DREARY UNDERTONE

Chapter 2

But Daddy’s gone, and all that’s left circulating through the house is the musty, sputtering coughs from the window units.

I bend over the mattress, straining to see Mom’s cropped hair in the shadows. Instead, I’m met with the bitter stink of beer and weed. Of course. Well, at least she’s alone. I have no interest in meeting the man-of-the-month she’s been shacking up with.

Should I wake her? Instinct tells me not to, but dammit, I ache to feel her arms around me.

“Mom?” I whisper.

The lump shifts, and a deep groan rumbles from the blankets. A man’s groan, one I know with horrifying intimacy.

A chill grips my spine as I scramble backward. Why is my brother’s best friend in Mom’s bed?

Oliver’s thick arm swings up, and his hand catches the back of my neck, pulling me toward him.

I drop the bread in my attempt to push away, but he’s stronger, meaner, and never responds to No.

“No,” I say anyway, fear amplifying my voice, my pulse roaring past my ears. “Stop it!”

He wrestles me to the bed, shoving me face-down beneath his sweaty body. Hot beer breath smothers me. Then his weight, his hands…oh God, his erection. He jabs my ass with it, rucking up my skirt, his heavy panting scraping my ears.

“Get off me!” I thrash wildly, my fingers clawing at the blankets, taking me nowhere. “I don’t want this. Please, don’t—”

His palm slaps over my mouth, shutting me up as his strength confines my movements.

My body grows cold, numb, collapsing like a dead thing, separating from my headspace. I let myself slip away, my concentration on the safety in what I know, what I love, as I wrap my entire being with dark atmosphere, light strokes of piano keys, atonal rhythm. Scriabin’s Sonata No.9. I see my fingers walking through the piano piece, hear the haunting melody, and feel each quivering note pulling me further into the black mass. Away from the bedroom. Away from my body. Away from Oliver.

A hand snakes under my chest, squeezing my breast, pulling on my shirt, but I’m lost in the dissonant notes, recreating them with care, distracting my thoughts. He can’t hurt me. Not here with my music. Never again.

He shifts, shoving his hand between my butt cheeks, inside my panties, probing roughly at the hole in back that he always makes bleed.

The sonata shatters in my mind, and I try to reassemble the chords. But his fingers are relentless, forcing me to endure his touch, his palm muffling my scream. I gasp for air and frantically kick my legs near the bedside table. My foot collides with the lamp and sends it crashing to the floor.

Oliver freezes, his hand tightening on my mouth.

Loud banging vibrates the wall by my head, a fist pounding in Jeremy’s room. My blood runs cold.

“Noemi!” Jeremy’s voice booms through the wall. “f*****g woke me up, you worthless f*****g cunt!”

Oliver leaps off me and backs into the beam of light from the kitchen doorway. Tribal tattoos blacken his chest, and baggy sweatpants hang from his narrow hips. An unassuming person might consider his beefed-up physique and strong Latino features attractive. But appearances are just the skin of the soul, and his soul is rotten.

I roll off the bed, shove down my skirt, and grab the wrapped bread from the floor. To reach the front door, I have to pass through Jeremy’s room then the parlor. Maybe he hasn’t crawled out of bed yet.

With a trembling pulse, I dart into the pitch-black cavern of Jeremy’s room and— Oomph! I slam into his bare chest.

Expecting his reaction, I swerve out of the path of his first swing, only to expose my cheek to the hard slap of his other hand. The impact sends me back into Mom’s room, and he stays with me, his eyes drooping in a haze of alcohol and drugs.

To think, he used to look like Daddy. But that was before… Every day, Jeremy’s blond hairline recedes farther, his cheeks sink deeper into his pasty face, and his belly hangs lower over those ridiculous workout shorts.

He hasn’t worked out since he went AWOL from the Marines four years ago. The year our lives went to s**t.

“Why. The. f**k…” Jeremy says, shoving his face in mine, “are you waking up the goddamn house at five in the f*****g morning?”

Technically, it’s almost six o’clock, and I have a quick stop to make before the forty-five-minute commute.

“I have school, dickhead.” I straighten my spine, standing taller, despite the awful fear souring my stomach. “What you should be asking is why Oliver is sleeping in Mom’s bed, why he puts his hands on me, and why I was screaming for him to stop.”

