The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (29 page)

“I'm scared, Maw Maw.” She presses the back of my hand to her cheek, and I think maybe she could love me in spite of everything, Travis and the letters and all the secrets I've kept. “We're already here,” I say. “Can I just see what the doctor says? They might give me medicine.”

“Won't give you no medicine.” She shakes her head with a certainty that angers me. She's been wrong before, thought the Linzer baby would be healthy, but it came to Mrs. Linzer blue, stillborn; she could be wrong about this.

“You don't want me to play anymore,” I say. “I heard you on the phone with Coach last summer. You've been looking for an excuse. You hate the game, you always have.”

She clucks her tongue. “Basketball's the least of my concerns, Tee Mercy.”

“Well, it's not the least of
mine,
” I say.
“
And this guy's a doctor, a brain doctor. He's going to help me.”

“The doctor won't do a thing for you. He
can't.
But if you need to hear it from a stranger to believe it, so be it.”

Once the hours of tests have been completed, we four sit in the hospital room awaiting results, Beau, Annie, Maw Maw, and me. Though weary, I'm filled with manic energy; we're so close to an answer that each minute spent waiting feels like it's been stretched into a fourth dimension. Finally, Dr. Joel returns, a stack of papers in his hands. He tells us that our brains look healthy on MRI, that the EEGs are normal, that our
spells
aren't related to brain malfunction, which is a good thing. When Beau presses him for a diagnosis, he says that with cases like this, it's often a process of elimination, and we can now eliminate brain damage, epilepsy, tumors.

“But can't you give me a prescription?” I ask. “Look at my arm! I'm sick. I need help!” Panic blooms in my gut.

“Unfortunately, there's no treatment I can administer at this time, because you are healthy, according to the tests.”

I glance at Maw Maw, but her eyes are on the floor, hands clasped in front of her. She was right, the doctor can't save me, not in time for Tuesday's game.

Dr. Joel looks at me and Annie with sympathetic eyes. “I'm sure these spells are scary. These kinds of physiological symptoms can force us to slow down and take a good look at our lives . . .” He pauses to pull a business card from his pocket and suspend it in the middle of our small circle. “I suggest you call this woman, Dr. Frances Ducharme.”

Beau snatches the card, scrutinizes it. “A headshrinker?” he says.

“So you think we're nuts, Doctor?” Annie asks. She's trying to sound tough, sarcastic, but I remember how often she's turned to me after a confession to ask,
Am I crazy?
I know she's thinking of Mrs. Putnam shut up in her satiny bedroom, and she's frightened.

“No, I don't, Annie,” the doctor says. “But there are forces within and without us, acting on our body and mind. What I know is that Dr. Ducharme can provide people with the tools to deal with those things that lie within us.”

At this, Maw Maw breaks her silence. “Funny,” she says. “When I was a girl, that role belonged to Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Joel chortles, but Maw Maw looks at him with raised brows, withering his laughter.

“Why don't you just lock us up and give us shock treatment, like the olden days,” Annie says. “Not too olden, though.
Daddy
had it done to Mama when she had her breakdown, didn't you?”
Daddy
like she's cussing.

“Hold your tongue, Anne,” Beau snarls.

“Once you realized keeping her locked in the castle was making her a little loony, right?”

Beau's face goes purple; I can see a blood vessel pulsing in his veiny eye.

“Annie,” Dr. Joel says in such a measured way that the word falls like a blanket over the fire that has just ignited between father and daughter.

“We're
sick,
” Annie says, turning back to Dr. Joel. “We need medicine.”

“The man just said you weren't sick,” Beau says. “He doesn't have time for your poor-little-rich-girl act, so you're going to have to shape up and start—”

“Start what,
Dad
?” she says. “Start behaving like a mayor's daughter? Like a governor's daughter? Maybe if you weren't running, I wouldn't be getting called in by the police!”

“Don't fool yourself, Anne Elizabeth,” Beau says. “I already called Sanchez on it, but he denied pulling a stunt, and I believe him. You're getting called in because you're a whore and everyone in this town knows it.” Annie looks stricken. He turns back to Dr. Joel. “I
expect
you practice doctor/patient confidentiality.”

Annie jumps off the examination table and flees. Nobody says a word to stop her.

