Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

“Young man, please. Has there not been enough shooting and death?” the pastor asked in a calm but insistent voice, as he rushed through trying to get to where Rita, Tyronne, and Snowflake were locked in a tug-of-war.

Rita spit at Snowflake. She missed his face but a glob stuck to the top of his left shoulder. Some older lady fainted but no one paid her any mind because she was too far away from the focal point of the fight. The minister smothered Rita in his protective arms.

“Can’t you see this woman is grieving over her son?”

When Reverend White grabbed Rita, Tyronne bear-hugged Snowflake and spoke slowly and carefully into Snowflake’s ear: “I’m begging you, man. Please don’t shoot my wife. She’s so upset she ain’t got no idea what she’s doing. You can understand her only son is dead and she thinks you had something to do with it. You got the gun. If you got to shoot somebody, shoot me. But please don’t shoot my wife.”

Snowflake’s gun was pinned between the two men.

“Will everyone please either leave out the front door or join me in the sanctuary where we will pray for sister Rita?” Reverend White picked Rita up and dragged her out of immediate danger. Supporting her with firm grips under her arms, two ushers grabbed the woman who had briefly fainted and spirited her out into the welcome chill of the night air.

The whole scene had been acted out so quickly, it seemed like a blur of simultaneous motion. Within ninety- five seconds, Snowflake and Tyronne were alone in the forlorn vestibule.

“Thank you,” Tyronne said as he stepped back half a step, reached into his lapel pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and gently dabbed Rita’s spittle off Snowflake’s cashmere jacket. “Thank you.”

It sounded so, so insane, but that was all Tyronne could think to say to the man standing in the receiving area of the church holding a loaded gun gleaming beneath the chandelier lights. From inside the sanctuary, the Twenty-third Psalm seeped through the swinging doors. Reverend White led and the assembled congregation responded with a tremulous sincerity.

“... Yeh, though I walk through...”

“Yeah, what up?”

Rita almost dropped the phone. It was Snowflake. She quietly hung up. So it was just like she thought. Snowflake was behind it all.

Here it was, two weeks after the funeral, and only now had Rita finally been able to summon the strength to clean out Sammy’s closet.

When she pulled the closet door open, Sammy’s scent assaulted her. She buckled at the knees and had to grab the door frame with one hand and push hard against the knob with the other just to keep from falling. It was like Sammy was hiding in the closet and had come charging out when she opened it.

Rita started to close the closet door. She couldn’t stand any more. Her intruding into Sammy’s life had already gotten him killed. She blacked out momentarily.

When she recovered consciousness, she was stooped on one knee inside the closet door. This was as close to a breakdown as she had allowed herself to come.

Fueling her weakness was the indescribable mantle of guilt that refused to lift. She had taken the money out of Sammy’s backpack because she wanted to talk him into stopping. He did. His death stopped everything. And the money, well, four thousand dollars barely paid for the funeral.

Rita heard some sound behind her, turned to look over her shoulder, and saw Tyronne standing in the doorway, his brow deeply furrowed.

“I’m all right. I was just going to clean out his closet and...” How do you explain to a man that a mother knows how her child smells, that you could identify his clothes blindfolded, that opening this closet door was like finding the secret place your child’s death had not yet visited, the place where the child was still overpoweringly present? How does a mother tell a stepfather that the smell of dirty clothes piled on a closet floor knocked you to your knees?

“If you want me to help, I’ll be in the front room,” Tyronne said softly. Then, after waiting a few moments and hearing no response to his offer, he turned and left the room even more quietly than he had entered.

Tyronne was trying so hard to be helpful and patient and considerate. But Rita knew the details, and the ultimate impact of all of this was way beyond his understanding. So much of Rita’s reality was based on events she would never reveal to Tyronne, such as the fact that Sammy’s father was Silas Moore, Snowflake’s oldest brother, and that she and Snowflake knew each other in ways that were hard to explain.

“Stand up, baby, show this boy what a woman look like.”

“Silas, I don’t have any cloth — Silas, I’m naked.”

“I know you naked. This my little brother. He ain’t nothing but ten years old and he ain’t never even seen no pussy.”

“I done seen it before.”

“Yeah, when?”

“Joanne showed me her thing.”

“Who you talking ’bout?”

“Joanne dat live ’cross the hall.”

And Silas had laughed at Paul. “Bo-Bo, that ain’t no pussy. Bet she ain’t even got no hair on it good yet. How old that girl is?”

“She eight and it’s still pussy, it just girl pussy.”

“Yeah, well, I’m talking ’bout real pussy. I’m talking ’bout a woman’s pussy. Rita, stand up and show this boy what a woman’s pussy look like.”

“Sil, I don’t want to.”

“Do it for me, baby.”

“She ain’t got to show me nuthin’, I done seen pussy befo’.”

“Rita, I said stand up.”

As Rita recalled standing up that day with Silas, she turned around to see if Tyronne was still there looking at her, but he was gone. Rita lowered herself into a sitting position in the closet doorway and another wave of memories flooded over her.

When she was seventeen, the fact that twenty-two-year-old Silas “Silky Sil” Moore considered her a woman filled her with pride. Sil was the biggest player in the courtyard. He always had money — had a big car and could have any woman he wanted, and he wanted Rita.

“Why you like me?”

“Look here, Rita, let me give you some good advice. When you hit a streak a good luck, don’t question why. Just ride it long as it last, and when the luck leave you, get up off it and be thankful you got what you did.”

“You saying you gon’ leave me?”

“Naw, baby, I’m saying life is like the weather — it’s always changing. Sooner or later, everything gon’ change.”

“I ain’t gon’ never stop lovin’ you.”

“Now, nah, girl, you can’t say that. Don’t be judging tomorrow by what’s happening today. Suppose I take to liking another girl? Would you still love me?”

“As long as it was liking and not loving, what I care? My love for you ain’t got nothing to do with you liking or not liking somebody else.”

“You don’t sound like no seventeen-year-old. That’s one of the reasons I likes you.”

“Yeah, and what’s another reason?”

“Come here, I can show you better than I can tell you.”

Rita could see her silly little seventeen-year-old self trying to act so womanish, and really doing nothing but being a stone fool for a man who was just using her.

No matter how hard she tried, Rita could never forget that day. Sil had pulled her close and kissed her. As her tongue flickered into his mouth, he sucked it hard, almost to the point of hurting her, and then released her.

Sil unbuckled his pants and let them drop at his feet. He slid his shorts down and sat on the side of his bed. “You want a mouthful of this?” he said, while guiding her hand to his erect penis.

Rita knelt quickly and started to give him head — she knew he liked the way she did it. She practiced doing it, sucking on a banana sometimes for five minutes straight without stopping, strengthening her jaw muscles. And other times she would chew five sticks of gum at a time, over and over, and over and over, and over, building up her stamina.