Where the Line Bleeds (15 page)

"Oh. Well, alright." Samuel pushed away from the shaded cool
thrown by the eaves and retreated to the glare of the sun. The light seemed to diminish him so that his outline was smaller than the effluent, leafy
azaleas, so that he was all spindly arms and legs; a naked bush. "Can you
just tell them that I'm home now and that I'll be around?"

"Sure." It had never made a difference whether he was around or
not. After that sixth birthday, Ma-mee knew he had still been around
the neighborhood. Paul would see Samuel around, tell her about it,
always begin his sentences with, "I saw that sonofabitch...." Ma-mee
knew jailhouse fervor when she heard it. She barely resisted snorting, and
instead picked up a piece of flattened, thick, layered newspaper from a
small card table near her chair and began fanning herself.

"Thank you, Ms. Lillian." There was nothing more she wanted to say
to him. "See you later."

"Goodbye, Samuel." The light ate at him, pared him away in pieces
as he walked away, until he disappeared when he hit the road. Ma-mee
fanned herself faster, noticed, and then stopped. She wouldn't tell the boys;
part of her felt that telling them would be giving something to Samuel.
She smelled wisteria and crepe myrtle, and she tried to relax, to shake the
encounter away with the heavy musk of the flowers. He had made her feel
dirty. Even if he had just completed some kind of rehabilitation program,
he still had that jumpiness about him, that anxious, unsettled air. She
thought of her niece Iolanthe, who came over every week or so to borrow
sugar or cornmeal, and Blackjack, one of her cousin's children, who would
sometimes wander over in the day and offer to cut her grass for five dollars,
and other drug addicts around Sandman's age in the neighborhood who
were addicted to drinking and all kinds of dope. They all acted the same;
all moved as if they were perpetually waiting for something astounding to
happen: a tornado, a flood, an earthquake.

So, she wouldn't tell the twins. It was quiet; there were no boards
creaking, no breathing sounds, no doors creaking open or closed. She
raised her face to the air, knowing that she probably looked like an animal,
like the stray dogs in the neighborhood did when they caught the scent
of a rabbit that had strayed into a yard from the wood. Would she rather
have Samuel approach them in the street and casually mention to them
that he had come by and talked to her? She didn't want to lie to them like
that; protect them, yes, but leave them to be surprised, no. She had heard them talking about him. She had noticed how they hated to say his name.
She would mention it to them and not make a big deal of it. She'd prepare
them. Ma-mee ran through a list of ingredients in her head; she would
make cornbread. She would set it on the board above the sink and let it
cool so it would be sweet and light, and she would defrost the red beans
she'd frozen. The evening would be quiet, and outside in the dark, even
the insects would be sated. Ma-mee would ask Christophe to play those
tapes on the radio during dinner. The ribbon of Al Green's voice would tie
the evening. Perhaps she could tell them a couple of funny stories about
Lucien; perhaps she could make them laugh. Then she would say it.

The seagulls meandered in threesomes through the air over the
dock. They paused to alight on the concrete railings bordering the water,
and pecked inquisitively at the asphalt, at sodden lumps of paper and
flapping wads of napkins and hamburger wrappers. The sun was so bright
it blanched the surface of the water crystal. The glare hurt the eyes as it
shimmered and rebuffed the sun. When the birds flew out away from the
dock over the water, they disappeared. Even so, Joshua heard them calling
in rough, scratchy voices to one another as they skimmed over the salty,
distended waves.

Joshua knew that there were some places in Alabama where the water
was blue, where it was clear enough to see the sandy bottom, but here
in Mississippi, it was so gray. He was grateful for the sun in that way; it
threw a glamor over the water and made it appear to be something else.
Joshua picked up another twenty-pound sack of chicken, loaded it on a
pallet, and grimaced as he wiped away a splatter of pasty bird shit from
his forearm. He'd stuck to Leo's back, squinted against the violent shine
of the man's orange overalls, and stooped so he could hear Leo over the
clanging of the ships' bells, the waves, the gulls, the grind and churn of
the cranes and lifts and men as Leo trained him. He'd been loading sacks
for close to an hour. He smelled of sea salt and sweat salt and musk. He
bent to pick up another sack when he felt a hand grip his elbow; he hadn't
heard anyone call his name. Leo stood at his side.

