Snakeskin Road (10 page)

She touched Mazy’s shoulder. “I’m going out.”

“Wait.” Mazy caught Jennifer’s arm. “Why you leaving?”

“I’ll be outside. Not far.” She pointed to the opening in the canvas. “I promise.” Jennifer started to put Mazy’s hand on her stomach and explain but stopped. She didn’t want Mazy to know about the baby—she shouldn’t reveal that to anyone. So Jennifer exited by the large fans as a guardsman and the agent trudged back to Lavina.

Outside, the fans’ humming stayed with her; the sun’s heat began to swell; and she bent over, vomited on the ground.

Don’t pass out
, she said to herself quickly and repeated quickly.
Whatever you do, don’t pass out
, trying to push through the drowning heat and breathe.

Someone reached over to help. But when she saw the Red Cross patch, she jerked away. The Crosses lifted the dead and the dying, took them to the harvesting machines, and she was neither.

“You all right?”

She nodded, stepped away, slipped inside the wall of refugees. That pull from the earth had so much strength—well fed, rested, cool, and she had none of the man’s reserves. She had to sit on the ground to keep from falling and watched the legs cross and open in front of her. In between
those arches, before the legs closed up, she fixed on the exit where Lavina and Mazy would eventually show.

“You need a way out?” a man said to her.

“What?” she asked.

“A way out,” he said. “Don’t you want a passage out of Birmingham? Consulate’s no help.” He stood pearled and blue like the desert at times. In his shades, certain tinges of light filtered against what she remembered—the sandbanks, washing color into the river. On him now, the same dusting of sunlight, and underneath, what he really was: curly hair, bland shirt, pants, scrubbed clean and faceless. Not even the doctors were this clean.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“You’re too close to the consulate,” he said, and started into the thick mess of bodies. She got up and followed. When he stopped, another man was there, identical clean shirt and skin and shades. They nodded to each other like partners, brothers, and faced Jennifer.

“Do you want out?” the man repeated. He was younger than the other man, but something in the straight of their bodies like a tree split down the center, both halves pulled open to reveal the same burls and longness in their faces, the same deep hinge attaching their necks to their jaws, something marked them as brothers in the odd filtered light.

“Yes.”

“Then we can get you out,” the older one said. “You have money?”

“Yes,” she said, again, but shouldn’t have said that, why did she reveal that? and wished to undo the word. Jennifer had left the money in her box, and left the box under the blanket with the rations in the van. Lavina had said not to bring it. “It’ll be safer here.” But all morning in the cramped line Jennifer felt for the lacquered edges, her hands twitching, hesitating, and at nothing, just restless twitching.

“Not a lot of money,” she added.

They kept quiet, and she withdrew a step—“I don’t have
the money on me—” brushing against the refugees. If needed, she could push into the swirl of bodies and escape.

“You look healthy. Do you have any diseases?”

“Diseases?” Jennifer laughed. “Not that I’m aware of. You?”

They didn’t answer. Of course they didn’t, and she laughed more, unable to stop. When she was younger, she did this often: laughed in the middle of conversations, in bleak moments or the silence right before a joke’s punch line, always at the wrong time. It was something Terry and she did together, cutting each other off with snickering until they had forgotten the logic of their thoughts. Her mother would scowl and slap at them, her hands like blind flyswatters, missing badly. “Stop it. You’re too giddy.” She slapped at the air and never hit, never caught them.

“You’re missing on purpose,” Jennifer had accused her mama eventually, all that laughter a contagion her mama tried to avoid.

“Oh, I’d hit you if I wanted,” Delia said, and they left it at that.

Mathew used to tease her about it. “What’s so funny?” he’d say. “Why you laughing
now?”
And that always got her laughing in wilder spurts. She’d shrug or close her eyes and bite her tongue until it stung. That was the marker—pain—what it took to stop. And he just eyed her, chuckled, never lost himself in a fit like Terry. Once she bit the corner of her tongue so hard she started crying and couldn’t stop. “What’s wrong?” Mathew said, but she just balled up on the bed and sucked at the blood, shut his hands out rubbing, rubbing and trying to soothe, shut out everything except Terry and Everett, their laughing swirling through her in wave after wave.

“I only take healthy people out,” the older brother said. “It’s a difficult trip.”

