Of course angels. But who else? Who will stand beside you, Laurel?
The last time she asked, we were sitting on a bench by the water. The sun was dark red, and no wind was blowing. Late afternoon, and soon Mama would cash out her drawer at the Dollar Store, pull off her apron, rub her growing belly and punch the clock. Then she’d say good-bye to those staying for the late shift and head down to the water to meet us. The three of us would sit for a while, sharing the candy bars Mama’d brought us, making dinner plans and watching the fishing boats come in and go out. These were our days in the Pass—slow that way and unsurprising.
And while we waited for Mama to come, me and M’lady talked. And talked.
While you’re living, M’lady said. It’s the Rocks in your life that will stand beside you. Your words, your friends. Your family.
How many Rocks does a person get, M’lady?
M’lady put her hand on my thigh and smiled out at the water, her hair a long blue braid down her back.
If you’re lucky, she said, you get as many as you need.
As me and Kaylee sat there, letting the chocolate melt in our mouths and staring out at nothing, I let the thoughts of M’lady move over me, slow and calming as a breeze. It’d been a long time since I’d felt anything but sadness when I thought of her, and sitting there with the sun coming down, with Kaylee all new and promising beside me, I felt like M’lady was right close somewhere, taking every little bit in . . . and smiling.
Texas, I said to Kaylee. I bet we’d like it there.
t-boom
I MADE THE SQUAD EASILY. Maybe because I’d spent the two years before in Aunt G.’s yard, doing cartwheels and back bends, walk overs and round-offs. Some mornings, Aunt G. came outside to find me hanging from my cousins’ jungle gym—just hanging there, my mind miles and miles away. Oh, my stars, Laurel, she’d say. We need to get you into some gymnastics. But it didn’t happen. We were always leaving Jackson but never gone from there. Jobs turned up for Daddy in other places. Then they fell through. Friends promised work on fishing boats, then there wasn’t work. Again and again, the hope rising, then falling. Rising and falling so that our small bags remained half packed, our toiletries remained travel size. Me and Jesse Jr. outgrew our clothes—he got my cousins’ old stuff, I picked out things from the Salvation Army. And the days passed with me twirling around Aunt G.’s yard, maybe thinking if I hung long enough, spun fast enough, flipped high enough, the image of water pouring over Pass Christian would erase itself, melt into the spinning inside my head and disappear. It never did.
Then I was in Galilee, spinning in front of a long line of girls, cartwheeling and back-flipping and throwing my hands into the air until the captain of the squad said, Well, duh! Hell yes on you! And just like that, I was a Tiger, dressed in black and orange, running out onto the basketball court behind Kaylee, my pom-poms high in the air.
And always, always, there is Kaylee—my reader, my neighbor, my best friend—close to me.
Stop, look and listen! We are the mighty Tigers!
Stop, look and listen! We are the mighty Tigers!
Stop!
And then T-Boom is running onto the court, number twenty-three, eleventh-grade co-captain.
Give us some more of that Boom-Boom!
T-Boom with his hands up, high-fiving the other players as he runs through the double line of them.
His arms are long and pale. When he gets close to me, I see there’s a dark blue bowl tattooed on the left one and below that bowl, in thick letters, the word gumbo. Gumbo like a dream coming toward me.
Who will stand beside you, Laurel?
Then I’m in M’lady’s kitchen, Pass Christian heat thick around us and the pot bubbling, steam rising from it, the smell of it so now, so right here. T-Boom, take me home . . . Time stops here.
The crowd is loud but then it’s not. The people are all around us and then they’re not—just me and T-Boom, with no sound, no people, between us. Just me and T-Boom, seeing each other—not for the first time, really, but, yes, for the first time. Because all those times before this night, all through the fall and early winter, he was just another guy on the team, just Boom-Boom, Number Twenty-Three, taking foul shots from the line, dribbling the ball down the court. Before, he was just jump shots and layups, laughing with his teammates while we practiced cheer after cheer after cheer.
