Where the Line Bleeds (28 page)

"Mama?" Cille bent to hug Ma-mee and Ma-mee smelled her perfume,
baby-oil, and something else: perhaps hairspray.

"Cille." She was rounder than she had been, softer. When Ma-mee
hugged her, Cille's shoulder blade was a barely discernable hump beneath
her skin; it was cloaked by fat and reminded Ma-mee of the smooth
ripples fish made as they swam inches below the surface of the water.

"How you been?"

"Alright. And you? How was the flight?" Ma-mee led Cille into the
kitchen. She grabbed a plate and began ladling rice in a bowl. She passed
it to Cille and pointed toward the stove. "They got biscuits in the oven."

"I'm alright. A little tired. It was bumpy." Cille spooned beans over her
rice. The boys traipsed silently to the extra room, their footsteps hitting
unevenly on the thin carpet. "I was hoping you'd a made something?"

"I was trying to wait for y'all." Ma-mee passed Cille another bowl
to fill for herself. "Boys, I got beans in here!" Ma-mee yelled. "Just some
beans and a biscuit, please. I ain't that hungry"

Cille placed the full bowls on the table.

"Hot sauce?"

"Boys!" Ma-mee sat down. "Cille, they got a cold drink in the
frigerator: Coke, I think." Before Cille could do so, Ma-mee rose
from her seat and opened the old pine cabinets. She pulled out four
glasses and balanced them against her chest as she walked back to the
table. Cille popped the top on the two-liter and it hissed and gurgled.
Ma-mee smelled the sugary, acrid smell of it. Cille poured. "How's your
job going?"

Cille pushed Ma-mee's glass of water toward her and began to fill her
own with Coke. She did not fill the boys' cups.

"Boys!"

"It's going alright, I guess. We just got a whole bunch of new products
in so we had to remodel the floor and move the shelves around. Worked
more nights, but that's more overtime for me, so I wasn't mad."

Ma-mee heard the boys shuffle in, and they busied themselves at the
counter with their bowls; when Christophe placed the lid to the pot of
beans on the counter, he set it down lightly so that she could barely hear
it rattle, and when Joshua opened the oven, he eased it open soundlessly on its hinges. They sat down at the table. They were both taller than
Cille; the blindness had washed away the defining characteristics that
made Cille older, and if it wasn't for the way she held herself, stiff with
her arms crossed before her and her wrists resting delicately on the table,
Ma-mee could have imagined that Cille was the boys' shorter, younger,
heavyset sister. Joshua slid a spoon across to Ma-mee so that it nudged at
her fingers next to her plate.

"Since we all here, somebody should say grace."

"I will," Cille said.

"When you ready." Ma-mee nodded her head slightly, but kept her
eyes on the twins.

"Thank you, Lord, for this food we are about to eat. Thank you
for family and for a safe flight. Amen," Cille said. The twins weren't
churchgoers; Ma-mee couldn't blame them for it. Since her blindness had
set in, she had only been to church on holidays with Rita. She had made
them go to church with her when they were younger, but since that visit
to the doctor, they had fallen out of going. She didn't want to argue with
them about it. Cille had become increasingly religious the longer she
stayed in Atlanta. She had told Ma-mee she attended services at a Baptist
church, which Ma-mee had felt an initial irrational negative reaction to:
church to her meant Mass and white robes and purple satin sashes and
gold communion cups and wine. Later, Ma-mee decided it didn't matter
that Cille went to a Baptist church: at least she had someplace to go, a
community, where people knew her. Ma-mee still worried about her, old
as Cille was, in that city.

"Thank you, Cille."

"So, how's your job going, Joshua?"

"It's alright. Long hours, sort of boring."

"What about you, Christophe? You been looking, right?"

"Yeah, I been looking."

"You know you have to call them, right? They got to know you want
it. I don't give nobody a job at my store unless they call and ask about
they application."

