“What happened?”
Sara turns around and faces her friend. “He tried to kill me. He knew I was leaving. I found his money in the desk. I took it. He owed me that much, I guess.”
The envelope almost bursting with cash, smeared with blood, is now clutched in Sara’s hand. Violet shakes her head. “I knew something was wrong. You both didn’t show up, and I knew I had to come back, but...”
Sara walks to the bookshelf across from the desk, a few feet away from King Saul’s body; she opens a small wooden box and pulls out a small bottle of whiskey and takes two strong sips.
Wide-eyed sitting on the floor, Naomi repeats the same thing: “What could I do?”
Violet closes her eyes, trying to remove what she’s seen, praying perhaps when she opens them, it’ll be a bad dream. But when Violet opens her eyes again, King Saul is still dead, Naomi remains on the floor clutching a bloody piece of glass, and Sara stands before her in a blue dress slightly torn at the shoulder. There are scrapes on her arms, knees, marks on her throat and a small bottle of whiskey in her hand.
There is a line Violet crosses in her mind and heart, one presenting options, ugly choices. It might be over soon. Their lives, the circumstances planned and unplanned, light and shadow, leave them stifled and still in a dim church office. Yes, there is a line Violet must cross, and on the road of her mind much of what she picks up along the way are Old Testament stories, times when vengeance was warranted, justified and even celebrated.
Naomi did what needed to be done. King Saul was a bad man and bad men deserve what they get, even if it’s death on a dirty floor. It was right and it is well with God. Violet knows this. That man was already in Hell. Violet knows this, too.
Crouching down to Naomi who gently rocks herself still asking that one question, Violet brushes hair away from her light yellow, angular face. She removes the wine-stained shard of glass, fiercely gripped in delicate hands.
“Did anyone see you and Sara come here?”
Words sound far away to Naomi. There are things still frozen in her mind. Shock clings to her, sweaty clothes on a muggy summer day. Only the whoosh of blood cycling through her trembling frame signals she still exists in the land of the living.
She still exists. King Saul does not.
“No,” Sara finally answers from behind her. “I don’t think so.”
With everything quiet, Violet further clears the fog in her mind and reasons it’s important to take care of things step by step, contain one crisis at a time. If she didn’t keep moving, she’d surely stop and collapse on the floor, joining Naomi, both of them held captive by inaction.
“Put that bottle back and help me,” she orders Sara.
Sara returns the bottle to the wooden box but remains in front of the bookshelf.
Violet removes the blanket. Blood, an unholy glue, initially resistant to Violet’s pull, finally loosens its grip. A few stray fibers cling to the wound.
Sara just watches. Offers no help. Cries no tears. Her eyes vacantly follow movement.
Naomi still rocks to and fro.
Violet continues to pray and acts fast.
The scene will be more convincing as a robbery so she’ll make it look like that as much as she can. She takes a few bills from the envelope and scatters them around the body.
She removes Saul’s wallet from his back pocket, a subtle lump of black leather embossed with his initials, taking the $42 and stuffing it in her bra. He has his rings, including a plain gold ring on his left pinkie finger and the one with diamonds on his right pinkie finger. She confiscates those as well, placing them in her pocket. They’ll fetch a few more dollars to help Sara on her journey to Tennessee. Plenty of shops in the city are willing to take jewelry with blood on it. They’ll wipe it off and sell it just the same.
As best as she can, Violet rubs fingerprints from the glass that killed Saul and gathers it up along with the blanket to take with her to discard in a dumpster a few blocks away.
“Get Naomi,” Violet orders Sara.
Violet looks on the street from the window. People linger in front of the building so they’ll escape out the back.
“We’re gonna take you home, Naomi, and you’re gonna go to sleep because this is a bad dream. Nothing but a bad dream,” says Violet.
Naomi leaves the office and waits for Sara and Violet in Sister Coates’s chair.
Sara closes the door after her. “She’s not strong like we are,” says Sara.
“Strong? You went to get a doll. She saved your ass and you want to talk about strength now?”
“I’m just saying she’s gonna break. Tell someone. Then it’s all done. It’s over.”
“All you had to do was follow directions! We should already be at the train station.”
Sara’s eyes even in the dim light grow darker, her lips curl. She looks like Saul. The streetlights bounce shapes and shadows, ghostly witnesses to fresh secrets.
“I needed to get Louisa. It’s the only thing I have left from her.”
“This ring was your mom’s.” Violet pulls the cheap wedding band from her pocket. “You didn’t even flinch when I took it.”
“What would I want it for? He gave it to her and it kept her chained to him. She gave Louisa to me. She was mine!”
“You almost died to get a damn doll! Naomi almost died to save you!”
“Y’all got involved. I didn’t ask for your help. You see me like some charity case. You always need to be the hero. The good girl. You need someone to save all the damn time! You need to feel like you Jesus or some shit.”
Violet’s head cocks to her left much as it did before she was about to say something she’d later regret. Her lips hot and ready to burn.
