Jackal, page 6
I turn back to the woods, a new tension building in my chest. Then, I see something. A flicker in the trees. I peer out and sure enough, there’s a candle.
“Care-bear?” I call softly.
When I get no reply, I’m able to focus only on the obvious answer: Caroline is with the candle in the woods. I blink. Again. Again. Like I can make her appear.
“Caroline!” I’m loud. I hear my voice echo in the branches.
No response.
I look at the candle one more time. Caroline wouldn’t run out there. She would want to keep her dress clean. She didn’t even get any food on it at dinner because she spent most of the time drawing. She’s hungry! I head back into the reception. If she wanted food, she’d go to someone who’d always sneak her some sweets.
“Mrs. Parker?” I don’t even try to be graceful in my disruption. “Have you seen Caroline?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Good.” I sigh.
“She was out there throwing those little lights.” She gestures out to the side of the barn.
I nod. I drink some of my wine. I nod again. She smiles and goes back to her conversation.
Another lap around the room.
I check the bathrooms. I check in with Petey and Tyler’s mother. I check in with Garrett’s parents. I check in with strangers I haven’t spoken to all night. No one has seen Caroline. Everyone I talk to, I make sure I laugh and smile and hold up my quickly disappearing glass of wine. Everything is fine.
I look again.
And again.
And again.
I’m back, standing where I started: facing the candle in the trees.
I have to check for her. The faster I do it, the faster I’ll confirm that she’s somewhere in the barn. Instantly sober, I am stilled by adrenaline. My breath slows and I shift my weight. Here it is. My test. There’s nothing in the trees. Nothing in the woods. I take a step into the darkness and toward the votive.
As I leave the light of the barn, strange shadows shimmer between the branches. The reception is loud enough to scare off any animals. I think about getting Nick or Chris—no. I can do this. I can face this.
I take a step in. Mud wraps around my feet and takes my shoes with it. Shit. I grab the muddy heels and keep moving. Dirty and determined, I press forward.
“Caroline!” Farther from the party, the noise fades. The quiet of the woods takes over. This is the quiet I remember. The quiet I dread.
I race toward the light. The candle flickers in a bush. Nothing else. I look for any other signs. Only shadows greet me. Suddenly my skin prickles. I’m being watched. Whipping around, I see nothing but black.
Wait.
In the trees, there’s something. I struggle to glean the image. I open my eyes wider, willing my pupils to expand, taking in all the light they can. The moment my eyes perceive what’s in front of me, my mind refuses to make sense of it. The mess of shadows shifts into the shape of a dog. No, this is too big to be a dog. A hound. My breath catches in my chest. A deep tremor roots in me and vibrates my entire frame. My mind is making shapes with the dark. It’s trying to assign a form to nothing. That’s it. That’s all. There is nothing in the woods. I blink to reset the image. My eyes refocus and the shadows melt. A mess of misleading branches and brush are all that lay in front of me. No dog. Nothing.
I faced the darkness. I stood in the quiet. Neither has produced Caroline. There must be somewhere at the reception I haven’t tried. I turn around. A flicker of white stops me. There, in the underbrush, I see unmistakable shimmery fabric. I grab it. The strip is covered in sparkly shredded ruffles, heavy with mud and something else. It’s slippery. I have to clutch the fabric to keep it from sliding out of my hands. I bring the ruffle to my nose.
Nausea overtakes me. My mind scrambles for the name of the smell, my body knows it instantly.
Blood.
