Nash
Everything felt old and empty. Stale, like a hangover.
It was nearly four a.m. and Willow was everywhere and nowhere at all. My bed still felt warm where she’d been. My body cooling, starting to go numb every spot where she’d kissed me.
The streetlight outside was yellow, a dreary color that reminded me of a rainstorm, of sickness. I hated the dim light it shot through my room, between the slip of window from my partially open curtains. The pillow on the other side of the bed held three long strands of hair, Willow’s hair, and I grabbed the thing, tucked it under my chin, just to catch that jasmine scent; just to remind myself she’d been there.
Only then did I sleep.
* * *
New Orleans
There were things that weren’t done in the city. Not by folk like me. Not when there were so many eyes looking this way and that, waiting to see what we’d do and who we’d do it to. There was nothing for it, just the way of our world. Some bad men liked to keep us under their thumbs. They liked to remind us all that our kin had been owned by theirs not all that long ago. They liked to tell us how we were nothing, how our kids wouldn’t be nothing, just because they were small, stupid people with no notion of good sense. They were mean because it was in their nature. It was how they’d been reared and how they’d die. God help us, they were raising little ones to be just like them.
When there are eyes looking, judging, you need to be smart about the company you keep. Back on the farm was one thing; there was no nosey spying because the company we kept told the town straight where they’d be. But here in the city, where illegal liquor and cheap dope came easy as dying, boredom led to the devil’s business and damn us all, business was good.
Some things just weren’t done. They weren’t fittin’ at all. Like Sylv nosing around the Chambers cottage at all hours of the night because Lily let him put his hand inside her shirt. Or the way Ripper Dean took any girls with half a decent smile right off the street without anyone’s bye or leave. Sad fact was ole Ripper didn’t care if that was fittin’ or not. Or, the thing that made those staring eyes widen and those fat running mouths go off a mile a minute, when Dempsey Simoneaux, a white Cajun boy whose daddy had a special hatred for black folks, brought me, the light skinned daughter of a woman who sold illegal hooch, a bunch of white and yellow roses he picked right from his mama’s prize-winning garden.
Things like that happen, especially in the city, and folks tend to notice.
“You are a damn fool.” I wanted to say I was sorry for putting that look on Dempsey’s face. His smile got a little shaky then, and he lowered his arm, fist full of those pretty roses. But really, he should have known better.
Three white men I’d seen a few times around the Simoneaux place watched as I tugged on Dempsey’s arm and pulled him around to the alley just in back of Mama’s shop.
“I got these for you, Sookie. To make you feel better.”
“Don’t tell me why you got them. Lord, Dempsey, I know why you did.” It couldn’t be helped. The roses really had the fullest blooms and their scent, thick and sweet, blocked out the nasty smell of garbage and trashed liquor bottles that littered the ground next to us. I took the flowers, despite my fussing, and held them in front of my face, smelling that sweet perfume. “You should have waited.”
“No time like now.” He stepped closer, resting his palm on the brick wall at my back and I wondered if he’d dare to kiss me, right here, where anyone could look into the alley to find us standing close, our mouths just inches apart.
No. That wouldn’t do.
It was only him reaching forward, the space between us getting smaller and smaller that made the fog that had come with the smell of those roses lift from my head. Dempsey leaned, eyes already closed and I pushed him back with the flowers against his chest.
“Oh no you don’t, Dempsey.” He moved again, taking the flowers out of my hand to stand right in front of me and I shook my head. “No indeed. You stop right there.”
“Why would you want me to do that?” I hated that smile, just a little bit. I hated it because before it had loosened my strength that night in the fishing shack. It had me forgetting that I had no business kissing boys like Dempsey. By the end of that night my lips were swollen and beat with a throb from all the kissing. That smile told me enough that Dempsey wanted to make my lips throbbing and swollen again.
“Come on now…just a little kiss. I did bring you flowers.”
