“Who?” they ask.
“The little girl they found by the harbor. Man, where the hell is your head?”
Their eyes darken at that point. Yeah man, that’s some shit, they say. Fucked up, that’s what it is. That shit happening to a little kid.
Judah tells them to come to the memorial. He tells them she was one of us, and we have to go remember her.
Everyone knows him. They give me strange looks, like I’m the one in the wheelchair. It’s because they don’t see his chair. Judah is Judah. How large does a person’s humanity have to be to look past their big, clunky wheelchair? I wonder how large I can make myself so that no one will see my fat, or my mother, or my ugly face? Then they’ll call out.
“Hey Margo.”
“What’s up, Margo.”
“Looking good, Margo.”
I give the back of Judah’s head a dirty look.
We go straight to the toy aisle in Wal-Mart. I choose a stuffed unicorn, because I’d like to believe Nevaeh is somewhere better—magical. Judah wants to get flowers. He asks me to grab a bunch of rainbow carnations that he can’t reach. I hand them to him, and for a little moment our hands are wrapped around the same bunch of flowers. He squeezes my fingers like he knows I’m hurting.
“Can you hand me the roses too?” he asks.
He holds the flowers and the unicorn while I wheel his chair to checkout lane. After we pay, he hands me the roses.
“These are for you,” he says. A woman walks by, her arms loaded with blue and white bags, and looks at us strangely.
I must look dumbfounded, because he presses them into my hands and says, “I’m sorry about Nevaeh.”
I clutch the roses, my eyes brimming with tears. No one has ever bought me flowers. I try to be normal as I wheel him out the door and back into the street. I won’t let go of the roses even when he offers to hold them for me. I don’t let my tears spill, or my heart spill. Tonight is about Nevaeh, and I won’t be selfish.
Since the local news picked up Nevaeh’s story, there is a bigger turnout than I expected. There is a large crowd gathered outside the squat, blue house she shared with her mother and eight other people. I see her grandmother standing in the swamp of humans, crying into her hands. People have stuck letters and pictures into the chain link fence around the house. Nevaeh’s school picture is there in the middle of the chaos. I stare at it long and hard so I won’t ever forget her face. There are piles of teddy bears, and bouquets, and toys that her classmates have left for her—some with letters scrawled in little kid handwriting. I push Judah’s wheelchair to the front of the crowd so he can give her his flowers. He lays them down gently, in front of a note that says, We love you, Nevaeh. You’re safe in God’s arms now.
It’s my turn next. I kneel in front of the fence and bow my head so no one can see my tears. It’s just a stupid unicorn from Wal-Mart, but I want Nevaeh to see it and know that I love her. Loved her. Love her still.
“This isn’t right,” I say. Judah looks at me earnestly.
“No,” he says. “It’s not. So what are you going to do about it?”“Me?” I shake my head. “What can I do? I’m no one. The police—”
“No,” he says. “You know how the police handle things. We’re nobodies. A little girl dying in this neighborhood isn’t anything new.”
“The way she died is,” I say. “And somebody has to pay attention.”
His jaw tightens, and he looks away. “If only I weren’t in this goddamn chair.”
That makes me feel hot. I get a tingling in my fingertips, and I want to shake him.
“I hate to break it to you, Judah, but everyone in the Bone has a wheelchair. One way or the other, we are all fucked.”
He glares at me, I glare at him. I wish I could glare at someone and look as if my cheekbones were carved out of marble. I look away first.
The tension between us is broken by Neveah’s mother, who at that moment walks out of the blue house carrying a candle. There wasn’t enough money to hand out candles to everyone, so people take lighters and hold them toward Nevaeh’s picture. Judah lets me hold his lighter. It’s a pink Zippo.
“My mom’s,” he says.
“No judgment.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek; I’ve seen him do it a few times now. I sort of like it.
We all huddle around Nevaeh’s school picture with our lighters and tears. Someone starts to sing “Amazing Grace,” but no one knows the words to the third verse, so we just keep singing the chorus over and over. When the Grace runs its course, one of the local pastors steps up in front of the crowd. He hugs Nevaeh’s mom and says a prayer.
“She isn’t crying,” I whisper to Judah.
“Shock,” he says.
I look over at Nevaeh’s grandmother. She has people on either side of her, holding her up. She can barely breathe, she’s sobbing so hard. In the dim light of the streetlamp, I can see the tears smudged all over her cheeks and chin, the blue bandana on her head pushed crooked so the knot stands out above her ear. A grieving woman, her pain clear and sharp like the vodka I once tried at Destiny’s house. I reach for Judah’s hand. At first he looks surprised, his gaze passing over my face and then our clasped fingers. I don’t look at him. I fix my gaze straight ahead. He squeezes my hand and looks back at Nevaeh’s picture.
He does not ask me to push him home. He never does. Sometimes he needs help past the dents and ruts in the sidewalk, which I do without comment. Our relationship is seamless so that no one need feel guilty. I help him up the ramp to his front door, and he asks me to wait outside. I stand on the porch looking out over Delaney’s yard, her pretty flowers and bushes a shock of beauty down an ugly street. When Judah comes back, he’s holding a bottle of something brown.
“I’m too young to drink,” I tell him.
“You’re too young to have seen such ugly things, too.”
I take the bottle from him, my only memory of alcohol being that one sip of vodka Destiny and I took from her father’s bottle when no one was home. I lift it to my lips. The rum is spicy and sweet. I prefer it to the vodka. There is a pirate on the label. He reminds me of the Indian chief on my mother’s healthy cigarettes. Indians and pirates—societal derelicts representing American addiction. I’d much prefer their company to the rest. We pass the bottle back and forth until I am too dizzy to stand up, then we sit quietly and look at the stars.