I focus on my hands. Through the snatches of light, the mud slides off my skin. The blood stays. Keisha died out here. Alone. Afraid. In pain. This place ripped her body apart. I remember kids talking about how animals go for the “soft parts” first. Scavengers ate her eyes. Then her face and neck. With her sternum broken in half by a fall, I wonder how long the animals out here waited to dig out her heart. Focusing is all I can do to keep from screaming. I search for something else. Anything else. Another hint of Caroline in the trees. I drag myself onward through the mud and search around the flickering votive. Nothing. I turn my gaze deeper into the woods. Only blackness lies ahead. I shift my weight again to take a step forward. Fear makes me question the mechanics of walking. Go after her. I curl my toes under me like they can drag my body forward. Coward! When I have no rebuttal in my body or my mind, I earn that title. I can’t bring myself to go any farther. I retrace my steps back toward the reception. I pause when I reach the pile of candles, hoping she’s returned, waiting for me to play again.
Nothing.
In the space between the trees and the barn, no one stops me. I race through all the places she could be again in my head. I looked. I really looked. A strange whine follows me. My muddy feet slip on the concrete. The sound wavers. It’s coming from me. The edges of my peach dress are covered in mud. My face is warm and wet with tears. Overwhelmed, I gather myself between breaths and move forward, searching the faces on the floor. When I reach Melissa and Garrett in the center, I stop.
“Liz?” Mel looks so happy.
“I can’t—I can’t—I can’t.” I pull away when Melissa reaches for me. She’s going to hate me. I’ve ruined this day. “She was right there. Right there. I can’t find her.”
“Who?” Mel asks.
“Caroline.”
Mel flinches, but she holds her face.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry,” I mumble. Before she can ask him, Garrett breaks away and calls for his daughter. Someone turns the lights on.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Mel whispers. “Calm down.”
“We were near the trees—and—and—”
“The wedding is in the woods, Liz, we’re all near the trees.” Melissa grips my shoulders. “She’s here. We’ll find her. She’s okay.”
I meet Mel’s eyes and the words refuse to come. This is it. The nightmare. I show Mel the bloody piece of Caroline’s dress.
A new grounding possesses Melissa; it is something I’ve never seen in her before.
“Caroline?” she says. Someone tells the band to stop. “Caroline?” The other guests fall silent. The only sounds are Melissa’s and Garrett’s measured voices. “Caroline?” Melissa yells, Garrett echoes. “Caroline!” Every child shudders, they all know what that drop in her voice means. Caroline is in trouble. The other mothers round up their children. Garrett’s cries don’t carry like his wife’s. After a few minutes, all I can hear is Mel screaming her daughter’s name into the night.
“Caroline!”
Silence.
KEISHA
June 2002
Keisha was used to the rich kids. They were fun. Because she didn’t belong to them, it was easy to manipulate parts of her personality to fit in. Like the best kind of game, this one was constantly changing and adapting. She had long realized the cultural currency of Blackness. Black was cool. It gave her a set of unique pieces and perceptions to play. Keisha found it funny that what she learned at home helped her get ahead at school. On the other hand, it was taking longer to apply what she learned at school to home. Between the two, her future was bright.
Her mother worked hard to maintain that luminous fate. She was why Keisha was going to school up the hill in the first place. Her mother had seen too many people get stuck. “Stuck is more than a location,” she said. “It’s a state of mind.” Keisha didn’t understand what her mother meant until Keisha met the other Black girl in school, Liz Rocher. The girl embodied the word. Stuck finding friends. Stuck focusing on grades. Stuck obsessing over these white boys. Unlike Liz, Keisha didn’t question her interest in these white boys. She didn’t flush when she thought of them. One of them had told her he was in love with her. She didn’t know if she loved him back. Not that her desires weren’t as deep as Liz’s, but she didn’t funnel everything into one of these young men like they were her saviors. She already knew what they were. Boys.
When Keisha arrived at the bonfire, she did a welcome tour affirming her place inside this ecosystem.
“I love your braids!” Lauren Bristol yelled. “How long did they take?”
“Eight hours,” Keisha said.
“Ohmigod, I could never sit that long.” Seasick from her beer, she looked at Keisha and counted her long plaits. Keisha simply kept moving.
