Noah

by Allison LaFleur

“No, not really.” In two weeks’ time, I would be walking across the stage for my diploma, a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a minor in business. And I had no idea what to do with my life after that.

  “Is your family coming to graduation?”

  “I don’t know. I hope my mama at least will come… and maybe a couple of my brothers and sisters. We’ll see.”

  “That’s right. You have a really big family, don’t you?” He asked, walking me to the corner where he would head to the parking garage, and I would go the opposite direction to the bus stop.

  “Yeah.” Whether they came would depend on if we could afford the bus fare or not.

  “Good luck on the final.”

  “Thanks! You too! I’ll see you Friday!” I pulled my jacket tighter and crossed the cracked sidewalk to sit on the cold bus bench. An old styrofoam coffee cup skipped down the street, blown by a gust of wind that attacked my neat bun, pulling strands out to dance around my head. I kept pulling them from my eyes and mouth. Finally, I gave in and dug in my purse for a scarf to tie over my wild hair.

  Some bored individual had carved their initials in the bench—JW+SC surrounded by a heart. I felt an odd kinship with the artist. I was bored too.

  I loved my job and Tander Science, and I missed it. I’d thrived on the camaraderie, the verbal sparring with Noah, the way he listened to me and sought out my opinions. I could apply for other positions. My degree guaranteed I wouldn't have to start in the secretarial pool ever again, but I didn’t want to start over somewhere else.

  I didn’t have much time left to make a decision. I would not be living in my parents’ house with a baby. No child of mine would grow up hungry or in fear.

  The bus creaked to a stop in front of me, and I climbed aboard, my hand holding tight to the cold stainless rail. I lowered myself into the hard plastic seat and stared out the window, my reflection in the glass taunting me. Who is this woman? What will she do with her life?

  I could hear the yelling all the way down at the corner as I got off the bus.

  Mama must have brought Daddy home, and he either needed a drink or had already had too many. Either way, he was angry and itching for a fight. I could see the twins sitting on the curb, homework spread across their knees.

  “You bitch! Who gave you the right to sell my car? Huh? How am I going to get to work tomorrow?” Crash!

  “I needed the money to get you out of jail! I thought that is what you wanted me to do?”

  I stood outside the door a moment, eyes closed, ears taking in every sound coming from the apartment. The scent of curry wafted down the building. The Indian couple upstairs must have been making their regular Friday night meal. I could hear the crunch of gravel as someone nearby walked across the parking lot. A door slammed. A dog barked. A baby cried, and I could hear someone shush it. And my father railed at my mother as she whimpered and sobbed. Smack! The sound of flesh striking flesh. The grunt of impact. The squeal of pain.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and opened my eyes, pushing my way into hell.

  “Stop it!” I launched myself at him, pulling at his shoulder, trying to distract him long enough for my crouching mother to get away from him.

  Blood leached from her lip, and one eye had swollen shut. Her dress hung in ribbons from one shoulder.

  “You bitch!” He twisted his shoulders, backhanding me before turning back to Mama as she tried to crawl away on her hands and knees. “Don’t get involved in matters that don’t concern you.”

  “Daddy! Daddy, No!” I screeched, clawing at his back as he kicked Mama over and over in her hip. Then when she fell, he attacked her thighs and belly. Over and over, his boot met her soft flesh so many times she could only groan.

  I grabbed at him, trying to pull him off of her. I lost track of time, my only goal to keep him from killing her.

  The sound of sirens interrupted my focus. Daddy must have heard them too because he paused and looked up and out the window just as a police car pulled up in front of our unit.

  “God damn nosy neighbors. Can’t mind their own business.” Splat! He screwed up his face and spit on the floor where Mama lay perfectly still.

  “God damn worthless bitch!” He huffed and stomped out the door, tossing over his shoulder, “Clean her up and put her to bed. I’ll deal with this.”

