Orleans (32 page)

“Father—” I have to stop because my voice break and I clear my throat, start again. “Father, will you raise her here for me? This be a sacred place. You give her protection and she be all right. You can get her the blood she gonna be needing. You got equipment and folks willing to trade. You hear me? That’s more than I can do.”

I got no tribe, no home. I could keep her, I suppose, take her back to Mr. Go and we raise her on that little island. But she infected. She sick, and it only a matter of time before she pass that on to Mr. Go.

“Sorry, Baby Girl. This church be the safest place for you. Safer than being with me.” She be looking at me, the only person she know in this world. But I ain’t exactly been good luck.

I put my face close to her, breathe in that warm baby smell. “I love you, Baby Girl. Remember that, if you can.” She be watching me with old eyes. I touch her cheek and she pull a little half smile. Not a real smile, I know. She too young for that. But it break my heart just the same. “Bye-bye, Enola. Bye-bye.”

And then I hand her to Father John, along with the baby formula, the bottles of water, the two extra shirts Mr. Go made.

“When she old enough, send her to the Ursulines for schooling.”

“I will,” Father John say. “And I’ll be glad for the company in the meantime, child. But what about you?”

“I don’t know,” I confess. I feel like I done used up all I got to give to this life. Maybe this be why we don’t grow old in the Delta. There just ain’t no point.

I don’t take long saying good-bye ’cause it hurt. Like Daddy say: Run, Fen, and don’t look back. So I don’t. Even when Baby Girl start to fuss and be crying, I keep walking. Father John take the chains off the doors, now that the sun be fixing to rise. Baby Girl wailing for all she worth. She ain’t used to Father John. She ain’t used to nobody but me. Then I hear him start humming to her, a real old song he used to play when we been here long ago. He a good man. She gonna be all right with him. I shut the door behind me.

40

I done the best I could.
I SAY IT TO LYDIA,
though I just be talking to myself. She ain’t here. It just me now. I did my best, and this gonna be a better life for Enola than what she woulda had with me on our own. Or the O-Negs, too stupid to take good advice, be on they guard. Better than with Mr. Go and his little island, locked up like a tomb. I head up the road, away from the O-Negs and the Super Saver and the woods, like the last time I say good-bye to Father John. My parents been with me then, and we walked together into the trees. I follow our footsteps, back to the heart of Orleans and a glade in the swamps.

The clearing be smaller than I remember, and the house ain’t even a house no more, just a half-burnt, vine-covered wall. The rest gone back to the swamps. Even the ground be softer than it used to, marshland claiming its own. Daddy had pumps going to keep it solid for us. That all gone to rust now, too. I walk around the edge of the glade, touch the trees, and remember how Mama had a hammock tied between these two trees on sunny days in the middle of summer, and how Daddy got so angry when he saw me carving my name into that trunk because it be a sign someone live here. Could be dangerous, even after we moved on. Could give a hunter my scent, and a reason to follow. We been so careful out here. Freesteaders have to be.

I be glad the swamp so alive here, full of gators and foxes and all. ’Cause my parents be dead, and there ain’t no trace of them left, no bones, no nothing. Nothing to cry over. No one to blame. Two young people chose to come over the Wall. They fell in love, had a baby, and left her behind.

I be tired of running and hiding, tired of just trying to survive. How can Orleans be a home if it always trying to kill you? How can it be living if you ain’t allowed to live? What did Lydia say? The City takes. Well, I ain’t got nothing left to give.

I plant a cross of twigs in the dirt by the cottage wall, pick some yellow primroses, and twist them into the twigs. “Sorry it ain’t a real funeral, Mama,” I say.

The flowers be pretty. I tuck one behind my ear. Mama used to do that. She used to do a lot of nice things. Enola shoulda had a mother like that.

When the sun be bright in the sky, I get up to go. The place look so small; hard to believe it used to be my whole world.

I don’t pray, but I kiss the cross and I say good-bye. Then I walk into the swamp and the trees be so tall, it like a cathedral from a photograph, high arches, cool and deep and green. The water be warmer than it look. It feel good to the touch, so I step in, lower and lower, ignoring the moss and the green scum on the surface. I drag my hands behind me and I start to feel so light. I start humming that song Father John be singing to Enola. It be soothing and I need that, so I be humming, then I be singing:
“Would you be free from your passion and pride? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.”
I lay back in the water like a baptism, and the swamp be dancing around my ears, little sounds like clinking glass, and it smell of earth and water, and it feel warm, like blood.
“Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide; there’s wonderful power in the blood.”

