The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (14 page)

I can't destroy the letter. I need it to remind me what not to become.

O
VER THE NEXT
couple days, Illa continues to check the mail. While the Purity Ball invitation fails to arrive, a couple more of the chicken-scratch epistles land and are spirited away by Mama to parts unknown. With each letter, Illa's curiosity grows, so that by the time the third one arrives, she barely notices the invitation to the Purity Ball beneath it in the stack. Mama is napping in the kitchen, the afternoon silence heavy and close through the house.
What if I just have a peek?
Illa thinks.

Before she can consider the consequences, she rushes to her room, taking the stairs two at a time so that when she lands on the bed, she's breathing hard, temples pulsing with blood.

She looks over the invitation to the ball, which is made out to Ms. Meg Stark and Miss Illa Stark, just as she feared. She skims it for details, then buries it at the bottom of a desk drawer. It's overkill, she knows, but if Mama sees the invitation and insists on going with her, it would be like the funeral of that French president where his wife and mistress stood side by side at his grave. Over the years, Illa has taken pains to ensure that the two spheres of her life—basketball, Mama—never overlapped.

Holding one of the mystery letters, she tears the envelope along the seam, unfolds the sheet of paper. Given free rein over a blank page, the handwriting expands into something loopier. The salutation takes Illa by the throat:
Dear Mercy.
How has she come to be holding a piece of private correspondence meant for Mercy Louis? Maybe the mailman had made a mistake and dropped the letter in their box by accident; she flips the envelope back over to confirm the address. 3156 Galvez Street, Port Sabine, Texas. Apparently, the letter's in the right place, but that only adds to Illa's confusion. She reads it:

           
Dear Mercy,

           
There was something I used to do when you were small, when I was still a mess with the dope. Believe me, when you're unemployed and zonked out of your head, you have a lot of time alone with your thoughts, what fried bits of them there are left, that is. Anyway. I would picture your face as I remembered it—your baby face with its squishy nose and serious blue eyes (you didn't have eyebrows at first, just these huge staring eyes). And I'd try to fast-forward in time, like those nature videos that show a flower growing from a seed, to try and picture what you looked like at different ages. I think mostly I just substituted my face from when I was a child, which is cheating but it was the best I could do. I don't have much of an imagination.

                  
Of course, I did this on my best days, when I could think straight enough. I'll admit it, there were bad days, really bad days, when I didn't think of you, or much of anything. Days I was barely alive. I lost weeks, maybe years, that way but I try not to think about it too much. Shame and regret are already close friends of mine.

Love true,

C. B. must be Charmaine Boudreaux, Mercy's mother. So the rumors are true, the drug stuff, at least. In a small town, it's hard to tell fact from fiction, the apocryphal making the rounds alongside the God's honest until they're indistinguishable and both cited like gospel.

Why are these letters coming to Galvez Street? Illa wonders, listening for sounds from the kitchen, rustlings to indicate Mama is awake. Nothing. On tiptoe, she makes her way down the stairs, past the kitchen where Mama naps, and into the bedroom, where she suspects the other letters reside. Inside, the room is dark and smells of unwashed sheets; Illa makes a mental note to strip the bed later. She opens the blinds, the sudden daylight catching dust motes on their soundless descent. If her mother is trying to hide the letters, she hasn't done a great job—they're stacked neatly on her bedside table. Next to them sits a mother-of-pearl letter opener. So Mama has already opened the letters and read them like dog-eared paperbacks before bed.

Why would Mama withhold this correspondence from a girl who's probably starved for news of her mother? It seems perverse; Illa decides to deliver the letters to Mercy at Park Terrace that night. Finally, a good excuse to show up at the park. And she knows Annie won't be there because of the fight Lennox told her about.

THAT EVENING, THE
letters tucked neatly in the side pocket of her camera bag, Illa ventures to the Park Terrace basketball court. She waits until after the sun sets, a silvery twilight wrapping her in protective shadow. At the edge of the park, bulrushes and cattails announce the beginnings of the salt marsh that stretches from there to Chocolate Bayou. Illa watches a pair of redwing blackbirds feint and dodge as they dance in and out of the reeds.

Before she can see the court, she hears its familiar sounds—the scuff and squeak of sneakers, the clanging of ball against rim, players conversing in their language of grunts, shouts, whistles, claps. And then there they are, nine boys and Mercy carving up the air under the streetlights.