“Uh huh, from your mama’s garden. You had to steal them. She wouldn’t give the Wise Men a single flower for Jesus’s birth much less her son. Especially when he wants to give them to no-account colored girl like me.” He really didn’t think sometimes and it had me fuming. God knows the trouble he’d be in now. “She’s gonna whip you good.”
“Ah, sweet Sookie, it’s worth the beating…or it would be if you kiss me.” He was taller than me by about three inches and it was that long stretch of shadow that distracted me, that and the thick scent of his hair, the clean smell from his soap that come off his skin as he moved closer. Dempsey got his kiss, a slow, wet one, before my good sense returned and I pushed on his chest again.
“That’s enough. Go on, get out of here before your daddy’s people see us together.”
“I ain’t worried so much about that.” He moved closer, but stopped short when I shot him an ugly frown. Dempsey leaned on the wall next to me pulling one of the flowers from the bunch in my hand. “He don’t much care for Joe Andres and so when the fool told my daddy that you’d attacked him…” He went quiet when I let out of muffled noise between my breaths, but waved off my worried frown. “Daddy had to drag it out of him. Damn idiot didn’t want to go around telling people some girl got him good.”
“How is it they haven’t come looking for me?” My throat felt tight and I worried something fierce that Dempsey might have sassed his daddy just to keep the man from nosing after me. But looking at him quick, there wasn’t nothing that told me he’d been beaten. The same sweet, wide smile met me just then. The same thick top lip twitched a little when he smiled. The same gray-blue eyes shined, lit with something like laughter as he looked down at me.
“Because, Sook…” There was a giggle between his breath that made me loosen some of my worry as Dempsey’s smile grew wide. “For once in my miserable life, my daddy believed me when I told him you weren’t to blame.”
“Wha…how is that possible?”
“Like I said, he don’t much care for Joe. He was likely to believe me when I said that fool was too drunk to remember passing out in the north field. My daddy believed me when I fibbed a little and said I’d seen him falling over the half-cut stump of that oak that got struck by lightning last summer.”
It was unbelievable. Dempsey’s daddy didn’t agree with him about anything. Dang sure didn’t seem the type that would listen to his son over one of his loud, drunk friends. But the longer I watched Dempsey, the wider his smile became and just like that my worry didn’t feel like such a heavy thing.
“So, your daddy isn’t going to change his mind? They aren’t gonna come looking for me?”
Just then Dempsey’s smile went a little weak, like he’d only just realized how worried I’d been, how scared the threat of his daddy’s anger had made me. Until I spoke it, if I’m telling the truth, I didn’t know how worried I was myself. But Dempsey’s lowering smile and the way his tall body ate up the space between us as he stood in front of me had me not remembering that I’d been so scared.
“How many times do I have to say it, Sookie?” He moved closer still and I swore the air around us started to sizzle. There was heat that I didn’t reckon came from the humidity in the spring air. The noise of the city fell away then, just with one look from the boy who didn’t care about things that were fittin, things that those staring eyes would eat up like a juicy steak. “Long as I’m breathing, I’ll look after you.” He held my face, tilting my chin up, so close, just inches from his mouth. His breath was sweeter today than it had been Saturday and I wondered for a second what he’d eaten that made it seem so. “Promise,” he said, like a whisper only half remembered.
And just when Dempsey pressed his lips against mine, the noise of the city and the stench of the alley came back, like the ripping of a bandage on a sore not healed.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I’d never heard Dempsey scream so loud, all flustered and surprised. Not even when he wanted to kill his daddy for breaking one of his ribs, but just then it seemed his anger would bubble over.
Sylv pushed Dempsey away from me, standing between us like some sad buffer to keep my friend from me. “You need to get on, Dempsey. Right damn now.”
“The hell I do.”
They stood there squaring off, like a dozen dumb men do in the city every night. But this wasn’t a fuss over a woman they both wanted or money won and lost in a round of dice. This was my brother, who had always liked Dempsey almost as much as me, wanting to keep us both safe. This was Dempsey thinking only he could do that job.