As the night went on, Keisha found herself in one corner of the party. The boys around her drank beer and broke the bottles. She kept up with the conversation, entertaining and one-upping where she could. Then Melissa Parker entered the circle.
“Where’s your shadow, Parker?” Bobby Hoffer asked. Everyone knew who he meant. The little Black girl who followed Mel around. Liz Rocher.
“She’s not my…my…” Mel stumbled over the word shadow, unsure if it was a slur. “She’s over there, looking at the stars.” They all turned. There was Liz, across the field, looking up. The kids laughed. Mel didn’t see what was funny about it. Liz loved the stars. “You guys should go talk to her. She knows tons of cool stories about them,” Mel added. No one moved to take Mel up on the offer.
Keisha didn’t dislike Liz. In all honesty, Keisha wanted to take Liz under her wing, but the girl required too much work. Liz didn’t even know how to be this version of Black. How could she ever learn to manipulate it with fluency? Keisha braced herself—the need to take care of Liz finally moved her to act.
Keisha walked over to her. “Liz?”
Liz beamed back, earnest as ever.
Keisha frowned. “You finally snuck out for one of these. Stop being a goody-good and have some fun.” Keisha said the word “good” like an insult. To her, it was.
“I am having fun.”
Keisha knew that was a lie. The beer in Liz’s hands was full.
“Liz.” She sighed. “Mel’s not your friend. Look.” She pointed. “She left you. At a party. With drinking and stuff. You’uns should stick together.”
“Mel’s my friend. She can go where she wants.”
“Mm-hmm.” Keisha narrowed her eyes at Liz. Liz was too trusting.
Keisha would have been successful in life if she hadn’t fallen victim to one of its worst lies. It wasn’t her fault; it was ingrained in her by her parents and they learned it from theirs. She believed that there was only space for one successful Black person. That meant one popular Black girl, one pretty Black girl, and one Black girl at this party. Liz could be the smart one; Keisha was going to be the one who rode her connections to the top because she was better at playing the game.
Soon the kids coupled up and broke off into the trees. Someone pulled out a joint and a pint of Malibu. The teens courted in that awkward way teenagers do. It is a shame this unusual courtship usually stays with people for the rest of their lives. With behaviors that strong and careless, I wonder how anyone ever meets their mates.
The leftover girls huddled around the rum and cooled their feet in the river. Melissa’s laugh carried in the night. The girl was always so loud.
Keisha sought out her “boyfriend” and wondered if she could use the title with him yet. This was something couples agreed upon—were they that? He told her to meet him deep in the trees. Just below the bonfire field was a maze of old hiking trails, newly made paths, and animal migration patterns. The locals called it The Rounds, and it was almost impossible to navigate in the dark. Keisha’s boyfriend knew a way through them. He was older. Cooler. Keisha didn’t question his need to keep their relationship a secret. The people in this town could talk.
Oh, to be a teenage girl.
Excited and scared all at once, Keisha didn’t notice eyes watching her until well after she was lost. When she glimpsed movements following hers, she froze. She looked in the branches behind her, trying to decide if it was friend or foe. A strange, large, dark shadow moved in and out of her sight line. All her life she’d heard the stories like this.
“Hello?” she asked.
“You aren’t Liz,” it replied.
Unsure if it was a question or a statement, Keisha told the truth. “No?” The shadows moved and she gasped. She’d done it. She saw something strange in the woods and she did the worst thing. She looked. Keisha drew breath to scream. The shadow simply raised a limb to signal her to be quiet.
“Help!”
Her refusal forced the shadow to emerge from its hiding place and take the shape of a man. He wrapped a gloved hand over her mouth and led her farther off the trail. That’s when the shouts from the party started.
“Cops! Police! Five-Oh! Run, run, run!” someone yelled.
The party devolved into chaos. They all ran. Keisha was marched deeper into The Rounds. No kids dared to flee there. Once they were far enough away, the man removed his hand from over her mouth.
“You a cop?” she whispered to the dark figure.
