Jazz Funeral

dance, throwing her hands up in the air, the only parts of her body that stood out of the crowd, that could possibly be identified. Why hadn’t she thought of that? In a fury, she jerked the ring off and tossed it into the crowd. “Finders keepers,” she hollered, and all might have been well if the finder hadn’t been a girl of nine or ten.
    “Mees, mees,” she screamed, and with a sinking heart. Melody realized that she was foreign, Jamaican perhaps, or African, that she didn’t speak English, and that, childlike, wanting desperately to do the right thing, she wouldn’t rest till she returned the ring. She was small, and fast too—she’d catch Melody and slow her down, keep her there being polite until the tracker could get to her.
    Melody turned around and shouted over her shoulder, “Keep it! It’s for you. Keep it, keep it!”
    The tracker was gaining. The girl stopped for a second and pointed, possibly telling the story to her mother or sister. Someone else, someone with more English, shouted, “Mees, mees! Your ring—I have your ring.”
    Melody tried again. “Keep it. It’s yours—wear it in good health.” She had learned the phrase from television.
    More people were chasing her now—a crowd of black people, shouting, most of them children. What irony, Melody thought, everyone Uptown was afraid of getting robbed by black people, and here was a whole fifth grade class and all their chaperones trying to chase her down to return her property.
    She was getting close to Congo Square now, the part of the Jazz and Heritage Festival dedicated to the African part of that heritage. The original had evolved from a slave market to a voodoo site and black culture center. This one had rethought the market idea and given it a more palatable twist. There were T-shirts for sale here, as everywhere at any festival, and some cassettes, and that was about the end of ordinary merchandise. The rest was all dashikis and djellabas and rattles and jewelry and curious musical instruments. It was a great place to shop; Melody could spend hours there. But right now it was about the last place she wanted to be. If her pursuers were African, someone here might speak their language and try to help them out, and the shopkeepers would all have seen a running white girl. She was doomed.
    Desperately, grasping at anything, she picked up a scarf, something to make her look different. She grabbed it as she sped by, shoplifted as the owner’s back was turned. But a customer saw and pointed.
    “Hey!” the merchant shouted. “Hey, you thief!”
    Shit. It was hopeless. She was nearly numb with depression and she was breathing so hard her lungs were probably going to burst. And then she’d be dead. She hoped it wouldn’t be a painful death. After all this, surely she deserved simply to slip away. She turned a corner.
    “Goddamn you! Watch out, bitch!”
    She had run right into a man who hadn’t had time to move. “What you want?” he yelled, outraged. He was a big man, and for some reason he had grabbed her wrist. She couldn’t move.
    She’d probably have given up right then, except that due to the circumstances, she was jammed right up against him and he’d asked a question. She thought later that the smell of patchouli incense that someone was burning had been a contributing factor. That and adrenaline.
    What you want?
    There was nothing for it but to give an honest answer.
    “Hide me,” she said, and she looked into his eyes, wishing she weren’t wearing the shades. “Please, please, hide me.” And because his chest felt strong and good against hers, and she could smell his sweat, it occurred to her to reach for his crotch with her free hand, to brush it lightly and to whisper, “I’ll give you a blow job.”
    The shouts were getting closer. Without a word or change of expression, the man raised the piece of India print fabric that covered his table of wares and pushed her under it. Just like that. One moment desperation, the next a dark, enclosed space all her own.
    Melody crouched and concentrated on the pain in her chest, sure she could be heard breathing at fifty paces. She wished there were a way to lie down.
    The first group of pursuers had closed in. “Blond bitch run through here? Red shorts?”
    No answer. Probably her benefactor had merely shrugged.
    “Hey, man—she stole somethin’. Come on—you seen her?”
    More silence. Melody imagined him shaking his head.
    There was a rustling as the