When Dempsey showed no real sign that he’d back down, Sylv shook his head, lowering his shoulders like some sign that he wasn’t really mad. “Man, I mean it now. This thing here between you two, it stops right now.”
I didn’t much like my brother making decisions for me and I gave him a look, mouth tight from the quick flash of irritation that rushed up inside me. “Don’t you tell me my business, Sylv.”
“Think I need to since you won’t listen.” He didn’t bother looking my way as he spoke, seemed too wrapped up in watching Dempsey like he needed to be ready for a tussle when it came.
Dempsey was honest. Always had been, even when his face was all bloody and his eye had swollen shut and my Bastie had asked how he’d gotten that way, his answer had come without him taking a breath to invent some lie. “My daddy beat me for helping mend your fence, Mrs. Bastie.” Part of me thought he didn’t know how to lie so when he looked right at Sylv, all the anger gone from his face, I believed him. I think so did Sylv and maybe that was the problem.
“Sylv, I’d never let anyone come near her. Not my blood…no one.”
My brother let out a long, slow breath, like he wanted everything Dempsey said to be true. They’d been friends a long time. Maybe they weren’t close like me and Dempsey were, but Sylv liked him fine. That’s why I knew it hurt Sylv to tell Dempsey he wanted him gone. Maybe he didn’t really want to see the back of Dempsey, but in Sylv’s mind it was the only way to keep us all safe.
Our world wouldn’t understand. Not now, not a year from now, and with my brother shaking his head, with him giving Dempsey a look that seemed like good riddance, I realized that maybe Sylv was right. There were men on the other side of this alley hell bent on seeing the end of my family, of all families like ours. They’d want Dempsey to keep away and would likely go about making that happen in any way they could. It’s what his daddy had been trying to beat into his head for years.
Sylv shook his head, took a second to rub the back of his neck like the argument with Dempsey worked something hard into his body. “That’s not a promise you can keep. Is it?” He was right. Though Dempsey wanted me safe, maybe thought he could manage it, being here in New Orleans, being the people we were in New Orleans left no guarantees. Sylv seemed to know just then that Dempsey could make no promises. We all did. “Didn’t think so.”
I broke in. “Sylv, don’t you go stepping on toes.” It was a sad try at getting my brother and my Dempsey to calm. But Sylv had the notion in his head that he was right. He was my mama’s son. He was my brother. He wouldn’t back away until he had Dempsey admitting the truth.
“He can’t even keep that no good daddy of from beating on him. You think he’ll be able to keep you out of that man’s way?”
“I would.” Dempsey’s try was weak, his voice small but his eyes were bright again, lit with a fire that I thought might shoot out his fingertips.
“You’d want to.” Sylv stepped back, finally looking away from Dempsey to glance around the alley, watching, holding his breath like something lurked just beyond the spot where the alley and street met. “Don’t mean you could.”
“I can protect her,” Dempsey tried again, head jerking toward the sound of feet moving on brick behind us.
“That’s not your job.” Mama’s face was drawn, a little sad as she walked toward us, hands moving around in the apron she wore as she dried them.
“Mrs. Lanoix.”
“This thing, Dempsey,” she interrupted, “it’s just gone on too long. Sookie is becoming a woman. Time for her to be thinking about starting a family of her own with a man of her own.”
My face flamed and something low and heavy started to build in my gut. Mama had never talked to me much about marrying anyone, but the past few months she’d mention me fixing myself up a little. She even had Bastie sew two new dresses for me and Mama gave me a pair of her small heeled shoes with the gold buckles. I’d reckoned she was gearing up to push me at some business, maybe have me work in some rich folks’ home. But this? No. That was something she’d kept quiet about.
“There’s plenty of men in the city that like the look of her.” She didn’t even glance at me when she said that, as though I wasn’t even there, like I didn't matter. “Men with jobs and homes. Men that will take care of her.”
“I…I can…”
“You can what?” Mama stepped closer, arms folded over her chest as she glared at Dempsey. “You gonna marry my little girl? You and Sookie gonna live up in the tree house where the owls shit and sleep?”