Silence.
“It’s just a party. Okay?” she pleaded. “They have them all the time.” Ever resourceful, as she spoke, she searched for a way out. She looked to her left and right. The trees were too dense. She looked ahead, and she saw more unknown paths. She looked up. She couldn’t see the stars through the branches. Ahead, she saw a massive downed tree trunk. It looked rotten and hollow. Maybe if she could roll inside, she could distract him enough to get away. She counted the steps it took to get to the tree. After twenty, she fell to her chest and pressed herself into the dirt to roll.
“Keisha?”
There. In the hollowed-out tree was Liz. This is when the unknotting in Keisha began. If she had really been the only Black girl, if Liz hadn’t come, she wouldn’t have had this moment, then she wouldn’t have been out there with someone who was just as afraid as she was.
Fear moves in people differently.
When Liz’s and Keisha’s fears aligned, Keisha stepped out of her pattern. If there was room for only one Black girl, one of them wouldn’t survive. Keisha wanted to live.
I watched Keisha.
She reached out for Liz’s hand before she was pulled away.
Keisha taught me that a heart can change.
Hers changed me.
Keisha Woodson
CLASS OF 2003
[KEISHA’S YEARBOOK PHOTO: A rainbow laser backdrop. Keisha is sixteen years old. Black. Smiling with her top teeth. Long box braids. A crisp white shirt. Clear lip gloss. Pink stud earrings.]
In Loving Memory.
SEVEN
“What did you get up to, party girl?” The clerk’s familiarity makes me take a step back. I look up and brace myself for another reunion. Behind the desk sits an older Black woman. Her short gray hair looks soft. Her smile seems kind. I dim my focus to the space between us as I search for my answer. The haze of the night is still heavy on me.
The wedding dissolved into a search party. Tables were overturned. Harsh light invaded. The police not already at the wedding were called. Then the fire department. Both arrived at alarming speed. It’s a small town, after all. Then, while the party guests flocked to the flashing lights, the two departments argued for what felt like an agonizing amount of time. There was some sort of math that had to be done around the missing child. Hundreds of scenarios were whispered between men in uniforms before they decided to have the cops search the woods.
Something in my brain clicks. I’m in a police station. My focus goes back to the clerk.
“They, um…need my fingerprints,” I mumble and shift my gaze to my feet. To my surprise, I’m still in my bridesmaid’s dress, but someone has given me flip-flops. They are at least two sizes too big and bright green.
“A VIP party girl, huh?” The clerk gives me a smile. She wants a smile out of me. Not tonight. “You can take a seat, honey. Doug will be out to get you in a second.” She hands me a form to fill out. I shuffle back to what I have decided is my chair and sit. Once I do, the rest of the night unfolds itself to me again in a rush.
There were lots of lights. Questions. The bloody edge of Caroline’s dress was bagged. My hands were wiped. Seeing the blood disappear was comforting, but it also felt wrong. Like they were taking away something important. Outside, the officers were cool, calm, and collected, but the same feeling simmered inside all of them. Something was off. While children got lost, they didn’t disappear like this. That was why Melissa, Garrett, and I had all been asked to go to the station. Well, it wasn’t so much a request as it was an implication. If we had nothing to hide, we could come in for questions. The weight of each new memory sinks my shoulders.
That’s when I realize I’m wrapped in something. A jacket. It’s heavy and denim. I run my finger along the raw edge. This is Chris’s. He gave it to me. I can’t remember if he drove me to the station. I can’t remember how I got here at all. I bring the collar of the jacket to my nose and inhale.
“Liz…R-Roach—?” a voice asks, giving up on the French midway through my last name. I bolt to my feet.
“It’s Ro-shay,” I correct reflexively.
The voice belongs to a lanky white man with brown hair. He’s in a blue polo, not a uniform, and holds a clipboard. While he isn’t dressed in the institutional green that covers the walls, something about him blends into the background.
