Drowning Is Inevitable (20 page)

The policeman saw the two of them running and yelled at them to stop. Max listened, but Maggie didn't. She never does, just bulldozes ahead.

“Stop!” the cop screamed again, loudly and seeming frustrated as he spit his command at her a third time. “Stop now!”

I looked at the policeman and saw that his gun was trained on her, like he was determined to have someone listen to him today. I looked back at her.
Stop now!
I willed her, but she didn't. The policeman looked at me, deflated, and brought the gun down, like one kid bleeding in the street was enough.

Then Maggie was next to me, not asking questions but simply putting her hands on top of mine. Jamie slid his eyes to her and apologized again, making Maggie cry, something she was getting better at.

“It's okay, Jamie. You're gonna be fine,” she said. “You're gonna be just fine.”

A few moments later Max stood over us, making me look up at him. I looked in the direction he was staring and saw the other policemen running at us. Maggie saw them, too, and stood up. She had Jamie's blood on her fingers, and she wiped them on her jeans.

The policemen yelled, telling us to step away from each other, hollering at us to step away from “the boy,” but I didn't move. Maggie did, though. She stood and positioned herself so she was standing next to Max, making a wall.

I looked back at Jamie. In all the commotion, his eyes had closed and I'd missed it. Closing my eyes too, I took my hands off his stomach and dropped my face down to his, my forehead pressing against his, our noses touching. His breathing was soft, and he was warm.
It's just me and this boy.
The other policemen were on us, breaking down the wall, pulling Max and Maggie in separate directions. Maggie's screams were feral.

A cop began to pull me from Jamie. I reached my head toward him one more time, my hair just touching his face, before being yanked away. The policeman wrenched my arms behind me, and even though I was sure they didn't naturally bend that way, nothing hurt. My eyes stayed with Jamie, my friend, my brother, sleeping on the sidewalk.

Other people were coming toward us then, paramedics. I was grateful. One stopped to look me over, and I choked out, “It's not my blood.” They crowded around Jamie, blocking my view. I made deals with God. The policeman pushed at me from the back, his grip on my arms still tight. I had no idea what he was pushing me toward. I just knew it was in the opposite direction to Jamie, and the pain in my stomach exploded, the string between us pulling too tight, making me see white and bringing my knees in to my chest, forcing the man to half drag, half carry me.

Once we were down the street, he put me down next to a police car. He spoke to me, asking me questions, his face angry, his voice forceful, and even though I heard him I didn't process what he was saying. I didn't understand anything anymore. This immediately frustrated him. He shrugged his shoulders and grabbed my wrists, pulling them in front of me and forcing them together. There was pain from metal, cold and pinching. He pushed at my head, down and into the car, and I couldn't breathe. The sound of the door being slammed made me flinch.

Sitting in the back of the police car, I looked for Max and Maggie but didn't see them. Where were they? My mind went back to Jamie, to the sight of his blood spreading out on the sidewalk. My head hurt, matching the pain in my stomach, and I longed for a distraction. I heard a barge's horn coming from the river, blaring over and over again, warning everyone to get out of its way.

I understood then why my mother walked into the river. I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life I saw her clearly, as if she was right in front of me. I had found her in the back of a New Orleans police cruiser.

The pain in my stomach was so great that even though I knew it was impossible, I wished for the river to reach out and take me like it did her, to make the pain stop. But I was too far from the river now. So I imagined that I had the power to pull the river into the police car. I felt for the water with my hands, and I watched as it began dripping from my fingers, slowly at first, then faster. It looked and felt so real, and even though part of me knew that it was a fantasy, and how dangerous it was to play with those, I welcomed it. The water had a calming effect, taking my mind off what was happening to Jamie. Soon river water was pouring from my hands and washing across the floorboards, making me bring my feet onto the seat. But the water kept coming; it reached the seat, and I watched as it flowed over my lap, moving up my body. It was filling the car faster now, lapping against my neck, bringing chill bumps to my skin. I took one deep breath and closed my eyes as it washed over my face. Once I was completely submerged, I sat in the darkness and relaxed into the water. When I opened my eyes again, I saw Max and Maggie through the window. They were making their way to me, each escorted by a cop, their hands pulled at uncomfortable angles behind them. They looked fuzzy in my underwater view, but as they moved closer I saw their faces. Max kept his eyes down, but Maggie didn't. She held her face forward. The look in it told me things had gotten worse. My lungs burned, protesting the lack of oxygen, but I didn't give in. Any minute they would surrender to the lack of air and my stomach would give in to the pulling and I'd die.
Please.
The car door opened. The water rushed out, but the policemen didn't notice it. They didn't notice that I was wet and gasping for air, they just shoved Max and Maggie onto the backseat with me and slammed the door. My body immediately fell across Max like a deflated balloon, my head just touching Maggie's lap, and then kept falling deeper and deeper into them. Like the house of fallen cards we'd become, Maggie dropped her body down to cover mine, leaving Max as the only one of the four of us still sitting up. The next thing I felt was the car lurching us forward, and then I heard more sirens. Max kept silent and told us to do the same. He said his dad was coming for us. That didn't comfort me, though—nothing could. The police car sped through the cobbled, bumpy downtown streets. I'm not sure how far we'd gone when we finally stopped. I closed my eyes tight at the sound of the back door opening, and Maggie's body pressed closer to me. They pulled her off me easily, making me sit up, my face close to Max's. He leaned into me, his breath so close when he said, “I'm here. You're not alone. I'm here.” He kept repeating it, like he knew it would be hard for me to understand. My door opened, and then more hands were on me, pulling me up and away from him.
He's here.
They led us into the side of a building; I guess it was the police station. Inside, I saw a long hall ahead of us. The man pulling me along handed me to a woman. She said she was taking me someplace special, as I was not yet eighteen.

