Downtown (37 page)

It was not until I had gotten her turned over and half-propped against the wall and was squatting beside her, dabbing at her encrusted face with wet toilet paper, that I realized that she was Rachel Vaughn. I was so shocked that I rocked back on my heels and sat down heavily on the filthy floor.

She looked as if she were dying. Dying at that moment, of illness or starvation or perhaps physical abuse; she was so thin that I could almost see the bones through her slack, dirty gray flesh, and she was all over yellowing bruises. Especially on her bare arms and legs; they were so discolored that they did not look as if they belonged to a living human.

I did not think that they would, for long. I really did think, sitting there and staring at her, my head whirling, that she would die under my eyes.

Her little fox’s face, once sly and somehow charming, was edematous, swollen and discolored almost beyond recognition, but I knew her. The swelling did not seem to be that of physical abuse, but of illness. I could not define it. There were deep, near-black circles under her ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 296

closed eyes, and her blazing fox’s brush of hair had faded to hacked, pinkish-dyed straw, tangled now with her vomit.

She had stopped crying for the time being, but she was breathing in deep gasps, as if she would vomit again, and I got up off my buttocks and tilted her head back and wiped her face gently with wet toilet tissue. There were no towels or washcloths at hand. Perhaps, I thought furiously, the sated and stoned women in the bedrooms were wearing them all.

“Rachel,” I whispered. “Rachel. Can you open your eyes?

Rachel, it’s Smoky. Smoky O’Donnell. You remember me, from Our Lady?”

She did not open her eyes, but her puffed lips made a silent shape: “Smoky.”

I found a filthy glass that had rolled under the washbasin and filled it, and held it to her lips, and she drank greedily, and then vomited it up, all over herself. The vomit was clear and thin; there was nothing left inside her. I turned for the roll of toilet paper, and when I turned back for her, her eyes were open and she was looking weakly at me.

“Smoky,” she whispered.

“Let me clean you up,” I said, dabbing furiously, “and then we’re going to take you out of here.”

She began to shake her head weakly, back and forth, no, no.

“Rachel, you’re sick, you can’t stay here. Oh, God, what on earth are you doing here, anyway?”

“What are you?” she said, and tried to smile. It was a terrible thing to see.

“I’m working,” I said distractedly, and she stretched her mouth farther.

“So am I,” she said, and all of a sudden I knew that she had come here as a prostitute, to make money. Sorrow and a terrible anger began, far down inside me.

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She had never gone back to Our Lady, then.

“Well, you can’t stay here. You’re sicker than a dog. I’m going to get you to a doctor—”

“No.” Her voice was stronger.

“Rachel—”

“No, goddammit, Smoky! Shit, I haven’t even…scored yet.

I got ahold of some bad stuff, and I’ve been puking ever since. I’ve still got my panties on.” She tried to laugh, and it turned into a retch.

“Bad stuff. You mean food? Liquor?”

She shut her eyes and rolled her head on her neck.

“Stuff, Smoky. Shit. H. Heroin. Guy in there said he had some of the absolute best, but it’s bad…. Oh, fuck it, you’re impossible. You always were. Just get on out of here and let me alone.”

“I’m not going to do that. You look like you could die—”

“I’m not going to die. I know the signs; I’ve had this before. It’s just bad stuff. It wears off. I’ve got to score. I’m broker than shit—”

“I have some money. We have some with us—”

“No.” Wearily.

“Well, then…Sister Joan. Let me call Sister Joan. You know she’ll help, and she’ll do it with no questions asked, not like those others…. Let me do that, Rachel.”

“No. Christ. What’s Sister Joan going to do, sing ‘Blowin’

in the Wind’ to me? Go on, Smoky. Get out of here.”

She slumped back onto the floor and covered her face with her hands. I scrambled to my feet.

“I’m going to call her,” I said, and started out of the room.

“
Noooooooooo
!”

It was a great, animal howl of illness and despair. It froze me in my tracks.

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The door burst open and the heavy black woman was on me like a wildcat before I could move, clawing and scratching and spitting, literally spitting. I could feel her spittle hitting my face along with her fists, feel her hands in my hair, pulling my head straight back.

