You’re hurting me!
But he didn’t let go.
Where did you get it, Laur?
It’s Kaylee’s! I was crying now, needing the moon that was so close . . . Kaylee asked me to hold it for her!
Does Donna know?
I didn’t answer him.
Does Kaylee’s mama know she’s using this stuff, Laur? Answer me!
Give it to me! I was shivering now.
My daddy put the pipe and the moon in his pocket, then took my face in both of his hands, looking hard at me. His own face was red and wet from crying, and even as he held my head, the tears kept coming.
God help us, he whispered, dropping my face and turning away from me.
Give it to me!
But my daddy was walking out of my room. In another minute, I heard his car starting and then speeding down the road, my moon in his pocket, toward Kaylee’s house.
I leaned against the wall and lowered myself down. My whole body trembled with wanting the moon. Jesse Jr. came in, dragging his stuffed bear behind him.
Don’t cry, Laurel, he said, his tiny hand rubbing my back. Mama’s in heaven. Don’t cry.
Leave me alone for a little while, Jesse! I said.
But Jesse Jr. ignored me, his tiny hand moving in circles over my back, his voice soft in my ear. Don’t worry, Laurel. She’s not scared anymore.
water rising up
I USED TO WALK AND WALK after I ran away. Had to keep moving, had to let the moon move through my body, keep flowing, and didn’t feel the heat on me till my skin burned. No rain hardly, but still if I stopped moving, the visions of the water came at me. I heard the crushing of rock against rock. Heard the Mississippi roaring. Couldn’t breathe through all the water coming down and over me. There’s my house . . . washing away. Water like somebody’s angry hand slamming it to pieces.
And you’ll smile, M’lady said. Remembering me.
Her voice inside my head over and over . . . There’s my friend Emmajean’s daddy’s Honda—EJ’s doll against the window as the car twisted through the water, landing topside down two hundred feet away.
There’s the oak tree we used to climb, lying on its side now, five feet high. Count the rings, my science teacher said that year. And it’ll tell you the age of the tree. How many hundreds of rings beneath that clump of dirt and roots? How deep is that hole the tree left behind?
EJ’s daddy stayed behind. I hear her and her mama settled in Texas. What was the song me and Emmajean used to sing together? Miss Sue. Bless You. Say it with an eye closed. Touch your head, shoulder, nose. Miss Sue . . . Strange not to know anybody who remembers the words.
But we were already gone by the time the water rose up. We’d driven away at sunrise, the clouds low and dark, the gulf already angry and creeping high up, rain coming down. My daddy said, The storm might pass right over, and my mama looked at him. Y’all getting out of here till it does, Charles. Come right back to me when it’s passed on by. And so we pulled into the long line of cars driving away from the water. Behind us, M’lady waved.
But you were coming with us, Mama.
I can’t leave M’lady here, precious. And she’s too stubborn to leave.
Then Mama touched my hair, pulled my braid to her lips and kissed it. You be sure to brush your hair in the morning, you hear me? Keep it pretty.
I reached through the car window and held on to her real hard.
If it gets bad, we’ll go over to the Walmart, Mama said. That’s our plan. I don’t want y’all worrying. Me and M’lady going to be fine.
Big store like Walmart should be safe enough, M’lady said. No storm coming through those heavy walls. And to me she said, I’ll buy you something pretty.
I’ll buy you something pretty.
I’ll buy you something pretty.
I’ll buy you something pretty.
galilee
WE STAYED IN JACKSON for two years. Jesse Jr. learned to crawl in Aunt G.’s kitchen, took his first steps across Aunt G.’s sunporch floor, said Laur before he could say Daddy and called Aunt G. Mama the morning we packed up the car to head to Galilee.
As we stood in Aunt G.’s driveway, hugging our good-byes and wiping away tears, I wondered if this was the beginning of some new life for me—a life filled up with tears and good-byes and moving on to the next place.
