Father Hensile checked his watch. “I should be going. I don’t want to be taking up your whole night here,” he was saying when the bell rang.
“Can I come in? Just for a minute?” she asked through the half-open door.
“No. Someone’s here. I’ve got company,” he said in a low voice.
“I just want to explain, that’s all.”
“No, that’s all right. You don’t have to.” He stepped outside and closed the door.
“But I want to. I was scared, that’s all. I thought I heard a—”
“No! Go away! Just leave, will you?”
“But that’s why. You’re mad at me. . . .”
“No, I’m not mad.”
“Then what are you? You sure look mad.”
“I’m not mad. I’m not anything, but I have to go back inside. So will you leave? Please?”
Her eyes moved in shrewd assessment between him and the closed door. “You got a couple bucks I can borrow?”
He only had six dollars, a five and a one.
“Five’s okay. I’ll pay you back. I promise.” She ran off down the street.
“That was my neighbor,” he explained, coming back in. “She lives across the street. She’s only thirteen.”
“Actually, that’s why I’m here,” the priest said.
“What do you mean?” His voice trembled.
“The new youth center. I was hoping you could maybe give us a hand now and then. No set schedule or anything, I don’t mean that. That’s the beauty of this, it’s all kind of free-form. Random. Just come by when you feel like it.”
“No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t be very good at it,” he added because the priest continued to look at him.
“But there’s nothing to be good at. All you’d have to do is be there.”
“No. No, I can’t.”
“I could really use your help. I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself in pretty deep,” the priest said with a wan smile.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Can I ask why?” The hounding eyes held his.
“I’m sorry, Father. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t. I have a lot to do here. I’m very busy. I don’t have a whole lot of free time. I’m usually pretty tired after work. And I . . . To tell you the truth, I prefer being alone. I need that now.”
“Forgive me, then. I’ve overstayed my welcome.” The priest started to get up.
“No. I meant generally. In everyday life. I mean, after . . . after all that time.”
“Yes, of course.” The priest hunched closer. “And you were so young. All those years, what a terrible price to pay for an accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
“It wasn’t?” The priest didn’t move. “But you didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“A terrible price all the same,” the priest said with all the dismissal of absolution.
He was stunned.
The only terrible price is that I’m here and she’s not.
“Well, after all this time I hope you’ve come to some sense of acceptance, Gordon,” the priest said, obviously reading his shock. “I mean, how else do you live with something like that?”
You don’t,
he thought, looking straight into his eyes.
“It all has to be put into perspective. You have to understand that some things happen for which there is no earthly explanation. And that what you did or didn’t do in a particular moment doesn’t condemn you—forever,” he added uneasily. “Not in the eyes of God, anyway.”
Gordon sighed and looked away. This was the mission, to rescue the sinner from his sin. He could feel himself clinging to a crumbling window ledge while this priest tried to coax him back inside.
“Don’t you think God has forgiven you?”
“To tell you the truth, Father, I don’t think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because it’s so irrelevant!” he said in exasperation, shocked by his disrespectful tone yet empowered by it.
“Why? Because you can’t forgive yourself?”
“Because no matter what I think or say or do, she’s gone, she and her baby,” he blurted, as close to anger as he would allow himself. Like so many others, it was the priest who needed to forgive him, the priest who needed to make sense of what he had done. “Because it’s an emptiness that can never be filled. And it would be wrong for me to even try.”
The priest had been shaking his head. “Do you think God wants you to suffer forever, to keep on punishing yourself like this?”
“He doesn’t want anything from me.” He would not speak the name.
“Of course He does!” The eager benevolence spread like warm honey. “You’re here for a reason, Gordon. We all are.”
“So in other words, everything’s all really out of our control.”
“No! No, not at all. What I’m saying is that we’re born, we’re human, we’re here, and so it’s up to us to find out why.”
Now more than ever Gordon wanted this intrusive little man to leave. He disliked him intensely. Any further pretense seemed unnecessary. He stood up. “I’m very tired now. I need to wash the dishes.”
It was long past midnight when the dog jumped off the bed, barking. Jada stumbled after him to the front door, then, still benumbed by sleep, stood staring at the turning knob.
“Ma!”
Her mother rushed past her into the bathroom. “Don’t turn on the light,” she said from the toilet.
“Where’ve you been, Ma? I’ve been here all alone.”
