The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (26 page)

Illa checks her watch. It's almost seven o'clock, time for walkthroughs. She cuts across the student lot toward the gym, wondering where Lucille is and if she's okay. The LeBlanc baby is making people nuts. Illa passes through the gym doors, which are covered in posters promoting that night's building dedication: J
OIN US TO HONOR LIVING LEGEND
J
ODI
M
ARTIN
!

Inside, the girls are gathered in a circle by the bleachers, balls on their hips. Everyone but Annie, whose presence Illa always registers instinctively, the cheetah to her gazelle. The girls look distressed. Corinne Wolcott is crying, Brittny rubbing her back.

“So who's going to start, then?” Corinne sobs.

“Didn't you hear Coach?” Chole answers. “She said don't worry about it, so I say we don't worry about it.”

“Don't worry about it? Don't worry about it?” Corinne parrots hysterically. “Easy for her to say, no one's arresting
her
!”

“She's not under arrest, C,” Mercy says. “They're just asking questions.”

“I thought they were questioning Lucille,” Brittny says. “I thought Lucille did it.”

“Don't you read the paper?” Chole says. “They released her yesterday. Nothing to arrest her for. She had some kind of alibi for the night they think the baby was dumped.”

“Someone shot her dog this morning,” Illa says. “In front of Mr. Good Deals.”

“God in heaven,” Corinne gasps, her tears starting afresh.

Brittny looks like she's on the verge of crying, too. “That poor animal. What is
wrong
with people?”

“Poor dog? Poor Lucille. Poor Annie!” Chole tugs at the hem of her penny. “Shit is getting out of hand.”

“Couldn't the police wait a few days to talk to Annie?” Keisha asks. “It's opening night!”

“This is all that cholo Sanchez's fault, man,” Brandye says. “Election's next week, he just trying to shake things up because he losing.”

“Who cares about the election?
We
can't win without Annie,” Jasmine says, bouncing the ball hard with both hands. “For real.”

“This is bigger than basketball,” Mercy says quietly. “Bigger than all of us.”

Illa wants to know more, but just then the buzzer goes, and Coach Thibodeaux slams out of the office. “Think y'all are going to get the
W
sitting on your rear ends?” she yells. “Let's go!”

On the court, the girls play nervous, rattled by the morning's news. They flub bank shots, throw passes into the arms of defenders, forget in-bound plays. In a team as tight as theirs, their moves synced carefully as clocks through hours of practice, a player doing her hair differently on game day is enough to throw them off. Annie's absence is like sand in the gears.

Afterward, Coach Thibodeaux tries to rally them in the huddle: “I'll start by saying we're literally lucky to be here today, in this gym right now. They were ready to call off school because of the stink, but we reminded him about UIL rules. Y'all need at least half a day in the classroom in order to play tonight. So let's not take anything for granted; let's remember everything we've overcome, the large and small, to get
right here
today.” She stomps her foot for emphasis. “Annie
will
be back, you heard Coach. You're prepared for this. Your bodies are ready, they know what to do. You know what we say: losing is a failure of the mind. So you take the rest of the day today and get your minds right.” She scans the huddle to drive home the point that she isn't being rhetorical. “Scouts'll be here tonight. You owe it to Mercy to bring your head. This is her chance, so let's get Mercy some papers to sign. After all she's done for us the past three seasons, we owe it to her. Don't we?”

“Yes ma'am,” the girls say.

“Don't we?”

“Yes ma'am!”

“Bring it in.”

In the locker room, Illa learns that Detective LaCroix showed up outside the gym that morning and asked Annie if she wouldn't mind answering a few questions related to the Baby Doe case. Annie declined to call Beau or talk to Coach, just got in the car with LaCroix and sped off. When the girls got inside and told Coach what had happened, she said nobody, not the police, not the president of the United States, was going to keep her starting forward out of the lineup on opening night. Before hustling out the door, she threatened to kick their asses off the team if news of Annie's trouble traveled farther than the locker room.

Sure enough, Annie is back at school in time for first period, AP Government, the interview postponed until Monday.

