Snakeskin Road (9 page)

Finally there was movement, her mother shuffling.
She’ll open the door
, Jennifer thought. For twenty-seven nights she had kept herself hidden while Terry worked, but now she’d do it.

Delia paused at the door, just the hollow wood between them, and Jennifer screamed again. “I cut myself,” she yelled. “I’m bleeding,” drawing out the
ees
in
bleeding
as long as she could, like Terry’s hand flat on the truck horn, telling them to come on, it was time to go for a jaunt.

The door swung open, and her mama still had wrinkles on her face—why Jennifer thought they would be gone, she wasn’t sure. A ravaged face—what her mama said about herself often and hung bath towels over mirrors after staring, pinching her skin, pinching the wrinkles out. “The desert has ravaged me,” or “The wind has,” or “I.” Delia moved the blame around.

And the long crumpled dress she wore fit too loosely on her arms and flapped at her stomach with the tiniest movements, and she seemed only half-alert, a little dopey and confused from those hours locked in her room, decaying into someone else. It was
decay
, that word that snagged in Jennifer’s mind, made her realize she had stopped breathing to watch, to judge. But she couldn’t stay withdrawn forever, so she screamed.

“What’s wrong with you?” her mama said.

Jennifer put her arm forward as evidence and truth of her suffering. “I got cut.”

Delia grabbed the arm, and in doing so, pulled Jennifer.

Jennifer almost fell, then caught herself by stubbing her toes, anchoring them deep into the carpet.

“How’d you get cut?”

She hadn’t thought about that, how to answer that.

“On the window,” she admitted.

“Which window?” Her mama peeked out from the doorway, and Jennifer pointed down the hall with her good hand to where the kitchen was.

“Why you messing with that window? You already broke it once. The one over the sink? You break more of it?”

And Jennifer screamed louder, “I’m hurt. I’m hurt.”

Her mama pulled back the bloodied shirt and a straight line of blood was still coming, slowly, but coming, and a sticky blob of blood all along the rill in her fish-white skin.

“Did
you
cut yourself?”

Jennifer wasn’t sure what her mother meant and didn’t answer.

“Did you hurt yourself on purpose? Did you?”

“No, ma’am,” Jennifer said. “I just got cut on the window.”

“Not on the wrist, not there, not like that.” Her mama’s palm began to shake and it shook Jennifer’s wrist, a cold engine starting as if blood were draining out of her mama fast, but from where? Everything about the woman was sealed up in that long cotton gown, including her toes. Jennifer was the injured one.

“Mama?” Jennifer started to ask if she was okay, then Delia’s hand turned hot, the faucet turned on inside her, and she squeezed Jennifer’s wrist, drew her daughter close, punched her in the mouth. “Don’t you ever do that to yourself again.”

She hadn’t yanked Jennifer’s hair like she did sometimes when she braided it, to straighten her head. Delia announced it in this way, “I need to straighten your head.” Braid-pullings came with warnings. She hadn’t spanked Jennifer—Jennifer was too old for spankings. Or simply walked back in her room and shut the door. And she hadn’t embraced Jennifer either, said, “I’m sorry, Baby. Let’s go wash that, Baby. Take care of you,” like Jennifer wanted. No. She hit her in the mouth. And Jennifer stood there, unable to smooth out the ache in her lungs for her mama had managed to push all of Jennifer’s breath back inside and trap it.

Slowly, she began to feel the numbness and cool blood
drip to her chin, circle into drops heavy enough to fall. Then she curled her head under, barreled it into her mother’s stomach, pushing at her like some bull spitting blood.

“I’m hurt,” she said, coughing. “Damn you. I’m hurt,” and somehow their bodies got switched—they fought like two girls Jennifer saw at school, one pulling chunks of hair out of the other one’s head, the other girl grunting, and two boys the same week, their fists wouldn’t stop clipping, swinging until one boy said, “Damn you,” and head-butted the other—he capsized with his mouth open in a big surprised O—it was like everyone had to get into it before the school closed down again. But not like mother and daughter, like their fights had been in the past and should be. Their bodies got switched. And Jennifer pulled away, slammed the bedroom door, locked it.

