Chapter 3, Untitled Manuscript

It’s an act of courage to get up and do your thing, my friend, whatever it might be right now. I’m grateful for all of you. Thanks for coming here to spend a little time. I’m reading poems in public next week, and I’ll send you an update about that.

Chapter 3

She was about half asleep still. Like being underwater, but the water was the color of NyQuil. Something beeped but she couldn’t see it. Then it beeped again. And again. Every few seconds. She started waiting to breathe until she heard the beep. If she breathed when it beeped, it would be okay. The beep came, and she took another breath. Every time, it was like she started over. Like writing with water. Nothing saved. Just the next breath. A good one. One more. There now.

With each breath, she noticed a smell. Not the alcohol. She swam past that. Not the cleaning fluids, not the cold, that had its own smell. Almost a warm smell, almost sweet like an apple, but green. Almost like mint but without the edges. She crawled into the smell and it held her and rocked her. In the rocking, the pain turned to pressure and then broke apart into warmth. The beeping stopped telling her to breathe.

A rocket inside her. The green turned bright orange, then white. The rocking turned to shaking, vibrating, and she lifted off the bed for a second, then landed in feathers. Up again, and down. Shouting. Shouting children. Climbing out of a boy full of toys. Running and falling in red dirt. She was out of breath and, and, wait for me. Beady, wait.

“Get up, Kim! We got to go. It’s late.” Beady sounded funny.

Kim tried to find the edges of the bean bag chair, but her hands were far away. They were gone. Where were her hands? She tried to ask Beady. Something was wrong. The alarm clock was going off in the next room. “Is this your house, Beady?” This wasn’t Beady’s house. It looked kinda like her old house on Western Boulevard. But that was torn down now. And Beady had never been to that house. He couldn’t.

The bean bag chair seemed like it was squeezing her. Pushing her back down every time she got up. She could hear him moving the chairs. Maybe they were playing a game. “Come on, Kim! Where’s your bag?” Then he had her by the shoulders. His face right up in hers. “Where is it, Kim? We need to get out of here before they get back. Wake up!”

I’m awake, she said, but her lips couldn’t wrap around the words, and she heard something else come out. Help me, Beady.

It was dark, but she could hear him. Not angry now, just talking soft like when they were little. Put the quarter on the track and get in the ditch. Black-eyed Susans bobbing in the hot air. He had an apple in his pocket and he gave her a piece while they sat there. He was such a cute little thing. Where’d he get that apple. Not from his momma. She was laid up in the bed all the time.

No train whistle this time, no blast of air. No car crackling in the gravel driveway in the dark, rolling it out with the motor off so daddy won’t hear them leave.

“Kim,” She thought, it is him. Beady, are you here with me? She couldn’t get to the words.

“Come on, Kim. It’s late. Don’t you know what day it is?” That’s right! It must be! It’s Christmas Eve, she thought. She must be riding with Beady. Or maybe he was riding with them. That’s right; he was supposed to ride with them. “Get in, Kim. Your momma and daddy said it’s okay.”

“But we’re sposed to bring a cake. Applesauce cake. Momma’s got to get it from Grandma. She’s coming back.”

“No, Kim. You’re riding with me this time. Hurry up! We don’t want to miss the presents. Come on, now.”

“Beady, you know they gon wait til momma and daddy gets there…” Everything, everything was coming up inside her. She wanted to open her mouth wide enough. Get it out of me, she prayed. Can’t you see it’s killing me.

“Girl, I know where you been. I saw you there.” He slowed down, slinky-like. Like he talked to the girls who came over from the college, the ones who came up the metal stairs outside the apartment slow, not sure. You could hear their shoes on the steps, as tinny as their laughter. It was a game to them.

“I saw you up there at your Momma’s house, too. After. Say, Kim, you reckon Miss Jessie keeps them cakes up in her freezer so she can be the first one to the house? Damn if she won’t there before the undertaker.” That’s not Beady. Whose voice is that? Something was in her throat and it couldn’t get out. It wouldn’t come. Oh god, Kim thought, let me loose. “I see you now, and my heart just hurts, Kim. Why you always got to fight everybody? Made it so hard on yourself. You don’t have to fight now. You can set it all down here. Come on and get in the car with me. Come on now.”

Come on and get in the car. The Cadillac, the backseat silky like the skin inside your wrist, like something alive and warm, smell like perfume. The grown men talk in here. They might let her stay if she could tell a story that made them laugh. If she could drink out of the bottle like a man. He laughed and threw her cup on the ground, Aunt Sylva’s Christmas cup with the holly berries. Maybe that’s why they have to drink out here.

“Come on, Kim. It’s time now.” She felt his hands wrap around her wrists, and she tried to shake them off of her. “No! I want to go with Momma and Daddy!”