THE CHAOS OF
opening night: a gym so packed it vibrates, the warm-up music loud enough for Illa to feel the bass rattling her spleen. People who can't find a seat in the bleachers line up five deep at the corners of the court, which the officials allow because it is opening night at Port Sabine and they don't dare cross Jodi Martin by sending any of the fans home. Students have made glittery banners on butcher paper, which they wave overhead: L
ADY
R
AYS
S
HOW
N
O
M
ERCY
and T
HE
R
OAD TO
S
TATE
G
OES
T
HROUGH
P
ORT
S
ABINE
. An older woman wearing a navy Port Sabine High School sweatshirt like the one they found behind the Market Basket holds up a neon-green poster board that says G
OD
B
LESS
T
HAT
B
ABY AND
O
UR
G
IRLS
in lopsided black bubble letters.

The girls come tearing out of the locker room in a blur of navy and yellow, their snap-down warm-up pants flapping around their legs. A roar goes up from the crowd. Everyone wants to be close to the girls. Because she's captain, Mercy's out front. As the girls fly past the bench, Coach Martin slaps their hands and shoulders. Watching Mercy warm up, Illa sees how she owns each step but without arrogance, inviting you to be proud of her.

Illa spots Lennox looking in her direction from the senior section and her belly goes warm. Is he looking at her or past her, to Annie? She pencils in the lineup with a shaking hand and gives it to the scorekeeper, then turns her attention to Mercy, who has set her feet to take a three-point shot. When she releases the ball, she lets out a half-strangled, bestial cry, her shooting arm flopping down awkwardly. Instead of arcing into the air and landing with a swish, the ball rockets into the crowd of bystanders gathered along the gym wall, a full forty-five degrees southeast of the bucket. Mercy hesitates before turning to the people hit by her errant ball and clapping her hands twice to indicate she wants the ball back, as if she meant to pass it to them all along. Illa knows the leather balls can get slippery if sweat gets on them, so she jogs onto the court with a washcloth to wipe down Mercy's ball.

“Sucks when that happens,” Illa says as she works the cloth over the ball.

Mercy nods. “Thanks, Illa.”

The next song comes on, and the girls continue their warm-up routine. Mercy takes another shot; it looks solid but barely reaches the rim, glancing off the side. She chases her own rebound and positions herself at her favorite spot on the three-point line, just north of the key. Backspinning the ball to herself, she receives it between her hands, then launches another massive air ball.

Illa wonders if she's pulled a muscle. Mercy, embarrassed, looks to Coach Martin, who's facedown in her playbook, oblivious. By now, the other girls have stopped their warm-ups, and Annie races over to put an arm around Mercy's shoulders. With that gesture, Illa can see the trouble more clearly: Mercy's upper body is jerking spasmodically, Annie's body both absorbing and deflecting the movement, revealing the freak contractions of Mercy's arm. The game clock reads two minutes and twenty seconds to tip-off.

“Coach,” Illa says, pointing to Mercy.

It takes Coach a few seconds to register what's happening, but when she does, she runs onto the court and tries to shield her player. There's an operatic twist to Mercy's lips as her head thrusts back. Once more, that pained cry issues from a jaw wrenched open too wide. The crowd goes silent. After an agonizing minute, when Coach and Annie seem to be deciding if they should touch Mercy, they steer her into the locker room, and Annie goes to the officials with a message:
Give us five minutes.
Then she grabs a bottle of Gatorade and follows in the direction of Mercy and Coach.

In a situation like this, you expect to see concerned parents bolt onto the court, but Evelia has never come to a game, not even the state tournament. It saddens Illa that Mercy is in there with Annie and Coach. Chole stares at the locker room door, then throws up a shot, trying to keep her rhythm going. Corinne and Brandye do the same, while the others head to the bench to stretch and catch their breath. Fifteen minutes pass; the crowd grows restless. The warm-up CD has ended, but someone starts it over from the beginning so that “Sweet Home Alabama” blares out a second time. It elicits no clapping or singing from the stands this time, its rollicking chorus in stark contrast to the grim atmosphere of the gym.

When the locker room door opens and Coach Martin steps out, people cheer, but the noise dies quickly when they realize she's alone. Jodi claps several times, raising hands overhead to urge people to stand up, trying to salvage the home court advantage. Reluctantly, people get to their feet, but their enthusiasm has soured. They are moviegoers at a premiere where the headliner has failed to show. They will not be satisfied unless Mercy Louis takes the court.

