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  "What happened?" she asked. "Is everything all right?"

  Paul didn't want her to talk, neither, 'cause I seen how he clenched his jaw hard so the muscles showed through on his face.

  He turned to me and said, "Pack your things and get out of here."

  Me and Lisa spoke at the same time. Lisa said, "Paul, it's after midnight. You can't just throw her out."

  I said, "Where I gonna go? I ain't got no place to go."

  Paul tore at his hair, he were so angry, and I ain't never seen nobody do that before. He growled and tore at his hair. Then he turned on me and yelled in my face, "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

  I got out. I didn't take nothin' with me but what I had on, but I didn't go far. I lay on the floor outside Paul's door and fell to sleep soon as my head touched the cool wood floor.

  I DIDN'T WAKE till I heard Lisa say, "Thank God."

  I opened my eyes and looked straight up and saw Paul and Lisa standing above me, in the doorway. I groaned. I felt all banged up everywhere on my body, including in my stomach. I sat up, and Paul backed up into the apartment a bit.

  Lisa squatted down next to me. "Are you all right? Come on, let me help you up."

  Didn't want Paul's little housewife helping me do nothin', so I pulled away from her and said, "I be fine if you could stop breathin' on me."

  Lisa looked up at Paul and said, "You want me to stay?"

  Paul said, "No, I can handle it."

  I said, "I ain't a it."

  Paul said, "Get up and get inside." His voice were his hard voice, but it sounded flat and bored, too, like he really didn't care what I did.

  I groaned and stood up and got inside. Him and Lisa said their sweet good-byes, whispering to each other and kissing real quick Then Paul turned and come inside with me.

  "You cannot live here with me any longer," he said. He were still in his sweatpants and undershirt, and his hair were all poky. He were scowling at me good, but with his silly hair standing up, I weren't scared.

  He went to the counter to show me my stuff all packed up and waiting for me. "I put your things in here," he said, patting a backpack "I put some money in the front zipper. You can keep the pack"

  I come into the room more. "Don't need your money or that pack. I can get me a job any old day. I don't have to go on your stupid-ass New York trip to make me some money. I can take care of myself."

  "That's a laugh."

  "I been doing fine without you for all these years, I can do fine again. Anyways, thanks for all your music lessons. They was nice." I pulled the pack off the counter and put it on my shoulder.

  Paul crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Yes, it was nice. Why did you have to ruin it?"

  "You be the one who ruined it. You the one had Lisa come over."

  Paul gave a big sigh and shook his head like he didn't know what to say.

  I looked at his feet. He had long knobby toes that looked like he went all the time in too tight shoes. I shrugged and said kinda quiet, "I don't know why I always ruin things. Don't know I'm ruining something till I ruin it. I don't know why it be my fault Jed be dead. I don't know why." I looked up at Paul, and he let go his arms from his chest and let them hang loose. It made his whole body sag.

  "The drugs, Leshaya, the drugs! We had an agreement, remember? I thought you liked staying here. I thought you wanted to change."

  "I never agreed to nothin', and I didn't make Jed take them tranquilizers he stole. He done all that on his own. You just lookin' for someone to blame 'cause you sorry he dead."

  Paul exploded when I said that. His arms was flappin', and he said, "Yeah, I am! He was my oldest friend! You killed my best friend, and you don't show an ounce of remorse!"

  "I didn't kill nobody! He were your best friend, so why didn't you help him? Why you let him go on all his binges? Why didn't you get him to a rehab place or something if you cared so much? You was his best friend."

  Paul's eyes looked wild and hot. "How was I supposed to stop him? What should I have done, tied the both of you up?"

  "What were I supposed to do? How come it be my fault just 'cause I were with him? How were I supposed to know them drugstore pills don't mix good with alcohol? What if we both died? What if I took them pills, too? Then who's fault it be? Yours! We was at your place, and I were livin' with you. So goin' by the way you think, it would be your fault. It be all your fault!"

  Paul held his hands up and said, "All right, let's stop this. Okay, you're right, it wasn't just your fault."

  "Damn straight!"

  "But the things you did, you are responsible for them."

