by Eden Butler
For a long while she only watched me. I read her expressions and the thoughts that seemed to move around her face as she kept quiet, sorting through whatever it was that kept her attention inside her own head. Finally, tears began to collect in her lashes and I stood away from the window reaching for her. “Will…”
“I can’t…Nash, I believe in everything. I have to. This life, it can’t be all there is. It’s just not that cut and dry. I’ve seen things, felt things that you wouldn’t believe. My belief, it’s important and I can’t just… If life can only be narrowed down to facts and evidence and something you can point to and say, ‘there it is’, then what I feel in my bones is a lie. And it can’t be a lie. It can’t be.”
Disappointment choked me as tears spilled down her cheeks, as she shook her head like she couldn’t believe me, as if I had erased her.
“This doesn’t have to be a deal breaker, Willow. It’s just silly…”
“No,” she said, voice high, shrill. “Whatever else it is, it’s not silly. Not what I believe and I could never…” The room had gone still. Only the sound of our breathing and the rustle of the sheet sounded as she moved away from me, picking up her clothes that had been discarded around the room. “I can’t be with someone that doesn’t have any faith, Nash. I can’t be with someone whose life is so damned narrow.”
I wanted to stop her. Something old and angry inside me burned in my stomach, knotted hard as she dropped the sheet and tugged on her clothes. Even as she reached for me, kissed my cheek, I wanted to pull her close, do away with the work she’d made covering herself up again. But Willow was too determined, too sure, too angry, and I could only watch her as she walked away, wondering what faith had taught her to slam the door on something she wanted. Worse yet, I wondered what logic told me the same thing.
Nash
Everything felt old and empty. Stale, like a hangover.
It was nearly four a.m. and Willow was everywhere and nowhere at all. My bed still felt warm where she’d been. My body cooling, starting to go numb every spot where she’d kissed me.
The streetlight outside was yellow, a dreary color that reminded me of a rainstorm, of sickness. I hated the dim light it shot through my room, between the slip of window from my partially open curtains. The pillow on the other side of the bed held three long strands of hair, Willow’s hair, and I grabbed the thing, tucked it under my chin, just to catch that jasmine scent; just to remind myself she’d been there.
Only then did I sleep.
New Orleans
There were things that weren’t done in the city. Not by folk like me. Not when there were so many eyes looking this way and that, waiting to see what we’d do and who we’d do it to. There was nothing for it, just the way of our world. Some bad men liked to keep us under their thumbs. They liked to remind us all that our kin had been owned by theirs not all that long ago. They liked to tell us how we were nothing, how our kids wouldn’t be nothing, just because they were small, stupid people with no notion of good sense. They were mean because it was in their nature. It was how they’d been reared and how they’d die. God help us, they were raising little ones to be just like them.
When there are eyes looking, judging, you need to be smart about the company you keep. Back on the farm was one thing; there was no nosey spying because the company we kept told the town straight where they’d be. But here in the city, where illegal liquor and cheap dope came easy as dying, boredom led to the devil’s business and damn us all, business was good.
Some things just weren’t done. They weren’t fittin’ at all. Like Sylv nosing around the Chambers cottage at all hours of the night because Lily let him put his hand inside her shirt. Or the way Ripper Dean took any girls with half a decent smile right off the street without anyone’s bye or leave. Sad fact was ole Ripper didn’t care if that was fittin’ or not. Or, the thing that made those staring eyes widen and those fat running mouths go off a mile a minute, when Dempsey Simoneaux, a white Cajun boy whose daddy had a special hatred for black folks, brought me, the light skinned daughter of a woman who sold illegal hooch, a bunch of white and yellow roses he picked right from his mama’s prize-winning garden.
Things like that happen, especially in the city, and folks tend to notice.
“You are a damn fool.” I wanted to say I was sorry for putting that look on Dempsey’s face. His smile got a little shaky then, and he lowered his arm, fist full of those pretty roses. But really, he should have known better.
Three white men I’d seen a few times around the Simoneaux place watched as I tugged on Dempsey’s arm and pulled him around to the alley just in back of Mama’s shop.