  My face throbbed where he had caught me with his knuckles. I touched it, wincing as I made contact with the hot, swollen area.

  “Mama?” I bent down, not sure where I could touch that wasn’t injured. “Mama, we need to get you in bed.” I looked over my shoulder where I could just see him through the window talking to the policeman. “Daddy’s gonna be back in a minute, and he’ll be mad if you’re still here.” Anxiety built in my gut. I looked again and watched him point the officer to another apartment, ever helpful.

  My mother looked small and broken, curled in a tight ball on the faded yellow linoleum. I suspected she had passed out from the pain. That happened with particularly viscous beatings. This one was one of the worst I could remember. He must have dried out overnight in jail and come back meaner than ever.

  “Pete, Andy, get in here!” I whisper-called out the door, motioning my little brothers inside. “Here! Help me move Mama into the bedroom before Daddy gets back.”

  They looked over at Daddy first, gauging his involvement in the conversation, before closing their homework and filing in through the door.

  “Help me roll her on this blanket.” I knew it must have hurt because she moaned as we moved her, but I couldn’t think of any other way a pregnant woman and two eight-year-olds could carry an adult. I dragged the end at her head while the boys each took a corner at her feet, and we carried-dragged her into the small, dark bedroom. I didn’t even bother to turn on a light.

  “Come help me. Grab her middle. Careful!” We pushed and heaved her up onto the sagging double bed, tucking her under the thin sheets and rolling her to face the wall. I needed to see how bad it was, but we didn’t have time. “Go sit at the kitchen table and look like you’re doing homework. I dropped to the floor and hurriedly wiped up the drops of blood, burying the red-stained paper towels deep in the trash.

  By the time the officer followed my father into the house, I had soup heating on the stove and the boys were deep into their homework.

  “Hello, ma’am.”

  “Officer.” I dipped my chin and turned back to the sink, scrubbing potatoes to add to our dinner.

  “Everybody in here okay?”

  Pete and Andy paused in their scribblings, not saying a word, just blinking silently at the policeman.

  “We’re fine. Thank you. Would you like some soup?” I held up a spoonful, the steam rising lazily from the broth.

  “Thank you, ma’am, but I need to be getting on back.” His eyes searched every corner of the kitchen, coming to rest on the boys. “You boys have anything you want to add?”

  Pete and Andy just shook their heads no and buried their noses back in their workbooks.

  “You all have a good night,” he said as he and my father went back outside.

  I could feel us all breathe a sigh of relief when he was gone.

  “Who the hell called the police?” I looked sternly at everyone peeking out from their rooms.

  Toby tumbled out of the hall closet, landing in a heap at my feet. “Daddy hurt Mama.”

  “Oh, Toby.” I swept him up in my arms, squeezing him before plopping him in a chair at the table and setting a bowl of soup and half a potato in front of him.

  We finished eating right before Daddy strutted back in, chest puffed up. He grinned broadly, drinking whiskey from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  “Did you see that? Did you?” He surveyed his domain, the king of his realm. “Those rich pigs think they are so smart, but I showed them!”

  “Daddy? What did you do?”

  “I blew those fuckers sky high!” He started laughing maniacally, taking a big swig of his whiskey.

 
“Oh, Daddy,” I whispered, my face going ghost white. Who is this man?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Noah

  My headlights cut through the darkness. Clouds obscured the moon, only occasionally parting enough to allow its radiance to shine down. The broken moonlight provided flashes, eerie glimpses, like black and white photographs, of squalor as I drove through Lena’s end of town.

  My hands shook. My nerves jangled and made me jumpy. Will she be happy to see me? Does she feel the same way?

  Pulsing red and blue lights lit up the night, flashing like fireworks across my windshield. Black and whites parked haphazardly through the apartment lot. I couldn’t get near Lena’s building. A police barricade stopped me.

  I parked as close as I could, and shouldered myself up to the wooden saw horse, elbowing looky-loos out of my way until I could get the attention of the closest officer.

