Where the Line Bleeds (30 page)

"Well, um, I told her to come by Saturday."

"Well that's good, since I'm going to be gone all tomorrow to the
festival."

He wanted to tell her he knew, and that's why he had asked Laila to
come over on Saturday, but he didn't want to interrupt her.

"Who's her mama and daddy?" she asked.

"Ozene and Lilly."

"Hmmm." She half-breathed and snorted, and then looked down at
the carpet, where she traced circles with the toe of her sandal. "You like
her a lot? Ma-mee says she comes by the house all the time. Say she a
sweet girl."

"She is."

"Well, do you?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

It felt good to say it to someone, even if it couldn't be his brother. He
thought of the way Christophe skirted him when he and Laila were on the
sofa or in their room, the way he felt guilty watching his brother scuttling
sideways like a crab, averting his eyes away from them until he was out of
the room. Joshua saw Christophe walking out of the door, away from him
and Laila, off the porch and out into the sunlight where the light ate his
dark silhouette until he disappeared. Joshua would remember a biblical
word then, forsaken, and he could not help pulling away from Laila,
from regretting how he'd peppered Christophe with questions about jobs
until he either shrank or blurted out "fuck." He was angry at Christophe's
palpable loneliness, his withdrawal, and his own guilt.

"Is she cute?"

"She pretty."

The rasp of the words in his throat made him blush. He could hear
the caress in them. He could see Laila's flushed face, her pink mouth, and
then he focused on Cille.

"Well." Cille stood and he knew it was a dismissal. "Just make sure I
meet her."

"Alright," Joshua said.

Cille pulled up a green silk shirt. He nodded and she laid it on the
bed. He moved away from the door as she made to close it.

"You look better in yellow," he said.

Joshua did not think Cille heard it before she closed the door. He
felt his breath against the wood. He could hear Ma-mee fiddling with the
television. He walked in to see her turning the volume down and standing
by the window that faced the garage; she grasped the curtains with her
hands and palmed the glass before she moved back to the TV and turned
it only high enough so that the voices whispered. Joshua fixed a paper
plate of food and walked it out to the shed. Christophe sat before the
lawnmower, his face almost smashed into the black steel of the engine,
stabbing it with a flathead screwdriver. He shifted and Joshua saw a dark
bulge, thick as a brick, shoved into the waistband of his pants. It stuck
out beneath his thin white shirt. Christophe did not look up at him.

"Ma-mee told me to bring you some food. I'll set it right here."

Joshua set the plate on the top of a steel drum. Christophe jabbed the
screwdriver, and Joshua heard the squeal of metal. Christophe closed his
eyes so tightly his entire forehead wrinkled, and he sucked his lips in a
grimace. He bent down so that Joshua saw only the crown of his head.

"I'll get it," Christophe said.

Joshua wanted to sit with him but Christophe was not looking up.
His brother did not want him to stay. Joshua's skin was itching, and
everything was hurting. He walked back into the house. After showering,
he dragged himself to the sofa again, to Ma-mee. Laila called, and she sat
patiently on the phone as he translated the moving images on the screen
to Ma-mee. The sun set, and the night grew loud outside. Christophe
switched a light on in the shed. On the screen, Forrest Gump was playing:
he was running through the desert, his hair long and nappy, shadowed by
a large group of people. When his love interest in the movie said Forrest's
name, she reminded Joshua of Laila. Ma-mee hardly laughed at all, and
when she did laugh, it was always at the wrong part. When sleep began to
grab him with dark, delicious snatches, he got off the phone with Laila.
The movie went off and Ma-mee kissed him and walked to her room. Cille
was quiet. Joshua only woke when Christophe walked past him. Joshua
followed him to the room and fell like a downed animal to the bed.

Christophe woke the next morning to the sun glazing the room a
milky white. It was wrong. He looked at the alarm clock, jumped from the
bed, and croaked, "Shit." Joshua's eyes opened wide with the movement,
and he turned his head and saw the time on the clock and blinked hard,
testing the vision, before he jumped up and began pulling on clothes
from the floor. At the same time, they heard Ma-mee's bed rustling, heard
the press and pull of the metal springs. They'd all overslept.

