Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Why you so quiet?

Porsha said nothing. The receiver hummed at her ear like an empty well.

Hmm, I see. Um huh. I see.

The words echoed what she felt.

I’m sorry, Nia said. Sorry, I really am.

Porsha listened and waited.

I’m sorry but, you know, people shouldn’t cross roads in heavy traffic.

Porsha searched each word for the meaning she wanted to hear. Perhaps Nia was right. Perhaps it was all her fault. Then again, she had only followed the natural flow of her heart.

Next time you’ll know.

I thought we were talking about you.

Ain’t no need to talk about me. Evil as always.

What happened?

Same ole.

I’m coming over.

No need to.

Nia had missed the point. She needed to. I want to come over.

Stay away from me cause I’m in my sin.

You ain’t gon tell me what happened?

Who said anything happened.

Porsha could hear destruction in the words. But Nia was like that, secretive — something you either were or weren’t — holding and nurturing it all inside until she was ready to let another taste her bitter milk. Okay, Porsha said, be like that then.

I will. And you do like I always do. Find a hole and crawl into it.

Porsha felt the words roaring like ocean in the phone, roaring, as if they had enough wet force to will her into action. Well, I’ll talk to you when you get back.

Sure you don’t want to come with?

Porsha smiled into the phone. She pictured Nia sitting at her office desk, looking like a package somebody else had wrapped. No.

It’ll do wonders.

I’m sure it will.

Okay. I tried. Later, girlfriend.

Later.

THE WINDOW FRAMED A REMOTE WORLD. The day had drawn sure. The night was well along. But night is no hiding place. The earth and its corrupt works shall be discovered. What the cockroach has left, the locust has eaten. Cause the Good Book says that through the windows the locust shall go like a thief. She felt a hot melting urge. She greased her hands in petroleum jelly and eased them into the Lazarus 1 Ascension Aid, patent pending. She failed to levitate. Once again. She’d been unsuccessful for months. Nia had succeeded on her first try, her fat body bobbing balloon-fashion above the bare floorboards.

She returned to her seat before the window. She felt like a passenger in a waiting train. The hum of the air conditioner amplified her feelings. She clicked it off. Quiet. At that moment, she felt pain all over, pain that had been crouching and waiting in the silence and the dark. At first she thought her friend was paying the monthly visit, then the pain declared that it was different. She accepted this difference when the pain declared that it wasn’t pain at all but acute lethargy. She drew the blind cords. Raised the window. Warm night air expelled the musty air of the room. Moonlight gave depth to the objects around her.

Got two minds to leave here

Three tellin me to stay

She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Half-formed images blinked in and out of the ceiling plaster. Head and face a patiently crafted globe directly in the ceiling’s middle, glowing there in the lightbulb’s place. The face grew smaller and smaller until the features were indistinct. She had to think hard to imagine the eyes, the set of the mouth.

In all the folds of her body she felt tired dampness, summer weariness. But this was spring. Day had simmered down to brown evening and evening to blue night. She could string hours together in thin melodic lines but the rhythm had broken. Everything seemed impossible, far away, another world. To escape sleep, she took inventory of her physical being. Silence in her muscles. Her hands rubbed her legs in slow circles. She shut her eyes. Many a day he had met her at the train station. Piggybacked her home. Damn, you heavy. He would watch her walk about the room, loose her hair, take off her garments. Kneeling while she stood, he would kiss all her body. Now, he wasn’t here. A mile away or a million, all the same. Her hands worked. He don’t know what he’s missing. Her open sea scent. A whole life would not be long enough to survey, discover, and explore her soft, curving geography. His loss.

With hidden force, she lifted her body from the bed. She took a long time getting dressed, hindered and slowed by pain. Clothed in cutting elegance, she stepped out into the night. Flowers shone stronger than the moon but she carried the night’s chill — the first cool night in weeks — and trembled like a bird near a pond. She walked rapidly along the empty street beneath failing streetlamps where bugs crashed and whirled in halos of mist. Streetlamps that spread pools of soft fire at her feet. Her footsteps fell lonely and hollow. The night seemed a walking shadow. Her necklace shone like an illuminated noose. She admired herself in the mirroring dark.

HOW’S NIA?

Porsha thought about it. Fine, I guess. Same ole. You know Nia.

She still datin all those men?

Yes.

Mamma shook her head. She keep that up, she’ll be a used bill. Out of circulation.

Mamma and Porsha laughed above the river-running faucet. Truth in wet laughter. Where is everybody? Porsha said.

They ain’t here. Mamma washed dishes, scrubbing hard, like they were made of iron. She rinsed them spotless under the running water. Lined up the cleaned dishes like soldiers in the drainer. Quieted the water. Porsha had seen it all before. Mamma, a woman of settled habits.

How come nobody’s here this late at night?

Mamma dried her hands on her apron. Hatch over at Abu’s house. She removed the apron and draped it over a cabinet arm. A plume of steam whistled from the teapot’s spout. Mamma killed the flame, lifted the pot with a holder, and poured two cups. She lifted the cups and placed them on a plastic serving tray.

Need some help?

Sit back down. Mamma carried the tray and the cups over to the table on creaking knees and set them down dead center. Then she placed one cup before Porsha and one before herself. She pulled her chair out from the table and eased into it. Nobody’s here, she said. Praise the Lord. She smiled into the steam of the tea she had made. I got some peace finally. Nobody to clean up after. She broke open two packages of artificial sweetener and poured and stirred them into her tea.

You deserve it. Tea steamed up into Porsha’s face. She scooped two spoonfuls of sugar into her cup. She sipped tea hot and sweet on her tongue. Where’s Dad?

Mamma raised — yes, raised, as if the hand were a machine; the fingers long and thin, the veins taut spokes beneath the skin — her steaming cup to her lips. Out of town. He went looking for John.

John?

Yeah. A few days ago.

What’s going on?

Mamma tasted her tea. Ask him that.

Dad ain’t called?

You think I been sitting around here waiting for him to call?

Porsha thought about it. You never knew what to expect when those two got together. Like two lil kids. Maybe all brothers are like that. She looked at the globes of Mamma’s breasts. Dad remembered and told, Mamma would hold the infant Porsha to her breasts and recite all the places the baby would travel. Where did they go?

Well, John run off to that march in Washington, then Gracie come callin here at two or three the next morning sayin that she ain’t heard from him.

Is that all? … What she expect?

I don’t know what she expect. She thinks John disappeared.

Disappeared?

Her exact words.

Porsha shook her head. He disappeared all right. Wit some woman. Beneath her sheets. Between her legs.

Mamma sipped her tea.

Think after all these years she’d know.

Well, she don’t know. That’s why Lucifer up and run off to New York or Washington or wherever the hell he went.