Beginning #2
His chest rose. Green lights blinked. I kept one eye on those lights, one eye on his eyelids.
His lashes didn't even tremble. "You remember when we first met?
" I asked. "I refused to give you the time of day for weeks.
Madame Laurent had warned me about you before I ever laid eyes on you.
It was like she saw you coming into my life before I ever did.
She stood and still stands on the fact that your bloodline isn't clean and hold secrets. Even through all of that you made me love you. Love you enough to defy her and run off and marry you." A tear slid. I let it. I wasn’t soft, but I wasn’t stone neither.
My hands went back to work cause that's how I knew I was alive, by doing.
I lifted his head, loosened the band a little so it wouldn't cut into his hair.
His hair had grown out, frizzy around the edges and softened by months of not being combed or maintenanced.
I took my comb and ran it through his hair as best I could.
I talked while I worked. "You not allowed to be raggedy when you meet me again.
You keep letting this hair get raggedy ima have to get somebody up here to cut it.
" I smiled hoping it would wake him up knowing how sensitive he got about his hair.
The fluorescent light near the door buzzed, flickered, then steadied.
I set the comb down and took the small brown bottle from my bag, with oil that I had gotten from Madame Laurent .
It smelled like clove and cedar and a little like the back pew of a damp church.
I dabbed two drops on my fingers and rubbed them warm, then brushed it over his temples, his wrist-pulse, the arch of his feet.
My hands shook on the last one. I praised his feet; they'd carried so much toward me.
"Se pou limyè a gide li," I breathed. Let light guide him.
The monitor made a sharp sound, then went back to baseline.
My stomach fluttered. I leaned in. Nothing.
My ears rang with all the unsaid. "Gade mwen," I told him.
Listen to me. "If you still down there, if you lost in that place you went, I want you to remember this: my name inside your chest. It's stitched there. I know because I put it there when you thought you didn’t need love.
You hear? Se mwen ki rele ou tounen. I'm the one calling you back.
" The rain pulled back to a hush. Somewhere a phone rang at the nurses' station.
Wheels squeaked faint. I swore I smelled tobacco, though no one smoked in here.
It all reminded me of the night of my mother's last breath.
It came in hard as a slap. Eight years old, a chair too high for my feet to touch the floor, my legs kicking space while machines threw green lines across a dark screen.
Grandma's whisper in my ear: Pa kriye devan yo.
W'ap kriye lakay. Don't cry in front of them.
You cry at home. The doctor saying words that felt like sugar cubes I couldn't swallow.
The woman from the neighborhood who came, talking over her teeth, saying, "You know how she lived.
They say somebody put roots on her." Grandma's answer a stone: "Roots ain't the devil.
Ignorance is." The way the room felt turned inside out when her breath stopped, the air cold and hot, the floor moving like a boat, my body learning, right then, that life and death live in the same house.
I shook it off and whispered into the room. "I'm not that little girl no more."
I pressed my forehead to the back of his hand.
The veil scratched my cheek. "Noles," I said, softer than sugar, softer than prayer.
"Mon chè. My husband. You open your eyes and I swear I'll—" I cut myself off, cause promises made at the edge are heavy and listening.
But the words were already awake in me: I'll burn down anything that try to take you.
I'll stand in the doorway and dare the dark and whatever else to step inside.
The bells in my hand trembled all on their own.
Just a little. Then the air conditioner kicked again, and I told myself it was that.
I reached for the shaker, shook it once more.
Silence settled the way a big woman sits in a chair, full and final.
I let go the shaker and reached for the beads again, then stopped and took up the chalk instead.
The veve at my feet glowed like it remembered being white on a dirt floor.
I strengthened the line that curved toward the bed, thickened the cross that held the center, added small marks like eyes along the outer ring.
“Veye pòt la," I told them. Watch the room.
I slid the rolling table aside and climbed onto the mattress slow, careful of the tubes and the IV line.
I laid myself along his side, face to the slope of his shoulder, veil falling over both of us, making a little tent of black lace and breath.
I took in his scent missing having it whenever I wanted.
It'd gotten a bad. I slept in his shirts at home because they smelt like him.
"I hate you sometimes," I whispered, voice shaking.
"For being so heavy inside me. For making me responsible for both our souls cause you bold and tired and too proud to ask for help from anybody even me.
" The tears came more now. I let them. They traveled along the ridge of my nose and dropped on his skin.
"I love you so bad it done turned ugly some nights.
You hear that? Lanmou mwen ap fè m fou. My love making me crazy.
I be cooking and forget what Im stirring.
I be driving and end up in my old neighborhood without meaning to, just cause my heart likes the way the street call your name.
" I shifted my mouth to his ear. "If you don't wake up, I'm gon' learn how to live around your absence.
I'm strong like that." My smile came bitter. "But I’ll hate this world for it. I’ll hate it quiet, and I’ll hate it forever. So do us both mercy. Come home to me."
The monitor ticked, dumb as a metronome.
Thunder cracked again. one sharp clap like a hand at the back of a head.
The door clicked; the hallway lights dimmed a little like the storm had pulled power out the walls.
I didn't move. I pulled my veil back, kissed his mouth.
Not the soft press of "I love you," but the claim of a woman who remembered what she split herself open for.
Honey slicked my lip. It tasted like second chances and lies.
"Ou pwomèt mwen," I breathed into him. You promised me.
"Mwen kwè ou." I believed you. I sat up on my knees over him, my palms braced on either side of his chest. I looked down at his face, memorized it again like I do every night, cause love and fear teach you to study what you can lose.
The veil made a halo when it fell forward and caught in the IV pole.
My shoulders shook, once, twice, and then I steadied myself.
"Noles," I said. "It's late. Even the dead got bedtimes. Come home."
By the time sunlight crept through the blinds, it came in thin and sideways , not golden, but pale, like the sky itself didn't know how to start over.
I was still sitting there on the edge of the bed, the smell of the room softening into something sweet and tired.
My throat felt raw from prayer, my hands sore from clutching.
I leaned forward, pressed one last kiss to his lips then stood.
The world moved slow as I gathered my things.
Candle stubs, the small blade, the chalk tin, the bowls.
I straightened the sheets, fixed his gown, and smoothed his hair down, just tenderness with nowhere else to go.
It felt wrong that sunlight touched this room. Like the world was being nosy.
Any second now, I knew Evie would come marching in.
She always came at first light. She'd cuss the whole time, calling my rituals "spiritual witch bullshit," like she wasn't born with the same Louisiana blood that bent toward spirits.
After Noles got shot, she found out we were married when the doctors asked who could make medical decisions.
I still remember the look on her face, rage twisted up with something else, maybe betrayal.
Her baby boy had gone and married me, the woman she once called "A voodoo witch and a problem.
" She raised so much hell I thought she'd wake the dead.
To keep the peace, the nurses arranged a schedule, so she had days and I had nights.
She came with her perfume and her tears and her mouth full of orders.
I came with my candles and my prayers and the kind of love that filled the room.
We passed each other in the hallway sometimes like two storms pretending to be weather.
I reached for his hand again before leaving.
It had always swallowed mine whole. I lifted it to my mouth and kissed the back of it.
His skin was soft, still warm. "M'ap tounen," I'll return, I promised.
I slipped out before the sun could tell on me.
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