by Yasmin Angoe
“Noble will care, and he’ll set things to rights. This justifies your dispatch of Smith and will get your dad to look further into who backed them, like Lucien Douglas, for example.”
Hearing the name of Paul’s alter ego gave her a visceral reaction she wasn’t sure she had masked fast enough.
“What is it?” Witt missed nothing.
She told him.
He might have been a master at showing no emotions, but this was too much. He gawked at her incredulously. “Are you sure?”
Nena managed to keep back a biting retort. She was tired of everyone asking if she was sure about these men. Their faces were forever seared into her mind.
“My God, how can this be?”
She wanted to say, You tell me. After all, you’re the one who was supposed to make sure he was gone. But she didn’t. She kept her mouth shut and her face impassive. She didn’t need to say it, though, because Witt could read it in her face. He knew they hadn’t been thorough enough. Nena placed her hand against her hot forehead, leaning back against the chair in her office and releasing the frustration and accusations she felt toward Witt and the Tribe at the moment. They were not the real villains here. They did not know, as she did, what chaos Paul was capable of, how he was always waiting just beneath the tranquil surface for the right moment.
“Someone within the Tribe is Paul’s benefactor,” Witt surmised. “Just like you guessed.”
“Yup.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t even think of that now, and she told Witt as much. “I need to compartmentalize, to focus.”
Witt warned, “If you dispatch Paul’s third man, you’ll poke the bear.”
“Then he’ll know I’m no longer the scared little village girl from before.”
42
BEFORE
The woman and I consider each other as we stand in the wreckage of the ordeal we have shared. She has a cut just above her eye, but despite the blood, disheveled clothes, and ripped pantyhose, she does not look too bad off. She does not even seem too shaken, which is perplexing. Surely a woman as high class as her should be quaking in her shoes, of which she is only wearing one.
“I should have been more careful. I saw those men hanging around before going into the store.” She searches the ground, locating her purse and her phone within it. She places a call.
“I have something for the Cleaners, double order. Yes. In an alley across from my hotel. I’m leaving now,” she says tersely, tenderly touching the cut. She ends the call, then turns back to me. I am concerned about my rucksack and wondering where I am going to sleep tonight, because the area will be too infested with police to stay in the park. “Noble is going to be angry with me.”
I just look at her. Not sure who Noble is and why he would be angry with her for being attacked. He sounds quite the opposite of his name if that is the case. Not my business. I want only to return to my own life. However, the woman has other plans.
“Can you speak?” she asks in French.
I nod.
“Will you speak?” she asks in English.
I hunch my shoulders.
Her eyes narrow as my mistake dawns on the both of us: I understand English too.
“Where is your family?”
There is no way I will answer in either language.
She nibbles on her lip. She does not know what to make of me, nor I of her. I am still trying to figure out how I was tricked into disclosing anything about myself.
I wilt beneath her scrutiny. For the first time, I am ashamed of my appearance. Here I am, bundled in my clothes from Robach and the coat from his car, all caked with dirt and grime.
She inches closer but halts when I tense. “We need to leave here now. You cannot stay, or the Cleaners will take care of you too. Do you understand me?”
I do not see any issue with cleaners. I could use them. I remember watching, on the CCTV, cleaners pick up Monsieur’s dirty clothes. But the way she’s made them sound, maybe that is not what these cleaners do.
“For your trouble, will you return with me to my room? You can sleep in a nice bed and get real, hot food, not processed food from the store. And tomorrow, we can decide what the next step will be.”
Tomorrow? We? She must be concussed. She speaks of us as a pair when there is only me, and I will be long gone.
She checks the area once more, gingerly stepping over the men. She pulls her lost shoe from a corner where it landed during the assault. Satisfied there is nothing of her left, she walks briskly to the street, toward the hotel, pausing to watch me root around for my knife under the foul man’s body. I push him a little to pull it from under him, let his body fall back in place, and extract what dangled in his hand. Then I kick his corpse for good measure, feeling nothing as I look at the men. No remorse. No joy. Nothing at all.
