by Jesmyn Ward
On the way to the graduation, Ma-mee sat in the front seat with one arm out the window. While her fingers felt at the seam of the glass, her unseeing eyes turned to blink watery and half-closed at the bayou as the wind pushed thick and heavy as a hand at her throat. Paul drove, his blue short-sleeved button-down shirt fastened to his neck, his hands careful on the steering wheel as he slowly followed the curves; his fists were positioned at ten and two. Already, he was sweating dark rings under his arms. Christophe and Joshua sat awkwardly in the backseat of the Oldsmobile with their legs open at the same angles as their uncle’s forearms and their arms akimbo at their sides. They leaned away from each other and watched the bright green marsh grass lining the side of the road, the water, interrupted by islands thick with pelicans and white cranes and brush, slide by. The bayou splayed out away from the gray asphalt on both sides, eclipsed the horizon, and sizzled with cicadas and crickets. The twins’ windows were rolled down as well.
Ma-mee hated air-conditioning. She never wanted it on in the car, and she refused to install an air-conditioning unit in the house. She said the cold air made her feel like she couldn’t breathe, and that it made her short of breath. So in the summer months, they sweated. The boys grew up accustomed to the wet heat, the droning indoor fans, the doors that swelled and stuck with the rise in temperature. In their shared room, they slept on top of their twin beds’ coverlets with their mouths open, their spindly limbs and knobby knees and elbows exposed, and wore only white briefs. As they grew older, they stripped their beds to the fitted and flat sheets, and took to sleeping in old gym shorts, or boxers.
Joshua propped one arm on the door, and rested his hand on his chin. He didn’t lean back because he didn’t want to crush his curls flat against the headrest. Outside, the edge of the road shimmered, and ahead the road wavered so that it looked as if snakes, tens of them, were crossing the road in the distance. When he was little he’d always been amazed when they disappeared the closer he got: but then again, back then he’d twisted around in his seat facing the rear window because he’d thought the moon and the sun followed the car, and he liked to watch them sail through the sky and chase him. He looked over to Christophe, who had arranged his head and arm similarly, and was looking intently out the other window. As they were walking to the car, Christophe whispered his warning about the possibility of seeing Sandman there. Joshua had started to laugh at the impossibility of it. Then Joshua had looked at Christophe’s mouth, and he’d stopped laughing and nodded: yes, he’d watch out for Sandman. The set of Christophe’s shoulders as they got in the car made him think of Cille: he wondered if Christophe was wondering if she was coming, if perhaps Ma-mee knew she was coming and was trying to keep it a secret so it would be a surprise. He let his hand fall out the window and drag in the current of the wind: she would wear red, her favorite color, he knew.
They arrived at the school ten minutes before the start of the program. With their gowns held gingerly in their hands, they climbed out of the car and walked across the small parking lot, past the sprawling redbrick buildings couched among the moss-strewn oaks and the football field stretching away to the left, to the gym directly behind the cluster of classrooms. The family entered the gym together and stood still for a moment; they were a small group in a milling confusion of parents and students and relatives.
Every other person led neon balloons that read “Congratulations Class of 2005” in yellow and sported tails of sparkling, curly streamers, and carried cards stuffed fat with money. The smell of perfume and cologne was thick in the air. The basketball court had been remade into an auditorium: folding metal chairs were lined in precise rows down the length of the floor. The more punctual family members claimed choice seats in the metal rows while the less punctual consigned themselves to the bleachers. While Uncle Paul led Ma-mee by the elbow to her seat next to Aunt Rita and the rest of the extended family at the front of the gym near the long dais that served as the stage, Joshua and Christophe skirted the crowd and found their way to the rows of graduating students. The graduating class had nearly two hundred students, but still, they filled only around ten rows: St. Catherine High was a small high school, even with all the students from the town of St. Catherine and its country neighbor, Bois Sauvage. About half the students were white, half were black, and there was a smattering of Vietnamese. While most of the Vietnamese kids’ parents had immigrated to the area after the Vietnam War to work in the shrimping and fishing industries, most of the black and white families had been living in the two towns since their foundings, and some of them even shared last names with each other, which was the result of little-acknowledged intermarriage. Their seating in the gym belied their social interactions: the two groups lived mostly segregated lives.
Joshua peered into the crowd and saw Laila; he waved. She had eyes that turned to slits when she laughed, a curvy waist, and lips he thought about kissing every time he saw her, but he’d never told her that. He and Christophe had lost their virginity to two sisters from St. Catherine when they were fifteen. Dunny had taken them along when he’d gone to their house to visit the oldest sister. While Dunny disappeared in the bedroom with his girl, Christophe and Joshua had sat sweating on the sofa. Lisa, the middle sister, had just walked over and sat on Christophe’s lap and flirted with him. She laughed at his jokes. Within minutes, they’d disappeared down the hallway. Nina, the youngest, had sat next to Joshua and told him she had seen him around school—and did he think she was cute for a ninth-grader? When he’d told her yes, she’d kissed him. The next thing he knew, she was partly naked and on top of him and the remote control was digging into his back and the TV went black and he didn’t care.