The room was black, all black, and smelled like chocolate, cinnamon—her mama loved the stuff—hot chocolate stirred with cinnamon sticks in winter that she saved her money for and bought from the black marketers when they traveled up to Jackson. She heard a faint tapping, her mother striking at the door, so distant compared to the blood pulsing in her ear.

“Let me back in my room, Jennifer. Let me inside,” the voice whirred, and drowned in the noise of Jennifer’s blood. She waited for her eyes to adjust, but still things shook—a lamp, the vanity, and on top jewelry sparkled, and bedposts, and the bubbled glass of the TV. One chair had something hanging—clothes. She inched toward them, then stopped, afraid to walk too deep into the room, into the blackness growing cold, and what she couldn’t see, the nothingness—this is where faces became ravaged.

Her mama knocked louder as the pulsing subsided in Jennifer’s ear.

“You don’t have any right. It’s my room.” Delia slapped
at the door now, slapped like she was throwing water. It made a thrash, thrash like a sweeping broom. “Hear me?” Then her mama began to cry.

Jennifer went to the door.

“Unlock it,” Delia said. “You don’t understand, girl. Please, girl. I’ve got to.”

And Jennifer crouched down, her hands on the hollow wood, that thin, thin wood, her mother’s shadow underneath the door, clogging the small chute of light. Blood dripped from Jennifer’s chin and she wiped it off, rubbing at the carpet—she’d have to clean this—blood was never easy to get up if allowed to set.

“No,” she said, the blood choking her a little, caught in her throat. She spit it out.

“Please.”

Jennifer kept still. And for the first time, though she had felt this before and never brought it to the surface, named it, hadn’t wanted to—it was the only time her mama had ever struck her—for the first time Jennifer recognized that she hated herself for hating her mother.

Everything in her body scattered, the hatred moved so she couldn’t place it, couldn’t find it to quarantine, and scoop out, throw into the nothingness and be done with. Her mama’s crying spread under the door, into the walls. And she knew she would never be done with it.

“Girl, there’s people walking around,” Lavina whispered. “Sleep, okay? It’s okay. You’re just having an awful dream. Come on now. Be quiet. Can’t let those roamers find us.”

Jennifer couldn’t see Lavina’s face, or her hands, but felt them, the palms like river stones, their roughness trying to smooth her hair back, trying to cool the worried skin stretched over the flat bone of her forehead, that crinkled
hair. Those hands smelled like mud, as if Lavina had reached down and pulled Jennifer from deep inside the tunnel, away from her mother’s door.

“So much sweat on you,” she said, and rubbed the moisture into Jennifer’s hair. It’s something Mat had done, and she had done for him. Delia had done it, too, when she wasn’t in a spell. “It’s all right.”

Jennifer stretched her neck out, exhaled. She had made her way to the surface of her dreams and could go down, again, no matter how much falling, no matter if she didn’t want to go—she wouldn’t get lost there and suffocate.

She didn’t write her mother that morning, couldn’t. Even though the fight between them had happened eighteen years ago, and they had forgiven each other, whenever Jennifer thought of it, her mouth became numb, and her mama’s crying rattled in her ear. She wanted to leave Birmingham, but she didn’t want to see her mama, not today. But there was nowhere else to go. Jennifer turned her wrist over—not even a scar, a trace of what had happened, only a small bruise from holding the stationery box for so long, and nothing on the inside of her lip. She smoothed her tongue over her teeth to make sure.

Lavina and Mazy had almost finished their tins. Mazy took her finger and licked out every corner—three times Jennifer saw her do this—dipping a finger carefully, avoiding the top sharp inner edge, making sure she had removed it all.

   The consulate told them no just as the consulate had told Jennifer no before: visas were not accepted, and Lavina walked up, pressed her legs into the table. “You have to get us out. We can’t survive in this much longer.” They had spent all day in line, and behind them, more and more people. Didn’t seem worth it, all this standing, but the fans were blowing, it was safe.

