Beneath a Meth Moon (4 page)

daddy: part two

WHEN MY DADDY
came into my room that night after talking to Kaylee's mom, Donna, he hugged me real hard without saying anything for a long time.

Jesse Jr. was asleep on the other side of the room. I'd made him eggs and sliced ham for dinner, a few boiled carrots with brown sugar on them for his vegetable.
Why you shaking, Laurel?
Jesse'd asked me.
You cold? You want my blanket?

I could hear his breathing coming slow and calm. Jesse Jr. always slept deep after he ate, his mouth a little bit open, his hand clutching tight to his blanket.

My daddy pulled a chair in from the kitchen up to the side of my bed.

We're gonna move through this, Laurel,
he whispered.
We got through everything else. This is gonna be easy as pie.

Then he started crying again. I stared out the window at the rain and darkness, tried to slip my mind out of the room, away from him crying, away from the hurting coming on inside me.

He stayed in my room all night—rubbing my back as I jerked myself in and out of sleep. Praying. At one point, I screamed and swung at him in the darkness, but he just caught my hand and gently held it until I was asleep again.

Dear Heavenly Father—We don't ask for the return of loved ones that you've taken to your Upper Room,
I woke to hear him whispering.
But please let me hold on to Laurel—full-on. Please don't take her too, dear Lord.

I slept through the next day. And most of the day after that.

My daddy came into my room each morning and set a tray of food beside my bed—toast and jam at breakfast time, with orange juice in the Elmo cup we'd found in the back of the car on our way out of Pass Christian. It'd been mine when I was little, and maybe I'd left it in the car at some point, so that when it rolled from under the seat, me and Daddy both smiled, remembering.

But all day long, the cup sat there with the orange juice getting warm inside it.

On the morning of the third day, my whole body felt like someone was dipping me into ice water and leaving me in there only long enough to feel the pain—then pulling me out again. Even my brain hurt, but when I tried to cry, no tears came—just deep hunger for the moon.

When I came into the kitchen that morning, Jesse Jr. was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal, milk dripping from his chin. Daddy was sitting across from him, reading the Bible and drinking coffee. When he saw me, he smiled, like every prayer he'd ever spoken had been answered. I stared at him. There were deep rings beneath his eyes.

I leaned back against the kitchen wall and closed my eyes, the pain behind them like a knife. Every part of my body itched. I couldn't scratch any one place hard or long enough.

You see I don't need that stuff, Daddy,
I said, scratching hard at my legs.
I only did it once. I was just seeing what it was like. I'm okay now. I'm all right . . .
kaylee before

WE HAD BEEN LIVING IN GALILEE
for two days when Kaylee showed up at our front porch. I'd never seen hair like hers—dark and cu
rling perfectly down over her shoulders. Her skin was different, too—dark like she'd been in the sun all her life—but without freckling or burning or paling up in the wintertime.

The night before, it had rained—a soft light rain that smelled like heat. The rain was different from Pass Christian rain—no salt in it. No sea air. Different from Jackson, too. The next morning, the rain was gone, and when I walked out onto the porch, I was struck near dumb by how bright green the tree leaves were. All along the street, the leaves stood out that way so that when Kaylee walked up to our porch that morning, there I was, sitting and staring at the tree leaves like I was seeing them for the first time—wondering how all that color could be in them that way.

You write?
Kaylee asked.

I looked down at the notebook I had left open on my lap—the blank page just sitting there like it was laughing at me.

I shrugged.

I wish I could write,
she said.
I like to read, though.
If you need a reader, I'm that person
.
A hundred and ten books in my house and counting. I read all of them. Some sucked, but I kept reading, hoping they'd turn good at some point. They didn't, though. But you don't just give up on something—

She stopped talking as quickly as she'd started. One minute, the words were pouring out of her, then nothing.

I closed my notebook. And for a long time, neither one of us said anything.

Then Kaylee told me her name.

Maybe I told her mine. I must have. I must have said,
I'm Laurel Daneau. We just moved here from Pass Christian.
Or maybe I said
from Jackson
—or maybe I didn't—like Jackson was a sidestep, a quick stop on our way to Galilee. Like Jackson wasn't two years and three cousins and a house too small for all of us together. Pass Christian was my somewhere before this. I didn't want to erase Jackson. I just wanted to hold on to Pass Christian. Hold on hard to it.

But the next thing Kaylee said to me made me stop cold and put my head down, my forehead pressing hard against my notebook.