“Mama!” She still didn’t bother to look at me, keeping all her attention on Dempsey, striking hard while his face paled and his eyes went narrow. She kept at him, speaking sense that only sounded as such to herself. “I’m sorry, cher, but that’s a fairytale and we don’t live in the make believe.” She paused for a half second and the expression on her face went flat; a long line pulled on her mouth, but she set her jaw as though what she said would have to be taken for the truth. “It’s time you keep away from her. For both of your own good.”
“No.” Dempsey’s breath came out in a whoosh of sound and air. I’d never seen him look so heavy with fear. But the gray in his eyes got bigger and he took to running his hand along the back of his neck as though he had to hold himself back to keep from screaming. “No. You can’t do that.” Mama seemed down with him, had tugged on my arm and pulled me back toward the street and away from Dempsey, but he kept on us, following along. When he spoke, his voice went high and shrieking. “You can’t put me out. You can’t…”
“Cher, how can I put you out?” Mama said, dropping my arm to face Dempsey. “You don’t live with us. You need to go back to your own people. Be with your own people.”
“You can’t…Sookie...” He stopped, reaching toward me. He’d almost touch my hand before Mama slapped his hand away, and stood between us like a stone. Dempsey stepped back and kept his gaze down, as though he didn’t dare look at her. Like he couldn’t stand to see her face when he begged. His voice came out all ragged. “Sookie…she’s my people. You…you all are.”
“Dempsey, no…” I said, covering my mouth. He broke my heart just then. His life and ours had gotten tangled up together when we were kids. Bastie had cleaned his busted face and Mama had fed him when his own people wouldn’t. Now she was telling him he wasn’t wanted anymore and the look on his face, the streak of hurt and sorrow breaking his stubborn frown until tears made his eyes look like glass was more than I could stand to watch.
Mama pushed me out of the alley so I couldn’t see what she did to Dempsey, so I couldn’t tell how she’d get him to leave. But I heard what he said clear as day and each sound he made broke my heart a little more.
“She’s all I have, Mrs. Lanoix. Sookie’s all I have in the world.”
Me and Dempsey came from different worlds. We moved together like otters, floating side by side, letting the world around come over us, like a wave, rushing, passing and the whole time we held on to each other. But that was the things that children did. That’s what we’d done when were kids and didn’t know about things like family and anger and the differences that kept people apart. We didn’t know about money and poverty and struggling because all the things we’d needed for most of our lives had been given to us. Struggle had been only as important as what game we would play in the backyard of my Bastie’s home. That had been all we fretted over. It had been just as important, just as real as it should have been, to little kids.
But now we weren’t’ kids. We were moving toward something that I couldn’t name and in the middle of all that, there were those curious, searching eyes and the people dead set against anything that would keep Dempsey and me together. They hated us. They hated who we were and who we wanted to be even if they didn’t understand why. It was the way of things, for good or bad and who were we to change the way the world had always turned?
I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it.
* * *
Mrs. Matthews had not died, not yet. Mama likened her to an old rooster strutting around, teasing death because she was too ornery, too stubborn to give the reaper even a hint that she was ready to leave this place. I wanted to be like her one day, when my hair was white and thin and my eyes had gone all snowy blue.
There was a whopper of a storm brewing, the sick breath of it raspy in the wind as folk all around the city made their plans. Some would stay, wait it out, not fearing what would come because something always did, so why run. Some had already left, more vexed by the calmness in the air and the low silence that had grown throughout the city over night, it seemed. The calm before the storm.
For her part, Mama thought it best to keep me hidden in Treme’ where neither Joe Andres nor Dempsey could find me. I knew her worry. It was the same as mine but that didn’t mean I was altogether happy that it was Mrs. Matthew’s place, too small already for her and Bobby, that Mama locked me up inside. Everywhere I went, or thought of going, Bobby went too. There was no easing away from my little chaperone, and I had to listen to her ask a million damn questions about my brother and what sort of girls I thought he’d go for.
