42. Mississippi, 1996
Idid not want to get in the box. I stared at it for a long time, trying not to think of another box from another time. There is no hope of drowning in this one. If the plane crashes, I will burst into flames and die instantly. It is the only thing that encourages me to get in it.
I fill the box with grave dirt and sit in it for a few days with the top open. The flight is not several days, just many hours. I will be asleep for most of it.
I tell myself these things, and then I compel humans to box me up and put me on an aeroplane destined for New York City. It is a port of entry to the United States of America. I watched my sitcoms and read my histories of the USA.
I was unprepared.
I break free from my box and gather my grave dirt and journey into the city. I go to the square, to the center of life in the city.
And I hate it.
The lights are too bright, the sounds too loud. The stores on the corner have t-shirts that say “I NEW YORK” and keychains and snow globes and every item you could think of. Réka would hate this. She’d call it “capitalist crap,” the “enshittification of life.” She’d write a poem about it.
Réka is thousands of miles away and hopefully in the arms of another woman.
I find a bar to sit in and consider my next move. An old couple sits in a booth, their hands clasped together over the table. The old man runs his thumb along the top of the woman’s hand. They sit like that for almost an hour without speaking, their silence the comfort of time.
“What can I get you?” asks the man behind the bar. I don’t understand his accent at first, and I squint at him.
“What can I get you?” he repeats, slower this time.
“I will take whiskey,” I say.
He pours me a glass and I turn it over in my hands.
“You working on your nursing degree?” the bartender asks.
“My what?”
He nods to my drink. “You’re nursing it. Drink it or don’t, it don’t offend me.”
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Where are you from?”
“A place that no longer exists,” I say.
“Soviet Union?” he asks.
“Older,” I say.
“Hmm. Well, I’m from Mississippi.”
“What is it like there?”
“Hot. Humid. Rural. Nothing for a city girl.”
I left for Mississippi the next evening.
It is hard to travel America. There are few trains once I leave New York City.
There are buses, but I cannot trust they run on time.
To take the aeroplane you need proof you are a person, so I find someone who looks like me and take her proof.
I could get in my box again, but I am not confident I can survive another trip like that, no matter how short.
Mississippi is like the world before I buried myself. It is open spaces, big fields, buzzing insects. I find a home with wheels in a park and coerce those living there to teach me to drive a car.
I drive south and stop in a town on the water. The humidity here fogs my windshield and keeps my hair damp long after I’ve showered. The windows sweat, even at night. Flies and mosquitoes buzz in droves over trash and people alike.
I find a bar and sit in the corner. Here they notice if you are drinking or not, and they want to ask you about it. I have to compel them away each time so I might exist and listen.
A boy climbs onto a chair in the corner and pulls a microphone to his face. The boy wipes a line of sweat from his face and adjusts a guitar on his lap. Behind him is a piano, where a man sits. I start to leave, because I cannot hear a piano without thinking of you.
Then the boy begins to strum and the piano plays and he sings and it is nothing like your music.
The crowd hoots and hollers. They slap their legs. Some get up to dance, either alone or in pairs. The boy smiles and rocks in his chair as he plays.
They sing three songs before they are replaced by another group, this time of three.
Two have shiny instruments I do not know, one sits at the piano.
When they bring the instruments to their lips, the sound is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
The man at the piano sings, his fingers dancing over the keys.
They sing and people dance.
They sing and people cry.
Then the bar closes for the night, and the people get up and leave. They mill in the street and slap each other on the back. They laugh and tell stories under the haze of a single lamp.
“If you liked that, you’d love New Orleans,” says a woman from the shadows. Her piercing green eyes remind me of someone from long ago and I take a step back.
“Hold it, there,” she says, raising her hand.
“Who are you?” I demand.
“My friends call me Chickadee,” she says.
“I am not your friend.”
“Ah, in that case you can call me Naomi. If you’re trying to settle down here, I’m who you go through.”
“I am not trying to settle down,” I tell her.
“Good. Because there are rules, you see? And if you’re just passing through town, say on the way to New Orleans, then there is no harm played. But if you snack on any of them folks,”—she nods to the crowd still outside the bar, chatting and laughing—“you won’t make it to New Orleans.”
“Who made you?” I ask.
“You’re a rude thing, aren’t you? All you Europeans are. Don’t you have enough problems on your side of the pond to keep busy? Always gotta come over here and spread your rudeness.”
I turn to go to my car. If I want to make it to the next town with time to find a place to sleep, I need to leave now.
“Wait,” the other vampyr says. “Why do you care about my maker? You looking for trouble?”
“Trouble? I am passing through.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know.”
She eyes me up and down a few times, her face screwed up as if deciding something. Finally, she sighs and nods. “Look, just don’t be eating the locals. They’re family, and they have my protection. I am not kind to those who hurt my family.”
“New Orleans, you said?” I ask.
“Yeah. Lots of music, sights to see, tourists that no one misses…if you get my drift.”
“How far from here?”
“A few hours. You can make it before sunrise.”
“Thanks, Chickadee.”
“Oh, we friends now? How’s that so when I don’t know your name?”
“Melinoe,” I say.
“I’ll call you Noe, then. Seeing’s as we’re friends.” Then she turns to go back into the bar, and I turn my car toward New Orleans.