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  Jo sat on her mother’s good leg and gently brought the foot up out of the hole. Alice’s weight shifted again. Jo lay the mangled foot on the step and grabbed her mother’s good leg. Now she was holding back her mother’s full weight in her right hand. She straddled her mother and held her in place, first with her good right and then with her bad left. Then she let her mother slide headfirst, face to floor, just a bit at a time, broken leg sliding along behind her, down, step by step, easy does it, step by step. Her mother’s head, then the leg, bumped each step with a sickening thump.

  When Alice’s head reached the bottom, Jo snatched the flashlight and ran back into the living room, barely avoiding tripping over Son, who lay just around the corner. She waved the light around, looking for something to make a tourniquet from. The living room was filled with strange shapes: her brother’s body, the coat hanger sticking straight up from his chest, the collapsed chimney, overturned furniture. Was she in one of her nightmares, and her brother, zombie-like, would soon rise from the dead to take his revenge?

  She began to tremble, her knees in danger of buckling.

  In a far corner of the living room she spotted another piece of white. An apron, one of Essie’s, the kind she wore for special occasions, when company came for dinner. Jo snatched it up, wrung out the water, and ran back in to her mother, still lying facedown. She wrapped the tourniquet around her leg, above the break. Then she went to the hall closet, which, unlike her own closet upstairs, was still there, and got out her mother’s good wool coat. Clean and dry. She unbuttoned it and slid it under Alice’s leg, trying not to look. Then she gently pulled the coat together and standing over her mother, she rolled her over, leg last. She picked up the leg in the coat and turned it too. She shined the flashlight on her mother’s face. It was alabaster, her lips white, her eyes rolled back in her head. Jo’s first thought was that her mother was dead too, that she had already bled to death, but when Jo picked up Alice’s hand and put her forefinger to the wrist she could feel the thrum, thrum of her mother’s pulse, a sound she knew somewhere deep in her own body, the sound she’d heard long before time began for her. She held Alice’s freezing palm to her face to warm it, then ran back to the closet and got out her father’s worsted woolen overcoat and put it over her mother, tucking her in.

  There was a long moment. Then Alice began to mumble. Jo knelt beside her mother and tried to hear. Something about Tommy. How, when Alice heard the storm coming, she’d picked him up out of the crib. She knew she had. How he was still asleep when she picked him up. How she’d hated to pick him up for fear of waking him.

  Jo’s teeth chattered. She stroked her mother’s forehead, then turned off the flashlight to save the battery. As the dark settled in, she could hear tapping on what was left of the roof over their heads. Hail. The thing wedged in her own forehead seemed to have settled in for the long term. Surely it wasn’t as big as it felt! She needed to go out into the street and look for help, and she would, she promised herself she would. She just needed to warm her mother up first. That was the number-one rule with a victim of shock, getting them warm. This much she knew from her Campfire Girls manual. She lay down beside Alice, whose light breath she could still feel against her fingertips, thank heavens, and put her fiery left arm over her mother. Now that Jo was still, her elbow was hit with a stabbing pain that came in waves, as if someone were driving nails into it.

  As she lay on the cold wet floor beside her too-quiet but still breathing mother, she found herself on a ledge overlooking a gorge; she let herself go and fell downward into the dark, into the cold, cold night.

  She dreamed a long, complicated dream. It started with little Tommy riding a giant elephant. The elephant wore a silk saddle and its ears, translucent, flapped in the sunshine. Tommy had on a pretty blue turban and a robe made of gold, and everybody everywhere was bowing to him and waving palm branches and calling him messiah, the blessed son. Her mother was smiling and there were parties and dancing and foot washings and sparkling wine. Then a giant cloud descended from the heavens and the sky grew dark. There was a rumble of thunder, and someone from far far away (was it angel or devil?) called out across the sky in a voice that echoed far and wide, across the whole wide world: No no no no no.

  Then another sound. The mewing of a cat, close by, urgent and intimate. You, you. Or was it a baby’s cry?

