were positioned at ten and two. Already, he was sweating dark rings
under his arms. Christophe and Joshua sat awkwardly in the backseat of
the Oldsmobile with their legs open at the same angles as their uncle's
forearms and their arms akimbo at their sides. They leaned away from
each other and watched the bright green marsh grass lining the side of
the road, the water, interrupted by islands thick with pelicans and white
cranes and brush, slide by. The bayou splayed out away from the gray
asphalt on both sides, eclipsed the horizon, and sizzled with cicadas and
crickets. The twins' windows were rolled down as well.

Ma-mee hated air conditioning. She never wanted it on in the car,
and she refused to install an air-conditioning unit in the house. She said
the cold air made her feel like she couldn't breathe, and that it made her
short of breath. So in the summer months, they sweated. The boys grew
up accustomed to the wet heat, the droning indoor fans, the doors that
swelled and stuck with the rise in temperature. In their shared room,
they slept on top of their twin beds' coverlets with their mouths open,
their spindly limbs and knobby knees and elbows exposed, and wore only
white briefs. As they grew older, they stripped their beds to the fitted and
flat sheets, and took to sleeping in old gym shorts, or boxers.

Joshua propped one arm on the door, and rested his hand on his chin.
He didn't lean back because he didn't want to crush his curls flat against
the headrest. Outside, the edge of the road shimmered, and ahead the
road wavered so that it looked as if snakes, tens of them, were crossing the
road in the distance. When he was little he'd always been amazed when they disappeared the closer he got: but then again, back then he'd twisted
around in his seat facing the rear window because he'd thought the moon
and the sun followed the car, and he liked to watch them sail through the
sky and chase him. He looked over to Christophe, who had arranged his
head and arm similarly, and was looking intently out the other window.
As they were walking to the car, Christophe whispered his warning about
the possibility of seeing Sandman there. Joshua had started to laugh at
the impossibility of it. Then Joshua had looked at Christophe's mouth,
and he'd stopped laughing and nodded: yes, he'd watch out for Sandman.
The set of Christophe's shoulders as they got in the car made him think
of Cille: he wondered if Christophe was wondering if she was coming, if
perhaps Ma-mee knew she was coming and was trying to keep it a secret
so it would be a surprise. He let his hand fall out the window and drag in
the current of the wind: she would wear red, her favorite color, he knew.

They arrived at the school ten minutes before the start of the program.
With their gowns held gingerly in their hands, they climbed out of the
car and walked across the small parking lot, past the sprawling red brick
buildings couched among the moss strewn oaks and the football field
stretching away to the left, to the gym directly behind the cluster of
classrooms. The family entered the gym together and stood still for a
moment; they were a small group in a milling confusion of parents and
students and relatives.

Every other person led neon balloons that read "Congratulations
Class of 2005" in yellow and sported tails of sparkling, curly streamers,
and carried cards stuffed fat with money. The smell of perfume and
cologne was thick in the air. The basketball court had been remade into
an auditorium: folding metal chairs were lined in precise rows down the
length of the floor. The more punctual family members claimed choice
seats in the metal rows while the less punctual consigned themselves to
the bleachers. While Uncle Paul led Ma-mee by the elbow to her seat next
to Aunt Rita and the rest of the extended family at the front of the gym
near the long dais that served as the stage, Joshua and Christophe skirted
the crowd and found their way to the rows of graduating students. The
graduating class had nearly two hundred students, but still, they filled only
around ten rows: St. Catherine High was a small high school, even with all the students from the town of St. Catherine and its country neighbor,
Bois Sauvage. About half the students were white, half were black, and
there was a smattering of Vietnamese. While most of the Vietnamese kids'
parents had immigrated to the area after the Vietnam War to work in the
shrimping and fishing industries, most of the black and white families
had been living in the two towns since their foundings, and some of them
even shared last names with each other, which was the result of littleacknowledged intermarriage. Their seating in the gym belied their social
interactions: the two groups lived mostly segregated lives.

Joshua peered into the crowd and saw Laila; he waved. She had eyes
that turned to slits when she laughed, a curvy waist, and lips he thought
about kissing every time he saw her, but he'd never told her that. He and
Christophe had lost their virginity to two sisters from St. Catherine when
they were fifteen. Dunny had taken them along when he'd gone to their
house to visit the oldest sister. While Dunny disappeared in the bedroom
with his girl, Christophe and Joshua had sat sweating on the sofa. Lisa, the
middle sister, had just walked over and sat on Christophe's lap and flirted
with him. She laughed at his jokes. Within minutes, they'd disappeared
down the hallway. Nina, the youngest, had sat next to Joshua and told
him she had seen him around school-and did he think she was cute for
a ninth grader? When he'd told her yes, she'd kissed him. The next thing
he knew, she was partly naked and on top of him and the remote control
was digging into his back and the TV went black and he didn't care.

