Where the Line Bleeds Read Free Page A

thin smile and backed away. Christophe left
the room without trying to hug her, and Joshua followed. After they both
took showers, Cille came to their room and embraced them both. Joshua
had followed her back to the kitchen, wistfully, and saw her hand a small
bank envelope filled with money to Ma-mee. She left. Joshua thought
that on average now, she talked to them less and gave them more.
    He couldn't help it, but a small part of him wished she would be there
when they got home, that she had come in late last night while he and
Christophe were out celebrating with Dunny at a pre-graduation party in
the middle of a field up further in the country in a smattering of cars and
music under the full stars. Wrapped in the somnolent thump of the bass,
Joshua closed his eyes, the sun through the leaves of the trees hot on his
face, and fell asleep. When he woke up, they were pulling into the yard,
Dunny was turning down the music, and there was no rental car in the
dirt driveway of the small gray house surrounded by azalea bushes and
old reaching oaks. Something dropped in his chest, and he decided not
to think about it.
    Ma-mee heard the car pull into the yard: a loud, rough motor and
the whine of an old steel body. Rap music: muffled men yelling and
thumping bass. That was Dunny's car. The twins were home, and judging
by the warmth of the air on her skin that made her housedress stick, the
rising drone of the crickets, and the absence of what little traffic there
was along the road in front of her house, they were late. She'd pressed their gowns and hung them with wire hangers over the front door. She
thought to fuss, but didn't. They were boys, and they were grown; they
took her to her doctor's appointments, cooked for her, spoke to her with
respect. They kept her company sometimes in the evenings, and over the
wooing of the cicadas coming through the open windows in the summer
or the buzzing of the electric space heater in the winter in the living room,
described the action on TV shows for her: Oprah and reruns of The Cosby
Show and nature shows about crocodiles and snakes, which she loved.
They called her ma am, like they were children still, and never talked
back. They were good boys.

    The front screen door squealed open and she heard them walk across
the porch. She heard Dunny step heavily behind them and the sound
of wet jeans pant legs rubbing together. The twins' light tread advanced
from the front porch and through the door. The smell of outside: sunbaked skin and sweat and freshwater and the juice of green growing things
bloomed in her nose. From her recliner seat, she saw their shadows dimly
against the walls she'd had them paint blue, after she found out she was
blind: the old whitewash that had coated the walls and the low, white
ceiling had made her feel like she was lost in an indefinite space. She liked
the idea of the blue mirroring the air outside, and the white ceiling like
the clouds. When she walked down the narrow, dim hallway, she'd run
her fingers over the pine paneling there and imagined she was in her own
private grove of young pines, as most of Bois Sauvage had been when she
was younger.. She'd breath in the hot piney smell and imagine herself
slim-hipped and fierce, before she'd married and born her children, before
she started cleaning for rich white folks, when she filled as many sacks as
her brothers did with sweet potatoes, melons, and corn. She spoke over
the tiny sound of the old radio in the window of the kitchen that was
playing midday blues: Clarence Carter.
    "Y'all been swimming, huh?"
    Christophe bent to kiss her.
    "And drinking, huh? You smell like a still."
    Joshua laughed and brushed her other cheek.
    "You, too!" She swatted him with her hand. "Y'all stink like all
outside! We going to be late. Go take a shower. Laila came over here to braid y'all's hair, but left cause y'all wasn't here, your Uncle Paul coming
in an hour to take us to the