“No. I’m not Jesus. I’m the one who is keeping a bitch like you from going to jail with a bastard in your belly. I’m the one who can tell you the truth. And I can tell you this—without Naomi doing what she did, you’d be dead. And yeah, we’d be sad. But we’d eventually move on with our lives just the same, and you’d be in the ground. So yeah, I’m Jesus, fine. Act like you don’t want my help and find yourself in Hell just the same.”
“Fuck you!” shouts Sara, reaching for Violet’s neck much the same as Saul did to her earlier. The angry tangling of limbs, muffled yelps. The girls tussle on in anger and fear, all the hidden competitions and jealousies on display, the abundance of emotion without an easy release.
Each girl loses momentum and breath, hate drains from their limbs and fingers. They’re left sore and scratched and winded. Nothing has been alleviated, nothing has been gained, but with the broken love left between them, Violet and Sara trudge out of the office and gather Naomi. They leave my halls with a bloody blanket, a blade of glass and a new burden to shoulder.
More than hate binds them now. Secrets and blood can fortify the shakiest of bonds.
Forever and to the end.
CHAPTER 10
LAYLA
“You looking for the girl?”
This is why Ruby can’t leave. He’s terrifying. He imposes himself; a monarch, a pharaoh, a vengeful god of all around him. He circles me like prey. His smile, even and iceberg white, one that charms so many, seems more of a snarl. He might kill me. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
The bravery I thought I had. The Three Women and the faith I thought guided me into Ruby’s small room begins to abandon me.
He takes only two steps and we’re inches apart.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.”
I try to step around him but he matches my stride. Dancing with an unwanted partner.
“Again, I ask what you’re doing here? You collecting her belongings? She leaving?”
“If she is gone, what the hell are you gonna do about it?”
He laughs and I think the devil must laugh this way. He’s a shuddering ba
g of yellow-brown bones. His green eyes slice into me.
“That little bitch thinks she can go?”
I flinch when I hear what he calls Ruby. I remember the bruises on her neck. I remember the black eyes that Auntie Alice so expertly learned to cover up and the lies she knew how to tell and how people believed her because they didn’t want to believe anything else. All that pain, hate, anger, wasted time, wasted lives. And I can’t let him intimidate me. I can’t give him my power. I breathe deep. I remember again the Three Women. I’m not alone. I have my faith and that’s going to give me courage. Something has to.
“You’re the reason she left.”
“She better get her ass back here before the sun goes down.”
“You don’t own her. She’s not property.”
“That girl owes me.”
“That’s your problem. You think everyone owes you.”
“Little girl, you better stop talking before you say something that’s gonna get you hurt.”
“Like what? Like you’re a shitty father. Like you were a terrible husband to one of the sweetest women in the world. Like you’re nothing and I know you’re nothing! You’re a bully. You’re a coward. A scared, little boy.”
It feels so good to say all of this. I am burning with righteous anger and my mouth is firing out everything I’ve wanted to say to Lebanon, maybe to my father, too. All the hate and the rage, the sadness and the loathing I’ve let myself feel, I get to free it, put it on someone else. I get to breathe!
“I’m going to tell everyone, any person who’ll listen, at the church, on the street that you’re the reason a woman is dead. You’re the reason my friend is broken. You are everything that is wrong.”
“Shut up,” he whispers, trembling like someone experiencing an earthquake only they can feel.
“Or what? You’re gonna shoot me like you shot Auntie Alice?”
Fingers grip my face and squeeze. He tightens enough to make the muscles throb instantly. He can break my jaw. He can bloody me. I think he might kill me. I think of Mom and J.P.
I think of Dad. What would he do if Lebanon killed me? Would that break the spell, destroy their connection? If Lebanon killed me right now, would it be enough to free my father? And I want to believe it will.
Looking into Lebanon’s eyes my stray thoughts flicker like those bugs in the summertime.
“You know, your dad tried to play the hero, even when we were younger. You should ask him how playing the hero turned out.”
It’s a few seconds, a minute at the most, and he lets me go. “Tell her to get her ass back here and you get your ass out of my house. If I see you in here again, you’ll get worse than Ruby or Alice ever got.”
He doesn’t yell or scream. His voice isn’t raised. It is so even and soft, his words spoken don’t sound like threats, but they are.
“I’m not scared of you, Lebanon.” My left arm begins to break out in small bumps again.
“You should be scared of your daddy. So busy looking for me, you don’t realize monsters live in all families. Not just mine.”
I walk out of the bedroom and try not to look back at him. He utters one final question as I make my way to the front door: “Who’s the coward now?” There is an unmistakable smile in his voice.
My face still pulses like it remains in Lebanon’s grip. I almost run out of that place.
Ruby wasn’t there, but bad memories and sadness and violence still reside in the cute bungalow with an apple blossom tree in the front yard. Worse, Lebanon still lives there and none of us are safe.
Who’s the coward now?
Fear is such a warm blanket and I feel it fold over me, but I still hear this:
Go!
RUBY
I felt bad leaving Layla the way I did, the empty ringing of a bell my final goodbye. She wanted me to talk. I wanted to say something, but I want her to be free of me. I want to be free of me, too.
Longwood Drive is a few beautiful blocks lined with old houses and even older trees on small hilltops that look like mountains to me. It lies only about three or four miles from where I live, on the southwestern tip of Chicago.
