Beneath a Meth Moon

by Jacqueline Woodson

  The Pass is gone, T-Boom. No place to go back to. My daddy’s just talking. Just saying words to say them.

  Inside, T-Boom had a whole lot of candles burning, and the house seemed to be breathing with the light. I wondered again who lived here once. Whose old house this was before the boards got nailed to it and the lights got turned off. I’d found a deserted place too—a tiny back room in J. Turner’s old hardware store. Had been staying there awhile. J. Turner died two years before, and his family was fighting over who inherited what. Either everybody wanted it or nobody wanted it, but in the meantime, they left it to collect dust. Water still flowed in the toilet, but no lights worked. No heat came on. Mostly it was dark and cold back there. Quiet as anything. Easy to get to by a small cellar door that had a broken lock on it. I’d gotten some police line tape and strung that across. Nobody tried to come in, and my guess is most people feared finding a body in there. Whatever the reason, I’d never woken up to find anybody standing over me.

  This kid out in Donnersville said it’s not good to have all those flames in the house with the moon cooking, I said.

  T-Boom shrugged. Those Donnersville meth heads don’t know. Unless that kid’s gonna come get the electric turned on, he needs to shut up. I know what I’m doing. Keep everything separate. T-Boom cursed and looked hard at me.

  Sometimes the evil came fast to him—one minute smiling and the next, his face twisting into some kind of rage nobody saw coming. Once, on the basketball court, he knocked a kid from the other team clear across the gym. He was suspended for two games after that.

  But most days, T-Boom was all sweetness, and it was hard not to remember that first time he walked over to me . . . I felt the sadness creeping up quick, put another small taste of moon in my mouth and told T-Boom I had to go, that I’d see him next time.

  You should think about going home, Laurel. I bet your daddy would take you back again. You just gotta leave the moon alone. Me and you, we’re not like those meth heads—we could leave this stuff alone if we wanted to.

  Yeah, I said. I know that.

  But I knew all I was thinking about was how the moon was washing over me, disappearing all the sadness.

  T-Boom wiped his nose and sniffed hard.

  I’m just about through with this, Laurel, he said. There’s a place up in Summitville I been hearing about, thinking about. Say they can clean you up real good, all the way so you don’t slip back to wanting it. I know we don’t need some program, but Coach said if I show him I could do it, I’d be back on the team come next season. Get two more years of playing in.

  He leaned against the doorway, swatting at some invisible something near his head. The moon did that, made you feel things that weren’t there. There’s a place in Summitville, he said again. I’m gonna go there.

  Yeah, I said. That sounds nice. That sounds real good. Summitville.

  They say it’s easier if people do it together, T-Boom said. Me and you could do it together. Then you could go back to cheering, and I could play ball again. Be like it used to be.

  I put my hands in my pockets and fingered the moon. The tiny plastic bags felt warm and good and right. Before I headed back out of town, I’d do a little bit more behind the 7-Eleven. Then walk for a while before trying to hitch back to Donnersville. With the moon inside of me, the walk wouldn’t be cold, the night wouldn’t be dark. I smiled at T-Boom. He was over six feet tall, but he looked small standing there twitching and swatting. He looked like something a little bit broken. Looked like some little kid’s electric toy that was short-circuiting out.

  It’s all gonna be all right, T-Boom. We’re all gonna be all right. I started walking backwards away from him. No worries, T-Boom. We don’t have any worries.

