How to Breathe Underwater (21 page)

Carney and I drifted from one group of adults to another. They smiled down at us and stirred their ice with Easter-colored swizzle sticks, but they went quiet when we approached, the way adults did when they were talking about something they didn’t want you to hear. Some of them kept glancing over at Dale, who was crouched by the toolshed, examining a pile of dirt on the ground. I knew Carney was paying attention to everything. She saw the adults looking at Dale. She saw them growing impatient when she drifted into their circles. Her forehead began to flush and she scratched at her silk-flower wreath. She took my hand and pulled me over to where her father was stirring the gumbo.

“We’re hot,” she announced. “We want Cokes.”

“Run get some in the kitchen, then,” her father said. He was a sturdy, beefy man, maybe six inches taller than my own father. He had an aluminum boat in which he’d once taken us fishing. Now he wore an apron emblazoned with the words CHEF DE CUISINE.

“You get them for us,” Carney said, fanning herself. “We’re too hot.”

“Well, I have to be the chef, honey,” he said. “You can go get them, can’t you?”

“We don’t want to.”

“Go play, then. It’s cooler in the yard.”

Carney shuffled to the edge of the brick patio. In the yard, her sisters Eleanor and Patty swung on the swing set and her brother Jonah pushed his dump truck around in the sandbox. Dale was still playing all alone by the toolshed. He’d abandoned his Easter basket on the patio, untouched, and had rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. His silver glasses glinted in the sun. In his cupped hand he held some potato-chip crumbs, which he was dropping one by one onto an anthill. If he knew the adults were watching him, he didn’t show it. Carney gave me a look and motioned for me to follow her. She crept up behind Dale, leaned close to his ear, and whispered, “Yah.”

He gave a little jump as if she’d poked him in the ribs.

“That’s just an old anthill,” she said, kicking its edge with her white shoe. “My daddy keeps pouring poison on it, but they just keep building it again in a different place.”

“You shouldn’t pour poison on them,” Dale said, squatting down to look. “Ants like these don’t even bite. They all have jobs to do. These worker ants here are bringing food to the queen.”

“You like ants or something?” Carney said.

He turned his head to look at her.

“You got an ant farm at home or something?”

Dale wiped his hands on his pants and squinted warily. “I have a book about ants,” he said. “I’ve read about them.”

“We all know about worker ants and queens,” I said. “It’s not like you have to do research. I learned about them in second grade.”

Dale shrugged. “Worker ants are just the beginning,” he said. “There can be five different classes of ant in a single hill. I just finished a ten-page report.”

“Well, whoop-dee-doo for you,” Carney said. She picked up a long stick from beside the toolshed and gave the anthill a good stir. The hill became a glittering confusion of ants.

“What’d you go and do that for?” Dale said, getting to his feet.

“Because I wanted to,” Carney said, and skipped over to the swing set. She twisted the chains of Eleanor’s swing until they wouldn’t twist anymore, and then she let go. Eleanor shrieked as she whirled around and around, her blond curls flying, her dress a yellow blur. Dale and I stood beside the toolshed and looked down at what remained of the anthill. I could see the white shapes of larvae amid the glinting brown of worker ants.

“I’m Lila Solomon,” I said. “I’m originally from New Orleans.”

“It could take them weeks to build another one,” Dale said, squatting to look closer at the ants. “That’s more than three years in the life of an ant.”

“I said my name’s Lila,” I repeated, but Dale didn’t seem interested in making my acquaintance. I wasn’t going to press the issue. Instead, I went inside the house to get the present I’d brought for Carney. I could tell she was working herself into a bad mood, but I knew the present would make her feel better. It was a china carousel-horse music box from Tinker-bell, our favorite store downtown. I’d left the package on the bureau in Carney’s bedroom. As I went upstairs to get it, I heard Carney’s mother and Aunt Marian come into the kitchen, arguing. I paused on the stairs to listen.

“Well, that’s just a lie,” Carney’s mother said. “I never said any such thing.”

Aunt Marian answered. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell she was almost crying.

“You’re overreacting, as usual,” Carney’s mother said. “You never did have any sense of proportion.”

“I know what I heard,” Aunt Marian said, louder now.

“You only hear what you want to hear,” Carney’s mother said.