I know. I know all about the flood and your mama and grandma. I came by to say I'm sorry.

We stayed there like that—me with my head down, taking deep breaths. Kaylee standing in front of me, her hands in her pockets.

I'm sorry.

Wasn't your fault. You didn't bring the water.
There was a meanness to my words that I hadn't expected to come out of me. But I didn't want some strange girl feeling sorry for me. Our whole two years in Jackson had been filled up with people I didn't even know coming up to us all sad-eyed and sorry. I didn't want to be pitiful here in Galilee. Didn't want the looks, the nosy questions, the creepy desire for my family's Oh-So-Sad story.

I know. I just wish none of it ever happened, and I'm sorry it did. That's all.

When I looked up, Kaylee was staring at me and holding out a handful of Hershey's Kisses.

Supposedly, something about chocolate is good for sadness,
she said.
I read that somewhere.
Then she smiled at me.

I must have smiled back, because Kaylee sat down beside me on the porch. In my memory, it's the first time I'd smiled in a long time. And Kaylee must have somehow known that, because she told me my smile was like a light getting turned on. I'd never heard anything like that before.
A light getting turned on.

Maybe you can write it into the past, and that will help leave some of it there. People do that. They write stuff down and then it's gone from them and they're free.

How do you know that? I thought you said you didn't write.

I don't,
Kaylee said.
I read—like I told you. You put it in front of me, I'm gonna read it. And somebody must've put a book about writing in front of me at some point, because I remember that part—about writing away the past. I remember thinking, “That must be like magic.” Like having a giant Memory Eraser. How cool is that? Anything embarrassing or really hard or really painful—boom! Gone. Until you get the guts to pick up what you wrote and reread it—

She stopped talking again. Felt like she was in the middle of a sentence and just closed her mouth.

Why do you do that?
I asked her.

Do what?

Stop talking like that.

Kaylee shrugged. After a little while passed, she said,
I don't want to talk too much, that's all. They're your memories . . . to do with whatever you want. I shouldn't be sitting here trying to tell you where to put them. That's all.

I didn't think that's what you were trying to do. I liked what you were saying.

I looked out over Galilee and squinted against the sunlight. Where the leaves tried to block it out, it snuck in around them and made pretty yellow lines along the road. I peeled the silver foil away from a Hershey's Kiss and let the chocolate melt down over my tongue.

Galilee's a good place to make some new friends,
Kaylee said.

I thought about the kids I'd seen the first time Daddy drove into town—how different they'd looked from my Pass Christian friends.

Kaylee was taller than me, and sitting beside her, I had to look up a little bit to see her eyes. They were pretty—brown with little bits of green jumping through, like some kind of light was jumping out of her.

You ever lived anywhere else?
I asked her.

Yeah—when I was a baby, we lived in Colorado, but I don't remember. My mama got a picture of me by some mountains—that's pretty much the only proof I got of living there. Guess that's why I like reading so much—can just leave this place if I want to and don't even have to get on a bus or plane to go.

You got a lot of friends here?
I asked. Maybe because I wanted to be her only friend. Maybe because I was afraid she could just disappear into all her friends and leave me standing.

But Kaylee shook her head.
I cheer. I got people who cheer with me. But since we're so far from town, mostly, aside from cheering, I stay home. People call this part of Galilee the country. Not like Galilee's that big, but where we are is still far away from everything.

Cheering?
I asked.
Like a cheerleader?

Kaylee nodded.
There's tryouts at the end of the month—for next season. I bet you'd make the team easy.

You think?

Kaylee smiled.
Yeah. All you need is a big mouth—the routines come easy.

This big enough?
I opened my mouth wide, and Kaylee laughed.

Looks big enough to me. Least big as mine.

Good. Then I guess I'll be trying out.

After that, we just sat there smiling, staring out at nothing. Galilee's a quiet town—just farms out by us. In town, there's just a Walmart, a Payless, a Dollar Store, and the supermarket. Once you pass those, you're not in Galilee anymore, and the road you're on turns into highway, taking you west toward Colorado and Wyoming and east toward Illinois and Ohio. Me and Kaylee watched a car drive down the street, listened to the sound of a train whistle blowing far off.

I'm not staying out here in the country past high school,
Kaylee said
.
You can come with me if you want. Maybe California. Or Texas. Someplace big and far away.
She looked at me.
If we end up being friends, I mean.

M'lady used to ask me,
Who will stand beside you with the Lord?
For a long time I didn't know what she was talking about, and I used to say,
Angels.

