Where the Line Bleeds (14 page)

"Nobody said I was avoiding you."

"You still doing it."

Christophe grabbed Joshua by the arm and half dragged him around
the bumper of the car, away from the lights and the people.

"Chris."

The side of Joshua's thigh ached where Christophe's violent, clumsy
pull had made him bump into the trunk of the car. He tripped out into
the darkness after his brother. Christophe stopped at the edge of the
woods, and Joshua stood next to him, close enough to brush against his
arm for a second, to feel reassured. A frog croaked loudly and insistently
somewhere in the underbrush. Christophe was silent, his hands hanging
open palmed, his fingers wide as if he were searching for something
he'd lost.

"Don't worry about it," Christophe said, surprisingly clear.

"I'm sorry, Christophe."

Christophe touched his lips with his fingers, and then licked them.

"I guess I must have dropped the bottle back there somewhere. There
wasn't anything left of it anyway. And nothing more where it came from,"
he whispered.

"I said I was sorry, Chris." Joshua tried to draw Christophe back, but
he knew his brother would only come back when he wanted to. Perhaps
he was too drunk. Perhaps it wasn't the right time for this conversation. "I
don't have to take the job. We could look for another one together."

"No. One is hard enough to get, specially a good one." Christophe
moved closer to Joshua and looked at him intently.

"Are you sure?" Joshua asked.

Christophe's breath blew in hot, wet puffs over Joshua's cheeks. His
nearness was almost confrontational. Even though he was so close, Joshua
had to strain to hear what Christophe said.

"We can't always do things the same."

"We'll work it out-working different places. You just take the
car and drop me off and then when you get off, you could come pick
me up."

"No."

Christophe's eyes looked glazed and all pupil in the dim light from
the party. Joshua heard some girl scream in laughter. Another car stereo
system rumbled to life. Christophe blinked and pursed his mouth. He
looked sick; he looked as if he wanted to spit.

"I don't mean it like that."

Joshua tried to grab Christophe's arm to steady him and instead
brushed against his T-shirt, and he smelled the pungent aroma of weed
waft from Christophe's clothing, and suddenly, he knew what Christophe
was talking about.

"Christophe."

"What?"

"You're not talking about what I think you're talking about,
are you?"

"What you think I'm talking about?"

"Selling."

"What if I am?"

"No."

"We been looking and calling for a month and I ain't got shit. I ain't
got no more money left. Ain't nothing coming through. Dunny going
to front me a quarter pound and help me get on my feet, and then I'll
look again."

"You ain't got to do that."

"What I'm going to do? Sit around and beg these fucking folks for
a job and eat off of you and Ma-mee? I can't do that." Christophe was
gesturing widely, his hands out to his brother as if he were waiting for
him to grab him and pull him toward him. Joshua felt the pain that he thought would be eased by this talk sharpen in his chest. "I gotta do
something... and if that mean I got to make my money like this for a
while, then that's what it mean."

"This wasn't part of the plan."

"Fuck the plan."

"Give it a couple weeks more."

"You ain't listening to me," Christophe said. "I ain't got shit."

Christophe grabbed his T-shirt and tugged it over his head. It slithered
off and Christophe stood before his brother, his chest bare and wet and
heaving. His movements were slurred. Christophe pushed his hands into
his pockets and upended them, pulling the soft, cotton ears out.

"I have no money." Christophe backed away from his brother and
cupped the back of his neck with both hands so that his elbows and chest
spread and widened like wings. "But," he whispered, "I got options."

Christophe let his arms fall. Tomorrow, Christophe wouldn't
remember any of this. Tomorrow, Joshua would get up and eat grits and
eggs and Christophe would bring him to the interview and then they'd
come home and help Ma-mee with dinner and eat and go to the park
at St. Catherine's and play some ball until the bugs got too bad, and
then they'd go home and sleep. Tomorrow, Christophe would bring him
to the dock and on the way back, they'd find other places to look for a
job and Christophe'd get called back for an interview and start working
somewhere and he'd forget all of this, let it recede from him like the vomit
did now, as he bent over and let a milky stream of alcohol pour from him
and puddle on the red clay and sandy earth. Joshua stood with his hand
firmly planted in the center of his brother's back and felt Christophe's
muscles protest the liquor, and said the only two words he thought would
make it so.

