The waters ain’t clean, down here.
I can drag net after net through those damn waters and somethin’ still gets stuck.
See, I drag net after net because this place is my home and maybe the water wasn’t always this dark, and maybe I will see my feet in the water one day, when I wade in. It’s a little scary, knowing things are up to me.
My name is Juno. I’m a full-figured pit bull of a child with tangled yellow hair, tanned olive skin, a curved nose and big bright eyes. I think I’m pretty, somewhere underneath all of the car oil and bayou scum. But I’m good enough for what I’ve gotta do.
And even though it’s scary, I’ve got everything under control down here.
But it’s strange for me to think about it realistically. If I lived a little up north some, it probably would make more sense and in fact maybe no one would think it was stupid. No Jerry Falkner, a boy with wildly curly black hair and freckles covering every inch of him, who sees me with a wet t-shirt working and he just calls his friends over and they think I’m damn funny. I never told anyone that he sent me flowers once, asking me to go to his school dance with him, and I said no.
My sister told me it was no mistake that I did that, that his kind takes advantage of girls like me.
I wonder if she was just talking about men in general, or if she knows some secret I don’t know about him.
She calls me a bayou baby and I contemplate every time she says it whether or not I like it. Thing is I been called naïve before because I haven’t taken things into consideration enough that I take some things meant as insults as compliments, and when I should feel sick with shame I just don’t.
It’s lucky I don’t, because someone has to hold my household together. She’s been feeling pretty sick lately, Anna, my sister. She looks so drained but every time I ask how she is, she doesn’t tell me anything other than “I’m tired, honeybee.” And she’ll drink one of her home-made remedies, honey and whiskey or something that almost always has alcohol in it. She’s the prettiest girl most anyone has seen around here, big, twinkling brown eyes and rose colored cheeks and hair that is always shiny and fragrant, like Rapunzel herself. I reckon I could look like her if I actually fixed myself, but it ain’t gonna happen because it’s the only way that people leave me alone.
Plus to be honest I’ve never gotten a haircut, and with my hair reaching record lengths sweeping my knees it ain’t happening anytime soon.
Jerry Falkner still bugs me though, no matter if I swat him off, curse him out, he laughs. He compliments me too much when we’re alone together, and cowers behind his little flowery phrases when I call his friends ugly names.
I’ve lived all around Louisiana over the years, from Lafayette to New Iberia in a span of just a few months before we move down, down to New Orleans where everyone loved jazz and it was before the runoff from the storms got so bad, or rather before The Storm itself.
I was six, but now I’m seventeen and I don’t remember Lafayette all that well, but we’re planning to go one of these days, and Anna tells me that the flora is so dense you can’t distinguish what smells of what.
We never lived in really safe neighborhoods though, no matter the area. New Orleans might be the worst right now, but Anna never really had enough money, and I’ve learned to not question where she gets it anymore, because the shame in her face is something I find a little sickening.
But I don’t think I could live anywhere else anyhow.
The shrimp ain’t good enough and there’s no morality learned when it’s taken from experience.
The Ten Commandments come to mind, even though I’m no religious child. However, I’ve gone to church to confess my sins, once or twice. The habit petered out, because as of late the trees have ears bigger than any wrinkled priest’s, and the waters reflection gazing back tells me that (as well as the fact that I need to wash my face) I’ve no one to apologize to other than myself, and I’ve got to get better for that reason only.
I still find myself apologizing to the water I stare down at though. Apparently further west there are reserves and centers for the environment, up by Monroe and by Leesville, and even closer to New Iberia than here, National Parks and whatnot. We don’t have as much of that here, and especially after The Storm, most of the money we’ve got is still being used for repairs.
The money I’ve got is held in a piggy bank in the corner under my bed, kept safe because I still remember when I was home alone one day when my sister was out, and a man in a dark coat came in and I remember hiding under the sink in the upstairs bathroom with the family shotgun (which makes me chuckle till this day, as the safety was still on and my fingers were so stubby I wonder if I could have even reached the trigger) and he looted the house well enough that my sister cried herself to sleep that night.
