by Jesmyn Ward
The shrimp were beginning to stink like a stagnant, landlocked, shallow beach pool. Reluctantly, she removed her hand from the tent of his own, and grabbed another shrimp.
“The heat coming,” she said.
She realized she was squinting at him as if she could sharpen him with her stare so she could read his face. The pile of shrimp between them shrank. The sun slid across the window of the room and sent planks of light across the floor, and Ma-mee closed her eyes as she picked and peeled, picked and peeled, as the light crept under the table and submerged her feet. It moved upward and lent a halo of light to Christophe’s head: a phosphorescent glow. Christophe peeled, working away at the pile, and felt the heat brush the back of his calves. The shrimp ripened and seemed to melt into the paper, to blur the words gray.
As the sun rose in the sky, Joshua slept in the twins’ room. He wrapped himself in a sheet, fought it as sweat wet his face and dampened the cotton fabric, and dreamt vivid, colorful dreams. He smelled the sea salt of those small ripening bodies protesting the loss of their water to the dry air and dreamt that he was on the pier pulling at woven sacks pregnant with frozen chicken that, regardless of how hard he pulled, would not move.
Joshua’s walk down St. Alphonse Street was a crawl. It was ten and the heat and humidity of the air pulled at him like a net: it reminded him of his dreams, of the salt and sea. He wondered if shrimp felt like this, if they struggled against the thick fingers of the current created by the encroaching net in hope of escaping, of moving forward. When he’d awoken that morning, his brother was gone. The crooked, taut sheet was the only indicator that his brother had been there. Christophe had made the bed sloppily. When he walked into the kitchen feeling as if his eyelids were glued together and rubbing his face against the light, Ma-mee had been wiping down the table. The air smelled of seafood. She answered his question about Christophe’s whereabouts, told him that he had been there, but had woken up early in the morning and left. When he asked her if Christophe had said anything to her about the call and the previous day, she’d paused midswipe, and then shook her head no. Joshua had sat on the sofa and watched The Price Is Right with her, gulped down a bowl of cold cereal, and left after shrugging into a discolored tank and a pair of baggy jean shorts. He decided to go walking in search of Christophe, who he guessed was probably somewhere with Dunny.
By the time he was a house and a stand of woods away from Ma-mee’s house, he’d peeled off his shirt and slung it over his shoulder, where it hung drenched and limp as a dishrag. Insects seethed in the woods and called loudly to one another; they seemed to cheer the heat. The asphalt shimmered like a handheld fan down the length of the road, and his feet dragged along the pebbles embedded in the asphalt. The sun glinted sharply as a knife off the wet gold of his arm. The heat made him want to stop, to be still, to sit and breathe. He paused under a patch of shivering shade thrown by the reach of a pine tree. The sunlight glittered around him at the edges of the bristles’ fluttering shadow. The dark reminded him of being submerged to his neck in the river in water so tepid, when compared with the loaded tropical day, it verged on being cool. He wondered if that was where his brother was. He wanted to feel weightless and buoyed.
Five feet away from Joshua, a snake blacker than the asphalt lay sunning itself. It writhed lazily, flicking its tail as it soaked up the baking heat of the concrete. When he was younger, he had been terrified of snakes, but now, he wasn’t. Either it didn’t notice him, or the temperature of the day had made it loath to move. It seemed to be made of the same stuff as the asphalt: its skin like the polished grain of the pitted, ancient street. The snake eased its way to the side of the road. He thought about the stories Ma-mee told them, about how they were so hungry when they were children. She told them her brothers had caught snakes by their tails on hot summer days like this, had run with them to the closest tree and bashed their small, oblong skulls against the trunks, of how they had brought them home and skinned and deboned them, of how they had eaten them in a gravy stew with rice. Ma-mee said that often they found whole mice in their stomachs. Joshua imagined that the meat would be flaky and chewy, and taste faintly like brown leaves and dirt. The snake raised its head and flicked its tongue as if it could taste Joshua’s sweat, his exhaustion, the steady hunger clenched in his stomach. He had heard that some animals could smell these things, could smell fear.