  “What’s going on?” I puffed, out of breath from my tumble through the crowd.

  “They’ve cornered the bomber, the guy who blew up that building downtown.”

  “The bomber? He’s here?” What were the odds that the asshole who blew up my parents lived in the same shit-hole Lena’s family did. This just fueled my resolve to get her out. My woman and my child had no business living here.

  “He’s barricaded in his apartment. Hostage situation with his wife and kids. Not sure how they are going to get him out.” The young beat cop grinned, enjoying what was probably his most exciting day on the job so far.

  I squinted, looking at where the cars were positioned. I spotted the SWAT team van and the black-clad commandos who had taken up position at strategic vantage points. One knelt on the roof of the building next door while another used a tree on the far side to steady himself as he sighted his target.

  I followed the angle of his rifle down to—Wait! No! That can’t be right! That’s Lena’s apartment! Oh, God! That is Lena’s apartment!

  “You have to let me in there!” I told him. “I have to get my girlfriend out!”

  “Sir…” An older officer heard my panic and came over to assist. “Sir, you have to calm down.”

  “You don’t understand. I need to get in there!” I tried to muscle my way past, but they wouldn’t budge.

  “Sir, if you don’t calm down, I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “Alright, alright!” I backed up, looking around. There has to be a way for me to get in there.

  I blended back into the crowd and started circling around the barricades. I would find a way to get in. There was no way I could leave Lena in there with her bat-shit crazy father.

  I edged up as close as I could between two ambulances. I took a deep breath and stood tall, pretending I belonged. I guess one more guy in a suit didn’t seem odd.

  Radios chattered, ambulance motors hummed, and I could hear Lena’s brothers and sisters screaming.

  Lena’s family had a corner apartment. I could see a small window around the side. Wait. Is it open a crack?

  “You’re all pigs, coming in here and messing with a man in his home!” Her dad’s crazy shouting broke the night.

  I snagged a jacket and radio from the open trunk of a patrol car, shrugged into the jacket, and turned the radio off while pretending to speak into it. It was a clever prop to hide my face. Glancing around, I came out from between the ambulances, heading straight for the window.

  It is open! I grabbed a garbage can and dragged it over, using it to climb up and shove the window open. Luckily, the bathroom was empty, unusual in an apartment of ten people. In seconds, I’d climbed up and in, slithered through the small window, and landed with barely a thump on the bathroom floor.

  The small room sported the various cosmetics and personal hygiene products of a houseful of people, wet towels, random socks, and a row of toothbrushes. The single cracked cup on the sink was a testament to the utter poverty of the family housed within these walls.

  With silent footfalls, I crept to the door, trying to see through the tiny crack out into the room beyond. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, so I leaned an ear against the wood. The whimpers of Lena’s siblings reached me, and then the sudden roar of her father boomed through the apartment.

  “Shut up, you bastards! I can’t believe I put up with you.” He threw a bottle at the wall above them, bits of glass and the dregs of whiskey rained down on the kids as they huddled together.

  “Mr. Bishop, come out with your hands up!” a cop called out to Lena’s father on a bullhorn, trying to establish contact.

  “Assholes think they can tell a man what to do in his own home.” He paced back and forth with a fresh bottle in his hand, loudly slurping from it as he strutted, his gut leading the way. His words grew more and more slurred, “I won’ have any… *hic* anyone tell me *hic* what ah can and canno’ do.” BANG! He kicked a kitchen chair, slamming it into the wall.

  “Mr. Bishop, I repeat, come out with your hands up.”

  This time, he ignored them completely, appearing to be lost in an argument with himself. Then he shouted,“Girl!” He stopped in front of Lena. “Make me a pie!”

  Lena extricated herself from Toby, handing him to her mother, and stood. “Yes, Daddy.”

  He cuffed her upside the head, and she staggered before continuing on to open the cabinets.

