The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (19 page)

“Come here,” he says, pulling me into the V of his legs so my back is to his belly. The warmth of his breath against my hair, the whisper of kisses on my ear, along my shoulder. Where his skin meets mine, a borderline that threatens to go up in flames. His hardness against my rear. One word runs through my head:
want want want want.
It's a hollow word, a nasal cave of longing, everything else lost in its void. I am the word, nauseated with desire, emptied of all other feeling. His hand fits between my legs. With his fingers, he presses against my crotch. I feel my wetness against his skin and wonder if I will stain the car's upholstery. Forever, no matter what else passed between us, he would have my smell. I arch back and his other hand finds my breast. He groans softly.

Then, with urgency, he turns me around, pushes me flat against the seat. We kiss deeply, a hint of spearmint gum on his breath.
More,
I think. Or perhaps I say it, because he pauses and pulls away.

“Wait,” he says. “Wait a second.”

From his pocket, he gets his wallet, then slides something out. He unzips, and that's when I see what it is. A condom. He tears it open and starts to put it on. Something in me recoils at this.
Condom.
The word has seemed dirty to me since ninth-grade health class, when Mrs. Ancelet told us,
Don't trust boys who keep condoms within easy reach. It doesn't mean they're prepared; it means they're sleeping around.
Now what we're doing seems cheap. I panic, not wanting to lose the intensity from before.

“Don't,” I say, putting my hand on his. He looks confused. “The condom. Just . . . it's okay.”

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“I'm on the pill,” I lie. “Because of my skin medication.” I try to recall the name of Brittny's acne stuff. “Accutane.”

“Oh,” he says. “But what about . . . ”

“Please,
Travis,” I plead. “I need you close to me
now
.”

He slides into me, a look of astonishment on his face. Briefly, there's pain, not sharp but a dull tugging. My hands move with his narrow hips, I can feel him at the deepest part of me.
Union,
a round, full word, so much better than
want.

Afterward, my thighs are sticky with blood; Travis cleans them with a kerchief he keeps in his back pocket, dampening the cloth with water from my thermos and rubbing it in soft circles. When he finishes, he kisses me down there, and then we lie sandwiched together on the seat for a spell. He hums a song I don't know, his voice a deep, pleasing vibration.

“I didn't want to pull out like that,” he says. “But I thought I should.”

“Mmmm,” I say, lost in a pleasant fog.

“Damned if I know which way is north anymore,” he says after a while, laughing.

Sorry sorry sorry sorry,
I think. Everyone else is, why not me, too? It is so easy to say.

“We are beautiful and dangerous,
” he says after a while, using the words of the Louisiana poet, tracing his finger along the curve of my waist.
Dangerous to whom?
I wonder. I'm uneasy. We're skin to skin but we're separate bodies once again, the feeling of completion gone. I remember Witness outside the pool hall, the way he dangled money between thumb and forefinger, the way he laughed at me, and I'm sunk low. This is what
they
did, he and Charmaine.
Sorry sorry sorry sorry.

I go to open the door for some fresh air, but my hand freezes when I see her staring at me through the steamy window—Lucille Cloud. I cry out, scramble to depress the door's lock. When our eyes meet again, a smile hovers on her face.

“Shit,” Travis says. “Where'd she come from?”

“Shhh,” I hush him, pulling my shirt down over my head. I shimmy back into my shorts, hoping the dark is enough to keep Lucille from seeing too much. “Her cabin must be somewhere nearby.”

She knocks on the window slowly, deliberately,
knock knock knock.
I can hear her dog whining on the other side of the door.

“Let's get out of here,” Travis says.

He dislodges his shirt from between the bench and seat back, then propels himself behind the wheel. A fumbling for keys, then the engine sputters to life. Lucille steps back from the car as the tires spin in the mud before catching. At last the car bolts forward. As we gain some distance, I look back. Lucille is rooted to the same spot, watching us drive away. The dog howls, a baleful sound that makes me shiver. Exhaling, I climb into the front seat next to Travis.

Once we're well away from the spot, he says, “Sorry that Nutter Butter had to go and ruin things.”

He puts his hand over mine and gives a squeeze, but he's right, the night is ruined. Any tenderness from our lovemaking has disappeared into the yellow moon like everything stolen or lost or forgotten. Guilt hangs on my heart. For a breath of pleasure, I have shed my innocence. I think of the times I've judged Annie and Charmaine, and here I am, not a bit different. All Maw Maw's teachings, all my hours in church and in prayer, and how easily I gave in.
Shame shame shame,
the car scolds as it rumbles over the ruts in the forest floor. I roll down the window for a breeze. After a while, lights appear through the trees.

“Look, it's the refinery,” he says, pointing through the windshield. “Come to guide us home. Can't escape that place.” He glances at me with his sideways smile, the light of the dashboard illuminating his face. We drive and drive, following those lights, which appear through the branches of the trees like fireflies, the only other light the shine of our headlights on the forest floor. Occasionally, they catch the eyes of creatures in the scrub and make them glow like lit matches.

I'm tired from my morning workout, from Witness and the sun, from sex, drained by what we've done. I feel the tiny particles of guilt, shame, and regret rising like sand fleas in a swarm around my organs. The truck noses through the broad darkness of the forest. Soon the lights disappear. When we finally come out of the trees, we are several miles too far east, out by the old Garrison homestead.
Strange,
I think. Two kids born and raised in Port Sabine getting lost in territory we know like our own faces. I think of Maw Maw's story of the
feux follets,
the ghost lights, and wonder if what we saw wasn't the refinery at all but the glimmerings of that poor baby's unbaptized soul trying to find its way to heaven.

