Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

Lena took her left hand out of her coat pocket and I could see that she was holding a bill and a couple of coins. She moved them slowly back and forth; Maam’s eyes followed but she did not move.

“You got to give it to me,” Lena said. Her voice was high-pitched and rasping. I hadn’t known it could be as rough as that.

Maam held out her hand: a thin black arm, all the muscles and tendons showing along the bone. She held out her arm, palm down, fist clenched. Then slowly, so that the old muscles under the thin skin moved in twisting lines, she turned the arm and opened the fingers. And in the palm there was a small bundle of cloth, white cloth. As we stared at it the three edges of the cloth, which had been pressed down in her hand, popped up slowly until they stuck straight up.

Lena reached out her right hand and took the three pointed edges of the cloth while her other hand dropped the money in its place. I could see how careful she was being not to touch the old woman.

Then we turned and almost ran back up the path to the top of the levee. I turned once near the top and looked back. Maam was still standing in the door, in her thin black sleeveless dress. She seemed to be singing something; I couldn’t make out the words, just the sound. As she stood there, the lamplight all yellow behind her, I could feel her eyes reach out after us.

Lena had done all she could. She’d gone to the church and she’d prayed and lit a candle and asked the priest for special prayers. And she’d gone to the voodoo woman. She’d done all she could. Now there wasn’t anything to do but wait.

You could see how hard waiting was for her. Her face was always thin, a little long, with fine features. And now you could almost see the strain lines run down her cheeks. The skin under her eyes turned blue; she wasn’t sleeping. I knew that. She always lay very quiet in her bed, never tossing or turning. And that was just how I knew she was awake. Nobody lies stiff and still like that if they’re really asleep; and their breathing isn’t so shallow and quick.

I’d lie awake and listen to her pretending that she was asleep. And I’d want to get up and go over there and comfort her somehow. Only, some people you can’t comfort. You can only go along with their pretending and pretend yourself.

That’s what I did. I made out I didn’t notice anything. Not the circles under her eyes; not the way she had of blinking rapidly (her eyes were so dry they burned); not the little zigzag vein that stood out blue on her left forehead.

One night we had left the shade up. There was a full moon, so bright that I woke up. Lena was really asleep then. I looked over at her: the light hadn’t reached more than the side of her bed; it only reached her hand that was dangling over the edge of the bed, the fingers limp and curled a little. A hand so thin that the moonlight was like an X-ray, showing the bones.

And I wanted to cry for her if she couldn’t cry for herself. But I only got up and pulled down the shade, and made the room all dark so I couldn’t see anymore.

Chris died. The word came one Thursday late afternoon. Ma was out sweeping off the front steps and she took the telegram from the boy and brought it to Lena. Her hand was trembling when she held it out. Lena’s thin hand didn’t move even a little bit.

Lena opened the envelope with her fingernail, read it, cleared the kitchen table, and put it out there. (We didn’t need to read it.)

She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t even catch her breath. Her face didn’t change, her thin, tired face, with the deep circles under the eyes and the strain lines down the cheeks. Only there was a little pulse began to beat in the vein on her forehead — and her eyes changed, the light eyes with flecks of gold in them. They turned one color: dark, dull brown.

She put the telegram in the middle of the table. Her fingers let loose of it very slowly. Their tips brushed back and forth on the edges of the paper a couple of times before she dropped her arm to her side and very slowly turned and walked into the bedroom, her heels sounding on the floor, slow and steady. The bed creaked as she sat down on it.

Ma had been backing away from the telegram, the corner of her mouth twitching. She bumped into a chair and she looked down — surprised at its being there, even. Then, like a wall that’s all of a sudden collapsing, she sat down and bent her head in her lap. She began to cry, not making a sound, her shoulders moving up and down.

Pete was balancing himself on his heels, teetering back and forth, grinning at the telegram like it was a person. I never saw his face look like that before; I was almost afraid of him. And he was Pete, my brother.

He reached down and flicked the paper edge with his fingers. “Good enough to die,” he said. “We good enough to die.”

There was a prickling all over me, even in my hair. I reckon I was shivering.

I tried to think of Chris dead. Chris shot. Chris in the hospital. Lying on a bed, and dead. Not moving. Chris, who was always moving. Chris, who was so handsome.

I stood and looked at the yellow telegram and tried to think what it would be like. Now, for Chris. I thought of things I had seen dead: dogs and mice and cats. They were born dead, or they died because they were old. Or they died because they were killed. I had seen them with their heads pulled aside and their insides spilled out red on the ground. It wouldn’t be so different for a man.

But Chris...

“Even if you black,” Pete was saying, “you good enough to get sent off to die.”

And Ma said: “You shut you mouth!” She’d lifted her head up from her lap, and the creases on her cheeks were quivering and her brown eyes stared — cotton eyes, the kids used to call them.

“You shut you mouth!” Ma shouted. She’d never talked that way before. Not to Pete. Her voice was hoarser even, because she had been crying without tears.

And Pete yelled right back, the way he’d never done before: “Sweet Jesus, I ain’t gonna shut up for nobody when I’m talking the truth!”

I made a wide circle around him and went in the bedroom. Lena was sitting there, on the bed, with the pillows propped behind her. Her face was quiet and dull. There wasn’t anything moving on it, not a line. There was no way of telling if she even heard the voices over in the kitchen.

I stood at the foot of the bed and put both hands on the cold iron railing. “Lena,” I said, “you all right?”

She heard me. She shifted her eyes slowly over to me until they were looking directly at me. But she didn’t answer. Her eyes, brown now and dark, stared straight into mine without shifting or moving or blinking or lightening. I stepped aside. The eyes didn’t move with me. They stayed where they were, caught up in the air.

From the kitchen I could hear Pete and Ma shouting back and forth at each other until Ma finally gave way in deep dry sobbings that slowed and finally stopped. For a second or so everything was perfectly still. Then Ma said what had been in the back of our minds for months, only I didn’t ever expect to hear her say it, not to her only boy.

“You no son of mine.” She paused for a minute and I could hear the deep catching breath she took. “You no man even.” Her voice was level and steady. Only, after every couple of words she’d have to stop for breath. “You a coward. A god-damn coward. And you made youself a cripple for all you life.”

All of a sudden Pete began to laugh — high and thin and ragged. “Maybe — maybe. But me, I’m breathing. And he ain’t... Chris was fine and he ain’t breathing.”

Lena didn’t give any sign that she’d heard. I went around to the side of the bed and took her hand: it was cold and heavy.

Pete was giggling; you could hardly understand what he was saying. “He want to cross over, him.”