This made me think back to Steven's words the night I saw him and his band snorting cocaine in the back room of the house on Oak Street.
This one's a baby
. Turning my head to Max and Maggie, I watched as they moved down the hall, away from me.

The woman led me to a room and took off my handcuffs. There was another woman in the room, and it looked like she'd been waiting for me.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

I just stared back at her. She told me again and motioned to my body. My middle and my hands were coated in Jamie's blood. She pointed to a shower in the corner and then to a pile of clothes on a table next to me, like I'd know what to do. She didn't realize I didn't know anything anymore. To her credit, she tried to explain again, but I still didn't move.

The woman who had walked me into the room came to stand behind me, and the other woman came to meet her. They must have been tired of giving me instructions, because now their hands were on me, stripping me of my clothes. My head yanked back, caught in my shirt. Soon I was bare, and I heard water running. They pushed me into it; it was cold at first and then too hot, the water beating down on my body, reminding me of the drowning dream and the rain. One of the women put a washcloth in my hand, but I didn't close my hand around it, so it dropped to the floor. She stepped into the shower with me, bent down to grab the washcloth, and took his blood from me by force.

In a small room with one window, looking out onto an even smaller courtyard, lay a dead boy on a bed with white sheets. They told me he was Jamie, but I didn't believe them. They told me to step closer and I'd see, but I kept my feet where they were.

I was standing at the door of the hospital room with Max's dad on one side and a policeman on the other. There was no point in stepping into the room, because even at this distance I could tell he only barely resembled yesterday's boy in the street. He seemed smaller, somehow less, and I couldn't feel a pull to him; nothing in my body said this was the right boy. My Jamie must be in one of the other rooms. I looked back at the other two policemen in the hall, where I was told they'd been stationed since Jamie was brought to the hospital. Why were they necessary? Where was this dead boy going?

Mr. Barrow had rescued me from the police station a few hours after I arrived, a few hours after I turned off the switch inside me allowing me to hear or feel. He sat next to me for several minutes in the room they'd placed me in, but I didn't understand anything he was saying. He didn't get frustrated with me, though, just turned his frustration toward the other people at the jail, giving them harsh looks and gesturing with his hands. Whenever he turned his face to mine, it softened. He and Max looked so much alike that his presence comforted me. Eventually my hearing returned, and to prove his further connection to Max, Mr. Barrow leaned in to me and whispered, “I'm here. I'm here now.”

He seemed reassured that I understood him now. He told me which hospital Jamie was in, and he promised to get me there. He said it was a condition put forth by Max, who wouldn't cooperate in any way until I was with Jamie. It would take a while, though, he said. There were my charges to consider, statements to give, papers to be processed.

“Max told me everything,” he said. He registered the shock on my face. “Don't be mad at him. He just wants to make sure I understand what's going on. So I can help you.” He looked at me knowingly. “I've prepared a statement that says you were an invited guest on the night in question. You were helping Louise Benton cook dinner when Tom Benton came home early from work. He and Jamie got into an argument that escalated. They began to fight. You witnessed Jamie hit his father in the head with a skillet, and then Jamie stabbed him.”

His words made me feel sick.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

Let me be the one who finally stopped him.

“I understand,” I said, my voice hoarse. “But Mrs. Benton—”

“She won't contradict your statement.”

He told me it would go quicker if I said what he told me to say and signed where he told me to sign. He didn't have to persuade me too much, because the only thing I wanted was to get to Jamie.

“You won't be officially released until we get back to St. Francisville,” he said. “I've spoken to your father. Apparently he was in New Orleans as recently as yesterday, looking for you. He's back home now. Once we get back to St. Francisville, we'll file the paper work. When the deal is finalized, you'll be released to your dad, and you can go home.” He'd had a hopeful look on his face as he said this, like I'd take it as good news. He didn't know about the rival feelings inside me: the longing for home fighting the fear of looking into the faces of the people in it, my dad's especially, his sadness and his worry. He didn't know I'd much rather be locked away somewhere small and alone.

And now here I was, in this room, with this boy.

Mr. Barrow touched my elbow. “It's him, baby. I'm sorry we didn't get here in time.”

It was the “baby” that did it. Even though I knew it was just a Southern man's way of speaking, I couldn't stand his sweetness. I didn't deserve kindness or gentle voices. He was only doing it because he felt sorry for me, because he thought this boy was Jamie. I decided to prove him wrong, so he'd be angry with me, which was his right.

There were nine steps from the door to the bed, and I took each one slowly before climbing into the bed with the too-still boy. I could tell from the shifting of feet coming from the men behind me that they hadn't expected me to do this, but they didn't stop me.

My hand slid his hair back, and I saw fine, white-blond hair like the boy from my childhood once had. My other hand, knowing what to do now, went to his face and began tracing, over his eyes, his nose, his mouth, the light from the tiny window highlighting his face and my fingers like a spotlight. I closed my eyes and did it a second time, slower now, just in case. Tears slid out from under my closed lids. They were right; this was Jamie.

My hands dropped from his face and went to my stomach, to the hollow feeling there, the absence of Jamie. The knife must have cut the string connecting us. I dropped down to Jamie and curved into him, my hand sliding up to rest over his heart with no beat. Just yesterday Jamie was breathing and he was warm. I thought about all the ways his face had changed over the years, and all the ways it wouldn't, like my mom's: forever eighteen.