Natashia Deon - Grace

So much screaming.

I took off running in the direction of Albert’s scream. He flew out his shop door with his hands on his head, his hair on fire, and his shirt and neck was smoking. He threw hisself in the trough and flailed in the water like it was deep and he couldn’t swim.

He lifted out the water, took deep breaths, dunked back in again. I scooped water on the parts of him that he was trying to drown.

“I cain’t see!” he screamed, throwing his hands at me.

“You got to calm down!” I said. “I cain’t help you like this.”

He hummed and jumped up and down, dumped his head in the trough again and again. I got next to him, scooped more water over him, saw the edges of his shirt burned down his back, his neck. A burning ember must have got him, a flash of fire. The new lotion he was gifted, a trigger. The top of his head and face was bleeding, his skin was peeling away in gray sheets.

I ripped my dress to try to put it on his burns but he grabbed my hand before I could touch him. With his voice quivering, he said, “You touch me with that cloth and it’ll melt in my skin.”

I backed away from him. Didn’t know what to do but give him room.

He bent over the trough clinching his jaws together while the smoke piped off of him smelling of burnt meat. I reached into the trough and got a hand scoop of water, threw it on him, but by the time the cooling wet reached him, it was only sprinkles.

“Just let it be!” he hollered, desperate. Dunked his head completely, baptized.

I can only sit with him now ’cause water don’t heal.

It only stops the worsening and gives us time to think about what went wrong.

For the last three hours since he ran out on fire, I haven’t done nothin. I guided him back into this shop and went and got Cynthia. Thank God she was home and would come tend to him. But ain’t much she can do but wait with me ’cause right now he’s like lava, she said. His skin is red underneath with blackened skin on top. He’s cracking and recracking, shivering on his bench slouched over. Blood and sweat drips from his face, skipping like a picnic fly from his chin to his shoulders. He squeezes the neck of the whiskey bottle in his hand.

Blisters on his face and neck are swollen, red, and weepy, and little white bumps have broke out on his nose and under his swollen shut eyes. Patches have spread on the sides of his face where his brown skin was and is gone now. Cream-colored splotches have risen there, too.

“Albert?” Cynthia whispers. “Let me see you.” She barely touches him and he grunts.

His eyebrows are gone. A slimy film has smeared in their place. The ridge of his top lip is rippled black and dry. Cynthia say, “I think you look better like this,” but Albert don’t laugh. Neither do I.

“I brought you something,” she say but he grunts, no. “I know you don’t like my medicine but it’s the best thing for you right now. One time won’t get you hooked.”

He grunts louder, shakes his head, bringing hisself terrible pain.

“Have it your way,” she say.

She raises white sheets around him like a tent and tells him, “It’ll keep the soot in the air from blowing in your wounds.”

She wrenches the bottle of whiskey from his hand, turns her back to him and pours something else in it — a syrup — and shakes it up. “Drink some whiskey,” she say and tilts the bottle to his lips while keeping the flow of it away from his burnt top lip. The double heavy syrup is already separating from the liquor and it snakes though the neck of the bottle and into his mouth.

After a few minutes, he stops shivering.

We wait for him to sleep before she asks me to help wash him. Real gentle. Tapping him with warm water. Took us both a hour to do everything. But she the only one who could help us now.

“Don’t burst the blisters,” Cynthia say, getting up to leave. “Don’t use healing oils. And don’t move him ’til tomorrow. But tomorrow he’s gon’ need to walk. Just back and forth to the end of the shop. Outside, if he can stand the light. You’ll have to hold him up by his unburnt parts — his forearm. .” I start crying when I look at him again. He’s hurting and I cain’t do this. I cain’t take care of nobody.

Cynthia looks at me softly and waits for my tears to finish and when they don’t she say, “The stuff I gave him is gon’ make him wrong in the head so when he wake up, he might want to fight you. You need to protect yourself and the baby, so give him more of that drink the second you hear him waking.”

I wipe my tears, nod.

“And it’s fine to double the amount of syrup if you need to. It’ll keep his face numb, stop him from cracking the blisters and skin. He don’t need an infection.”

She gives me the vial of her syrup and stops at the door before she go. That soft look again but she say, “This don’t make us friends.”

ALBERT AIN’T WOKE up for more than thirty minutes in the last week.

I walk him and give him more medicine, change his towels and sheets, bring him a pot to empty hisself and wipe his messes away. I can hear him rustling under his tent now. He’ll need some new water.

I go to get it fresh ’cause I fell asleep and left the cover off the pitcher. It’s already filthy with soot so I hurry outside with it, pour it out, and fill it again.

When I walk back through the door, Albert’s sitting up. He’s got his tent off, huffing. “Who’s there?” he say, his eyes still swollen. He groans from speaking. “Don’t come no closer.”

“It’s just me,” I say. “But you don’t need to talk. Your scabs need to heal.”

His lava face has stretched out on one side and his skin is pinned up and back by hardened puss crystals like crunchy new skin. He shifts in his seat.

“I have water for you,” I say. He raises a hand to take the cup. His hand is trembling and his arm he brings up only halfway. I stare at the freckles on the back of his hand. The shaking seems to join the dots together in a line. Tears crowd my eyes but I won’t cry for him again. He deserves better than weak.

I put the cup in his hand and sit next to him, help him hold it to his bottom lip only. He can hardly part his lips to drink. He swallows.

“Cynthia’s been by to see you,” I say. “Took care of you on and off. But now you just got me.”

I don’t want him to die.

I cain’t see his eyes good enough to tell if that’s what he wants to do.

Hazel used to say that you could tell when a person’s ready to go. There’s a stepping away from their own body that happens and you can see it in their eyes. She said people know when it’s time.

Like I know.

I know I’ll die by thirty-five because I’m not worthy of more than what Momma had.

I’ve been thinking about what Albert said. About the most valuable thing — time and health. Love being what we leave behind. Family, what we make it. Maybe when this baby comes, I’ll go with the Railroad. And maybe, if Albert’s well enough, the both of us, all three of us, could go together and be family. North, south. No matter.

I give him another sip of his water and he flinches ’cause the cup touched the wrong part of his lip. I cringe, too. He takes deep breaths to calm his pain.

“Here,” I say. “Drink some more whiskey.”

He pushes it away.

“Don’t you want to get better? Not get the infection?”

He tries to speak.

“Don’t talk. Just scrunch your eyes. . blink once for no, twice for yes.” I look at him. “You understand?”

He blinks twice.

“Good. I need you to drink your whiskey. Just ’til you’re better, then you don’t have to drink it no more.”