“Aw, I love you too, my angel.” She rubbed his soft curls.
“Mom, look! A McDonald’s!” Ryatt pointed at one of those new drive throughs.
“You’re hungry?”
“No, but I wanna go.” Ryatt clasped his hands and begged. “Please, Mommy.”
Well, there was no denying a request put like that. What the heck, she decided she’d splurge, albeit slightly perplexed by his newfound interest. Ryatt used to love Burger Chef’s Funmeal before Wendy’s introduced drive-throughs and McDonald’s followed suit. Now they were sprouting up like mushrooms, and Ryatt never missed their Golden Arches. How soon had he outgrown the chintzy toys that came with the Funmeals! Or maybe he hadn’t. Something about getting fast food while sitting in a vehicle made kids forgo the excitement of going inside for a little toy.
Iris stopped the car in front of a window, and a teenager with a perpetually bored face jotted down their order, which was just an ice cream. Ryatt leaned out, paid for it, and collected the cold treat, never stopping to smile until the conclusion of business, even though his gum-chewing interlocutor offered nothing more than the obligatory greetings. Iris, who didn’t turn off the engine due to her recent reminder of the condition of her car, shifted into the first gear, drove around, and resumed the journey.
The distant gray buildings were silhouetted against the sinking red orb behind them radiating in the sky. She glanced at her boy, and like always, the glance turned into a stare, not for the peculiar way he ate ice creams—he never licked or sucked but just bit the thing off and swallowed it like a starving wolf coming across a meal in the Siberian Tundra—but because of his oceanic eyes. There was something mesmerizing about them, deep and mysterious, and they always transfixed Iris. The color couldn’t befit anyone better. Combined with Ryatt’s caramel skin, they gave him such a wise look, as if he had got it all together already. A man with a plan. Cool as a cucumber. A survivor who came knocking down into the world, a world that was going up in smoke and spiraling into utter chaos.
As they got closer to home, Ryatt was rubbing his eyes vigorously, which were starting to look reddish. The Plymouth trundled to a stop in front of her store, and they both got down.
“Mom, my eyes feel funny,” Ryatt said and wiped them with his knuckles.
“It’s the chemicals, sweetie.” Iris held his hands gently and pulled them loose. “You go rest now. If they feel funny after an hour, we will go to the doctor.”
She unlocked the front door, which was thankfully not jimmied, and Ryatt ran towards the back that led to their bedrooms. She went inside and positioned herself behind the billing counter, looking out at passing cars.
A black Alfa Romeo stopped in front of the shop, blocking her view, and a short chubby young man alighted from the front. First thing anyone would notice about him was his white-blond hair and bushy eyebrows. Pulling his loose pants up, he walked to the backdoor and opened it. A man, taller than six feet and heavier than two hundred pounds, stepped down. He wore a hat that drooped to the side of his face, and he carried a white walking stick, which he didn’t need. He was healthy as a mule, his muscles built like a wrestler who let his body go.
He came into the shop and smiled at Iris, the uncanny expression of a viper. “Bugsy.” He tipped his head at the chubby man. “He’s my cousin from Naples. They call him Roman. How about that?”
Iris’s face crumpled. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“My name’s Bugsy but people call me Mr. Hat. I’m the capo of the Detroit Alliance. Maybe you’ve heard of us?”
Iris had, from papers and hearsay. They were the zenith of evil when it came to Detroit. Murder, rape, extortion, drug and human trafficking, even pornography, nothing was beneath them when it came to debauchery.
Iris nodded.
“Your mother borrowed $5,000 from my boss before deciding to catch cancer and die.”
Indignant, words tumbled out of her mouth. “I already told the kid—”
“Kid she says.” Bugsy looked at Roman and laughed, before turning his attention back to Iris, without the smile, however snake-like it had been. “My collection agent has murdered two people so far, but the poor bastard’s fallen for you. He just can’t bring himself to carve you up like he’s ordered to.”
Frowning, Iris said, “C-carve me—”
“So, you are the woman who gave birth alone during the riots? The Strong Thing?”