By the third day and another dang round of “oh Sylv is so…” I cooked up a plan to break away from my annoying shadow and get on with heading back to my mama’s shop, worry and danger be damned.
I just couldn’t take the questions, the worry and yet another interrogation about my stupid brother. Who, it seemed, had disappeared right from the face of the earth. He, at least, hadn’t been hidden in Treme’. Sylv, I bet, had gone on back to Mama’s shop, running orders and cash with Uncle Aron like the world was not rattling and spinning to an end around him.
I could stand a little rattling myself but it seemed the only dang thing in my future was yet another round of dominoes with Bobby and more readings from the Psalms to ease Mrs. Matthew’s worry over her own end coming. And the storm, that had blown in with a vengeance.
Bobby’s voice was monotone and thin as she read the Scriptures, like a bristle of dandelions in a storm, but I did my best to keep from judging her. She was, after all, reading to her dying grandmother.
“For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”
Even in that low, even tone, the verse was a nice thought. The wicked would be punished, so the Lord promised. Men who lied and hurt, like Ripper. Men and women, like Dempsey’s parents, who struck out in hatred to reign in their own child with violence. People like Joe Andres who thought the world and those in it were here for their own sick needs. All, according to Scripture, would be handed a dose of justice. They and their destruction would not be looked over. They would not be protected in the end.
Would we?
My mama was making hooch and selling it to drunks and whores. She did make some to heal and help, but was that enough? Sylv snuck into Lily’s room when her house was settled and dark so he could kiss her and touch her like it was just something to do because he’d got the notion to do it. Did that make my mother and brother wicked? Did the bad they did get cancelled for the times they were good?
It was a thought that came heavy on my mind as I listened from the front porch of the Matthews' small house as Bobby kept on with the Psalms, reading louder now to be heard over the storm. I wasn’t thinking of much but how we’d all be dealt with when our time came. I wasn’t even worrying over the wind and rain that fell onto the street around that small cottage in buckets and sheets.
Then, out of nowhere, there came a chill with that wind and something dark and listless fell over me. A feeling took root inside my belly and stayed there as Bobby’s voice went on with no movement in the sound at all. That feeling kept my eyes unfocused and the chill on my skin the lower Bobby’s voice sounded and the heavier the whip of wind and rain came down around me. The feeling that something was going to happen. Something bad.
I blinked, trying to bring myself from the sadness that took over. That’s why I didn't notice the hunched form darting toward the house, rail thin but tall. His slacks were slicked snuggly around his thighs and the umbrella he held was broken on one side.
“Sookie!” my brother shouted, giving up on the umbrella and throwing it to the ground when he reached the Matthews’ porch. He waved quickly, his long, slim fingers like the flaps of a flag. “Come on here, come now!”
Sylv tore off his wet jacket, holding over both our heads when I met him in the street, huddled close and already dripping as he led me away from the Matthews' cottage, down toward the front side of Treme’.
“Uncle Aron got one of those fast and loose ladies from the brothel to give us a ride out of the city.” He pulled me closer toward him when a thick band of rain and wind sloshed against us. “Mama wants to head on to Atlanta. The storm is getting too bad, folks say the levies won't hold and it's gonna drown us all.”
“She’s a little late,” I said nodding toward the line of cars and trucks already backed up, horns blaring with stragglers hanging off the back cabs and bumpers like rats on a sinking ship. “The traffic will be stupid.”
“Well, at least we’ll be headed in the right direction.”
We passed another line of cars, these with damn fools not giving a single care to the corners of the streets where the police huddled together watching the crowd weaving out of the city.
I didn’t like the look of one of them policemen especially. He had pock marks all over his face and a mean little frown bunched under the sparse mustache he wore. Him I’d seen more than once sniffing around when Uncle Aron and Sylv walked ahead of me, to clear the path from busybodies that might be curious about what I carried in my basket.
“What about Bastie?”
