Visitation Street (16 page)

She thinks she sees Cree everywhere—at the bodega, at the bus stop, on the pier. She lingers on her stoop before going inside, tricking herself into believing that he is going to be the next person to walk down her street. At night, she stays up late, sitting on her windowsill, her legs dangling, her heels tapping a rhythm she hopes will call Cree to Visitation Street.

On the Sunday following the vigil, Val waits outside the tabernacle. As she listens to Monique sing, she watches the rows of worshippers in shiny suits sway and clap—an undulation of colors like the evening sun spilling across the river. But when the crowd flows back onto the street, Cree is not with them.

Val watches Monique come down the aisle. How far-fetched is it to imagine that they might be friends again, gossiping late at night in Coffey Park, teasing the boys and letting themselves be teased in return?

“You still waiting around for me to sing something for June?” Monique says as she passes Val. “I told you Cree’s mom’s the one to bother with that nonsense.”

“I’m looking for Cree, not his mom,” Val says.

“Your daddy knows that?”

“No.”

“Thought you always followed daddy’s orders.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“What’s your business with Cree?”

“Nothing. I just want to talk to him,” Val says.

“You guys a couple or something?”

“No.”

“Building closest to Lorraine. Sixth floor. Door’s busted.” Monique fans herself with her hand. “You’re not scared of the Houses? Bet you’ve never been inside before.”

Val won’t admit it, but Monique’s right. Paulie forbade both her and Rita from playing in the courtyards, let alone entering one of the project buildings. He’d grown up on the waterside and watched the drug slingers from the Houses invade his community, force his friends and family to move away.
People over there got nothing to do with us
, Paulie warned Val whenever she mentioned the Houses.

The projects are a maze. Val tries to appear nonchalant as she looks for the building with the busted door. A couple of young punks whose waistbands ride below their hips circle her. “I got what you’re looking for?” one of them asks, reaching down between his knees to grab the sagging crotch of his pants. “You come this way for a little action?”

From a bench in the middle of the courtyard, two old men tsk and tut, their displeasure souring the boys’ thrill. The boys run off. Val glances around, willing Cree to appear from every doorway, saving her the trouble of seeking him out.

She finds the building. Like Monique promised, the door is ajar. From outside, Val can smell the pungent stench of summer garbage stewing in the hall. Her palms are clammy. Sweat trickles down her neck. She looks across the courtyard. The boys who taunted her are watching with their arms crossed, checking if she dares to enter.

The stairwell is dark. The floors are unnumbered. Val flattens against a wall, making room for a woman with a baby carriage who scowls as she passes. The baby cries each time the carriage bangs against the stairs, staccato hiccups that bounce off the concrete.

Val pushes through a fire door onto the sixth-floor hallway. The fluorescent lights buzz and flicker as if they’re catching flies. A man stumbles out of an apartment, cursing as the door slams behind him.

Halfway down the hall is a door with the name
JAMES
below the bell and a sign advertising
PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS $10
. Val’s hand cannot find its way to the doorbell. She leans against the opposite wall. She wipes her palms.

The door opens and a large woman in a long purple skirt pokes her head into the hallway.

“What’re you doing standing there?” she says, reaching out a hand to Val. “Come inside. I’ve got the fan running.”

Val follows her. She has the same round face as Cree, the same wide, soft features. The apartment is bright and clean. It smells like lavender. Framed prints of flowers hang on the walls in the tidy kitchen. A yellow plastic tablecloth is spread over the small table.

“I’m Gloria,” she says. She still holds Val’s hand. There is a soft electricity in her fingertips as they press into Val’s palm, scanning her life lines and love lines, as if reading Braille.

“I’m—”

“I know who you are. The last time I saw you, you were nine years old.” Gloria turns over Val’s palm inside her hand. Her hand is soft with deep creases.

If she lets go, Cree will be home
. Gloria does not let go. Her grip is strong.

“Is that sister of yours still running wild?”

“I guess,” Val says. “I’m looking for—”

“You don’t need to tell me who you’re looking for,” Gloria says, patting Val’s cheek with her free hand. She leads Val to the kitchen table. “Sit down, baby. There’s no need to be nervous. I don’t bite.”