“Yes,” Iris managed to say, hating the fame the papers had brought her. When she had carried Ryatt that dark afternoon, with the cord still connecting them, she found a group of firefighters around the corner. They had used a wireless and called in an EMT who carefully severed the tube. A man was lying on a stretcher inside the EMT and when he heard how she managed to deliver the baby by herself, he introduced himself as a news reporter. He went on ahead and published her story and also printed her picture. The article’s title read, ‘The Strong Thing’.
“You’re Italian, aren’t you?” Bugsy asked and gave her body a once-over. “Those robust shoulders and feisty look on your face, these American women don’t got those. They’re all weaklings.”
Iris didn’t know how to respond to that. If his mom had sent him to school, he would have learned about Amelia Earhart, Jane Addams, or the one in Detroit, Rosa Parks.
“I’ve seen you out on the streets,” Bugsy continued, “in Vito’s butchery, in Carrera’s vegetable shop, and I think to myself, you’re the most beautiful bitch in the neighborhood. How come you married a nigger?”
Iris’s eyes widened, and she clenched her teeth. “Watch your language.”
“Can you believe this bitch?” Bugsy turned to Roman who shrugged.
“I said mind your—”
“Close the door!” Bugsy barked.
Before Iris could react or shout for help, Roman locked the front door. Bugsy pulled a knife out, the light gleaming on the metal’s edge menacingly.
Roman circled the counter, but Iris didn’t back up; she stood her ground. Then he came around and grabbed her arms from behind. Bugsy inched closer and touched her neck. His rough hand travelled down and squeezed her right breast, making her gag in repulsion, and he groped his way to her stomach.
Licking his lips, he said, “You lost touch with how the world outside works. Let me give you a reality check.” He made a fist and punched her in the gut. Iris’s surroundings darkened and everything spun. Roman let her go and she fell down at Bugsy’s feet.
“You don’t teach me how to talk, bitch.” He nudged her head with his boot. “Not when you owe me, you got it?”
She just wouldn’t talk to this racist animal.
Bugsy mashed her hand with the heel of his boot, and grated it against the floor. In spite of a yelp originating within her, she shut her mouth in time to contain it. Never give the animal the satisfaction.
“I’m asking you a question. Say you got it.”
Iris pursed her lips, deciding not to be intimidated by this two-bit thug. When he lifted the boot, Iris held her dust covered hand. Skin had been scraped off and the tissue within slowly turned from white to pink before finally settling on red.
Bugsy sighed. “Looks like we’re gonna have to teach this bitch some manners. Open the door.”
Roman obliged and kept watch while Bugsy doubled over, tugged her upper arm and pulled her to her feet. He put the knife’s tip on her back, inches above her hip, and whispered into her ear, “Make a sound, this goes in.” He pressed his face onto the side of hers and bit her cheek along with her hair. “Damn, you smell good.”
Roman opened the car door, and Bugsy said, “Let’s go.”
Even though she knew no one would cross these criminals, Iris wanted to scream for help. But then she remembered Ryatt. These unpredictably violent gangsters would not hesitate to hurt anyone, even a child. So she complied.
As Bugsy manhandled Iris out of the shop, she turned and looked back.
Though she was confident that she would never cry, that sh
e would never let the corruption of this city get to her, she heard a loud sniffle.
And then she saw Ryatt’s tiny head peeking from the back wall. He was terrified and frozen to the spot. Tears dripped down from his big eyes. Eyes that were now redder than that evening’s sun.
Chapter 3
September 19, 1977. 06:45 A.M.
The van that transported Iris back to her shop jerked to a sudden halt. She heard the door beside her glide open and a cold morning wind flooded inside. The hood they’d put over her head was yanked off and she was pushed out of the vehicle, making her land on all fours. As the shock of hitting the pavement passed through her, the burning throb below her hips became more apparent. However, she had no time to process the disgusting things Bugsy and his men had done to her in the name of teaching her a lesson. Her baby had spent the whole night alone, starved and petrified, and that was what mattered the most. She scrambled to her feet and propelled herself at the entrance, throwing the front door open.