  I felt too tired to keep standing up, so I flopped down in one of Paul's chairs, thinking he were gonna yell at me for sitting, but he didn't. He just come over in front of me and kept talking and yelling, with his hands flinging here and there to help him make his point.

  He said, "What you do doesn't just affect you! You hurt me and the band, too. The trip to New York, remember? Do you ever think even a minute ahead?" He picked up a pillow and threw it back down on the couch. "Man!" he said. "What you do hurts anybody else who cares about you, not just you. Don't you get that?"

  "Well, that list ain't long. Got nobody caring about me, so I don't got to worry 'bout who I be hurtin'."

  "Agh!" Paul said, or something like that. "You don't let anybody care about you. You don't let anybody get close enough!"

  "Yeah, it be my fault again. Funny how it always be my fault."

  Paul raised up his hand. "Whose fault is it, then, if it isn't yours? Man!" He dropped hisself down on the couch. "Man!" he said again. He had his head back and were looking up at the ceiling. Then he lifted up and sat forward, looking at me again. "You know, you act like you're the only one. Like the whole world is against just you. Just because your life's been tough doesn't mean you're excused from being responsible. Like it or not, you do live in society."

  "Yeah, whatever," I said, and I shrugged 'cause I didn't know what he were meaning about that living-in-society stuff. I guess he thought when I said whatever, that it meant I didn't care 'bout what he said, 'cause he sprung up from the couch like I just stepped on his one last nerve. He had his fists held tight on the sides of his body, like he were trying not to beat me up, and all these veins popped out his neck.

  "Get out!" he shouted, raising one of his stiff-angry arms and pointing at the door. "Go on, get your things and get out!"

  I knew he weren't gonna let me back in again, so I grabbed my stuff and left.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I WALKED TO THE Krispy Kreme doughnut shop and bought me a sack of doughnuts and coffee and sat outside in the garbage park to eat them. Were a cold day for what I had on—Paul's black jeans and his white undershirt. The sky were gray, and weren't nothin' blooming in the trees, and no birds singin'. Nobody else were in the park but me. I stuffed my last bite of doughnut in my mouth and tossed my sack and coffee cup on the ground with the rest of the garbage. I took Paul's pack and the diaper bag I come to him with, and walked along the street, and the wind blew cold at me.

  A old man who looked like he got one of his eyes shot out come walking toward me. I hung close to the building I were at, and he went on by, stinkin' of piss and old dead stuff. Right behind him a lady in a bright red coat come along walking fast, her high heels clicking on the sidewalk all smart and snappy sounding, like this be her special day. I wanted to follow her and see where she going so bright and fast like that, but I didn't. I kept walking the way I been walking till I come to a pay phone. I set my junk down, pulled out some quarters from my pocket, and paid the phone. I dialed Mama Linda's number—what else. I let it ring six times. I started to hang up, then I heard a voice on the line. I put the phone back to my ear.

  "Hello?" I said.

  "Hello?" Were a sleepy scratchy voice on the other end.

  "This is—this is Jane. This be Janie. Who this?"

  The voice sounded brighter. "Jane! My Jane? It's—this is your mama Linda!"
>
  "Oh hey, Mama," I said, trying to sound like I knew she gonna be there and I didn't care much about it.

  "Where are you? Are you here in Gulf Shores?"

  "No, ma'am. I'm in Atlanta."

  "Oh." Mama Linda said, and she sounded like she were sad, real sad.

  "But I were thinkin'—I were thinkin' I could come see you. Just, you know, come see you?"

  "Yeah? Well, good. Come on down. You remember where I live?"

  "No, don't remember nothin' but this number. But I can take a bus, and maybe you could pick me up at the station?"

  "I don't have a car anymore. You get a taxi and I'll pay for it, okay? I'm the street just after Orange Beach Way, on the right It's a little dead-end road. I'm the only house on it."

  "Yeah, okay. Well, okay—bye."

  "Yeah, bye."

  I hung up the phone and stared at it. I didn't move for a long time. I couldn't move for a long, long time.

