Nobody's Magic by Destiny O. Birdsong

Author:Destiny O. Birdsong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

AFTER MOMI’S STRIP CLUB TRIBUTE, I stopped getting DeVaughan to bring me food because he was acting as thirsty as an undercover cop, always asking if I needed anything else besides what I had in the tin. And even though the club had given me enough cheese to stay high until I saw my mama again, I told him no because I was beginning to scare myself. One night, I ate a shitload of gummy bears, and an hour later, I was fifteen again, in Natchitoches at the Christmas festival. Back in the day, Momi and Ms. P would bundle us up and make the hour-long drive down I-49 so we could stand outside for hours until the town lit up after dark. Lett and I would always wander off to buy meat pies (beer, too, if there was a teenager working the booth), and do our best to appear like we weren’t there with our parents, which was easy because our moms usually lost us in the crowd anyway. They were as distracted by the men as we were by the boys, and tipsy off thermoses of cocoa spiked with E&J Cask & Cream. But somehow we always found each other before the boat parade, and watching Momi watch the boats and then the fireworks was my favorite part. It was like all the lives she’d lived since she got pregnant fell away, and she was a kid again, pointing and squealing at a pontoon decked out to look like Santa driving an alligator-pulled sleigh down the Cane River.

But in my hallucination, I was on the riverbank surrounded by strangers, watching a twinkling barge pass under the Church Street Bridge. I squinted. On the deck stood a woman in a white mink, waving like a prom queen. She looked like Momi, and I told myself if I swam to it, I could crawl onto the deck and find out who it really was. So I took off running in my mind, in a crowd of people who wouldn’t get the fuck out of the way. I could smell diesel exhaust and sugar in the air, and I was cold, but I kept going until I got to the bank. Then I jumped. The next morning, I woke up on the balcony naked, wrapped in the duvet and clutching an eraser I’d seen in one of the kids’ rooms. It was shaped like a laughter emoji.

That night at the strip club was a similar blur—something I regretted because if anyone ever needed to be distracted by titties, it was me. But I can’t remember anything other than flashes of blue bodies, the smell of sweet things, sweat, and money, Ms. P’s white turtleneck dress, and her second cousin Chad’s beard and open-faced grill, which was all I could recall about his appearance, even though when he first stuck out a jeweled fist to shake my hand, I remember thinking he was almost as beautiful as Ms. P. When he dropped

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