“Don’t try to twist it around,” Aunt Marian said. “Don’t you try to blame
me.
”

Now Carney’s mother said something under her breath. Whatever it was, it must have been terrible. Aunt Marian came down the hall, a handkerchief pressed to her face. My heart pounded. I didn’t want her to know I’d been listening, so I ran upstairs and slipped into Carney’s room. From the hall came the sound of footsteps, and then Aunt Marian opened Carney’s door. Her face was wet, her eyes red, the handkerchief a crumpled ball in her hand.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone was here.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and picked up the present from the bureau. “I was just going. It’s your room, anyway.”

She tilted her head at me.

“You’re Carney’s Aunt Marian,” I said. “I saw your name on the wall.” I planted my feet and pushed the bureau away from the wall with my shoulder. There was her name, in red crayoned letters against the pale wallpaper:
Marian Beatrice
Fortunot. I live here.

“Well, look at that,” she said, bending down to touch the letters. “Marian Beatrice Fortunot. I hardly remember writing that.” She ran a hand over the side of the bureau. “This was my furniture, too.” She glanced around the room, her eyes coming to rest on Carney’s shrine. She went over and knelt on the cushions where Carney and I had rehearsed the saints. For a moment I thought she might start praying, but then she gave a small, hard laugh, so full of bitterness it frightened me. I went downstairs as quick as I could, being careful not to drop Carney’s present.

When I came out, I found my mother sitting with a younger woman at the picnic table, dandling a baby on her knee. The baby kept grabbing handfuls of my mother’s hair. The younger woman kept saying, “No, sweet pea, no,” but my mother was laughing.

I touched her sleeve. “Can I give Carney her present?” I asked.

“Say hi to Lila,” my mother said, making the baby wave its pink hand at me.

“Can I?” I said, not waving back.

“
May
I,” my mother said. “I guess you may.”

I knew she might have wanted me to wait until we could give Carney the present together, but I went ahead anyway, leaving her with the baby. Carney was still playing with her sisters on the swing set. Eleanor and Patty were sitting on the swing-glider, and Carney was pushing them as hard as she could. Her face was flushed, her silk-flower wreath askew. She pushed the glider with such force that her sisters screamed as it soared up into the air. I ran across the lawn and held the gift out to her.

“Happy Communion,” I said.

“I’ll bet I know where that’s from,” Carney said. She took the present and gave it a little shake. Just then, the glider swung back and struck her on the shoulder, and she stumbled back and dropped the box. There was a tinkling sound, the sound of a delicate thing breaking. Carney stood there, one hand on her hurt shoulder, looking as if she might cry. She picked up the present and ran to the shade beneath the chinaberry tree at the edge of the yard. There she sat with her head in her arms, the present beside her on the grass. Dale had been watching all this from the toolshed. He took a few steps toward her, but when she heard him coming she raised her head and said, “Leave me alone.”

“Hey,” I said, going over to kneel beside her. “Are you okay?”

Carney shook her head.

“Open the present. Maybe it’s fine.”

She tore off the wrapping paper and broke the gold seal on the box. Inside was the carousel-horse music box I’d chosen, the one she and I had admired in the window. The china horse had broken off at the base of its pole.

“Maybe your dad can fix it,” I said.

She sighed and stuffed the horse back into its tissue paper.

“Let me see it,” Dale said, coming closer.

“No.” Carney held the box against her chest.

“I fixed a cuckoo clock for my mother once,” Dale said.

Carney got to her feet and stared at him. “This is not a cuckoo clock.”

“You could fix it with epoxy,” he said.

“Why don’t you go away?” she said. “No one invited you here in the first place.”

Dale stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. “Yes they did,” he said.

“Fine,” Carney said, and turned her back on him. “Stand there if you want. My friend and I are going to do a play, and you can’t be in it.” She turned to me and said, “What play should we do, Lila?”

“Well,” I said, trying not to look at Dale. “We could do an Easter play.”

“
I
know,” Carney said. “We can do Stations of the Cross. I get to be Veronica, and you can be the Virgin Mary.”

I didn’t think my mother would approve, but when I looked at her again she was still cooing at that baby. And anyway I was angry at her for not letting me eat my Easter candy, for talking about things people here didn’t care about, for reminding them that we didn’t belong. She wasn’t about to stop me from playing Stations of the Cross. Carney was offering me the best role, the role of Mary, tragic mother of God.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be the Virgin Mary.”