“We thank you for your time, Doc,” Beau says. “You've given us all the information we need.” He's recovered his politician's glibness. “Let's go, Evelia.” He puts a sheltering arm around her and escorts her to the door. She goes without a word because she has no questions for the doctor; he has confirmed what she knew all along.

“Goodbye,” I say to Dr. Joel.

The others are already in the hallway, but I hesitate. I don't want to leave, because what waits for me outside the door is too dark to contemplate. But then Dr. Joel pats me on the shoulder, tells me to try and get some rest, and that the whole town's proud of me, no matter what happens.

A
T THE HOSPITAL,
Illa hides out in the cafeteria. From there, she can see the entrance that Mercy and Annie will have to pass through in order to leave. She knows she's taking a risk by being there, especially if Annie sees her, but at this point she's so thoroughly freaked by what has happened in the last twenty-four hours that she's willing to brave Annie's barbs to find out what's wrong with the girls.

Restless, Illa wanders the food line, examining the hard-tack biscuits and lumpy gravy, the mound of powdered eggs forming a dark boogery crust under the heat lamp's orange rings. She should eat something—already the day has a fever-dream quality from lack of sleep and sustenance—but she takes a weird pleasure in denying herself, as if this act of fasting can somehow cure Mercy and fix everything. Back at the table, she half watches the news, some PR robot from the refinery who wants to reassure everyone that nothing out of the ordinary has happened at the plant to cause the smell and they should just go about their daily lives.

When Illa sees Annie, dressed in a hospital gown, walk into the women's restroom at the far end of the cafeteria, she contemplates diving beneath the Formica table but doesn't. Even though Annie will give her a hard time for asking, Illa has to know how Mercy is doing, and at this point, Annie is the only person who can tell her, so she walks past the other bedraggled diners to the restroom.

The door opens on silent hinges to reveal a corridor of stalls, at the end of which is a bank of clay-colored sinks. Annie has ducked her head near one of the faucets and is splashing water on her face. Afterward, she stands with both hands on the counter's edge, her head sunk below her shoulders, so that from a certain angle, it looks like she's been decapitated. She kicks the tiled wall beneath the counter, hard.
One-two one-two,
her head bobs to the right.
One-two one-two.
“Stop it stop it stop it stop it,” Annie growls.

Instinctively, Illa takes a step toward Annie. It's upsetting to watch someone in a bad state like this, even someone upon whom you have wished a mild kind of harm—stubbed toe, failing grade, pinkeye, bad-hair day. The physical antics are unsettling, but it's the inhuman cry that sends Illa scrambling out of hiding to where Annie squats, head between the knees, breathing hard. Unsure what to do, Illa waits for Annie to look up and notice her, but a minute passes and Annie doesn't stir from her position.
Huh,
Annie says finally, head jerking up. She loses her balance and falls backward onto the floor, where she sits, stunned, legs splayed out in front of her like a little kid. She looks around the empty bathroom, her face scrunched, crinkling the skin around her right eye, mouth a rictus of terror. It's unclear whether she's registered Illa's presence.

“Annie, do you need help?” Illa asks. “Should I get someone?”

Annie's expression morphs from fear to surprise, and she blinks repeatedly. Struggling to stand, she eventually regains her footing. From somewhere outside comes the tomcat whinging of a siren.

“How long have you been there?” Annie asks, her eyes wet and unfocused.

“Not long,” Illa lies. “I just . . . You should get help.”

One-two one-two
bobbles Annie's head.

“Fu . . . Fuck off,” Annie stutters. “Just fuck off.”

“I was just wondering,” Illa ventures. “Is Mercy—”

“LEAVE OR I'LL CALL THE COPS ON YOU, STALKER!” Annie bellows, this time stomping her sneakered foot threateningly in Illa's direction.
One-two one-two.

Illa backs quickly out of the room. She needs air. Darting through the doors leading to the parking lot, she flinches against the watery light. The cold front that arrived last night wraps its icy shawl of breeze around her. In her thin T-shirt, she shivers violently. Watching first Mercy and then Annie taken by these strange spells, she's felt so helpless. She needs a task, something simple she can start and finish. She decides to go to the gym and do the laundry left over from that morning's truncated practice.