I follow Jeremy’s focus to his friend. Faded ink scrawls up the sides of Oliver’s face, indiscernible beneath the dark shadow of his sideburns. But the fresh tattoo on his throat burns as bold and black as his eyes. Destroy, it says. The way he’s glaring at me, it’s a promise.

“She came onto me again.” Oliver’s gaze stays on mine, his expression an open canvas of malice. “You know how she is.”

“Bullshit!” I turn back to Jeremy, my voice pleading. “He won’t leave me alone. Every time you turn your back, he’s pulling off my clothes and—”

Jeremy grabs my neck and throws me face-first into the door jamb. I try to dodge it, jerking against the force of his rage, but my mouth connects with the sharp corner.

Pain bursts through my lip. When I taste blood, I jut my chin out to keep the mess off my clothes.

He releases me, his eyes dull and heavy-lidded, but his hate stabs through me sharper than ever. “If you flash your t**s at my friends again, I’ll cut them the f**k off. You hear me?”

My hand flies to my chest, and my heart sinks as my palm slips through the gaping V of my shirt. At least two buttons gone. s**t! The academy will write me up, or worse, kick me out. I desperately scan the bed and floor, searching for little plastic dots in the sea of scattered clothes. I’ll never find them, and if I don’t leave now, there will be more blood and missing buttons.

I turn and run through Jeremy’s room, his furious shouts propelling me faster. In the parlor, I grab my satchel from the couch where I sleep, and I’m out the door in the next breath, exhaling my relief into gray sky. The sun won’t be up for another hour, and all is quiet on the vacant street.

As I take a step off the front lawn, I try to shed the past ten minutes from my mind by compartmentalizing it into baggage. The old-style kind, bound in brown leather with those little tan buckles. Then I picture the baggage sitting on the porch. It stays here, because I can only carry so much.

A short jog takes me toward the 91 line. If I hurry, I still have time to check on Liam before the next bus.

Veering around the potholes that dimple the stately tree-lined streets, I pass rows of cottages and shotgun houses, each vibrantly painted in every color and adorned with the trademarks of the deep south. Wrought iron railings, gas lamps, guillotine windows, and gables etched with ornate scrollwork, it’s all there if one can look past the sagging porches, graffiti, and rotting garbage. Empty, overgrown lots pockmark the streetscape, as if we need reminders of the last hurricane. But the resonance of Treme thrives in the fertile soil, in the cultural history, and in the weathered smiles of the people who call the back of town their home.

People like Liam.

I reach the heavily-barred door of his music store and find the handle unlocked. Despite the dearth of customers, he opens the store the moment he wakes. This is his livelihood, after all.

The bell overhead jingles as I enter, and my attention compulsively darts to the old Steinway in the corner. I’ve spent every summer since I can remember pounding the keys on that piano until my back ached and my fingers lost feeling. Eventually, those visits turned into employment. I handle his customers, bookkeeping, inventory, whatever he needs. But only in the summers when I don’t have the means to earn my other income.

“Noemi?” Liam’s raspy baritone warbles through the small store.

I set the banana bread on the glass counter and holler toward the back. “Just dropping off breakfast.”

The shuffling sound of his loafers signals his approach, and his hunched frame emerges from his living quarters in the back room. Ninety-years-old and the man can still move fast, crossing the store like his frail body isn’t wracked with arthritis.

The cloudy glaze in his dark eyes denotes his poor eyesight, but as he nears, his gaze instantly finds the missing buttons on my shirt and the swollen cut on my lip. The wrinkles beneath the rim of his baseball cap deepen. He’s seen Jeremy’s handiwork before, and I’m so grateful he doesn’t ask or offer pity. I might be the only white girl in this neighborhood, and I’m definitely the only kid with a private school education, but the differences end there. My baggage is as common in Treme as tossed beads on Bourbon Street.

As he takes me in from head to toe, he scratches his whiskers, the little white hairs stark against his coal-black complexion. Visible tremors skate across his arms, and he squares his shoulders, no doubt an attempt to disguise his pain. I’ve been watching his health decline for months, and I’m helpless to stop it. I don’t know how to support him or ease his suffering, and it’s slowly killing me inside.

I’ve seen his finances. He can’t afford medication or doctor’s visits or even basic things, like food. He certainly can’t afford an employee, which made my last summer on his payroll bittersweet. When I graduate from Le Montaigne in the spring, I’ll leave Treme, and Liam will no longer feel obligated to take care of me.