The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (25 page)

T
HURSDAY ARRIVES. ILLA
hums as she prepares breakfast: egg whites and a grapefruit half for Mama, oatmeal for her. It's the day before opening night, also Mercy's birthday. Illa has the day circled in red on the calendar hanging in her room. Nothing—not even the putrid smell from the refinery—can dampen her mood today.

Good Lord, but the air is nasty. Illa imagines one of those green cartoon clouds of stink settling over Port Sabine. She switches on the television to see if there's any news about the stench, but a blond woman is smiling and pointing to a weather map like nothing is out of the ordinary.

Illa sets the eggs on the table, then spoons up a few mouthfuls of oats, enough to get her to lunch without too much cramping. Kids in class give her weird looks if her stomach gets too rumbly.

“Ma, breakfast,” she calls.

When Mama wheels out of her bedroom, she's disheveled, her nightgown stuck beneath her right thigh, exposing the scar-mangled calves. Illa looks away and says, “Morning,” grabbing her backpack. “Team dinner tonight, so don't wait for me—I put some dinner fixings in the fridge for you.”

“You smell that?”

“Sure,” Illa answers. “Bet all of Mexico can smell it, too.”

“Illa, honey, I was wondering . . . I've been feeling under the weather, and this smell's got me a little anxious . . .”

“Ma, call Mr. Alvarez if you need anything, but I've got to go or I'll be late for practice.” She gives her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “I'll see you tonight . . .”

“Okay,” Mama says.

“Don't wait up!” she shouts over her shoulder, racing down the path to her car. She purposely leaves the front door ajar so that when Mama goes to close it, she'll see the green lawn and blue sky and red oleander, and perhaps miss it a little bit, this world she has forsaken.

IN PRECALCULUS, LAYNIE
Hibbard comes in wearing a blue surgical mask over her nose and mouth. Illa feels sorry for her because the other students roll their eyes behind her back. Midway through class, Laynie gets up to sharpen her pencil, but before she makes it to the sharpener, her knees buckle and she goes down. Someone gasps and Mrs. Maxey runs to her. Already Laynie has regained consciousness. Groggily, she sits up, eyes glassy.

Rubbing Laynie's back with one hand, Mrs. Maxey waves Nancy Cobb over with the other. “Walk her to the nurse's office, would you, Nancy?”

Mrs. Maxey asks Laynie if she remembered to eat breakfast that morning.

“I don't feel good,” Laynie says.

Mrs. Williams frowns. “Just go on to the nurse. She'll get you fixed up.”

“What about tonight's assignment?” Laynie asks.

“Don't worry about that now. You can do makeup work later, if need be.”

When the bell rings a half hour later, students shoot out of their chairs and down the hall, where Illa can hear them buzzing about Laynie.
Bet she's knocked up,
someone says.
Maybe the LeBlanc baby was hers! No way. She's just looking for attention.

When Illa passes the nurse's office at the end of the day, there's a line of people stretching down the hallway, including Nancy Cobb. Illa counts nine girls and one boy sitting on the linoleum, some holding wet cloths to their foreheads, some clutching sick bags. Since the refinery blast, Illa has felt connected to Nancy, a pudgy, dark-haired girl who lost both parents in the explosion. At school, she often looks as miserable as Illa feels.

“What's going on?” Illa asks Nancy.

“I feel sick to my stomach,” Nancy says. “And dizzy.” She leans back against the wall, clutches her stomach like she's in pain.

“What about the rest of them?” She spots Marilee Warren in the line.

“They shoulda let us stay home today,” Nancy says. “Aunt Carol said it wasn't safe.”

“Yeah, but what did the nurse say?” Illa's nervous. What if one of the players gets sick?

“She told me to go home and rest and I'd feel better in the morning.”

AT COACH'S HOUSE
for the team dinner, the girls are subdued as they pass plates of food around the table. Normally at team meals, the mood is buoyant, the girls ribbing one another, psyching themselves up for the coming game by recounting funny stories involving past victories. Tonight, though, they're on edge. Illa sits wedged between Keisha and Brittny, whose bony shoulder Illa has to lean around to see when Mercy starts to tell a story about last year's Holiday Classic tournament in Corpus Christi, something about Annie and an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, but Annie cuts her off: “Heard that one about a million times already.”

Like kids with bickering parents, the players can feel the tension between Annie and Mercy, and they're probably wondering what it will mean for them tomorrow. For years, Annie has shared Mercy with an entire town; can one boy really make that much difference? But even in that brief moment at the Hotel Sabine, Illa could feel the intensity of Mercy's feelings for Travis.