“She caught a ride from cousin Ethel. They’re head out toward their kin in Virginia.” When I didn’t say anything, Sylv glanced down at me, putting his arm around my shoulder. “She’s snug as a bug.” I snorted out a laugh and my brother stopped walking, moving his chin down. “What is it? You look vexed.”
We started walking again after Sylv caught my head shake but he pulled me closer, weaving us through the crowd with glancing this way and that to keep a look out for anything worrisome that might headed toward us.
“I don’t like it. Leaving,” I said, waving a wet hand at the crowd and weather. “Something’s percolating. More’n just the storm.” A heavy shudder took over my body then and I fought to push it down. “I feel deep inside.”
For a second Sylv watched me, pulling me from the street and the screeching tires of a rusted Chevy when it came too close to the sidewalk. “Aw, hell, girl, you just mooning over Dempsey Simoneaux.”
Until he mentioned Dempsey I hadn’t exactly put my thoughts on him. He’d slipped in and out of my concentration while I stayed with Mrs. Matthews. It was his smile mostly and the memory of his sweet, full mouth that kept me wondering how he’d fared since Mama sent me to Treme’. I’d spent most of my nights worrying that his daddy had decided Dempsey was a liar and went at him with a belt for talking against Joe Andres.
“You hear anything of him?” I asked Sylv, not caring when he rolled his eyes like I was stupid for keeping my thoughts on Dempsey. When my brother ignored me, I pulled him off the sidewalk to huddle next to me under a broken awning with sheets of water spilling from an opening between two thick boards. Not like it made much of a difference. We both were soaked. “Tell me what you’ve heard.”
“I ain’t seen him.” Sylv tried ringing out his jacket, cursing to himself when a big splatter of water fell onto his head.
“You lying to me.”
“Damn, Sookie, so what if I am?” He threw down the jacket, giving it a kick for good measure before he jerked me back onto the sidewalk. “The both of you are itching for trouble, courting it like it won’t be ruin of both of you.”
“Sylv…” I waited, ignoring his stupid try at changing the subject.
“I ain’t seen him at all since Mama told him to get…”
“But?”
Two fat hustlers, I suspected some of Ripper’s old henchmen, walked in front of Sylv, eyes narrow, gaze heavy on the pair of us as we headed into the thick of the Quarter where everyone seemed to be leaving. But we waved them off, more worried about the weather and getting to Mama and Aron in time than over two fat bullies who I bet couldn’t keep up with us if we was to take off running.
“Sylv,” I said when we glanced at each other, silently deciding we needed to hurry down the sidewalk.
He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “Bastie said she saw a whole mess of Mr. Simoneaux’s white men all gathered together this morning when Ethel came to get her. Policemen too, and not Parish either. They was New Orleans cops.”
“Did she see Dempsey?” I watched my brother as he moved through the crowd and didn’t like how light his skin looked just then, as though something set in his throat and he didn’t want to let it out. That look on his face made something thick and knotted clot the air in my throat.
“No,” he finally said, taking my hand to tug me along quicker. “She said she hadn’t seen him for a week.”
Dempsey was the sweetest boy I’d ever known and he was the only one I’d ever let get close enough for a kiss. I thought maybe, despite the hurry in our steps and the wild noise around us, despite the trouble we were likely all in because of his daddy, that maybe, if our world had changed, that Dempsey would be the boy I’d get a chance to be with. Maybe forever.
We made it two blocks from Mama’s shop where the sidewalk was thinner and the crowd moved slower. I followed Sylv without really thinking of where we were going or why the streets were filling up with water. It sloshed around our ankles as we scurried.
“Sylv…” I started, pulling on his arm to make him stop but my brother’s arm tightened and his whole body went straight as the blade of a knife.
“Son of a bitch.” Sylv didn’t curse often. Bastie had always made sure we kept our tongues civil, but just then, watching wide-eyed as a few blocks away Mr. Simoneaux and a half a dozen policemen stormed into Mama’s shop, I thought maybe Bastie wouldn’t mind so much.