There are distinct boundaries here like there are with all communities, certain streets cordoning off where this neighborhood is from that neighborhood. Beverly is no different. Eighty Seventh Street kisses the north border, then Vincennes Road lies east; Francisco Avenue and Western Avenue lie west and 107th Street holds up the southern tip. Potawatomi Indians used to live here until white people came and kicked them out, like every other scrap of land in this country.
What sets this place apart is that white people in this area of the city never left, didn’t flee and scatter to the North Side or the suburbs. The white flight of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s didn’t totally affect this area. I mean we moved in, but they stayed. It’s one of the few places white flight didn’t hold its power.
It was also one of the few places I felt happy with Layla. Reverend Potter would take us to this neighborhood for Halloween and we’d get full-size candy bars, none of the fun-size stuff. Reverend Potter would take our hands, I’d be on his right and Layla on his left and we’d go house to house. And everyone, white, black, didn’t matter would smile at us and ask if we were sisters. I’d say yes. One time we were ketchup and mustard. Another time we both dressed up as Princess Leia and got in a fight about it, but we reconciled after we ate candy.
In Beverly I imagined I was a Potter, Ruby Naomi Potter. Reverend Potter was my dad. Auntie Joanna was my mom. J.P. was my little brother. Layla, she was my sister. Finally.
And now there’s no place where I can go in this city, where he can’t find me. No place where I can disappear in the streets and homes with boutique shops and pubs and rolling hills and big trees.
He will find me like he found Mom. You can’t dream when you’re not safe so I can’t stay in Beverly, in Chicago, have the life I dreamed about running up and down the streets with Layla holding bags of candy, pretending I belonged to a family that loved me and made me feel safe.
“Save yourself, baby.”
There are two white women talking on the corner across the street. Both are stick figures with golden hair cut in perfect layers and enshrined in designer clothes I’ve likely never ever heard of and can’t afford. Their lips part and collapse in strange ways, their faces take on distorted shapes. I think they must have wonderful lives and tiny inconveniences. Maybe I’m wrong and these rich girls have a million problems I’d never want to have. But I don’t want their lives and I have my own problems. So what do I want?
To leave and never, ever come back.
LEBANON
TWO YEARS BEFORE ALICE KING’S DEATH
Alice is waiting on the porch for me. She has some kinda look on her face soon as I come up the stairs with a mostly empty beer bottle in my hand. It’s just my third, maybe fourth, I think. The nighttime, this particular brand of it, right before one day turns into the next, makes her look small, like she needs protecting, but that isn’t a job I’ve ever been good at.
“You’re late,” she says, but she puts her arms around me.
“I’m tired.”
“I know. I know. Did you have a good day at work?”
I take her hands and unwrap them from my waist. She steps back, her lips downturned and trembling. “What you want, woman? Told you I’m tired. Don’t wanna be bothered with no nonsense. Got enough of that at work.”
“What happened?” Alice’s voice, it’s always light, never angry. Maybe there’s love there. She grabs for my hand. I let her hold it and I squeeze back the tiniest bit. Streetlamp glow through the bare tree branches in our front yard covers our hands in striped light, like tigers.
“Just tell me what happened. It’ll make you feel better. Talking always makes me feel better.”
“Talk about it, huh?”
> “Nonnie, please...just try,” she begs. She’s the only one I let call me “Nonnie” or anything other than Lebanon and she calls me “Nonnie” only when she wants to get something out of me. Nothing material, just my feelings or some such shit that won’t make a bit of difference though she believes it will.
“Deliveries were all late. Mr. Wright kept getting lost, giving customers the wrong orders. I had to go back out and fix everything!”
“Well, is he okay?”
“Hell if I know, but it’s been going on for too damn long. His family is thinking about selling the place. They might shut it down. I mean if he can’t run it, then someone needs to.”
Her eyes sparkle even in the deep blue black of night. “Why not you?”
“Why not me what? Buy the bakery? You must be crazy!”
“You’re smart, Nonnie, and talented. Everyone at church asks about that pineapple upside-down cake you make, the cookies, that sweet potato pie. You could do it!”
Buying the place means money, means more responsibility, too. Means more eyes, but if Mr. Wright’s family let me make payments, if I could find another source of income, if someone took care of the numbers, it’s possible. Alice is good with numbers. Best with a needle and thread, but pretty good with numbers, too. And she really believes it, that I could be good at managing the bakery. The shadow of her hand as it caresses my face startles me, just a bit. The skin of her palm is warm on my cheek. I could run the bakery. Like she said, people love my food. Enough people come, I get enough money together, I could open another bakery maybe, and another after that. All I need is opportunity.
“I do this, you’re doing the books, Alice. If I can get enough money together, maybe we could use some of the money from the church. Enough comes in, Jackson might not notice a few hundred here and there. I mean he has about two or three services on Sunday alone!”
“Well, I was thinking maybe we could get a loan, Nonnie.”
“No one’s gonna give me a damn loan! You either! Two broke-ass black people on the South Side of Chicago is not some banker’s idea of the American Dream to throw money at. We’re not the kind of people white people loan money to!”
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