There were limits to the mob’s artwork. The rain unstiffened the bodies and warped the ropes, so that what once was an interesting constellation, a display as intriguing as a mobile above a newborn’s hungry eyes, by morning looked saggy, soggy, improvised, and limp. Those who showed up to bear witness were not only shocked but disappointed, because by then the victims were waterlogged and relaxed, so it looked like no one had actually suffered. I knew they had, so much so that the one woman among them had bled from her womb the entire night. Inside that blood was me, dropped into bright green swamp water adorned with magnolia blossoms, so when I looked down at where I had just come from, my people only looked like ornaments that were a part of a Christmas tree.

SEVEN

AS IF GOD himself had called it for me, there was a cab waiting outside the building when I flew out. As if I really had somewhere to go. My coat and purse were still upstairs at Renelle’s. Like there was money to pay for a cab in either one. Shivering, I looked down the street and saw a fire truck and a couple of police cars had backed up traffic on King Drive. I was in back of the cab before the driver even noticed I was coming.

“I’m off darlin’,” the older gentleman said. It was dark and he barely turned, so I couldn’t see his face. Soft blue coils covered his head and ended along the edge of his ears; stiff gray hairs like light pencil marks peeked out from inside them. I thought about Ma playing with Daddy while she sat in the back of his cab, and I almost touched the old man’s soft puff of hair.

He glanced back at me. Whatever he saw in my face got him back on the clock.

“Where you goin’ darlin’?” he sighed.

“Nowhere,” I said.

“Hah?” he asked. “Pretty young gal like you gotsta be goin’ somewhere.”

Traffic began to move again, so he couldn’t look back at me anymore as he spoke.

“Maybe so,” I told him, “but I don’t know where somewhere is.”

“Well, you gotta tell me something. Soon as we get past this here commotion King Drive gonna be movin’ too fast to be going nowhere.”

He looked back at me again. I just hunched up my shoulders as if to say, What you expect me to do about it?

“’Bout how old is you? Twelve, thirteen?”

“I’m twenty.” I had to make him think I maybe had some money so he would just keep on driving. Being polite couldn’t hurt.