T9C found a way to pull the car into the yard without hitting any of the various disassembled vehicles, washing machines and barrels. The house was dark among other dark houses, with tarpaper siding, the likes she had scarcely seen since her time as a girl in the delta. Through the window blue light streaked like dampened breaches of lightning.
She took a warm crockpot from the passenger floor board. The porch creaked under her weight. She knocked gently with her elbow, and the door let her in. A TV played soundlessly in the small front room, no other lights. The kitchen was dark too and she veered sideways and found a place on the counter, urging dirty glasses aside. She washed a bowl clean and sighed at the rest.
Down the block competing boomboxes stuttered. A single gunshot, impossible to tell whether inside or outside the recordings.
Back through the front she carried a watery bowl to the bedroom, illuminated by a weak table lamp.
In the bed lay propped an emaciated woman in a night cap whose eyes seemed to take up half her shocked face.
T9C went in speaking, as if continuing an interrupted conversation. “These dumplings, they're not so dense, as I thought it might digest better for you. Now I know you're probably gone say you don't want any, but I just want you to give it a try, you never can tell.”
She squatted on the edge of bed, inadvertently ventilating the mattress, and wished she hadn't; a smell that revealed vast depths of sickness. She made herself spoon broth and a small dumpling into the gaping mouth; the mass fell and remained in that spot between tongue and gum for several minutes until T9C fished it back out and dropped it in the bowl and went to the bathroom for a wet towel to cleanse the wound she knew no one else would clean.
She came back with an empty coffee can for a basin and a warm cloth. She lifted the bedcovers then the shirt and finally removed the wrap-bandage, breathing sparingly.
The sore beneath the armpit was worse, much worse. But she knew the home health was only administering palliative now. The whole right side of her chest was raw. T9C knew a cat once who scratched herself down to the muscle layer like that, until there was no skin left.
The necessity that disease, illness bring such rank discomfort to the senses of the sufferer went to the darker side of mystery, to be sure. But then she generally ceded mystery's very opacity as a living, changing thing, subject to the presence of humility and reverence.
When she had taken the coffee can and cloth back to the bedroom she attempted to feed her once more, with the same results. "Miss Mae-e (Mary), I'm going to have to go now. If you can, make Kurtis feed you more of this when you feel like it. I will be back. I'm going to say a prayer and leave.”
As she finished and crossed the dark living room again she spotted a figure almost invisible on the couch watching the TV. “You feed her some dumplings, hear. And call me if she starts to go down. She aint got no kin the world but you.”
He may have grunted, answered. She wasn't sure. A spray-painted t-shirt read Kooler.
"I'm coming back. She's different tonight. You pay attention. Hear?"
She stepped into the yard. At that moment, she didn't know why, she made the decision to take the new job at the school system. Computers were coming in, and she had the opportunity to teach the teachers. Didn't do no good to be scared. Same thing day in and day out will kill you sure as cancer.
Somewhere off a siren, briefly.
A big green car rolled by and honked, just a polite tap. A white man in this part of town. He waved.
She awaited some impending backlash of ugliness, but he just smiled, broadly friendly. Face spotlit by the sodium streetlamp. Sincere.
No idea who he could be.
Only after the car was gone did she think to wave back. She made the effort.
