by Eden Butler
I wanted to be sick, thought maybe I would be; even got to my knees, slumping over the open hole in the board floor in case I threw up. Below I saw the twisted, long roots of the tree, how they went out into the yard, how they reminded me of twisted limbs and broken bones underneath the ground.
My head spun and swam and I couldn’t make the shake in my hands quit good enough. When the sound of my name came again, it took a full minute for the noise of it to hit my ears.
“Sookie?”
My whole body went shaky in relief when my addled brain realized it was Dempsey calling my name, not Andres or some devil from hell. When I didn’t move or say anything, he climbed up into the shack, just barely making it through the opening, he’d gotten so much bigger than when we were little.
“Hey.” He didn’t try touching me when he came in front of me, kneeling into a crouch as I backed against the wall, pulling my skirt over my knees. “What is it?”
His voice was so soft, so low just then. It felt like a whisper, like some song I knew but had never heard before. His tall height and the sweet scent of his skin knocked up inside my nose, stretching sensation and sweetness into every pore of my body.
“Sook?”
I wanted to take his hand when he reached for me. I wanted so much to let Dempsey put his arm around me and hug me close so I could wet his shirt with my tears and hold on to him. It would feel good, so good, just for a little bit, to disappear in the circle of his body and lay all my troubles down; to be with him in a world we could fashion together in that small shack resting within the limbs and leaves of my Mimi Bastie’s big ole oak tree.
But that would not do. Not with Andres probably after me. Not with him running his mouth over how his eye had gotten all purple and bruised. Not while Dempsey’s daddy was likely listening to all Andres had to say and was right now on the phone to the police, making them thunder up our gravel road to drag me into one of those big police cars.
Instead, I jerked at Dempsey’s outstretched hand, the stench of Andres’ breath still stuck in my sinuses, the feel of his grimy hands gripping my arms and the sound of ripping cloth, and I withdrew back into myself. It seemed I’d sully him somehow just by touching him.
But Dempsey was mule-stubborn, same as me and he cocked up an eyebrow, curious, a little worried before he dropped his hand to his knee. “Come now, Sook, tell me what’s got you spooked.” He inched closer, the heat of his body a comfort. The sweat had set down my back and though I’d run hard and fast in the small spring heat wave, I felt cold, like my bones were made of ice, and chills had moved over my skin, goose bumps on my arms, making me looked like a plucked chicken.
“I…” Could I tell him? How many times did Dempsey offer to hear me speak whatever fretted me? A dozen? A hundred more that he’d actually done it without needing to ask. He was my friend, always had been, even when his mama and daddy told him to keep away from me and my family. Even when his face was bloody and his lip busted, even then Dempsey still wanted to listen to whatever held my attention.
“Sook,” he started, reaching for me again. This time I didn’t flinch away. This time I wanted him to touch me, just a little to see if that touch would warm me up. But then Dempsey dropped his hand, nodding at my torn shirt. “Someone do this to you?” When I didn’t answer, Dempsey’s jaw went tight and his mouth went stiff, as though someone had whispered something dark and dirty in his ear and just the sound of it had his feathers ruffled. “Who the hell did this to you?” He leaned back, coming to his knees to stare down at me with his hands balled up tight at his side. “Was it…God, Sook, was it my brother?”
“What?” My voice was low, awed likely because I didn’t believe his question. Malcolm Simoneaux was nearly eighteen and hated the sight of anyone, man or woman, who didn’t look just like him and his people. He hated black folk worse than his daddy. Dempsey should have known better to ask, but right then to me he didn’t seem like he was having thoughts that made much sense at all.
“It was. That son of a bitch. I knew he was home. I knew he was drinking, if that son of a bit…” He went on mumbling to himself, pacing around in a circle before he said something rude and filthy under his breath and then Dempsey headed toward the opening that led to the ladder below.