Afterward, Christophe had laughed when Dunny asked him about it, but Joshua had been quiet in the backseat. Since then, every time he had sex seemed a lucky accident, while Christophe grew more and more confident. He had just broken up with his latest girlfriend, he said, for being too clingy. Christophe tugged him toward their seats. Joshua and Christophe found their assigned chairs in the “D” row; Christy Desiree sat on their right, and Fabian Daniels on their left. Christy was busy pulling at her blond hair and reapplying lip gloss. Fabian curved into his seat with his arms crossed over his chest: he looked as if he were sinking. Joshua ignored Christy and perched at the edge of his chair, scanning the program.
“So what y’all going to be doing after this?”
Christophe turned to Fabian and adjusted his robe where it had bunched beneath his legs. He could hardly move. He knew it was going to be wrinkled when he walked across the stage, but he didn’t want it to be too wrinkled. He knew Aunt Rita would talk.
“Look for a job, I guess. You don’t know anybody trying to get rid of a old car for cheap, do you?”
“Naw.” Fabian pushed his cap up and back on his head since it had begun to slip down over his dark, broad forehead. “If I hear something, I’ll let you know. I probably won’t hear nothing before I leave—I’m going offshore. My uncle already got my application in. I start in two weeks.”
“I couldn’t be out there on that water all the time, cooped up. I’d go crazy.” Christophe shifted his robe again, resettling it flatly beneath him. “Who knows, though. They make good money. Maybe when I get older, I’d go offshore for that kind of money.” The only way he could ever consider leaving Bois Sauvage to work was if he was older, and only if Ma-mee was gone. She’d spent her entire life working for one rich white household or another to earn money to feed them, dressing them when they were younger in clothes her employers had given her to take to the Salvation Army, providing for them the best she could. Now it was their turn.
The hum of conversation in the gym was almost deafening, and already Christophe was growing tired of the rustling of programs, the shrieking of small children, the loud boasting of men, and the sense of interminable wait. He hated official shit like this. He just wanted to get his diploma and hear his name over the loudspeaker, the light patter of applause, and then get to th
e cookout, to the rest of the summer, to the rest of his life. He was ready to be done with school; he was tired of watching his principal, sweating at the neck, now barking orders at the first five rows, his teachers, dressed in long, loose dresses replete with maiden collars, darting around nervously, the secretaries, bored and severe, picking at the microphone and the fake flowers next to the podium. The gym was cold, and he felt the sweat dry on him and goose pimples rise on his arms under his gown as the satin, now cool like water, slid over them. The principal, Mr. Farbege, leaned into the row and barked, “Remember your cues!” and Christophe barely resisted the urge to flip him off. Joshua leaned over to Christophe, the program in his hand.
“Look at this,” he said.
Joshua thought she might do something like this. The only reason he was looking at the program was to look at the family advertisements in the back: he knew that he’d find at least a couple of choice photographs of his classmates in embarrassing ads that said things like “You’re a star! Follow your dreams” and “From Maw-maw and Paw-paw. We love you.” There, on the last page, was a small ad, measuring around three by five inches. In it was a small picture of him and Christophe; it had been taken when they were five. Cille had asked Aunt Rita to take it, a picture of all three of them, on the day she left for Atlanta. She was kneeling on the ground between them with her arms over both of their shoulders: her smile was wide, and she had sunglasses on, large dark ovals, because as Christophe remembered it, she had been crying. At her sides, the twins looked like small, young-faced old men: their T-shirts hung on them, their heads were cocked to the side, and neither of them was looking toward the camera. Joshua was looking off into the distance, his fists clutching the bottom of his shirt as he pulled it away from his small round stomach. Christophe’s eyes were squinted nearly shut, and the set of his mouth was curved downward and puckered: he looked as if he had just eaten something bitter, like he looked on the day they snuck the small, bitter grapes from Papa’s old grapevine that grew curled on crude posts behind the house and ate them.
Under the picture was printed in small, bold-faced print: Congratulations to Joshua and Christophe. Love, Cille. That was it. Joshua knew as soon as he saw the small picture, the minuscule line, that she wasn’t coming. He knew that she wasn’t already sitting in the audience with Aunt Rita, that she wasn’t just running late, that she wouldn’t appear at their cookout with the rest of the family, that she wasn’t just going to walk casually out of the kitchen with a pot in her arms to set on the long wax-covered table beneath the trees while the outdoor fans buzzed in the background and blew her dress away from her legs. Joshua let Christophe take the paper as he leaned further back and down in his chair. He purposefully spread his legs to take up more space so that Christy squeaked as she had to smash her knees together to make room for him; he hated her lip gloss and her prissiness and for a second he felt a strong urge to press his hand across her face, to smudge her makeup. He didn’t turn and say he was sorry.
Christophe read the program and folded it in fourths and placed it in his back pocket along with his own program. Who knows, he thought, one day Joshua might actually want it. He heard Mr. Farbege giving the opening remarks, and he tuned out as he began to make a list in his head of where he and Joshua could go to look for jobs: Wal-Mart, the grocery store in St. Catherine, the McDonald’s.
