White Smoke

by Tiffany D. Jackson

  But . . . its skin was dark and charred like burnt plastic, nails black with dirt . . .

  How could I make something like that up? If I was still on the Percs, I could’ve blamed it on a crazy trip. Damn, I could really use some weed. I know I made a promise to Dad, but it’s the only thing that helps my anxiety. Surrounded by emaciated houses, with no cell phone service, a jerk of a stepfather, and strangers creeping in the bathroom—he can’t really expect me to just deal in these types of conditions. Weed would at least take the edge off and make me a functional human.

  My jog morphs into a sprint, muscles not warm enough, but I push them harder . . . with weed heavy on my mind.

  Something is trying to break into my room.

  It’s scratching at my door, feverish and desperate. Hungry. I’m familiar with that type of hunger.

  Okay okay okay if I can just get Mom’s door open, I can get that sixty dollars I saw yesterday, then I . . . come on! Open!

  I stir and blink in the darkness, lips dry, mouth parched. I sit up in bed, clenching my fists to keep them from trembling. The door shakes again, violently. Now fully awake, I crawl closer to the end of the bed.

  Buddy is in downward dog, clawing at the door’s sill.

  “Ugh! Bud! You’re killing me!”

  New 10:00 a.m. ALARM: Buy Buddy new chew toys before I leave him on the side of the highway.

  Buddy scratches harder, whining, staring back at me as if to say, “Are you really just going to sit there?”

  “Buddy! Stop it. There’s no one—”

  But then I think of the friend Piper mentioned . . . and that hand in the shower. The door creaks loud as I open it a crack, peering into the dark hall. Buddy shoves his nose between my legs, and darts out, sprinting down the steps.

  “Buddy,” I shout under my breath, trying not to wake up the whole house. But there’s a light on downstairs.

  Thought I turned those off.

  I tiptoe after him, following the light into the kitchen. Empty. So is the family room. No way my earth-conscious mom would ever leave the lights on like this. Must have been Alec.

  The cup is on the counter again.

  Buddy paces in front of the basement door, sniffing, nose jabbing at the bottom. Time on the microwave, 3:19 a.m.

  Am I ever gonna get a good night’s sleep in this place?

  Who am I kidding? I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a year.

  Yawning, I pour myself some water. The windows facing the backyard are like black voids, a draft whistling through the cracks. Outside, something is staring at me. Or someone. I can’t see them but I feel them there. Waiting . . .

  Why is it always so damn cold in this house?

  Buddy turns, giving me the classic puppy-dog eyes with a whimper.

  “Forget it! I’m not going down to the cellar of doom in the middle of the night.”

  Buddy flops his tail, crying again.

  “Ugh, Bud, there’s nothing down there, look!”

  I yank the basement door and it jerks me forward. Locked. Locked? It wasn’t locked the other day. The knob is old, brass, screws loose, the keyhole ancient. I yank it again. Definitely locked, but feels like it’s from the inside.

  How is that even possible?

  “Alec must . . . have the key or something,” I tell Buddy, letting go of the handle.

  That’s when I smell it again. A mix of funk and . . . death. It’s stronger now, like a cloud hovering over my face.

  CREEEEAK

  Am I losing it, or did something . . . just move behind the door?

  I take two steps back, listening to the silence.

  A loud THUMP hits the door, shaking it in its frame. A yelp escapes me and Bud whimpers. Something definitely shook that door. But that’s crazy talk because there’s nothing down there.

  It’s a draft. There’s probably a window open. . . .

  “Bud, come on,” I snap, never taking my eyes off the door. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

  I grab his collar and head for the stairs, but on step one . . .

  “AHHH!”

  Piper is at the top of the staircase in her pink pajamas, glaring down at me, face hidden in the shadows.

  “Shit, Piper! What are you doing?!”

  She stands there for several beats in silence. Just staring motionless. I take a step toward her and a large shadow behind her seems to shift. My body stiffens.

  “Piper?”