  MONDAY, APRIL 6

  5

  3 A.M.

  When Dovey turned north on Church Street, the wind and freezing rain slapped at her face the way her aunt used to do when she didn’t finish the wash on time. She had to bend almost double, pulling up the white lady’s shawl to cover her head and shield her eyes. She walked mostly blind, tiptoeing her way up Church Street, so as not to step on anything sharp, the early wound on the bottom of her foot firing with each step. Above all else, she needed shoes—shoes and a place to get out of the weather.

  Every now and then she looked up, hoping for the gray light of dawn, but the sky was still black as pitch, not a trace of moon. How long could one night go on? It felt like a week had passed since she’d seen the sky.

  Through the rain—she’d never seen such rain—the big houses on either side of the street loomed dark and broken. Whole sections bashed in. Roofs collapsed and topsy-turvy under the weight of downed trees. Giant water oaks that had once pushed up the sidewalks now sheared off at the tips, bare of their leaves, tilting crazily sideways, or felled. Feeling her way, she monkey-climbed over one that stretched across the whole street. She’d never realized how massive they were, how vast and complicated their networks of limbs and branches.

  Up ahead, through the dark, the McNabb house rose out of the rubble, still there. So that boy was still drawing breath. Her house nothing but a pile of secondhand lumber, her own family blown to the four winds, and Satan still lived? She’d always suspected there was no justice in this world. Now she was sure of it.

  She tripped over a shard of metal and almost fell. She needed to sit down, just for a few minutes, and the big front porch drew her. She passed the long row of crepe myrtle bushes between the curb and sidewalk and hobbled up the six concrete steps from the sidewalk to the McNabbs’ front yard and then up the second flight of four red-tiled steps to the front porch. How many times had she dragged her laundry cart up these steps, bounced it back down, filled to the brim with McNabb dirt? The big oak at the curb, which had made huge cracks in the sidewalk on one side and buckled the street underneath it on the other, had been flipped over, its top resting on the house across the street, which had crumbled under its weight, the chimney the only upright structure she could make out in the dark. She hadn’t planned on going inside the McNabb place, but the big porch swing she’d hoped to take her rest on had been ripped from its chains and was nowhere in sight. The loose chains still hung from the porch ceiling, jangling and flailing in the ragged wind.

  The front door, that door she’d come and gone from hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, picking up the dirty, bringing back the clean, had been blown clear off its hinges. So she walked right in through the door frame, right on into the living room, dark as pitch. She knew this room, every nook and cranny. She’d been in more white folks’ living rooms than anyone else up on the Hill, and certainly down in Shake Rag. Despite her aversion to the McNabbs and their dirt, this was her favorite. When she had picked up the McNabb laundry each week, she’d lingered to admire the marble-top tables and dresser, the Oriental rug, the eight-foot dining table, the gold-rimmed china plates with their pretty hand-painted fruits lined up just so in the breakfront. The fire screen in the shape of a peacock’s tail in front of the fireplace, Mr. McNabb’s brown velvet chair with its lace doilies where that McNabb girl used to sleep curled up like Henry in his box. The lady rocker with the striped silk upholstery.

  What a wreck now. In the darkness the shapes all scrambled, chair legs and a legal bookcase she didn’t recognize, its shelves separated and propped at weird angles around the room. The pretty living ro
om furniture upended and in pieces, taking on strange, frightening shapes. Rain poured in from above and blew through the opening where the front door had been so that she couldn’t tell the difference between outdoors and indoors.

  The McNabb place was in pieces. She couldn’t say she was sorry.

  She tiptoed inside, her feet so numb now she couldn’t tell whether she was stepping on anything sharp. What she would give for a pair of shoes.

  She felt her way through an open spot, holding on to the upended furniture. She almost tripped over something on the floor. She grabbed the leg of an upturned chair to catch herself. What? She first thought she’d tripped over a pile of laundry. What a joke. But she knew it wasn’t that. This was Sunday (or in the early morning hours on Monday, she wasn’t sure) and of course she had picked up the McNabb wash Saturday, though it seemed a year ago that she was hanging it on the line. (Where was it now? Probably in the next county. Would she be blamed?) She tried to walk around whatever it was on the floor, but it was large and rubbery and it had what felt like tentacles going every which way, blocking her passage. She sank to her knees and felt around. A leg, an arm, both cold and slick with the rain and sleet that had blown in from the open door. Not something, but somebody. She felt some more, the trousers, the belt, the genitals. A man, cold as ice. She put her hand on his face, felt for breath. Nobody here.