With possibility fizzing in her bones, Illa walks to the wooden benches that flank the court and starts to take pictures, trying to look purposeful. A few of the girls cock their tweezed eyebrows at her, gold hoops flashing, but they don't say anything.

“It's for a contest,” Illa murmurs in the direction of the girls, but they've already trained their eyes back on the court.

“What contest?”

She turns to see who's spoken. It's Travis Salter, sitting on a patch of grass, legs splayed in a V in front of him, torso propped up by kickstand arms dug into the ground.

“Some scholarship thing,” she says. “For sports photography.”

“Cool,” he says. He's an exceedingly
long
human being, she notes, so much that it's almost comical, which has always inclined her to like him.

“I guess,” she says, shrugging, trying to sound bored even though what she wants to say is
Yes, it
is
cool, really, really cool!
She knows that saying anything fervently is an invitation for mocking.

During a break in play, Mercy sees her and waves. The gesture bolsters Illa's confidence. As the game continues, she paces the sideline, bringing the Canon to her face and following Mercy as she moves. She looks leonine, crouched low and slapping the cement tauntingly on D, fluid and confident on offense. What a change from the semifinal, when she was wound so tight that Illa thought she might go flying off the court and into the stands.

After the game, the players and the gold-hoop girls stand around in semicircles that break apart and re-form into various social compounds. Illa sees Travis unfurl his long body and start to sidle across the court. Illa has never seen anyone
sidle,
though she has long liked the word. His gunboat Chuck Taylors are stripped of their laces and flap loudly against the concrete as he walks. Across his back, he's slung a guitar, which bumps against him with each step.

Almost too late, she realizes he's walking toward Mercy, who sits on a bench unlacing her sneakers. Crap. If they start talking, Illa might miss her window.
Go,
she commands herself.

“Mercy!” she exclaims too loudly, so that the kids at the sideline pause to see what's going on. At the sound of her name, Mercy jerks her head around. “Can you come here a sec?” Illa says, quieter this time. She feels herself blushing aggressively. Mercy stands and trots toward Illa, nodding at Travis as she passes. He flips his guitar around to the front and starts strumming it absentmindedly.

“Long time, no see,” Mercy says. “How you been, girl?” Sweat drips off her chin, slicks her dark hair to her head. She dabs at her forehead with a sweatband she wears around her wrist, but there's no stanching the flow; the heat lingers well after sunset, stored up in the pavement and cars to be released slowly over the night hours. At dawn, it will still be eighty-five degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity.

“Good, good,” Illa says distractedly. “Here, I have something for you.” She fumbles in her bag for the letters, holding them out as if they can explain themselves. Mercy glances down, eyes lingering on the envelopes for a half second before meeting Illa's gaze. “Why'd you bring those here?” she hisses, stepping toward Illa.

“If you're wondering why they're open—”

“I'm not wondering about them at all,” she says. Out of the corner of her eye, Illa notices Travis watching them. “Those letters don't exist.”

“But your mom—” Illa continues.

“My mom nothing, you don't know
piss-all
about my mama.”

“I'm sorry . . .” Illa says helplessly, still holding the letters out. She's not sure what she's apologizing for, but she's ready to say anything to stymie Mercy's anger.

“You didn't read them, did you?”

“No, of course not, no,” Illa lies. “That's why I was bringing them to you, I thought you'd want to—”

“Everything all right?” Travis says, coming up behind Mercy. She grabs for the letters, but not before he sees them. “What's that?”

Mercy glares at Illa, jaw set, eyes flashing. “Nothing,” she grumbles. Travis doesn't look convinced, but Mercy makes it clear the subject is closed. They look at Illa, Travis with concern, Mercy with such stark animosity that it makes Illa want to cry. What has she done wrong?

“I . . . I was just going,” she manages, shoving the letters back in her bag before turning and tripping her way out of the park, hot tears streaking down her face.

ON THE CAR
ride home, sobs leave Illa gasping for air. She's spent her entire life trying to avoid conflict—trying to avoid being noticed at all. If not for Mama and the stolen letters, the fight with Mercy never would have happened.

Illa made a mistake by going to Park Terrace; it's obvious now that Mercy wants nothing to do with Charmaine. How could Illa have known? She thought she was doing Mercy a favor. And Charmaine wanted so badly to connect with her daughter. The letters bled a raw truth that made Illa ache while reading them.