Verdi left Kitt and her mother keeping their vigil over Posie’s bed and went to retrieve her slice-of-sunshine Sage from the Whittackers, Kitt’s down-the-street neighbor. Verdi was keeping Sage with her for the night. Glad. Forced her to compartmentalize, to pack her sorrows in a separate case than the one she’d use for Sage. Forced her to become more other-directed, to think about what she’d feed her, the books she’d need, the videos, barrettes, socks, sneakers. A dress in case they’d go to church the next morning, undershirts because it wasn’t June yet, bananas for her cereal, cold cream for her knees, post earrings, Mr. Snuffleuglious doll. Construction paper, children’s scissors, barrel-shaped Crayola crayons. Was all organized, back to the efficient self that was a school principal: the one who lined the children up, hung the star papers on the bulletin board, hid behind a pretended toughness when her vice principal crossed her path.
And now she was finished gathering all that Sage would need for the night, was about to leave Kitt’s house, to go down the street and be uplifted by the sight of Sage’s smile. But there was the telephone sitting on the end table almost to the door. And the sorrow-filled case started leaking, threatening to soil Sage’s anklet socks. And Verdi sighed, and picked up the phone and dialed Johnson’s number yet again, like she had before she’d left her house, and the hospital, and like then, the phone just rang and rang until the sterile voice came on and said this call is being answered by Autotech.
Sage fidgeted the entire bus ride down. Acted three instead of eight. Tried to stick her hand outside of the window, stand up in the seat, run through the aisle, tore a page from the picture book Verdi had opened on her lap. Verdi had to turn a stern face on Sage, something she’d never had to do, and even that didn’t settle her down. By the time they walked in through Verdi’s door, and Verdi set the bags on the floor and picked up the cordless phone from the foyer table and plopped on the steps to hear who called—Rowe called, said he had driven all night, was halfway to the Mississippi Delta to the spot where he was born, that he was brokenhearted but not blameless, that he’d be gone about a week, would call when he returned to civilly dissolve the holdings they shared—and Sage came at her, hair pulled from her barrettes and standing all on top of her head, eyebrows scrunched, mouth pursed looking like a real badass child, and Verdi took her by the shoulders, pressed her fingers into her forearms. “Settle down,” she said, “just settle yourself down.”
But Sage couldn’t settle herself down. She missed her usual colors, the yellows and oranges and shades of peach that were her mother, her grandmother. And even though being with Verdi was usually as good as a hand-dipped butter-brickle ice-cream cone, she didn’t like the way Verdi was right now. Didn’t like the sharpness of the silver blue that was like lightning pokes to her eyes. Didn’t like the way Verdi wasn’t grinning at her the way she usually did when she met her face, didn’t like how Verdi kept looking past her to some monster on the wall, not even taking her face in her hands to help her with her sounds. And there were too many sounds getting stuck in her mouth. Too many for her to swallow the way she usually did because she couldn’t tie them together in her mouth to make a word, too many to even pick through with her tongue to give a color to. So she ran through Verdi’s house to give herself relief, un-strung the videotapes from their reels, marked up her favorite books with black Crayola crayons, pulled out her hair again and again and again because it was too tight against her scalp, didn’t Verdi know that it was tight, that she needed for her to take her jaw in her hands and help her make her sounds, that she wanted for her to sit next to her on the couch and put her arm around her while they watched the Reading Rainbow tape so the silvery blues could settle down? But all Verdi was doing was dialing the phone again, and staring out the window and asking Sage over and over what had gotten into her.
Sage’s bedtime came none to soon for Verdi, especially the way she’d transformed herself into the devil’s child. And the worse Sage acted, the more Verdi felt helpless. So by the time she’d run Sage’s bathwater, and put her in the tub, and came back in to wash her back and Sage threw a cup of water in her face, Verdi started to cry. She threatened to spank Sage then. Told her to get in that bed and not get out of it until morning. Then she went downstairs and poured herself a flute of sparkling cider, put on some Louis Armstrong, and tried Johnson’s number one more time.
This time he answered and the sound of his voice went straight to her heart and she couldn’t even talk.
“Hello, hello,” he said.
And all she could do was let out a solitary sob.
“Verdi? Verdi? Is that you? My God, Verdi. Is it about Posie? How’s Posie?”
“Not Posie, me. I’m the one dying here.”
“God, baby, Verdi—”
“Johnson, I need you.”
“You don’t need me.”
“Rowe’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes gone. He left. He knows, he knows about you and me.”
“Did you tell him or he found out on his own?”
“He found out on his own.”
“Did you ask him to leave or did he just leave?”
“He just left.”
Silence. “I’m leaving, baby. Tomorrow morning.”
“God, Johnson, please, please don’t make me beg.”
“Don’t beg, Verdi, this is just the way it has to be.”
“Why, because it can’t be on your terms?”
“No, because it wasn’t your decision. Because you’re just allowing things to happen for you, because that’s how you live, just having things done to you, because last night you could have made the decision to leave him, with some faith, Verdi, that you would get the strength you need, you’re the one who was raised in church, I should be the last person telling you that—that you’ve been caught in an idolatrous relationship all this time giving some old motherfucker power over you that he never had.”
“Johnson, please—”
“You know I’ll always love you.”
“John—”
“I’ll call you sometime when it doesn’t hurt so much to hear your voice—”
She was listening then to dead air so loud it was deafening as it pushed through the phone, filled the room, obliterating the sound of Louis’s trumpet; the ticking of the pewter mantel clock; her shallow breathing; her good reasoning that tried to tell her to just go to bed, curl up next to Sage, everything looks better cast under a morning sun; hope, this dead air even drowned out the sound of her hope; until there was nothing left for her to hear except for that sound that she’d managed to snuff out over the past twenty years, and now there was no Rowe to put his hands over her ears, and the dead air opened up and made like a megaphone and amplified that sound that was always the last sound she’d hear after the sterile point of the metal had punctured her flawless skin and just before the silver pings started firing in her brain, she’d make a sucking sound, drawing her breath sharply as if it would be the last breath she’d take, that sound was always the prelude to her heaven dripping in her brain, or was it her hell, could hell be as magnificent as that rush, or was it the fusion of the two rolling around like a whirlpool that caused that ecstasy, doing it to her, isn’t that what Johnson said, she always allowed things to be done to her. Do it to me, she said as she sank deeper in the couch, and realizing what she said, she jumped up, covered her ears, shouted no, no, hell no. But it was too late. That sound of that last sharp breath was all in her ear, like a kiss, whispering, like sound into form now, throbbing, gyrating. The sound had taken hold, amoeba-like reproduced itself, had sprouted a forest by now, too much for her to tame, and wasn’t it right upstairs in the nightstand drawer, and wasn’t Sage asleep, and just this one more time, awl yeah, to get her through this night, wasn’t this the worst night, Rowe gone, Johnson leaving, her aunt Posie still might die? Yeah. She blossomed with unrestraint then and headed for the stairs.