We took Route 55 out of Jackson, then 80 all the way across. There was a job waiting for Daddy in Galilee. They’d even found a place for us to live there. A small house outside of town, Daddy said. I love your aunt G. like she’s my own sister, but we need to be in our own home again, Laur. Need to be moving on.
I sat up front with Daddy, stared at the flat land as we drove. Big sky that I couldn’t look up into without thinking about M’lady and Mama. Green land moving fast toward us, then passing us by. Farms and fields. Whole stretches with nothing at all. I watched Mississippi grow small behind me. Next time I see you, you’ll be a lady, my aunt said, hugging me hard. Already look so much like your mama I can’t hardly stand to look at you. And then more tears.
We stopped for hamburgers somewhere. We slept in the car and washed up in a gas station. I woke up once, and we were in Iowa. Woke up again and it was near morning and we were here. Moving slow past a big blue sign that said
WELCOME TO GALILEE
WHERE LIFE IS A WALK ON WATER.
Sounds promising, my daddy said. New place. New life. Put our past behind us.
Jesse Jr. slept hard in his car seat behind me. I listened to the soft sound of the motor and my daddy’s hand drumming against the steering wheel. On the radio, a deep-voiced man was talking about lamb and sheep, about Christ and blood. I stared up at the sky—blue and cloudless. The morning we had the service for M’lady and Mama, my daddy took my hand, pointed up at the same blue and cloudless sky. That’s where they are now, he said. Safe. Closer to God. Water’s never gonna rise that high.
We drove slow down the main street—past a grocery store and a secondhand shop. A flower store with its gray gates pulled halfway down and a bucket of wilted daisies out front. I rolled down my window and let the warm air come over me. A group of teenagers was hanging out in front of a 7-Eleven, and as we drove past, they looked at me and I looked back at them. They looked different from my friends in Pass Christian—dark haired and pale skinned, like the sun wasn’t on them year round. I put my hand on my own face, knowing the color was already leaving it, my freckles fading, the sun’s heat on it feeling like something from a long time ago. We looked at each other, and I tried not to think about my Pass Christian friends—scattered all over and none of us knowing where the others were. Tried not to think about us together in the school yard, at the beach, walking to get ice cream. Just a group of kids going somewhere, that’s all we were. Like something real normal, real always.
After a few minutes, I rolled the window up again and lay back against my seat. Galilee looked like a whole lot of other towns we’d been through—flat and small and landlocked.
You okay, baby girl? my daddy asked. He put his hand on my leg, then patted it quick and put it back on the steering wheel. How okay can I be? I wanted to scream. My whole life got washed away.
But my daddy looked so hopeful, so ready to make this new place work for us.
Yeah, I said. My life is a walk on water.
daddy: part two
WHEN MY DADDY came into my room that night after talking to Kaylee’s mom, Donna, he hugged me real hard without saying anything for a long time.
Jesse Jr. was asleep on the other side of the room. I’d made him eggs and sliced ham for dinner, a few boiled carrots with brown sugar on them for his vegetable. Why you shaking, Laurel? Jesse’d asked me. You cold? You want my blanket?
I could hear his breathing coming slow and calm. Jesse Jr. always
slept deep after he ate, his mouth a little bit open, his hand clutching tight to his blanket.
My daddy pulled a chair in from the kitchen up to the side of my bed.
We’re gonna move through this, Laurel, he whispered. We got through everything else. This is gonna be easy as pie.
Then he started crying again. I stared out the window at the rain and darkness, tried to slip my mind out of the room, away from him crying, away from the hurting coming on inside me.
He stayed in my room all night—rubbing my back as I jerked myself in and out of sleep. Praying. At one point, I screamed and swung at him in the darkness, but he just caught my hand and gently held it until I was asleep again.
Dear Heavenly Father—We don’t ask for the return of loved ones that you’ve taken to your Upper Room, I woke to hear him whispering. But please let me hold on to Laurel—full-on. Please don’t take her too, dear Lord.