  A long, impossible noise echoes out of her mouth, like crumbling metal. Ear-piercing and terrifying. Then she leaps, floating through the air, landing in a perch on my chest, slamming me into the front door. My head bangs against the wood and I briefly see stars before we slide down to the floor, Piper on top of me. Her eyes are black holes, bloody veins hanging out of their sockets like ripped roots. Black blood oozes from her mouth. I try to scream, to move, but I’m frozen.

  Her little hands tighten around my throat, thumbs pressing against my voice box. She’s strong, her fingers icy. I strain, unable to feel my legs, my arms, or anything. The room grows darker as my lips flap like a fish gasping for air.

  And then I’m up, slapping air, gasping and sweating. Buddy looks up from his ball on the end of the bed, annoyed I disturbed him.

  Dream. It was just a dream.

  Heart pounding, I leap out of bed and lock the door, checking the hidden pocket in my book bag. The place I used to keep my stash.

  Empty. I knew it would be but was hoping for a miracle.

  God, I need some weed.

  My bouncing knee rattles the metal kitchen stool as I stare at the basement door. It’s locked. Just like it was last night. Usually, bedbugs are the star of my nightmares. So what if that wasn’t a dream?

  Stop it. You sound crazy!

  “Well. What’s her ‘friend’s’ name?” Mom asks.

  “Ms. Suga,” Alec says, popping a handful of raspberries into his mouth. “It’s cute. Says she’s an old Black woman who likes to bake apple pies.”

  I need to smoke I need to smoke I need to smoke.

  Mom cuts up bananas for our morning smoothies, a wrinkle of worry above her brow.

  “Alec, she’s ten,” Mom says. “Isn’t she a little . . . old to have imaginary friends?”

  A blunt, a gummy, a bong, a hit. Anything. Everything. I need weed weed weed.

  Alec straightens, quick to come to Piper’s defense.

  “With all the recent changes . . . marriage, the move, new school . . . I expected it to come out somehow. She had imaginary friends like this before, when my mother died.”

  “Yes, but . . . maybe we should have her talk to someone. I agree there’s been a lot of changes, but given her close relationship with her late grandmother . . .”

  weed weed weed weed

  Alec places his coffee mug down, hard, before walking off.

  “Sure,” he mumbles. “We can send her to the same place Marigold goes.”

  The struggle not to react is real as I push away from the kitchen isle. I’m losing control. And if I lose control, they’ll see it, they’ll know . . . and they can’t or I’ll be back on lockdown. My terrarium sits on the windowsill facing the backyard, where the light is less harsh. I used to have dozens of these, taking up all spare surfaces in our home. Every window, desk, and bathroom countertop had a piece of paradise I created. Now, this is the only one I have left that survived . . . well, me, and I’m clinging to it like a lifeline.

  “You can build again,” my guru suggested after I’d swept up the glass and soil.

  Maybe I can. Maybe I can build a whole new type of garden.

  At the edge of the backyard, I stab a trowel into the ground and scoop up a piece of earth, rubbing the soil between my fingers. It’s moist, slightly clayish and stony. Even if Tamara mailed me the seeds tomorrow, the weather here is different than in Cali. I would need at least eight weeks before I could harvest, but an early cold front could kill all the seedlings in one morning.

  I’ll a
lso need topsoil, fertilizer, a watering hose, containers, and an 8-x-4-foot raised garden bed to put this plan in action. Could probably find scraps of wood and nails from the nearby houses, but that’d only get me so far. If I had known I’d be back to gardening so soon, I would’ve never given all my stuff to Tamara’s mom. I’ll need tools, but I can’t spend my own money with Mom clocking my every penny. I also need time away from Sammy and nosy Piper.

  . . . every last Sunday of the month.

  I grab my tote bag, rush for the door before anyone has a chance to join me.

  “Going to the library!”

  The Maplewood Library sits across the street from the elementary school, a few blocks from our house. It’s an old redbrick building, the metal letters of the sign crying rust and there’s cracks in the foggy glass door. By the entrance is a bulletin board with flyers of various business, outdated calls to meetings, and scheduled protests. A ‘Brown Town Mowing Company’ business card sits pinned on the top right corner. Below it, a flyer for the garden club Irma mentioned.