“Let's play ball,” Coach says, nodding at the refs. “Keisha, you're in for Louis. Wood, you'll play the three spot tonight.”

Brittny looks terrified, but she nods, then licks her palms and swipes them across the bottoms of her shoes.

“Huddle up,” Coach says.

Illa ventures quietly, “What about Mercy? Is she going to be okay?”

“I look like a fortune-teller to you, Stark?” Coach snaps.

“No ma'am.”

She pauses, sniffs. “We got a game to win. Hands in!” The girls comply, layering their hands into the huddle. “Mental toughness on three. One, two, three . . .”

“MENTAL TOUGHNESS!”

After tip-off, Coach Martin leans in to whisper to Coach Thibodeaux, then slips off the end of the bench and back into the locker room. A couple of minutes into the game, the Lady Rays already down, Illa sees Coach emerge, her broad back turned to the court as she makes her way toward the gym door, slowly, struggling to move. It's then that Illa notices a pair of long legs dangling over Coach's right arm, black hair cascading off her left. It's Mercy being carried away like a rag doll.

Remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven.

—
ARTHUR MILLER,
THE CRUCIBLE

S
TOP THAT,” COACH
says in the locker room, where my right hand slaps against my knee, palm up, the
thwack
of skin hitting skin a clean sound in the silence.
Stop that, stop that,
I tell my hand, but it doesn't listen. Coach paces the room, keeping her distance. As she moves, her nylon windpants tell me
shush shush shush.
After a minute, she grabs my hand and presses it firmly to my leg, so that I feel my knuckles dig into the muscle of my thigh, shifting it on the bone. “
Stop,
” she says.

I'm desperate to do what she asks of me, but when she removes her hand, mine rockets upward again.
I'm trying, I swear,
I want to explain, but I'm an actor in a badly dubbed film; someone has taped over my words with funny sounds that aren't mine.
Huh huh huh,
come the noises from my mouth.
Help me, please God, help me, Coach, anyone, help!

“Come on, don't do this to me,” she says.

It's not me doing it,
I want to say.
This is not my body, get me out!
Annie comes in and Coach steps toward the door, then back to me, an awkward waltz.

“I brought some Gatorade,” Annie says.

“You see what you can do with her,” Coach says.

Annie sits down behind me on the bench, threads her arms under mine, and clasps her hands at my stomach. She puts a leg on either side of my hips, her pelvis curved into me like we are stacked dishes.

“A
hug
?” Coach bellows. “Get up, Putnam.” I feel Annie's shoulder move away from mine; she's being peeled from me. “Give her space, she needs
space
.” There's a seed of panic in Coach's voice.

But Annie lays her head against me and squeezes tighter. I'm so relieved by her familiar warmth.
Flap flap flap
goes my hand.
Flap flap flap.

“We got to get her to a doctor,” Coach says. “I'll tell Thibodeaux.”

I try to pray, but my words are scrambled, the familiar phrases undone. I hear the door sigh shut behind Coach as she leaves. In the hallway, Beau's loud voice sounds.

“Of course he's come to check on you,” Annie says, grunting a laugh. “If you were his daughter, you'd win him an election.”

“Travis,” I say. “Get Travis.” It takes such effort to speak; I'm buried beneath a dune, each word fighting its way to air.

“No,” Annie says. “You broke up, remember? I'm here, Mers, I'm here.” She breathes into my back. Then, quietly: “
What is happening to you
?”

When Coach returns, she smuggles us out the gym's back entrance; I'm carried like a child, my legs crooked over her forearm, my right arm windmilling at the elbow, churning the night air into nothing. She places me in the passenger seat of her Explorer gently, like I'm a valuable vase or perhaps a stick of dynamite. Annie climbs in the backseat as the car shudders to life. Through the night we drive. I feel as if I'm in a car in one of those old black-and-white movies, wooden sets depicting the countryside flying past the window as we stay still.
This is not my body, I'm not here, I'm not moving.
Tiny me in the cave of this disobedient body, shouting up toward daylight. Before I took that shot, I felt a tickle, a premonition of the coming spasm. A split second when my body told me
hang on
because there was no stopping what was coming.