I slept through the next day. And most of the day after that.
My daddy came into my room each morning and set a tray of food beside my bed—toast and jam at breakfast time, with orange juice in the Elmo cup we’d found in the back of the car on our way out of Pass Christian. It’d been mine when I was little, and maybe I’d left it in the car at some point, so that when it rolled from under the seat, me and Daddy both smiled, remembering.
But all day long, the cup sat there with the orange juice getting warm inside it.
On the morning of the third day, my whole body felt like someone was dipping me into ice water and leaving me in there only long enough to feel the pain—then pulling me out again. Even my brain hurt, but when I tried to cry, no tears came—just deep hunger for the moon.
When I came into the kitchen that morning, Jesse Jr. was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal, milk dripping from his chin. Daddy was sitting across from him, reading the Bible and drinking coffee. When he saw me, he smiled, like every prayer he’d ever spoken had been answered. I stared at him. There were deep rings beneath his eyes.
I leaned back against the kitchen wall and closed my eyes, the pain behind them like a knife. Every part of my body itched. I couldn’t scratch any one place hard or long enough.
You see I don’t need that stuff, Daddy, I said, scratching hard at my legs. I only did it once. I was just seeing what it was like. I’m okay now. I’m all right . . . kaylee before
WE HAD BEEN LIVING IN GALILEE for two days when Kaylee showed up at our front porch. I’d never seen hair like hers—dark and curling perfectly down over her shoulders. Her skin was different, too—dark like she’d been in the sun all her life—but without freckling or burning or paling up in the wintertime.
The night before, it had rained—a soft light rain that smelled like heat. The rain was different from Pass Christian rain—no salt in it. No sea air. Different from Jackson, too. The next morning, the rain was gone, and when I walked out onto the porch, I was struck near dumb by how bright green the tree leaves were. All along the street, the leaves stood out that way so that when Kaylee walked up to our porch that morning, there I was, sitting and staring at the tree leaves like I was seeing them for the first time—wondering how all that color could be in them that way.
You write? Kaylee asked.
I looked down at the notebook I had left open on my lap—the blank page just sitting there like it was laughing at me.
I shrugged.
I wish I could write, she said. I like to read, though. If you need a reader, I’m that person. A hundred and ten books in my house and counting. I read all of them. Some sucked, but I kept reading, hoping they’d turn good at some point. They didn’t, though. But you don’t just give up on something—
She stopped talking as quickly as she’d started. One minute, the words were pouring out of her, then nothing.
I closed my notebook. And for a long time, neither one of us said anything.
Then Kaylee told me her name.
Maybe I told her mine. I must have. I must have said, I’m Laurel Daneau. We just moved here from Pass Christian. Or maybe I said from Jackson—or maybe I didn’t—like Jackson was a sidestep, a quick stop on our way to Galilee. Like Jackson wasn’t two years and three cousins and a house too small for all of us together. Pass Christian was my somewhere before this. I didn’t want to erase Jackson. I just wanted to hold on to Pass Christian. Hold on hard to it.
But the next thing Kaylee said to me made me stop cold and put my head down, my forehead pressing hard against my notebook.
I know. I know all about the flood and your mama and grandma. I came by to say I’m sorry.
We stayed there like that—me with my head down, taking deep breaths. Kaylee standing in front of me, her hands in her pockets.
I’m sorry.
Wasn’t your fault. You didn’t bring the water. There was a meanness to my words that I hadn’t expected to come out of me. But I didn’t want some strange girl feeling sorry for me. Our whole two years in Jackson had been filled up with people I didn’t even know coming up to us all sad-eyed and sorry. I didn’t want to be pitiful here in Galilee. Didn’t want the looks, the nosy questions, the creepy desire for my family’s Oh-So-Sad story.
I know. I just wish none of it ever happened, and I’m sorry it did. That’s all.
