My Monticello(48)

Ezra said if I was going, he should go. He dreamed about finding those men every single night.

You too hot-headed, Elijah said. Hell, if you go, I go.

Why y’all always talking about going back there? KJ said.

Devin stood up and spoke and all our eyes went to him. I saw his mouth flare open, that golden glint if you knew where to look. We’ve got to talk and listen, he said. We’ve got to work together.

Even after he’d sat back down, he kept our attention.

And Naisha prob’ly should go, Devin added.

I was smart, he said, and stubborn, and would make certain I got the meds if they could be gotten. And I’d had the sense to bring us here, he said. Apparently Ezra told him that MaViolet and I were descendants of Monticello. We’ve been living up and around town and in these counties, like we’ve got no stake in it at all. Like we’re vagrants or something, he said. Hell, who knows who my momma’s people were, who my daddy’s people were, way back. Chances are, they gave this land their blood, sweat, and tears, and those who owned them profited.

Before he’d been sent to live with his uncle, Devin had started with a solid tripod of a family: a momma and a daddy and a pretty brick split-level, not far from the high school. It had been the most ordinary stresses that toppled them, just as he entered teen-hood: a job loss, untended depression, a violent event. The solution of sadness and anger must have seeped into Devin’s ten-and eleven-and twelve-year-old body. By the time I started to see him around First Street again, his mouth held a different kind of quiet, though a bit of his old gentleness always shone through when we were alone together.

It’s a risk, Devin concluded, but if Naisha feels like it’s got to be her, if she only trusts herself to do it, then she should go.

The map rustled in Knox’s grasp, and I could the see the calculations tensing his cheeks.

I don’t know, Knox said.

She should go, Devin persisted.

I’m going, I said.

The light kept shifting. Blinking, we let our eyes adjust.

Then Devin said that he was going too. The twins would protect everybody, he said; they were tough, bighearted, and should stay at the house, together. But he and I would go with Carol and Knox to get the meds and see about town.

We’ll go and be back in a heartbeat, Devin said.



* * *



All those days on the mountain, and Devin and I had done our best to avoid each other. But that night, it was decided: Devin and I would both go, early the next morning, along with Knox and Carol. But Devin and I would be hidden in the trunk, because our skin made us dangerous. That night I lay awake, listening to the trill of insects, wondering if I should call it off. If I backed out, would they all still go without me? What if something happened to Knox, or Carol, or Devin, while I’d stayed safely behind? And what if they went, got all the way to First Street, but failed to bring back MaViolet’s medication? I went and sat next to MaViolet’s bed, speaking softly into the dark. I miss home, I miss home, I miss home, I miss home, I miss home. MaViolet did not answer. Her face looked newly twisted in sleep.

We set out early the next morning, before the break of day.

Legs shaky beneath me, I followed Knox out of our boardwalk terrace, then down the stairs toward Mulberry Row where we fell in with everybody: Mr. Byrd and the twins. Ira and Carol. Devin came last, jogging toward us from somewhere near the fish pond. He was wearing a plain T-shirt he’d likely swapped with Ezra, the bright white glowing against his skin. The straight brick path ahead unspooled before us, seeming to disappear between the black bodies of the trees.

Looking back over my shoulder, I could see Monticello’s dome, shadowy against the dawning morning. Beneath it, on the west lawn, the bubbles of the Flores family’s tents shone softly, along with the flare of laundry strung between trees. Down the slope to the garden, limbs trembled beneath the skittish orchestration of finch feet. Our tools edged the red-brown pathways, everything lauded by the chirrup of birdsong. Such a short time here and look how industrious we’d been—our threadbare striving! We’d go to town, I told myself, we’d get MaViolet’s medication and we would all come safely back. When we got back, I would work harder for all of it: food, shelter, safety. Life. Liberty. Happiness.

Our group walked briskly down the long path, hardly talking, each carrying our own thoughts, until we arrived at Mr. Byrd’s Town Car, cleared of brush the day before. So far—except for the boy by the road—our shoddy perimeter had held. Mr. Byrd opened the trunk, which was tidy and bare but for jumper cables. The faint smell of gasoline wafted up, turning my stomach. How would I manage to ride back there without getting sick, and with Devin beside me? Mr. Byrd placed the keys in Knox’s hand. Drive like you mean to get there, he said.

Then Mr. Byrd called us into a huddle, his voice clarifying the most direct route, along with an alternate one. He ended by restating our mission: Get MaViolet’s medication. See about the road, the neighborhood, town. Grab batteries if we could. Nonperishables. Bring yourselves back to us, Mr. Byrd concluded, kicking a slender fallen branch from the road. We pulled our heads apart.

Knox tugged me to one side. Are you sure, Da’Naisha?

Are you, I said, and then again, more softly: Are you?

Carol hugged Ira and kissed the single white hen he’d carried all the way down the hill; it lurched back, casting red-laced feathers. Devin dapped Elijah and Ezra, then they all wrapped their arms around one another. Knox hugged me and I burrowed my face into his chest, praying again like I’d prayed over MaViolet’s bed two nights before. Let us live, I prayed. The sun reached us through gaps between the branches, dappling our limbs with light, setting a whole series of spiderwebs aglow—shining mandalas all through those woods around us that had been invisible a moment before. I prayed to something shapeless and not my own, to the murky future, bargaining wordlessly: Please let us make it back! Then I climbed into the trunk, fighting a tremor that had returned to my limbs, trying to make my body small.