He looked down at his hands. “She used to play with those knives for me, when I was real little. My dad made her stop. He yelled at her and said it was dangerous. But it wasn’t, was it?”
“The only dangerous thing was who she played with them for, Sonny. She loves you.”
He nodded hard. “I know.”
They came up over the ridge, back into Pea and Gloria’s line of sight. Ida had already given Pea her wreath, which was wide enough to drape across her chest. Tamara’s was a meager enough offering, a single-strand dandelion chain that was all that had survived the destruction below. Pea took it with a smile and bestowed it with deliberation upon Gloria. Her sister blushed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Phyllis…”
Sonny stepped between them and turned to Tamara. “Kneel down,” he said, imperious as a king among his suit. “You’re too tall for me to reach.”
“Sonny!” his mother hissed. “I know I taught you better than that!”
But they were all laughing, even Gloria, as Tamara knelt on the damp grass and bent her head for a crown.
She felt that sooty curse, even now. A weight that was not her own, a vise around her heart. But she did not feel burdened. If you can share your joys, you can share your troubles too.
Gloria and the children went back to the city. Phyllis and Tamara stayed in the garden, rationing cigarettes between them and drinking the champagne that Walter had left them straight from the bottle. They were laughing hard enough to drown out even the crickets. Pea was telling one of her rare stories about her mother, who had died when she was just twenty-three.
“So Rob stumbles off the elevator at, oh, it had to be two in the morning. Drunk as half a bottle of whiskey can make him, real stinking tight. And I know Rob a little, but Mommy babysat him when she was fifteen so he’s always coming around to say hello to ‘Miss Judy’—never mind Mommy got married and divorced a decade before. She was always Miss Judy to Rob. So he stumbles off that elevator and heads straight to our door. I’m watching through the peephole. Mommy tells me to mind my own business and I tell her a drunk and disorderly in our building is everyone’s business.”
“She smack you?”
“She just laughed and let me stay.”
“And then?”
“Rob knocks on the door. Well, he starts just calling her name, but when she don’t open he starts knocking. Then he starts hollering again, so Mommy opens the door just to get him to shut up. Rob’s so drunk, he nearly falls over. He’s holding his arms out just like this, like he’s holding up a wall. ‘Miss Judy,’ he says, ‘how ya been doin’, Miss Judy?’ Mommy says, ‘I’ve been fine, Rob, but I think your mother won’t like you getting home so late, so how about you turn around and go back there now?’ He nods, like he thinks this is a fine idea. But then he’s holding the door again. ‘Miss Judy,’ he says, ‘can I borrow twenty-five cents? I’ll pay you back next Sunday, promise. I’ve got a new pastor that gives numbers in his sermons. I’m sure to hit and I’ll pay you back.’”
“Oh, I’ve heard that one before.”
“So had Mommy. ‘Rob,’ she said, in her schoolteacher voice, ‘turn around right now and go home. I’m not giving you a penny.’ Rob turned to go again. He even made it to the elevator. But then he came right back just as we were closing the door. ‘Miss Judy,’ he said, ‘you real nice, Miss Judy. You think I could take you to dinner sometime, Miss Judy?’ And his hands still up like this, holding that invisible wall. And now Mommy just can’t take it anymore. ‘Dinner! You just asked me to borrow twenty-five cents! Where you gonna take me to dinner? Street-corner hot dogs? Go home, Rob!’”
Tamara loved Pea’s impression of her mother. A voice warmer than Pea’s, but just as sharp.
“Did he ever take her out to dinner?”
“Nah, but would you believe, next week he hit the numbers!”
“No!”
“He did. Bought a fancy car and set himself up as a chauffeur on Sugar Hill. For all I know he’s still doing it. He’s probably getting drunk on better liquor, too.”
They laughed again and then let it fade, let the crickets have their turn.
“Tammy,” Phyllis said after a while. “Can I ask you a question?”
Tamara turned sharply. “What about?”
“That cough of yours…”
“It’s nothing.”
“And the hands. I thought they’d gone from me. I thought you’d found some way to take them away, but…” Pea picked up the bottle, drained it, and then launched it high in the air. It spun, end over end, before landing on its mouth in the dirt between them, perfectly straight.
Tamara took a deep and careful breath. Her heart hurt more than she could bear just now.
Pea put a light hand on Tammy’s shoulder. “You didn’t have to, whatever you did.”
“I know.”
“I’ll do whatever I can…” Pea’s eyes were bright, flashing green, distorted by water. “… to help you bear it.”
The air was muggy and warm, the mulch she and Gloria had laid down the day before giving off a spicy ferment that grew more agreeable the more champagne she drank. Perhaps the smell was what had lured the first fireflies of the season out of their hidden spaces to dance among the tiny green shoots on the roses’ spindly limbs and then rise stately, on a wave, into the strait between Pea’s eyes and her own.
“Don’t … don’t imagine I’m some kind of martyr. I just realized I couldn’t outrun it,” Tammy said, keeping her eyes wide until the fireflies stained her vision with the negatives of their flashing yellow song. “I couldn’t outrun who I was.”
“Was she so bad?”
“No. But she wasn’t so good, either.”
Pea lifted a hand and held it before her so the fireflies could sway around it ponderously as an