She takes a few woozy steps toward the car, then feels her knees buckle.
I'm fainting,
she thinks just before crumpling to the pavement. She's out only a few seconds, at least that's what the guy hovering over her says. She recognizes him as the reporter from the
Flare
who covers the basketball games.

“It's like you knew you were going down,” he says. “Your head fell against your arm. It was a close call. Whew.” Reaching out a hand to help her up, he asks if she's okay.

“It's been a long day,” she says, taking his hand and standing. She's so tired that the guy looks fuzzy around the edges.

“It's only eleven o'clock.”

“That's what I mean.”

“How's Mercy doing?” he asks.

“I only saw Annie.”

“Were you at the practice when Annie collapsed?”

“Yes, yeah . . .”

“I heard she went down like a ton of bricks. I got Wood and Gomez on the record about it. They were pretty shook up. What's your name?”

“Illa,” she says.

“You're the manager, I recognize you now.” He pauses. “You fainted. Are you sick, too? Is Mercy contagious? Are there more sick girls besides you and Annie?”

“I'm not sick,” she says peevishly. “I'm just tired, that's all.” She's confused; he's confusing her. She wants to get to the gym, throw the practice jerseys into the wash, then sit with her back against the warm, rumbling machine until she falls asleep.

“I've got to go,” she says, stepping around him and into the car. She starts the motor but idles there, watching until he returns to his vehicle and drives away. Just before she puts the car in gear, she sees Evelia and Annie walk out. Illa sinks herself lower into the seat. Beau comes next, followed by Mercy. They've been released from the hospital; that's a good sign. And Mercy is walking on her own; but it's
how
she walks that catches Illa's attention. A kind of hobble-skip, apparently adopted to help counterbalance the swinging arm. As Mercy makes her way across the lot, she grimaces periodically.

Beau and Annie roar out of the lot in his black Tahoe. When Mercy and Evelia pull out, Illa glides after the Lincoln, making sure to leave some distance between the cars. They head east toward Chocolate Bayou and the stilt house. Once arrived, Illa parks halfway down the block in the encompassing shadow of an ancient cypress, hunching below the dash. She sees Evelia usher Mercy inside. The woman looks up and down the block as if she can feel herself being watched, then shuts the door after them. Illa's skin prickles. What, exactly, is going on? She decides to wait there to see if she can find out.

A
T HOME, MAW MAW
watches as I change into my pajamas and get under the covers. She tells me I'm to fast, pray, and rest, and that she will join me in this period of cleansing.

“We've got much work to do, hard work, to fend off these demons that want your body. No school this week. Need to keep you away from those other girls. So long as the killer walks unpunished through this town, more girls will fall.”

She tells me she's going up to the church for an emergency meeting with Pastor Parris so she can tell him about her latest vision and call on him to harness the prayers of the congregation. As soon as I hear the Lincoln sputter away, I slip out of bed. I believe in the power of prayer, but I'm running out of time. If Maw Maw's right and this is a curse, there's only one person left who might be able to help me get back on the court. Lucille Cloud.

No time to change out of pajamas. I tuck the money I've been saving for new Jordans into the elastic waistband of the pants, then slide behind the wheel of the Accord and race for the woods. As I drive, a verse from Leviticus runs through my head:
I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut him off from their people.
But I'm cut off already. I ache for Travis but can't go to him. Annie betrayed me. Maw Maw thinks she can pray me to healing but doesn't know I'm not pure anymore.

It's dusky beneath the canopy of trees, the Century Oak tall and broad in the middle of a small clearing. I think of Lucille's hound shot dead yesterday, and I'm glad he's not there to announce my arrival. I get out of the car and notice immediately the eerie, suffocating silence of the woods. Inland away from the Gulf breeze, the smell from the refinery is so overpowering, I hold my shirt over my nose.

“Well, well, well,” Lucille says when she pulls open the door to her cabin to find me standing there in my plaid flannels. “Look who's come from Grandma's house to visit the Big Bad Wolf.”