Joshua walked around the snake; he gave it a wide berth. It seemed to nod at him, and he frowned at it until he was out of the shade. The sun seemed to beat the sense out of him. Its burn echoed the revolving, sucking burn in his stomach. He was glad he’d gotten the job. It would be good to be able to buy food for the house and not have to ration soda, to abstain from eating too much shrimp because he was trying to save some for Ma-mee, for his brother, for later; it would be good to not have to eat oatmeal in the morning. He was so damned tired of eating oatmeal and sugar, of parsing out the teaspoon of condensed milk on top.
He hated condensed milk. It would be good to have a little money in his pocket so he could go out to eat sometime, pick up a basket of fried catfish and hush puppies for dinner for the family. Take a girl somewhere, maybe. He closed his eyes and stumbled, sure he could almost smell the food. Ma-mee maintained that she had kept them fed and fat when they were little: she was proud of the fact, and she would brag about it to her friends, to her daughters, that the twins had never wanted for food. Joshua remembered otherwise. He remembered eating handfuls of corn flakes and watery powdered milk, of eating tuna for weeks at a time, of dreaming of pizza as an eight-year-old. He remembered being perpetually hungry, regardless of how much he ate. Even now Joshua associated his infrequent brushes with satiety with bliss: the full weight of good food in the stomach, a mouth wet with juice, and the sated, languorous feeling that massaged his chest and back when he had eaten well. Down the street, someone was standing in Laila’s driveway, and he could hear music blasting from a truck parked in Uncle Paul’s yard. He doubted it was true, but perhaps Christophe was at Uncle Paul’s house, or perhaps Uncle Paul had seen him. Regardless, the shade in Uncle Paul’s yard was too good to pass up. He jumped across the ditch and jogged to the truck.
It was Uncle Paul’s Ford. He was under the hood with a wrench in his hand. Rust laced its way along the seams of the gray truck, and Joshua had no idea how Uncle Paul had kept the thing running for this long. It was his work truck, and he was forever alternately cussing it and cajoling it. At the least, Uncle Paul would have some water in his refrigerator: if he didn’t know anything about Christophe, Joshua could get a drink and head back down the street to Ma-mee’s house to lie on the relative cool of the living room floor and wait for dusk to look. Joshua leaned against the truck and Uncle Paul jackknifed in surprise and almost banged his head on the hood.
“What you doing sneaking up on folks, boy?”
“Looking for Chris. You seen him?”
“Naw, I ain’t seen him.” Uncle Paul set the wrench on the edge of the grille and rested his forearms against the iron grate. “I’m surprised you out here looking for him in this heat.”
“I’m alright. I think I’m going to head back after I leave here.”
“How ya’ll like them shrimp I brought by? I figured since I was down there at the docks checking on some fish for Rita, I might as well grab some shrimp for Ma-mee. They was some good-sized shrimp, too, for only three dollars a pound. She fry them up this morning?”
“Yeah . . .”
“I bought me a couple of pounds, too. I might bring ’em to Mama’s tonight. Not like I got somebody to cook them up for me over here anyway.”
“Stop trying to be a player and then maybe you could keep a girlfriend.”
Uncle Paul was at least a head shorter, and when he took off his mesh cap to wipe his forearm across his forehead, Joshua saw that he was prematurely balding.
“Can’t help what’s in the blood, son. No, you sure can’t help it.” Uncle Paul replaced his cap and kicked something at his
feet, something that was shoved underneath the hood of the car, and Joshua heard a dull clunk. “Have a beer.”
Joshua normally didn’t drink in the daytime. It was sort of an unspoken rule he played by: smoking, yes, he’d smoke a blunt or two while there was daylight, but he didn’t like to drink. It made him think of drunks. It made him think of Rollo, who rode up and down the main street in St. Catherine and lurked around the Vietnamese corner store buying ninety-seven-cent King Cobras all day, whose eyes were perpetually watery and bloodshot, and who always had the sickly sweet smell of alcohol sweat on him, even in the winter. It made him think of his father in those yards, of him leaning against trucks like these with those goddamn blue-blocker shades on, drinking beer after beer, laughing and smiling at jokes Joshua and Christophe couldn’t hear as they walked past. Joshua shrugged his shoulders and hesitated. He was so hot, though. He could imagine the cool, salty fizz of it on his tongue. Fuck it. He would have just one, and then he would walk home. He pulled out a Michelob longneck, unscrewed the top, and took a deep swallow.