“You get out of here and leave us and our people alone, you white cunt,” she screeched. “You got no business in there botherin’ that girl! She came in with us!”

She jerked sharply backward, off me, and I saw that John Howard had her from behind, pinioning her flailing arms.

He was holding her up off the floor, and her black legs were kicking at him and me alike. She was stark naked, and as wild and furious as a captured animal.

“Fucking cunt!” she screamed into my face, her face contorted. I felt my own go out of control with rage.

“You were going to just let her lie here and die, you bitch!”

I screamed back, my face inches from hers. I had never been so angry in my life.

Luke came in, then, and he and John wrestled the thrashing woman back into the bedroom. Lord Byron Playboy got lazily to his feet and gave her a smack across the face, so hard that she staggered with it, and fell back onto the bed.

She did not make another sound, but lay there, naked and heaving, staring murderously at me.

“Might be y’all will want to mosey on, now,” Lord Byron said softly, and I saw that one or two of the men on the floor and the other bed were beginning to make as if to rise, slowly, and John said, “We’ll be doing that,” and before I could protest, he and Luke had marched me out of the room and were trotting me down the hall.

“But…Rachel…You don’t understand, that girl in the bathroom, she’s sick, she’s had bad heroin, I know her….

Luke, she was at the Church’s Home for Girls with me when I first got here. I just can’t go off and leave her, she could die—”

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“You can’t help her, Smoky,” John Howard said sharply, and pulled me out into the lobby. “You stick around and you’ll get her hurt, as well as yourself. Lord, we never should have brought you—”

“I didn’t start that,” I said, wounded. My ears were still ringing, and my face stung from the black woman’s blows.

I tasted something metallic, and knew that the inside of my mouth was cut.

“I didn’t say you did,” he said. “I just said we shouldn’t have brought you. You and Luke go on out to the car. I’ll make a call and get her some help.”

“Oh, John, not the police—”

“No. There’s a doctor in SCLC I know who’ll come.”

“But she’s white—”

“He’s a good doctor, Smoky,” John Howard said.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said, and went off to phone. Luke and I walked slowly toward the Mustang. The parking lot was still deserted and hot, but lying in full darkness now. The moon was almost full, but it had not yet risen. I took deep gulps of the fetid air.

A fine trembling began in my arms and legs, and my knees wobbled. Luke slipped his arm around me. We sat down together on the Mustang’s hood.

“You okay?” he said. “Jesus, Matt was worried about race riots and drugs and what we get is rednecks with shotguns and one pissed black lady. It just goes to show you.”

“Show you what?” I said. My teeth were chattering.

“I don’t know. Wait, you’re drooling blood. Shit, Smoky, but you’re a mess,” he said, and pulled my head down on his shoulder. I leaned there, taking deep breaths. Presently the trembling slowed and stopped.

John Howard came out of the motel and walked across the parking lot to us. As he did, a neat, dark ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 300

Chevrolet pulled up alongside him. He was near enough to us so that I could see that the driver was the pretty young black woman with the Afro who had been at the first day care center we had visited, on Pumphouse Hill. Juanita Hollings. The woman for whom John Howard had left his wife and son, or, perhaps, vice versa…. The lady Panther.

Or so Lucas had said.

She stopped the car and leaned out, and we could hear what she said:

“Hello, John.”

“Juanita. We meet again.”

“We do. I came by to tell you that some of us are having a barbecue over at AU for the deejays, and we’d like it if you could join us. We’re going on to Paschal’s afterward. I left word with the desk clerk but I guess he didn’t tell you.”

“No,” John Howard said.

“So come on by.”

“I don’t think so, thanks,” John said. “I’ve got some folks with me.”

She looked in our direction.

“Luke,” she said.

“Juanita,” he said back.

As she had before, she nodded slightly to me, but did not speak. She turned back to John Howard.

“Lots of people there you haven’t seen in a long time. Paul is there. Terry’s there. Terry would like to see you, John.”

John Howard said nothing, and then he said, “Maybe I will, after a while. Tell Terry…Is Terry okay?”

“Terry’s fine. So…we’ll see you, then?”

Finally, he nodded.