“I got these for you, Sookie. To make you feel better.”
“Don’t tell me why you got them. Lord, Dempsey, I know why you did.” It couldn’t be helped. The roses really had the fullest blooms and their scent, thick and sweet, blocked out the nasty smell of garbage and trashed liquor bottles that littered the ground next to us. I took the flowers, despite my fussing, and held them in front of my face, smelling that sweet perfume. “You should have waited.”
“No time like now.” He stepped closer, resting his palm on the brick wall at my back and I wondered if he’d dare to kiss me, right here, where anyone could look into the alley to find us standing close, our mouths just inches apart.
No. That wouldn’t do.
It was only him reaching forward, the space between us getting smaller and smaller that made the fog that had come with the smell of those roses lift from my head. Dempsey leaned, eyes already closed and I pushed him back with the flowers against his chest.
“Oh no you don’t, Dempsey.” He moved again, taking the flowers out of my hand to stand right in front of me and I shook my head. “No indeed. You stop right there.”
“Why would you want me to do that?” I hated that smile, just a little bit. I hated it because before it had loosened my strength that night in the fishing shack. It had me forgetting that I had no business kissing boys like Dempsey. By the end of that night my lips were swollen and beat with a throb from all the kissing. That smile told me enough that Dempsey wanted to make my lips throbbing and swollen again.
“Come on now…just a little kiss. I did bring you flowers.”
“Uh huh, from your mama’s garden. You had to steal them. She wouldn’t give the Wise Men a single flower for Jesus’s birth much less her son. Especially when he wants to give them to no-account colored girl like me.” He really didn’t think sometimes and it had me fuming. God knows the trouble he’d be in now. “She’s gonna whip you good.”
“Ah, sweet Sookie, it’s worth the beating…or it would be if you kiss me.” He was taller than me by about three inches and it was that long stretch of shadow that distracted me, that and the thick scent of his hair, the clean smell from his soap that come off his skin as he moved closer. Dempsey got his kiss, a slow, wet one, before my good sense returned and I pushed on his chest again.
“That’s enough. Go on, get out of here before your daddy’s people see us together.”
“I ain’t worried so much about that.” He moved closer, but stopped short when I shot him an ugly frown. Dempsey leaned on the wall next to me pulling one of the flowers from the bunch in my hand. “He don’t much care for Joe Andres and so when the fool told my daddy that you’d attacked him…” He went quiet when I let out of muffled noise between my breaths, but waved off my worried frown. “Daddy had to drag it out of him. Damn idiot didn’t want to go around telling people some girl got him good.”
“How is it they haven’t come looking for me?” My throat felt tight and I worried something fierce that Dempsey might have sassed his daddy just to keep the man from nosing after me. But looking at him quick, there wasn’t nothing that told me he’d been beaten. The same sweet, wide smile met me just then. The same thick top lip twitched a little when he smiled. The same gray-blue eyes shined, lit with something like laughter as he looked down at me.
“Because, So
ok…” There was a giggle between his breath that made me loosen some of my worry as Dempsey’s smile grew wide. “For once in my miserable life, my daddy believed me when I told him you weren’t to blame.”
“Wha…how is that possible?”
“Like I said, he don’t much care for Joe. He was likely to believe me when I said that fool was too drunk to remember passing out in the north field. My daddy believed me when I fibbed a little and said I’d seen him falling over the half-cut stump of that oak that got struck by lightning last summer.”
It was unbelievable. Dempsey’s daddy didn’t agree with him about anything. Dang sure didn’t seem the type that would listen to his son over one of his loud, drunk friends. But the longer I watched Dempsey, the wider his smile became and just like that my worry didn’t feel like such a heavy thing.
“So, your daddy isn’t going to change his mind? They aren’t gonna come looking for me?”
Just then Dempsey’s smile went a little weak, like he’d only just realized how worried I’d been, how scared the threat of his daddy’s anger had made me. Until I spoke it, if I’m telling the truth, I didn’t know how worried I was myself. But Dempsey’s lowering smile and the way his tall body ate up the space between us as he stood in front of me had me not remembering that I’d been so scared.