"What's the fucking chances?" Joshua said. Christophe shrugged and
slapped the steering wheel. When he didn't speak, Joshua listed asleep,
head butting the window and dozing. Once they arrived, Joshua stalked
tiredly away from the car.

After Christophe drove off the lot, he didn't even bother trawling for
Help Wanted signs. Christophe saw the asphalt, the salty sea rimming
the straight road, and followed the line of cars. He watched for white and
blue cop cars: they liked to sit in the piney median and wait for speeders.
They would search him if they stopped him. He knew it. He took the
quickest route to Bois Sauvage, and when he got there, he circumvented
Ma-mee's house again, and drove to Javon's. He knocked at the front. His
pocket was bulging with a green bag: he'd bought twice his usual supply
to Javon's. He had pored over his stash the night before, removing the
stems and seeds, breaking it down and bagging it, and had actually put in
applications next week. Javon hollered at him to enter. It was as if Javon
hadn't moved. Christophe could not be sure that Javon had changed
clothes. The same videos were on the television, and later, they played
the same video games. The same people came by: Marquise, Tilda, Bone,
others. Christophe thought the slabs of crack could be the same that
Javon passed to him to hand along. They felt the same in his hand: light,
and hard as stone.

The weed in Christophe's pocket disappeared at a faster pace. He was
almost happy until someone else knocked on the door and walked in
without waiting for Javon's yell: Sandman shuffled toward the kitchen.
Javon glanced at him, then stood and beckoned to Sandman. Christophe
could not move his legs: they were crossed at the ankle, outstretched,
immobile as two pine trees felled by a storm. He looked at them, their
color turned dark from his days at the park, the same as his hands, the same as Sandman's face, and his ashy, scaly-skinned wrists, and he hated
the color. Christophe stared mutely at the television, his eyebrows drawn,
and refused to move; inside his chest, he quivered as if a driving rain was
running through him, a storm pulled from deep in the gulf, a storm the
same gray blue as the water.

"Could move out the way, young cat," Sandman mumbled.

"Could shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone, old man."
Christophe spat. The words erupted from him. The quivering had moved
from his insides, and he dropped the joystick and stood.

"Sandman! Don't let me have to slap the shit out of you again."

Javon snapped the remark like a wet towel from the kitchen. Sandman
skirted Christophe and loped into the kitchen. Christophe sat down. He
let the music play on the game, and Sandman appeared again at his left.
His hat was pulled so low Christophe could only see the line of his jaw.

"Don't be coming up in my house starting no shit," Javon barked at
Sandman as he opened the door. Sandman shrank further into his shirt,
and slid out the door. When the next knock sounded at the door, Javon
paused the game. He handed the crack to the person himself. The minutes
passed by the dim VCR light and Christophe wondered if he would see
Sandman again this afternoon after picking up Joshua. He wondered if
Sandman had sold that paltry bag of sand-logged cans to pay for what he
had just bought, or if he was hoarding the cans like a skinny gray squirrel
hoards acorns. Christophe sold the last of his weed and his virtual football
team went to the playoffs.

Tilda walked in and she and Javon disappeared around the corner,
but instead of clustering in the kitchen, he heard them walk to the rooms
at the back of the house. Christophe stared at the paused game. He went
to the bathroom to pee and heard an arrhythmic bumping in the room
next to the bathroom, and murmurs. He retreated to the living room
but did not reach the door quickly enough to escape Tilda and Javon
emerging from the hallway, musty with sex, and Tilda combing her redpeppered hair back into her bun with her fingers. Her hands were almost
as plump and smooth as Cille's. Christophe left.

Christophe scanned the side of the highway as he drove to pick
up Joshua, the beach and the sandy dunes, the pines and the pristine sidewalks and mansions on the other side. He did not see Sandman. He
squinted past Joshua's nodding head and slack face as he dozed against
the window and saw no skinny man on a bike. He forsook the shed and
watched his brother sleep curled to the wall on his twin bed, and in the
weak light coming in from the hallway, thought his brother looked more
like his father now that he was skinnier. For the first time since they were
both children, Joshua's face curved in at the cheeks. Christophe walked
past Cille's empty room and wondered briefly where she was, who she was
with at the festival, if she was safe. He pictured drunk men accosting her
on Bourbon Street, saw her spinning and falling against neon lights; he
shook the image away from him. She was a grown woman: shit, they were
all grown, he thought.

