The pit came the summer Shelley was pregnant. It arrived at night while I was sleeping and I heard it howling behind the house, in our dirt-and-weeds yard. Morning came and I was making the coffee—strong, because Jared liked it muddy, though I didn’t—and I heard something outside. Probably my strays waiting for breakfast, one of them jumping from the fence onto the trash can. A dozen or so lived under the house and in the yard. I had named them after cities in New Mexico, where I’m from—Santa Fe, snow-white Santa Rita, jetblack Estancia, long-haired Roswell, a shy tabby called Pueblo Bonita. I lugged out the big Wal-Mart bag of cat food and unbolted the back door. Roux, my ten-year-old calico, came running up from the other end of the shotgun. She rubbed against my legs and I cooed at her as I opened the door. Then she screeched and leapt up onto the fridge, and something tore up from under the house.

The pit was so skinny I could see its nasty spine arching. Black and brown with a white diamond on its hollowed chest. It had matchstick legs, a short, pointy tail. Yellow bat eyes and a nose smashed into its face. A horrible mouth full of teeth.

I slammed the door and bolted it. For a moment, I thought I’d imagined the whole thing. One of those delusions Jared’s been talking about. Something seen in another dimension, out of my invisible eyes. Am I loco, Lima? I cracked the door and peeked. No lemons no melon. Its snout poked at the screen.

I crept up through the house to the front porch with my coffee, afraid the animal would hear me. It didn’t—the kitchen was all the way in the back.

Shelley came out on her side of the double, where she lived with her mother. Shelley was nineteen, and eight and a half months pregnant, but you wouldn’t know it if you saw her from the back. She had narrow hips and a little ass, and when she turned sideways it was like an optical illusion. She walked across the porch wearing nothing but an old pair of black elastic shorts and a neon-pink sports bra, her hand holding up her back. As if it could do such a thing. Her huge belly hung over the waistband, striped with light brown and pink stretch marks, her belly button popped out. Shelley’s hair was half done, braided into a weave, that blood orange color that only a black woman can pull off. At seven-thirty, she was already sweating.

“Lord,” she said.

“Hush,” I said. “A dog got into the backyard.”

Shelley nodded. “Barked all night. Didn’t get a bit of sleep. Wild packs been all over Napoleon.”

“It’s a pit bull. Nasty one.”

“My dad used to raise pits for fighting. Mean, mean.” She sat on the porch floor and leaned back on her hands. Sitting is an effort when you’re pregnant. “You got a cold-drink inside?”

The living room was dim. I heard Jared snoring, his ragged breath fi lling the house like heat in an oven. The squat forms of his drums huddled together, his guitar cases reclined in the corner. I stroked the head of a mannequin as I walked past, jingled the strands of beads from last year’s Mardi Gras that hung around the doll’s neck. In the bed, Jared was long and hairy, his mouth open. Some people look beautiful when they sleep, children, their easy dreams spinning above their damp heads. I grabbed a can from the fridge and got back out.

“That man of yours came in late last night,” Shelley said, popping the tab on the can of diet Sprite. “Thank you.” She held it up and toasted my coffee mug.

“He had a gig downtown.”

“Till four in the morning?” She swatted at a mosquito. “No-good man.”

“He does have his moments.” I dumped the dregs of the coffee into the weeds. “I’ve got to get going. Careful out back. I’ll make sure he takes care of it.”

“If he ever wakes up.” She looked off toward Tchoupitoulas and the river.

“I’ll be stopping by the store later. You need anything?”

“Sure,” Shelley said. “A husband.”