South Central Noir

She knelt. “Looks like you got yourself into real bad trouble at last, young lady. You really are such a troublemaker.” I thought she was praying over me, but I kept thinking, Why aren’t you doing anything? I’m hurt!

She prayed for a bit more... or was she praying? Maybe she was just looking at me. After a while, she glanced around the dark basement and saw something. She rose and moved away from my vision. I heard something rustle and something like a wrench clatter to the floor. She came over to me and glanced down before kneeling again. “You can just be quiet now,” she said, and something rectangular came toward me. It was a smelly old towel. And she pressed it to my face. And then I really couldn’t breathe.

I struggled, but not much. My poor body was too broken for that. It smelled like oil and dirt and I couldn’t get any air. The darkness swallowed me up like a tunnel slowly closing in.

My heartbeat slowed... and then it was done.

14

I sat on top of Sister Sixtus’s wardrobe and watched her at her prayers. They were so fervent, so full of emotion. Yet I wanted to laugh because they wouldn’t do her any good.

Not that I could remember how to laugh.

15

The nuns met for their evening meal. Some would eat with the students, while the others would stay in their own dining hall. Separate. Away. This made them holier, they must have assumed.

The Mother Superior stood at the head of the table. “We must pray for poor Mr. Washington, that he understands his sins and confesses them. Pray for his soul.”

I sat on an empty chair next to a quiet nun. Even in profile she looked like a man. But she wasn’t praying.

Later that night, I whispered to Sister Sixtus and she finally got up from her knees and left her room. I followed her as she passed door after door of each sister’s cell through the dark corridor, until she came to one at the end. She hesitated a long time, just standing in front of the door. I thought I would have to whisper some more to her. But she finally raised a shaky hand, balled it into a fist, and delicately knocked.

“Come in,” said the voice from the other side of the door.

She grasped the doorknob and pushed it open.

“Sister Sixtus, what do you want? It’s late.”

“I... I...”

“Yes? Are you all right?”

I whispered to Sister Sixtus of Hell and the fires of damnation, and she took a step into the room. “I... I... know...”

“You know what?” She was irritated. She was in her starched white nightgown, with a cap on her closely cut hair. I could tell she just wanted to go to bed.

“I... know what you did.”

She tied the strings of her cap under her chin. “This isn’t getting any clearer.”

Sister Sixtus took another step inside. “I know that you killed that girl.”

Sister Conception seemed to freeze. She slowly lowered her hands to her lap before she turned and rose. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

“I saw you. I saw what you did.”

Her eyes narrowed. I’d been trying to whisper to her though she never seemed to hear me. Funny thing.

“You supposedly saw what I did... but you never told anyone.”

“I’m going to tell. But I’d rather you confess it.”

She laughed. “Me? Tell what? Something you dreamed?”

“I didn’t dream it. I saw it. I can give details. Confess it before they convict that poor man.”

“He’s a colored man.”

I didn’t like the way she said that. To us, grown-ups weren’t one thing or another. They were just grown-ups. Mr. Washington was easy to pull a prank on because he never told. But you couldn’t get away with it with the nuns. They were the worst, as far as grown-ups went. You sure wouldn’t tell them your problems.

“He doesn’t deserve to die!”

Sister Conception took a step toward Sister Sixtus, who backed up. “I’m not going to confess. I didn’t do anything. That girl wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t the grace on her. It was better she was gone. Her friends did most of it to her anyway. Her own friends. They’re the ones who killed her. These are the hearts of the little heathens we have in this place. It would be better to tear the whole place down than to have these girls here.”

Sister Sixtus stared at her. I could see it all on her face. She was scared. If she didn’t get out of there, Sister Conception would get her too. Even I could read as much in her eyes. Maybe it was already too late.

Sister Sixtus spun on her heels and ran down the corridor.

I watched Sister Conception stand there in her nightgown, glaring at the open door. She was trembling in her fury, when she had been so passive as she pressed that towel to my face in that dark basement. I was dead anyway. I wasn’t going to survive that fall. She didn’t have to kill me.