  “Um, Daddy?” she hesitated.

  “What now, girl?”

  “We, ah, we don’t have anything to make a pie with.”

  I looked around the bathroom. I needed some way to slow him down, something to restrain him with. Other than a pair of Lena’s stockings drying over the shower rail, I couldn’t find anything useful in the bathroom.

  “You make me a pie right now, you sniveling bitch, or you will regret it!”

  “Ow!” Lena cried out as he landed a blow to her back.

  My fists clenched, and I tensed to leap out at him when the front door of the apartment flew open with a BANG!, and a can of tear gas landed in the middle of the room, spraying the foul chemical everywhere.

  The sound of coughing filled the apartment. All the children sniveled and cried. Lena’s dad began howling, covering and rubbing his eyes, and staggering about the room even more unsteady than when he was simply drunk.

  I pulled the door to block the gas, running a hand towel under the water and covering my mouth. I breathed through the fabric as I busted into the living room and barreled into her father like a linebacker. I slammed him into the wall where he slid to the floor in a whining ball of drunken mess.

  The tear gas started to get to me, and I ran the cloth under the faucet, turning my back on him for a moment.

  That was a mistake. As I rang the water out of the towel a fist like a sledgehammer met my ear, knocking me sideways. “What the…?” I threw my arms out, coming into contact with the counter on one side and Lena’s father on the other. The bastard had gotten up and attacked me.

  Thud!

  He staggered, knocking into me before slumping to the floor at my feet. I looked up, and Lena stood there, a warrior princess, eyes watering, lip leaking blood, belly rounded with my child.

  She had never looked more beautiful.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Noah

  “What?”

  I stood there shocked, looking from Lena to her father and back again. After several minutes, he still hadn’t moved.

  “Lena, baby, are you okay?” I rushed to her side, taking her arm to support her. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “But, my family…” She started to turn back

  “Hon, they are all gone.” And they were. The moment they saw her father go down, they had all scattered like rats leaving a sinking ship, abandoning her to whatever happened.

  “But—”

  “No. Come on.” I led her out into the sunlight as the police stormed into the apartment behind us, rolling the fat mess over and zip-tying his unconscious form.

  “Here.” I found an empty ambulance and sat her down, looking her ove
r until the paramedics pushed me out of the way to take over. When they were done, I bundled her into my car.

  “My family—”

  “They will be fine. I’ll find a hotel and put them up until we can find them a new place to live.”

  “Really?” She turned her big round eyes on me. “You’ll help my family?”

  “If I help them, I help you. Of course I will.”

  A single tear fell from her eyes, rolling slowly down her smooth cheek and dripping onto her belly.

  “Lena,” I pulled the car over and turned to face her. “Life has no meaning without you.” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “I thought about a lot of things while you were gone. About things I could do, anything in the world, and the only thing I wanted was you.” I took her hands. “Come home with me, please?”

  “Noah,” she rubbed a hand over her belly as she looked into my eyes. “We are just too different.”

  “No, Lena. We’re not.” I sat back in my seat and looked out the front window of my car. “On the surface, maybe. We started in different places, but deep down, we are made of the same stuff.” I reached over and took her hand. “I had a long talk with Mr. Tander. I’m moving the division to New York.”

  “But your contract!” She blinked. “How can you possibly?”

  “Well,” I looked back at her, “I told him to stuff it.”

  “Noah!”

  “No, really. It was a huge scene. I called Mr. Tander and Mrs. Buckingham to my office. I told them they fired the woman I love, and I have no interest in doing business with them.”

  “Noah, seriously?” She smiled, bouncing a little in her seat.

  “Seriously. The contract has an out. I can separate at any time as long as I don’t expect Mr. Tander to promote it though his contacts like we’d planned. I would never enter into a contract I didn’t control.”

  “Oh my God!” She sucked in a breath, just staring at me. “You really did that for me? You are going to move to New York?”