Megan Abbott - Mississippi Noir

“Jada...” he whispered into her neck.

“No,” she interrupted him, trying to halt the inevitable. To keep him from talking, she kissed him, not caring that they were at school and there was no lock on the door. Anyone could walk in: a student, another faculty member, the principal. But she didn’t care. Jada needed to feel connected to Derek. She poured all of her emotions into him with her tongue. He kissed her back, communicating his own. Jada knew he didn’t want to end this; he just felt obligated. She could respect his obligation, respect him for feeling it. But what they had was good. It shouldn’t have to end because of a damn baby who wasn’t even here yet. A thousand things could happen between now and then. There was no reason they could not be together until the baby was born, and when they got to that bridge, they could decide how to cross it. She tried to say all of this in her kiss because she had been a speechless fool when he was talking to her.

“Mmm, I’m going to miss this,” he murmured, coming out of the kiss.

“You don’t have to. We can keep this relationship going.” She began unbuttoning his pants.

“Jada, I was serious. We have to end this.” He halfheartedly attempted to move her hands from his zipper.

“Derek, you know this is what you want.”

He shook his head as he silently watched her jerk down her pants and panties and pull his erect penis out of his boxers. Rolling his eyes upward in surrender, he pushed Jada against the cinder blocks behind her desk and entered her hard. Jada wrapped her arms around his neck and held on to him as he bounced her against the wall. She finally felt the connection. She closed her eyes and prayed that it would hold.

But it didn’t. After Derek pulled up his pants, he promised her that would be the last time; he thought it best if they didn’t even talk for a while.

The numb feeling reentered Jada’s body and she walked through the rest of the day like a zombie. She didn’t come alive again until Wednesday morning when Regina called her before work.

“The nurse just called. You better come over to Nana’s. She took a turn for the worse last night. The doctor’s out here. They don’t think she’ll make it.”

A flood of fear overran Jada’s body. Just when she thought she had made it through Derek’s tornado, a new disaster was aiming for her, threatening to drown her sanity if not her actual life. Nana could not die. What would she do without her?

At Nana’s, Gina and the nurse were talking quietly in the kitchen. Jada barely acknowledged them as she practically ran to Nana’s bedroom. She stopped at the doorway. Nana seemed even smaller than she had on Sunday. Thin, and transparent even, she looked like she was simply fading from existence. Her eyes were closed and the room was devoid of sound except the slow beeping of the heart monitor.

This can’t be real , Jada thought. It was almost a wish, a prayer. “Nana,” she called. She reached up and touched her necklace. Jada thought she saw the older woman’s jaw twitch, but there was no other movement. She moved closer to the bed and threw herself on Nana’s shoulder. “Nana, you have to stay here with us. You still have a lot to teach us hardheaded girls.” When no response came, not even the jaw twitch, Jada grabbed Nana’s hand and cried softly.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that. It seemed like hours, days, but it didn’t matter. As long as she lay on Nana’s shoulder and felt her warm hand, she knew she was alive.

But why was God punishing her? Why was God taking away all the people whom Jada loved? She was a good person; she loved her family; she worked hard for her students; she went to church. What more did God want from her? Didn’t she deserve to be happy and loved? In this storm, she needed to be like those mothers in the tornadoes who lay atop their most precious ones and save them. Couldn’t she save her world from total destruction? Wasn’t she doing it now, lying atop her Nana to keep her from flying away?

But eventually Regina made her get up. Jada walked numbly over to the couch in the bedroom and lay down. She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, it was dark outside and she knew what she had to do. Like a trickle of sunshine pushing a small space through a barrier of clouds, a light dawned on her. She did not have to be unhappy. She could fix this.

With a kiss on her grandmother’s forehead and a quick prayer for her to keep living, Jada walked out of the house without saying a word to her sister or the nurse. She got in her car and drove the familiar trek up I-55 to Madison. She was going to Derek’s house to do what had to be done.

This time, she did not park in the driveway next door. Instead, she parked on the street two houses down from Derek’s. She knew on Wednesday nights he played tennis with some friends so he wouldn’t be home. It would just be Jada and his wife. It would be quick and easy. Jada would ring the doorbell, she would come to the door and let Jada in after Jada told her she had important information about Derek. She would be shocked, but Jada would do it. She would stop the loss of everything dear to her.

It was spring and the sun was going down later and slower, it seemed. A faint glow painted the evening. Cars whirred by in the distance, but otherwise the neighborhood was oddly quiet, safely unaware of the storm of sounds gathering inside of Jada. She heard sobs and wails and pleas inside her head. She rang the doorbell, and for a brief moment the melody obscured the cries. But only for a brief moment. When she opened the door, smiling hospitably, they returned.

“You need to know something, Mrs. Ross.” She spoke the woman’s name like a curse word. “Derek and I have been fucking for the past year.”

Horror and disbelief wrestled across the woman’s puffy, glowing face. Jada had to admit that pregnancy was agreeing with her; she looked less ordinary. But her new mom’s glow did not dissuade Jada. Instead, it emboldened her. This woman and her baby were responsible for blowing down the walls of her happiness. That had to end. Tonight.

Quickly, she pulled her pistol from her purse. It seemed light as a pencil. Maybe because she couldn’t feel anything on her person. She didn’t even feel the cool release of the trigger. She may not have known she had actually shot the woman if Jada hadn’t heard the loud pop and then another pop . Then a strange thing happened. All of her senses came back and she felt the gun, the warm mugginess of the night air against her back, and the hot splattering of blood across her bare arms and chest. She fell to the ground. Jada looked around, but no one was outside so she pushed the woman’s lifeless body farther into the foyer, out of immediate sight. Then she turned and walked out of the house, pulling the door closed with her now-crimson hands. She rubbed Nana’s necklace like a good luck stone.

But she had just made her own luck. She had eliminated the source of her problems. There was no baby to keep Derek tied to his wife. They could be together, and she didn’t have to worry about losing him. It never occurred to her, even as she drove back to Nana’s with blood covering her steering wheel and the pearly white of her necklace, that she had just lost herself.

Holly Springs

Back when I was fifteen there wasn’t much Mississippi outside Holly Springs. I’d never hopped a train or even met someone from the coast. I’d been to a football game in Oxford with Phael once and to a doctor in Olive Branch when a roach got stuck in my ear. I stayed with Grandma Oliver because my mom was dead and so was my dad, though I never knew him. He was from Memphis and that was where he died. Shot by cops while robbing a liquor store. That was the story anyway. My mom smoked too much and got lung cancer and it spread everywhere and she went fast.