Huh huh huh
. I must look desperate, because Lucille doesn't make another smart remark, only pushes her tangled hair out of her intense little fox face and stares at my arm. Though she isn't much older than me, her face speaks of centuries I haven't lived through. Perhaps it's being alone, or living at the mercy of the elements, or perhaps it's as they say: that she's a witch who's not in her early twenties but is well over three hundred years old, born in this territory's lawless age, when the Gulf foamed red with the blood of Indians and settlers alike, when Jean Lafitte's pirates ruled.

Lucille raises a toothpick to her mouth, and I shy away from her hand, thinking she means to hit me. She ignores my jumpiness, sucking on the toothpick. “What's going on here?” she asks, indicating my arm. She steps toward me.

“Don't . . .” I say, sidestepping her advance.

She puts her hands up. “Fine by me, but I don't imagine you came out here to chew the fat.”

I shake my head. “I . . . I need help.”

She assesses me before continuing. “The police searched this place upside down for the stuff that killed the baby. They wanted names of all the girls who've ever bought anything from me.” She laughs bitterly. “Like I keep a log or something.” She looks at me, suddenly serious. “If I help you, you've got to get Evelia off my back. I don't want them troubling me again. All's I want is to get left alone.”

“I'll make sure she leaves you alone,” I promise, knowing that if I mention Lucille's name to Maw Maw, she'll take it as proof the devil's won me.

“Let me take a look, hon,” she says. To my surprise, she doesn't start with the arm, instead checking my glands, pulse, temperature, examining my tongue, my irises. Finally, she takes my arm in her hands and holds it away from her like it's a bone she's excavated. “You been to see a doc yet?” she says at last.

I tell her about the doctors and tests, how they didn't find anything wrong. She nods and steps back, still assessing me. Then, because I feel as if I might burst if I don't, I ask what she can give me to make it go away so I can play come Tuesday. She goes to a plywood shelf nailed into the trunk of the tree and pulls down a red lacquered box, sorting through its contents until she finds what she's looking for: a purple stone encased in thin wiring, hanging from a leather strip. She holds it out to me. “It's a protector amulet,” she says. “An amethyst.”

Reluctantly, I take it. “Don't you have some herbs or something? I need something strong . . .”

“Hon, all your vitals are good, you got the standing heart rate of a marathoner. You ask me, I think it's the negative energy of all these—”

“You don't understand.” I pace the narrow cabin, the amethyst swinging as I walk. “I can't . . . This is just
a necklace.
”

“Mercy, listen to me,” she says. “It's not just a necklace. It's a blessed stone, but you have to really
believe
.”

“Don't you talk to me about belief!” I'm crying now, filled with despair.

“I think you better go,” she says, pushing past me to open the door.

As I leave, our fingers touch; I feel a sharp shock and draw back. On the wind, a gamey scent, pungent and sickening. Some unseen animal moves in the underbrush.

“If you're going to take the stone, you have to pay me for it.”

Still clutching the necklace, I reach for the wad of cash in my waistband, scatter the bills on the dirt. It was a mistake to come here. I stumble back toward the car. My hand's shaking so bad I can't fit the key in the lock. The sneezy feeling, then an attack, my arm flapping
one-two-three.
I howl up toward the treetops, hurl the necklace away. This arm!
This damned arm.
I squeeze myself hard at the wrist, dig my nails into the skin, clench my teeth until I'm sure they will fall from my mouth like bits of smashed porcelain.

If this arm must move, I'll move it!
I'll
move it! Again and again and again, I swing the arm against the side of the car, and Lord it feels good, this dull pain in the meat of me.
Thump thump thump.
Eyes closed, I swing it so hard and fast that there's no time for the flapping;
I
control
you; I
control
you.

Someone's arms around my shoulders, holding tight. I keep my eyes shut.

“It's okay, Mercy. You're okay. You're okay. Let's sit.
Shhhh
. Sit, now.”

I let myself be guided to the ground, my arm numb but still. I curl into the lap in front of me. When I finally look up, there's Illa, her thin face so near I can see the texture of her freckles. She takes my hand in hers, strokes my hair.

“Will you stay with me, please stay just a few minutes?” I ask.

“Of course, Mercy.”

“Is there anyone else here?”

“No, no one. Just me.”

“But it feels like there's someone else. I feel someone breathing.”

“It's just me, Mercy. I promise.”

“I need help, Illa. Please, stay close.”