"You can go take a break, now. I'll have you load a few more pallets
when you done, and then you can leave for the day. We don't want to tire
you out too much-we want you to come back tomorrow." Leo smiled; one of his front teeth was chipped. Leo must have seen Joshua looking,
because he gestured to his mouth with his gloved hand and said, "Got this
in a dirt bike accident when I was sixteen. Glad this was the only thing
I broke."

Joshua ducked his head, a gesture he knew probably seemed like a
bow to Leo, and walked to the office building to retrieve his lunch from
his narrow gray locker. The air was so cold and dry in the building that it
shocked him; he started shaking and had trouble fitting the thin key shaped
like a heart into the lock. There was a small cafeteria with long wooden
tables and metal chairs in the building, but he didn't feel like eating there.
He was hungry, but he knew he wouldn't be able to eat inside; he could
see himself sitting on a hard chair by himself in a corner of the room, his
shoulders rounded as if to block out the room, the men quietly joking and
shoving spoons into their mouths. He walked outside and turned from the
building and followed the seawall away from the boats and men and the
work and climbed up and perched on the edge of the wall facing the sea.
All of it was an unpleasant rumbling to the left of him.

Joshua heard the seagulls screaming above him, and he watched them
land a few feet away from him. They dropped gracefully from the air to
palm the hot, tarry asphalt. He pulled his sandwich from the bag and was
surprised to see that it was flat. He hadn't had anything else in his locker;
he had no idea what could have smashed it like that. The locker had been
cold, but even so the jelly had melted and slid out of the sandwich to
smear against the plastic bag; the peanut butter bubbled away from the
sides of the doughy, mashed bread. The sandwich had been small and
meager that morning, but it was all he had time to fix, and now, smashed
as it was, it seemed even smaller and more meager, and his stomach was
a sucking black hole. He hadn't made more because he hadn't wanted to
eat the last of the bread.

His shirt was losing the coolness it had taken on while he was in the
building. The heat was squeezing him again, squeezing him as it had when
he was lifting and throwing those sacks. His hands had felt like they were
going to spontaneously combust inside those thick, padded suede gloves.
He had wanted to punch Leo in the face while he was coaching him,
punch himself in the face for taking this stupid, hard job, had wanted to strip off his pants and the heavy, cumbersome boots, and walk home.
Collapsing of heat stroke while dodging traffic, hitching a ride, anything
had to be better than this: anything but facing Ma-mee and Christophe
and feeling like he had failed. He licked jelly from his finger. He would
endure it.

"You know we got a cafeteria, don't you?" Leo had snuck up on him
again. Joshua shifted on the seawall, away from the glassy sheen of the
water, to answer.

"Yeah, I know. It's too cold in there for me." How in the hell did
he sneak up on people when he was such a big man? "What you think
so far?"

"It's alright." Joshua swallowed and glanced back toward the water.

"It gets better once you get used to it."

"Yeah?" Out on the horizon, the islands were dark, thin fringes. They
reminded Joshua of eyelashes.

"Yeah. The first day is always the hardest. Your muscles got to get used
to the work. Pretty soon, you won't even think about it."

"Oh." A seagull flapped its wings next to Joshua's head and landed
on the seawall. Joshua shooed it away with the sandwich. The bird didn't
seem to mind. It squawked, nodded its head several times as if it were
stabbing the air with its beak, and hopped toward him again. Leo yelled
"Hey!" and waved at the bird. It fluttered backwards and away, startled.
Leo yelled again, and it took to the air.

"Flying rats." Leo spat. "Well." Leo was looking at Joshua as if he was
waiting for him to say something. Joshua didn't want to talk-he wanted
to leave. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Alright." Joshua shoved the last bite into the hollow of his cheek,
and chewed. Leo walked away across the parking lot. Joshua watched him
go and eyed the birds hopping about on the asphalt. He wondered if the
pavement burned their feet. They danced closer to him. He folded up the
paper bag: he could re-use it. One of the birds, perhaps the one that had
just landed on the seawall next to him, swooped down a foot away from
him and shrieked. Joshua didn't wave it away. He squinted at the bird and
its followers. He was bracing himself against the heat: his neck tense, his
shoulders stiff. That was the wrong way to go about it. He forced himself to loosen his chest and inhale the air, to invite it to him. It was bearable
then. As he walked through the cluster of birds, they hopped behind him
a small way from the wall, like a posse. They stopped and called to him
when they realized he had nothing to offer them. He looked back to see
them fluttering away toward the garbage cans; they floated haphazardly
along in tandem with the blowing napkins. He wiped his face with
the hem of his shirt. He didn't agree with Leo; they weren't filthy, and
they weren't flying rats-they were just scrabbling and hungry, like
everything else.

