In This Light (7 page)

But Emile, he didn’t say a word. There was only water, that one sound, and I saw it seeping under the door, leaking into the white carpet. Still I told lies to myself. I said,
Shit, Emile—what’s going on?
I pushed the door. I had to shove hard, squeeze inside, because Emile was there, you know, exactly where you found him, facedown on the floor. I turned him over, saw the lips smeared red, felt the water flow.

I breathed into him, beat his chest. It was too late, God, I know, his face pressed to the floor all this time, his face in the water, Emile dead even before he drowned, your bottle of valium empty in the sink, the foil of your cold capsules punched through, two dozen gone—this is what did it: your brandy, your valium, your safe little pills bought in a store. After all the shit we’ve done—smack popped under the skin, speed laced with strychnine, monkey dust—it comes to this. After all the nights on the streets, all the knives, all the pissed-off johns, all the fag-hating bullies prowling the Fenway with their bats, luring boys like Emile into the bushes with promises of sex. After all that, this is where it ends: on your clean wet floor.

Above the thunder of the water, Clare said,
He doesn’t want to live.

Clare stayed very calm. She said,
Turn off the water, go.

I kept breathing into him. I watched the butterflies between his bones. No flutter of wings and Clare said,
Look at him. He’s dead.
Clare said she should know.

She told me what to take and where it was: sapphire ring, ivory elephant, snakeskin belt. She told me what to leave, what was too heavy: the carved bird, white stone. She reminded me,
Take off that ridiculous coat.

I knew Clare was right; I thought, Yes, everyone is dead: the silent heads in the TV, the boy on the floor, my father who can’t be known. I thought even you might be dead— your husband asleep at the wheel, your little boy asleep in the back, only you awake to see the car split the guardrail and soar.

I saw a snow-filled ravine, your car rolling toward the river of thin ice.

I thought, You never had a chance.

But I felt you.

I believed in you. Your family. I heard you going room to room, saying,
Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
it took all my will.

I wanted to love you. I wanted you to come home. I wanted you to find me kneeling on your floor. I wanted the wings on Emile’s hips to lift him through the skylight. I wanted him to scatter: ash, snow. I wanted the floor dry, the window whole.

I swear, you gave me hope.

Clare knew I was going to do something stupid. Try to clean this up. Call the police to come for Emile. Not get out. She had to tell me everything. She said again,
Turn the water off.

In the living room the tree still twinkled, the angels still hung. I remember how amazed I was they hadn’t thrown themselves to the floor.

I remember running, the immaculate cold, the air in me, my lungs hard.

I remember thinking, I’m alive, a miracle anyone was. I wondered who had chosen me.

I remember trying to list all the decent things I’d ever done.

I remember walking till it was light, knowing if I slept, I’d freeze. I never wanted so much not to die.

I made promises, I suppose.

In the morning I walked across a bridge, saw the river frozen along the edges, scrambled down. I glided out on it; I walked on water. The snowflakes kept getting bigger and bigger, butterflies that fell apart when they hit the ground, but the sky was mostly clear and there was sun.

Later, the cold again, wind and clouds. Snow shrank to ice. Small, hard. I saw a car idling, a child in the back, the driver standing on a porch, knocking at a door. Clare said,
It’s open.
She meant the car. She said,
Think how fast you can go.
She told me I could ditch the baby down the road.

I didn’t do it.

Later I stole lots of things, slashed sofas, pissed on floors.

But that day, I passed one thing by; I let one thing go.

When I think about this, the child safe and warm, the mother not wailing, not beating her head on the wall to make herself stop, when I think about the snow that day, wings in the bright sky, I forgive myself for everything else.

III.  HOME

November again. Harvard Square. I called Adele. Not the first time. One ring, two—never more than this. If my mother loved me, she’d pick it up that quick.

Don’t be stupid
, Clare said.

No answer, no surprise. Coins clanging down.
Jackpot
, Clare said.

I saw Emile across the street. He was a Latino boy with cropped hair, reaching for his mother’s hand.

Then it was December third. I remember because afterward I looked at a paper in a box so I’d know exactly when.

One ring. My mother there, whispering in my ear.