Of course angels. But who else? Who will stand beside you, Laurel?

The last time she asked, we were sitting on a bench by the water. The sun was dark red, and no wind was blowing. Late afternoon, and soon Mama would cash out her drawer at the Dollar Store, pull off her apron, rub her growing belly and punch the clock. Then she'd say good-bye to those staying for the late shift and head down to the water to meet us. The three of us would sit for a while, sharing the candy bars Mama'd brought us, making dinner plans and watching the fishing boats come in and go out. These were our days in the Pass—slow that way and unsurprising.

And while we waited for Mama to come, me and M'lady talked. And talked.

While you're living,
M'lady said.
It's the Rocks in your life that will stand beside you. Your words, your friends. Your family.

How many Rocks does a person get, M'lady?

M'lady put her hand on my thigh and smiled out at the water, her hair a long blue braid down her back.

If you're lucky,
she said,
you get as many as you need.

As me and Kaylee sat there, letting the chocolate melt in our mouths and staring out at nothing, I let the thoughts of M'lady move over me, slow and calming as a breeze. It'd been a long time since I'd felt anything but sadness when I thought of her, and sitting there with the sun coming down, with Kaylee all new and promising beside me, I felt like M'lady was right close somewhere, taking every little bit in . . . and smiling.

Texas,
I said to Kaylee.
I bet we'd like it there.

t-boom

I MADE THE SQUAD EASILY.
Maybe because I'd spent the two years before in Aunt G.'s yard, doing cartwheels and back bends, walk overs and round-offs. Some mornings, Aunt G. came outside to find me hanging from my cousins' jungle gym—just hanging there, my mind miles and miles away.
Oh, my stars, Laurel,
she'd say.
We need to get you into some gymnastics.
But it didn't happen. We were always leaving Jackson but never gone from there. Jobs turned up for Daddy in other places. Then they fell through. Friends promised work on fishing boats, then there wasn't work. Again and again, the hope rising, then falling. Rising and falling so that our small bags remained half packed, our toiletries remained travel size. Me and Jesse Jr. outgrew our clothes—he got my cousins' old stuff, I picked out things from the Salvation Army. And the days passed with me twirling around Aunt G.'s yard, maybe thinking if I hung long enough, spun fast enough, flipped high enough, the image of water pouring over Pass Christian would erase itself, melt into the spinning inside my head and disappear. It never did.

Then I was in Galilee, spinning in front of a long line of girls, cartwheeling and back-flipping and throwing my hands into the air until the captain of the squad said,
Well, duh! Hell yes on you!
And just like that, I was a Tiger, dressed in black and orange, running out onto the basketball court behind Kaylee, my pom-poms high in the air.

And always, always, there is Kaylee—my reader, my neighbor, my best friend—close to me.

Stop, look and listen! We are the mighty Tigers!

Stop, look and listen! We are the mighty Tigers!

Stop!

And then T-Boom is running onto the court, number twenty-three, eleventh-grade co-captain.

Give us some more of that Boom-Boom!

T-Boom with his hands up, high-fiving the other players as he runs through the double line of them.

His arms are long and pale. When he gets close to me, I see there's a dark blue bowl tattooed on the left one and below that bowl, in thick letters, the word
gumbo.
Gumbo like a dream coming toward me.

Who will stand beside you, Laurel?

Then I'm in M'lady's kitchen, Pass Christian heat thick around us and the pot bubbling, steam rising from it, the smell of it so
now,
so right here.
T-Boom, take me home . . .
Time stops here.

The crowd is loud but then it's not. The people are all around us and then they're not—just me and T-Boom, with no sound, no people, between us. Just me and T-Boom, seeing each other—not for the first time, really, but, yes, for the first time. Because all those times before this night, all through the fall and early winter, he was just another guy on the team, just Boom-Boom, Number Twenty-Three, taking foul shots from the line, dribbling the ball down the court. Before, he was just jump shots and layups, laughing with his teammates while we practiced cheer after cheer after cheer.

T-Boom, please take me home . . .
And then the crowd is back, like a loud wind blowing around me.
Stop, look and listen!
We're yelling and we're stomping and clapping and throwing our pom-poms in the air and remembering to smile, but there is that word, and there is T-Boom, circling around me.
Stop!

I think he likes you,
Kaylee whispers each time T-Boom looks my way. He's home to me, and I don't even know him. He's salt sea air and hot sand. He's good things in a bowl and memory.