“No!” He didn’t slow until I scrambled to grab him, pulling on his arm. “Dempsey, don’t be a fool. It wasn’t your brother. I swear.” He came around to face me, mouth still set hard and somber when he stared down at me. “It wasn’t Malcolm, cher, I promise.”
He took to looking me over, hard, but that small word, cher, worked like a balm on him, keeping the rise of fury from his head. He liked when I called him that which is why I never did it much. But the more Dempsey looked, the more frozen and raw I felt. Was there marks or bruises starting up where that old man had grabbed me, scratches? I was too scared to look, too caught up in the hard look on Dempsey's face. In my stillness, he looked me up and down, over my face, to the top of my head, back down to my face, over my cheekbones, until he stopped to stare at my mouth. I swear there was something peculiar about the look in his eyes then, how he took on the air of someone who hadn’t had anything at all to fill his belly. Dempsey stepped closer, resting his hands on my shoulders and I let him, liked how big his fingers felt on my skin, how one palm covered my collarbone completely. But then it was like the moment between us passed when he realized just how torn my shirt was and went all still.
His skin went pale white just as mine pinked up and heated over my cheeks as his gaze traveled down my neck, to my resting on the beige strap of my frayed undershirt.
“Who…” He cleared his throat, like something thicker than hay had taken root in the back of his mouth. “Who?”
It was the breath I let out that brought his attention back to my face and again his expression straddled somewhere between irate anger and fretting like none I’d ever seen from him before.
There was no sense in lying. Dempsey would believe me even if no one else would. No one who mattered to me anyway. “That Joe Andres was drunk and snuck up on me on the north side of your daddy’s sugarcane field.” He nodded once, and his jaw worked hard again so I hurried to keep him calm. “Likely he’s too drunk to know what he done…”
“What did he do?” The pressure of his fingers on my shoulder tightened.
“Nothing, Dempsey, he didn't get to nothing.” When his expression didn’t change, I grabbed his hand, twisting my fingers with his and pulled them both from my shoulder. “He tried to grab me and got hold of my shirt but…I…well, I socked him good in the eye.”
Dempsey’s laugh came quick, like a streak of lightning that makes the darkest night light up. It was a nice sound, something I didn’t hear near enough for my liking. “You punched that fat jackass?”
“Dempsey Simoneaux!” He shrugged, ignoring how I fussed at him for the cursing. Couldn’t be helped. Dempsey had probably never used such crude words out loud before now.
“Well, I’m speaking the truth. I doubt the good Lord would mind so much me calling a spade, a spade.”
The laugh that pulled from me felt nice, but not as much as how I lit up with things I didn’t know how to name when he pulled me close and let me rest my cheek against his chest.
I could have counted the seconds of my breath just then; I could have set them inside me like moments that would be precious if ever there came a time when the world had gone all black and dark and I needed something to remind me of the lightness I’d known. That moment, with Dempsey’s strong arms around me would have been the brightest light in my memories. It would have split away the darkness and made me happy for the blindness it caused.
It wasn’t smart to hope for things that would never be. It wasn’t my life that was charmed. When you live here, when you are as I was, as all my people would ever be, hope was a funny thing, especially when there was trouble stirring around the edges of our days. Like the rim of the levee just before it breaks, worries were coming. I knew that bec
ause they always did and no amount of wishing me and Dempsey could disappear from the world right then would keep the waters from spilling over.
“Dempsey…what if he comes after me?” I spoke that low, against the fabric of his cotton shirt. It smelled fresh, like he’d pulled it right off the line.
“Don’t you worry over that, Sookie.” He pulled back, lifting my face up with his knuckle. “You don’t ever have to worry about anyone hurting you, so long as I’m around.”
He was so sweet. Maybe a little stupid about how things worked, but Dempsey sure was a sweet boy. The frown came back on his face when I shook my head. “You can’t say that.”