  Chapter Forty Three

  THE TAXI DRIVER passed Mama Linda's road twice before he decided the little dirt path with all the tall grass growing along it, like nobody been on it for years, had to be Mama Linda's street. He turned onto the dirt and drove slow, catching the tall beach grass in his antenna.

  I stuck my hand out the window and let the grass hit my hand. Weren't but a bitty road. Mama Linda's house stood at the end. It were a wood house, beaten gray by lots of rain and wind and sand. It stood high up on stilts and had a long set of stairs leading up to the door.

  I didn't wait for Mama Linda to pay the driver, 'cause Paid had put me enough money in my pack to pay for the bus and taxi rides myself. So I paid, and the taxi backed up the street and out to the main road, 'cause there weren't nowhere to turn round first.

  I went slow up the steps of Mama Linda's house and stopped when I got to the top. From up there I could see the Gulf and people on the beach and seagulls flying round over them. Their screeching noise set my teeth to hurting. I turned away from the water and knocked on the door 'cause weren't no doorbell, and I waited. I knocked again. I waited again. Nobody come to the door. I didn't know if Mama Linda tricked me on purpose or her mind were just too blown to tell me straight where she lived.

  I looked in the window and saw a white room with beach-type furniture in it. The wood floor were painted a deep blue, and all the cloth on the chair cushions was blue and white. Everything were blue and white and yellow, bright yellow. t)idn't look like a room Mama Linda would have. Were too fresh-clean and cheerful, and warm looking.

  I knocked again' but nobody come. I tried the door and it opened. I stepped inside and called out, "Mama Linda? It's me. It Leshaya. I mean—it Janie." I kept walking through the room calling out, moving toward the kitchen I could see at the back "Mama Linda?" I saw a room to the right, and I looked in at it. Were a bedroom, but she weren't there. "Mama? Mama Linda, it's me, Janie."

  I come to a bathroom also off on the right side, then I come to the kitchen back of the main room with still another door on the right of it, but it were closed. I knocked on it. "Hey, Mama Linda? Hello?" I opened the door slow and looked in. The room were dark 'cause all the curtains be pulled, but I could see someone were laying in the bed. "Mama Linda? It me, Janie."

  A head lifted up from the pillow. "Janie? Little face? You got here so fast. I just hung up the phone with you." Her voice were sleepy-groany, like when we talked on the phone.

  "No, Mama Linda, that were hours ago. It be almost five o'clock"

  "Come here, let me see you. Open a curtain, will you? Let me see you."

  I pulled back the curtains and saw the ocean outta every window. I went to Mama Linda's bed. She raised up her arm to touch me, and I seen all her ugly old veins.

  "You sick?" I asked, even though I could see she were real side Weren't never more than skin and bones, anyway, but now she were hardly no skin, 'cause it were so thin-looking and had them veins popped out so ugly. She didn't much look like herself at all. She had just bits of hair and more veins on her head. Her neck looked too long, and her eyes looked deep and hollowed out. She blinked at me.

  "You're still pretty," she said to me. "You look just like me."

  I backed away from her bed. "No, I don't. What's wrong with you? You got some disease? You got that AIDS disease?"

  Mama Linda sighed, and it sounded like it come from so deep inside her body, like it be her last breath.

  I backed away some more.

  "Yeah, baby, I got AIDS." She smiled and her lower lip cracked open in the middle and blood come out. She grabbed a tissue off her bedside table and wiped her lips.

  "I cain't stay long," I said. "I just come to say hi, and then I gotta go, 'cause, see, I'm a singer. I got this song come out on the radio, and I gonna be goin' on tour with it."

  Mama Linda nodded. "It's all right. I'm not going to be hanging around here much longer myself."

  "Yeah. Shouldn't you be in a hospital or something?"

  "No. I want to be here. This is my home. I've come back home. Do you remember this house? It was your grandparents' house, remember?"

  "Don't remember no grandparents."

  "Right, they both died before you were a year old." Mama Linda lay her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes like any minute she gonna fall back asleep—or fall off dead. "They left me the beach house, and my brother, Len, got the big house," she said. Her voice sounded tired of talking.

  "You got a brother?"