When I looked up, Kaylee was staring at me and holding out a handful of Hershey’s Kisses.
Supposedly, something about chocolate is good for sadness, she said. I read that somewhere. Then she smiled at me.
I must have smiled back, because Kaylee sat down beside me on the porch. In my memory, it’s the first time I’d smiled in a long time. And Kaylee must have somehow known that, because she told me my smile was like a light getting turned on. I’d never heard anything like that before. A light getting turned on.
Maybe you can write it into the past, and that will help leave some of it there. People do that. They write stuff down and then it’s gone from them and they’re free.
How do you know that? I thought you said you didn’t write.
I don’t, Kaylee said. I read—like I told you. You put it in front of me, I’m gonna read it. And somebody must’ve put a book about writing in front of me at some point, because I remember that part—about writing away the past. I remember thinking, “That must be like magic.” Like having a giant Memory Eraser. How cool is that? Anything embarrassing or really hard or really painful—boom! Gone. Until you get the guts to pick up what you wrote and reread it—
She stopped talking again. Felt like she was in the middle of a sentence and just closed her mouth.
Why do you do that? I asked her.
Do what?
Stop talking like that.
Kaylee shrugged. After a little while passed, she said, I don’t want to talk too much, that’s all. They’re your memories . . . to do with whatever you want. I shouldn’t be sitting here trying to tell you where to put them. That’s all.
I didn’t think that’s what you were trying to do. I liked what you were saying.
I looked out over Galilee and squinted against the sunlight. Where the leaves tried to block it out, it snuck in around them and made pretty yellow lines along the road. I peeled the silver foil away from a Hershey’s Kiss and let the chocolate melt down over my tongue.
Galilee’s a good place to make some new friends, Kaylee said.
I thought about the kids I’d seen the first time Daddy drove into town—how different they’d looked from my Pass Christian friends.
Kaylee was taller than me, and sitting beside her, I had to look up a little bit to see her eyes. They were pretty—brown with little bits of green jumping through, like some kind of light was jumping out of her.
You ever lived anywhere else? I asked her.
Yeah—when I was a baby, we lived in Colorado, but I don’t remember. My mama got a picture of me by s
ome mountains—that’s pretty much the only proof I got of living there. Guess that’s why I like reading so much—can just leave this place if I want to and don’t even have to get on a bus or plane to go.
You got a lot of friends here? I asked. Maybe because I wanted to be her only friend. Maybe because I was afraid she could just disappear into all her friends and leave me standing.
But Kaylee shook her head. I cheer. I got people who cheer with me. But since we’re so far from town, mostly, aside from cheering, I stay home. People call this part of Galilee the country. Not like Galilee’s that big, but where we are is still far away from everything.
Cheering? I asked. Like a cheerleader?
Kaylee nodded. There’s tryouts at the end of the month—for next season. I bet you’d make the team easy.
You think?
Kaylee smiled. Yeah. All you need is a big mouth—the routines come easy.
This big enough? I opened my mouth wide, and Kaylee laughed.
Looks big enough to me. Least big as mine.
Good. Then I guess I’ll be trying out.
After that, we just sat there smiling, staring out at nothing. Galilee’s a quiet town—just farms out by us. In town, there’s just a Walmart, a Payless, a Dollar Store, and the supermarket. Once you pass those, you’re not in Galilee anymore, and the road you’re on turns into highway, taking you west toward Colorado and Wyoming and east toward Illinois and Ohio. Me and Kaylee watched a car drive down the street, listened to the sound of a train whistle blowing far off.
I’m not staying out here in the country past high school, Kaylee said. You can come with me if you want. Maybe California. Or Texas. Someplace big and far away. She looked at me. If we end up being friends, I mean.
M’lady used to ask me, Who will stand beside you with the Lord? For a long time I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I used to say, Angels.
Beneath a Meth Moon Page 3
