Blue Sky
Page 33
“No.”
“And you never saw the man you say actually killed Mr. Hassan? Never met him before in your life, so you say. But what if you had?”
“I didn’t.”
“Let’s say hypothetically that you did. Let’s say you knew him. The two of you were…involved. In love even. That would explain why you would want to protect him, right? Hide his identity from the police? And one way to do that would be to say…that you didn’t see a thing.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t lie.”
“Oh, really!” His face broke into a grin as wide as all outside. “You’ve never lied before? Never? You receive benefits from the state do you not? For five years now, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea what your address of record is? It’s your mother’s house, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you moved out when you were…sixteen, is that correct?”
“Yeah but—”
“Did you ever report that Mr. Perkins was living with you?”
“No.”
“So, you do lie. Seems like you’ve been getting away with it until now.”
“Objection!”
“Sustained.”
“Miss Morrow, I have one more question for you. The blood. Tell us how you got the victim’s blood all over you.”
“I tried to help him. To stop the bleeding.”
“You tried to help…” He pretended to ponder. “I suppose that’s a possibility. Is it also possible that you bent over the body to rifle through his pockets?”
The room began spinning. Blood rushed to my face. My ears picked up every possible sound until it all blended together. I’d made a mistake. This was a horrible mistake.
“Okay, let’s say you didn’t rifle through his pockets. Is it possible that when Mr. Hassan was shot, his body spun in such a way that he collided with you, maybe even falling on top of you?”
“Objection, Your Honor, my client isn’t an expert in…in…”
“It’s fine. I have no more questions.”
Mia made a mad dash for the front door at the first click of the keys. My grandbaby loved her mama something fierce. Acted like they hadn’t spent no time away from each other her whole life. Scared me. Somebody so little and innocent…if things took a turn…
“Mommy! Where you go?”
The three of them hurried in from the cold. Heziah closed the door behind them, and Jackie was the first to come on in the living room. Could tell just from the look on her face that I’d missed something important.
“What happened?”
Her face did a sad twitch that was supposed to be an attempt at a smile. And she reached for the baby, cuddling her face in his belly, getting lost in the scent of his sweetness.
“It’s over, for now.” Heziah sighed, standing back, so Mya could enter first, her feet clobbering across the floor in secondhand pumps.
Mia was wrapped around her mama with unflinching devotion. Legs cinched around Mya’s waist, arms clutching her neck. Hadn’t seen my girl cry in…I don’t know when, but she was damn close.
“Jackie, take the kids on upstairs. Get them ready for their nap.”
“I don’t want no nap. Mommy, when we go get Dee?”
Mya’s eyes slid shut, and a whimper parted her lips as she sank into the sofa.
“Jackie—”
“No, it’s okay.” Mya said.
My girl was back.
“I wanna do it.” Mya stood. Taking the stairs at a slow pace with Jackie following a safe distance behind them.
“What happened?”
Heziah crossed the room and pulled me into a hug. Wasn’t for me though. He was the one needed it. “I tried,” he mumbled into my shoulder.
“That good, huh? Nikki show up?”
He nodded. Leaned back enough to study my face, then kissed me like it might be the last time. “Took the judge ten minutes to decide. Guilty.”
After the initial burst of energy, Mia went down easy. She was tired. Mama had been right about that. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking over them, wondering how any parent could walk away without so much as a word. Was there even such a thing as the right words? How does a mother say goodbye to her child?
Maybe I’d start with something like “Mommy has to go away for a while.”
“Take me with you,” she’d say.
“I can’t. Kids can’t come.”
I touched her hairline with just a faint brush of my fingertips, careful not to disturb her sleep. I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and get lost in her warmth. Instead, I concentrated. Allowed only the slightest touch, matching my breathing to the slow pace of hers. She needed the sleep. The sleep would help prepare her for what was coming next. I’d tell her the truth. The judge—no, the police—she understood what the police were. I’d tell her they thought I did something bad, and they wanted to punish me for it.
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing. I’m innocent. It’s all a mistake.”
“Did you tell ‘em it was a mistake? You should tell ‘em, Mommy.”
“I did tell them.”
“Then why you have to go?”