"It's alright."

' OSHUA'S INTERVIEW HAD BEEN EARLY. WHEN THEY RETURNED FROM
the interview, Christophe, reeking of vomit and sweating alcohol,
had tripped past the azaleas in the front yard and murmured an
embarrassed "Good morning" to Ma-mee before rushing inside to fall
into his bed. Joshua had sat next to her, waited for the house to fall silent,
before he told her that they had given him the job, and that he would start
on Friday. The next day, Christophe woke before Joshua and from what
Rita told her later over the phone, spent most of his evening at her house,
playing videogames and waiting for Dunny and Eze to come home, when
he bothered Eze about his contacts at the shipyard. Thursday night, he
appeared out of the darkness, showered, and fell asleep early with Joshua.
She woke both of them at dawn on Friday, and then Christophe did
not come home after dropping Joshua off on his first day of work. Mamee assumed he was filling out more applications. She had stretched the
phone as near to the porch as she could, turned the ringer to loud, and sat
in her favorite chair, waiting. The twins circled each other.

Ma-mee kneaded the wood of the armrests: the chair was old. It was
the last thing Lucien had made for her. He'd made it while he fixed the
chicken coop in the backyard. Paul had wanted to fix the coop himself,
to save his father the trouble of tottering around with an unruly hammer
and errant nails, but Lucien had refused his help. He was a stubborn sixty
at the time; he still dyed his hair black, and walked and swung his arms
like a young man. It was only when he had to concentrate his muscles on details, on pinpointing a nail or threading a needle, that his body betrayed
him, that his aim veered or he started shaking. Ma-mee was fifty that
year. Cille had been pregnant with the twins, then, and still living with
them. It had taken Lucien two weeks to repair a reef of boards that would
have taken him a day when he was younger. She'd watched him from the
window in the morning while she was sorting collards or snapping green
beans: his progress was like watching the sky to gauge the movement of
the clouds. For days it seemed he'd wander around the coop and nothing
would change, and then suddenly, she'd notice a small change where one
hadn't been before. At dinner, he'd say he was simply taking his time: he
didn't want to do a sloppy job.

A week after he was done with the coop, she'd walked out on the
porch one still morning to hear him banging on something under the
hood of the pickup truck, and to see an elegant, simple chair with handcarved flourishes that looked like clam shells at the ends of the armrests
on the porch. When he came inside to wash his hands at the kitchen sink,
she'd walked over to him with clumps of cornbread dough in the sieves
of her fingers to kiss him. She remembered that he'd stood still then, like
a shy boy, and bent his head slightly to her so she could reach the fine,
damp skin of his cheek with her lips. She remembered the way his skin
had given, softer and more yielding than it had ever been in his youth.

Ma-mee let the memory slide from her shoulder like a slipping sheet.
It felt like waking: to her age, to Lucien's death, to the day and the absent
twins. The cicadas roused themselves in the trees outside. The day was
shaping into a bright, pulsing bulb. She slumped a little in her chair.
She thought of making cornbread for dinner: sweet, as Lucien had liked
it. She let her eyes close, felt the heat diffuse through her, and surprised
herself by wanting nothing more than to sleep.

His smell roused her. The scent of beer sweating through the pores of
someone wafted to her, strong on the wind; they were close. She squinted
out into the yard and saw someone standing just beyond the screen. It
was a man; she could tell by the width of his shoulders and waist. The way
he stood reminded her of a community dog: lean, starved, the bend of his
torso that made him look as if he were perpetually looking for something.
She didn't recognize the silhouette through the dull gray screen that was detaching itself from the porch, peeling away from the wood to gape open
and allow flies into the house.