  T-Boom watched me. He said something, but I couldn’t hear it. Then he stepped back, gave me a long, broken-faced look—like everything in the world that was wrong was his own fault—and closed the door.

  other houses

  AFTER I LEFT the House that night, snow started falling. It was early April, but snow was coming down. Not hard, just flakes of it, like tiny lights in the darkness. As I passed by window after window, I saw smiling families around dinner tables. It wasn’t until I walked past the last window that I saw a woman carrying a ham to a table decorated with colored eggs and green plastic grass. I stopped then and stood there in the darkness watching the family bow their heads. It was Easter Sunday. A little boy turned in his chair and seemed to look straight at me. We stayed like that for I don’t know how long—me looking into his life, him looking out at mine. Then the others raised their heads and he turned back toward the dinner. The moon was floating through me, and I smiled, thinking about Jesse Jr.—his face pressed against the car window, his eyes begging. Something warm and wet was surrounding me, and I laughed at the heat inside the snow. The hurt of wanting the moon was gone now, replaced by something heavy. Not heavy. Light. Free. I was free. Tears. The warm thing wasn’t snow. Where were the tears coming from? Who was crying on me? I stopped walking and wiped at my eyes, but whoever was crying on me kept on crying. I laughed, and the tears came harder. Jesse Jr.’s face faded away, and Mama was there, laughing. Behind her, my grandmother, M’lady, sat on a porch, rocking slowly, looking at me like she couldn’t quite see me. Laurel? She leaned forward and squinted into the darkness. Is that you? Laurel . . . ?

  I walked faster, away from her. I didn’t want her to see me with all of this water coming out of me. Didn’t want her to be reminded.

  Laurel.

  I tried to run, but the hurting was back, and the cold was like a wall pushing against me.

  Laurel!

  I stopped—my breath coming heavy—and turned, ready to tell M’lady and Mama to go to Jackson. It’s dry in Jackson.

  Laurel, is that you?

  Slowly, Mama faded, and M’lady turned into my friend Kaylee, shivering on her front porch. I looked around—how had I gotten on her street when Donnersville was in the other direction?

  We stared at each other a long time. I could tell she was looking me over, taking in my ragged coat and bloody lips.

  Laurel, she said, look at you. Look at yourself! Who did you turn into?!

  pass christian, mississippi

  THE CITY OF PASS CHRISTIAN sits right there on the Gulf of Mexico—blue-gray water and white sand so pretty my daddy used to say it reminded him of my mama’s hair. Go down to the water, and the peace comes over you so deep you’d think it was the true ocean even if you’d never seen the sea. Hot wind damp with salt all day long until your skin freckled all over. If somebody would’ve told me that water and that sand and the way that wind blew my hair into my face wasn’t always gonna be there, I would have looked at them and laughed and said what my daddy always used to say: You ever met a person from the Pass that gave up when times got hard?

  In 2005 I was eleven years old, and I’d been in Pass Christian, right close to Long Beach, Mississippi, all my life. Since third grade, all I ever wanted to do was tell stories. I’d tell them to whoever was listening, and most times that person was the Grandlady of the House—my mama’s mama. From the time I could talk, she’d said that’s what I had to call her, not Grandma or Nana or even her name—Helene. The Grandlady of the House—or M’lady.

  M’lady was tall and, as she always said, thick boned, not fat. There’s a difference, Laurel. She had blue hair hanging long down her back, and I thought that blue was the prettiest color hair I’d ever seen. It’s the rinse I use, she’d say to me. This shade’s hard to come by. You see people trying for it all the time, but most times, theirs is off-color, like dank water.

  Some days, I’d just climb up onto the couch and sit running my fingers through her hair. Felt like hours I could do that, us just sitting quiet, me running my fingers through her long blue hair.

  She could make just about anything—pretty
crocheted doll dresses, grits and boiled shrimp, sweet potato pie with a Louisiana praline crust. She’d been born in Louisiana, and there was French in her blood. And that’s how she learned to make gumbo. I don’t just make any old gumbo, M’lady would say, stirring so many things into the big pot so fast that I got dizzy from watching. I make a gourmet gumbo. Not everybody can cook gourmet. They might say they can, but their cooking’s just regular. Watch here, Laurel. Learn yourself some gourmet. On the days she made gumbo, people always found a way to just drop by our house to talk about church or the weather or how fish didn’t seem to be biting.