Ryatt was at the same place where she had last seen him, but in a different position.
He lay motionless on the floor!
Iris’s motherly instinct took over. As she sprinted towards him, the rug caught her foot, causing her to stumble. Straight away, she got up and rushed to her child again.
She scooped him off the floor as tears cascaded down her cheeks. “Ryatt? Oh my God, Sweetie?”
Ryatt’s eyes were swollen, and some kind of viscous fluid ran along the sides of his face in thin rivulets. It appeared too thick and gelatinous to be tears.
“Baby?” She stroked his right cheek, and his eyes fluttered open. “Are you alright?”
And she almost fainted when she saw his eyes. They were plump red, bordering on bloody, causing her heart to pause for a few moments before accelerating at its fullest speed.
“M-mommy?” Ryatt spoke but his eyes did not look at Iris, focusing on something over her head.
She held his chin and angled it gently so that he faced her. “Look at me, baby. I’m right here in front of you.”
“Mommy…” Still not looking at her, Ryatt cried, “I can’t see no more, Mommy!”
A ghastly chill froze her spine and traversed her back. “What do you mean you can’t see?”
“I don’t know.” He sniffled as his small fingers wiped his nose. “Everything is just so black and glowing-like.”
Iris lifted Ryatt up, maneuvered him onto her hip, and swiped the keys off the counter and hurried to the car.
* * *
In under ten minutes, Iris skidded her car to a stop before the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. Maybe her Plymouth understood the urgency and decided not to make her day any worse.
She whisked the boy onto her arms and hastened inside. After telling the orderlies what had happened, they propped him on a wheelchair and rushed him to the Ophthalmology department in the East wing.
Though it was an ultra emergency for her, they put her in a queue of around twenty people, all with little kids in their hands.
And every child had swollen eyes, except Ryatt’s were the worst of them all.
Iris craned her neck and found Loraine waiting at the front of the line. She almost peeled away from the queue, wishing to join Loraine, cutting everyone in front of her off. But her heart didn’t consent. After all, these were all mothers and fathers feeling desperate for their children, even for a longer time than Iris. So she unwillingly decided to wait.
Loraine went in and came out. And a nurse led them towards a room in the far end of the corridor.
It was almost one hundred years before the line became the shortest and Iris was let into the office.
The doctor, a black senior with an air of authority, smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry for the hold-up. As you could see, the contamination has affected so many children.”
“C-contamination?” Iris gave Ryatt’s hand a gentle squeeze. “What contamination?”
“The children’s swimming pool you took him to yesterday is contaminated with Acanthamoeba. And the long queue outside? They all took their boys or girls to the same pool.”
“But the water was chlorinated. I smelled it myself.”
“Doesn’t matter. There are a few pathogens that can survive the chlorine. But no worries,” the doctor said with a cheerful smile. “A few eye drops and proper rest, he will recover in no time.”
“Thanks a lot, doctor.” Iris placed a hand on her chest and chuckled. “I almost gave myself a heart attack when he said he couldn’t see.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed and his smile shrank. “What do you mean he can’t see?”
He took a pen torch and skirted the table in one quick motion. He examined Ryatt’s eyes, his expression turning grave with each passing second. “When did you take him to the pool?”
“Noon, yesterday.” Iris scratched the nervous tick at the back of her neck.
“Yesterday?” the doctor asked in vehemence. “And you thought it wise to wait until his eyesight was completely gone to bring him to the hospital?”
No, she screamed inside.
If only the kind doctor knew what had happened; that Bugsy had kidnapped her, and the unspeakable things he and his goons had done all night. The relief she felt a minute ago turned into a dark hole that drained every bit of hope.
Ryatt gripped her hand tighter. “Mommy. It’s starting to hurt.”
The doctor switched off the light, the expression in his face still that of a very disappointed father.
