My Monticello(41)

We were gathered one night on the sheltered northern porch when Devin spoke up. He and I had kept our distance since he’d come to the house, but whenever I saw him, my eyes caught on his figure. Devin told the story of the day he’d come home to find that his uncle had passed. Devin said he’d been in Prospect overnight, and I imagined he’d gone to see some girl, though he might’ve gone to trade for batteries, for smokes. Whatever it was, when he got near his house, he could tell something had happened, the way Ezra and Elijah were standing in the yard as he approached, leaning over shovels. He saw what looked like a body, on the side deck, beneath a white sheet. I knew that deck, its wobbly wooden banister, the urn-like planter by the door that held plastic peonies so long ago sun-bleached they looked nostalgic. By then, there were no longer ambulances. There were no longer funeral homes, not any that Devin knew of. Devin said the only glimmer of hope had been the boys and men who stayed in the yellow house next door, who soon came over, mazing past spare tires and engine parts. The way Devin told it, I could see them too: brown-skinned boys in low jeans wearing colorful sneakers. White T-shirts hanging from their back pockets like lowered flags. After Devin shared this, he looked right at me for the first time after so much time of not looking. And I wanted to say something to comfort him. Because, after losing Momma, I knew that kind of hurt. Devin told us that the yellow-house men had relieved him and the twins of their shovels, taking turns, digging quickly, until they could lower his uncle’s body into red Virginia clay.

As we tugged our chairs closer, out of the slanted reach of rain, Lakshmi spoke. She shared how she’d driven to her parents’ place out in the county, in Albemarle. Her folks had retired a year earlier, relocating to a newly built three-story on a lone rural cul-de-sac—the sole brown family in a cluster of white ones. It was tranquil there, Lakshmi said, most of the neighbors had stayed put. And while she was there, she’d heard more than one neighbor knock at her parents’ door to ask, Did they need anything? Lakshmi’s parents had stockpiled wholesale-club supplies, vibrant spices, and enormous jars holding split lentils and dried beans. One pantry shelf dedicated to bulk packs of peanut brittle clusters—her dad’s weakness. Her mom still had hope for the wet-footed garden, and they’d all be fine there for the time being, her parents assured her. And it had been entirely peaceful on their street except for one dry evening, when a neighbor had come out shouting from his dark front porch—a retired widower, drunk maybe. By flashlight, he’d hung one of the old flags high from the post on his lawn, replacing the sodden American one. But this was the same neighbor who’d helped Lakshmi’s parents when they first moved in, offering jumper cables when their battery failed, pulling his car up beside theirs even though the angle was awkward. Besides, her parents assured her, the lonesome man had taken that flag back down, somberly, the following night.

It was safe enough at her parents’ place, Lakshmi conceded, but she had not stayed for long. On the way there, along one of those snaking rural routes, a pair of the men had blocked her passage. Not the same men who’d driven dark trucks past campus—but who could tell for sure anymore, Lakshmi said. The men who barred her did not show guns or flags or carry torches. One of them might not have been “white”—his skin was an olive-tan. Either way, the men’s car obstructed the road, and they’d propped their hood up, so that Lakshmi would have had to swerve into the ditch or plow into the car to get past. I wish I’d run those fuckers over, she said, adjusting her bandana, now knotted around her wrist. Instead, she’d stopped her Civic in the road, to ask them to move, or if they needed help. The men had made her get out of her car and sit in the back of theirs as they rifled through her things. Then one of the men had climbed into the back seat with her. They took what they wanted, she said, picking at the thick red knot.

Eventually they’d let her pass and she’d made it to her parents’ house, but it had been too quiet there. After a couple nights, she’d used the last of her gasoline to drive back to town, returning to their dark apartment, to her roommates, despite her parents’ protests. Coming back, she’d taken a different route, telling herself that if she saw men in the road again, this time she’d plow right through.

With each new story, my heart swelled in my chest until it felt colossal. It ached for Gary Chen, with his sapphire-streaked hair, because he seemed so clearly in love. And for Mr. Flores after he shared how he’d emigrated from Honduras, many years ago. He’d survived a massive hurricane—the power had gone down there too, he told us; the winds had reduced his neighborhood to rubble. My heart surged for Lakshmi, for whatever had happened to make her leave the relative safety of her parents’ place and move back into danger, as if danger had already staked its flag in her. Sometimes my heart felt so heavy and bruised, I could hardly move, or speak.

The next morning, at rations, Ms. Edith suggested that the ladies and girls meet all together. An ounce of prevention, she said as she dried her hands on a square of cloth on her lap. We met in the parlor, with its windows draped in faded crimson valances. We met while the Flores men collected wood, while Mr. Byrd and Knox worked to erect rabbit-proof barriers around key parts of the garden. We met while Ira and Georgie tended a fire with laundry boiling in a basin above it. While Elijah and Papa Yahya shuttled a ball made of plastic bags and rubber bands back and forth with Jobari and KJ along the all-weather pass. While Devin and Ezra and Gary kept guard down below. Edith came into the parlor from the western porch, shedding her borrowed boots, the treads clogged with chunks of dark, wet earth. She showed up holding Carol’s cloth-lined basket, brimming with tiny strawberries and humble wilting flowers, leaves, roots, and all. I aimed to bring something sweet, she said.