She squeezes my hand, hard. “I can do that. I can definitely do that, Mercy.”

“I'm all alone.”

“I'm here, Mercy. I'm here for you.”

“You're not scared?”

“Of you? No. Never.”

“That you might catch whatever it is I've got.”

“I'm not scared.”

“I am, Illa. I'm terrified.”

THAT NIGHT THE
tics get so bad they keep me awake. They come on every few minutes, shuddering through me, making my jaw clench and my whole body tighten while the arm does its freak thing.

After I hear Maw Maw's door close for the night, I wander into the kitchen, fill a gallon bag with ice, and set it heavy on my wrist. For a minute it feels good, but then with one swift jerk, the bag slides off my arm and onto the table. In the living room, I lie on the carpet and wedge my arm under the couch. But when another round of tics start, the pain is too much. After I pull my arm out, there's a dark red line where the wooden frame dug into the flesh of my upper arm.

I give up trying to stop the fits and lie back on the floor. The hardness of the surface feels good at my back. I want the peace of sleep so bad, but my churning mind and body won't allow it. What was Illa doing in the forest? In the moment, I'd been so grateful for her calming presence, her familiar face, but thinking on it now, it makes no sense. Still, she stayed with me until I felt better, and then she drove me home, where I showed her how to sneak up the back way and she boosted me to the balcony. Before we said goodbye, I made her swear not to tell a soul, and she said she would never. I believe her; she hasn't told anyone about Charmaine's letters.

It's strange that this person I've never thought much about now knows so much about me, but there's something in Illa that makes me trust her. A gentleness you don't find in many people. She takes such care with everything she does, folding our uniforms into crisp rectangles, winding bandages around ankles. With a label maker she borrowed from the faculty lounge, she put our names on the water bottles so we wouldn't share germs and get sick, and on game days, she makes glittery signs for our lockers. I hear she's a nurse to her mama, which is refreshing somehow; most girls are
me me me
all the time. After her kindness in the forest, I feel bad for never truly noticing her before, but she's so
small,
and she ghosts in and out of the locker room, never really participating. When she put her hands to my face to wipe the tears away, I was almost surprised to realize she was flesh and blood like the rest of us.

I must have fallen asleep, because Sunday morning arrives with Maw Maw squatting beside me, telling me
wake up, wake up
, asking if I'm all right. She brings me water, and I'm careful to take it with my left hand so it doesn't spill.

Maw Maw tells me that after talking to Pastor Parris yesterday evening and giving it some thought, she's decided to withdraw me from school. “Only two months till Judgment Day. We've got to get you right before then. Pastor Parris has a plan, but he needs to do the proper preparations.”

“What preparations? What's the plan?”

I'm hopeful but wary. I recall the girl in Nacogdoches, the one whose dress supposedly caught fire.

“When I have the details, I'll surely share them,” she says, taking my empty glass back to the kitchen.

So it's all but settled now. There won't be four more years of ball; there won't even be one more game. Just two more months on this earth. This can't be how it ends, though, everything is happening too fast.
Please, slow down, I need more time,
I beg, though I don't know who I'm pleading with now that I can't pray.
One-two-three,
my arm flops down.

I haul myself up onto the couch. “Let me tell Coach in person. At least let me do that.”

There should be a ceremony to mark the end of basketball, the death of this thing I've loved so long. Like so many things, however, it will slip away without fanfare.

“Come straight home after, don't tarry,” Maw Maw answers. “We must take care when the devil walks abroad.”

Soon I'm blasting down residential streets until I hit the seawall. During the season, Coach practically lives at the gym on weekends, reviewing game tape or devising plays, so I head for the school to find her.

It's all over now; I must try to forget the girl I was, the one who was beautiful and dangerous, who could bring herself to imagine all the glories of the world but only with a basketball in her hands. I pass the turnoff to Travis's house; the happiness of the summer seems so distant, another land I traveled to once. If what we had was only lust, then why do thoughts of him linger and deepen far past the first physical pulse of my body in response to his memory?

But if I hope to rise to heaven with Maw Maw in two months' time, I have to stop this thinking. Though she didn't say the word, it hung heavy between us:
hell.
Without intervention, the destiny of sinners like me.