Snakeskin Road (29 page)

“I tell them that, but I have a husband in Alabama, nine years. And what’s he going to think when I’m done at the St. Charles? Like your first wife—what she did. You think he’s going to want me when I’m done?”

“It’s different. She was two-timing.”

“I’m doing worse than that.”

“Stop,” he said but wouldn’t look at Jennifer now—it was the same look she expected from Mathew. He’d turn from her, allow the numbness to seep back in over the emptiness in her bones, her skin. His gaze, his hands—he’d keep those from her. “I’m going to play a song. One that’s going to lift your spirits, get you out of this mess. You’ll see.”

“No, Jinx,” she said and held his palms tight, tried to stop them from moving—she was the one sliding now and needed his hands, but they twitched, shifted.

“I’ve got to start playing,” he said. “Now let go.”

“Linger a little more, Jinx. Rest your hands with me, Jinx.”

“I’ve rested enough. I’ve got to do my work. You can stay here.”

“You never let me stay,” she said. “Besides, Ms. Gerald won’t allow that.” Jennifer released him, set the towel down.

He put his fingers right at the center and banged out a chord. “What am I going to do with you?”

Jennifer stood up. “You’re letting me go.”

“If a man loves you, he loves you no matter what,” Jinx said.

“Maybe. Maybe he loves you until he thinks you’ve betrayed him. Like all your songs tell it, like you yourself tell it.” And she walked off.

“Don’t listen too closely to my songs,” he called after
her, and clicked fast over the keys. Then, “Wait,” he said and got up from the piano.

Slowly, he came over. “Why’s it got to be like this?” he said. “You walking away?”

He reached out and grabbed hold of her arm. Rubbed it, his hands wet and cold from the ice. “Come downstairs tomorrow, and I’ll play some songs. Just get through this night and come down tomorrow. See me.”

“What makes you think I can’t get through the night?” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. There were so many other things to say. Better things.

“I don’t know.” He looked down. “I’m just worried about you, Jen.”

She took his hand, held it carefully. “It’s good of you. And I’ll be here tomorrow, all right?”

“I’ll be expecting,” he said and nodded and walked back to the piano.

For a moment, she felt better. Then Mazy came out on the floor with the two clients, and Jennifer sat at an empty table to watch them.

The whole evening went this way—Jennifer and Mazy swirling around each other, avoiding each other. Cawood wouldn’t talk. Every time a trick came by, Jennifer got up with him and found at least one other girl to chat with until the trick started talking to the other girl more. Then Jennifer went to the bathroom or the bar, somewhere, anywhere else. The maneuver had been nicknamed “the bump and run.” Bump into someone else, leave your trick there, and run the other way as fast as possible.

Even though Mazy made sure not to look over, Jennifer watched her—so much like her mama, Lavina. She had those same knobbed cheekbones and wide, moon eyes, and that smile, that full row of teeth.
Take care of Mazy until I can get back to you
—that’s what the note from Lavina had said.

As she watched Mazy, she wondered about Lavina, and her own mama, Terry, her baby, Mat and what Jinx had said about a man’s love, and Cawood’s sister, and sometimes there were glimpses of Birmingham, the dead being lifted into harvesting machines, Mazy’s drawings of their arms and legs and faces. For months, Jennifer had lost these parts of herself, misplaced these people—how does one misplace people?—but with Mazy here, suddenly they bloomed. At times like this, they overwhelmed her, consumed her, each image pressing down, becoming the other, and there was nothing to be done about it until she lost them again.

She sat listening to Jinx play “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue”—his voice cracking high but gruff. That music, Jinx’s music, and the river, the only two things in this place that ever healed her. And it never lasted. She looked at Mazy, wanted to ask if she was okay after what happened earlier. But Mazy seemed like that body tied to the tree, like she had already forgotten what Jennifer could not, like she had never seen it to begin with.

Naomi passed through the room, and Ms. Gerald came down from her office twice and circled. Neither said a word to her, but like Jennifer they came to watch Mazy. Another girl doing what was expected.

And when Mazy finally left with a trick, even then, Jennifer held on to see if she would come back down. It was all Jennifer’s doing and no way to undo it. She hated herself. But this time, all the self-righteousness she had pointed at her mother was gone. She hated herself for what she had done to Mazy. There was nothing else, just like Cawood had promised, nothing to hold.

   There was a scratch at the door. Jennifer thought it was Mazy, hoped it was, but it was Lisa.

“Come on,” she said.

“What?” Jennifer said.

“Just come on.” Lisa was still whispering, but with such urgency, Jennifer didn’t say a thing to the trick lying asleep in her bed, just left him, slipped on the green dress, closed the door, and followed Lisa down the hallway. And she didn’t ask Lisa
What?
a second time because she couldn’t. Lisa moved too fast, staying ahead of her, the hallway empty, cold, always colder than her room.

The wall lamps flashed up in their steps; between the lamps, shadowed curbs of wallpaper and carpet, and in the distended blackness of the ceiling, the space between her and Lisa grew longer. Jennifer couldn’t catch up.

Lisa opened the last door to Cawood standing over a bed, and Mazy in a chair at the far end with her knees up, arms folded, and sheared head burrowed down. On the bed was a trick lying on his stomach, his back wrapped in sheets and blood.

“She cut him into a mess,” Cawood explained. “Broke a water glass in the bathroom. The pieces are everywhere.”