“I hid them because I know if niggas saw them they’d come asking for some. Hold it low, boy. I don’t want to be supplying the whole neighborhood.”
“Ain’t nobody out in this heat, Uncle Paul, except you and me.” Joshua tilted the bottle back again. He was so hungry he already felt a little dizzy buzz behind his temples.
“That’s what you think, Joshua. Look like we ain’t the only ones out here, and look like I ain’t the only pimp in the family.” Uncle Paul nodded toward the street and started laughing.
“What the hell you talking about?”
“Ain’t that Laila?”
Joshua squinted out past the yard and saw a brilliant white shirt and short red shorts, a pair of thick tan thighs and slender, swinging arms, and coal-black, curly hair. Yes, Laila. He was surprised at the way the beer caught in the back of his throat at seeing her. He swallowed. He hadn’t seen her since he let her braid his hair after Christophe left: he’d been in a stupor, and hadn’t complained when she led him to the couch and plucked the comb from his head and began braiding. She was so fine he couldn’t take his eyes off her legs, from the taper of her waist, but the sudden thump in his chest when he realized it was her walking up in the yard surprised him. He looked past her breasts and stopped at the crooked, flashing grin on her face, and wanted to stay there. There was feeling. Sometimes, when she smiled at him like that at school or in the street, so shy and brave all at once, it reminded him of Cille. He shifted on his feet and let the bottle rest between his chest and the truck; it clinked once, twice against the grille. He didn’t want her to think he was like some old drunk with nothing better to do with his time than drink. He tried to look casual as a small wind stirred listlessly in the branches of the pecan tree overhead and disturbed the shade, rippling it momentarily so that the light stabbed his vision.
“Hey, Paul.”
“What’s a little sweet thing like you doing out here in this heat? You going to melt.”
Laila rolled her eyes and stared at Joshua.
“I heard it all before, Uncle Paul.”
Paul broke out into a loud bray of laughter.
“Hey, Joshua.”
“What’s up, Laila?”
Joshua nervously swung the bottle back and forth. Laila leaned against the door of the truck and propped one forearm on the side mirror. Her move made one breast rise higher than the other. Her hair brushed against the contours of her cheeks with the wispy languor of cattails, and Joshua found himself glad that there was another small coughing breeze for a reason that had nothing to do with the heat. He tried to still his hands. “I thought that was you down the road.”
“I was looking at a snake. Big black one. I guess it was a king snake.”
“Where was it at?”
“Right in front of Uncle Paul’s yard.”
“You should’ve told me,” Uncle Paul interjected.
“I didn’t even see it.” Laila rested her head on her forearm, and watched Joshua steadily. “I hate snakes.”
“I used to, but I wasn’t scared of that one,” Joshua said.
“It’s good to have snakes around. They eat up all the rodents. Keep the mice in check.” Uncle Paul seemed determined to break into the conversation.
Joshua stuck one finger in the mouth of the bottle. He was thirsty again. Maybe he’d just have to take one more sip, regardless of Laila. She seemed so innocent. He knew she drank once in a while, but the beer in his hand suddenly seemed as loaded with potential menace as that snake in the street, and he wanted to drop it. He wondered if he could cough and drop it at the same time, if he could cover up the soft thud of the bottle hitting the dirt. The breeze blew again, a bit more forceful this time, and he could smell her: sweat and salt and underneath it all, cocoa butter.
“I heard you got called back to the pier,” Uncle Paul said.
Uncle Paul probably thought he was doing Joshua a favor by mentioning his future job in front of a girl, but his declaration made the beer smack Joshua with a biting nausea. It made him think of Christophe. Joshua grimaced and let the warm glass slip from his sweaty fingers and drop to the ground without a care for the sound or the sudden lukewarm spill he felt coat his leg. He had drunk all but a sip of it. Where was his brother? Laila had heard the bottle; she stared at Joshua and the black, greased machinery glistening underneath the hood.