“Acanthamoeba keratitis,” the doctor said as he went to his table and picked up a pen and a pad. “It is a fairly curable condition if treated promptly, usually when the first symptoms appear. But delaying the treatment this long, you practically made your son blind.”
A thousand knives pierced Iris’s heart. Her voice was barely a whisper when she heard herself say, “H-he is going to be alright?”
The doctor gave Iris a resigned look. “Unfortunately, his vision is gone forever.”
Iris clasped her hands together, praying. “There is no cure?”
The doctor shook his head. “The only way he will regain sight is by transplant. But the wait is long. It could be years before we get a pair.”
As Iris’s world stunned, the doctor filled a prescription and rang a bell on his table. A nurse came into the office. Casting one last disgusted look at Iris, he turned to the nurse. “Give this boy the same medication you gave to the other boy, Nick.”
As Iris followed the nurse and Ryatt to a room at the end of the corridor, she spotted Loraine in the doorway. She was with a man in a tank top who had his head shaved and his body covered in tattoos. The drug-dealing soulmate.
Inside, she found Nick, Loraine’s boy, almost done with the bandages. Something about it just didn’t feel right. Such a small head didn’t really belong in all that white wrapping.
Loraine shooed her husband away before waddling to Iris and hugging her.
When she let go, Iris asked, “How did Nick get… so sick? Weren’t you with him last night?”
“I was working, and my asshole husband was drunk out of his mind. Doesn’t even remember Nick trying to wake him up when his eyes hurt. So I returned home and found the boy sitting beside the couch, sobbing.”
Iris emitted a guttural sigh and teared up again as if Nick were her own child.
“Oh dear.” Loraine gripped Iris by the shoulders. “We’re gonna sue the owner of that pool.”
Iris couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to sue anyone or get a billion dollars. All she needed was to reverse the damage done to her baby.
“I just want him to be okay again. To be able to see.”
Loraine grabbed Iris’s arm and pulled her to the side. “There’s a way.”
“What do you mean?” Iris asked, her voice a decibel louder as a sliver of hope lightened her being.
A nurse, who was wiping Ryatt’s eyes with a cotton ball, looked up at them but resumed her work.
In a low voice, Lo
raine said, “My asshole husband has connections, you know?”
Iris did. He was a jailbird. But what did that have to do with anything? “I don’t understand,” she said.
“He just told me about an Oriental who can, for a price, fly in ‘organ donors’ from the East. They sell whatever body parts us lucky and relatively rich Americans need.” Loraine looked into the room and lowered her voice further, bringing it down to a whisper. “We are going to buy a pair of eyes for Nick.”
“What about the donor? Won’t he go blind?”
“What? No. How good is money if they don’t have eyes. No, sugar, we will buy from two different donors.”
Iris couldn’t accept to do something like that. On top of sounding illegal, her moral compass was too darn perfect to guide her anywhere but towards what was right. But Iris had no intention of waiting years for a legal donor in the US and let Ryatt miss his childhood. She loved her son so much that it hurt her. She would do anything for him. She would even…
Wait! That’s it!
“Loraine.” Iris took hold of her friend’s shoulders. “Does your husband know any unlicensed doctors?”
“He should. Why?”
“I…” Iris dabbed at the corner of her left eye and looked away. “I want to give my own eye to Ryatt.”
“What?” Loraine wriggled out of Iris’s grip and took a step back. “That’s crazy, woman!”
Iris glanced inside the room and shushed her friend.
“No, it is not. If someone on the other side of the planet is willing to give their eyes for money, then it really shouldn’t surprise you that I am willing to do the same for love.”
“But Iris” – Loraine’s voice shook – “you will be blind.”
Iris smiled calmly, and tears of hope escaped. She never felt so confident about something. In fact, this would be the most perfect decision she had ever made in her life.
“You only have one eye,” Loraine said.
“And I am sure Ryatt will use it for the growth of our community and to help people. Because he is a good boy. Always has been such a good boy.” Iris looked at her son. So handsome. So very calm. He was a good boy. A very good boy indeed.
The Innocents Page 2