Maw Maw says that the devil's business is easy, it is the Lord's work that is hard. And it's true. What I did with Travis tonight was easy. Our bodies spoke to each other in a language that came so naturally, we mistook it for truth. At home, I curl into bed and start to cry. At first I cry for the baby, but soon I'm grieving for myself, for the letter that reminds me of all that I've lost, for what I've given away tonight. I open my mouth wide into the pillow so Maw Maw doesn't hear.

THE DAY OF
Annie's Purity Ball arrives. She's still not speaking to me, but I hope that when she sees me up close, she'll realize that my friendship is worth more to her than the moral high ground.

The summer has given me more secrets than I can bear: Charmaine, my arm, Travis. When I try to pray for help, I feel false and wretched, like I have no right to ask for anything.

And now I understand how Annie has felt all this time, with no one to turn to but me. I hope she can put aside her anger and be my confessor as I was hers. I'll force the matter if I have to, corner her in a bathroom stall until she'll look me in the face. She's bigger than me, but I've always beaten her one-on-one, which is what makes our friendship possible in the first place. She has nothing but contempt for the people she beats, and she beats everyone at everything. Except me.

I put on the white dress I wore for my purity ceremony three years ago. Taking stock of myself in the mirror, I barely recognize the girl staring back. I feel far from the person I was at the start of the summer, the one blessed by the Holy Spirit with the gift of tongues, who promised her grandmother she wouldn't let trouble find her. The dress, with its white flounces and frills, feels childish next to my face, aged by this knowledge I shouldn't yet have. I tear off the dress and shove it under the bed, donning instead the navy sheath I keep for funerals.

But when Maw Maw sees me, she sends me back to my room to change, despite my protests that the dress is too small. When she secures the final pearl button at the top of the neck, I feel choked. I cough, tug at the collar. The tulle petticoat is scratchy against my legs. Still, I know there's no arguing the matter. I slip on my shell-pink shoes and climb into the Lincoln. There are faded stickers on the glove compartment, placed there by Charmaine when she was a girl. Only these shreds of evidence prove she was ever here at all.

Inside the gym, clusters of white balloons are tied to the backs of white plastic folding chairs, and white sheets bunch beneath the legs of cafeteria tables, which have been covered in white tablecloths. It looks like some kind of Winter Wonderland–themed prom, or maybe an insane asylum. Someone's hired a harpist, and the music floats through the air. On a projector screen, childhood photos of Annie flash up. She's scarcely recognizable to me behind the dusting of freckles and carefree grins. I notice that the photos don't show her past the age of twelve or so. They are all pre-painted-on-jeans-and-navel-ring Annie.

Maw Maw looks at me. “Who you are in this dress is more important than who you are in that uniform that everyone makes so much of.”

“Yes ma'am,” I say, cheeks hot with shame. I don't deserve this dress anymore, or this ring. Twisting the gold band on my finger, I get the prickly feeling and try to breathe through it, folding my arms over my chest. Temporarily, it seems to work.

I think back to Marilee Warren at church on the last day of school, how shrunken she looked in the black modesty dress. If I were brave, I would deliver myself to Pastor Parris now so that he could give me the dress to wear for everyone to see. The black angel, fallen.

Folks have started to find their name cards and sit down, the women dressed in white and ivory and cream, the men stiff in their cheap collared shirts and wide ties. We pass Mrs. Ancelet, the health teacher, sitting with the girls of the True Love Waits club. “Ceremony's fixing to start,” Maw Maw says. Like an anxious wedding planner, she clutches a program listing the order of events, which she shows to me now: punch and appetizers first, then the ring ceremony and dance, then dinner. “Annie's probably in the bridal suite,” she continues.
Bridal
because she's becoming a bride of Christ. “Go on and go see her, see if she needs any help getting fixed up.”

Relieved to have an excuse to get away from the crowd, I head toward the bridal suite, which is just the locker room counter with the addition of a folding chair, a plug-in makeup mirror, and a hair dryer. On my way there, I spot Illa Stark standing alone at the edge of the collapsed bleachers. She's clutching a Dixie cup of punch, her eyes roaming the room. When she sees me, she startles, her owlish eyes grown even larger.

“Hey, Mercy,” she says.

“What's up, Illa?”

She looks so tiny in her baggy white linen pants and jacket, like she's a head atop a wire mannequin. Looking at her in these shabby clothes, I feel bad for my outburst at the park.

“Hey,” she says. “I wanted to apologize about what happened at Park Terrace. It was none of my business, and—”

“Don't give it another thought,” I say. “Please. Just forget you ever saw those stupid letters.”

“Okay,” she says, looking at the floor, then back up at me. “You have a good summer?”

I consider this routine question, which to me, coming at this moment, seems important. “I wouldn't call it good,” I say. “It was . . . complicated.”

She laughs. “I know what you mean.” She bounces slightly on the balls of her feet so that some of her punch splashes out of the cup and onto the hardwood. She kneels to mop it up. When she stands, she looks like she wants to say something more, her mouth parted.

“What is it, Illa?”

“Nothing.” She stares into her cup. “It's nothing.” She laughs nervously. “Hope Coach didn't see me spill, she'd tan my hide.”

“See you in school,” I say.

“See ya.”

I'm not sure what I expect to find in the locker room—Annie with dyed black hair, wearing some shredded Goth dress, or perhaps no Annie at all—but it's certainly not this: she is sitting upright in a cap-sleeved antique white ball gown, applying pink cream blusher to the apples of her cheeks, her blond hair twisted into a sleek chignon punctuated with a pearl brooch. Through the mirror, our eyes meet and she smiles. I feel a physical pull toward her, like someone reunited with a long-lost twin.

“Hey, kiddo,” she says. From her affectionate tone, I know I've been forgiven.

“You look beautiful.”