“You should’ve called Uncle Bob. I told you to.”
“No, you didn’t. You said you’d be right back. That’s all you said.”
“Well, I don’t have to tell you everything, do I? I mean, you should’ve known. You should’ve called him.”
“The phone’s shut off.”
“You should’ve gone up and used Inez’s.”
“I didn’t want her to know you were gone.”
The toilet flushed, and Jada turned on the light. “Oh!” she gasped as her mother cringed from the glare. She was deeply tanned, but so skinny that her arms and legs were like sticks. Her hair was lighter and had been braided in cornrows. “You look so nice, Ma. Your hair, I like it like that. Who did it?” she said, following her into the bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the bed, holding Leonardo while her mother undressed in the dark.
“Some guy. I don’t know, it’s like this thing they do. They just come along the beach and they do it. Here, feel.” Her mother held out a braid, but Jada didn’t move. “They even put these little bead things in.”
“You were at a beach?” She was wide awake but deeply tired. Her mother hadn’t been in detox. She wasn’t clean at all, just high on the curve between hits. Leonardo wiggled, straining toward her mother, but Jada wouldn’t let go.
“There was so many different ones I don’t even know where I was half the time. There’s so many boats parked, you can’t even see the water, they’re all crowded in so close. And to get on the dock you just walk on the boats, one to the other.” She lay down. “That’s all you have to do.” She yawned.
“You were on a boat?”
“Yacht’s more like it. You should’ve seen it, baby, you wouldn’ta believed it,” she said as she petted Leonardo, who’d burst from Jada’s resentful grip. He sprawled on her mother’s chest, squealing and trying to lick her face. Her mother clamped her hand around his snout. “They even have, like, their own private chef.”
The window rattled and Jada sat up. “What’s that?”
“Chef. It’s a French word. It means a cook that cooks fancy food.”
“Ma, Feaster wants his money. He said you did this big buy and then you took off.”
“Why do you have to ruin everything all the time?” her mother groaned. “I should’ve just stayed there, that’s what the hell I should’ve done. The only reason I came back is because of you, and now you won’t even listen.”
“I am, I’m listening, but—”
“You know what I ate every single night?”
“No, but Feaster’s mad, Ma. I been really scared. Him and Polie both, they made me—”
“I said I don’t want to talk about them. All right?” She paused, then shook Jada’s arm, her voice girlish and cozy again. “Guess what I ate every single night?”
“I don’t know.”
There’s this and then there’s that, there’s here and there, but never any connections. Except me,
Jada thought.
“Here’s a clue—it’s one of the most favorite things you like.”
Jada shivered. Without Leonardo’s warmth, she felt raw, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off.
“Come on, Jada! Every night I told everyone, I said the same thing, ‘This is my kid’s most favorite food in the whole world.’ Oh, all right. Shrimp cocktail!”
“So what about Tron? Was he there, too?”
“Tron?” There was a pause. “Oh, no, he wasn’t there.”
“How come? Did he go in detox?”
“Huh?”
“He was gonna go in detox and you said you were, too.”
“Tron’s an asshole.”
“He seemed nice to me.”
“He’s a crackhead, that’s all he is, baby. . . .” Her mother’s voice trailed off. “That’s all he’ll ever be.” She was already snoring.
Jada reached for the dog, but he growled through the darkness. “Leonardo,” she whispered, hurt.
“Jesus Christ,” her mother whined, then snored again.
Jada covered her face with her hands, refusing to cry. She slipped out of bed and groped along the floor for her mother’s purse. She opened it in the bathroom. Two twenties and a lot of ones. Three cellophane-wrapped rocks lay at the bottom of the purse among grains of sand, matches, hair clips, casino tokens, crimped roaches, and loose cigarettes. She held one rock over the toilet, smiling as she let it go. The minute it splashed she panicked. She scooped it out and wiped it on her shirt, then put it back.
She crept back into bed and drifted into fitful sleep, curled as close to Leonardo as she could get without waking her mother.
The next morning Jada sat on a stool in the Donut Shop, eating breakfast. She finished the onion bagel with cream cheese, then ordered a chocolate-covered jelly doughnut and another coffee. Reflected in the mirror behind the coffee urns were three boys coming down the street, Thurman and two buddies, Colt and Ray. She ran to the door. “Hey, Thurman! You guys want a doughnut or something? I’m paying,” she yelled, waving the twenty. They scrambled in and sat at the counter, careful to leave an empty stool between themselves and her. They each ordered two doughnuts, which they wolfed down in silence. When they were done they jumped up and hurried outside.