She nodded, too, and put her head back into the car’s window, and then backed out.

“Keisha’s there, too, Luke,” she called.

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Luke nodded, but he did not speak.

John got into the car and said, “Doctor’s on his way, Smoky. They’ll see she gets medical attention and a place to sleep tonight, and they’ll call this Sister Joan in the morning.

Will that do?”

“Thanks, yes,” I said. “Sister Joan will get help for her. Oh, Jesus, poor Rachel. She was pretty once, she really was.”

“That’s bad stuff,” he said.

They were both silent on the drive back to the Commerce Building garage, and John Howard said only, when he dropped us off, “If you didn’t get anything tonight, Luke, we might try the rally on the capitol steps tomorrow. It’s not what you wanted, but it should be…colorful.”

“I’ll see what I have when I develop ’em tonight,” Luke said, and we got out of the Mustang and went up to the ticket window to get the Morgan.

“What rally?” I said. “I didn’t know there was going to be a rally.”

“Me, either,” he said. “The Panthers, I guess.”

He was silent on the way to my apartment, and I simply did not feel like talking. My face ached and my mouth hurt and I was completely out of adrenaline, as if I had run a marathon. But my mind teemed with questions. Questions and images. Oh, Rachel…

We were almost to the Colonial Homes turnoff on Peachtree Road before I said, touching my tongue to the inside of my mouth where the stinging was, “He’s going to meet her tonight, isn’t he? He’s going to go back together with her. I can tell. Who is Paul, Luke? Who is Terry?”

“People he knew in Lowndes County. People who were there when Jonathan Daniels was shot. I told you a little about that.”

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“Panthers?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“And Keisha? Who is she?”

“She was there, too.”

“Is she a Panther?”

“I don’t know, Smokes.”

“You’re going to Paschal’s, too, aren’t you? To see her?”

He looked over at me.

“For a girl who just got her ass whupped, you sure do talk a lot,” he said, and I was silent.

We did not speak again until he had walked me to my door and I had fished my key out of my purse and put it into the lock. Then he took me by the shoulders and leaned me against the door and bent over and kissed me. It was not a short kiss, and not a brotherly one. When he lifted his head I stared at him.

“What was that for?” I said, tasting him on my mouth.

“How can you not kiss somebody who’s got her eyelashes hanging on her belly button?” he said, and I looked down and saw that one of my false eyelashes had come off and was stuck to the nubby fabric of my sweater, dangling over my bare midriff.

“What would you do if they were both hanging over my belly button?” I said.

“Stay tuned,” Luke Geary said, and ambled off into the darkness, grinning to himself.

Sometimes—not very often, in any life—there come days so perfect and seamless and golden that you remember them always. Almost everyone has them, though some, I think, have more than others. It just isn’t given to everyone to simply love a day for its own sake. But they are 303 / DOWNTOWN

the very coin of memory, and you can pull them out over and over again and fondle them, and spend them, and they are never depleted. That Labor Day was one of mine.

In accordance with Matt’s policy of making a small holiday for the staff after each issue was wrapped, we spent that Labor Day on Culver Carnes’s houseboat up at Lake Lanier, celebrating the wrapping up of the November issue and the publication of the September one. Matt had pulled another editorial article out of September and rammed the Focus piece through, and the day care story was now out. It would be on the stands on Tuesday. He had a small pile of advance copies on board, and champagne on ice to toast them. We all knew that the Andre piece, as it had become known around the office, was special. We started the day with the jauntiness of talented but fallible people who knew they had not, this time, fouled up.

Even the weather shone for us. After the muzzy heat of August, a little out-of-season tornado had spun up from the Florida panhandle, nipped at a trailer park or two, and departed, leaving the air crystal and sweet and the dusty, used leaves sparkling. The lake surface was a diamond-dusted, dancing indigo, and there was a smart enough wind so that the Thistles in the regatta setting out from the Lanier Yacht Club down the lake were all flying taut, fat spinnakers. The wind and water were cool and the sun hot, and even before we left the dock we were laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I said, as Teddy and I stepped aboard.

We had come up in her car, lugging barbecue from Harry’s and an angel food cake from her mother.