I guess I didn’t understand enough at the time, and it didn’t scare me as bad as it should have.
What scares me now is that times are changing much faster than I anticipated; I hear my friends talk about their plans and their dreams and it’s lost on me.
I wake up at dawn just so I can chew honeycomb in the dense morning fog and wait for the sun to stretch itself awake against the pines and magnolias and I’ll hear the cicadas wake up, and no one talks about any college or that I’m young and have a future and I can feel as old as the war veterans who hum in their rocking chairs with their shotguns by their laps.
I belong with simpler times, where I can clean the water until the sun has long set and the moon balloons to the ceiling of a star-salted sky and there’s no fear of deadlines.
There’s only a whole lot of water.
“You look like you’re thinking mighty hard girl.”
“Jerry.”
I don’t know whether I hate Jerry or not. I hate him when he’s with his friends, but not as much when he’s by himself.
“You thinking of jumping into this sludge?”
“S’not sludge, it is water. An’ it’s not gonna look like this forever either.”
I didn’t face him but I could hear his feet shuffle over to me and plop himself down beside me. He lets out a long grumble.
“Do you see something that other people can’t out here?”
I looked at him after a few seconds pause.
“If I did, I don’t think I’d be talking to you, I think I’d be talking to the voices.”
He let out a bark-like laugh.
“I don’t get you, Juno-“
“You’re damn right you don’t.”
“What I mean is that you don’t do nothing other than work down here and then go home and hole up, the only times I see you are down here.”
“Yeah, well, why would I want to see you and your gang; you and Frank Miller and that boy who you call Tank, you look me up and down and then you jeer at me like I’m real funny-“
“Hey look we don’t mean any harm, they think you’re pretty, you know.”
“Yeah? I think they look like sewer rats. Just because I’m the only female in this neighborhood who won’t mace you doesn’t mean you can take the piss out of my hard work.”
“That wasn’t what I was trying to say!” His ears glowed red. “I was trying to ask why you think you can make a difference when one little girl isn’t gonna do jack to fix anything. You’re not dumb Juno, even though I say so with the guys, you know how guys are! That’s just what we do. Don’t mean no harm by it though, honest!”
“Yeah like meaning harm means anything. You think a bear means to hurt their lunch when they’re starving?”
“I didn’t come here to argue with you.” Jerry mumbled. I shot him a stinging glance. “Your sister isn’t well is she? She looked real pale last time I saw her.”
“None of your beeswax.” And I scooped out another lump of gooey comb from the jar in my lap and bit off a chunk. He laughs a little at my joke. “You think you know things, just like your friends and my friends too-“ I forced down the mouthful. “Just cause you do well in school, or have some healthy pattern. I know who I am and what I gotta do, my sister knows. Do you know, Jerry? Do you and your friends know when you beat people up and tell them they’ll see you again?”
“Juno I-“
“If she ain’t well, then she ain’t damn well! You can keep your nose out of it, and you can stop making me think about things that aren’t necessary! I got enough to worry about as it is, and all you and your kind ever do is make it worse!”
“Why’re you crying?”
What scares me about the future is that no matter how much smarter I am than everyone else, is the future is always smarter than me. The future knows that until there are hundreds of Juno Velikigi with nets and purifiers, the water will still look like sludge. The future knows that my sister won’t be around to hold my hand for very long.
Jerry left when the tears started to fall, and I looked at the dirty waters, I looked at my net.
I felt the water slide over me with a rush of anticipation and sorrow and I tasted the rich scum on my mouth when I shouted as loud as I could.
What scares me about the future is that it knows everything and I know so little, but when I’m here, when I’m with my own God and my own heart?
I know everything that I will ever need to know.
I know everything that I will ever need to know, and so much more.