“How many times do I have to say it, Sookie?” He moved closer still and I swore the air around us started to sizzle. There was heat that I didn’t reckon came from the humidity in the spring air. The noise of the city fell away then, just with one look from the boy who didn’t care about things that were fittin, things that those staring eyes would eat up like a juicy steak. “Long as I’m breathing, I’ll look after you.” He held my face, tilting my chin up, so close, just inches from his mouth. His breath was sweeter today than it had been Saturday and I wondered for a second what he’d eaten that made it seem so. “Promise,” he said, like a whisper only half remembered.
And just when Dempsey pressed his lips against mine, the noise of the city and the stench of the alley came back, like the ripping of a bandage on a sore not healed.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I’d never heard Dempsey scream so loud, all flustered and surprised. Not even when he wanted to kill his daddy for breaking one of his ribs, but just then it seemed his anger would bubble over.
Sylv pushed Dempsey away from me, standing between us like some sad buffer to keep my friend from me. “You need to get on, Dempsey. Right damn now.”
“The hell I do.”
They stood there squaring off, like a dozen dumb men do in the city every night. But this wasn’t a fuss over a woman they both wanted or money won and lost in a round of dice. This was my brother, who had always liked Dempsey almost as much as me, wanting to keep us both safe. This was Dempsey thinking only he could do that job.
When Dempsey showed no real sign that he’d back down, Sylv shook his head, lowering his shoulders like some sign that he wasn’t really mad. “Man, I mean it now. This thing here between you two, it stops right now.”
I didn’t much like my brother making decisions for me and I gave him a look, mouth tight from the quick flash of irritation that rushed up inside me. “Don’t you tell me my business, Sylv.”
“Think I need to since you won’t listen.” He didn’t bother looking my way as he spoke, seemed too wrapped up in watching Dempsey like he needed to be ready for a tussle when it came.
Dempsey was honest. Always had been, even when his face was all bloody and his eye had swollen shut and my Bastie had asked how he’d gotten that way, his answer had come without him taking a breath to invent some lie. “My daddy beat me for helping mend your fence, Mrs. Bastie.” Part of me thought he didn’t know how to lie so when he looked right at Sylv, all the anger gone from his face, I believed him. I think so did Sylv and maybe that was the problem.
“Sylv, I’d never let anyone come near her. Not my blood…no one.”
My brother let out a long, slow breath, like he wanted everything Dempsey said to be true. They’d been friends a long time. Maybe they weren’t close like me and Dempsey were, but Sylv liked him fine. That’s why I knew it hurt Sylv to tell Dempsey he wanted him gone. Maybe he didn’t really want to see the back of Dempsey, but in Sylv’s mind it was the only way to keep us all safe.
Our world wouldn’t understand. Not now, not a year from now, and with my brother shaking his head, with him giving Dempsey a look that seemed like good riddance, I realized that maybe Sylv was right. There were men on the other side of this alley hell bent on seeing the end of my family, of all families like ours. They’d want Dempsey to keep away and would likely go about making that happen in any way they could. It’s what his daddy had been trying to beat into his head for years.
Sylv shook his head, took a second to rub the back of his neck like the argument with Dempsey worked something hard into his body. “That’s not a promise you can keep. Is it?” He was right. Though Dempsey wanted me safe, maybe thought he could manage it, being here in New Orleans, being the people we were in New Orleans left no guarantees. Sylv seemed to know just then that Dempsey could make no promises. We all did. “Didn’t think so.”
I broke in. “Sylv, don’t you go stepping on toes.” It was a sad try at getting my brother and my Dempsey to calm. But Sylv had the notion in his head that he was right. He was my mama’s son. He was my brother. He wouldn’t back away until he had Dempsey admitting the truth.
“He can’t even keep that no good daddy of from beating on him. You think he’ll be able to keep you out of that man’s way?”
“I would.” Dempsey’s try was weak, his voice small but his eyes were bright again, lit with a fire that I thought might shoot out his fingertips.
