Where the Line Bleeds

by Jesmyn Ward

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, my name is Christophe DeLisle and I dropped off an application about three weeks ago and then another one around a week ago and Charles—he works the day shift—told me to call back and ask to speak to you because you handle all the applications and—”

  “Charles doesn’t work here anymore.”

  The manager had hung up then. Christophe had only pressed the button to hang up the phone and call Dunny to bring him to the shipyard, to Oreck for applications. He’d even stopped at one of the convenience stores in Bois Sauvage and told them he was interested in a job when he saw a handmade Help Wanted sign in the window. He wanted to apologize to Joshua. He wanted to get his opinion about Dunny’s proposition. He needed Joshua’s reasoning, his slow deliberation; Joshua would help him find his way. He’d walked around the house because he wanted to enter the back door and go straight to his room. He wanted a chance to gather himself. He stood on his tiptoes at the window and peered inside, balancing himself by laying the flat of his palms against the worn board siding. The boards beneath his hands splintered like toothpicks, and a sliver stung him. In the room, he could see Joshua sitting on the floor with his head lolled back on the bed. It was resting on Laila’s thigh. She was slumped over. Both of them breathed deeply and evenly: he guessed that they were asleep. Christophe frowned past the sudden feeling that he wanted to punch through the screen of the window and startle them awake. It didn’t look like Joshua needed his apology, or his company. He pressed his hand hard into the house, hard enough to feel the splinter drive its way further into his skin, hard enough so that it felt like a blade instead of wood, and then pushed himself away and out into the day.

  The sun would not leave them: even after it set, it left a residue of heat in the evening. Christophe, stone-drunk under the bare-bulb lights strung between the trees at Felicia’s party later that night, thought the blanketing heat was a vestigial presence, something made even more present by its absence. The bulbs burned like dying stars on the wire draped over the arms of the old, twisted oaks in Felicia’s parents’ front yard. It was her eighteenth birthday party. She was flitting from one group of people to another, along the tables laden with barbecue and potato salad and hamburgers, flirting. She was one of the girls he’d fucked with in high school. He liked a few things about her: her brownish-blonde hair, her hips, her fierce sense of determination—she usually got what she wanted. She was silly, though. Talking to her was a chore. Now, the most he appreciated about her was the party: it was good to see everybody he hadn’t seen since graduation, and to have a place to get drunk and high and not have to worry about the police.

  Dunny passed him a blunt. Christophe expected to feel the burst, the sudden pleasurable explosion of THC in his chest, but he felt nothing but relief at breathing again when he exhaled. He was numb. Evidently, he’d drunk and smoked himself sober. He spit into the grass. Dunny was laughing at Javon, who was attracting girls like mosquitoes in the passenger seat. Skinny Skeetah and short Marquise were passing a bottle of Crown back and forth in the backseat. Christophe hadn’t said much of anything to any of them. After Christophe had left his house, he’d walked back to Dunny’s and wandered from the sofa to the car until the sun set. He’d rolled up blunt after blunt on the way to the party. The smooth cigar paper on his tongue made him think of Joshua’s face against Laila’s leg. He’d only uttered something else besides yes or no when Dunny had stopped at the liquor store and asked him what he wanted to drink: Mad Dog. Dunny had rolled his eyes.

  He came out of the store fifteen minutes later and handed Javon a bottle of Remy and his change, tossed the bottle of Crown in the backseat at Marquise and Skeetah, and dropped a brown-wrapped bottle of Hennessy in Christophe’s lap. Christophe had made to pass it back, ashamed through the haze of his high at his lack of money, at the $3.50 in change he’d given Dunny to buy the Mad Dog that surely must’ve been as leaden as a fishing sinker in Dunny’s shorts pocket. Dunny wouldn’t accept it. Christophe had decided that he would wash away the lump of pride in his throat. He’d popped the bottle and drained the neck in one gulp.