I was so involved in the scene playing out in my head that I didn’t even notice the flurry of noises going on behind me. Not until Jackie heaved a suitcase on the foot of the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Can’t take that much. Just the essentials.” She yanked out the top drawer on her bureau and tossed in some of my underwear. “We’ll go when it gets dark. After everybody’s asleep.”
“Jackie?”
She’d been quiet the whole ride home. Now I knew why. She’d been plotting. Defiant to the end. Even when we were little, she was the one always resisting the rules, fighting the inevitability of the world we lived in, fighting Daddy every chance she got. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils, closed my eyes, and let the oxygen disseminate throughout my body. I would have to make a choice. Maybe Darien saw it coming, and that’s why he disappeared. To make it easier on me, he took himself out of the equation. That just left Nikki, Jackie, and Mama.
“Don’t worry about money. I got you. Once we get to the border, we’ll find one of those people that sneak folks into the country and get them to sneak you out. That simple.”
Jackie had lost her mind, and chaos was sure to follow. I wasn’t surprised. If anybody knew my sister, I did. It made the choice easier.
“You’re smart. You’ll learn the language. We’ll go down and visit you. It’ll be fine. Mama’s gonna worry, but no way around that.”
“Stop.”
“No,” she replied without a moment’s pause. “I got it worked out. See Kem left his car here and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I can drive y’all down to the border—”
“You can’t drive.”
“It’s a technicality! I can drive! I just don’t have a license yet.”
The suitcase was nearly full, and Jackie had only packed my things. She seemed to come to the realization as soon as I did and tossed the first layer onto the floor, replacing it with Mia’s clothes, clean bottles, and diapers.
“Mama would lose the house.”
“Fuck the house. It’s Daddy’s house.”
“Jackie.”
“You can’t just sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop! Who are you? ‘Cause the sister I know wouldn’t just roll over.” She glared at me. “Well?” she demanded, one hand on her hip, the other clenched into a fist. “We can’t just do nothing!”
“Shh!”
The carpet barely moved under our feet as I dragged her into the hallway and closed the bedroom door behind us.
“Prison! Mya!” she shouted as if I were fuzzy about the concept of criminal punishment. “We gotta right to—”
“Not we. Me. It’s my business, not yours.”
The twins emerged from their bedroom. Nat from hers. Mama and Heziah were on the stairs. All of us watching as Jac
kie cut loose.
“Don’t you do that! You are my sister! My blood! What happens to you happens to me! Even if you do run away. Even if I don’t see you for months or years or…” Tears welled up in her eyes, and I looked away.
“All right, now.” It was Mama. As stern as she’d ever been. Joined us on the second floor and slowly walked over to put her arms around Jackie. “You done said enough. Time for quiet.”
Mama’s chest muffled the sound of my sister’s cries. The snotty blubbery kinda cries. The ones that broke your heart if you heard ‘em. Her sobs washed over us all, drowning our family in the unfairness of it all. Nobody moved. Nobody fought it. Jackie sobbed some more, her knees wavering under the weight of it all. Her legs couldn’t have been stronger than a pair of limp noodles, but Mama held her up. Struck me how much strength it took to keep my sister upright when she was falling to pieces. I’d always known I was strong. I’d just assumed I got it from my daddy. Was a lot of things I thought I knew, but I didn’t.
“You pull yourself together, you hear?” Mama whispered. “You do it right now.”
Thirty seconds later, Mama withdrew her support and turned to face the rest of us. “Ain’t gonna be no pity in this house tonight. We gonna have a nice supper—whatever Mya wants. Potato salad, meatloaf, whatever. And we gonna spend the night enjoying each other’s company.”
All was quiet.
“Mama?”
“Yes, baby?” She turned to me.
“Fried chicken? Greens. And potato salad.”
“You want anything sweet?”
My sister wiped the tears from her eyes and reclaimed her natural posture. Our eyes met.
“German chocolate cake.”
With the sunrise, came the beginnings of a new life. A life without cool breezes on summer days, and the warmth of sunshine on my face. A life that held few surprises, good ones anyway. Where family only existed on weekends and in letters. Where the best of me became a nugget of weakness to be hidden and suppressed. The start of a life that settled for good enough. A life with concrete floors, a maze of locked doors, and only the dream of a window. Life at Beaumont Correctional Facility for Women.