As we drive, I will my flapping hand to stay in my lap, but it rises up and up and up, spring-loaded.
This is not my body,
I want to say again, but I realize: I feel the smooth leather of the seat, the swing of the forearm on its invisible up-down track, I recognize the wrist. This is my body, but I am no longer in charge of it. A sudden press of panic. I clench and unclench my left hand, my good hand, watch the blue veins ripple in my wrist. As we pull into the circle drive in front of the ER, Coach tells Annie to stay with me, that she's going to get Evelia who didn't pick up the phone when she called earlier.
She's asleep, don't wake her for this,
I want to say.
Huh huh huh
is what comes out instead.

Annie guides me out of the passenger seat, pulls my good arm around her neck. Together, we hobble through the sliding doors. Inside, we're given a wheelchair and I'm told to sit in it. A round, dark-haired man hovers over me as we roll down a white hallway. He tells me his name is Dr. Elgin and that I'm not to worry about a thing, they'll take care of me.

“You're Mercy Louis, aren't you?” he says, smiling. “I recognize you from the papers. Want to tell me what's wrong, Mercy?” My eyes must tell stories I can't, because Dr. Elgin says, “Mercy, can you answer me? Just say yes or no.”

Oh, Dr. Elgin, I want to, I want to answer yes or no. Please don't get the wrong idea about me, I'm a good girl, and you've requested something of me in a slow, kindly way that makes me think you have young children at home. I wonder what their names are, what your wife looks like. I bet you're a good father. If I answer you, will you take me home to meet your family? Will you speak gently to me, ask me easy questions I can answer? I will be your most obedient daughter.

All I can do is shake my head no. Touching my shoulder, he says again that they will take care of me. Gratitude spreads like a hot drink warming my insides. Soon I'm in a room with Dr. Elgin and two nurses in brightly colored scrubs. He asks if I've taken any pills, if I've been feeling sick lately, if I have a headache, if I think I've eaten something bad, if I have a history of seizures or spells. His breath smells like tomato soup. I shake my head no to all questions.

“We were warming up for the game like usual,” Annie offers. “And Mercy started to have some kind of attack.”

I want to tell him my version, but I'm not sure what it is. The moments following that shot are a blank; one minute I felt the bass line of the warm-up music rivering through me alongside the adrenaline, and the next, I was back in the locker room with Coach, my hand a hooked fish flopping in the bottom of a boat.

“What kind of attack?” Dr. Elgin asks.

“Her arm started flapping like it's doing now, and there was something freaky with her jaw. And the weird noises . . .”

“Did she fall down and hit her head? Did she have something that looked like a seizure?” he probes. “Where her body started to jerk around and her eyes rolled up?”

“No, nothing like that. Just a bunch of air balls and then the hand and stuff.”

“And she hasn't been sick lately? Feverish? No vomiting?”

“Not that I know of.”

He turns to me and I shake my head, confirming what Annie has said.

“Annie, you'll come with me. Mercy, rest here with Edie”—Dr. Elgin indicates the nurse in purple scrubs—“while we wait for your grandmother. Take some deep breaths and try to relax, and we'll talk more about what's happening once the others get here, okay?”

“But I need to stay with her,” Annie says. “She needs me . . .”

“We're not sure exactly what Mercy needs right now,” Dr. Elgin says sternly. “But we know that she needs to rest. Come with me, please.”

“But Doctor, you don't understand, we're never apart, she really,
really
needs me to stay with her.” She pauses, a desperate look on her face. “Don't you, Mers?”

I can't bring myself to nod. He motions her out the door; she follows him, sighing petulantly before disappearing into the hallway. I barely have time to exhale before they are both back in the room, close on the heels of Maw Maw and Coach.

“See?” Coach says, pointing at me for Maw Maw's benefit. “See her arm?” I can't say I've ever seen Jodi Martin scared, but she looks it now, tugging at her ear, biting her lip.

“Hmm,” Maw Maw replies, eyeing me.

“What's the matter with her?” Coach asks Dr. Elgin.

Huh huh huh,
I say as if on cue.