Things went muddy then. Dark and thick as though the water around us came straight from the Manchac and not the Mississippi. Sylv took off, running toward Mama’s small shop and he got tussled and pushed back as Mr. Simoneaux stood next to a large truck with a shotgun on his shoulder and Joe Andres at his side. As I got nearer and spotted Uncle Aron and Mama screaming at three policemen, wrestling with them as they fought the rising water on their calves and the men screaming about prohibition and illegal contraband, I could just make out the shape of a boy sitting in the cab of Mr. Simoneaux’s truck.
“There’s that little bitch.” I could only guess that I was the little bitch Joe Andres pointed to because as I made my way toward Mama who was still fighting with the policemen and the rising water, Mr. Simoneaux and Andres cornered me. “What you got to say for yourself, gal? You gonna tell those policemen how you attacked me? How you tried stealing my wallet when I’d had too much drink?”
He wasn’t worth the argument, a fact I thought was plain when I darted around him to follow my Mama and Uncle Aron, just as they broke away from the policemen.
“Run, baby. Run fast.”
I didn’t know where Uncle Aron was or how I’d gotten ahead of him. I didn’t know if Sylv followed or where it was Mama was leading us. I only knew that the rain came so hard and fast now I could only make her out by the black hem of her slip as she dashed ahead of me and those long, red nails as Mama reached out her hand.
We came to some building I didn’t recognize, and slipped right in. There were tarps that covered the broken windows and wooden crates stacked up ten feet along the inside. It smelled like mildew and dirt and of the sweat and rain that came off me and my mama’s skin and hair.
“Keep still,” she said to me, pulling me next to her as we hid underneath a wooden stairwell with more tattered tarps and half broken crates. She moved her head, nodding at the burned smudge in a circle around the foot of the staircase and I wondered, trying to distract myself from the race of my heart and the shake that took over my hands and fingers, if this was where drifters came to rest when nights in the city were cold and rainy.
Outside, the rain drown out most of the noise, but Mr. Simoneaux’s voice carried and I heard my brother crying out, begging for something I could not hear.
“If we’re still and quiet,” Mama promised, her voice in a whisper, “maybe they’ll go away and give on up…” She said it like she meant it. At least for a few seconds. Her rare smile was big and broad, like she thought it might give me a little comfort. Maybe make me feel less hopeless than I did just then.
But my mother knew same as me that they would not give up. Not when they felt they were justified and men like Mr. Simoneaux and Joe Andres always thought they were justified, especially when they were doing the devil’s work. And it must have been the devil’s work, else how would it have been possible to start a fire when Noah’s own storm was raging outside.
The smoke started to billow before we realized what was happening. Sylv’s voice was panicked and loud and I swore I heard someone else, a different voice not my brother’s pleading for things I couldn’t hear.
“They’ll come out,” Mr. Simoneaux said in a voice meant to carry and there was a whole lot of laughter in that promise. “Don’t you fret, they’ll come on out.”
The smoke got thicker, billowed wilder and Mama grabbed me, led me to the opposite side of the room where it was a bit clearer, her eyes wide as she hurried around to the windows, yelping when she tugged down a tarp and saw Joe Andres on the other side with a gun pointed right at her.
“Come on out, gal. Come on now.” There was tobacco between his teeth and the same greedy spark in his eye that had been there the night he ripped my shirt open. “Don’t you make me say it again.”
When I started to cough, because the smoke had gone black and one side of the building had gone up in a hot, bright flame, Mama pulled me along with her towards a set of rickety stairs that led to a platform in the direction of a catwalk on the second story. A large opening way high up the wall of the building, probably meant for offloading, was broken and open to the elements, with a large chain bolted to the crossbeam above it. Climbing those sagging stairs two at a time, Mama held tight to my hand, thinking, I guess, that if we got to the roof we could jump to the next building. But from the platform we saw that the catwalk up ahead dropped off in the center with only that long chain stretching high enough to reach the broken window.
