“Bullshit!” I turn back to Shane, my voice pleading. “He won’t leave me alone. Every time you turn your back, he’s pulling off my clothes and—”
Shane grabs my neck and throws me face-first into the door jamb. I try to dodge it, jerking against the force of his rage, but my mouth connects with the sharp corner.
Pain bursts through my lip. When I taste blood, I jut my chin out to keep the mess off my clothes.
He releases me, his eyes dull and heavy-lidded, but his hate stabs through me sharper than ever. “If you flash your tits at my friends again, I’ll cut them the fuck off. You hear me?”
My hand flies to my chest, and my heart sinks as my palm slips through the gaping V of my shirt. At least two buttons gone. Shit! The academy will write me up, or worse, kick me out. I desperately scan the bed and floor, searching for little plastic dots in the sea of scattered clothes. I’ll never find them, and if I don’t leave now, there will be more blood and missing buttons.
I turn and run through Shane’s room, his furious shouts propelling me faster. In the parlor, I grab my satchel from the couch where I sleep, and I’m out the door in the next breath, exhaling my relief into gray sky. The sun won’t be up for another hour, and all is quiet on the vacant street.
As I take a step off the front lawn, I try to shed the past ten minutes from my mind by compartmentalizing it into baggage. The old-style kind, bound in brown leather with those little tan buckles. Then I picture the baggage sitting on the porch. It stays here, because I can only carry so much.
A short jog takes me toward the 91 line. If I hurry, I still have time to check on Stogie before the next bus.
Veering around the potholes that dimple the stately tree-lined streets, I pass rows of cottages and shotgun houses, each vibrantly painted in every color and adorned with the trademarks of the deep south. Wrought iron railings, gas lamps, guillotine windows, and gables etched with ornate scrollwork, it’s all there if one can look past the sagging porches, graffiti, and rotting garbage. Empty, overgrown lots pockmark the streetscape, as if we need reminders of the last hurricane. But the resonance of Treme thrives in the fertile soil, in the cultural history, and in the weathered smiles of the people who call the back of town their home.
People like Stogie.
I reach the heavily-barred door of his music store and find the handle unlocked. Despite the dearth of customers, he opens the store the moment he wakes. This is his livelihood, after all.
The bell overhead jingles as I enter, and my attention compulsively darts to the old Steinway in the corner. I’ve spent every summer since I can remember pounding the keys on that piano until my back ached and my fingers lost feeling. Eventually, those visits turned into employment. I handle his customers, bookkeeping, inventory, whatever he needs. But only in the summers when I don’t have the means to earn my other income.
“Ivory?” Stogie’s raspy baritone warbles through the small store.
I set the banana bread on the glass counter and holler toward the back. “Just dropping off breakfast.”
The shuffling sound of his loafers signals his approach, and his hunched frame emerges from his living quarters in the back room. Ninety-years-old and the man can still move fast, crossing the store like his frail body isn’t wracked with arthritis.
The cloudy glaze in his dark eyes denotes his poor eyesight, but as he nears, his gaze instantly finds the missing buttons on my shirt and the swollen cut on my lip. The wrinkles beneath the rim of his baseball cap deepen. He’s seen Shane’s handiwork before, and I’m so grateful he doesn’t ask or offer pity. I might be the only white girl in this neighborhood, and I’m definitely the only kid with a private school education, but the differences end there. My baggage is as common in Treme as tossed beads on Bourbon Street.
As he takes me in from head to toe, he scratches his whiskers, the little white hairs stark against his coal-black complexion. Visible tremors skate across his arms, and he squares his shoulders, no doubt an attempt to disguise his pain. I’ve been watching his health decline for months, and I’m helpless to stop it. I don’t know how to support him or ease his suffering, and it’s slowly killing me inside.
I’ve seen his finances. He can’t afford medication or doctor’s visits or even basic things, like food. He certainly can’t afford an employee, which made my last summer on his payroll bittersweet. When I graduate from Le Moyne in the spring, I’ll leave Treme, and Stogie will no longer feel obligated to take care of me.
But who will take care of him?
He tugs a hankie from his shirt pocket, his hand trembling as he lifts it to my lip.