Now you’ve done it
, Clare said.

Past noon, Adele still fogged. I knew everything from the sound of her voice, too low, knew she must be on night shift again: nursing home or bar, bringing bedpans or beers—it didn’t matter which. I saw the stumps of cigarettes in the ashtray beside her bed. I saw her red hair matted flat, creases in her cheek, the way she’d slept. I smelled her, the smoke in her clothes, the smoke on her breath. I remembered her kissing me one night before I knew any words—that smell: lipstick and gin. I heard Clare sobbing in the bunk above mine, her face shoved into her pillow, and then our mother was gone—we were alone in the dark, and if I’d had any words I would have said,
Not again.

Who is it?
Sharper now, my mother, right in my hand. A weird warm day, so the Haitian man was playing his guitar by the Out of Town News stand. He’d been dancing for hours, brittle legs, bobbing head. You never saw a grown man that thin. Sometimes he sang in French, and that’s when I understood him best, when his voice passed through me, hands through water, when the words stopped making sense.

I wanted to hold out the phone, let my mother hear what I heard. I wanted to say,
Find me if you can.

It’s me, Nadine
, I said.

I heard the match scrape, the hiss of flame burning air. I heard my mother suck in her breath.

Your daughter
, I almost said.

Where are you?

I thought she was afraid I might be down the road, already on my way, needing money, her soft bed. I saw her there on the edge of the bunk, yellow spread wrapped around her shoulders, cigarette dangling from her lips. I saw the faded outlines of spilled coffee, dark stains on pale cloth, my mother’s jittery hand.

Not that close
, I said.

Muffled words. I thought she said,
I’m glad.
The Haitian man kept jumping, dreadlocks twisting, pants flapping— those legs, no flesh, another scarecrow man. Dollar bills fluttered in his guitar case, wings in wind.
Un coeur d’oiseaux brisés
, he sang, and I almost knew what he meant. A crowd had gathered to listen, two dozen, maybe more, all those people between us, but he was watching me; I was watching him.

I’m glad you called
, my mother said again.

And I swear, I knew then.

Je ne pleure pas
, the Haitian man said.

For a moment both his feet were off the ground at once. For a moment his mouth stayed open, stunned. He was a dark angel hanging in blue air. I saw his heart break against his ribs. For a moment there were no cars and no breath.

Then every sound that ever was rushed in. Horns blaring, exploding glass; ice cracking on the river;
On the ground, motherfucker—
all this again.

I said,
Clare’s dead.

Tell me where you are, Nadine.

Fuck you
, Clare said.

The Haitian man fell to earth. I heard the bones of his legs snap. He wouldn’t look at me now. He was bent over his case, stuffing bills in his pockets.

The voice came over the phone, the one that says you have thirty seconds left. I said,
I’m out of quarters.
I said,
Maybe I’ll call you back.

That night I found a lover.

I mean, I found a man who didn’t pay, who let me sleep in his car instead. He told me his name and I forget. Fat man with a snake coiled in the hair of his chest. I kept thinking, All this flesh. When he was in me, I thought I could be him.

Clare said,
I tried to come home once, but the birds had eaten all the crumbs. There was no path.

The next night, another lover, another man with gifts. Two vials of crack we smoked, then heroin to cut the high.
Got to chase the dragon
, he said. No needles. Clean white smack so pure we only had to breathe it in.
Safe this way
, he said. He held a wet cloth, told me,
Lean back
, made me snort the water too,
got to get the last bit.
When he moved on top of me, I didn’t have a body: I was all head.

Then it was day and I was drifting, knowing that by dark I’d have to look again.

Emile appeared on Newbury Street, shop window, second floor: he was a beautiful mannequin in a red dress.

Listen, you think it’s easy the way we live? Clare told me this:
I never had a day off. I had to keep walking. I could never stay in bed.

So she was glad when they put her in a cell, glad to give them all she had: clothes, cash, fingerprints. She said,
I knew enough not to drink the water, but nobody told me not to breathe the air.