“That’s what I’m telling you, girl. They gone. They got the cake already. It’s time to open your present. I’ve got it. It’s in the glove compartment.”

“I didn’t want to go with you, Beady. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t want to go with you.” She felt tears but no air, nothing.

“Beady? You still calling for Beady? He ain’t here. Any of y’all seen Beady? That little splinter didn’t even have a name. We didn’t ask for him, did we?”

She saw the rest of them, shadows around the open trunk. Beady had been just a baby then. No, not even born yet. She was only, only—how old. How old was she then? Momma made her wear socks, not pantyhose. That year when she got dressed she wanted to wear hose but Daddy said no, and then she went on into their room anyway, got a pair of her Momma’s new L’eggs and put a run in them trying to pull them on. Got her tail tore up for that, even though it was Christmas eve. But then at Aunt Sylva’s house Big Tam asked her to go out to the car with him, where the men went to laugh. The bottles in the trunk that clanked together like little bells. She tried to run that night and her new shiny shoes got scuffed on gravel in the driveway. She got a whippin’ for that, too.

This time, she didn’t yell. She just ran. Ran like she should have the first time. She didn’t look back at the shadows coming out of the car trunk. She didn’t look back at the cream-colored Cadillac or the glass on the ground. She ran and ran, sinking in the stones. And then she crawled. She tried to pull herself out but the digging only dropped her lower. Digging a hole. A hole she could crawl in. Back to Beady. Wasn’t she supposed to be watching him? She was always watching him. “Come on, cuz. Let’s go up to the store.” He’d reach up for her hand on the way there, and then she’d carry him back home, drinking a Pepsi that old Barnard would give her if she let him look under her shirt.

Beady always followed her. She never had to check for him. Like a little puppy dog, her momma always said. They threw off the hindrances of school and didn’t let the words land in their ears. When Kim’s first boyfriend got sent to prison, they threw him off, too, and Kim moved right into his place in the order. She did all the work anyway. May as well make the money. Kim’s and Beady’s apartment kept hopping all night, enough money to buy real gold, not those damn plastic beads he wore all the time.

“I saw you go back there that night, after the funeral. I saw you bury my beads in the ground, right over my head. Bitch, you thought I would climb back out to get them from you.” He laughed, and so this time she knew it really was Beady. Her heart beat itself apart in her chest. She could feel it right when it blew to pieces.

“No! I didn’t think that. I didn’t think—I missed you, Beady. I didn’t know how to grow up anymore without you. I was stuck there. I’m still stuck. Anyway, I thought you might need them where you were going. You told me they brought us luck.”

Beady’s voice got thin, and it scared her. “You don’t know what it’s like where I am. You don’t know anything. Keep them damn beads because once you come over here, girl, nothing can save you.” She still could not see Beady, but the chain must have broken because beads spilled across her face, cold and hard. He was holding her shoulders again, and now she could see him clear and close, real as life.

“Wake up, Kim. I’m not fucking around now. We can’t be here when these people get back. I’ve got your bag. Get in the car.” Beady pulled her up by one arm. She reached for his face, but she caught his necklace instead, and it broke apart. “Jesus. Fuck! Shit! I’m going to the car.” He left her on the rug, the green rug, and the lights were circling up from inside it. She pulled herself along by the edge of the coffee table. A car door slammed. And then nothing, not for a long time.

Get in the ditch. Get in the ditch. It’s a tornado coming. She loved this movie. But the witch always scared her so bad, even when she was grown. Like it’s not bad enough you up there in the air, your house flying like a damn helicopter and here comes this old bitch on her bicycle. Why is she laughing? She’s gone be just as dead when she hits the ground. She heard that sound, the train sound. She knew what they told them in school.

Behind her at the funeral, Sharon and Stacey held onto Aunt Rena, sobbing. Somebody near them whispered, she was with him. Her bag was in that car. Bag full of money. And Aunt Ginger. They could hear her from the parking lot, everybody said after. The whole county came. The church so full of people that some of them had to stay outside. And they could hear her. Everybody could hear her. Kim could hear her right now. She was in the church, she was in the car with him. No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t in the car. She won’t hurt none. They found her rolled in the ditch over there by that crack house. The sound was in her own throat. She closed her mouth. She bit her lips bloody. But it broke out of her, the sound, it shattered the church windows. The pew tilted and she slid off, but she didn’t fall. Air shot through her and all at once she stood up, hands to God.

“I’ve got her.” A woman was holding her by the shoulders. A blue woman, all blue. No, she was wearing blue all over. A bright light shined into Kim’s eye. “Lie still now, honey. Well, well. We thought you left us there for a minute. It’s okay. It’s okay. Breathe. Do you know where you are? No. That’s okay. Your name, do you know your name, sweetheart? Let’s try this. What day it is, do you know that?”

“Christmas Eve,” Kim heard her own dry lips rasp.