  "No, not really." She opened her eyes and looked round like she were hunting for something. "Now that Fm dying, he's sending me money, but last time I saw him was years and years ago. He lives in Italy." Mama Linda tried to laugh, and her lip cracked more and got to bleeding again. "Parents thought if I got the big house, I'd sell it for drugs. The place had been in the family since before the Civil War. Brother Len didn't even wait for their graves to get cold. He sold it and moved to Italy." Mama Linda sounded all out of breath. She took in a couple of deep breaths, and I watched her chest rise and fall, and rise and fall, big and bony.

  "Here I am, now, and I still got the beach house," she said.

  "Yeah," I said, "you still got the beach house. Sold off other things, but you still got the beach house."

  Mama Linda lifted her head. She dabbed at her bloody hp with her tissue. "I fixed it up myself," she said, like she didn't get my meaning. "I was always good at making a place look nice. Look around, you'll see. I could have been an interior decorator." She looked at her tissue, then looked at me. "Could you pour me some water? Here, on the table."

  I looked at her bedside table with the phone and the tissues and the pitcher of water and the glass. There was bottles and bottles of pills there, too, and I didn't want to touch nothin' of it. Her AIDS germs was all over the place. She were bleeding right there in front of me. I turned and run. I run out her room and straight out the house.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I HURRIED DOWN the stairs so fast, my diaper bag come off my shoulder and fell down in front of me, rolling down the steps. I were kinda leaning forward, reaching for it and chasing after it, so I didn't see the old lady standing at the bottom till I almost crashed into her. She had a bag of groceries in her hands. I stopped short and said, "Oh!"

  The lady smiled. She had a big nose. She said, "You're Janie, right? I'm Mrs. Trane. Your mother said you were coming. So|rry I wasn't here when you arrived. Would you take this for me?" She handed me the bag. "I've got another one in the car."

  I stood with the bag in my hand and watched her limp to her car, like she got one leg way shorter than the other one.

  The lady limped back toward me with her second bag of groceries and nodded for me to go on up the steps. "I'U follow," she said.

  "Oh. Well, okay, I'll take this bag up, but I ain't stayin', 'cause I got to be goin'."

  I climbed back up the stairs, and she come after me with her bag, making heavy clomping noises on the steps, so they creaked and groaned like they gonna bust apart. I went back to the kitchen
and set the groceries on the counter.

  Mama Linda called out, "Melissa? Janie came. I think I scared her off."

  Mrs. Trane set her bag down and went to the doorway of Mama Linda's room. "Nonsense," she said. "Your Janie's right here." She turned to me and made a motion for me to come to her. I come to the door but I didn't look in. I looked at my shoes, old plastic things I stole from a Kmart.

  "See, here she is." Then she said to me, "Your mama's so glad you've come. It's right for the two of you to patch things up now."

  I looked up. I saw Mama Linda sitting up in her bed. The pitcher of water were on the floor and so were the water. Her glass lay tipped over in her lap.

  The old lady limped into the room and picked up the pitcher. It were just a plastic thing, so it didn't break "Janie, get me a sponge off the sink" the lady said to me. "Let's clean this mess up for your mama."

  I did it. I got her the sponge. I come into the room and handed it to Mrs. Trane. She didn't take it. She nodded and said, "Yes, that's the one to use, good for you. Don't miss the bit under the bed. I'll go get dinner started." She headed out the room. "Linda, I hope you've got a big appetite tonight. I'm making lasagna."

  I got on the floor to clean up the water. I looked up at Mama Linda. Didn't think she ever in her life had a big appetite, but I knew I were hungry. I hadn't had nothin' since the sack of doughnuts I ate that morning.

  Mama Linda talked to me while I were sponging up her floor. "I didn't mean to scare you before, little face."

  "Didn't scare me. I got places to go."

  "I don't think so."

  I stood up and squeezed the sponge into the pitcher. "I told you I be a singer now. You don't believe me, turn on your radio." I got back on the floor and wiped up under the bed, holding my breath the whole time, case they be germs so close to the bed.

  "What I don't believe is if you had anywhere else to go, you'd be here."