  She bent over him, trying to see the face. Could it be? The end of the coat hanger grazed the bridge of her nose, cut a thin line down the middle. She jerked back. An inch or less and it would have poked her right in the eye. She followed it with her fingers to the entry point, right under the shirt pocket, a pocket she herself had ironed countless times. She peered at the face but couldn’t see it clearly.

  Old storm, what you gone and done? You done killed that boy?

  Her heart a jackrabbit zigzagging through the field.

  One way to find out. She knew the household’s most intimate apparel. The lady’s loose silks; the girl’s white cotton bloomers, always stained; the Mr.’s patched boxer shorts, thinned in the rear; that boy’s nasty briefs. She unbuckled the belt, unbuttoned the fly, reached in. Briefs! It had to be him. Who else in this house? Who else but Satan?

  She stood up and something with feathers and talons loosened its grip on the cords of her neck, shook itself, and fluttered. She took a deep breath and the something with feathers flapped its wings. This here—a dead boy, even if he was the Devil—was serious business. Dead is dead. It gave her pause to feel so fine in that moment, so light. She thought to ask for forgiveness, but couldn’t and didn’t.

  The rain blew harder through the opening where the door had been and drummed onto the floor around her. If anything, it was raining harder. She needed to get under cover, get herself some warm clothes. She felt her way around that boy’s body (Thank you, old storm!), made her way into the hall, then froze. Somebody breathing hard, somebody clearing a throat.

  A girl’s voice, a whisper: “Who’s there? Daddy? Daddy? Is that you?”

  Dovey peered through the dark. The voice had come from the floor, to the left, at the base of the stairs.

  Then again, shrill, afraid: “Who’s here? Daddy?”

  Dovey wanted to run, but where to? Here in the hall, at least, it was dry. The roof hadn’t given way. Not yet anyhow.

  “It’s me. Dovey.”

  “Who?”

  “Dovey. I do the clothes.”

  A scramble. Somebody getting up, that McNabb girl, a good two heads taller than Dovey. She’d grown a foot since Dovey saw her last. The girl snatched at her, grasped her shoulder, then her hand. Dovey shrank from her touch. Was the girl going to strike her? Dovey peered at her through the dark. Something sticking out of the girl’s head. A horn.

  “Oh, thank God you’ve come! It’s my mother. Can you go for help? I don’t want to leave her.”

  At that moment a train whistled once, then again. Time was all scrambled up in her head so Dovey didn’t know whether it was the Frisco or the M&O. How could a train get through this mess?

  The girl’s name was Jo. Dovey had seen it sewn into her underwear when she’d gone off to camp. What a piece of work that had been when that girl came back after two weeks, her clothes musty and stained and smelling like sour milk.

  Then, from the shadows, the girl leaned forward, so close that Dovey had to move back to avoid the horn. The girl whispered, “Tell your granddaughter he’s dead, my brother’s dead. Tell her he can’t bother her ever again.”

  The something with feathers and talons teetered now on the edge of Dovey’s shoulder and flapped its wings again. Then a whirring in Dovey’s ears, a brush of her hair good-bye, and it was gone, through the dark house and out into the rain and the night. “I will if I can find her. She and the baby gone missing.”

  “Baby? What baby?”

  “The baby that brother of yours give her.”

  The girl began to sob now. “Oh no! She had a baby?” The girl’s left shoulder looked all wrong, poked out crooked. The drumstick swung wide, back and forth. In the dark, her silhouette looked like one of those birds with broken wings Dreama kept bringing home.

  Dovey didn’t have time for white-girl foolishness. Promise was old news. “You got me some dry clothes and some shoes? Some kind of coat? It’s bad out there. I’m near about froze to death.”