Despite the fan, the kitchen is hot. The backs of Val’s thighs adhere to the chair’s vinyl cushion.

“I could air-condition the place, but it disturbs my flow,” Gloria says.

Val cranes her neck, checking to see if Cree is in the living room.

“Water. Lemonade?”

“Water’s fine.” Val removes the paper napkins from their spindled holder and squares their edges before replacing them.

Gloria fills two glasses with water and places them on the table. She returns to the sink and washes her hands. Then she takes the chair opposite Val. “Are you ready?” she asks. “Give me your hands.” Gloria holds out her hands and closes her eyes.

Val hesitates. “Is Cree here?”

Gloria’s eyes open. “Cree? No, baby, he’s not going to interrupt. Now give me your hands and we’ll see if I can talk to your friend.”

“My friend?”

“Don’t tell me her name.” Gloria takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling. “I remember now. June. We’ll try and talk to June.” She flutters her fingers.

If you want to talk to the dead, talk to Cree’s mom
.

Before Val can object, Gloria grasps her hands and squeezes. A low-watt current passes between them. Val doesn’t close her eyes. Instead she takes in the grocery list held to the fridge by an orange magnet, the wire fruit basket hanging over the sink, a coffee cup with a lipstick mark waiting to be washed. She clings to everything mundane to fight back the extraordinary.

Gloria’s grip tightens. The light hasn’t changed, but shadows have crept over her face, making caverns of her eyes. Although Gloria is only a few feet away, Val knows she’d have trouble reaching her.

Despite all the rituals she’s invented to summon June home, Val doesn’t want June to appear here. She does not want to hear her voice come out from Cree’s mother’s mouth. Until this moment, Val always thought of June’s return in the abstract, a miraculous homecoming, a joyful celebration. But in reality, what would June say? What accusations would she make?

It’s your fault
.

Gloria’s face contracts and resettles. Her lips part. Val’s breath catches. She doesn’t want to hear what Gloria is about to say. She snatches her hands out of Gloria’s grasp and covers her ears.

“No!” Val’s cry raises a metallic echo among the flatware and pots drying on the counter.

Gloria’s eyes snap open. The shadows blow back from her face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t find her.”

“Okay,” Val says. “That’s okay.” She cups her hand over her mouth and exhales into it, trying to catch her jagged breath.

Gloria leans over the table. “You don’t believe she’s dead. For this to work, you have to believe she’s dead. Do you believe it? Or are you still hoping?”

“Is she dead?”

“That’s not for me to say. If you think she’s dead, I can try and reach her. But only if that’s what you believe. It has to start with you. Sometimes we hold on too long. Sometimes with good reason. Do you know your reason?”

“I just want to know where she is,” Val says. “I want her to come back.”

“You’ll find her, either with my help or with someone else’s. You just have to decide how and where to look.” Gloria switches to a chair closer to Val and takes her hand. There is nothing probing or searching in her touch this time. “Baby, there’s hundreds of people around us we don’t see. It’s up to you to open your eyes. You have to choose that this is where you want to find June.” Gloria gives her hand a squeeze.

“So it’s up to me to decide if she is dead?”

“There’s a difference between dead and forgotten.”

Val stands up. She rummages in her pocket for money but Gloria waves her off.

They walk to the door. Gloria keeps an arm draped around Val’s shoulder. At the threshold she pulls Val into a warm, soft hug. Val closes her eyes. With her face buried in Gloria’s shoulder, she sees the raft and the river, the pink rubber buoyed by the water’s pulse. She does not see June.

“I’ll tell Cree you were here,” Gloria says, closing the door behind Val.

This is how you walk home. This is how you look for June—you follow the precise route that led you to the water that night. You see yourself from above—a player moving through a video-game maze. At Coffey Park you turn left. You walk along Lorraine Street, over to the abandoned lot with the boat. You look for Cree among the weeds. You continue down to the Beard Street Pier. You dip your toes into the water at the exact place where you and June launched the raft. You get on your knees, soaking your shorts. You tip your head, lowering your ear into the water. If you can hear the water speak, it will tell you where to find June. You listen for June. The water has no voice. Its heartbeat, the one audible that night from the raft, is silent.