Joshua woke to find the room as dark as it was when he'd fallen asleep
the evening before, and momentarily he was confused: drowsiness, like
a fine green fishing net, was tugging him back to sleep. He rose to peer
out the window: gray drizzle, almost a mist, sifted through the air. He
saw a dim white sun glowing palely in the sky, and he knew that it was
morning. Laila would be coming by: he had grass to cut and bougainvilleas
to plant. He heard voices on the porch. She was already there. Cille sat
next to Ma-mee on the porch swing, and Laila sat in Ma-mee's chair that
had the clams etched into it. Laila saw Joshua standing in the doorway.
She smoothed her hair self-consciously, and his heart clenched nervously.
Cille followed Laila's gaze. She wore yellow again, and she sported an
entire row of gold hoop earrings in her ears; she'd curled her red-gold hair
into a bun, and he thought she looked as young and pretty as any girl.

"Bout time you woke up, sleepyhead," Cille said.

"My boy was tired," said Ma-mee. "I figured he could use a good
sleep."

"I couldn't sleep at all," said Cille, "with your brother out here cutting
and digging soon as the sun rose."

"He ain't left nothing for you to do." Ma-mee said as she rubbed her
forearms. Joshua could see gooseflesh ripple in a current along her skin
like wind over a muddy puddle.

"You need a sweater or something, Ma-mee?" Joshua asked.

"I got this," Christophe yelled, his voice like iron spiking into the
earth.

He was on his knees in the grass, and he was digging a hole: the dirt
was black and veined with red clay. Joshua saw dark handprints across
Christophe's shirt where he had wiped his palms. It looked as if a crowd
had attacked his brother, pulled at him, and then let him go. The grass
was already cut. Christophe had lined up the bougainvillea along the
porch, and he was digging holes to plant them.

"What time is it?" asked Joshua.

"Ten," Cille said. She was crossing her legs and looking at Laila as she
spoke. "Your brother was up cutting grass at six. By the time I got up he
had trimmed the azaleas."

Joshua saw a pile of tree branches, twigs, and cut grass that Christophe
had raked into a pile. It glistened with droplets of misty rain. Christophe
stabbed at the earth with a small red trowel, ignoring them.

"Ma-mee wanted me to let you sleep, so I had a chance to talk to Miss
Laila before you had a chance to warn her about me." Cille laughed and
flipped her head. Her earrings shivered.

Laila sat with her palms folded together: her legs were shaking. Joshua
sat in a chair next to her. He barely resisted the urge to pull her closer, to
reach out his leg and slide it against hers.

"Hope you didn't scare her too much," Joshua said.

"Scare her? Of course I didn't scare her. She was telling me about her
mama and daddy and the rest of her people. Found out I used to date her
uncle in junior high school. He looks a little like her but he's taller and
thinner. Handsome, too." Cille turned to face Ma-mee and touched her
arm. "You remember Alonzo, Mama?"

"No, not really. You and Rita had so many little boys after y'all I had
to beat them off. You more than Rita," Ma-mee said. "They got grits and
sausage on the stove, josh."

"I ain't hungry," Joshua said.

He brushed Laila's forearm: her head was down. The humidity had
frizzed her curls and made them coil like vines away from her scalp: they
fell forward and shielded her face. Still, he saw her staring intently at the
patterns in the chair as she traced them with her finger.

"Then I realized her mama was on the homecoming court with me
the year I got queen. She had her daddy walk her, right?" Cille said.

"No, ma'am. She had her uncle walk her because my granddaddy
wasn't around," Laila replied.

"Well, I thought it was her daddy for sure."

"No, ma am."

"You ain't got to call me `ma'am,' Laila. Makes me feel old." Cille
laughed, and Joshua marveled at how her gold and her white teeth and
her hair seemed to sparkle, about how she seemed brighter than them all
against the dreary canvas of the day.

"Yes, ma-I mean, Ms. Cille."

"I was just saying how Laila looks just like her mama. Same hair and
everything, like her mama just spit her out."