  After five or so swallows, it had started tasting like sugar water, and Christophe relaxed as the drunkenness swept him up and buoyed him along. It felt good. He hated to think it, but it seemed like what he needed—until he drained the bottle so that only a lick of brown liquor was left at the bottom and they were parked in Felicia’s yard in a cluster of cars and people, and he felt terribly sober. The darkness hadn’t softened anything: the glint of gold teeth, the bright tint of jerseys, the hard, clean casts of car bodies, and the bottles emerging from the dirt as durable as seashells—they were all around him, all distinct and singular. He wanted it all to recede, but it wouldn’t. The liquor and the weed had failed him. The only thing that would ease it all would be if he passed out, and he knew he had to wait for that to happen, so he stood at the front left tire of the car and held the Hennessy absently in his hand and leaned against the hood and hoped that he’d be unconscious in Dunny’s backseat by the time Joshua showed up. He felt his eyelids flutter close, and then snap open. Oh yes, it was coming.

  Joshua jumped over the ditch and landed in the yard and pulled his cap low to hide his face. He hadn’t seen his brother all day, and he’d felt particularly naked and awkward and aroused when he woke up and found Laila there in his bed with a patient, kind look on her face. He’d told her he’d see her at the party; it was the most polite way he could ask her to leave, and it was still a lie. The only person he wanted to see was the only person who didn’t want to see him, it seemed. He didn’t bother calling Dunny to ask for a ride; he didn’t want to hear Dunny lying to him on the phone at Christophe’s behest, telling him for some reason or another that he didn’t have room in his car. He’d walked over to Franco’s house and gotten a ride with him. They’d parked down the street from Felicia’s, close enough to see the lights and hear distinct voices. They’d smoked a blunt. Franco was ambling over toward a group of younger girls with his arms out, his new outfit crisp and starched to a cardboard stiffness, so Joshua loped his own way, looking for his brother.

  Christophe raised his chin from where it had eased down to his chest and saw a shadow weaving its way across the lawn between the cars and he knew that walk because it was his own twin and goddamn it, he cussed to himself, he hadn’t passed out in time. Joshua stood, his hands in his pockets, next to Christophe. Christophe realized he had missed him.

  “Hey, Chris.”

  It seemed so unnecessary to Joshua that he had to greet his brother.

  “Joshua.”

  Christophe upended the bottle and poured it in a weak stream down his throat. It stung a trickle down his esophagus. Christophe closed his eyes and was grateful for it while it lasted. When he opened them, his twin was still there.

  “Fuck it.”

  “What you mean, fuck it? I didn’t even say anything yet.”

  “You didn’t have to . . . I already know what you want to talk about. And I just . . . I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  Joshua leaned nearer to his brother and sniffed.

  “What all did you drink?”

  Christophe shook his head, and saw the world blur and tilt. Okay, so he hadn’t drunk himself sober. Just when that thought seemed consoling to him and guaranteed to help him get through the conversation he was trying to have with his brother, his stomach settled and the world lurched aright, and he felt dreadfully, seriously present.

  “You avoiding me,” Joshua said. He looked at his brother’s profile. Christophe was staring off into the yard. He looked like he was on the verge of passing out.

  “Nobody said I was avoiding you,”

  “You still doing it.”

  Christophe grabbed Joshua by the arm and half-dragged him around the bumper of the car, away from the lights and the people.

  “Chris.”

  The side of Joshua’s thigh ached where Christophe’s violent, clumsy pull had
made him bump into the trunk of the car. He tripped out into the darkness after his brother. Christophe stopped at the edge of the woods, and Joshua stood next to him, close enough to brush against his arm for a second, to feel reassured. A frog croaked loudly and insistently somewhere in the underbrush. Christophe was silent, his hands hanging open palmed, his fingers wide as if he were searching for something he’d lost.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Christophe said, surprisingly clear.

  “I’m sorry, Christophe.”

  Christophe touched his lips with his fingers, and then licked them.

  “I guess I must have dropped the bottle back there somewhere. There wasn’t anything left of it anyway. And nothing more where it came from,” he whispered.

  “I said I was sorry, Chris.” Joshua tried to draw Christophe back, but he knew his brother would only come back when he wanted to. Perhaps he was too drunk. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time for this conversation. “I don’t have to take the job. We could look for another one together.”

  “No. One is hard enough to get, specially a good one.” Christophe moved closer to Joshua and looked at him intently.