Christophe woke to a furtive scratching sound, the sound of a
fingernail against wood, and then a soft tapping. He opened his eyes
and remembered it all: the drinking, the smoking, the admission, the
blackout, the blurry, drunken drive he'd taken the morning after dropping
Joshua off at work, the weekend he'd spent running from his brother like
a darting deer, this morning's silent, long drive. He'd sat in the parking
lot of the Oreck vacuum company until the time had come to drop off
applications only to be told that they weren't accepting any because there
were no open positions. Back at the house, he'd snuck into the back door
while Ma-mee on the porch. It was late in the day, and here he was in the
bed with no job and no prospects and his brother was gone. He slid the
pillow, cool on the underside, over his face and pulled it to the side so he
could see out one eye. Laila stood in the doorway, ready to knock again.

"Hey, Chris." She said softly.

"Hey, Laila." Christophe managed to grind this out through his
parched, closed throat. He blinked at her with his one open eye, shut it,
and pulled the pillow back over his head. She was bright and clean and
pretty and wearing short shorts, as always.

"I came over to do your hair."

"What?" Christophe spoke into the pillow and instantly regretted it.
His mouth stank.

"Joshua didn't tell you?" Laila stuck her fists into her shorts. "He
asked me to come over today and do your hair."

"Oh." Christophe wanted to cover his face with the pillow again and
go back to sleep, to tell Laila and her legs to go away, but who knew when
she would be able to braid his hair again. Only she could do it well; he imagined it was because she braided his twin's hair regularly: her fingers
familiar and fond of his brother's hair. He shouldn't be jealous, but he
thought about Joshua again, and knew one of the reasons she liked him
so much was because of his light eyes, his easier to braid hair. His hair had
to be neater; prospective employers would think him lazy and unreliable
if he wore his hair wild and curly. "Alright." He sat up. "It's going to be
a minute, Laila."

"It's alright. I'll be in the living room with Ma-mee."

Out of the shower, Christophe threw on whatever he pulled out of
the drawer first, grabbed some moisturizer and a comb, and walked to the
living room.

Laila was sitting on one of the sofas. Ma-mee sat across from her
in her easy chair. They were watching The Price is Right on TV. People
were cheering in a messy, colorful blur. He shuffled over to Ma-mee and
kissed her and barely caught himself from tumbling in to her chair. She
gripped his arm and smiled. She wasn't squinting; something about the
smile seemed off. Christophe thought to say sorry, but as he opened his
mouth, she squeezed him again and let him go. He was still clumsy with
sleep. He sat between Lailas knees.

"Did you bring rubber bands?" Laila's question surprised him. No, he
had forgotten the rubber bands in the room. Her kneecaps were marked
with thready scars.

"No."

"It's alright. I brought some." Christophe felt her shift to pull them
out of her pocket. The scars drew closer before moving away. "They're
brown. Joshua likes them brown... so I figured you did too." She hesitated.
"Is that okay?"

"Yeah." Christophe wondered about Joshua then, wondered if he was
sweating out his own braids at the pier.

Christophe felt the fine tail of the comb like a finger on his scalp. It
divided his head into sections; it traced rivers of forgetting on his skin. It
felt good. He started to doze, and then Lailas hands jerked him awake.
She was shaping the first braid. It hurt like hell. She yanked each section
of the braid tight; it was like a lighter burned along his scalp. He was
tempted to pull away from the pain, but he knew that if he wanted the braids to look glossy and to last, he couldn't. He was vain about his hair,
but most boys his age that sported long hair were; it was a point of pride
to sport the most unique, the tightest braids, and when his hair was done,
it was like wearing a new outfit; he felt rich, almost. From Ma-mee's chair,
he heard a soft snore.