Ma-mee's beans were spicier than she usually made them. She must
have used too much Creole seasoning, too much cayenne. They must've been hot to Christophe as well: she heard him gulping down half of his
dark drink. The twins' spoons clanked against the sides of their bowls.

"Y'all hungry, huh?" Ma-mee asked.

"I had a sandwich for lunch," Joshua said.

"You should eat more. Eating so fast ain't good for you."

"Anybody want another biscuit?" Christophe asked as he rose and
went to the oven.

"No, thank you," Cille replied. "Christophe, you going to bring me
to get my rental car tomorrow?"

"I thought you was using our car."

"That's too much trouble. Sides, I don't feel like getting up at dawn to
go bring Joshua to work. I already made a reservation for a rental."

Christophe laid his spoon delicately in the crater of his bowl. It clinked
lightly against the porcelain like the initial note of a wind chime.

"Yeah," Christophe said, short. Joshua yawned.

"Go ahead and go to bed," Ma-mee said.

"I'll do the dishes, Ma-mee." Christophe rose from his chair and
cleared Ma-mee's place.

After all that cooking, she had not been hungry. The summer was
nearing its zenith, and for once, the heat boiling against the windows
bothered her. The fans had sluggishly stirred the heat thrown by the oven
and the heat from outside the house. Ma-mee had felt as if she were
sinking in a pot of simmering soup. For once, she wished for the end of
the summer, for the short dark days, for the late dawns and early sunsets
of winter. Joshua left Cille her plate, but picked up his own cup and plate
and followed his brother to the sink. After the boys cleaned the kitchen,
Joshua stood silently next to Cille, waiting a step behind her chair until
she turned and saw him. Ma-mee noticed the straight dark bulk of him,
the way he stood almost painfully at attention.

"You want me to get that for you?" Joshua asked Cille, reaching for
her plate.

"No, thank you. I got it." Cille grabbed Joshua to stop him. She left
her hand on him, and for a second Ma-mee thought he would fall over
her onto the table: his silhouette looked unbalanced. Christophe kissed
Ma-mee softly on the cheek, and she decided she wouldn't begin nagging him again about a job until Cille left, and that she was glad for the summer,
glad for her full stomach, glad to have Christophe's lips on her skin.

"Goodnight," Christophe said.

Joshua pulled away from Cille.

"Night, Cille." Christophe threw this over his shoulder.

"Night, Christophe," Cille replied.

Joshua slid his hand over Ma-mee's shoulder: his hand felt rougher
and heavier than it usually did.

"Night, Ma-mee." Joshua kissed her and drew away. "Night, Cille,"
he added, and then he was gone.

"I'm surprised they still wash the dishes."

Ma-mee watched Cille play with her bowl. She was tired, like the
boys. She would follow them to bed.

"They good boys." Ma-mee stood. "I'm going to bed, too."

"You need some help?"

"Naw. Your bedroom ready."

Cille stood and lightly hugged Ma-mee; Ma-mee felt it as no more
than a slight, extended flutter against her back. She hugged Cille solidly,
and let her palms slide from the spine of Cille's back and out over her
shoulder blades to her underarms. Yes, she had gained weight. Ma-mee's
eyes stung and they blurred to an incoherent opacity, so she blinked and
nodded at Cille and pulled away from her.

"Night, Mama."

"See you in the morning."

Ma-mee felt her way to her room. In the living room, the TV rumbled
to life. Cille would stay up late, and Ma-mee knew if Cille didn't have to
ride with Christophe to pick up her rental car, she would have found Cille
asleep in front of the TV in the morning. Ma-mee pulled her housedress
over her head, and noticed by the shadow mimicking her that she was
undressing in front of the mirror, as was her old habit. She heard her child
laugh at something in the living room, and the muted stumbling of one
of her boys in the bathroom. As she leaned toward the switch on the wall,
she wondered what Cille's face looked like now, if she was sprouting fine
lines at the corner of her eyes that looked like bunches of spider lilies. Her
father had gathered them at that age. She switched off the light.