"Who you?" She spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry past him.
This was Bois Sauvage. There were no strangers, everyone knew everyone.
She didn't like not being able to recognize him.

"You don't remember me, Miss Lillian?"

"No, I don't." The scent of him wafted over to her and she exhaled
sharply: he smelled of fermented, overripe alcohol, cigarette smoke, and
sour sweat.

"It's me, Miss Lillian. Samuel."

Surprise surged in her chest, and she blinked to mask it. Ma-mee
heard him cough and gather phlegm. Against the glare of the day, he bent
over and spit.

"How you doing, Miss Lillian."

Fine. You been

"Getting my life in order. I was over in Birmingham at a center. I had
got into them drugs sort of bad. But now I'm better."

Ma-mee saw him raise his arms and hold them above his head. He
was making himself comfortable. He had to notice that she hadn't invited
him on the porch. He'd been a handsome, charming boy when he was a
teenager, but even then there was something about him, about the way
he moved, that was untrustworthy. She'd listened to him and Cille argue
about his drinking, about his flirting with other girls, and she knew he
didn't see Cille. Ma-mee saw him drunk at the Easter ballgame a couple
of times; he was a moody, unpredictable drunk. She remembered him
grabbing Cille's arms once, when he was ready to leave the ballgame and
she wasn't; he had yanked her towards his car. Ma-mee had passed Cille in
the hallway, fresh from the shower, her girl slender and wet, wrapped in a
towel like a child, and seen that he had left bruises on Cille's arm-four,
dark and perfect as watermelon seeds. She had told her daughter he wasn't
any good, but her child was stubborn. After Ma-mee found out Cille was
pregnant, she'd resigned herself to the idea of Samuel: there was nothing
she could do.

"What you come back here for?" The question sounded sharply in the
air, like a slap.

"Miss Lillian."

For a second, the way Samuel slid side to side on his feet reminded her
of him as a teenager. She saw his face as it had been: wide, generous smile,
brown black eyes, a weak jaw, and a sandy-brown, curly Afro. Something
about the way he stood reminded her of the twins. She felt a twinge of
sympathy for him then in her stomach, like a small insect turning and
burrowing in the earth.

"How's the boys? They eighteen now, huh?"

"They just graduated." Ma-mee remembered Samuel's last official visit
with the twins; it was their sixth birthday. He'd bought them matching
pairs of shoes. They were blue high tops and had small puffy decal stickers
of robots on the sides. The twins had worn them religiously for several
weeks until the decals had fallen off. Samuel stayed for an hour or so, gave
them their presents, refused cake, and then left. He'd twitched the entire
time and looked out the window frequently. Ma-mee had wanted to catch
him in the hallway on one of his trips to the bathroom, and away from
the boys, to shove him against the wall and wrap her hands around his
throat and squeeze and feel his damp neck give.

Lucien had only died two years before, and she knew she was a little
crazy, that loss had made her a stranger to herself. Her grief at Lucien's
passing had burned through her; it had left her black and fallow as a stretch
of forest burned by lighting-a landscape of cinder and truncated, spindly,
pines whose bodies were twisted black as their tops were still waving and
dull green. A year after Lucien had died, Cille left, and the only thing
that kept her sane were the twins; how precious their round, large, curlyhaired heads, their gap-toothed mouths, their constant questions had
been to her. Ma-mee could not understand how Samuel could not love
that. They had been bewildered in the beginning, and she'd had to make
excuses for Samuel, but then they'd gotten older, and they'd learned how
not to miss him. They'd stopped asking about him. They'd spent their time
running around the neighborhood in packs with Dunny and the other
boys, shooting BB guns and riding their bikes and playing basketball. She
was glad she hadn't had to lie anymore. "Joshua got a job down at the pier.
Christophe's looking."