  The girl took one of Dovey’s icy hands in her slightly warmer one and led her around the moaning woman on the floor. “You poor thing. Come on. Let’s see what’s dry.”

  Then she stopped and squeezed Dovey’s hand so hard she almost cried out. “You got to go find us somebody. I got this big old thing stuck in my head and my arm’s broken. My mother’s leg is all torn up. We need some men and a stretcher. I need somebody who knows how to get this thing out of my head without killing me.”

  The girl guided Dovey’s hand to the shard of glass in her head. Dovey’s fingers grazed the cloth underneath keeping the blood out of the girl’s eyes. It was saturated, with rain or blood, Dovey wasn’t sure.

  Dovey touched it. Lord, mercy. She felt around. “You wanting me to pull it out?”

  “Don’t fool with it. Daddy said I could bleed to death.” The girl began to sob now, clawing at Dovey’s arm. Dovey stepped back. Crybaby. “My mother could die, like my brother in there. He’s dead as a doornail, and it’s on me. I did that. My baby brother got blown away. Now I got my mother to save. You need to get us some help. You got to promise me.”

  “Give me a minute. I’m so tired. I got to rest.” Dovey dropped to her knees. Then the rest of her gave way and she was on the cold wet floor.

  She opened her eyes. The horn between the girl’s eyes pointed down at her, water dripping off it onto Dovey’s face. The girl said, “I’ll give you five minutes, then I’m waking you up.”

  Dovey dropped into sleep like she was falling off a cliff. She began to dream the old dream. The pile of dirty laundry. She tried to carry it, to balance it, but it grew heavier and heavier, knocking her flat on her back, sitting on her chest, furred and reeking. Then it slipped and slid, burying her, suffocating her with white-folks stink.

  When she woke up it was still on her chest, heavy and moving around. It leaned forward and tickled her cheek. She reached up to push it off and it had wet fur and dug in its claws, not budging. Then it spoke to her. “You.” Then again, “You.”

  Dovey opened her eyes. The cat was standing on her chest now, its face only inches from hers, its whiskers tickling her nose. “Shoo, now,” she said, pushing it back.

  “You,” it said again, then another time. Then it leapt off her and melted into the dark.

  On either side of Dovey, the girl and her mother lay flat on their backs, all three of them laid out like fallen dominoes at the bottom of the stairs. It was the closest Dovey had ever been to white people; she could feel their body heat against her shoulders and upper arms. Both moaned softly.

  Now a hand reached out and covered her face, groping about. The girl
’s mother was waking up, she was screaming. On Dovey’s other side, the girl sat up. “Mother, May-May, lie back.”

  “Where’s my little boy?” The mother screamed in Dovey’s ear. “Why can’t you find him?”

  DOVEY SAT up, her ears ringing. Her Promise. Where was he? Out there somewhere in the rain and dark? How could she have fallen asleep? She’d forgotten about the McNabb baby. “What happened to him?” she asked the mother.

  “He just flew out the window,” the mother whispered. “He just flew right out of my arms like he was riding a magic carpet.”

  “I flew around like a bird,” murmured Dovey. “I got blowed all the way down to Gum Pond. And I landed easy.” She patted the mother’s hand. “Your little boy, he’ll land easy too.”

  Even as she said the words, she didn’t believe them.

  “We need to find him!” The mother made a move to rise, let out a high-pitched scream, and collapsed back on the floor.

  The girl jumped up. With her good arm she pulled on Dovey. “Come on,” she said. “You got to get on up and go for help. You got to help us.” Dovey rose to her knees and then stood, her hurt foot leaden and throbbing.

  “Can’t walk. Got to get a bandage on this foot,” she said to the girl. “You need to see if something’s in it and then wash it and put on a wrap.” Dovey sat back down on the floor, held her foot up.

  The girl felt around for her flashlight, then found it and turned it on. Just as she did, they heard the train whistle. No no no no no. How could a train travel those tracks after what had happened, wondered Dovey. They must be covered over with rubbish. Outside the flashlight’s beam, the hallway seemed to get darker. Had she died and woken up in eternal darkness, eternal damnation? And what for? For wishing a boy dead? For wanting justice in this world?