40

I done the best I could. I SAY IT TO LYDIA, though I just be talking to myself. She ain’t here. It just me now. I did my best, and this gonna be a better life for Enola than what she woulda had with me on our own. Or the O-Negs, too stupid to take good advice, be on they guard. Better than with Mr. Go and his little island, locked up like a tomb. I head up the road, away from the O-Negs and the Super Saver and the woods, like the last time I say good-bye to Father John. My parents been with me then, and we walked together into the trees. I follow our footsteps, back to the heart of Orleans and a glade in the swamps.

The clearing be smaller than I remember, and the house ain’t even a house no more, just a half-burnt, vine-covered wall. The rest gone back to the swamps. Even the ground be softer than it used to, marshland claiming its own. Daddy had pumps going to keep it solid for us. That all gone to rust now, too. I walk around the edge of the glade, touch the trees, and remember how Mama had a hammock tied between these two trees on sunny days in the middle of summer, and how Daddy got so angry when he saw me carving my name into that trunk because it be a sign someone live here. Could be dangerous, even after we moved on. Could give a hunter my scent, and a reason to follow. We been so careful out here. Freesteaders have to be.

I be glad the swamp so alive here, full of gators and foxes and all. ’Cause my parents be dead, and there ain’t no trace of them left, no bones, no nothing. Nothing to cry over. No one to blame. Two young people chose to come over the Wall. They fell in love, had a baby, and left her behind.

I be tired of running and hiding, tired of just trying to survive. How can Orleans be a home if it always trying to kill you? How can it be living if you ain’t allowed to live? What did Lydia say? The City takes. Well, I ain’t got nothing left to give.

I plant a cross of twigs in the dirt by the cottage wall, pick some yellow primroses, and twist them into the twigs. “Sorry it ain’t a real funeral, Mama,” I say.

The flowers be pretty. I tuck one behind my ear. Mama used to do that. She used to do a lot of nice things. Enola shoulda had a mother like that.

When the sun be bright in the sky, I get up to go. The place look so small; hard to believe it used to be my whole world.

I don’t pray, but I kiss the cross and I say good-bye. Then I walk into the swamp and the trees be so tall, it like a cathedral from a photograph, high arches, cool and deep and green. The water be warmer than it look. It feel good to the touch, so I step in, lower and lower, ignoring the moss and the green scum on the surface. I drag my hands behind me and I start to feel so light. I start humming that song Father John be singing to Enola. It be soothing and I need that, so I be humming, then I be singing: “Would you be free from your passion and pride? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.” I lay back in the water like a baptism, and the swamp be dancing around my ears, little sounds like clinking glass, and it smell of earth and water, and it feel warm, like blood. “Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide; there’s wonderful power in the blood.”

The City takes. Well, if She want me, She can have me. Maybe then She leave Enola alone. I lie in the water and let the current carry me away.