  Anyone could be a grandma, Laurel, M’lady said to me one morning. All you do is have yourself some children and wait for those children to have themselves some children and then it’s done. But it takes more than that to be a Lady.

  We were sitting on her couch. The small hole I’d dug in it had some filling sticking out, and I pulled at it until M’lady slapped my hand away.

  Not anybody, M’lady, I said. Not daddies.

  Not men, I guess. M’lady was working the hem out of a pair of my pants. I’d grown over the winter, and it was springtime. When I pulled the pants on, they stopped just above my ankles, and M’lady bent down and raised up the hem, saying, There’s some fabric here. We could get another good inch out of these.

  I watched her work the seam ripper underneath the material, then gently slide it along until it hitched on something, making her slow down a bit to work through the thicker stitches.

  And you can’t be a grandma if you don’t get old, I said, my fingers slowly finding their way back to the hole in the couch.

  M’lady stopped working the pants and looked at me, her pale eyes almost the same color as her hair.

  You planning not to get old?

  Just last week you told me that some people just don’t get old. Said some people die before they even get one baby going.

  M’lady went back to the pants and made a tsk sound. Since when do you listen to everything I say? And remember it, too.

  You told me I have to listen if I want to tell stories. Told me the best stories come from other people’s stories. You don’t remember saying that, M’lady?

  Hmph, M’lady said. But she was smiling to herself.

  She finished one leg and moved over to the other, gathering the cuff around her hand.

  My plan is this—you gonna get old, Laurel. You gonna grow up first, though, find your husband—somebody you love a lot and loves you more—

  I started to huff about not wanting a husband, but M’lady shushed me.

  Just listen to me, girl. Just listen.

  I folded my arms and threw myself back against her couch, but I didn’t say anything more.

  You gonna start writing down your stories. He’s gonna listen to you read them, and he’ll tell you everything he loves about them—just like I do now.

  M’lady looked at me and smiled. I tried not to smile back, but I did a little bit.

  Then you and your husband gonna have some babies. My great-grandbabies. I plan to be here to see at least one or two get born. And one day, they’ll have some babies and you’ll be old like me and you’ll remember this talk. And you’ll smile . . . remembering me.

  I laid my head against M’lady’s arm and didn’t say anything. My mind on the future she’d already put down for me.

  this storm coming

  THAT DAY, I stopped just telling M’lady my stories and started writing them down. M’lady said as long as she was living, she’d make it her duty to keep me in little notebooks, took me to the office supply store in town and bought me four right on the spot. Pencils and pens and some dog-shaped erasers for the times I changed my mind about what I wanted to write. A few mornings later, I came running home to her, holding high up in the air a notebook filled with stories I’d written just that day.

  Laurel, you do any listening in school or just all this writing? M’lady asked, flipping through the pages, trying real hard not to smile.

  I did a little bit of listening, I said back. But the teacher didn’t say anything interesting to me. And the people in my stories, they just started talking louder.

  Then M’lady laughed hard, throwing her head back, blue hair flying. Strange how being able to make a person laugh fills you up with something good. Lord, girl, you’re something else.

  Late in the afternoon, after the hot Pass Christian sun went down, you could feel the breezes coming off the water. We’d head slow toward it, M’lady’s dress blowing, always pale blue or gray or green. Always reminding me of the water.

  We’d walk on Market until the sidewalks turned to sand, then we’d turn and head along West Beach, walking along the water.

  Mississippi heat’s hard to explain. Like walking out into thick steam some mornings and hard to move. But the afternoon I brought my first story home to M’lady, the weather had turned, the thick air heavy and wet, dark clouds hanging low over us as we walked.

  They keep talking about this storm coming, M’lady said. She stopped walking, leaned hard on her cane and looked up at the sky. Saying we need to be heading inland, find shelter.

  We got shelter, I said. Our house.

  M’lady shook her head and started walking again. I could see the water now, the small waves higher than usual, white capped and angry-looking.