  “Hello! Are you here for garden club?”

  A woman in a bright blue T-shirt that matches her eyes and well-worn jeans smiles at me.

  “Um . . . yes.”

  “Great, welcome! We’re just about to start.”

  The meeting is being held in a conference room by the history section. Attendance is sparse. A few old women, four college students, and three old Black men. At the front of the room, setting up, is Yusef.

  We catch eyes, and he gives me a hesitant nod. He’s been keeping his distance, while I’ve been awkwardly avoiding eye contact just to keep girls from trashing me. I even dress down and try my best to blend into the background to avoid beef. This is supposed to be a fresh start.

  Change is good. Change is necessary. Change is needed.

  I sit in an empty middle row, near one of the grandmas. Okay, yeah, I know, the totally easier option would be to just ask Erika for a hookup, but like I said, I don’t know Erika. Can’t risk it. One more strike and I’ll be shipped off to rehab like I have a real problem or something, which I totally don’t. So desperate times call for desperate measures.

  The woman who greeted me takes center stage.

  “Hello, everyone, welcome! We have a new member today, so hi! My name is Laura Fern. Yes, that’s my real last name, and yes, I love a good fern. Welcome to our urban garden club.”

  Laura gives updates regarding new developments in upcoming projects, trends in planting, and planned trips to a farm out in the suburbs.

  “I’m also pleased to report that we are this close to approval for a house on Maple Street, which will host our nonprofit city beautification initiative, with a generous donation by the Sterling Foundation. Renovations will start as early as November.”

  Damn, the Sterling Foundation has their hands in every jar.

  “And I think that’s about everything. As usual, tools are in the shed.”

  A toolshed . . . perfect.

  “We leave in fifteen minutes. Carpool assignments are on the board. See ya there!”

  Class is dismissed and people congregate at the board. I turn to a neighbor, an old Black woman wearing a beautiful auburn wig and a bright smile.

  “Um, excuse me. Where’s the toolshed?”

  “Out by the parking lot.”

  Slowly, I shuffle backward out of the room, trying not to draw attention to myself. Once outside, I speed walk around the building to a shed sitting in the grassy knolls at the edge of a crumbling parking lot. The padlock hanging off the side, I swing the door open and stand in awe. The tools are gorgeous. Brand-new rakes, hoes, garden shears, shovels in every size. Even a mower.

  “Perfect,” I mumble.

  “So, uh, I hope you don’t mind rolling with me?”

  Yusef stands behind me, dangling the keys to his truck as folks from the meeting pile into each other’s cars.

  “All the other cars are full,” he explains. “We weren’t expecting a new member today.”

  “Rolling . . . where?” I ask.

  “For today’s project. We’re planting some trees on the freeway.”

  “Oh, uhhh . . . sorry. Maybe another time.”

  Yusef frowns, his voice turning serious. “Yo, that’s how it works, Cali. You volunteer, you get free use of the tools and all the compost and soil you want. So, you coming, or nah?”

  I weigh my options with a huff. “You got leather seats?”

  FACT: Bedbugs prefer cloth to leather.

  We drive a few minutes in silence and I’m once again wishing alcohol was my drug of choice so I didn’t have to jump through all these damn hoops. I hate hangovers and beer looks like foamy piss.

  But I don’t mind going for a ride, gives me a chance to really take in my surroundings—the trash in the abandoned lots, crumbling old churches, rubble of foundations peeking through tall weeds. For the briefest moments, I forgot I’m not on vacation, that I actually live here, in a whole other city, miles away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known, among the wreckage of . . . what? I’m not even sure. It’s like a bomb exploded here that no one ever reported.

  “Guessing you decided to start that garden after all,” Yusef says.

  “Uh, yeah,” I admit, scratching my arm, out of habit.

  “Well, my offer still stands. You gonna need a good cultivator to work that yard. We don’t have one in the shed, but you can borrow mine from home.”

  I’m about to blow him off when it hits me: I need him. He knows how to work the land around here. Probably the best resource I could ask for next to Google.