“You’d want to.” Sylv stepped back, finally looking away from Dempsey to glance around the alley, watching, holding his breath like something lurked just beyond the spot where the alley and street met. “Don’t mean you could.”
“I can protect her,” Dempsey tried again, head jerking toward the sound of feet moving on brick behind us.
“That’s not your job.” Mama’s face was drawn, a little sad as she walked toward us, hands moving around in the apron she wore as she dried them.
“Mrs. Lanoix.”
“This thing, Dempsey,” she interrupted, “it’s just gone on too long. Sookie is becoming a woman. Time for her to be thinking about starting a family of her own with a man of her own.”
My face flamed and something low and heavy started to build in my gut. Mama had never talked to me much about marrying anyone, but the past few months she’d mention me fixing myself up a little. She even had Bastie sew two new dresses for me and Mama gave me a pair of her small heeled shoes with the gold buckles. I’d reckoned she was gearing up to push me at some business, maybe have me work in some rich folks’ home. But this? No. That was something she’d kept quiet about.
“There’s plenty of men in the city that like the look of her.” She didn’t even glance at me when she said that, as though I wasn’t even there, like I didn't matter. “Men with jobs and homes. Men that will take care of her.”
“I…I can…”
“You can what?” Mama stepped closer, arms folded over her chest as she glared at Dempsey. “You gonna marry my little girl? You and Sookie gonna live up in the tree house where the owls shit and sleep?”
“Mama!” She still didn’t bother to look at me, keeping all her attention on Dempsey, striking hard while his face paled and his eyes went narrow. She kept at him, speaking sense that only sounded as such to herself. “I’m sorry, cher, but that’s a fairytale and we don’t live in the make believe.” She paused for a half second and the expression on her face went flat; a long line pulled on her mouth, but she set her jaw as though what she said would have to be taken for the truth. “It’s time you keep away from her. For both of your own good.”
“No.” Dempsey’s breath came out in a whoosh of sound and air. I’d never seen
him look so heavy with fear. But the gray in his eyes got bigger and he took to running his hand along the back of his neck as though he had to hold himself back to keep from screaming. “No. You can’t do that.” Mama seemed down with him, had tugged on my arm and pulled me back toward the street and away from Dempsey, but he kept on us, following along. When he spoke, his voice went high and shrieking. “You can’t put me out. You can’t…”
“Cher, how can I put you out?” Mama said, dropping my arm to face Dempsey. “You don’t live with us. You need to go back to your own people. Be with your own people.”
“You can’t…Sookie...” He stopped, reaching toward me. He’d almost touch my hand before Mama slapped his hand away, and stood between us like a stone. Dempsey stepped back and kept his gaze down, as though he didn’t dare look at her. Like he couldn’t stand to see her face when he begged. His voice came out all ragged. “Sookie…she’s my people. You…you all are.”
“Dempsey, no…” I said, covering my mouth. He broke my heart just then. His life and ours had gotten tangled up together when we were kids. Bastie had cleaned his busted face and Mama had fed him when his own people wouldn’t. Now she was telling him he wasn’t wanted anymore and the look on his face, the streak of hurt and sorrow breaking his stubborn frown until tears made his eyes look like glass was more than I could stand to watch.
Mama pushed me out of the alley so I couldn’t see what she did to Dempsey, so I couldn’t tell how she’d get him to leave. But I heard what he said clear as day and each sound he made broke my heart a little more.
“She’s all I have, Mrs. Lanoix. Sookie’s all I have in the world.”
Me and Dempsey came from different worlds. We moved together like otters, floating side by side, letting the world around come over us, like a wave, rushing, passing and the whole time we held on to each other. But that was the things that children did. That’s what we’d done when were kids and didn’t know about things like family and anger and the differences that kept people apart. We didn’t know about money and poverty and struggling because all the things we’d needed for most of our lives had been given to us. Struggle had been only as important as what game we would play in the backyard of my Bastie’s home. That had been all we fretted over. It had been just as important, just as real as it should have been, to little kids.