“I’m sorry. We can’t do anything like that. There’s water and food,” the agent said through her face mask. The woman was tall, taller than Jennifer, and rested her hands on the belt at her hips. When she moved, her leg caught as if injured, and she had to stumble-step back into place.

“At least I need to get up north in the city.”

“That area’s closed,” she said. “There was a spill.”

“A spill? My aunt’s there, my cousins. What kind of spill?”

“That’s all I know,” and she glanced at the long string of tables, the guards helping other agents with their refugees. The yelling, the crying—it was like that booth to booth. No one wanted to leave the wheeling fans for the sun, and maybe if they carried on long enough, they’d outlast the agents and their resistance, trick them into granting asylum.

“Every time I get this far, I’m told stay put. But staying here—we’re going to perish. All of us. You know that.”

“Ma’am, the government’s providing water and a healthy, balanced diet—” She pointed to the food tent. “You’ll be okay if you eat your rations.”

Lavina chuckled. “No we won’t.”

The woman looked over her shoulder again, but this time, she leaned out too far on her bad leg and had to cross up her step to keep from falling. As soon as she readjusted, she sighed through the blue mask, rubbed her forehead—the guardsmen were still too busy.

“We need to get out of here,” Lavina pressed.

But the woman didn’t answer. She put a strand of hair behind her ear, the same turn Jennifer repeated throughout the day, and crooked her neck at the tablet between them, studying it or pretending to.

The top read
United States Petition for Asylum, Southern Alabama Zone
. Underneath a list of names had been scribbled next to fingerprints, pressed into the screen and eventually scrolled out of view as new names were added. The date appeared to the right, June 28, and half a line for the petition reason:
Visa
—that’s what they had put down, Lavina underlining and copying over her
Visa
, over Mazy’s, but all it did was make the electronic imprint blurry to read. A little lower someone declared
Cannot
, and under that,
Citizen. Permission to Transfer
, a social security number,
and
Reason of Insanity. Can you help?
And
Specialty Occupation
without any details of the specialty, and
Please
. Rebecca Eders—another name Jennifer didn’t recognize, but wanted to, wanted to fill in the contour of the cursive letters with a body, a face—Rebecca Eders had simply written
Please
.

“My daughter’s only fifteen years old,” Lavina said. “Let her out. You do that.”

“Can’t, ma’am.”

“Lavina. My name’s Lavina.” She set her palms heavy on the table.

“You can sign the petition, ma’am.”

“Lavina.”

“Lavina,” the agent conceded.

“I’ve already signed.” She tapped the screen. “You watched me do it. Have you forgotten? Been looking at my name, studying it for the past few minutes. I have cousins in the north. Isn’t there a camp at Lincoln?”

The woman shook her head and began to rock on her pegged feet. Her shoulders turned in like honed rocks, diminished.

“Isn’t there a camp at Lincoln?”

“There was. They had to close it because of the spill.”

“I need to get up there. My aunt could help me. She lives in Hooper City.”

“It’s closed off.” And that was it. The woman headed to the next booth, situating herself between a staffer and guardsman. They glanced at Lavina, then shuttered back, checked Lavina again in quick takes.

“I need some help,” Lavina yelled, her hair all knotted, the blond and gray strands frizzy, going left and right out of the loose knot.

Behind them the crowd remained bottlenecked in a long S train. Jennifer tried to count the first row, but too many eyes stared back, knotted her gaze, held her up before she could move on. Others looked around her as if a
real
exit was just beyond the tables and the canvased wall. All of them had dirty hands like her hands, trembling. The fans blew fine dust through the tents, which managed to stir up and sift a coating onto their shirts and heads; occasionally a fleck caught sharp in her skin. Some people looked down at their shoes, their bare feet, or held the rope that kept the line in its S shape and held their bodies up, stacked in crooked rows, emptying at the front where the answer would be
Not today; we can’t do that today
. In all the mumbling and coughing and shifting and staring, an exhaustion accumulated, churning inside Jennifer until it made her sick.