Jennifer kept hoping the body would move, but it didn’t. And in the dried blood coming through the white sheets she saw what Mazy cut into his back, the lines of a trunk, the round whorls of bark on the spine, and branches stretching over the shoulders—a tree bleeding through his skin that Jennifer could not reverse, could not sew up. “He’s dead.”

“Just dead drunk. He’ll come out of it eventually,” Cawood told her. “She didn’t cut him deep. More like she engraved him than anything else. We wrapped his back and the bleeding’s stopped. I mean, he’s lucky we got here when we did. Who knows what else she would’ve done—she’s lucky.” Cawood tilted her head sideways at Mazy. When the girl didn’t look over, Cawood crossed her arms, sighed. “He needs a doctor. And I don’t know what he’s going to do to her when he wakes up. He’s going to be hurting. You know what Ms. Gerald will do.”

It was a tree, straight, then curved where the roots sank down into the hips, and around the trunk, spots of blood like
stars, like leaves falling, at the shoulders the thin beginning of branches, his arms just dangling, his whole body.

Jennifer started for the chair, but Mazy tightened.

“I heard her through that wall crying. She was whimpering.” Lisa pointed. “She wouldn’t open the door, so I got Cawood to let us in.”

Jennifer kept walking, moving from the lamp to the window, tucking her bangs behind her ears.

“We found her like that,” Lisa said, “with him on the covers.”

“She was doing so well tonight. I thought she was ready.”

Jennifer stopped. “Mazy,” she whispered. The girl remained bundled, no shoes, blood on the dress around her legs. Jennifer turned to ask Cawood about the blood.

“Don’t leave me,” Mazy said.

Jennifer turned back. “I’m not going to,” she said and reached in.

“That man’s mille-copter is out there but the pilot isn’t going to wait. He needs a doctor.”

“We’re coming,” Jennifer told Cawood, and “We have to go now,” she said to Mazy. “You have to come with me. You understand what you’ve done?”

“I know,” Mazy said.

“You have to get up.” Jennifer helped her and lifted her—the girl’s hand was sticky with blood from where she held the glass but she hadn’t cut her wrists or any other part of herself. Her hands were shaking like Jinx’s, her whole body, and her bones felt pared and hollowed like Jennifer could lift her, the easiest, most breakable thing.

“Take her down to your room and wait. I’m going to open this door and yell, yell so loud, the guards’ll come running. When the guards come up the stairs, you get the hell out of here, the gate to the river.” Cawood handed her the key. “Try to catch a truck on the highway. Over at the bridge into Kentucky. I wish I knew a path, knew some people.”

“But Cawood,” Jennifer held up the key, “Ms. Gerald will—”

“She won’t. She might not even figure it out. I’ve been baptized by that woman, like I told you. Not doing that again. I’m out of here in a month, I promise.” Cawood shoved an envelope into Jennifer’s hand. “It’s what Lisa and I’ve been hiding—almost eight hundred. There are smugglers will take you to Chicago, or at least get you near for that. Now go.”

“Caw—”

“You going to make it, you need to go.” And they slipped into the hallway, the elongated shadows and lamplight, slipped into Jennifer’s room.

“There’s a trick here,” she whispered, setting a finger to Mazy’s lips.

He kept snoring. “Snores louder than you,” Jennifer said, and reached under the bed, pulled out the black box, placed the envelope inside, made sure the lock was secure.

When Cawood yelled, the doors in the hall were flung open, and even the trick on her bed turned. She waited until the heavy feet, the boots of the guards came through the stairwell before she and Mazy slipped out, all the way down and out the gate that Jennifer had walked through so many times. But Jennifer didn’t go to the Ohio, the bridge. She took Mazy through Cairo to the Mississippi side, and kept looking back, kept thinking someone would come, Douglas and the other guards, or the roaming gangs out of the houses, but if they just kept moving, running, maybe nothing could get them.

They made it under the levee to the Mississippi, and kept going along the bank until Mazy slipped, and Jennifer lifted her up, a stream of barges coming upriver like there were always barges. For a moment they raced the ships, then Mazy, swiftly, silently, dove in and began to swim.

Jennifer called to her, watched her slip from the bank,
then clutched the box and dove in, too. The stacked barges sat halfway out in the water, chugging slow-footed with what looked like coal, the moon catching flashes off the pyramided freight. They were heading north to St. Louis or Minneapolis. She could barely see the girl, but could hear her thrashing and followed after the sound, breathing, diving into the water, and back up, Mazy ahead of her, and the barge lights cutting off the Missouri bank on the other side.

Her lungs and muscles started to burn. She hadn’t swum like this in years, and her lungs filled with heat and too much cold water, but she couldn’t stop now and reached out, the thrashing ended. She grabbed the iron siding and tried to call for Mazy, then found the girl holding on to the edge, breathing hard, lifting herself as Jennifer drifted to a ladder, pulled herself up, too. She tossed the box onto the coal, and sat next to the girl in the front. Behind them, the black pile sparkled. They both looked back at Cairo and the St. Charles, watched it for a long time, the land slipping away, the dark trees, this separate island they were on. Overhead the stars from Mazy’s notebook glittered; it was as if the book had opened, and the stars had been tossed to the sky, those stars back into a universe, wide, so wide, impossible to navigate.

She thought of that story about the girl who waved to everyone from her barge and the next day came floating down the river, dead. She looked over at Mazy shivering and grabbed hold of her, gathering the girl into her arms; the warmth of their skin worked against the cold. Then she looked at the stars slipping past, and breathed.