No lover that night. I found a cardboard box instead. Cold before dawn, and I thought,
Just one corner, just the edge.
When the flames burst, I meant to smother them. I felt Earl, his cool metal grasp.
Get out
, he said. Ashes floated in the frozen air, the box gone that fast. Clare said,
Look at me: this is what they did.
Later my singed hair broke off in my hands.

In the morning, I called Adele again.
Tell me
, I said.

I thought she might know exactly where and when. I thought there might be a room, a white sheet, a bed, a place I could enter and leave, the before and after of my sister’s death.

But there were only approximate details, a jail, stones, barbed wire somewhere.

No body.
She meant she never saw Clare dead.

Clare said she tried to get home in time, but the witch caught her and put her in the candy house instead.

Busted. Prostitution and possession.

Let me answer the charges.

This is Clare’s story.

Let me tell you what my sister owned.

In her pocket, one vial of crack, almost gone. In her veins, strangers’ blood. She possessed ninety-six pounds. I want to be exact. The ninety-six pounds included the weight of skin, coat, bowels, lungs; the weight of dirt under her nails; the weight of semen, three men last night and five the night before.

The ninety-six pounds included the vial, a rabbit’s foot rubbed so often it was nearly hairless, worn to bone.

Around her wrist she wore her own hair, what was left of it, what she’d saved and braided, a bracelet now. In her left ear, one gold hoop and one rhinestone stud, and they didn’t weigh much but were included in the ninety-six pounds.

She possessed the virus.

But did not think of it as hers alone.

She passed it on and on.

Stripped and showered, she possessed ninety-one pounds, her body only, which brings me to the second charge.

Listen, I heard of a man who gave a kidney to his brother. They hadn’t spoken for eleven years. A perfect match in spite of this. All that blood flowed between them, but the brother died, still ranting, still full of piss and spit.

Don’t talk to me about mercy.

The one who lived, the one left unforgiven, the one carved nearly in half, believed in justice of another kind:
If we possess our bodies only, we must offer up this gift.

You can talk forever about risk.

New York City, Clare. Holding pen. They crammed her in a room, two hundred bodies close, no windows here. They told her to stand and stand, no ventilation, only a fan beating the poison air. And this is where she came to possess the mutant germ, the final gift. It required no consensual act, no exchange of blood or semen, no mother’s milk, no generous brother willing to open his flesh.

Listen, who’s coughing there?

All you have to do is breathe it in.

It loved her, this germ. It loved her lungs, first and best, the damp dark, the soft spaces there. But in the end, it wanted all of her and had no fear.

December still, Clare eight months dead. Adele knew only half of this.

You can always come home
, she said.

I went looking for my lover, the fat one with the car, anybody with a snake on his chest.

I found three men in the Zone, all with cash—no snakes and none that fat. Tomorrow I’d look again. I wanted one with white skin and black hair, a belly where my bones could sink so I wouldn’t feel so thin. I wanted the snake in my hands, the snake around my neck; I wanted his unbelievable weight to keep me pinned.

Ten days in a cell, Clare released. Two hundred and fifty-three hours without a fix—she thought she might go straight, but it didn’t happen like that.

She found a friend instead.
You’re sad, baby
, he said. She dropped her pants. Not for sex, not with him, only to find a vein not scarred too hard. When your blood blooms in the syringe, you know you’ve hit.

Listen, nobody asks to be like this.

If the dope’s too pure, you’re dead.

This is Clare’s story. This is her voice speaking through me. This is my body. This is how we stay alive out here.

Listen.
It’s hope that kills you in the end.

On Brattle Street I saw this: tall man with thick legs, tiny child clutching his pants. Too beautiful, I thought, blue veins, fragile skull, her pulse flickering at the temple where I could touch it if I dared. The man needed a quarter for the meter. He asked me for change, held out three dimes.
A good trade
, I said. He stepped back toward the car, left the girl between us. I crouched to be her size, spoke soft words, nonsense, and she stared. When I moved, she moved with me. The man wasn’t watching. I wanted to shout to him,
Hold on to this hand.
I wanted to tell him,
There’s a boneyard in the woods, a hunter’s pile of refuse, jaw of a beaver, vertebrae of a deer.
I wanted to tell him how easily we disappear.