Silver Sparrow

“Raleigh,” Daddy said. “Get in the fucking car.”

Uncle Raleigh hurried around the back of the limo to take his place beside my father.

DADDY GENTLY PRESSED the accelerator. Limousines are supposed to seem to float; luxury is never even noticing that the car is moving. I hooked my fingers in the door handle and leaned my weight against it. There must have been only seconds between the click as the door opened under my wayward hand and my tumble to the pavement, but in that moment, I felt a zing of regret. As my body connected with the blacktop, I knew I was ridiculous. The rough surface scrubbed a patch of skin from my bare shoulder. My fal was at most a foot, maybe eighteen inches, but it felt like a free fal from the Chattahoochee Bridge. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but the events of the past couple hours passed like a ticker tape moving too fast for me to read it, though my desperate eyes scanned it anyway, longing to understand.

22

SKIN PAIN

WHEN WE GOT HOME, my mother was waiting in the doorway, fil ing the space with her broadness. With her blue robe tied hard across her middle, she stretched her arms like “suffer the little children.”

“What happened?” she asked my father. “What happened to her shoulder?”

“She fel out of the car,” my daddy said. “She was l-leaning on the door and fel out. Flesh wound, that’s al . Just a little skin pain.”

“Baby,” my mother said to me. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

I was about two or three inches tal er than Mama, and this was made worse since she was barefoot and I stood in thick-soled sneakers. She hugged me, but I had to crouch to make myself short enough to fit her embrace. My mother smel ed of relaxed hair and peaches. She tightened her arms around me, pressing hard on the sore places.

What had happened? On a bare-bones level, I fel out of the car and scraped the skin from my shoulder. Daddy stepped on the brake, Raleigh jumped out of the car, but Daddy didn’t cut the engine. He sat stil behind the wheel as Uncle Raleigh knelt beside me on the asphalt.

But before bare bones is skin, muscle, and blood. I pushed out of the car, clawed my way free. I landed on the pavement altered and confused. I left blood on that parking lot, and some skin, too, although it was probably invisible against the dark asphalt.

Uncle Raleigh said, “Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”

I said no and touched my shoulder; my hand came away damp. My father stil did not kil the engine. He did not get out of the car.

“Why do you want to leave Dana?” I asked my uncle.

Raleigh said, “We’re not leaving her. She said her mother’s on the way.”

“Something’s happening,” I said.

“Chaurisse.”

“Confirm or deny, Raleigh.”

I lay down on the asphalt, flat on my back. My scraped shoulder smarted against the rough pavement, but this seemed like the only thing to do. I lay on that dirty pavement, putting my body in between knowing and not.

Uncle Raleigh was getting old. His face was a little bit baggy and his stubborn beard that had to be shaved twice a day was coming in white along his jaw. “What’s going on?” I asked him.

“Nothing that has to do with you.”

“How come you never had any kids? How come you never had your own wife? Just tel me. I won’t get mad. I just need to know.”

“Come on, Chaurisse,” Uncle Raleigh said. “Get up. Let’s get you on home so we can take care of that shoulder. Your mama is going to have to pick the gravel out with tweezers.”

My dad honked the horn, twice.

Raleigh muttered under his breath, “Don’t do her like this, Jim-Bo.” Then he said, “Come on, Dana.”

“I’m Chaurisse,” I said. “Dana is my friend locked up in the bathroom, who you and Daddy are trying to leave out here. Please, Uncle Raleigh.

Just tel me what’s going on.”

Uncle Raleigh stood himself up and pul ed me into a standing position. Raleigh said, “Chaurisse, we have al given up so much for you. I would think you would have a little bit more faith in us. Can’t you just walk out on it a little bit?”

He sounded so patient, Uncle Raleigh did. His voice was calm, as though he were asking me to hand him a flat-head screwdriver, but his face was creased and tight, as though he were negotiating for a hostage. My dad honked the horn again and Raleigh beat on the trunk with his fist. He turned his face to me, offering his hand, and it seemed only fair that I would get in the car. It was true. Uncle Raleigh had never asked me for anything.

I looked up into his gentle, patient face. “Okay.”

Uncle Raleigh said, “We love you, Chaurisse. You are the reason for everything.”

Raleigh smel ed like sweat and something I would later think of as fear. “Please don’t fight your daddy and me, okay?”