Beneath a Meth Moon (9 page)

laughter

I KNEW SCHOOL WAS OUT
by all the kids walking past me. Some days, I saw whole groups of teenagers walking together. I'd gotten used to them walking by and laughing at me or crossing the street to ignore me. Sometimes I could see bits of the girls' bathing suits peeking out as they walked past me, and I knew they were heading to the water park. When we first moved to Galilee, we drove by a big sign for it, and I said to Jesse Jr.,
I'm gonna take you there one day.
Now here it was summer, and I didn't even know where he was, how he was doing . . . if anybody else had come along and taken him there. Taken him anywhere . . .
You're still you in there, Laurel,
Moses said each time he saw me, each time we sat for a moment and talked.
You always talk about all that light in Pass Christian. But you're trying to forget that y'all brought a couple of sparks with you. None of them shining in that dark nasty room you're calling home now, my girl. You need to stop moving toward the darkness.

There was a clothing store across the street from where I sat, and one day, I watched a mama and her little girl go into it. A little while later, they came back out, the little girl letting her bag hit against her leg again and again as she skipped ahead, her mama smiling down at her. I tried to remember if that was ever me and Mama, but all that came to me was us together at the Dollar Store where Mama worked, me walking slow up and down the aisles, looking at the dollar toys and candies and nail polishes. Seemed that place was a whole other world to me, and on paydays, when M'lady took me there, Mama would smile real big when she saw us come through that door.
Get whatever you want, Laurel,
she'd say.
Everything's a dollar, but that's before the employee discount.
And then my mama would laugh as I grabbed armloads of balloons and plastic horses, stickers and M&M's.
Bless her heart, M'lady,
Mama would say.
Laurel's the first Daneau to go on a true-blue shopping spree.

And then, more laughter. Laughter that seemed to go on and on. Filling up the Dollar Store, floating right out of that store and into the big wide world.

moses and rosalie

MOSES WAS CARRYING
a green nylon bag when he walked up to me.

There was a loaf of bread sticking out of his bag, two paintbrushes poking out beside it. When he asked me if I wanted the end of it, I laughed, remembering how I used to offer the end to Jesse Jr. He'd always say yes, and I'd break it off for him, let him eat it as we walked home.

You not painting anybody today?

Moses shook his head.

Yesterday I finished Rosalie's. Rosalie Wright
.
I knew her. I met her when I first came to Donnersville. She was thirteen. She said she loved me
. Moses took a deep breath and looked out over the empty street. He got real quiet, and it was like nobody was there—not me, not anybody else either. Just him—deep in someplace nobody could go to with him.
I told her I didn't like her. Not that way.

Did you love her any kind of way?
I asked real quiet.

Moses nodded.
Yeah.
After another minute passed, he said,
I didn't know how to say it, though. I was just figuring everything out. And the figuring was coming slowly.

There were queer kids at school. I'd never met any until I moved to Jackson. M'lady had said being that way was against everything natural, and I hadn't thought anything about it until I got here. Daddy's older brother was . . . strange. That's what M'lady called him, the few times he came to visit from California.
He's strange, Laurel. Different.
And it wasn't till I got to Jackson and got older there and listened to Aunt G. and Daddy talking that I realized Uncle Jimmy's strangeness was the same strangeness Moses had. Wasn't till I was sitting in front of Aunt G.'s television, listening to their low talking coming from the kitchen, that I remembered how Mama didn't pay any mind to what M'lady said about Uncle Jimmy.
And you don't need to pay any mind to it either, Laurel,
she said to me.
Don't pay any mind to mean talk anybody says about anybody.
Sitting in front of that television, Mama already buried, I thought about how Uncle Jimmy loved Mama like a sister. At her funeral he cried like a baby.

Now here was Moses, strange like Uncle Jimmy, strange like the boys at school in Jackson who had their own club, threw their own parties and wore T-shirts that said
NOTHING TO HIDE
and
KISS A FAIRY
, who got beat up sometimes and sometimes beat people up, but everyone just kept on moving, everyone just . . . kept being. Here was Moses, strange and good—dropping money in my hat, bringing me bread, sitting to talk awhile. Here was Moses . . . strange . . . and here now.

