The room steamed with hot silences. The purple glow of the tropical aquarium, the whisper of currents, gurgling bubbles, and fish rippling in bright streaks. Deathrow bobbed over to the aquarium, his footfalls echoing against the hard wooden floors. Tried to scare the fish with ugly faces. Fish unscathed, he rapped on the glass with his knuckles, hard.
So you from South Lincoln? Hatch said.
Yeah. Red Hook.
Red Hook?
Yeah.
Really?
Straight up.
You know T-Bone? Abu asked, eye cocked to catch deceit.
Hell yeah. Crippled motherfucka. Ridin that wheelchair like a Beamer. But he straight.
Man, he from Red Hook, Abu said to Hatch.
What?
He from Red Hook.
Man.
A moment of silence. A feeling silence.
So, Hatch said. So, well, what’s it like?
Deathrow grinned his grin. When a man in the house, he said, all the bullshit stops. He slapped Hatch on the back.
Damn.
Damn.
You ever heard of the Blue Demons?
You mean that basketball team?
Yeah.
I seen them play a few times.
My Uncle John ref for them.
The same Uncle John who was sposed to drive the truck tonight?
Hatch nodded.
Deathrow thought about it. You know, I think I know yo uncle. A short guy, right?
Hatch nodded.
Look something like you?
Yeah.
Damn. Small world.
Sis, he from Red Hook.
He from Red Hook.
I know.
Sis, you know you don’t owe me nothing for helpin you move.
That’s right, baby. Deathrow kissed her.
Buy us some brew, Abu said.
Nigga, you know you can’t hold yo liquor.
Yo, money. What you drink?
Be pissin all night.
Watch yo mouth in my house.
I don’t drink no beer, Deathrow said.
What?
Man, how can yall drink that shit? Taste like piss.
Stop talkin low-life.
That’s because beer and piss got the same ingredient.
What?
Pee.
So it went. Hatch, Abu, and Deathrow: their forms and talk awakened memories. Shades of blue pasts. Hatch, Abu, and Jesus as rusty-butt boys, the three sitting before her monkeylike while she greased their naps.
She gave them money for liquor.
Deathrow kissed her before he stepped out the door with the other two.
Be back soon.
You better.
Awaiting their return, she kept her hands busy, arranging, rearranging, unpacking boxes, dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning.
She felt very small and tight inside. Her mind wandered. Imagined the worst. She sat and tried to settle. Time flowed.
Hours later, the three of them came back, drunk and stinking, speech thick. A night with devil in the wind, beating, pounding evil against the windows, and a handful of stars.
What took yall so long?
We were talkin.
What?
Jus talkin.
Yeah. They were tellin me all about Jesus.
Jesus?
Yeah.
And Uncle John.
A measure of silence — Porsha expected Deathrow to lean in for a kiss; he didn’t — then torrential tears. Hatch first. Abu followed. So too Deathrow. Tears distorted their faces. Sobs came wet and deep. The three babbled words from some unknown dictionary. Then their heads fell back like heavy stones, their bodies sinking into the floor, in the hollow created by a ring of boxes.
DEATHROW HAD YET to turn the final corner of maturity. Porsha moved in the world with complete faith that he would in the fullness of time. She devised ways to speed up his growth. Last Christmas, she had bought him a black trunk full of new clothes, a Bible at the bottom, leatherbound and smelling like new shoes.
That’s your passport to heaven, she said. She braced herself for some sarcastic reply.
He ran his hand over the worked leather. Thanks, he said.
Perhaps her very look had drawn out of him the answer she wanted. She went further. It is the traveler’s map, the pilgrim’s staff, the pilot’s compass, and the soldier’s sword.
I don’t know bout all that. He grinned. But it sho is some nice leather. I never knew you were this religious.
I am, but I ain’t no fanatic. What about you?
I believe.
Since then, she had chanced on him reading the Bible once or twice. And he had promised to attend the Great Awakening with her on Sunday to fellowship with the New Cotton Rivers, the fourteen-year-old evangelist who steered the souls of his congregation, the New Riverside Multimedia Church. The Great Awakening would be the evangelist’s first live appearance in four years. The Full Gospel Assembly, seven hundred and seventy-seven golden-throated singers, would accompany him.
Okay. I’ll let some fat fried chicken-eatin preacher take my money.
Every preacher ain’t like that. This one’s good. Builds houses for the homeless.
Need money to build houses. Most church folk ain’t got nothin but chitlins in they purses.
Well, he got money.
What’s his name?
The New Cotton Rivers.
That nigga on TV?
Yes.
Who be wearin them gym shoes and that joggin suit?
How else can you keep up with the Lord?
Right. He way younger than me.
Age got nothing to do with knowing Christ.
And he—
Will you go?
I don’t know.
It would mean a lot to me. She put her cool hand to his hot chest.
Okay. If you insist. Maybe he’ll do some—
She didn’t waste a minute. She called and reserved two tickets for the Sunday appearance.
Nothing like a good show, he said. I wanna see that preacher turn silver to gold and cotton to silk.
His promise, his tentative steps toward Christ, were good signs. No man had ever gone that far for her. But she wanted him to go further, touching distance, and accept God in his life, accept the voice resounding in her skull. These are candied kisses from God. God is the author of healing. I pray for sweet mending. I’ll put no man before my God.
One day he might even be elected to the Tubes of Testimony, Rivers’s missionaries, and help spread the gospel, roll the biblical light off of his hands and set the day ablaze. May the sun fly high. Spread wide the peacock-tailed fan of truth and light. This possibility eased her heart.
The train eased into Union Station. She rose from her seat, renewed. The doors parted. Passengers waiting on the platform divided, a clear open path between two rows of rushing bodies. She calmly waded through. She told herself, This will be a good day.
13
HER STEPS SEEMED SLOWER THAN USUAL. She rationed her breath as she climbed the long avenue of stairs up from the basement to the kitchen, laundry basket draped across her outstretched arms, a fireman carrying a child from a blazing building. She rested the heavy laundry basket against the wood railing. Waited for her second wind. It never came.
She continued up the stairs. The floor beneath her fell away. She dropped the laundry basket to the linoleum with a noisy splash. Snatched her a chair from the table and put herself in it. Shut her eyes and took a deep-chested breath. Her breathing was noisy. Wind and wheeze. She tried to quiet it. Crisp pain coursed through her body. She opened her eyes. The room was twisted, its objects warped, moving into one another, planes and lines falling away into white space.