Crescent City Connection

once.
    She could barely remember her own thin body or her childhood. Even Delavon’s memory was fading. Dorise prided herself on living in the present.
    “How was school?”
    “Good. You know about Passover?”
    “Somethin’ in the Bible.”
    “They still have it, Mama. Lady come in and tell us all about it.”
    “Well, ain’t that nice.”
    “Some days be better than other days.” Dorise didn’t know if she meant school or her own state of mind. Shavonne had watched her father die, shot to death in their living room.
    Dorise said, “Honey, you still dreamin’?”
    Slowly, reluctantly, Shavonne nodded, but half-heartedly, only a couple of times.
    “You don’t call me no more.” At first her daughter had screamed out in the night, terrified, desperate to be reassured.
    “Ain’t no point, Mama. I know it’s a dream. Ain’t nothing you can do.” She was looking at her lap.
    Dorise said nothing, wondering what all this meant. It could mean her daughter was growing up a little, getting over what had happened. But something about the way Shavonne spoke sounded so calm, so resigned, it worried her. She wasn’t sure why, but it gave her the creeps.
    She said, “Now don’t you be like that. Mama be right there. Right in a minute. Promise me now.”
    “Okay.” But she didn’t raise her eyes. She was such a good girl. Some things just weren’t fair.
    “Tell you what. Maybe Chantelle like to come over. You like that, precious?”
    The way Shavonne nodded was much like she had before, when Dorise asked her if she still dreamed—slow and not very convincing.
    “What’s the matter, baby?”
    “Nothin’, Mama.”
    Chantelle’s mama said why didn’t Shavonne come over there, spend the night even, give Dorise a night off? And Shavonne seemed to like that idea—but Dorise had a hard time reading her these days.
    The upshot was, Dorise found herself home alone, something that hadn’t occurred since before Shavonne was born, maybe. Nobody was there—not her sister, not anybody. She could take a nap if she wanted.
    But Dorise wasn’t the napping kind.
I could make gumbo,
she thought.
Then we’d have some for the weekend.
    I could call Troy.
    Troy was a man she’d met at her sister’s house, a neighbor, with whom she’d had a date or two. There was something about him she liked.
    Yeah
, said her sister.
Somethin’ hang down between his legs.
    Dorise said, “How I know about that? I ain’t even seen what he got down there.”
    She thought,
I might like to, though,
and the thought scared her a little bit. She hadn’t been to bed with anyone but Delavon in ten years.
    I need to get to know him better.
    She called him at work. “Hey, Troy. I’m gon’ be down at Jack’s later on.” A bar near her sister’s.
    “I was just thinkin’ about you.”
    “You were?”
    “Whatchew want to go to Jack’s for? Why don’t I pick you up, take you someplace nice?”
    “I cain’t be late, now.”
    He laughed. “Dorise, you worry too much.”
    They went out and had crawfish and beer. Before, they’d been to hear music, or to a party. They hadn’t talked much yet. She knew what Troy did, he had a good job driving a bus, and he knew she was a widow with a little girl, but he didn’t know about Delavon—or anything about her, really.
    She was sitting there working on her crawfish, poking at the tail joints, delicately separating meat from shell, when he said, “You got pretty hands, Dorise. I been watchin’ ’em.”
    She didn’t know what to think. “That mean you don’t like my face.”
    He laughed. “You funny, you know that? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like your face. But you got pretty hands, too.”
    He reached out and grabbed one of them. “Know what I like? You don’t put all that polish and shit on ’em.”
    Her sister did. Her nails were royal purple one day, pussy-pink the next, and half the time they had designs on them. Dorise giggled. “Little moons and stars—you don’t like that? Gold-colored fleur-de-lis?”
    “I like nice brown hands. Brown like God made ’em.” He turned her hand over. “Nice soft pink palms.”
    He rubbed her palm with his finger and it gave her a funny feeling, the sort she’d almost forgotten. But she was embarrassed. She pulled her hand away.
    “Dorise, what you do with those hands?”
    “You don’ know?”
    “You never told me.”
    She could hardly believe it. “I work for Uptown Caterers.” She said the name and everything