“Can so.” I liked the way he tilted his head, how there was so many things he thought just then, each one showing themselves in the shift of his mouth; how it moved from frown to smile and back to something in between the two. He moved his hands around to touch my face, holding my head still like there was something he wanted to make sure I heard and knew to the marrow of my bones. I couldn’t breathe when he looked at me the way he did then, all serious and fierce. One look and he stole the air from my lungs.
“No matter where I am. No matter where I go, I won’t let anybody hurt you. Not ever.”
I wanted to believe him. There was a truth he spoke just then, something he uttered without a sound that lit up his eyes and made those high, sharp cheekbones look pink and bright. He had a nice face, good enough for the pictures, I’d wager. He was handsome and sweet, but not so smart about how our lives would always be.
“I wish I could believe that.” He went on holding my face and I stared at the shine in his eyes, how the dim light through the cracks and spaces between the walls around us shone bright in his gray eyes. “It would be nice, I think, to have someone always watching over me.”
“I mean it, Sook. With everything I am.” His touch got firmer when I shook my head again and Dempsey pulled me closer, my head resting on his chest. “As long as there is breath inside me, I’ll protect you.”
“I don’t need you protecting me.”
“Maybe not, but I need to do the protecting.”
He circled me in his arms, holding me to him, and I could feel his heart beating in his chest, strong and regular, safe.
“Why?”
It took him a long few seconds before he answered. Around us the night went on as it always had, as it always would. The owls and crickets made on with their noisy business, as the wind swept cool relief through the leaves around us. I stopped worrying about Andres and whether he’d be coming after me. Just then, everything went away, my thoughts, my worry, even the breath in my lungs until I heard Dempsey’s answer.
“Because, sweet Sookie. I love you something fierce.” And right then, the world stopped spinning. The axis of life became uneven and slow as Dempsey Simoneaux, a boy who’d been my friend, bent close to me, breath hot and sweet against my face and kissed me so slow, so soft just enough that my body felt electrified. Just enough that I knew that at that moment, my world slowly began to unravel.
Nash
On any given Thursday night at four a.m., I relive the accident.
The skyline is different. The noises of sirens and the low howl of dogs, and animals skirting along the tree lines, they’re different too. There are no coyotes in Brooklyn and few moments that are quiet enough to hear the damn things if there were. But sometimes on a Thursday morning at four, my body shakes me awake and there I am, twelve years old, holding my sister’s hand, listening from the hallway as the cops explain to the sitter about the accident.
“He was drunk. He’s been arrested. She didn’t make it.”
There wasn’t anything I remember more clearly from my childhood in Atlanta than those words.
It took a village, literally to keep me and Nat out of the system, even though the village was full of blood sucking mercenaries. There were enough Aunts and Uncles, enough cousins, that took pity on us after our grandfather died four years later—or, to be honest, took more to wanting the government payouts supposing watching over us gave them—to let us stick together until we could get the hell out of Atlanta as soon as we finished high school. Most of the time, I manage to keep all that past low down, hidden someplace where I keep all the things I don’t want to remember—like the memory of being fired for the first time, or the first girl who told me I wasn’t good enough for her. Those things got locked away with the memory of a parentless childhood. It stayed there and I never touched it. Until it comes on its own at four a.m. on any random Thursday.
“He was drunk.”
That bastard lived in the low down.
Four-fifteen and I watched from the roof deck of my building as two kids argued on the sidewalk outside of my building. A guy and girl, Latin from the look of them. The yelling sounded like Spanish anyway. I caught puta, understood what that meant, and shook my head when the guy started in with excuses his chica wasn’t feeling. The sky was dark, cloudy. Despite the noise and overhead fog, I could still catch a scent of rain peppering the air, kind of bitter and it set something cold and weary in my bones. The yelling got louder, pulling my gaze away from the dotted cityscape and small stars lighting up night. He was on his knees now, voice high and pathetic, reminding me why I didn’t mess around with anyone for too long. There was always drama. There was always stupidity that weighed you down and I’d never met anyone worth all that drama. This poor jackass was begging for her to stay, begging for the drama to slip around him like a noose.
