“Did you know you were swerving, ma’am?” he asks.
“No, sir, Officer.” The baggie is thick as a wad of cotton balls in my throat. I can hardly breathe.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, sir.” Michael speaks for me. “We been on the road for a few hours. She tired is all.”
“Sir.” The officer shakes his head. “Can you step out of the car, ma’am, with your license and insurance?” I catch another whiff of him: sweat and spice.
“Yes,” I say. The glove compartment is a mess of napkins and ketchup packets and baby wipes. As the officer walks away to talk with a static-garbled voice on his walkie-talkie, Michael leans in, puts a hand on the small ribs of my back.
“You all right?”
“It’s dry.” I cough, and pull out the insurance paper. I snatch up my whole wallet and get out the car and wait for the officer to return, everybody but Michaela frozen in the backseat. Michaela flails and wails. It’s midafternoon, and the trees list back and forth at the side of the road. The newly hatched spring bugs hiss and tick. At the bottom of the shoulder, there is a ditch filled with standing water and a multitude of tadpoles, all wriggling and swimming.
“Why isn’t the baby in her car seat?”
“She been sick,” I say. “My son had to take her out.”
“Who are the man and the other woman in the car?”
My husband, I want to say, as if that would validate us. Even: My fiancé. But it’s hard enough to choke out the truth, and I know with this ball in my throat, I will surely choke on a lie.
“My boyfriend. And my friend I work with.”
“Where y’all going?” the officer asks. He doesn’t have his ticket book in his hand, and I feel the fear, which has been roiling in my belly, rise in my throat and burn hot like acid, push against the baggie on its slow descent down to my stomach.
“Home,” I say. “To the coast.”
“Where y’all coming from?”
“Parchman.”
I know it’s a mistake soon as I say it. I should have said something else, anything else: Greenwood or Itta Bena or Natchez, but Parchman is all that comes.
The handcuffs are on me before the n is silent.
“Sit down.”
I sit. The ball in my throat is wet cotton, growing denser and denser as it descends. The officer walks back to the car, makes Michael get out, puts him in handcuffs, and marches him back to sit next to me.
“Baby?” Michael says. I shake my head no, the air another kind of cotton, humid with spring rain, all of it making me feel as if I am suffocating. Jojo climbs out of the car, Michaela hanging on to him, squeezing him with her legs: she has her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Misty climbs out the backseat, her hands palms forward and her mouth moving, but I can’t hear anything she’s saying. The officer looks between the two and makes his decision and walks toward Jojo, his third pair of handcuffs out. Michaela wails. The officer gestures for Misty to take Michaela, and Michaela buries her face in Jojo’s neck and kicks when Misty pulls her from Jojo. She’s never liked Misty: I brought her with me to Misty’s one day after a run to the convenience store by the interstate for cigarettes, and when Misty leaned into the car to say hello to Michaela, Michaela turned her face, ignored Misty, and asked a question: “Jojo?”
“Just breathe,” Michael says.
It’s easy to forget how young Jojo is until I see him standing next to the police officer. It’s easy to look at him, his weedy height, the thick spread of his belly, and think he’s grown. But he’s just a baby. And when he starts reaching in his pocket and the officer draws his gun on him, points it at his face, Jojo ain’t nothing but a fat-kneed, bowlegged toddler. I should scream, but I can’t.
“Shit,” Michael breathes.
Jojo raises his arms to a cross. The officer barks at him, the sound raw and carrying in the air, and Jojo shakes his head without pausing and staggers when the officer kicks his legs apart, the gun a little lower now, but still pointing to the middle of his back. I blink and I see the bullet cleaving the soft butter of him. I shake. When I open my eyes again, Jojo’s still whole. Now on his knees, the gun pointing at his head. Michaela thrashes against Misty.
“Sonofabitch!” Misty screams, and drops Michaela, who runs to Jojo, throws herself on his back, and wraps herself, arms and legs, around him. Her little bones: crayons and marbles. A shield. I’m on my knees.
“No,” Michael says. “Don’t, Leonie. Baby, don’t.”
I snap. Imagine my teeth on the officer’s neck. I could rip his throat. I don’t need hands. I could kick his skull soft. Jojo slumps forward into the grass, and the cop is shaking his head, reaching under Michaela, who kicks at him, to cuff Jojo with one hand. He motions to Misty, who runs forward and grips Michaela under her armpits, wrestles her like an alligator.
“Jojo!” Michaela screams. “Have Jojo!”
The officer stands in front of me again.
“I need your permission to search the car, ma’am.”
“Take me out of these cuffs.” If he would come close enough, I could head-butt him blind.
“Is that a yes, ma’am?”
I swallow, breathe. Air shallow as a muddy puddle.
“Yes.”
Jojo only has eyes for Michaela. He twists his neck to look at her, speaks to her, his voice another murmuring, like the trees as they sway in the wind. The clouds, like great gray waves, are sliding across the sky. The air already feels wet. Michaela is beating Misty around the neck, and I am sure Misty is cussing, her words indecipherable, but her syllables split the air as cleanly as railroad spikes riven into wood.
“He put up the gun, baby?” Michael asks.
I nod and groan.
The officer is picking his way through the trunk, which is all junk. I see that now, handcuffed, suffocating. Plastic bags filled with faded, misshapen clothes. Al’s bag of sandwiches. A tire iron. Jumper cables. An old cooler littered with empty potato chip bags and cold drink bottles, mold eating at the seams. The baggie down my throat, disappeared to my stomach; my breath coming in a great whoosh, and I can breathe but the high from the meth comes fast. It squeezes me, a great hand, and shakes. It is a different kind of suffocation. I shudder, close my eyes, open them, and Phantom Given is sitting next to Jojo on the ground, reaching out as if he could touch him. Given-not-Given drops his hand. Half of Jojo’s face is in the dirt, but I can still see his frowning mouth, quivering at the corners: it is the face he made when he was a baby, when he was fighting the urge to cry.
“Have Jojo!” Michaela shrieks. The officer straightens from the car and walks over to Misty, who hoists Michaela up in the air to wrangle her. Phantom Given rises, walks to the officer, Michaela, and Misty.