The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

Author:Ayana Mathis [Mathis, Ayana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

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Ava too was on the move, heading toward Stenton to get a bus downtown. There was so much left to do: the post office, the Greyhound station to buy their tickets, Super Fresh for food for the trip. The block had a flimsy, unsubstantial quality, like it was already fading even though she hadn’t yet left the city. Or maybe she was the ghost, already half gone. She had the taste of blackstrap molasses in her mouth, and the sensation of Dutchess’s big spoon clinking against her back teeth. That was a taste of lean, late winter in Bonaparte. Cod liver oil, too. Every child in Bonaparte showed up to school smelling fishy. And didn’t we make it through those winters? Most of us anyway? Didn’t they make sure we did.

The 23 was packed. It crawled down Germantown Avenue, picking up passengers at every corner. You’re all right, Ava. She took a deep breath. You’re fine. Thanksgiving was three days away. After Caro died Dutchess hadn’t bothered much with holidays. Come to think of it, she hadn’t much bothered with them before they got to Bonaparte either. All of Ava’s early holidays involved a juke joint. One was always open somewhere and Dutchess would play any day of the year. It was Caro who made Christmas and birthdays; Jesse Days and Easter.

Sure, Ava was nervous about going back to Bonaparte. Of course I am, she’d answered Toussaint when he’d asked her. She stared out the trolley window. If she were on her own she wouldn’t go. She’d keep on not hanging herself in a basement, hoarding the weeks and years of life for no reason other than to rack up days. What futility. But she had Toussaint to raise. If she did right by him, he’d never find himself rummaging the dregs of his mind for reasons to stay alive.

A woman with three brimming shopping bags squeezed in next to her. The 23 was so jammed the windows fogged. They stopped for a red light, and there, down a side street, Bouvier it must have been, Ava thought she saw…But couldn’t have been. She wiped the smeared window. The trolley lurched forward at the green and she craned her neck to look back at the receding side street. But that gait. She was out of her seat, pulling the cord to signal a stop, shoving past the people and their bags in the aisle on her way to the front. “I have to get off! Let me off!”

“Next stop Broad and Erie,” the driver said.

“Let me off, I have to get off. My son—!”

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