Joshua ignored the valedictorian’s and salutatorian’s speeches, the cheesy slide show (he and Christophe were in one picture: their hands in their pockets, they stood outside on the benches used for break—he thought that Christophe looked like he was high). When the principal began calling graduates’ names, Joshua waited patiently as he watched the other students cross the dais: some of them danced and played the crowd for laughs when they got their diplomas, some pumped their fists in the air, while others walked across quickly, heads down, nervous, and seemed to shy away from the applause that clattered from the stands.
“Christophe DeLisle.”
Christophe rose, walked to the podium, and smoothed his gown. Once there, he shook Mr. Farbege’s hand with his left and grabbed his diploma with his right. The leather casing was cool in his hand, and it slipped slightly, and he realized he was sweating. The lights were so bright and hot that he didn’t attempt to look out into the crowd or find Ma-mee: instead, he turned and put on his cockiest smile, hoping Aunt Rita was relating everything to her, and walked off the stage.
Joshua stood when he saw his brother exit.
“Joshua DeLisle.”
Joshua ascended to greet the principal. He couldn’t focus on Mr. Farbege’s sweating, red face or the secretary fumbling with the diplomas. He turned to the audience, the lights blaring, squinted, and tried to smile. He knew he wouldn’t be able to make them out against the glare of the spotlight, but he looked in the direction Ma-mee and Uncle Paul had gone anyway, and tried to see if he could see her. He saw nothing but a mess of faces and bright, bold outfits, so he raised his hand and waved a little in their direction in time to the applause, and hoped that they knew he was waving for them. He walked to his seat, shuffled past the rows of the students, sat, and realized that he’d been nervous, that the tiny, golden hairs at the back of his neck and on his arms and legs were standing on end. He shivered, feeling as he had when he was little and he’d run into the river just after the sun rose. They’d camped with Aunt Rita and Uncle Paul and the rest of the family on a Friday night, and he’d awoken the next day before everyone else, jarred awake by the sand pressing into his stomach through the sleeping bag where he’d slept on the floor of the tent. He’d run out to the water, wanting to be the first one in, expecting it to be languid and warm, but instead was shocked by the cold of it, the bite of it on his legs up to his knees, how his skin seemed to tighten and retreat across his muscles from the chill. He grimaced and gripped his diploma. He couldn’t believe that he and Christophe had graduated. He leaned closer to his brother, sideways, in his chair, until he could feel their shoulders touching. The litany of names was a buzzing drone in his head, and he waited for it to end.
The sun was turning the tops of the trees red, and from the woods surrounding Aunt Rita’s trailer, the night insects began calling to one another, heralding the approach of the cooler night. Under the young, spindly oaks dotting the yard, Christophe, Joshua, and Dunny sat at one of several folding wooden tables in creaking metal and plastic chairs, plates of food before them. Ma-mee ate slowly, feeling her way around the food on her plate: tiny barbecued drumsticks, meatballs, and potato salad. Children darted back and forth across the yard like small animals, chasing and teasing each other in packs. Most of the twins’ uncles, Cille’s brothers, sat in a circle away from the steel drum barbecue grill, passing what Joshua suspected to be a bottle of homemade wine around and smoking.
There were four of them: Paul, Julian, Maxwell, and David. Aunt Rita, Cille’s only sister, was sweating over the grill: her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, frizzed and messed by the humidity, and she cooked with one hand on her hip while the other basted the chicken and ribs with sauce. Myriad gold earrings shone at her ears. She swatted a mosquito away from her head and, lifting one foot to scratch her leg, continued the cooking, mumbling to herself. She was a shorter, rounder version of her sister: Joshua thought there was something different about her movements, something more settled than Cille, as if her lower center of gravity made her more solid, more dependable, less susceptible to disappear from a place. Friends and neighbors filled the chairs around the twins, drinking and smoking, talking and laughing. Joshua waved a fly away from his food and took a sip of his Budweiser; the can was pleasantly cool in the palm of his hand. Christophe was busy fielding questions from Uncle Eze, Rita’s husband. Eze had moved his chair close and ate with both elbows on the table; his arms dark and thick with muscle as he licked his fingers. Once every few minutes, he’d pause to reach over and snake his hand around Aunt Rita’s waist. Then he’d grab his napkin and dab at his face where beads of sweat bl
oomed large as pearls.
“So, what y’all going to do now? Y’all thought about going to school?”
Joshua snorted and half-smiled, then picked up a boiled shrimp from his plate and began to peel it.
“You better be glad we graduated!” Christophe laughed.
They’d barely passed senior English, and the only reason they hadn’t been in more detention was because they were a team. After smoking blunts with Dunny a few mornings when he gave them rides to school or when they checked themselves out early and skipped class, they watched out for each other: they juggled each other’s excuses, finished one another’s lies, and generally kept one another out of trouble. Joshua placed the naked, pink shrimp on Ma-mee’s plate, and she smiled and reached for his hand before he could remove it and squeezed; the pads of her fingers, even after all those years of scrubbing and washing, were still soft and full on his wrist. He squeezed in return and then began peeling another shrimp.