At the end of the meal, the coaches go into the kitchen to wash up and drink their good-luck Scotch, which they put in coffee, thinking they're being clever.

“You hear the chief hauled in Lucille?” Chole says after the water in the kitchen sink starts.

“For the baby?” Corinne asks.

“Duh,” Chole says.

“Chief best watch himself,” Keisha says, coughing into her arm. “He question her good enough, gonna wind up with half the town's secrets.”

“If she's got all those potions, don't you think she'd know how to keep herself from getting in a
family way
?” Brittny asks.

“Maybe it was one of her potions that killed the poor thing,” Corinne says. “I've heard the talk about those ‘cures.'” She uses her fingers to put quotation marks around the word. Keisha is coughing harder now; Jasmine gets up to refill her water glass.

“Maybe it was some kind of sacrifice,” Chole says. “Some Comanche shit or something.”

“Lucille's Attakappa,” Illa says.

“Whatever, they've all got their weird rituals,” Chole says.

“And Catholics don't?” Annie says.

“I only go to All Hallows because Tia and Tio would send me back to Juárez if I didn't. They're mad strict.” She turns to Keisha, who's coughing violently now. “Dude, you okay?”

Keisha shakes her head, flapping her hand in front of her mouth like she's trying to get air. In the silence of the stalled conversation, Illa can hear her wheezing.

“Coach!” Mercy shouts. “Asthma attack!”

From the kitchen, the sounds of banging drawers. Mercy motions the girls to give Keisha space, so they get up from the table and move to the edge of the den. Annie rifles through Keisha's backpack, then runs her inhaler to the table. Keisha's eyes are wide with fear, tears glistening at the corners.

Coach flies to her side, clutching a brown paper sack. “Here, hon,” she says. “I need you to breathe into this.” She puts the bag to Keisha's mouth and holds it there. “Breathe, honey. Slow down. Breathe.”

Illa has never been so thankful for Coach's steady voice and fearlessness. Gradually, Keisha's breathing slows and she removes the bag. She draws two quick puffs from her inhaler, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It's okay, sweetheart,” Coach says, rubbing her back. “You're fine. Everything's going to be fine.”

THE NEXT MORNING
when Illa gets up, Mama is still in bed, a sign that she's sunk into one of her depressions. When Mama gets like this, Illa usually tries to take special care with her, bringing breakfast to her in bed, reading aloud articles from the morning paper. But Illa has little patience for her mother's moods, what with the season opener that night and everything falling to shit. It doesn't seem to matter what precautions Illa takes, though; Mama's melancholy bleeds into Illa's psychic space.

Once the season gets going, Mama tends to be grumpy.
Just wish I saw more of my girl,
she'll say when Illa gets home late from away games. Illa has to bite her tongue to keep from reminding her mother that, if not for basketball, Illa would see nothing
but
Mama, and any armchair psychologist could tell you that wasn't healthy for a girl. Pocketing the note, she grabs her backpack and bangs out the front door into the sunshine.

As she cruises toward the student lot, Illa notices a small crowd gathering in front of the Mr. Good Deals. A local news van is already jammed up against the curb. Approaching the crowd, Illa sees a dog sprawled out on the pavement, blood trickling into the gutter beside it. People have left a semicircle of space around the beast, as if afraid it will leap from beyond the grave to savage them. When Illa gets out of the car, she sees it's Lucille Cloud's dog, still lying on the dirty woven blanket Lucille puts out for it every day when she sets up her wares. Illa gags at the pulped bits of brain smeared out around the carcass.

“Already dead by the time Hartman got to it,” a man wearing oil-stained coveralls says.

“He see who done it?” another man asks.

“Didn't see, but he says between that baby and this, he's ready to close up shop.”

“You ask me, it serves the girl right for coming back here to sell her junk so close to a crime scene. Disrespectful, is what it is.”

A diminutive news anchor in a mauve skirt suit has buttressed herself against the front wall of the Mr. Good Deals to deliver a report. Illa wanders in as close as she can without being conspicuous.

“Good morning, Luke,” the anchor says into the camera, hanging heavily on the first syllable of
morning
and pressing the earpiece farther into her right ear. “For the second time in two months, I'm here at the corner of LeBlanc and Main to report on an unsettling incident. Early this morning, a large German shepherd–mix dog was found shot through the head on the sidewalk. There were no witnesses, but the dog appears to be the same animal that belonged to the woman who sold home remedies and jewelry here on this sidewalk, Lucille Cloud. Cloud was interviewed and released by detectives yesterday evening, probably around the same time the animal was shot.”