Walter Mosley: Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

“Sandy?” Lana Leer said. She was looking down at me with fear in her eyes.

I tried to smile but I don’t think she could tell.

“You’re gonna be okay,” she said in a voice that was anything but certain. “They arrested that crazy bitch and put her in jail. Neelo says that your eye and lung got cut up pretty bad but—”

“That’s enough for right now,” Jude Lyon said, interrupting my chatterbox friend.

I turned to see his concerned countenance. The person of interest smiled at me. There was no promise in that smile but I felt his caring. I could see the coldness in his eyes beyond the everyday human attention. There was also an inkling I had that something had changed in the person he was seeing.

“Your friend the doctor is doing all that he can,” Jude said. “That woman cut you up pretty bad but you’re in good hands.”

After that I passed into unconsciousness. For all intents and purposes I was dead.

When I awoke again the tubes were gone but my eye was still bandaged. Neelo came to see me soon after I’d regained consciousness.

“You’re gonna be all right, Aunt Deb,” he said, showing more relief than I felt. “It was tough going there for a while. We had to drain your lungs every day for three weeks and you were on life support for half that time. I’m actually surprised that you survived.

“I brought in seven specialists to operate on that eye. We still don’t know how your vision will be affected. But you’re gonna live, Aunt Deb. You know I love you. It would have killed me if you died.”

After that day the visitors started coming. It was like Theon’s death procession but over a greater length of time. Neelo’s words stuck with me.

Rash didn’t come but sent a note with Lana.

Dear Sandy,

I’m so sorry for the pain and danger I brought into your life. There are no excuses and I will not bother you again. I’m moving down to Miami next month and plan to start a little business down there with a guy I studied with at college. Please forgive me and try to forgive Annabella. She was just out of her head.

A few days later a woman lawyer named Katya Corvine came to get me to put on record that I was having an affair with Rash. I agreed and also documented that I bore no ill will toward my attacker.

There was a noticeable scar down the left side of my face, and when the eye patch was removed I saw an odd double image out of that eye. My face in the mirror looked a little off because of my impaired vision and disfigurement. But to me it was all good. The wounds inflicted were like a surgeon’s incisions, cutting out a deep, ancient infection.

I no longer wanted to die.

When Delilah and Edison were allowed in to see me I told my son that we would live together on a mountain overlooking the ocean.

“What about Mama Delilah?” my caring boy asked.

Kip Rhinehart had already agreed to all three of us living in his abandoned school.

“She can live with us as long as she wants.”

Edison cheered. Delilah had already agreed.

Delilah and Edison drove me from the canyon and as soon as I was better I got a job as a waitress at a seafood house on the Pacific Coast Highway.

One day, a little more than a year after Theon’s funeral, Edison was sitting on my lap as we watched the sun settle into the Pacific. He ran a finger down the trail of the scar on my face.

“Does it hurt you, Mama?” he asked.

“No, baby,” I said. “It reminds me.”

“Of what?”

“When I feel it going down my face I think that it’s a road my life took to this place.”

“A scary road with ghosts?”

“No. It’s just the way I had to go to get here with you.”

“And Mama Delilah an’ Uncle Kip,” he added.

“Yes.”

There was a seriousness beyond Eddie’s tender years in his face. And farther than that, beyond this childhood wisdom, there was a lovely California sunset and I felt that I had arrived at a place where no one could bring me down on my knees.