BY Ra'Niqua Lee
One year since the flood and that part of the neighborhood had not yet recovered, might not ever. Shades of brown marked the sides of houses like lines in sedimentary rock. No people there but a child with a wagon and his hair cut low, whoever cared enough to tend to his head, and then those others that looked. Most entrances had been boarded over, but some gaped black and open to gaze. Familiar faces watched from the muck of darkness. Fourth Street had irrevocably changed, and return was ill-advised.
These faces were her neighbors, the ones who witnessed her budding to grown in the square yard where her grandma kept watch. She needed the supervision because she let her shorts rise too high when she cartwheeled, and she always strayed as far as she could before her grandmother shrieked, “Girl, get back here.” Neighborhood talk abused the girls who went too far and wore too little. All the judgy pitch came in hot like a party of casted stones. She’d pushed boundaries anyway. In their little corner of Fourth Street, she flirted with the gossip and risked the bruises. Then she got away, thankfully away. Not everyone did. Their faces told the stories the flood couldn’t hold. Not all water got to keep its secrets.
The boy with the wagon must’ve seen the faces, too, considering how he went, marching forward like he knew more about keeping on and carrying on than the plastic wheels turning beside him. When she called out, he didn’t turn around or seem to hear. His wagon continued its jumble roll as he reached the end of Fourth Street and turned the corner.
At her old house, she pried plywood from the window and tossed it to the weeds. She had spent her childhood helping her grandma keep the house clean. Every few summers, they would whitewash the porch. The color had been high gloss, ultra-white, a white whiter than springtime cumulonimbus. The results were her grandma’s pretty as pearls, the hard-earned wares of pennies saved and pennies earned. Inside, daylight exposed where mold had claimed the walls. Her grandmother’s hutch draped the couch and left dishes embedded in inches of sludge. The refrigerator blocked the kitchen, such a mess, but vacation condos still lined the bay. The beach remained loved, by no one more than her. She never blamed the water for the disorder it had created before slipping back to the sea like a bandit with all the memories it could carry.
She had gotten out, too, but not forever, and that was her mistake. Now, her own face waited in the stairwell. She stood on the dirty porch. She also sat in the half-dark with her arms crossed her over knees. There was time enough for both, all at once, and she did not look scared, pissed, pleased, or careful, just alone. She wrapped her arms around herself. She stared at nothing. Held to nothing.
Ra'Niqua Lee writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. Her work is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her always.