“You little enough, Sookie, I want you to climb up there.” Mama’s voice was wild, broken as she screamed over the sound of the flames, fighting off the coughs that wracked her lungs. She pulled off the kerchief that had bound up her hair and wrapped it around my nose and mouth, trying to smile at me through the smoke, trying to give me some courage. “You can make it, baby. I know you can.”
“Mama, no. I can’t.” I glanced at the broken window, some two stories above the ground. “It’s too high. It’s just too high.”
She shook me then like a rag doll, her fingers clawing into my arms. “You listen here to me, girl. You get up there and climb that chain.” I hated the way her voice cracked. My mama was strong, tough as nails. In my whole life I never seen her cry or fret over nothing. Now she went at me like she was desperate, like she was near to begging me and my mama never begged for a thing in her life. “You might fall, you might make it to the building across the way, but you will not burn up in this building.”
Just then, a back draft swooped up the side of the building. There were shouts and voices from below screaming at us to get off the stairs and out of the building. But the fire had gotten too thick and all the lower windows and doors had been engulfed with flames. There was no way out save by going up.
My mother let out a wet sounding cough and gasped, getting to her knees to breath air that wasn’t a cloud of smoke, but there wasn’t much of anything in that building except that dark, deadly air. She pushed me, hard, toward the opening and the rusted chain that hung from the rafters above. “Mama, I can’t leave you!”
“We ain’t got much choice, baby.”
She looked up at me then, her face dark, eyes red rimmed and watering and it was all I could do to remember what she wanted from me. She’d called me baby. She’d never done that before in all my years. My mama wanted me out of that building. She pushed me toward freedom and breath and safety. My life mattered to her—she wanted me to live.
“Mama…”
“Go, Sookie. You go on now.”
I turned to look at the opening above. There was so much smoke I could only make out the streak of dull silver from the chain hanging down.. Mama had gone quiet behind me but I was too scared to look back, trying to desperately screw up my courage while the world fell apart around me. I heard and felt the boards under my feet groan, and in desperation, I jumped toward that chain, locking my legs and hands around it, swinging off the half-fallen platform just as it creaked and broke in two, spilling down into the dark below. Mama went down with it.
“No! No, Mama! Mama!”
But she couldn’t hear me. I held onto that chain like a lifeline, afraid that if I loosened my grip even the tiniest bit I’d join my mother in the flames below.
“Sookie! Sookie look here…”
My momentum had swung the chain so that it listed towards the open window. I tried to see into the street below, and moved my body to make the chain move in even wider arcs, aiming for the opening and freedom. Even through my terror and the roaring of the flames below, I could hear screams, some angry, some scared, but I couldn’t tell which ones I knew or which ones cared if I lived or died. I did catch sight of Uncle Aron on his knees, that hat scrunched up between his hands as he cried something fierce into the fabric. The chain creaked with each swing I made, in and out, flames and air, back and forth as my body felt heavy and my lungs full.
“Sookie! You look at me right damn now!” That was my brother, he sounded so angry. I could see him across the street, angled so he could watch what was happening inside where I was clinging for dear life to the swinging chain. His face had gone near white. And next to him Dempsey moved his attention to me, looking like he was working something swift and clever to get me down.
But I was so tired. My head throbbed and my fingers ached.
Sylv had blood on his lip and Dempsey’s left eye was again a black bruise.
I loved them. The pair of them. I knew that just as sure as I knew that my mama had always loved me. She died to see me out of that building.
I blinked when one hand slipped from the chain, my gaze falling onto Dempsey’s face, to that round, perfect mouth. I reckoned I did love him and not just because of his sweet mouth and sweeter kisses. He’d been my best friend since I was little. I supposed I’d always loved him.
Funny thing about love, ain’t it? Sometimes it saves you and sometimes, like right then, even love isn’t enough.
The smoke billowed up, choking me, so thick I couldn’t breathe. So thick there was nothing I could do but let it swallow me whole.