The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (2 page)

Be sober-minded; be watchful.

Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

—1
PETER
5:8

S
OMETHING WILL BE
lit on fire today. Noses and windows will get busted. Girls will cry. It's the last day of school, and endings are always extreme. Like the Great Tribulation before the Rapture, the sun and air dark with smoke, armies of locusts with faces like men, tails like scorpions, two hundred million of them riding to cleanse the earth of those who lack the seal of God on their forehead.

Already, summer breathes through the hurricane shutters outside my room, wet and close. Along the ceiling, a green anole lizard moves in fits and starts, pausing to puff its orange throat. Maybe if I stay right here in my room in the stilt house, the final school bell won't ring, dismissing us into the anarchy of summer.

The whole world falls apart in summer. Murder rates rise with the heat, hurricanes brood off the coast, waiting to batter us. On the streets, girls go practically naked, a carnival of flesh so that when we pass by, Maw Maw sings under her breath,
Bless them, give them purity at the gates.
By the time school starts in August, some of them are vanished—they drop out, move across the state line into Louisiana, gone to join all the other lost girls, my mother included, in that city called
easy
.

I throw the sheet back and grudgingly slide out of bed. Only because I know that after summer comes basketball season, and I have to get through one to get to the other. Out on the balcony, I feel the wood warm beneath my feet, listen to Chocolate Bayou humming with insects and bullfrogs. After Hurricane Alicia, we put the house on stilts. No concrete foundation anymore, just beams and floorboards, like a tree house. I like being up high, eye to eye with the birds. When I look toward the bayou, I can imagine myself a mermaid on the prow of a ship that has made a wrong turn and gotten stuck here.

When Alicia was still a green swirl over the Gulf, Maw Maw prophesied the flood and warned Mayor Sanchez. But the weatherman told him the storm would miss us, and since the mayor didn't want to shut down the refinery, he didn't order an evacuation. By the time the water peaked, four people had drowned. After the storm passed, the watermark on the walls of our house went clear up to the ceiling. Maw Maw used the insurance money to prop it up on these chopsticks, making the house a spindly four-legged creature whose lamplight eyes glow yellow by night. She never told Mayor Sanchez
I told you so.
It's not Christian to gloat, especially when death comes calling.

Padding to the kitchen, I pull a string cheese from the fridge. As I sit peeling it, a moan issues down the hallway. It's the kind of sound women make on TV when they're laboring with a baby, before the screaming starts—a growl that vibrates with pain. I quiet my breathing. She's prophesying again, and even the groan of a floorboard can interrupt the vision. Vivid and gut-socking, they come on every few weeks now, leaving her pale.
Like turkey vultures aswarm around the dying,
she says of the visions.
This world is in its death throes,
ma petite.

Maw Maw says it's only a matter of months before the Tribulation begins. Everything is a sign of the times, like what happened with the president and that intern, when even the special prosecutor's name, Starr, was a portent. Like the government shooting up that man and all his wives in Waco, and those people who tried to get to heaven on the back of a comet. The thread of Maw Maw's visions start in her fingertips. When she touches something, it tells her a story. Some nights she sits for hours on the dock where Paw Paw Gaspard died, running her hands along the cedar planks, trying to summon his spirit. She's been ready for heaven since the day he left us seventeen years ago.

At the sink, I fill a water glass and take a drink. A bright blast of sunshine spills over the counter, but otherwise, the room is dark, the wood paneling on the walls soaking up light. Other than being hoisted on stilts, the house hasn't changed a shred. When I move the living room furniture to vacuum, I run my hand over the deep grooves left behind in the carpet. Paw Paw's navy wool blanket stays folded over the back of his easy chair, as if at any moment he'll return for a snooze. He was fishing at the end of the dock out back of the house when the stroke buzzed through his brain and toppled him into the bayou. By the time Maw Maw got to him, he had drowned, the canvas pants and jacket he wore turned heavy as stone with water. He was fifty-six years old. Though Maw Maw told people that the Lord don't make mistakes when He takes someone home, she wore widow's weeds for over a year, like she hoped God would see her huge sadness and restore Paw Paw to her.

Another moan, long and low. I fight my instinct to check on her. What's it like having the world as it doesn't exist yet reveal itself to you? At church she's begun laying hands, running her fingers along the brows of upturned faces, touching temples where she can feel the pulse of brains through the scalp. She's so tender when she does it that the women go soft, the men yearn toward her palms. Before bed, I wish for her to touch me like that, but she stays in the doorway and says the same thing each night:
Live to meet the end without dread, Tee Mercy. Be better than good.

Even though I've been taught my whole life that the Rapture will happen
in the twinkling of an eye,
I never expected it to come so soon. I should be glad to go to heaven, but all I can think about is that December 31 falls in the middle of basketball season. If the world ends that night, we won't make it to State. I won't ever feel the weight of that gold medal in my hand. Perhaps in heaven, I'll grow wings and finally know what it's like to soar above the rim. But I wonder if even that would be enough to replace the pleasure of winning, that
zing
of happiness when the buzzer goes and you're exhausted, but best, the feel of a sweat-soaked uniform when you've left a part of yourself behind in it. Maybe it's better that Maw Maw doesn't touch my forehead before bed; these thoughts would burn her like fever.

From her room comes a series of thuds, and the moaning stops. I hurry down the hall and peek past her door, where she's slumped on the ground, eyes closed, nightgown spread around her. I rush in and kneel beside her, then lean in close to see if she's breathing.
Thank God.
Her shallow breath is feathery against my cheek. Before pulling back, I kiss her papery skin. It's a gesture she wouldn't tolerate while awake, but I can't help myself, I'm so relieved she's not dead. When the last day arrives, I know we'll rise together, neither one of us will get left. There's comfort in that.