The City takes. Well, if She want me, She can have me. Maybe then She leave Enola alone. I lie in the water and let the current carry me away.

41

IT TOOK HOURS OF CAREFUL AVOIDANCE, BUT
Daniel made his way to the broken field outside of Father John’s church. Unlike Rooftops, this field was clear. The Super Saver squatted at the far end of the field, solid, safe. Candlelight twinkled through a gap in the curtains along the one high, narrow window set in the western wall, barely visible in the late morning light.

Daniel sprang from his hiding place and ran.

The rear of the store-turned-church was closest. He ignored the trucks parked there and mounted the loading dock, two steps at a time, praying that the back door was open. It was. He was safe. But not alone. The long hallway flickered with guttering torches. At the end, beyond the double doors, a baby was crying. Enola.

He slowed down, resisting the urge to call out to Fen, and eased his way down the hall. The doorways to the left and right were dark and empty. The second to last door swung open and a tall man stepped out, dressed in a dark monk’s robe, hood pulled back, face streaked, pink and yellowed gray. Daniel froze. The man was wearing makeup to conceal the telltale scars from Delta Fever. A syringe in his hand caught the light.

“Ah, you’ve found me in disarray, I’m afraid. I’ve been cleaning, you see.” He wiped a sleeve across his face, smearing the rest of the concealing makeup in a grotesque streak on his forehead. “Welcome, my son,” the man said brightly. “All God’s children are welcome here.”

Daniel hesitated. “I’m looking for Fen.”

Confusion flickered across the scarred face. He gave Daniel a once-over, and his face brightened. “An outlander. Yes? Is that an encounter suit? What a wonderful invention. Would that they had had them when I first came to Orleans.” He chuckled. “Never mind that, though. Come along, we were just about to get started.”

The priest turned back through the double doors.

Daniel followed him. “Fen?”

Enola was there at the altar, a machine next to her warming up with the help of a small generator. He stared. It was a dialysis machine, designed to clean blood. Or harvest it.

Before Daniel could react, a dull pain pounded at his temple, and everything went black.

42

WATER LILIES AND SWAMP FLOWERS WRAP
around me. I glide in slow circles, watching the sun through the trees. It beautiful, the mist lifting like the veil of a nun, trees dappled in shadow and light even as the sky grow cloudy. Peaceful. The most peace I ever found in Orleans.

I drift and sing to myself, wanting to sink under, to bury myself deep.
“Would you be whiter, whiter than the snow? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.”
I been tempting fate, dangling in the water like an alligator snack, and I ain’t dead.
“Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow. There’s wonderful power in the blood.”

Why ain’t I dead?

“There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb.”

I think about Lydia, how her life be over so fast. She the most alive person I ever knew, and she gone like that. Mama and Daddy, they be gone in the blink of an eye, too. But Enola, little Enola, she perfect. Perfect little Baby Girl. Little baby lamb. She come into the world just as fast as everybody else be leaving.

“There’s wonderful power in the blood.”

And Father John, like Mr. Go, he been around forever. Like these trees in this swamp, ancient and strong. Mr. Go rooted like a tree, but Father John be like the chameleon, the lizard on the leaf. He know how to blend in. How to survive. Mr. Go be brown and rough, like the trees, and Father John be smooth and fresh, like he just been born.

It be like time stop ticking. The sun don’t move in the sky. And I ain’t floating anymore, waiting to drown. The world stop breathing and I think: Father John’s face, all pink and healthy. Not a line or a wrinkle in all these years. How could that be?

Unless it ain’t.

I be out of the water so fast, it startle a heron nearby. I climb out, hauling myself up the roots of a cypress tree. Daniel ain’t the liar. It be Father John. Right in front of me, like that chameleon, he blend himself in, make himself look healthy. Too healthy for his age.

Those test results he showed me ain’t Enola’s. They his.

He the one with B blood.

He the one with Delta Fever.

You can’t trust no one in Orleans. But Daniel ain’t from here. I shoulda trusted him.

Now Father John got my Enola. He got my Baby Girl.

43

“WOULD YOU BE WHITER, MUCH WHITER THAN the snow? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood. Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow. There’s wonderful power in the blood.”

INQUIRY:
Who is singing?

Daniel’s head was throbbing. His datalink was broken. A baby was crying. Nothing made sense. Slowly, he opened his eyes only to close them again. Dizziness threatened to make him ill.