T-Boom, please take me home . . . And then the crowd is back, like a loud wind blowing around me. Stop, look and listen! We’re yelling and we’re stomping and clapping and throwing our pom-poms in the air and remembering to smile, but there is that word, and there is T-Boom, circling around me. Stop!
I think he likes you, Kaylee whispers each time T-Boom looks my way. He’s home to me, and I don’t even know him. He’s salt sea air and hot sand. He’s good things in a bowl and memory.
laurel
YOU’RE THE NEW ONE, aren’t you? T-Boom asked me. You coming with us over to the 7-Eleven?
We had just won against Donnersville, and me and the other cheerleaders were walking out of the gym beside the basketball players. Kaylee’s mother was going to pick us up later, and I was sleeping over at her house. Kaylee’s eyes got big, and she nudged me, whispered, I told you he likes you! Say yes! So I said, Yeah. What else did I know that night but “yeah” for anything T-Boom wanted, anything he asked.
You like to party? he asked.
Yeah.
And there it was, my cheeks burning up, T-Boom smiling down at me, the excitement coming from everywhere.
A counselor at Second Chances said, Go backwards in your life. Start from the place before the first time you ever saw the moon.
Stop!
And I’m smiling now as Kaylee pulls my ponytail. It’s that blond hair, she whispers. Boys go crazy for blondes.
But it’s more white than blond. White like my mother’s and maybe M’lady’s before hers became blue. So white that people ask again and again, Is that your natural hair color?
Black and orange pom-poms bouncing against our legs as we run out of the gym—We are the mighty Tigers!
And when I look back, Jesse Jr. and my daddy are still in the stands, blowing me good-bye kisses. We’ll see you tomorrow and two thumbs up from my daddy, his grin wide. Good job, Laur!
Good job, Laur, Jesse Jr. echoes, sticking his tiny thumbs up into the air.
Go backwards, the counselor said. And don’t stop when it gets painful. Don’t stop when it gets hard.
T-Boom. Co-Captain Cutie wants you! Kaylee says. Crazy, huh? But there is a longing in her voice—her whole life in Galilee, two years on this team, and here I come. Still wet behind the ears, M’lady would say. And the co-captain of the b-ball team wants to know if I like to party.
Yeah, I like to party!
Behind the 7-Eleven, plowed snow was piled high, with more snow coming down on top of it. T-Boom smelled like sweat and cold and a whole lot of familiar things. Smelled like someone I’d known forever. And me finally finding my words, finally finding the question I’d been wanting to ask.
How come you have that gumbo tattoo . . . ?
T-Boom laughed. His laugh was sweet, like somebody younger, somebody surprised by their own laughter.
I’m all mixed up, he said. I’m always all mixed up. Just like the crazy-good gumbo my Louisiana grandma makes.
And the word sounded like a song. Louisiana.
Maybe he played with my hair, shaking snow from it, pulling it out from where I’d tucked it inside my coat. It’ll get all wet, I said. Don’t. But I didn’t want his hand moving too far away from me, so I let the word come quiet, fade quick as it left my mouth.
He kissed me. And his lips were soft and warm and familiar, familiar like this wasn’t my first kiss but my hundredth kiss, my hundredth T-Boom kiss. But it wasn’t. It wa
s my first kiss, spinning inside gumbo and T-Boom and the sound of cheers echoing off the hardwood bleachers and snow whirling around me.
He said, I hear you come from Mississippi. How’d you get so far from home?
I just did, I said. I just dropped from the sky.
Well, I guess I’m lucky if girls like you just be dropping down from the sky.
The sky was gray where I dropped from. Then it was black. Then the land beneath my feet was gone. I didn’t say this. Didn’t tell T-Boom about my before life.
What else does your Louisiana grandma make?
Everything. You sound just like her. Slow-talking Southern drawl. He touched my hair again. I could marry you in a minute.
My face was hot, and the snow falling on it melted quickly. M’lady’s voice shot into my head. Find your husband—somebody you love a lot and loves you more . . . You all right, Laurel?