“Wait!” she called, running to catch up. They ran even faster. “Wait up! You want a smoke? Hey! I got some Camels here.”
The wind kept blowing out the match, so they went into the alley next to the drugstore and huddled over the flame. Thurman lit up first. Lighting hers last, she took a deep drag. As they continued walking, Thurman had them staggering with laughter. He was telling them about his crazy sister. She was always messing up her paper route, but nobody ever said much because she was the only one the newspaper could get to deliver, the neighborhood was so bad. If Thurman needed a few bucks, he’d go collect from some of her customers. Then when the time came she’d try to collect. Her customers would say they’d already paid, and she’d just get confused and think she’d forgotten to write it down.
“Who you talking about? Peggy Triker? She’s your sister?” Jada said, walking faster to keep pace. Peggy weighed at least three hundred pounds and delivered the papers on a gigantic tricycle. “She’s, like, grown-up. I mean, how can she be your sister, she’s too—” Old, she was about to say as Thurman shoved her against a parked car.
“Careful, freak-face, or else I’ll knock those crooked teeth right down your throat.”
“Go ahead, try it,” she grunted, laughing but mad as hell as she tried to knee him. His face was at hers. He butted his pelvis into hers. The two boys watched with ruttish glee.
“Hey! What’re you doing? Leave her alone!” a man called.
Heedless, Thurman was just about breaking her wrists.
“Thurman! I said, leave her alone. Get off her!” Gordon’s shadow fell over them. Eyes glazed, Thurman stepped back with a nervous giggle. Gordon glanced at her, then continued walking down the street.
“Wait! Wait a minute.” She ran after him, but he only walked faster. “Don’t be mad,” she pleaded, running to catch up, then hurried alongside.
Gordon looked around in embarrassment.
“Please, please don’t be mad . . . I told you . . . I told you what happened . . . I was scared. . . .” She grabbed his arm. “That’s all. I wasn’t tryna come on to you or anything.”
Mouth agape, he stood there.
“I wasn’t!”
“I have to go to work.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered as he rushed off. He’d had that same look as Uncle Bob, as if she hadn’t fooled him at all and he knew what a hopeless piece of shit she was.
Ray waited, with his shirt wrapped around his hand. Thurman sliced the back-door screen with his knife. He unlocked the storm, then tapped the glass with the knife butt just enough to crack it. Ray punched in the glass the rest of the way, then reached inside and turned the latch. “When’s he get home?” Ray asked as they ran into the kitchen and began looking for money, drugs, or booze. Thurman wasn’t sure. He hadn’t worked at the Market since the asshole got him fired.
Jada hadn’t even tried to stop them. She was too high. Plus, it was Gordon’s fault. The least he could have done was listen to her. She liked walking around up here like the lady of the house. Everything was so neat, his closets and drawers, the rows of stacked change on his dresser. She studied the picture on the nightstand, instantly disliking the two kids with their fake smiles and stupid pose, the girl sitting close in front of the boy.
Downstairs, cupboards and doors opened and then banged shut. The television came on. Colt and Ray kept calling out to Thurman. The sweet smell of weed drifted up the stairs. Thurman had bought some on the way here with the rest of her money. She sat on the bed and opened the nightstand drawer. Not much in here. A real estate-agency business card with a woman’s picture: Jilly Cross, it said. A Bible. A Holy Roller, maybe that’s why he was so spooked about the other night. It didn’t look like it had ever been read, though. A couple of paperback books that also seemed new. A list of telephone numbers. In the back of the drawer were two folded magazine pages. She opened them and giggled. They were pictures of naked women, the creases worn in places to little holes. She felt a pang of jealousy. They were both blondes. At least Miss July had thick lips and long skinny legs like she did. Forget Miss May, though, with those supersize white boobs that weren’t even all hers—she could tell. She stood sideways in front of the mirror with her hand on her butt like Miss May. She pulled her shirt tight behind her back. It was never going to happen. Not unless she got some of that silicone stuff someday. From downstairs came a crash, quickly followed by another. Then another. She dropped the pictures and ran down to the kitchen. Ray and Colt were emptying cupboards onto the floor.