You walk home along the rocks, keeping your eyes on the water, tracing the precise path of the raft, looking below the surface. You pick up trash as you go.
If you pick up trash, if you clean the rocks, June will come home
.

Val follows these commands that pop into her head, letting them guide her out onto a jetty, as close as she can get to the place where she last saw June. The sulfuric mud between the rocks is charcoal gray, iridescent with an oily film.

Val slides her bag from her shoulder. She dumps the contents onto the rocks—a set of barrettes the girls shared in middle school, her half of a friendship necklace, a potholder from a fourth-grade craft project, and a handful of other sacred objects that she’s transformed into talismans of June’s return. One by one she hurls them into the water. She watches as some sink while others are carried away, bobbing and pinwheeling on the surface. If these things mean anything to June, she’ll come back.

She sits on the rocks and drops her chin to her chest. She clasps her hands and places them in her lap. Then she prays to God or the river to shake June free, cough her up, spit her out, send her home.

Starting tenth grade is like being the new girl again, except this time June isn’t there to help. Here is what Val overhears during her first week at school. She was raped by a stranger from the Houses and left for dead under the pier. She and June had been high on E when June fell into the water and drowned. They had been turning tricks down by the water when June was abducted.

She does not contradict these wild stories, but allows her classmates to spin their tales, hoping that soon they will forget the story of June’s disappearance and notice her presence. Because Val cannot imagine going through high school without a friend to whisper to in the hall, pass notes with in class. So instead of calling her schoolmates out for their lies and speculation, she lets them slide.

In class, she allows her mind to wander from June to Cree, hoping that he will validate her, that his friendship will pardon her.
If he likes her—if one person likes her—she can begin to forgive herself for June
.

During the second week of school, in the middle of geometry she sees him—a hooded figure pacing beneath the scaffolding underneath the abandoned public school that is being converted into apartments. His face is obscured by his hood. But she recognizes Cree’s slouch, his noncommittal gangster walk. She glances at the clock. There are twenty minutes left.

The teacher is drawing a line down the middle of the rhombus. He begins to write a formula on the board. Val watches Cree pace to the corner and return. Then she watches him pace to the corner and disappear. Her heart feels as if it’s beating against stone. It’s a minute before he returns, loping into view like he’s walking in jelly. He pauses, then turns toward the corner.

Val grabs her backpack. Her feet echo in the hall. Her bag thwacks a bank of lockers as she cuts a corner too close. She skips the bottom four steps and hits the lobby. Her knees buckle under the weight of her jump. The impact lurches into her chest. Then she’s through the doors.

She sees him rounding the corner, heading back in her direction.

“Cree,” Val says.

He drops the hood of his sweatshirt. It takes Val a moment to realize that it’s not Cree, but a ghost-gray boy in a baseball cap.

“Wrong man.” He takes off his cap, revealing twisted cones of black hair. His lips are cracked. The cheekbones are hollow. Val can envision the shape of his skull.

“I thought you were … never mind.” Val glances over her shoulder to see if anyone is watching her from the classroom window. “I should go.”

“Got to get back to class?”

She can sense the tempered noise in the classrooms stacked up inside like shipping containers. After geometry is history. “I don’t have to.”

“It’s good to get an education.”

“You never skipped school?” The air feels crisp and illicitly fresh. The street is quiet, as if in deference to the classes in session across the street.

“I’m a different story.”

“Why’s that?”

“I skipped school until I couldn’t.” The kid puts his cap back on. “You stare out the window too much. Teacher’s at the front of the room.”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“You’ve been watching me. What’s the difference?”

“Only because I thought you were somebody else.”

“I know precisely who you are.” He pulls a beat-up cigarette from a crumpled soft pack in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “The girl who took the raft out in the water. Big adventure for a young kid.”

“I’m almost sixteen.”

“Nevertheless. You shouldn’t go around blaming others for your own foolishness.”