Yeah.
T-Boom pulled me to him again. He didn’t try to kiss me again, just held me like that, close to his body, until M’lady’s voice faded away and warm air crept up where the cold had been. I breathed deep into his coat and closed my eyes. I could hear Kaylee and some of the other girls laughing on the other side of the 7-Eleven. Way far off, I could hear the train moving through—going on through Missouri to get people down to Louisiana.
T-Boom pulled back away from me and took something out of his coat pocket.
You shivering like crazy, he said.
I looked closer at the clear plastic bag T-Boom was holding. There was something in it that looked like powder that seemed to be glowing in the moonlight. For a moment, I just stood there next to him, staring at that little piece of moon in his hand. Then he rubbed the bag back and forth with his fingers some more, opened it, took a little bit out and sniffed it off his finger. I watched the powder disappear inside T-Boom’s nose. He closed his eyes, let his head fall back and smiled.
What is that?
T-Boom opened his eyes slowly and looked at me.
What’s that you got, T-Boom?
Then he looked at me a minute longer before holding it out. Something that’s gonna take all that shivering far, far away.
galilee moon
THE FIRST TIME T-Boom held the moon to my nose, his fingers were warm and shaking. He touched one to his tongue, then dipped it into the bag and held it up for me. Seems slow motion, remembering now the way I moved my head down so that my nostril was right over that little bit of moon. The way T-Boom whispered sniff hard, and so I did, feeling something bitter drip down the back of my throat and then my head filling up with so many different beautiful things that I had to lean back against the 7-Eleven wall and let it drop down. I could feel the air on my teeth. Could feel something that must have been heaven moving through my body so fast and slow at the same time that I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh real loud or cry or just let T-Boom move closer to me, lean in and add his kisses to all the beautiful other things. Then the whole world was moving fast in front of me and I jumped up high, did a quick flip in the air and laughed.
T-Boom watched me, smiling like he’d seen this a hundred times before. You feel good, don’t you?
And I did. I felt great.
I felt like I was holding up the whole world and there was no water anywhere, no roads in front and behind me filled with empty land and tore-up houses. No past. Just this new, just this amazing, just this forever now.
Later on, when Kaylee came back behind there to get me, she said, My mom’s here, Laurel. We gotta go. And I realized then my fingers were near blue from cold I didn’t even feel. I looked hard at Kaylee—trying to see her clear, but she was wavy, standing right there but with all these shadows swaying around her.
You look wild-eyed. Was it that good? Kaylee whispered as we started walking away. But I wasn’t listening to her anymore. I was thinking about T-Boom and the moon and how I’d never known a person could feel a whole lot of things all at once that way and how glad I was we’d moved to Galilee because if it wasn’t for this town, how would I have ever met T-Boom?
We got in Kaylee’s mom’s car that was all warm and humming. I put my head on Kaylee’s shoulder and whispered, I think I love him. And maybe Kaylee laughed. Or maybe she just got quiet and stared out into the darkness.
happiness
LATE THAT NIGHT, and me and Kaylee sitting in her living room, the TV on but turned down—popcorn between us. Me not sitting so much as moving around and trying to be still, but how could I? How could I ever be still again?
Kaylee said, Why are you so fidgety?
I pressed my feet hard against the floor. Pressed my hands hard against each other, sat on the edge of the couch, felt the tingling running through me, making me want to jump.
T-Boom likes me! I just spent a whole hour making out with him! You’d be jumping out of your skin, too.
Can he kiss?
I couldn’t stop nodding and smiling. My lips hurt. Maybe from the kissing. Maybe from the smiling. Maybe from the burn of the moon, I didn’t know, but whatever it was, I didn’t want it to ever stop.
Kaylee smiled. Her teeth were straight and white. With her dark and curly hair, she was so beautiful. She turned back toward the TV, twisting her curls around each other with one hand. A movie was on. A couple was dancing in it. The man held the woman in his arms. I thought about T-Boom.