“We're going to do a couple tests on Mercy to try and figure that out,” Dr. Elgin says. “Whenever we have a patient who has a spell like this, we want to make sure that the brain looks healthy and that there hasn't been any damage to it. As soon as we can get Mercy an appointment with a neurologist, we'll do an EEG and an MRI to try and see whether it's a neurologic problem that's causing the movements. That will teach us what to do to help. Right now we're going to do a urine test to check for infection or the presence of any substances that might have triggered the symptoms.”

“Are you suggesting drug use?” Coach asks defensively.

“We just want to cover all of our bases. Sometimes we can only determine what it is by figuring out what it isn't.”

“I can assure you, this girl's kept her body clean as a whistle, we make sure of that.”

I remember the beer fizzing down my throat, the stickiness of my thighs that night in the forest.
I'm
not
clean, I'm filthy.

“We . . . ?” he asks.

“The coaches, the team . . .” Coach responds. “I run a tight ship.”

He pauses. “All the same, it's a test we'll perform.” He turns to me. “Have you had any injuries to your head lately? Anything that might have led to a concussion or other form of brain trauma?” I shake my head no. “And have you ever had a seizure or spell of any kind before?” Again I shake my head before remembering how I spoke in tongues at church last summer, falling to the floor in rapture. I'm not sure that counts, and besides, I haven't been filled with the spirit since that day. “What about family?” the doctor asks. “Anyone in your family have a history of seizures?” I start to shake my head but realize I don't know the answer. Perhaps Witness is an epileptic, Charmaine a chronic fainter. I remember my phone call yesterday, the message I left on Charmaine's machine.
No, I don't know my family history, Doctor. I've never even heard my mother's voice.
I look to Maw Maw for help.

“No sir,” Maw Maw says firmly. “I'm healthy as a horse; it's just me and the girl at home.”

“Are you the biological mother?” he presses.

“Grandmother.” She sniffs.

“What about the parents, then?”

“What they got, no medicine can cure,” she says, but he's not satisfied.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning their bodies are healthy but their souls are sick, sir.”

“Hmm,” he says, writing something on his clipboard. “Was Mercy premature at birth?”

“Praise the Lord, no,” Maw Maw says.

Dr. Elgin instructs me to leave a urine sample in the small bathroom off the hallway. I don't want to; Travis and I were only together twice; still, I'm scared of what the test will reveal. I go to the restroom and leave the sample anyway. To refuse would raise suspicion.

Once I'm back in the room, Dr. Elgin says, “Just as soon as those results come back, barring anything unusual, we'll send Mercy home to get some rest . . .”

“I don't think we should leave till we figure this thing out,” Coach says.

The doctor clasps his hands in front of him, the clipboard flat against his belly. “I wish it were that simple, but it's going to take some time . . .”

“When can she do the tests? Look at the girl, she needs help right
now.
” She paces to the window in agitation. “We've got a game on Tuesday, and this girl is everything to that team.”

Dr. Elgin purses his lips into a tight smile that produces a stress dimple on his lower left cheek.

“She seems a little better since warm-ups,” Annie offers.

Maw Maw turns to her as if registering her presence for the first time. “What's she doing in here?” Maw Maw asks the doctor, pointing at Annie.

Flummoxed by this turn, he says, “I thought she was a friend of the patient?”

“Friend, my foot,” Maw Maw spits. She turns to Annie. “You get out. Mercy don't need your kind of influence right now. I know all about the summer, you getting Mercy drunk on the night you made your promise to your daddy and the town. Shameful!”

“Now, ladies . . .” Dr. Elgin says, but he might as well be furniture for the heed they pay him.

“You're wrong, Evelia,” Annie says. “She's never drunk a drop around me. Mercy, come on, tell her. Come
on.
” I'm frozen, though, my words retreating further down my throat.

“You're a devilish girl,” Maw Maw says, jabbing a finger at Annie. “I won't have you corrupting her.”

“What, because Mercy's so perfect?” Annie's face is bright red. “You think you know everything about her.”
Don't, Annie, please.
I make my eyes wide, pleading, but she's not looking at me.

“Get out,” Maw Maw says.

I feel a sudden sharp pain explode inside my legs. I slide from the bed straight to my knees before listing left. My cheek meets the cold ground, where I roll onto my back. From here, I can see the stars flickering dimly out the room's single window. Now I'm glad to be a tiny version of me stowed at the bottom of this cavernous body, far away from these others. I want to stay here forever, drinking starshine.