“Yeah,” Joshua said.
That back that was his own yet was something else, that back that he knew better than his own had walked away from him and become an alien thing: it made him feel like he was perpetually on the verge of crying.
“They make pretty good money down there.” Uncle Paul winked at him and turned up his beer.
“I guess so.” Joshua felt an obstinate quiet, bidding Uncle Paul to shut up. Laila wiped her bangs away from her forehead: she was sweating tendrils of sweat down her forehead like fine lines of cursive at her temple. He wanted to touch her, to wipe all the sweat away.
“It’ll be good to be working. I know how you boys is: you like to spend money, go places, do things.”
“What you talking about ‘you boys’?” Joshua kicked and hit the bottle by accident and was ashamed: it ricocheted under the truck and clanged as the glass hit the metal underbelly of the machine. Joshua pushed himself away from the metal grille and slung his T-shirt over his shoulder. “I got called back. Chris didn’t. I gotta go.”
“Alright, nephew.”
Uncle Paul’s farewell was lost in the swish of the grass against Joshua’s legs. It itched when it slid, almost sensuously, against the slick layer of the beer on his skin. He was walking fast; he was leaning forward, cutting against the sun with his head down. He had to get away from Laila. They were all making him crazy.
“Joshua.”
Laila was shuffling along next to him. He kept walking.
“What’s up, Laila?” Joshua said it in a way that he knew would make her go away: he said it quickly, curtly, dismissively. He was already on the street: the shock of the asphalt through the bottom of his soles surprised him. He walked faster.
“I know I may look tall, but I’m not. My legs is around three times shorter than yours.”
She was almost running to keep up with him. He didn’t slow down. She was still there, trotting along next to him. As shitty as he felt inside, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to go home, to leave him alone. He sighed and slowed down.
When he banged through the door, he grunted to Ma-mee and walked straight to his room and sat on the floor. Laila stopped to talk to Ma-mee in the living room. He stared at Christophe’s neat coverlet. The ceiling fan clicked and whirred above him like some irate bird. He felt himself growing sleepy, even though his stomach whirled with beer, with Laila and those slick tan legs in his living room. A sudden weight on the bed startled him.
“One of your braids came out in the back.”
Her hands cupped the crown of his head and lifted, and h
e felt the warm familiar enclosure of her thighs on his shoulders. He let her hands guide his head so that his ear rested on her thigh. Her fingers teased a braid from his head, combed his hair out. As Laila braided his hair, Joshua felt the muscles in his neck melt from strained cords to wide, lax threads. His head rested smoothly in the cup of her leg. He kicked absently at his brother’s bed. Laila wasn’t moving: she was done with the braid, but she was still and quiet beneath and behind him. He wanted to turn his head and mouth her thigh. The day was a prescient, dozing thing outside the window: the insects breathed a droning snore. Laila slumped against the wall behind him as patient and present as the bright outside. Joshua absently wondered if Laila had fallen asleep as he felt his own eyelids grow heavy. He wanted to rest his eyes.
Joshua had known her since he was little, had protected her, carried her over the deepest ditches, and made sure that when they played hide-and-go-seek, she was hidden in a good spot. Christophe and Dunny and the others would tease him about wanting to be her boyfriend. The first time he really noticed she’d grown up was one fall afternoon in his senior year. She’d had softball practice, and the boys had basketball practice. All of her teammates had left, and Joshua walked from the gym to get some water and saw her waiting for her mother to pick her up. He’d sat with her, ignoring Christophe and Dunny’s teasing, their threats to leave him. Christophe and Dunny had peeled off their practice jerseys and sat in the car next to the bleachers, rolling and smoking blunts. Joshua had fanned himself with his practice basketball jersey and rolled his eyes at them and sat next to her, quiet, cracking a joke once every five minutes or so. He liked to see her smile. Her breath was a lullaby.
Outside the window, Christophe stopped. He’d had Dunny turn the radio low when he dropped him off. After he’d talked to Ma-mee earlier that morning, he’d called McDonald’s, and asked to speak to the manager Charles had told them about. Steve had answered the phone with a quick Southern accent.