My leg started to shake on its own. I tried to press it hard into the floor, but it wouldn’t stop. Kaylee was looking at the TV and maybe talking about the game, but my mind was whirling. I got up again and started walking. If I had my way, I’d walk all the way back to T-Boom and his little square of moon.
I walked from one end of the living room to the other. There was a painting of Kaylee hanging on the wall above a small table. She was little in the picture. Wearing a pink and purple dress. Her hair was in braids with a million ribbons tied at the end. I tried to wrap my mind around being still enough to tie all those ribbons and couldn’t.
I did the steps back across the room, trying to touch her ceiling with each jump. We are the mighty Tigers!
I pulled at one of Kaylee’s curls and watched it spring back. I jumped around her, singing, I kissed him, I kissed him, I kissed that cute co-captain to the tune of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.”
Kaylee laughed. I used to love when my mom sang that song to me, she said. The real version, not your crazy made-up thing. I always wanted a green-and-yellow basket, and I always got so mad when that boy took her love letter. She started singing, I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. I dropped it. I dropped it. On the way I dropped it. A little boy picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Kaylee’s singing voice was sweet and shy. I listened to her, trying to remember what songs my mother used to sing. None came to me, and I all of a sudden wanted Kaylee to stop singing, stop making me remember that I couldn’t remember.
I like my version better, I said. That singer’s trying to force it to rhyme. Even a little kid could do that. I’m just a better songwriter, that’s all. I pulled her up. Let’s put on some music.
Kaylee and I danced hard around her living room, and the moving and singing loud felt so perfect, so right. I didn’t want to ever stop.
Look at you, Laurel, Kaylee said. You’re happy. I like the way happy looks on you.
She took my hand and spun me a bunch of times. Then did a high kick and sent the popcorn flying. For days and days, we laughed about that.
making the moon
USED TO BE YOU could make it easy, T-Boom explained to me, his eyes bright, his arm around my shoulder, dark and warm inside his car, the moon moving through us making the world beautiful and bright. Go to Walgreens and get your decongestant . . . get everything you need.
T-Boom’s arm tightening around my shoulder. No love like this since Mama, and since
M’lady’s arm around my shoulder saying, Laurel, one day you’re gonna . . . but no! No more. No Pass Christian or Jackson . . . Just the bright beauty, just T-Boom, his arm and the moon. Deep breath, and everything else is gone again. Deep breath and another sniff from T-Boom’s beautiful finger.
They lock it all up now, though. They make you come in with a license. Stupid meth heads messed it up for everybody.
You can make this, T-Boom?
Yup. Got a runner—guy over in Gaston. His dad’s a doctor. Gets me what I need most of the time. I found a house not too far from here. Like my own little laboratory. It’s gonna make me rich.
I thought you said you’re all mixed up. Don’t sound mixed up to me. Sounds like somebody with all kinds of big plans.
I moved closer to him, closed my eyes when he kissed me. The sun was starting to go down, and we were parked behind school. I’d told my daddy I had cheering practice, and he’d smiled, said he’d take Jesse Jr. for pizza and maybe they’d save me some. There were other cars parked around us. The lights at the top of the flagpole had just come on and were shining bright, lighting up the track. I felt like I could run a whole mile around it and keep on going. Go so fast and so far . . . All I ever think about, T-Boom said, is living happily ever after. He laughed. It was a sad, embarrassed laugh. Can’t believe I’m even saying that to anybody.
I’m not anybody.
T-Boom looked at me. I know. That’s why I know I can say it to you.
If somebody would have said Imagine perfection, Laurel, I would have imagined us just this way, with the track like a promise of something better. You just had to keep chasing it, keep dreaming it. I would have imagined the inside of T-Boom’s car and me and him and the silence. And somewhere Mama and M’lady, talking soft and waiting for me to come home. I would have imagined a night exactly like this one, only with them living. A night where the present was the same. But the past was different.
Beneath a Meth Moon Page 4