I decided I needed a day off,
Moses was saying
.
Rosalie's around the corner, if you want to see her.

I did. I got up from the bench and walked to the end of the street, then turned and walked a little ways more. On the side of a dark gray building, there was Rosalie's face. She was dark like Kaylee, with beautiful dark eyes. Moses had painted her turned to the side a little, and a tiny dimple showed at the top of her cheek. She was smiling. Not smiling, laughing, and it felt like I could hear her laughing right there on the road—coming at me all high and pretty.

Something caught in my chest—something that made it hard to take a breath, to swallow. I stared at Rosalie until I couldn't see her anymore—until her face was melting down off that wall, into the street, disappearing. And then I noticed Rosalie had my same birthday. My same year . . . I started running then, hard—away from Rosalie, away from Moses. Hard and fast as I could, with the hot wind on my face, drying the tears quick-fast as they came. I ran until the buildings disappeared, until the street turned to dirt and the dust kicked up into my throat. But I kept running. Fast as I could . . . away from that wall, my birthday up there for everybody to see me already dead. Running away from being already dead. Knowing I was dead dying gone. Running to keep on living. So, so scared to die . . . home's a place i used to know

AUNT G. HELD JESSE JR.
in her arms as me and Daddy got in the car for the long drive back to the Pass. It was warm out, blue and clear after the hurricane. Rain was still coming down in the Pass, but I couldn't imagine it, couldn't imagine all the water the newscasters were talking about.

All week long, we'd glued ourselves to Aunt G.'s television, waiting for news about the storm. Over and over, we saw the water washing over Mississippi, watched the people cry about what they'd lost, heard the crash of the levees breaking in Louisiana, followed the eye of the storm.

And all week long we called home.
Don't worry,
Mama said the first night after we left, even as the phone line broke up, sending her voice in a lot of directions at once.
We're. Fine. Here. Dry as bones. And. Having. Ham and rice for dinner.
But the next day, no one answered. Every hour, the phone going straight to voice mail. And every other number of all our friends too. Daddy dialing and redialing, slamming down the phone, then dialing again. Pacing Aunt G.'s kitchen, and Aunt G. with Jesse Jr. at the table.
It's gonna be all right, Charles. They got themselves somewhere. It's gonna be all right.
But me and Daddy dialed the numbers again and again, leaving messages till we couldn't anymore. Till the only voice we heard was the recorded one.
The voice mail is full. The voice mail is full. The voice mail is full.

And the roads washed out and no way home.
Whose bad dream am I living?
Daddy whispered until the mayor said,
Come home and find your people and get your stuff. Then leave again.
So we were on our way. Home.

Ride up front with me, baby girl,
my daddy said. So I climbed into the front seat of the car and watched the world coming at me. Green and thick with life. Until the hours passed and we were close to the Pass. And nothing was familiar at all.

We crawled along slow, cops ahead stopping each car and bending down into it. Maybe an hour passed this way—Daddy with his hand covering part of his face, as though he knew what was coming.

No outsiders,
the cop said.

We live here,
my daddy said, looking straight ahead, his eyes half closed like he wanted to see and didn't at the same time. For as far as we could see, houses were flattened, roofs were blown off. Cars and trees turned over on their sides.

You got proof of address?

Daddy reached into his wallet and took out his driver's license.
We're coming back for my wife and mother-in-law,
he said, his voice shaking.

The cop gave him a long, sad look.
The houses along the water gone, sir,
he said. There was a hurt sound in his voice—loving, though, like the voice Daddy would use when I was little to convince me there wasn't a monster under my bed.

They went up higher,
Daddy said.
To the Walmart—up off 49. We're gonna see if they're still there. Can't get no answer at home.

The cop took a deep breath, then pulled a pad from his back pocket and wrote something down. He ripped out the page and handed it to my daddy.