Carney called to her brother and sisters, and they came running. Eleanor always wanted to play whatever we were playing. Patty was quieter, but she didn’t like to be left out. Jonah, the youngest, was only three. He would do what you told him to do.

“Who wants to do a play with us?” Carney said.

“Me,” Eleanor said. Patty shrugged, sucking her thumb. Jonah nodded mutely.

“It’s an Easter play,” Carney said. “It’s called Stations of the Cross. I’m Veronica, of course. Lila’s going to be the Virgin Mary. Eleanor and Patty, you two are the Women.”

“What about him?” Eleanor said, pointing at Dale.

“Dale’s not playing,” Carney said.

“Yes, I am,” Dale said, stepping into our circle. “I’ve been in plays at school.”

“Well, you probably didn’t have any lines,” Carney said.

“I did too. I’ve even been the lead.”

“I don’t care,” Carney said. “You still can’t play.”

“Who’s going to be Jesus?” Dale asked her. “It’s Stations of the Cross, but you never said who was Jesus.”

“Oh,” Carney said. “Well, I guess it has to be Jonah, because he’s the boy.”

“He can’t be Jesus,” Dale said.

“Why not?”

“He’s just a baby.”

“Well,
you
can’t be it either,” Eleanor said. “You’re black.”

Everyone looked at Dale. Dale filled his chest and put his hands on his hips, narrowing his eyes at Eleanor. “I can too be Jesus,” he said. “Jesus was closer to black than any of
you.
The Jews were a desert people, and he was a Jew.”

“He was
not
a Jew,” Eleanor said. “That’s such a lie.”

“He was too a Jew,” I said. “He ate matzah. The priest said so.”

Carney gave me a look, as if to ask what I was doing taking Dale’s side. I hadn’t meant to; I’d just wanted to tell what I’d figured out in church. But Carney didn’t protest like I thought she would. Instead, a cold, mean light came into her eyes, and she gave Dale a slow smile.

“Okay,” she said. “If you want to be Jesus, you can.”

Dale tried not to look surprised, but I could see he was caught off guard. All at once I wanted to warn him about Carney, about what she might do. At the same time I knew I couldn’t go against Carney. Without her, I was just as much of an outsider as Dale. Maybe even more so. At least he was related to Carney by birth. I wasn’t even a Catholic, much less a cousin. I was a Jew, less common in Iberville Parish than children of mixed race. I turned away from him and said nothing.

“Okay,” Carney said, “if you’re going to be Jesus, you need to carry a real cross.”

“We could make one,” Dale said. “I saw some wood behind the toolshed.”

He led us there as if he were the one in charge, and stopped beside a pile of weathered two-by-fours. Carney picked up a long one and a shorter one and examined them. I could see her coming up with a plan, something beyond my own imagining. She handed the two-by-fours to Dale and disappeared into the toolshed. When she came out she was carrying a length of brown rope, a spade, a hammer, and a box of nails. I looked at that box of nails and thought of the Jesus in church. Carney saw me looking.

“Don’t be stupid, Lila,” Carney said. “We’re not going to hurt anyone.”

Carney gave the rope to Eleanor and the hammer to Patty, and she let Jonah carry the spade, just so he wouldn’t complain. Then she led us all through a break in the hedge and out into the back pasture.

The back pasture was a rolling sprawl of land, maybe three acres of tall grass shot with spiny pigweed and thistles and black-eyed Susans. Sometimes we played Capture the Flag there with other kids from school. Earlier in the year we’d had a cardboard fort, but it had collapsed after a rainstorm. I could still see one corner of it near the hedge. Fat bees hovered above the grass, buzzing loud in the sun, and a few blackbirds tussled in a holly bush. At the far end of the pasture stood a line of creek willows. Beyond the trees ran Cottrell Creek, where we were forbidden to play. A little girl had died there once, playing where she shouldn’t have, too soon after a rain.

“I’ve got my good shoes on,” Eleanor said. “They’re going to get all ruined.”

“You’re not even wearing those shoes anymore,” Carney said. “You’re wearing a long blue homespun cloak. You’re wearing sandals. Try to feel holy. Try to feel sad for Jesus, because he’s been condemned to die. Now, let’s have those two-by-fours, Dale.”