Seven Days in June

“I don’t miss drinking,” he continued. “But I do miss having a crutch. At first, I’d look at sober people like, damn, y’all really out here feeling everything?”

nostalgic for it before it had even ended

“You burst into my solitude, demanding to be seen. You were overwhelming. Just wild and weird and brilliant, and I never had a choice. I liked everything about you. Even the scary parts. I wanted to drown in your fucking bathwater.”

“I’m not just writing about you,” said Shane. “I’m writing to you.”

Seeing you in person makes me forget the things I should remember.

At first, I’d look at sober people like, damn, y’all really out here feeling everything?”

The night stilled around them as they settled into the realization that they were alone together. After wanting it so badly. Eva took the gardenia still in her hand and waved it under her nose. She wanted to have a scent to accompany this memory.

“Would you have asked me to come to Louisiana?” asked Shane.

“Yes.” Eva’s gaze caught his. “Would you have come?”

“I had a bag packed. I was just waiting for the word.”

“Hey. Quick question. Would you come here if I asked?”

“You asking?”

Eva paused. This wasn’t healthy. No, they weren’t supposed to see each other. Wasn’t the whole point of breaking up to focus on themselves? Work through past trauma? Separately? But Eva couldn’t ignore the dissenting voice in her head wondering if maybe there was a chance they’d be stronger together.

Whatever curse had befallen her foremothers, Eva had broken it. She was in love with a man who embraced everything about her. She just didn’t know if she had enough faith to accept it.

“Well, if you needed me,” said Shane, “I’d come.”

Mama Fay couldn’t recall what she ate for breakfast, but she did remember leading the protest against Clotilde’s teenage exorcism back in 1939.

“Your grandma’d be out there working in the hot sun, getting fits and head pains and all matter a vexins. She had a sickness, but it wasn’t witchery. Her fool daddy was scared a her, that’s what. His back went bad round fall ’39, and he reasoned Clo put roots on him. Jay-zee Ma-dee Jo-seff.” Jesus Mary Joseph. “His back went bad ’cause a fast women and slow horses, not his own daughter. Why women gotta be the cause a evilness in man? Now, I never got married. No, no, no, I ain’t one of those funny ladies. I just won’t fold myself up tiny so as not to put off no man. Anyway, Clo grew up and married a man same like her daddy. Scared. One spring they crops turnt dry, and the husband and the daddy and the same priest, Father Augustin, sprung a second exorcism on her. She let ’em. And went quiet for months. And then shot that husband in the shed. Let folks tell it, she shot him ’cause he was sanging a spiritual in there, and the holy noise poked the demon in her. Which I always took issha with. Won’t no evil in your grandma. She couldn’t long-divide for nothing, but she was a good girl. An excellent cook. And an even bettah shot.”

Fabianne Dupre—or Mama Fay, as she was affectionately called—was one hundred and one years old, with a silver braid wound around her head, cheekbones that screamed Shoshone Nation, and no teeth. The whole town knew her because she’d taught math to four generations of Belle Fleur children—in the tiny schoolhouse behind Saint Frances Church, which happened to be the oldest American church built by Black people and the epicenter of Belle Fleur.