  “Yeah, that’d be cool. Thanks. And I, uh, sorry that it’s all . . . weird and stuff at school. It’s just that I’m new and really don’t want any trouble, you know?”

  He follows the caravan of cars down the freeway. “Yeah, I get it, I guess.”

  I laugh. “You guess that seventy-five percent of the girls in our high school want you? Humble flex.”

  He smirks, turning up his music. “It’s not as cool as it looks.”

  Closer to downtown, we pull off near a stadium, parking behind a large truck with eight new baby trees in the bed. The garden club starts unloading stacks of soil and tools. From this position off the freeway, we’re closer to those large gray cement blocks I saw when we first arrived in Cedarville.

  “Hey, what are those buildings over there?” I ask Yusef. “They’re, like, really huge! Are they factories?”

  Yusef follows my gaze and his smile drops, jaw tightening.

  “Those are prisons,” he says, hard.

  “ALL of them?”

  He snatches a shovel out of the truck bed, storming away. “Yeah.”

  The garden club spends the afternoon digging deep holes and planting the new trees along the freeway exit, the place looking instantly better for it. It’s kind of nice, doing something useful, being a productive member of society rather than a screwup. Or at least how I feel, how my parents’ disappointment makes me feel. They don’t say it, but I know. It’s written on their faces.

  Yusef is quiet, keeping his back to the blocks as we work. He strips off his hoodie and . . . damn. Dude is kinda ripped under that tank top.

  Stop staring, you idiot!

  When we’re done, he gives me a tired smile. “Ready to go home?”

  Yusef’s tree-lined block is almost identical to ours, except the houses aren’t abandoned relics. They’re well lived in, peaceful, the porches perfect inviting spots for some fresh mint iced tea. But the calm is interrupted by the reverend’s eerie voice, blaring out of open windows.

  “And I say unto you, be mindful of sinners dressed like angels. For they will take you on a wrong path.”

  Yusef’s house is in the middle of the block, a brown one-story colonial with a picture-perfect lawn, lush front garden, and a birdy on the mailbox. I recognize Mr. Brown’s truck in the driveway, dripping dry after a recent wash.

  “Is that the new girl?” Mr. Brown emerges from th
e shadows, wiping off his hands. “Thought I recognized you.”

  “Hi, Mr. Brown.”

  “Well, come on in. Want a pop?”

  Inside is a sweet, homey trip to the past. A jar full of strawberry hard candies and white Life Saver mints greet us at the door. Pictures in brass gold frames hanging in the wallpapered hallway. A canary-yellow sofa set with a pea-green recliner facing an old TV, where I can see the top of a brown bald head as Scott Clark’s voice bellows . . .

  “Are you of faith? Are you of healing? Trust in the Church of Jesus Christ. . . .”

  “Who’s that there?” a rusty voice asks.

  At first, I thought the old man was referring to Clark, but he swivels his recliner in my direction.

  “Pop-Pop, this is Marigold,” Yusef says. “Family just moved over on Maple.”

  The old man gives me a once-over. “Maple Street, huh? Humph.”

  Mr. Brown comes out of the kitchen with two cans of ginger ale.

  “Here you go. You can have a seat.”

  The couch looks like it’s from the early 1980s—worn cloth with a fading flower pattern. My throat tightens; I scratch my arm.

  “Uh, no thanks. I’m good standing.”

  “Don’t be giving away my ale!” Pop-Pop hollers with a hacking cough.

  “Relax, Pop! We got plenty.”

  “Thank you,” I say with a small smile, nodding in the old man’s direction. He snarls and returns to his programs.

  “Hear testimony from one of God’s loyal children . . .”

  The screen cuts to an image of a Black woman speaking on camera, seemingly at one of those megachurches with hundreds of people surrounding her.

  “I was in debt for forty thousand dollars. I was dead broke and didn’t have anyone to turn to. Then one day, I called the number and planted my HOLY SEEDS just like Pastor Clark told me. Three weeks later they began to grow; next thing I knew I had forty thousand dollars in my account and God almighty, I was saved!”

  The crowd cheers before the camera cuts back to Scott Clark behind his desk.