  “Are you sure?” Joshua asked.

  Christophe’s breath blew in hot, wet puffs over Joshua’s cheeks. His nearness was almost confrontational. Even though he was so close, Joshua had to strain to hear what Christophe said.

  “We can’t always do things the same.”

  “We’ll work it out—working different places. You just take the car and drop me off and then when you get off, you could come pick me up.”

  “No.”

  Christophe’s eyes looked glazed and all pupil in the dim light from the party. Joshua heard some girl scream in laughter. Another car stereo system rumbled to life. Christophe blinked and pursed his mouth. He looked sick; he looked as if he wanted to spit.

  “I don’t mean it like that.”

  Joshua tried to grab Christophe’s arm to steady him and instead brushed against his T-shirt, and he smelled the pungent aroma of weed waft from Christophe’s clothing, and suddenly, he knew what Christophe was talking about.

  “Christophe.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not talking about what I think you’re talking about, are you?”

  “What you think I’m talking about?”

  “Selling.”

  “What if I am?”

  “No.”

  “We been looking and calling for a month and I ain’t got shit. I ain’t got no more money left. Ain’t nothing coming through. Dunny going to front me a quarter pound and help me get on my feet, and then I’ll look again.”

  “You ain’t got to do that.”

  “What I’m going to do? Sit around and beg these fucking folks for a job and eat off of you and Ma-mee? I can’t do that.” Christophe was gesturing widely, his hands out to his brother as if he was waiting for him to grab him and pull him toward him. Joshua felt the pain that he thought would be eased by this talk sharpen in his chest. “I gotta do something . . . and if that mean I got to make my money like this for a while, then that’s what it mean.”

  “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Fuck the plan.”

  “Give it a couple weeks more.”

  “You ain’t listening to me,” Christophe said. “I ain’t got shit.”

  Christophe grabbed his T-shirt and tugged it over his head. It slithered off and Christophe stood before his brother, his chest bare and wet and heaving. His movements were slurred. Christophe pushed his hands into his pockets and upended them, pulling the soft, cotton ears out.

  “I have no money.” Christophe backed away from his brother and cupped the back of his neck with both hands so that his elbows and chest spread and widened like wings. “But,” he whispered, “I got options.”

  Christophe let his arms fall. Tomorrow, Christophe wouldn’t remember any of this. Tomorrow, Joshua would get up and eat grits and eggs and Christophe would bring him to the interview and then they’d come home and help Ma-mee with dinner and eat and go to the park at St. Catherine’s and play some ball until the bugs got too bad, and then they’d go home and sleep. Tomorrow, Christophe would bring him to the dock and on the way back, they’d find other places to look for a job and Christophe’d get called back for an interview and start working somewhere and he’d forget all of this, let it recede from him like the vomit did now, as he bent over and let a milky stream of alcohol pour from him and puddle on the red clay and sandy earth. Joshua stood with his hand firmly planted in the center of his brother’s back and felt Christophe’s muscles protest the liquor, and said the only two words he thought would make it so.

  “It’s alright.”

  5

  JOSHUA’S INTERVIEW HAD BEEN EARLY. When they returned from the interview, Christophe, reeking of vomit and sweating alcohol, had tripped past the azaleas in the front yard and murmured an embarrassed “Good morning” to Ma-mee before rushing inside to fall into his bed. Joshua had sat next to her, waited for the house to fall silent, before he told her that they had given him the job, and that he would start on Friday. The next day, Christophe woke before Joshua, and, from what Rita told her later over the phone, spent most of his evening at her house, playing video games and waiting for Dunny and Eze to come home, when he bothered Eze about his contacts at the shipyard. Thursday night, he appeared out of the darkness, showered, and fell asleep early with Joshua. She woke both of them at dawn on Friday, and then Christophe did not come home after dropping Joshua off on his first day of work. Ma-mee assumed he was filling out more applications. She had stretched the phone as near to the porch as she could, turned the ringer to loud, and sat in her favorite chair, waiting. The twins circled each other.

