Sylv shook his head, took a second to rub the back of his neck like the argument with Dempsey worked something hard into his body. “That’s not a promise you can keep. Is it?” He was right. Though Dempsey wanted me safe, maybe thought he could manage it, being here in New Orleans, being the people we were in New Orleans left no guarantees. Sylv seemed to know just then that Dempsey could make no promises. We all did. “Didn’t think so.”
I broke in. “Sylv, don’t you go stepping on toes.” It was a sad try at getting my brother and my Dempsey to calm. But Sylv had the notion in his head that he was right. He was my mama’s son. He was my brother. He wouldn’t back away until he had Dempsey admitting the truth.
“He can’t even keep that no good daddy from beating on him. You think he’ll be able to keep you out of that man’s way?”
“I would.” Dempsey’s try was weak, his voice small but his eyes were bright again, lit with a fire that I thought might shoot out his fingertips.
“You’d want to.” Sylv stepped back, finally looking away from Dempsey to glance around the alley, watching, holding his breath like something lurked just beyond the spot where the alley and street met. “Don’t mean you could.”
“I can protect her,” Dempsey tried again, head jerking toward the sound of feet moving on brick behind us.
“That’s not your job.” Mama’s face was drawn, a little sad as she walked toward us, hands moving around in the apron she wore as she dried them.
“Mrs. Lanoix.”
“This thing, Dempsey,” she interrupted, “it’s just gone on too long. Sookie is becoming a woman. Time for her to be thinking about starting a family of her own with a man of her own.”
My face flamed and something low and heavy started to build in my gut. Mama had never talked to me much about marrying anyone, but the past few months she’d mentioned me fixing myself up a little. She even had Bastie sew two new dresses for me, and Mama gave me a pair of her small heeled shoes with the gold buckles. I’d reckoned she was gearing up to push me at some business, maybe have me work in some rich folks’ home. But this? No. That was something she’d kept quiet about.
“There’s plenty of men in the city that like the look of her.” She didn’t even glance at me when she said that, as though I wasn’t even there, like I didn't matter. “Men with jobs and homes. Men that will take care of her.”
“I… I can…”
“You can what?” Mama stepped closer, arms folded over her chest as she glared at Dempsey. “You gonna marry my little girl? You and Sookie gonna live up in the treehouse where the owls shit and sleep?”
“Mama!” She still didn’t bother to look at me, keeping all her attention on Dempsey, striking hard while his face paled and his eyes went narrow. She kept at him, speaking sense that only sounded as such to herself. “I’m sorry, cher, but that’s a fairytale and we don’t live in the make believe.” She paused for a half-second and the expression on her face went flat; a long line pulled on her mouth, but she set her jaw as though what she said would have to be taken for the truth. “It’s time you keep away from her. For both of your own good.”
“No.” Dempsey’s breath came out in a whoosh of sound and air. I’d never seen him look so heavy with fear. But the gray in his eyes got bigger and he took to running his hand along the back of his neck as though he had to hold himself back to keep from screaming. “No. You can’t do that.” Mama seemed down with him, had tugged on my arm and pulled me back toward the street and away from Dempsey, but he kept on us, following along. When he spoke, his voice went high and shrieking. “You can’t put me out. You can’t—”
“Cher, how can I put you out?” Mama said, dropping my arm to face Dempsey. “You don’t live with us. You need to go back to your own people. Be with your own people.”
“You can’t… Sookie...” He stopped, reaching toward me. He’d almost touched my hand before Mama slapped his fingers away and stood between us like a stone. Dempsey stepped back and kept his gaze down, as though he didn’t dare look at her. Like he couldn’t stand to see her face when he begged. His voice came out all ragged. “Sookie… she’s my people. You… you all are.”
“Dempsey, no…” I said, covering my mouth. He broke my heart just then. His life and ours had gotten tangled up together when we were kids. Bastie had cleaned his busted face and Mama had fed him when his own people wouldn’t. Now she was telling him he wasn’t wanted anymore and the look on his face, the streak of hurt and sorrow breaking his stubborn frown until tears made his eyes look like glass was more than I could stand to watch.
Mama pushed me out of the alley so I couldn’t see what she did to Dempsey, so I couldn’t tell how she’d get him to leave. But I heard what he said clear as day and each sound he made broke my heart a little more.
“She’s all I have, Mrs. Lanoix. Sookie’s all I have in the world.”
Me and Dempsey came from different worlds. We moved together like otters, floating side by side, letting the world around come over us, like a wave, rushing, passing and the whole time we held on to each other. But that was the thing children did. That’s what we’d done when were kids and didn’t know about things like family and anger and the differences that kept people apart. We didn’t know about money and poverty and struggling because all the things we’d needed for most of our lives had been given to us. Struggle had been only as important as what game we would play in the backyard of my Bastie’s home. That had been all we fretted over. It had been just as important, just as real as it should have been, to little kids.
But now we weren’t kids. We were moving toward something that I couldn’t name and in the middle of all that, there were those curious, searching eyes and the people dead set against anything that would keep Dempsey and I together. They hated us. They hated who we were and who we wanted to be, even if they didn’t understand why. It was the way of things, for good or bad and who were we to change the way the world had always turned?
I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it.
Mrs. Matthews had not died, not yet. Mama likened her to an old rooster strutting around, teasing death because she was too ornery, too stubborn to give the reaper even a hint that she was ready to leave this place. I wanted to be like her one day, when my hair was white and thin and my eyes had gone all snowy blue.
There was a whopper of a storm brewing, the sick breath of it raspy in the wind as folk all around the city made their plans. Some would stay, wait it out, not fearing what would come because something always did, so why run. Some had already left, more vexed by the calmness in the air and the low silence that had grown throughout the city overnight, it seemed. The calm before the storm.
For her part, Mama thought it best to keep me hidden in Tremé, where neither Joe Andres nor Dempsey could find me. I knew her worry: It was the same as mine but that didn’t mean I was altogether happy that it was Mrs. Matthew’s place, too small already for her and Bobby, that Mama locked me up inside. Everywhere I went, or thought of going, Bobby went too. There was no easing away from my little chaperone, and I had to listen to her ask a million damn questions about my brother and what sort of girls I thought he’d go for.