ILLE WAS MAKING CHRISTOPHE NERVOUS. HE HAD DROPPED JOSHUA
off in the heavy gray dawn and made his way back to the country
_'to pick her up. The rental car was in Germaine, and Christophe
only had time to brush his teeth and wash his underarms before he left the
house. He thought longingly of the privacy of his park bench, the matted
grass that the county officials had overlooked cutting, and the wind through
the closest branches of the pines: the closest thing he could get to his own
place. He was ready to be done with his family's errands and on with his
work.

"Got any new prospects today?" Cille asked him. She sipped her gas
station issue coffee.

"Couple places," he mumbled. He had seen a few new signs on his
first trip to Germaine that morning, but he had not had time to stop
and grab any applications and add them to the stash, thick as a nest of
napkins, in the glove compartment. He watched the cup anxiously and
hoped she didn't spill it. The first place she'd look for something to wipe
with was the glove compartment.

"Mmm, hmmm." She breathed and nodded.

There would be no riding, no sleeping at the park today. Cille might
see him. He would ride to Javon's house and park it around the back
and sit there for the day: he knew Javon would be doing a little business,
most likely from the living room and he knew he could still make the
money he needed to make there. The plastic on Javon's sofa would be cool. Christophe couldn't think of anything else to say to her. She had
showered and dressed and put on make-up, and she smelled clean and
sweet. Christophe saw the Enterprise Rent-a-Car sign and hit his signal.

"What you doing today?" he asked.

"I'm going to see some friends. Might take Rita with me to do some
shopping later." Cille patted him on the shoulder as he parked the car.
The rentals gleamed like wet candy. The Caprice growled and suddenly it
seemed too loud, too old.

"That's alright." She stopped him from turning off the car. Her
perfume was strong, as heavy and layered as her pinkish-red lipstick.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. Like I said, I made reservations. I'll see you at the house
tonight."

"Alright then." She left the car. He watched her walk into the building
with her head down against the sun, which lanced in bright waves through
the muffling clouds, and he did not reach over to pull the door more
firmly shut until she entered the tinted door of the building. The green
sign quivered and rang as a gust of wind blew, and he wondered at how
small she was, how petite she looked as she reached for the door, how she
had to lean back with her weight to pull it open. She was soft, underneath.
even though he didn't want to, he knew that. When he pulled into Javon's
driveway, he muted the stereo and veered off the oyster shells and parked
in the backyard beneath the sheltering branches of two oak trees, near
to where he had first seen Sandman on the fourth. When Christophe
knocked on the front door, hot paint cracked away beneath his knuckles
and fell like confetti. A muffled voiced answered.

"Come in!"

Javon had pulled all the curtains shut, and he sat on the sofa with a
forty sandwiched between his legs and a remote control in his hand. He
was the brightest thing in the room, glowing a pale white in the gloom.

"What's up?" Javon asked.

Christophe wiped sweat from his palms on his jeans. He felt
nervous.

"Uh-sorry about parking in your backyard. It's just, Cille's-well,
my mama's here from Atlanta and I was wondering if I could come over here and chill for a while." Christophe gripped Javon's hard, bony, pale
fingers in a handshake. He wasn't making any sense. "She think I be
looking for a job, and I don't want her to see me down at the park, and
everybody else at work, so I..."

"Sit down."

Christophe sank into the icy plastic cushions of the sofa.

"It's cold up in here."

"I can't stand to sweat." Javon changed the channel desultorily. "You
can chill here long as you want. I understand you don't want your mama
to know what you do." He switched the channel again. A woman in white
sneakers flew through the air on a yellow vacuum in a commercial. "Far as
my family know, I'm always about to get called back for a job or going on
a interview." He fingered the remote control and a video popped onscreen:
rappers wearing leather jackets mugged in front of cars that gleamed with
the dull silver sheen of bullets, as wide-thighed women writhed in bikinis.
Javon tossed the remote toward Christophe.