Creatures of Passage. Morowa Yejidé
envelopes, crumpled hats and shoeboxes. She knew all the rises and depressions of her mattress, the exact position of the falling-down furniture, the precise tilt of the little end table next to her chair where the bottle should be, the last of the others she’d already emptied. Which was why the missing bottle irritated her now, since she was certain she’d put it next to her chair where it would be within reach. But it wasn’t there.
Scattered rays beamed from the mirror shards at her feet, lighting the living room walls like a mineralized cavern. Then, she thought she heard a choked voice at the front door. It was barely audible through the limestone that walled her mind and it slid through the apertures of what she thought was her imagination.
“Nephthys …” said the voice.
She tilted her head with the slowness of a drowsy lioness bothered by some clatter in the savanna. “Cyan’t nobody be callin’ me,” she said, listening to the sound of her own slurred speech, thinking her mind was playing tricks on her.
“Nephthys Kinwell …” said the voice again.
She blinked in the darkness. Did someone call her name? That name of hers that she’d never fully understood? And yet she couldn’t say her name without thinking of her brother’s name too. And again, the image of her twin’s body on the morgue slab flashed in her mind, the missing pieces of him somewhere else, and she only wanted to drink more.
There was a soft knock at the door.
Nephthys sat listening. Was it the children playing in the hallway again? “Not now,” she mumbled, clutching her empty flask. She didn’t feel like struggling up from the chair with her numb leg to hand out any candy. The children who wandered the hallways came looking for her sweets nearly every day, early in the morning when only the very young or the very old paid them any mind. Each child at her door was a welcome distraction from thoughts of another child, another time.
Now her flask was empty and her bottle was missing, and there was the muddled memory of handing out a few sour balls and lollipops. But she couldn’t tell if that had been earlier that morning or the day before.
There was another knock. “Auntie?”
Her imaginings fell away at the sound of that word. She was Nephthys Kinwell. Or the Car Lady. She was nobody’s aunt. “Wrong door,” she said.
There was more knocking.
Reluctantly, with stiff and arduous movement, Nephthys struggled from the chair. She hadn’t bothered to change the ceiling light bulb and the light switch would be of no use. She shuffled to the window, tripping over empty bottles and shoeboxes filled with candy strewed about the floor, and inched the curtain aside. A blinding one-inch beam cut across the room like a laser probe. Was it midmorning or midafternoon? She went to the front door, heavy and cryptic like all low-income housing doors, and pulled hard. The potent smell of alcohol from her den slithered out like some phantom serpent as the hallway air rushed in.
A boy was standing under the flickering fluorescent hallway lights, staring up at her through two big eyes set in a chocolate face.
Dizzy, Nephthys leaned against the frame of the door in her formless housecoat, steadying her legs as she peered at the child. Even leaning, her head nearly brushed the top of the doorframe. In the antiseptic light, the silvery puff of her hair looked as if it had been sifted with flour. Nephthys stood over the child, squinting. And slowly, she realized that the boy was Dash, her great-nephew. His presence seemed impossible. But she’d learned many things about order and chaos in the southeast quadrant, how children of Anacostia appeared and disappeared. She glowered at the boy through yellow cat eyes scored with the bright-red lightning streaks of broken blood vessels. If she imagined the child, she would know it soon.
“Eh? Speak.”
The boy seemed stunned.
Nephthys looked down the hallway, wondering (hoping?) if Amber, the boy’s mother, had come there too. She heard only the sounds of other people and other lives behind the closed doors: babies crying, telephones ringing, men cursing. She looked again at the boy, squinting as if trying to see him from a great distance.
“Dash? Wuh you doin’ here, baby cootuh?”
The boy fidgeted.
“Mama know ’bout you standin’ here?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Done left school, huh?”
“No … I had to leave early.” Dash took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and held it up to her like an offering.
“Wuh that there?”
“Nurse Higgins said to tell you it’s a sick note.”
“Wuh kinda sick?”
Dash looked away and held the letter out farther to Nephthys. “She told me to bring this to you.”
“Me and not your mama?”
The boy was silent.
Nephthys looked at the paper in the boy’s hand but did not take it from him. There was no use trying to decipher the words, a collection of symbols on paper. And she knew who Nurse Higgins was, knew her well. For there were some souls lost forever in the darkness, and a rush of memories about the nurse’s son, Gary, flooded her mind. The grocery store and the lighter. The police and St. Elizabeths. And there were souls that she feared would soon be lost. Like Rosetta.
Nephthys pushed the thoughts away and gazed at Dash. “Nurse Higgins, huh? Well, come in, chile.” She watched the boy step forward slowly, as if entering a chamber, navigating the floor of objects illuminated by the sunray’s spotlight. He made his way to a radiator near the window and sat on top of it. Nephthys closed the door and turned the dead bolt. She scanned the living room for the missing bottle once more. Nothing. She looked at the boy, frozen where he sat. She was immune to the spoils of her habits and the reek of rot and ruin, but she knew that the child was not accustomed to the fumes of time. She lumbered over to the window, snatched the curtain aside, and opened it. The world’s air entered and light and oxygen flooded the living room. Recoiling, she stumbled back to her chair and collapsed into it.
When her dizziness subsided, Nephthys looked at Dash clutching the letter in his hand. “Read.”
Dash stared with a look of incredulity. “Me, ma’am?”
“Go on and read the letter fuh me, chile.”
The boy unfolded the paper.
“And speak up, baby cootuh.”
Dash blinked in the apartment’s atmosphere. Slowly, reluctantly, he began:
Dear Nefthis,
Forgive me if I spelled your name wrong but I never had to write it down. Today Dash was suspended for fighting and sent home early. He took a rock to Roy Johnson’s head and beat him silly, busted his forehead open and knocked out a milk tooth. It was extra bad on account of the fact that Roy is the principal’s nephew. I had both of them with me after I pulled Dash off of Roy, and as soon as the principal heard what happened he wanted to expel Dash. I talked him out of it on account of I been knowing his mother at church for upwards of thirty-five years, and I said that come Sunday I’d tell her that he wasn’t doing right by punishing one boy and not the other. Especially without asking no questions. He was ready to blow his top but he didn’t cross me. Now he’s saying if there’s one more issue with Dash, he’s out. Summer break is almost here. Lord knows there should be a way to deal with this before then. It would be a crying shame for the child to get all this way and then be put out of school at the end of the year.
But I really want you to know something else. I heard from the other children that the fight broke out because Roy was teasing Dash about talking to a man. Down by the river. A make-believe man. I wanted you to know about it and I didn’t want to say anything to Amber about it on account of not knowing what that girl would do. But it’s a strange thing talking to a make-believe man. Odd and troubling. Maybe Dash needs a man’s