Where the Line Bleeds (5 page)

Joshua ignored the valedictorian 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, Ritas 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 bloomed 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.

"Well, then, what y'all going to do?"

Christophe scooped potato salad onto a piece of white bread in
spoonfuls so big they threatened to break the plastic spoon in half. He
folded the bread and then took a large bite of his potato salad sandwich
before chasing it with a swallow of his own beer: the rim of the can was
flecked with bits of barbecue sauce and meat, and smeared with grease.

"We going to get a job. We got a whole bunch of places we can go put
applications in at. We going to make some money."

Eze paused to wipe his hands on his napkin, and leaned back in his
own chair. He'd sucked the bones on his plate clean. His voice was lower
when he spoke.

"Y'all thought about what y'all going to do about a car?"

Christophe took another bite of his sandwich and frowned.

"We was gonna borrow Dunny's car while he was at work to fill out
applications until we could save up enough money to buy one. Somebody
got to be selling one for cheap sometime soon. People always trying to get
rid of old Cutlasses; it shouldn't take too much money to buy one and get
it running good."

Joshua noticed Aunt Rita had closed the top of the grill and was
standing behind Eze. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her head
was cocked to the side. He realized she was looking at him, that she was
blinking at him solemnly. Her eyes were large and dark in her face and
the liquid eyeliner she'd worn at the graduation was smudged below her
eyes; it made them appear bruised. Dunny picked up a beer and paused
with the rim of the can to his mouth and found Joshua watching him.
Dunny winked, grinned around the can, and tipped the beer back so that
it hid his face.

Eze tapped his finger on the table once, twice, and then stood. He
dropped his napkin so that it fell as slowly as snow to the paper tablecloth.
Christophe looked at Ma-mee. She was chewing thoughtfully on the
shrimp and had a small grin on her face. Shrimp were her favorite food.
Away from the citronella candles and electric bulbs illuminating the trees
into the surrounding darkness, Eze walked into the ascending crescendo
of the raucous night, calling back over his shoulder, "Well, come on, I got
something to show you."

Christophe glanced at Joshua and widened his eyes. Joshua shrugged
and stood to follow Eze. Christophe stabbed a hot link with a fork and
took it with him when he pushed away from the table. Joshua waited for
him to catch up. Eze disappeared around the side of the trailer where he
and Aunt Rita parked their cars. Once Christophe rounded the corner,
he stopped alongside his brother, who stood at the tailgate of Eze's Ford
pickup. Joshua was still. He stared past Eze's trunk and Aunt Ritas small
red Toyota and noticed that there was another car in the hard-packed dirt driveway, a four-door, gray-blue Caprice. Eze was leaning against the
hood. Joshua heard Dunny's dog, chained to a post in the woods at the
side of the house, growl and bark once, high and sharp.

"What do y'all think?" Eze placed one hand on the body and patted it
twice, softly. "Your mama Cille sent me the money for it, told me to find
something for y'all so that y'all could have something to drive once y'all
got out of school. Bookie from over in St. Cats was selling the body for
five hundred: I got a motor for six hundred, and then parts came to a little
less than four. Used up all the money she sent. She said she'd been saving
up for a little bit and she wanted y'all to have something dependable. I
got it running pretty good, and it should get y'all to work and back." He
smiled, a glimpse of his teeth in the dark, then walked towards them and
held out a key ring with four bright metal keys on it before them. "It's a
good car."

Joshua stared at the ring that gleamed from the faint reach of the porch
light. Christophe was the first to react: he plucked the key ring from Eze's
hand. Neither twin spoke until Eze cleared his throat, nodded to them
almost awkwardly, and then walked away and around the trailer.

"Well," Christophe said low, out of the side of his mouth, "I guess we
know why she didn't come." He tossed the keys in the air; they glittered in
the dim light and fell with a dull metal crush into Christophe's palm.

"Why show up when you give us a car? Guess she's really done,
now."

"Yeah, I guess she is."

Joshua blinked, felt his eyelids slide heavily down, then open. He
let the feeling of her absence sink to his throat, skirt his collarbone to
settle in his chest, to throb stronger than it had when he had seen her
dedication to them in the program. He looked away from the car. He was
glad that Christophe had grabbed the keys; he would let his brother do
all the driving. He knew that if he reached out to touch the metal of the
hood, it would be warm as the night, insect-ridden air, warm as skin, but
not so soft. Joshua spoke in a voice lower than his brother's.

Christophe slid the key ring into his pocket. He moved to nudge
Joshua with his other hand, but then seemed to remember the sausage
on the fork.

"Shit." He plucked the sausage away from the metal and then wound
his arm back and threw it in the direction of the dog in the woods. It flew
through the air, a dark blur, and hit the leaves of the trees with a falling
rustle. The dog barked again, sharply, once. Christophe sucked the sauce
from his thumb and forefinger and bumped his brother with his shoulder.
He was still hungry, and while there was nothing but them and the silence
and this car here, there was more potato salad and hot, spicy meat in the
front, and Ma-mee was waiting for them. So, Cille hadn't shown up, and
she'd gotten them this car instead. It felt like a bribe. From the front,
Christophe heard Dunny shout at one of the little kids, and an answering
giggle. Christophe gnawed at a piece of jagged skin on his thumb, and
thought of Ma-mee, smiling and expectant in her pressed dress waiting
for them out front. This would make it easier for them. He would be
grateful. "Well, we did need a car. Come on."

Christophe turned, and Joshua followed him into the dark brush at
the side of the trailer. Joshua was an inverse shadow: full where Christophe
was thin. Christophe seemed more of the darkness. The dog was quiet,
and Christophe hoped he had been able to find and reach the food. Under
the night sounds, Christophe heard the links of its chain clink.

HE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS IN THE CEILING POPPED AND SIZZLED:
Christophe flinched and stabbed the tip of his pin into the
McDonald's application. Joshua frowned, and looked over to find
the ink bled black in a smudge that vaguely resembled a tiny heart. Through
the window, the dawn washed the water and the sky of the beach a pale,
milky blue: the sun was a small, bright light on the horizon. Joshua loved
the coastline in the morning: a small part of him always thought that God
had just dipped his hand in the water and cleansed it. Ma-mee had woken
them while it was still dark outside: she woke them to the tepid morning, to
grits and bacon on the stove. Christophe scrawled his name across the paper
in a nearly illegible sweep: Joshua knew he hated the smell of fried fat and
antiseptic that suffused the air in places like this. Christophe told him that
he didn't really want to work there, but they needed something. They'd done
yard-work sometimes with Uncle Paul when they were in high school, but
they couldn't depend on it: the work was too sporadic. Christophe covered
his mouth and nose with his left hand and scribbled with his right.