Four-seventeen and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone.
“You following me?” I asked her, itching for something to do with my hands as Willow came close. She wore colors I’d never seen on her; neutral, boring, surprising. Wasn’t like her to wear beige or keep her hair neat and braided so tight. But I wasn’t going to care about her or what she did, convinced myself of it, didn’t I? The hell did it matter, her wearing boring ass clothes?
“No,” she said stepping closer to the edge of the roof. She held her arms crossed and I wondered why she looked so sad, her who was usually always smiling. “I just wanted some air.” She moved back, stepping behind me to sit in the wicker chairs set in a semi-circle around the Home Depot fire pit Mickey had bought last fall. It had cost him thirty bucks. Discounted for being a display. That was a little shopping tidbit I’d floated his way when he talked about charging us an extra fifty a month for “maintenance” on the roof deck.
But the pit and the chairs, even the bickering couple five stories below faded from my attention as Willow rested against the chair, feet propped on the arm of another one, her head tilted as she watched the black sky above us, and sighed.
“Everyone likes me.”
I told myself I shouldn’t bite. She was casting a line and wanted me to nibble. The kind of thing is that to say anyway? I should have turned my back on her and went down the stairs, leaving her to her sky and sighs and moods.
“It’s a family trait. My people are just universally liked.”
“That right?”
Hell. Look at me, biting at Willow’s line.
“It is. My parents are do-gooder types. They recycle and volunteer and love to go hiking in the mountains just to pick up trash left behind by other hikers. They go to Africa every summer to help build wells. I go with them, most of the time, and for the most part, people like us.” From the corner of my eye I glanced at her, spotted how her face seemed calm, like she was talking to hear the echo of her own voice against the night. But her body was rigid and she moved her foot in a quick tap that told me she wasn’t calm in the least. Those crossed arms, too, folded tighter as she went on. “We’ve never been told to mind our own business or to go back where we came from.”
Willow stood then, moving back to the edge of the roof but keeping her distance from me. Her voice was soft, a little beige like her clothes and when she continued, her attention was on the couple down below who’d abandoned their fight for making out against a light pole.
“You pro
bably think I’m some privileged little white girl who’s never had a bad day in her life, don’t you?” I only glanced at her, letting my lone arched eyebrow answer her question. She took that expression for what it was, shaking her head like she wasn’t surprised. “Yeah, I thought so,” Willow said. “But the thing is, Nash, my parents brought me to Africa and Yemen and Costa Rica and a thousand other places because they wanted me to see that privilege doesn’t give you a pass. It gives responsibility, at least it should. My Granny Nicola started it all, making cakes and pastries for her family, then her friends. Ten years later she was manufacturing ten thousand cakes and hundreds of thousands of scones and turnovers a month. She made our family wealthy. It wasn’t my parents’ money, or mine either, because none of us had earned it. Being born into wealth doesn’t make you rich. For my family, it meant we had to spread the good fortune we’d been given. We have to pay it forward.”
Hell, did I really have to be listening to this self-reverential, poor little rich girl bullshit at four in the morning? “You got a point?” The question was rude, but needed to be asked. She looked tired—there were small bags under her eyes and her face was drawn and shadowed, as though she hadn’t slept in a week. Had to be something more to it than bemoaning the burdens that rich white folks bear.
“I got a point,” Willow said, stepping close enough that I saw her eyes were rimmed red. “No one has ever avoided me in my life. Not growing up, whenever I’ve set my eyes on something important. Something that needed to be done. All the times I’ve hassled people to donate to one cause or another, pried their hands away from their eyes so they’d actually seen what was going on, or shamed some rich fat cat into building a dozen wells for villages on the other side of the world, not even those people avoided me.” She turned toward me and her mouth looked tight, as though she fought her anger and did a piss poor job of it. “You’re the first. Ever, in my life, and that really bugs me.”