“To where? I need to get to Chicago.”

“Chicago,” he said, and nodded.

“I don’t have any diseases.” She giggled, could hear her mother—
What will they do with you, Jenny? This is serious. Stop now
. Jennifer bit down on her tongue, and the sun curled into the afternoon haze, no longer splitting a purple light along their faces. The younger brother stepped forward.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Checking.” He threw his hands up, opened them—nothing, nothing to hide, not even specks of dust. Then he let them down and stared at her shoes, up her pants leg, his stare sealing her inside the thick fabric, rendering her motionless. Her stomach breathed in and out, the dirty T-shirt where her baby rested, then he touched Jennifer’s shoulder, pushed it too hard and she pushed back.

“Don’t push on me.”

His hands went up in surrender again. “No trouble,” he said, and turned to get a better look at her teeth. She shut her mouth, watched him, his curly hair, the smooth flatness of his face down from his eye and nose.

The refugees were behind her, but the man was so near, and the sliver of glass Jennifer had taken off Highway 11 was too deep in her pocket to reach for.

“Your wrist, it’s okay?” He reached out for her wrist and she let him take it. There was a bruise in the center and one at the bend in her elbow from carrying the box. He rubbed over the center bruise, held her lightly, rubbed as if trying to figure out the dimensions, trying to find a break in the skin, decide if this bruise was somehow dangerous, the surface an indicator of something rotting inside at the core—like an apple, she thought, and wondered what soap he used and where in Birmingham was there enough water for a shower. Maybe it was the history he was looking for, what happened between Jennifer and her mother, all those years between then and now.
Pull away
, she told herself,
Get out of here
, but he was holding her gingerly.

“Healthy,” he said, and smiled and walked over to his brother.

“I’ll take you to Chicago for the money. How much do you have?” his brother asked.

“I don’t have any,” she changed her words.

“When can you get it?”

“I said I don’t have any,” and Jennifer found a seam, slipped into the line of bodies, slipped as easily as the man had held her arm.

“I’ll take you without the money,” the older brother shouted, but Jennifer kept walking. She spotted the American flag above the entrance to the consulate—the exit was to the right, and the crowd seemed to turn like a compass, its directions shifting slightly north toward south, then swooning the other way, recalibrating around her, the center needle, the tornado eye, shifting, shifting. Someone reached a hand out, pulled, but she sped up and started running toward the exit like running in water, stepping over bloated ankles and the yellow cans and shawls people left on the ground, bodies rolled in dirt, the dead trees. She looked behind her, kept checking—the two men weren’t coming.

She didn’t feel safe until she got to the gate where the Red Cross stood with the guardsmen, the Red Cross who had asked if she was okay. He had on his cap now and mask, the sun bright, and she stood on the red line spray-painted in the morning that you couldn’t cross. Jennifer checked behind her—no one was coming. What if she’d missed Lavina and Mazy? For a moment she was overwhelmed by panic. Then they walked out, and she ran up, hugged the girl.

“What’s wrong?” Lavina asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

“You need to get across the line,” one of the guardsmen told them over the hum of the consulate fans.

“It’s okay,” Mazy said. Her hair was so thick, and it smelled like grass, what Mathew used to say about her own
hair. She pressed her hand and face thick into Mazy’s hair, as thick as she could until she felt the girl trembling.

“It’s okay,” Jennifer said. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” Mazy held on.

“Get over the line.”

“We’re doing it. There’s no need to come here.” Lavina waved the guardsmen off, and the whole time, she kept her back to Mazy and Jennifer, facing toward the crowd. It was what Jennifer saw of her in the consulate tent, just that hair going every direction, the knot gone, replaced with tangles and loose curls.

“What’re you looking for?” Jennifer asked.

“Don’t leave us like that. We could’ve lost you. Too many bodies to separate out and find you. We might never—probably wouldn’t find you a third time.”

“I had to leave.”

“Not like that.” Lavina turned to the side, her scrawny neck keeping her head straight and angry. Then she let her chin drop, those knotted cheekbones thrown into shadow, exhausted.

“We’re together now,” Jennifer said hopefully. Still Lavina wouldn’t answer. “I won’t do it again.”

“Don’t.” Lavina lifted her shoulders and looked out into the park above the dried-up trees, the buildings to a gold statue of a woman on a tiled roof. The statue held lightning bolts and threw back all of the sun in the brightest glare.

