She rolled over and picked up the phone, called Jean-Alexi’s number. More and more lately, he had been strange and jacked up on the phone, barely hearing what she said. Coca said that he was more involved with selling drugs, taking them, too. His liquor license fell through. He was losing himself. No one answered.
She rose and moved into Linda’s bathroom, turned on the lights, and saw her blackness reflected many times over in the mirrors. Those feet, those legs, hips, breasts, that throat, that kinked hair, none of it worthy of belonging in that bathroom? Wouldn’t James gladly exchange Marie for Linda in his arms? Wouldn’t he rather fuck her? Marie, who had never had sex with a man she loved, except maybe one, and even him she was not sure of. Love a luxury not allowed the desperate. Who had now been celibate for over two years. Why was she undeserving of love? She took a long bath, scented her skin with the expensive oils from Linda’s cabinet, then dried herself on the plush towels that she washed and stacked, but was not allowed to use. She walked into the closet, turned on the light, inhaled the scent of the lavender sachets that she herself had put in those drawers and shelves so that Linda didn’t have to smell her own odor.
She pulled out shoes and put on one pair after another. She chose a pair of strappy, gold sandals with a tall heel that made her legs look a mile long, the calf muscles bunched. Her stride was long and graceful thanks to Jean-Alexi, and she walked back and forth in front of the mirrors, mesmerized by her own feet. Those feet belonged in that room. How was it that the smallest of changes could transform how one felt about one’s place in the world?
She searched for the dress she loved more than any other — a long, dark dress that had large flowers in red and gold twisting around the body. She felt at home in that dress, having worn it countless other times for games of make-believe, pulling it over her head, letting the silky fabric slide over her skin. The straps, thin and dark, were invisible on her shoulders. Almost as if the dress were painted on her. She searched through the drawers and put on black lace panties, a lacy black bra. She sprayed herself heavily with Linda’s most expensive French perfume. At that late date, she was not too modest to say that she had never looked finer. The woman in the mirror belonged in that house.
She swept the bottles of pills in the medicine chest into a towel and took them with her to the living room. She stopped in the kitchen and took the smallest, sharpest paring knife — the one capable of cutting an apple peel as thin as a strand of hair. In the bar, she opened the best bottle of French red wine, poured a glass until it was filled to the brim, and took a deep drink to fortify herself.
She swallowed down two bottles of pills with the wine, then rose to refill her glass. In the sudden calmness, she was sure it was enough pills, but needed more wine to celebrate. The blade ran smoothly across her skin, so that she had to hold her wrist close to her blurred eyes to see the delicate thread of blood swell.
She sat in Linda’s long, black dress. Black dress on black body on white couch in white room. A black speck in a white universe. Carefully she held the glass of red wine because if it spilled, it would be the same color as her blood. Red on red on black on white. That simple. A tragedy of color.
Time passed through her mind like a needle pulling thick thread so that it seemed either a blink of an eye or an eternity. She thought of pouring the wine on the carpet, a vévé to bring Papa Legba to open his gates for her. The sun was higher, beating overhead, unbearably hot. The room humid as a greenhouse. All she could feel was a sensation of floating, as if she were one of those colored balloons that skinned its way across the ceiling when let loose. She longed to burst, to be released.
She thought of home, lòt bò dlo, going to the other side of the water, for the first time in a long while. She could bear the current pain because she knew she was about to return to the small house by the ocean where she was raised, loved in Maman’s arms. The sun made the tin roof a burning semaphore at noon. As unlike the room she breathed in that moment as two rooms could be. Burning and hot and blinding. Her maman—had she ever been so young? Prettier even than the Minna in the mirror. She felt a stab of happiness that had not been hers since early childhood.
Maman used to say when someone died that they were returning by the slow road lan Guinée, to Guinea. She told of her grandparents in Africa having been made to circle the forgetting trees so that they wouldn’t pine away to go home. That’s what the slaves said, and what was Marie if not a slave in every sense that counted?
A dream of her own death released Marie. Finally she would meet Maman’s younger, inviolate self on that road, and they would move on to a freedom never granted in this life.
In the dream, Josie and Thibant, and even Jean-Alexi, appeared, and Marie forgave them all because they had the excuse of poverty.
Empty stomach trumped all.
* * *
No one would mourn Marie, either. Just as it had been for Maman. Linda would call one of the services that drove white trucks to the house and carted away all that was broken, offensive, unsightly. Those things disappeared from the neighborhood as if they never existed, to keep the illusion of perfection: a mildewed carpet disappeared this way; a drunken, violent husband carted off; a baby alligator coiled under a hibiscus bush disposed of in a metal box. It would be as if Marie had never lived in that house, her presence scrubbed away as diligently by the next girl as she had scrubbed away the dirt left by the unknown one before her, the one who had saved Linda’s life from overdose. A long succession of disposable beings. Perhaps Linda would tell James that Marie was troubled (although he understood Marie was only hungry). Perhaps Linda would hear things from Coca, or she might mix up Marie’s story with the pasts of her other cleaning girls, or more likely, she would simply forget, uninterested. The memory of Marie landing neatly in the detritus of Linda’s past.
None of this bothered Marie; it was just a story that happened to someone else. She had sunk easily into the sea of black faces in Florida, all of them uprooted, blowing like weeds, some coming to rest in cracks where they grabbed hold — grabbed hold for life but never wanted, easily pulled loose again. Or rather wanted only to clean houses but not sit across the table to break bread. To nurse but not be cared for. To fuck but never, never, be loved.
She felt a violent downward twisting of the earth. Her stomach turned on itself, devouring. All the contents of the morning — breakfast, pills — came up and created a purplish death-stain on the rug. Her thoughts pumped as slowly as her blood, and there was another deep drag in her intestines. She cursed herself that she worried about the stain on the carpet. Clear that this would take too long. The end. She grew ravenous for it.
The gun, cold and heavy as a stone, welcoming, hidden away in the drawer by Linda’s bed. Before, she had not considered anything so big and violent, but now she was eager to leave this agony. As long as she didn’t disfigure her face. A bullet to the heart would be fine. Her legs were rubber as she staggered back to the bedroom, the floor like a moving ship, and she pulled hard on the drawer so that it flew off its tracks, contents sprawled across the floor. She shoved papers aside, impatient, but the gun was gone. She broke into tears as a manila envelope taped to the underside of the drawer swam into her view. Angry, she ripped it off, tearing the envelope, thoughts pumping slowly, her head packed in cotton. Green bills fluttered down into her lap. Hundred-dollar bills. Many, many hundred-dollar bills.