"No." Dempsey's breath came out in a whoosh of sound and air. I'd never seen him look so heavy with fear. But the gray in his eyes got bigger and he took to running his hand along the back of his neck as though he had to hold himself back to keep from screaming. "No. You can't do that." Mama seemed down with him, had tugged on my arm and pulled me back toward the street and away from Dempsey, but he kept on us, following along. When he spoke, his voice went high and shrieking. "You can't put me out. You can't … "
"Cher, how can I put you out?" Mama said, dropping my arm to face Dempsey. "You don't live with us. You need to go back to your own people. Be with your own people."
"You can't … Sookie..." He stopped, reaching toward me. He'd almost touch my hand before Mama slapped his hand away, and stood between us like a stone. Dempsey stepped back and kept his gaze down, as though he didn't dare look at her. Like he couldn't stand to see her face when he begged. His voice came out all ragged. "Sookie … she's my people. You … you all are."
"Dempsey, no … " I said, covering my mouth. He broke my heart just then. His life and ours had gotten tangled up together when we were kids. Bastie had cleaned his busted face and Mama had fed him when his own people wouldn't. Now she was telling him he wasn't wanted anymore and the look on his face, the streak of hurt and sorrow breaking his stubborn frown until tears made his eyes look like glass was more than I could stand to watch.
Mama pushed me out of the alley so I couldn't see what she did to Dempsey, so I couldn't tell how she'd get him to leave. But I heard what he said clear as day and each sound he made broke my heart a little more.
"She's all I have, Mrs. Lanoix. Sookie's all I have in the world."
Me and Dempsey came from different worlds. We moved together like otters, floating side by side, letting the world around come over us, like a wave, rushing, passing and the whole time we held on to each other. But that was the things that children did. That's what we'd done when were kids and didn't know about things like family and anger and the differences that kept people apart. We didn't know about money and poverty and struggling because all the things we'd needed for most of our lives had been given to us. Struggle had been only as important as what game we would play in the backyard of my Bastie's home. That had been all we fretted over. It had been just as important, just as real as it should have been, to little kids.
But now we weren't' kids. We were moving toward something that I couldn't name and in the middle of all that, there were those curious, searching eyes and the people dead set against anything that would keep Dempsey and me together. They hated us. They hated who we were and who we wanted to be even if they didn't understand why. It was the way of things, for good or bad and who were we to change the way the world had always turned?
I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it.
Mrs. Matthews had not died, not yet. Mama likened her to an old rooster strutting around, teasing death because she was too ornery, too stubborn to give the reaper even a hint that she was ready to leave this place. I wanted to be like her one day, when my hair was white and thin and my eyes had gone all snowy blue.
There was a whopper of a storm brewing, the sick breath of it raspy in the wind as folk all around the city made their plans. Some would stay, wait it out, not fearing what would come because something always did, so why run. Some had already left, more vexed by the calmness in the air and the low silence that had grown throughout the city over night, it seemed. The calm before the storm.
For her part, Mama thought it best to keep me hidden in Treme' where neither Joe Andres nor Dempsey could find me. I knew her worry. It was the same as mine but that didn't mean I was altogether happy that it was Mrs. Matthew's place, too small already for her and Bobby, that Mama locked me up inside. Everywhere I went, or thought of going, Bobby went too. There was no easing away from my little chaperone, and I had to listen to her ask a million damn questions about my brother and what sort of girls I thought he'd go for.
By the third day and another dang round of "oh Sylv is so … " I cooked up a plan to break away from my annoying shadow and get on with heading back to my mama's shop, worry and danger be damned.