Surrounded by the nightgown, Maw Maw looks so small, like Thumbelina inside a rain lily. I take her hand, massage it, breathe warmth over it. “Maw Maw, can you hear me?” Angling her chin toward me, I see her eyelids flutter like she's in the middle of a dream. “Maw Maw?”

She opens her eyes and blinks several times, squeezing out a few fat tears. The visions come on fast and physical. In the last year, they've leached her hair white as a gull's breast. Afterward, she seems pummeled, disoriented. This is the first time she's fainted, though. “You're all right,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Everything's okay.” I almost say
I love you
but stop myself. Last time I slipped, she told me to save my love for the Lord.

She pulls her hand away, and for a second it's like she doesn't recognize me, her eyes small with suspicion. Where has she traveled to in her vision that I don't exist anymore?

“It's me,” I say. “Mercy.”

At the sound of my name, she relaxes a little. “I don't understand it,” she says in a faraway voice, pushing herself to a seated position. “Been the same for weeks now, but I don't understand.”

“What, Maw Maw?”

“Girls spread out on the floor, not dead but moving, dancing, maybe . . .”

“What girls?”

A pause, then: “Don't worry over it now,” she says, her voice returned to its usual forcefulness. “He'll give me the knowledge when it suits Him. Help me up.” I nod and scramble to a squat. With one hand she grips my arm and, with the other, scoops up the Bible from where it has landed on the floor. I brace myself and together we stand. She hobbles beside me until we reach the kitchen, where I pull out a chair for her and put the kettle on. Slumped into the seat, she rests one hand in her lap, the other on the Bible. Her fingers are elegant, like she ought to play piano. From the fridge, I take out the carton of eggs and a foil-wrapped hunk of corn bread. I light two burners, one for the skillet, one for the kettle, then set out two mugs for tea. “Can I fry you some eggs? Get up your strength?” I ask.

Staring out the window, she shakes her head. “Ain't hungry, but thanks all the same.”

When the kettle shrills, I pour the water, then hand her a steaming mug. “Here,” I say. She takes it with a nod of thanks.

I worry for her. Skinny as a rake and snow-headed, she looks a sight older than her sixty-seven years. Being privy to so much truth has aged her. Mothers used to bring their engaged daughters to her so she could caress their necks, skim their collarbones with her fingers to pause over beating hearts in order to discern whether the love was true, or the man worthy. Of course the girls had gone through father-guided courtship, the boys already put through their paces and groomed for guardianship, but that didn't stop these mamas wanting to be
absolutely certain
before marrying their girls off. Those visits stopped after several girls left in tears, stomping across the gallery, shouting that it was all superstitious nonsense, their marriages would sure as sugar last, and that Ray or Tommy or Bobby would love them much as they loved football and fishing and oyster po'boys.

Maw Maw doesn't mind upsetting people when it comes to delivering truth. She says Jesus was crowned with thorns for
His
troubles. Some people have a hard time accepting that the world keeps secrets from them, or that God shares those secrets with a chosen few. But accepting the world's mysteries is the root of faith, Maw Maw says. Most people just don't know when to listen or to whom.

I crack an egg into the skillet and watch as the white turns opaque around the bright yellow yolk. When it's done frying, I slide it onto a piece of toast and poke the yolk with the tines of a fork. Seated at the table, I watch it seep slowly over the bread, waiting for it to soak in; I like it soggy.

“Church tonight,” she says, fingering the tag of the tea bag. Her hands shake with a gentle tremor.

“I remember.”

“The year is over and done now, so no more of your moping. Don't forget, that game was part of His plan for you, Mercy girl. He don't make mistakes.”

“Yes ma'am.” I stab at my egg.

“Fruitless are our earthly desires.”

“Yes ma'am,” I say again.

The eggs are rubbery on my tongue. Around town, people ask me what went wrong in the state semifinal game, as if just because my body is my own, I understand what makes it fail. Even during the season, when we were winning, they asked me questions I couldn't answer,
How do you do it?
And
What does it feel like to play the way you do?
God gave me the gift of a sure shot and quick feet, a body too tall for a girl, bossy shoulders. Coach says that more than my physical gifts, my hunger to win makes me great. I want to win so bad, the wanting fills me until there's not a lick of room for anything else.

“Kids'll be wild tonight,” Maw Maw says. “Good time to visit with the Lord. Ready yourself by seven o'clock.”

“Yes ma'am.”

Maw Maw believes that purity of spirit is all a person needs to be full up, that you can find peace only when you stop wanting, because desire is the trick the devil plays on human hearts. I long to look at the world as Maw Maw does, with a cool eye toward heaven; there's simplicity in stripping your heart like that. But I'm weak for the things I can touch—a basketball, a trophy, my best friend Annie's hand in mine.

Maw Maw rises and walks to the pantry, fumbling among the boxes of tea and dehydrated potatoes and onion straws until she finds what she's looking for—her tobacco. She chews after the visions to calm her nerves. I watch as she tucks a tiny wad of chaw in her cheek before going to the sink to wash her hands. She thinks I haven't noticed, and maybe I wouldn't have but for the yellow streaks of spit in the bathroom sink.

From behind, Maw Maw might be mistaken for frail; her spine curves slightly, her head tilts forward like the loop of a letter
P
tilted off its leg. But if you see her face, you know she's not to be crossed. That toughness is how she's survived so much—the stillborn baby; Paw Paw's death; my mother, Charmaine, leaving us; and raising a child long after she ought. It's what makes her strong in faith, too.

“I better get going,” I say, chair scraping the linoleum as I stand.

She dries her hands on a dishrag. “Mind yourself today, stay clear of the beach road. Don't let trouble find you, Tee Mercy.”