“Count your blessings,” Darlene Pratt used to say. I’d roll my eyes and sulk instead. But that was then. Now, sitting on the steel-frame bed, hands clasped between my knees, I counted the seconds until the cockroach would cross the threshold of my cell on its way to visit another prisoner. One Mississippi.
Never felt one way or the other about bugs. Guess that was a blessing. Mama couldn’t stand the sight of anything with more than three legs. She’d run screaming through the house, pointing in the general direction of the perpetrator until me or Aunt Clara killed it and cleaned up all the evidence.
Two Mississippi.
Prisoners like me were sequestered into a tightly controlled population. Seventy-five cages, all in need of some repair, with only a view of the bars to feed our imaginations. Forced into faded blue jumpsuits. Scratchy but comfortable. Allowed one hour of daily exercise. I wondered if the outdoor space would be big enough for me to run. I nodded to myself. It probably was. Wouldn’t be much of a point otherwise.
Three Mississippi.
Hadn’t met my cellmate yet. I was alone. I could do alone. Four Mississippi.
Or was it the quiet that I relished? Hard to have quiet in a house full of people. My people…my kids…I closed my eyes, breathing slowly in through my nose and out a few seconds later. Then once more until I no longer saw their faces looking back at me.
Five, six, seven Mississippi.
Nikki promised to bring Mia and Alan every weekend. Probably wasn’t realistic, but she insisted. She promised to give them a good life. The best of everything. I nodded and tuned her out as she explained all she had planned. My kids would have it easy. A nice comfortable life. That’s all I needed to know.
Booker was already working on my appeal. He was smart and losing didn’t fit with his perception of himself. After the sentencing, he laid out his plan. Not that I knew the possible from the impossible. Not yet anyway.
I’d heard there was a library on the grounds somewhere. I would do what I should’ve done from the beginning. I’d study up. Between Booker and me, we’d find a flaw in the prosecution’s case—some matter of legal fact they’d ignored—and all this would be like a bad dream. Nine months was all I needed, maybe a year tops.
Editor: Sheri Kraft
Bravebird Publishing
contact@bravebirdpublishing.com
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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bryant Simmons, D., 1983-
Blue sky: the second novel in the morrow girls series / D. Bryant Simmons.
p. cm.
LCCN: 2015907220
ISBN:978-1-9439890-2-7 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-9857516-3-0 (softcover)
ISBN: 978-0-9857516-4-7 (e-book)
1. Family Life—Fiction. 2. Saga—Fiction. 3. Literary—Fiction 4. African American—Fiction
I. Bryant Simmons, D. 1983- II. Title.
Copyright © 2016 D. Bryant Simmons
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For my baby girl,
If someday you face the world without me hold these words close to your heart.
You are everything I dared to dream.
Dear reader,
Thank you for taking this journey with me! I hope you are enjoying it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is my mission to develop stories that actually reflect what women are going through. If you saw yourself or were touched by something in this book, please tell someone. We are our sister’s keeper and together we can empower one another.
Although this was the second novel in the series, the Morrow family saga is just beginning. If you came to Blue Sky without reading How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch, I apologize for the spoilers, because as a huge fan of series fiction I despise spoilers! But, if you want to know more about the girls’s childhood, life with Ricky Morrow, and his death How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch is the novel for that.
As always, please take some time to leave a review either on Amazon, Goodreads, or whatever outlet you purchased this book from. Other readers are counting on you! And don’t be surprised if I quote your review on my website!
Until we meet again…
Enjoy the journey,
About the Author
D. BRYANT SIMMONS is an award-winning author and the publishing force behind Bravebird Books. As a writer, her focus is on realistic fiction that straddles the line between art and social commentary. She is currently hard at work on the Morrow Girls Series, a family saga that spans three generations of women. Simmons incorporates meaty topics such as domestic violence, addiction, and mental illness into her fiction without sacrificing entertainment value.
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HOW TO KILL A CAGED BIRD
The Third Novel in the Morrow Girls Series
Mya Morrow was born with brains and brawn. It will take both for her to survive.
Imprisoned for over a decade for a crime she didn’t commit, Mya has morphed into a cold, calculating, convict with nothing to lose but time. But her cool facade comes tumbling down when her eldest sister visits with some unexpected news. Suddenly desperate to reconnect with the her loved ones on the outside, Mya takes justice into her own hands.
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