You might want to go here first,
he said real soft.
It's on your way. You can cover all your bases this way—instead of driving around and looking for people to ask.

Daddy took the paper from him and looked at it, then looked back at the cop without talking for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was tinier than I'd ever heard it, like a small child's.
Why . . . why . . . don't understand why you'd send me to the morgue . . . Officer?

The police officer took off his cap and squinted out over the long line of cars waiting to get back down to the water. He put his hand on the back of his neck, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked old and very, very tired.
I'm not saying they're there, sir,
he said, his voice coming slow
.
I'm saying it's on the way, and it seems to be where most people are looking first. This is the direction we're sending people
. A moment passed and then he said,
That's where they took the Walmart bodies, sir. I'm sorry.

dream

IN THE DREAM,
my teeth fall out, one by one until there's no more teeth in my head. Then I wake up screaming, but no one hears me. Again and again, inside the dream, I wake up screaming. Then I'm falling from somewhere high up. I wake up still falling.

That morning, though, I woke up from my falling thinking about Moses's Rosalie. Thinking about how you can be thirteen years old and in love with a boy, then be fifteen and dead and gone. And still laughing. Up on that wall, Rosalie was still laughing. I was awake but still falling . . . I climbed up from the floor slowly. My body hurt. Mostly my teeth had that hammered pain in them. The tiny room was hot and dark. I'd gotten used to sleeping on somebody's left-behind air mattress with no air in it, but the darkness always surprised me—how dark Donnersville could get at night. Pass Christian was more and more becoming just a memory to me, and the memory was mostly filled with light—sun off the water, sun beating down and coloring everything bright white.

It was raining out—hot, though. Maybe I'd been asleep off and on for two days. Maybe three. My stomach felt hollow. My throat burned. My heart just kept pounding and pounding.

The room let out into a broken-down yard. I stepped outside and let the rain pour down over me. Opened my mouth to quench the burning. There were some tires against a high fence and a patch of garden that was weeds mostly with some ivy creeping out of it and up the fence wall. I stood in the rain staring at that ivy, watching it climb over that wall and disappear. Some part of me wanted to follow it, keep on moving the way it kept on moving . . . Don't know how long I stood there with my clothes all wet and sticking to me, rain falling into my eyes, dripping from my hair, running down my back . . . Don't remember when the rain stopped. When the sun came out. Don't remember writing the stuff about ivy down on some paper, drinking the rain, until I read about it in my notebook later on . . .
I thought you were dead, this time,
Moses said.

I remember turning and seeing him standing there. Being surprised because he never came back here before.

I got bread and chocolate and oranges,
he said. He had on a white T-shirt and long camouflage shorts with pockets on the side. I remember the pockets—how he pulled two oranges out of them and handed me one.

His hand holding that orange out to me.

And the way the mist sprayed into my face, surrounding me with the smell of orange and rain.

And us sitting down on that stack of tires, sharing the buttered rolls Moses pulled out of those pockets. Those pockets real big in my memory, never empty.

It scared me, thinking you were back in that room, dead,
Moses said.
Kept seeing myself finding you dead. Being the one to have to go to the police.

Moses opened his roll and put a piece of chocolate between the bread. I watched him without saying anything. He took a bite and looked over the yard.

What kind of sandwich is that?

A chocolate sandwich,
he said—like he was telling me it was a ham sandwich, something real familiar that I was a fool not having heard about.
He pulled another piece of chocolate out of his pocket, unwrapped it and held it out for me to break off a piece. I put it in my roll and took a bite. It was nice the way the chocolate melted around the bread inside my mouth. I must have smiled, because Moses nodded.

We must have sat there for a long time, because my memory of the day goes from rain to sun. From day to near dark. My memory of it that's biggest, though, is how me and Moses sat and talked and talked and talked. And it wasn't till near night that I realized I had gone the whole day without the moon. Gone the whole day with bread and chocolate and oranges, and Moses, like this was how it'd always been. And always would be.