“I guess you need someone to be angry at.”

Mazy pulled at Jennifer. “Stop it,” she whispered. “Please, Jen.” It could’ve been Delia talking to her, her voice made young and smooth.

Lavina shook her head. “You don’t seem to appreciate what can happen here if we lose each other. I don’t think you grasp it.”

“I grasp it,” Jennifer said. “I’m sorry I keep upsetting you, but I’m not your daughter, Lavina. You can’t tell me—”

“You don’t appreciate—”

“I appreciate you, I promise. I’m grateful we’re together,
that we found each other, but I’m not your daughter.” Lavina refused to turn and look at her, stare through her, glare at her, but Jennifer could tell.

“I’m grateful,” Jennifer said, kept repeating that lower and lower until she had calmed down enough that she no longer needed to say it.

   “Tell me what happened. I know it wasn’t nothing,” Lavina asked Jennifer that evening. They had finished the tins of corned beef and pale orange carrots, and Mazy was asleep on the floor of the van, breathing heavy, and all evening Lavina and Jennifer had avoided talking to each other.

After supper, Jennifer had brushed Mazy’s hair, braided it, and Mazy did the same for her, brushing and shaking out as much dust as she could like Delia had done. Mazy kept the notebook with her on top of the blanket. She had drawn pictures all day—drawn and drawn—engraved faces, arms, and hard-boned knees into the pages, the pencil lead blurring in the sun, then cooling in the haze and clouds that drifted overhead.

“She snores as loud as her grandmother,” Lavina said, and laughed, trying to keep it low, but the laughter kept breaking through, chopping little notches into the silence.

“I haven’t heard her snore,” Jennifer said.

“You’re just tired. Unfortunately, I’m a light sleeper. Last night you talked in your sleep.”

Jennifer blushed, was thankful for the flashlight’s blue glow that kept their skin tinged in a pale blue, unreal and unchanged.

“It was gibberish. Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Lavina said. Somehow, she had managed to read that blush anyway.

“I didn’t mean to keep you from sleeping.”

Lavina waved her off. “I’m used to it. Like I told you, she snores like her grandmother. A bullhorn. If you’re awake in
a few hours, you’ll hear. Of course, I shove her a little like I had to shove you last night—have to get her to stop. I don’t want anyone finding us.” Jennifer remembered how Lavina had rubbed her head sweetly, calmly, cooled the sweat back into her hair until she had fallen back asleep and felt guilty for her silence toward Lavina all day.

“You’re not sleeping,” she said.

“No.” Lavina rubbed her eyes and yawned. “See what you’re doing—making me yawn just by mentioning sleep.” She glanced over at Mazy, then settled into staring with those large eyes open full to the blueness. “I do rest, until I hear something or get triggered out of a dream.”

“But we’re safe in the van, Lavina.”

The van was quiet just like the evening before. Around them, everything hushed except for the church bells that misfired—three bells, then ten, then six, and between the tolls, the buzz of mille-copters hovering, leaving.

“It won’t last,” she said. “Someone will find us. I’ve got to get Mazy out of here.”

For a while that afternoon, Jennifer had drawn pictures with Mazy. She made the noses longer than the heads and gave her figures pinwheel ears and hair that shot straight to the edge of the page like her own tangles did first thing in the morning and Mazy had said, “Electric hair.”

Jennifer had said, “My hair’s electric. Touch it.” Then, “Go ahead, touch it,” when Mazy just looked on skeptically.

The girl reached a hand up. Slowly she touched the thick black ends, then eased a tangle further and further out, untangling, until Jennifer jumped or half jumped, her best imitation of Terry’s bullfrog move, sitting still, then, boom! Mazy jumped back.

“Feel it?” Jennifer asked. “Electric,” she said. “Got you,” she said the next time, Mazy giggling, smiling, which Jennifer wanted. She seemed younger than fifteen. If it wasn’t for her height and growing breasts, Mazy might be twelve, what Jennifer remembered of that age, too closed off inside
herself to grab hold of any kind of maturity. But Mazy’s body said something different, that adulthood was coming, that it would happen fast.

“What happened to you today, Jen? I don’t believe nothing happened.” Lavina wasn’t going to leave it alone.