  They said it’s gonna be badder than a house can hold. Your daddy’s taking y’all up Jackson tomorrow, stay with your cousins there and wait it out.

  Not going to Jackson, I said. They can go by themselves. I’m staying here with you, M’lady. Or you come with us if it’s supposed to be bad like they’re saying.

  M’lady shook her head again. It’s just talk, Laur. People need something to get people scared about. A storm’s a storm, and I’ve waited out plenty of them. But your daddy’s taking you and your mama and baby Jesse just in case, so you’ll go. I’ll be right here when y’all get back.

  We walked slow the rest of the way to the water. Stood at the edge of it a long time, watching it move toward us.

  galilee sunrise

  GALILEE SUNRISE IS LIKE NOTHING anybody could ever dream of, except God. I guess he decided to take the prettiest sunrise and put it down right here. When we first moved here, me, Daddy and Jesse Jr. would go to the sunrise service at Christ’s House Church, and we’d get up real early. I’d have my clothes laid out on my bed so I just had to wash up and get in them. Then I’d sit brushing my hair while it was still near dark out. We’d wait to the very last minute to wake Jesse Jr. because once he was awake, nobody could do anything except make sure he didn’t break something or break himself. I’d braid my hair down my back and wrap a colored elastic around the end. Daddy would be in the bathroom shaving and humming. Mostly he hummed Christian songs because that was mostly all he listened to.

  Just a little while before we left, we’d get Jesse Jr. up, dress him and feed him something. Jesse Jr. shared a room with me, and his bed was in one corner, mine in the other. Aside from those two beds and a small rug, there wasn’t much to our room. Wasn’t much to our house. A couch and two chairs in the living room and a coffee table with a wobbly leg. A small TV connected up to a big satellite dish outside. Some pictures on the wall. A few pots and plates in the kitchen. We had a white tablecloth that I put out for birthdays and Thanksgiving. In the two closets in the living room, we had clothes—me and Jesse Jr.’s in one closet, Daddy’s in the other. My daddy would say, When our ship comes in, there won’t be enough closet space in this house, so I guess we’re gonna have to move to a mansion then. Then we’d be all dressed heading out to the car with that pretty sunrise looking down over us. Those mornings, as we drove quiet to church, it felt like we’d been given a whole new life. It was different, but it was ours, and in it, we had just about everything we needed—we had each other and God and that beautiful
Galilee.

  daddy: part one

  I DID LEAVE THE MOON ALONE for a while. After Daddy found it under my pillow, he sat on the edge of my bed and cried.

  It isn’t mine, I said, turning away from him.

  I hadn’t seen him cry since the day we buried Mama and M’lady, and to see the tears coming that way—hard and fast, him taking big gulps like his breathing was gonna stop, made me take my own deep breaths and pray that the moon flowed out of me. Forever and ever. I didn’t want to hurt my daddy like that. Never wanted to hurt my daddy.

  Outside, a freezing rain was falling hard. Maybe it was a Saturday, but already I had mostly stopped going to school, so the days blurred over themselves with the only distinction being night breaking into day and day to night again.

  Whose is it, then? And what the hell is it, anyway? Daddy opened the bag and sniffed it. He turned back to my pillow and flung it to the foot of my bed. There was a small metal pipe there, blackened at one end from the flame and the moon.

  Oh, dear Laurel . . . dear God! my daddy said, closing his eyes tight like that could make everything disappear. Dear God in Heaven help—

  Give it to me!

  Daddy looked up, like he’d forgotten I was there, his tears still coming.

  Give it to me! I whispered, my voice trembling. I had just come out of the shower, and my hair was wet and dripping, my back and legs still damp in my shorts and T-shirt.

  You’re not this, Laurel. Me and your mama and M’lady didn’t make you this!

  Just give it to me! I said again. I had been standing across the room from him, but now I moved fast toward him, hitting at him and trying to grab the moon. But my daddy was faster. Even though he was crying, he snatched the pipe and the moon away from me and with his other hand grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.