  Ma-mee kneaded the wood of the armrests: the chair was old. It was the last thing Lucien had made for her. He’d made it while he fixed the chicken coop in the backyard. Paul had wanted to fix the coop himself, to save his father the trouble of tottering around with an unruly hammer and errant nails, but Lucien had refused his help. He was a stubborn sixty at the time; he still dyed his hair black, and walked and swung his arms like a young man. It was only when he had to concentrate his muscles on details, on pinpointing a nail or threading a needle, that his body betrayed him, that his aim veered or he started shaking. Ma-mee was fifty that year. Cille had been pregnant with the twins, then, and still living with them. It had taken Lucien two weeks to repair a reef of boards that would have taken him a day when he was younger. She’d watched him from the window in the morning while she was sorting collards or snapping green beans: his progress was like watching the sky to gauge the movement of the clouds. For days it seemed he’d wander around the coop and nothing would change, and then suddenly, she’d notice a small change where one hadn’t been before. At dinner, he’d say he was simply taking his time: he didn’t want to do a sloppy job.

  A week after he was done with the coop, she’d walked out on the porch one still morning to hear him banging on something under the hood of the pickup truck, and to see an elegant, simple chair with hand-carved flourishes that looked like clamshells at the ends of the armrests on the porch. When he came inside to wash his hands at the kitchen sink, she’d walked over to him with clumps of corn bread dough in the sieves of her fingers to kiss him. She remembered that he’d stood still then, like a shy boy, and bent his head slightly to her so she could reach the fine, damp skin of his cheek with her lips. She remembered the way his skin had given, softer and more yielding than it had ever been in his youth.

  Ma-mee let the memory slide from her shoulder like a slipping sheet. It felt like waking: to her age, to Lucien’s death, to the day and the absent twins. The cicadas roused themselves in the trees outside. The day was shaping into a bright, pulsing bulb. She slumped a little in her chair. She thought of making corn bread for dinner: sweet, as Lucien had liked it. She let her eyes close, felt the heat diffuse through her, and surprised herself by wanting nothing more than to sleep.


  His smell roused her. The scent of beer sweating through the pores of someone wafted to her, strong on the wind; they were close. She squinted out into the yard and saw someone standing just beyond the screen. It was a man; she could tell by the width of his shoulders and waist. The way he stood reminded her of a community dog: lean, starved, the bend of his torso that made him look as if he were perpetually looking for something. She didn’t recognize the silhouette through the dull gray screen that was detaching itself from the porch, peeling away from the wood to gape open and allow flies into the house.

  “Who you?” She spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry past him. This was Bois Sauvage. There were no strangers, everyone knew everyone. She didn’t like not being able to recognize him.

  “You don’t remember me, Miss Lillian?”

  “No, I don’t.” The scent of him wafted over to her and she exhaled sharply: he smelled of fermented, overripe alcohol, cigarette smoke, and sour sweat.

  “It’s me, Miss Lillian. Samuel.”

  Surprise surged in her chest, and she blinked to mask it. Ma-mee heard him cough and gather phlegm. Against the glare of the day, he bent over and spit.

  “How you doing, Miss Lillian.”

  “Fine. You been . . . ?”

  “Getting my life in order. I was over in Birmingham at a center. I had got into them drugs sort of bad. But now I’m better.”

  Ma-mee saw him raise his arms and hold them above his head. He was making himself comfortable. He had to notice that she hadn’t invited him on the porch. He’d been a handsome, charming boy when he was a teenager, but even then there was something about him, about the way he moved, that was untrustworthy. She’d listened to him and Cille argue about his drinking, about his flirting with other girls, and she knew he didn’t see Cille. Ma-mee saw him drunk at the Easter ball game a couple of times; he was a moody, unpredictable drunk. She remembered him grabbing Cille’s arms once, when he was ready to leave the ball game and she wasn’t; he had yanked her toward his car. Ma-mee had passed Cille in the hallway, fresh from the shower, her girl slender and wet, wrapped in a towel like a child, and seen that he had left bruises on Cille’s arm—four, dark and perfect as watermelon seeds. She had told her daughter he wasn’t any good, but her child was stubborn. After Ma-mee found out Cille was pregnant, she’d resigned herself to the idea of Samuel: there was nothing she could do.