“He hit Kayla this morning.”
Mam looks straight at me then, not at the ceiling or off into the air, and I know she done shrugged off her pain as well as she can and she’s listening to me, hearing me the same way I hear Kayla when she’s upset.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I sit up straight-backed as Pop and frown.
“No,” she says. “You old enough to hear this.”
“Mam?”
“Shush. I don’t know if it’s something I did. Or if it’s something that’s in Leonie. But she ain’t got the mothering instinct. I knew when you was little and we was out shopping, and she bought herself something to eat and ate it right in front of you, and you was sitting there crying hungry. I knew then.”
Mam’s fingers is long and thin. Little more than bone. Cool to the touch, but I can still feel warmth like a small flame in the middle of her palm.
“I never wanted you to be hungry, Jojo. It’s why I tried. I would do it if she wouldn’t. But now—”
“It’s all right, Mam—”
“Hush, boy.”
Her fingernails used to be pink and clear. Now they seashells, salt-pitted and yellow.
“She ain’t never going to feed you.”
Her hands used to be muscled plump from all the work she did in the gardens, in the kitchen. She reaches out and I duck my head up under it so her palm on my scalp and my face in her sheets and I breathe it all in even though it hurts, and it smells like metal and sunburned grass and offal.
“I hope I fed you enough. While I’m here. So you carry it with you. Like a camel.” I can hear the smile in her voice, faint. A baring of teeth. “Maybe that ain’t a good way of putting it. Like a well, Jojo. Pull that water up when you need it.”
I cough into the blanket, partly from the smell of Mam dying, partly from knowing that she dying; it catches in the back of my throat and I know it’s a sob, but my face is in the sheets and nobody can see me cry. Kayla’s patting my leg. Her song: silent.
“She hates me,” I say.
“No, she love you. She don’t know how to show it. And her love for herself and her love for Michael—well, it gets in the way. It confuse her.”
I wipe my eyes on the sheets by shaking my head and look up. Kayla climbs in my lap. Mam’s looking at me straight on. Her eyelashes ain’t never grew back, which makes her eyes look even bigger, and when Mam blinks, I realize we got the same eyes. Her mouth works like she’s chewing, and she swallows and grimaces again.
“You ain’t never going to have that problem.”
While she talking, I want to tell her about the boy. Want to ask her what she thinks I should do about Richie, but I don’t want to worry her, don’t want to put another thing on her when it’s taking everything in her to bear the pain, which I can see now. Like she’s floating on her back in an ocean of it. Like her skin’s a hull eaten hollow with barnacles, and the pain’s seeping through. Filling. Pushing her down and down and down. There’s a sound outside the window, and the blades of the box fan cut it as it carries into the room. Chopping it up. Sound like a baby crying. I look out and Richie’s passing under the window, letting out one little cry and then gulping in air. And then he’s letting out another cry, this one sounds like a cat yowling, and then gulping in air. He touches the bark of each pine tree as he passes up underneath it.
“Mam? After you . . .” I can’t bring myself to say it, so I talk around it. Richie moans. “After, where you going to go?” Richie stops and lists. He’s staring up at the window, his face like a shattered plate; Casper barks off in the distance, a series of high yips. Richie rubs his neck. Mam looks at me and startles like a horse: for her, this means her eyelids jump.
“Mam?”
“You ain’t let that dog get into my garden, did you, Jojo?” she whispers.
“No, ma’am.”
“Sounds like he treed a cat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kayla slides off my lap, walks to the fan, and puts her mouth on it. Every time Richie lets out a little catlike yowl, she hoots back. She laughs as the fan chops it up. Richie gets up, hands still kneading his throat, and walks, crooked and limping, right underneath the window.
“After, Mam,” I say. “What happens when you pass away?”
I couldn’t bear her being a ghost. Couldn’t take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn’t take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck. Couldn’t bear to see Leonie sit on her without seeing, light up a cigarette, blow smoke rings in the warm, still air. Michael stealing her whisks and spatulas to cook in one of the sheds.
“It’s like walking through a door, Jojo.”
“But you won’t be no ghost, huh, Mam?” I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking’s bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow.
Richie is rubbing the screen, his hand sliding from side to side. Kayla giggles.
“Can’t say for sure. But I don’t think so. I think that only happens when the dying’s bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it’s so awful even God can’t bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.” She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. “That ain’t my way.”
I rub Mam’s arm and the skin slides with my finger. Too thin.
“That don’t mean I won’t be here, Jojo. I’ll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that’s gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop’s mama and daddy.”
There’s a growl and a hacking bark come from underneath the house, from underneath the floorboards, and I know Casper’s back and in the crawl space between the cinder blocks: a black shadow in the dusty dark.
“How?”
“Because we don’t walk no straight lines. It’s all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.” Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. “My son.”
Richie jerks away from the window and backs up, stumbling like an old man. His arms out in front of him. Casper saying: Wrong! No smell! Wingless bird. Walking worm. Back! I stop rubbing. Mam looks back at me like she can see me clear through the pain. Like she looked at me when I was younger and I lied to her when I got caught having a who-can-pee-the-furthest-up-the-wall contest in the boys’ bathroom at school.
“You ever seen something like that? Something like a ghost?” Mam wheezes. “Something you thought was strange?”
Richie’s climbing the tree like a rope. Gripping the young pine with his insoles, pushing, his hands flat to the feathered bark. Inching up. Swinging his leg around and sitting on a low branch, his arms and legs still wrapped around the trunk. The tree holding him like a baby. He yelps at Casper.