Afterwards, Christophe had laughed when Dunny asked him about
it, but Joshua had been quiet in the backseat. Since then, every time he
had sex seemed a lucky accident, while Christophe grew more and more
confident. He had just broken up with his latest girlfriend, he said, for
being too clingy. Christophe tugged him toward their seats. Joshua and
Christophe found their assigned chairs in the "D" row; Christy Desiree
sat on their right, and Fabian Daniels on their left. Christy was busy
pulling at her blond hair and reapplying lip-gloss. Fabian curved into his
seat with his arms crossed over his chest: he looked as if he were sinking.
Joshua ignored Christy and perched at the edge of his chair, scanning the
program.

"So what y'all going to be doing after this?"

Christophe turned to Fabian and adjusted his robe where it had
bunched beneath his legs. He could hardly move. He knew it was going
to be wrinkled when he walked across the stage, but he didn't want it to
be too wrinkled. He knew Aunt Rita would talk.

"Look for a job, I guess. You don't know anybody trying to get rid of
a old car for cheap, do you?"

"Naw." Fabian pushed his cap up and back on his head since it had
begun to slip down over his dark, broad forehead. "If I hear something,
I'll let you know. I probably won't hear nothing before I leave-I'm going
offshore. My uncle already got my application in. I start in two weeks."

"I couldn't be out there on that water all the time, cooped up. I'd
go crazy." Christophe shifted his robe again, resettling it flatly beneath
him. "Who knows, though. They make good money. Maybe when I get
older, I'd go offshore for that kind of money." The only way he could
ever consider leaving Bois Sauvage to work was if he was older, and only
if Ma-mee was gone. She'd spent her entire life working for one rich
white household or another to earn money to feed them, dressing them
when they were younger in clothes her employers had given her to take
to the Salvation Army, providing for them the best she could. Now it was
their turn.

The hum of conversation in the gym was almost deafening, and already
Christophe was growing tired of the rustling of programs, the shrieking
of small children, the loud boasting of men, and the sense of interminable
wait. He hated official shit like this. He just wanted to get his diploma
and hear his name over the loudspeaker, the light patter of applause, and
then get to the cookout, to the rest of the summer, to the rest of his
life. He was ready to be done with school; he was tired of watching his
principal, sweating at the neck, now barking orders at the first five rows,
his teachers, dressed in long, loose dresses replete with maiden collars,
darting around nervously, the secretaries, bored and severe, picking at the
microphone and the fake flowers next to the podium. The gym was cold,
and he felt the sweat dry on him and goose pimples rise on his arms under
his gown as the satin, now cool like water, slid over them. The principal,
Mr. Farbege, leaned into the row and barked, "Remember your cues!" and
Christophe barely resisted the urge to flip him off. Joshua leaned over to
Christophe, the program in his hand.

"Look at this," he said.

Joshua thought she might do something like this. The only reason he
was looking at the program was to look at the family advertisements in the
back: he knew that he'd find at least a couple of choice photographs of his
classmates in embarrassing ads that said things like, "You're a star! Follow
your dreams" and "From Maw-maw and Paw-paw. We love you." There,
on the last page, was a small ad, measuring around three by five inches.
In it was a small picture of he and Christophe; it had been taken when
they were five. Cille had asked Aunt Rita to take it, a picture of all three
of them, on the day she left for Atlanta. She was kneeling on the ground
between them with her arms over both of their shoulders: her smile was
wide, and she had sunglasses on, large dark ovals, because as Christophe
remembered it, she had been crying. At her sides, the twins looked like
small, young-faced old men: their T-shirts hung on them, their heads
were cocked to the side, and neither of them was looking toward the
camera. Joshua was looking off into the distance, his fists clutching the
bottom of his shirt as he pulled it away from his small round stomach.
Christophe's eyes were squinted nearly shut, and the set of his mouth
was curved downward and puckered: he looked as if he had just eaten
something bitter, like he looked on the day they snuck the small, bitter
grapes from Papas old grapevine that grew curled on crude posts behind
the house and ate them.

Under the picture was printed ins mall, bold-facedprint: Congratulations
to Joshua and Christophe. Love, Cille. That was it. Joshua knew as soon as
he saw the small picture, the miniscule line, that she wasn't coming. He
knew that she wasn't already sitting in the audience with Aunt Rita, that
she wasn't just running late, that she wouldn't appear at their cook-out
with the rest of the family, that she wasn't just going to walk casually out
of the kitchen with a pot in her arms to set on the long wax-covered table
beneath the trees while the outdoor fans buzzed in the background and
blew her dress away from her legs. Joshua let Christophe take the paper as
he leaned further back and down in his chair. He purposefully spread his
legs to take up more space so that Christy squeaked as she had to smash
her knees together to make room for him; he hated her lip-gloss and her
prissiness and for a second he felt a strong urge to press his hand across
her face, to smudge her makeup. He didn't turn and say he was sorry.

Christophe read the program and folded it in fourths and placed it
in his back pocket along with his own program. Who knows, he thought,
one day Joshua might actually want it. He heard Mr. Farbege giving the
opening remarks, and he tuned out as he began to make a list in his head
of where he and Joshua could go to look for jobs: Wal-Mart, the grocery
store in St. Catherine, the McDonald's.