Thrown-away Child

skin dark as a blue plum stood at the whore’s portal, rapping a steel-tipped cane against the lamb. She had a pocked face and dressed in a sporting man's clothes, a pale blue suit and silk shirt to match, and an orange ascot and white patent-leather shoes.
    “Nigger, you done used up more’n your time,” she barked at the frightened, embarrassed boy. She sneezed the bridge of her flat nose and took aim at the hallway floor, hawking snot from flared nostrils.
    “You want to stick around and dick around, that’s all right by Madam. But you do got to pony up extra.” Madam wiped her nose with a finger, then stepped inside Rose’s room. “I see you ain’t even managed to drop your drawers. Well, don’t matter, you got to pay to play, whatever’s your game.”
    “I don’t got the money to spare,” Perry said. He rubbed a sleeve across wet eyes.
    Some of the roughness left Madam’s voice. “Ain't no reason to fuss. We only engaged here in a little enterprise old as time. Nothing personal, nothing special about it. You understand?”
    Perry said nothing. Nor did he make a move to leave, which peeved Madam. “Now go on, you got to vamoose!”
    “Give us a little minute, won’t you?” Rose asked her. “The boy, he’s kin of mine.”
    “I’ll give you half a little minute. And don’t never be bringing no family here again.” Madam stalked back out into the hall. She turned and glared at Rose and Perry, and hawked some more snot before moving down the hallway.
    “Mama —”
    “Perry, Perry... Why’d you come here?”
    “To be with you, Mama. I can’t stay with Toby, I just can’t! Please, can’t I stay with you?”
    The words were fists pounding on Rose’s ears. Perry reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small box wrapped in foil and ribbons. He walked to the whore’s bed and handed the gift to his mother. “I brought you something from down home, from Bynum’s. Your favorite.”
    Rose sat up straight as she undid the wrapping and opened the box. Inside was an ounce of Evening in Paris brand perfume in a bottle shaped like the Eiffel Tower. She held the Eiffel Tower in both her shaky hands, pressing it to her black lace chest.
    “Mama, I’m going to take you away.”
    “Been trying my whole life to get took away. Finally got myself up north, figuring I could be one of them what-we-call passant blancs. That’s New Orleans French for colored folks think we can pass. Understand?”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    “I could’ve passed, too, if I only could’ve somehow lost my mouth. I got this black-bottom accent that’s tough as a moss to shake. Looks ain’t all, I sure did learn that.
    «How’d you wind up here?”
    “Oh, baby boy of mine ...”
    Rose’s voice trailed off to a mix of weeping and laughing. She set the perfume down on the chair and lit up another cigarette from her pack on the bed, dragged on it, settled it into the ashtray. Then she picked up a length of rubber tube from the Te-Amo box. She coiled this tightly around the bicep of her left arm, holding on to one end with her left hand, securing the other end with her teeth.
    “Mama—?”
    Rose reached for the needle in the box with her right hand. Her voice was muffled by the tube in her mouth. “Mama don’t feel so good.”
    Perry cried. “Why you got to do this?”
    “People come in three types. There’s the ones who make things happen. There’s ones who watch things happen to them. Then there’s the ones wonder what the hell happened. I know my type. What’s your type, boy?”
    Rose plunged the needle into her arm, and shot down on the syringe plunger. She got herself taken away, to where there was no escape.
     
    But when his mama’s ghost cleared from the cigarette cloud, thick and motionless in the shed, Perry saw more. Now came Uncle Willis in the smoke, dead face covered in chinaberry leaves... Now came Cletus Tyler, his head beaten clear off with a razored club, the branded flesh of his belly stinking.
    Perry thought, People I’m closest to are dead. What’s that make me?
    He heard Cletus again, They got them a plan...
    Sure as holy hell they do!
    Perry thought about his old cell block, and the likelihood of his having to go back there again, this time for something he did not do. This time without Cletus I to talk to at night.
    He thought about the Angola night.
     
    Early morning, actually. The only time Angola is truly quiet—for an hour, sometimes two. Everybody fast asleep, guards included.