Small Mercies

Jules steps off the curb to avoid a pile of ants swarming what looks like a broken egg. She pivots around a young tree before stepping back up on the sidewalk. “You just, you know, you ever have the feeling that things are supposed to be one way but they’re not? And you don’t know why because you’ve never known, like, anything but what you see? And what you see is, you know” — she waves at Old Colony Avenue — “this?” She looks at her mother and cants a bit on the uneven sidewalk so they won’t collide. “But you know, right?”

“Know what?”

“Know it’s not what you were meant for.” Jules taps the space between her breasts. “In here.”

“Well, sweetie,” her mother says, with no fucking idea what she’s on about, “what were you meant for?”

“I’m not saying it that way.”

“What way?”

“The way you’re saying it.”

“Then how’re you saying it?”

“I’m just trying to say I don’t understand why I don’t feel the way other people seem to feel.”

“About what?”

“About everything. Anything.” Her daughter raises her hands. “Fuck!”

“What?” Mary Pat wants to know. “What?”

Jules waves her hand at the world. “Ma, I just... It’s like... Okay, okay.” She stops and props a foot up on the base of a rusted BPD callbox. Her voice falls to a whisper. “I don’t understand why things are what they are.”

“You mean school? You mean busing?”

“What? No. I mean, yes. Kind of. I mean, I don’t understand where we go.”

Is she talking about Noel? “You mean when we die?”

“Then, yeah. But, you know, when we... forget about it.”

“No, tell me.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Her daughter looks her right in the eyes — an absolute rarity since her first menstrual cycle six years ago — and her gaze is hopeless and yearning in the same breath. For a moment, Mary Pat sees herself in the gaze... but what self? Which Mary Pat? How long since she yearned? How long since she dared believe something so foolish as the idea that someone anywhere has the answers to questions she can’t even put into words?

Jules looks away, bites her lip, a habit of hers when she’s fighting back tears. “I mean, where do we go, Ma? Next week, next year? Like, what’s the fucking,” she sputters, “what’s the — Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Walking around, shopping, getting up, going to bed, getting up again? What are we trying to, you know, like, achieve?”

Mary Pat wants to give her daughter one of those shots they give tigers to knock them out. What the fuck is she on about? “Are you PMSing?” she asks.

Jules hucks out a liquid chuckle. “No, Ma. Definitely no.”

“So what?” She takes her daughter’s hands in hers. “Jules, I’m here. What?” She kneads her daughter’s palms with her thumbs the way she always did when she was feverish as a child.

Jules gives her a smile that’s sad and knowing. But knowing of what? She says, “Ma.”

“Yes?”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t sound it.”

“No, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m just...”

“What?”

“Tired,” her daughter says.

“Of what?”

Jules bites the inside of her cheek, an old habit, and looks out at the avenue.

Mary Pat continues kneading her daughter’s palms. “Tired of what?”

Jules looks her in the eyes. “Lies.”

“Is Rum hurting you? Is he fucking lying to you?”

“No, Ma. No.”

“Then who?”

“No one.”

“You just said.”

“I said I was tired.”

“Tired of lies.”

“No, I just said that to shut you up.”

“Why?”

“Cuz I’m tired of you.”

Well, that’s a nice ax in the heart. She drops her daughter’s hands. “Fucking buy your own school supplies next time. You owe me twelve sixty-two.” She starts walking up the sidewalk.

“Ma.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ma, listen. I didn’t mean I’m tired of you. I meant I’m tired of you giving me the third fucking degree.”

Mary Pat spins and walks toward her daughter so fast Jules takes a step back. (You never take a step back, Mary Pat wants to scream. Not here. Not ever.) She puts a finger in her face. “I’m giving you the third fucking degree because I’m worried about you. Talkin’ all this stuff that don’t make sense, your eyes misting up, looking all lost. You’re all I got now. Ain’t you figured that out? And I’m all you got now.”

“Well, yeah,” Jules says, “but I’m young.”

If she hadn’t smiled right away, Mary Pat might have laid her out. Right there on Old Colony.

“Are you okay?” she asks her daughter.

“I mean, I’m not.” Jules laughs. “But I am. That make sense?”

Her mother waits, her eyes never leaving her daughter’s.

Jules gestures broadly at Old Colony, at all the signs — southie will not go; welcome to boston, ruled by decree; no vote = no rights — and the spray-painted messages on the sidewalks and the low walls around parking lots — Nigers Go Home; White Power; Back to Africa Then Back to School. For a second, it feels to Mary Pat like they’re preparing for war. All that’s missing are sandbags and pillbox turrets.

“It’s my senior year,” Jules says.

“I know, baby.”

“And nothing makes sense.”