I tug my rucksack out from where I stowed it. I sling it over my back and turn toward the park.
“Please,” she says, “won’t you come with me?”
I look toward the park. Look at her. Look at the hotel. What if she is like Paul or Bridget or Monsieur? What if she is worse? I cannot take the chance. I shake my head. She visibly deflates, sadness and disappointment washing over her face. It surprises me, is confounding. But she says nothing else and resumes her walk to the hotel.
I catch a whiff of my father’s scent. What if she isn’t like them? What if she’s better, and this is Papa telling me to go with her?
I jog to her side and touch her elbow lightly. She stops, and I hold my closed fist out toward her. She looks at me, puzzled, then looks down. She opens her hand, and in it, I drop what I took from the dead man.
Her smile is the sun, warming me all the way through. My lips twitch in response, having long ago lost a reason to smile.
“Noble gave this bracelet to me for our fifteenth anniversary last month,” she says.
I nod at her since it seems the appropriate thing to do.
“I’m Delphine,” she says. “What’s your name?”
My name. What do I tell her? The adults I have dealt with lately have not been kind to me, have betrayed me in every way possible. Am I making the right decision? But this lady has something about her that rings honest and safe.
I need safe.
We begin walking, crossing the street to the entrance of Le Monantique Hotel.
Who am I? I cannot be Aninyeh. I lost the privilege of her when she died with my family and my village. Whore and bitch, from Paul’s men? Souris, from Monsieur? Wretch and vagrant, as the man in the store referred to me?
Who am I?
Like a ghost from the past, I pull a name no one has ever called me except Papa—his own special name for me. Then I look at the woman and answer, “My name is Nena.”
43
AFTER
“I didn’t peg you for a cheeseburger-and-fries type of lady,” Cort said. He opened the door of Jake’s, looking up when the chimes announced their arrival.
Nena surveyed Jake’s Burger Joint, the scene of her recent crime, noting the diner was bustling with the midday lunch crowd, very different from the night she and Georgia had been there. She was feeling a flood of emotions: anticipation for what she was preparing to do with Kwabena; a twinge of concern about when Witt had said she was “poking the bear”; a rush of worry about what the ease and quickness with which Paul was able to ingratiate himself in the Council meant for the Tribe and, even more so, for her family; and lastly, hope that none of what she had to do meant there would be a bigger target on Cort’s back. She didn’t want to think of any of that at the moment. Right now, Nena just wanted to enjoy a guilt-free afternoon with Cort and a burger and a milkshake.
Nena shrugged. “I’m a bacon-cheeseburger-and-fries type of lady,” she replied.
She knew it meant she was a total glutton for punishment, or playing with fire, or both, that she’d suggested she and Cort meet here, of all places, when he’d proposed they grab lunch.
Cheryl wasn’t on duty today. It was another pleasant-faced server wearing red and white. Nena chose her usual booth, selecting the side against the wall where she could see who came in and out.
Cort took another look out of the large-paned window at the busy street. He read the street signs. “You know,” he said, his eyebrows furrowed in thought, “I know this place.”
Nena knew what she wanted. It was the same order every time. “Yeah? Been here before, then?”
He shook his head. “Nah. There was a killing that happened here not too long ago. Two men affiliated with a local gang were killed.”
“Are you investigating that too?” she asked innocently.
He refocused on his menu. “Nope. Doesn’t fall under my jurisdiction.” She forced herself to chuckle with him, all the while wondering again why she’d brought him there.
Playing with fire, that’s why, is what her mum would say.
Perhaps Nena was.
Or perhaps she just wanted to be a normal woman for once. Go on a lunch date in the middle of Cort’s workday with him in his business suit and talk about nothing and everything, all at the same time. She wanted to know him, and he her. First, she needed to know who she was—beyond being a killer. And she couldn’t help wondering if the woman currently on her first lunch date was the woman she might have been.
“Earth to Nena.”
She blinked away her surprise, forcing herself to return to the present, where Cort was smiling at her, and the server—Janice—was waiting with a knowing smile. Pen and paper at the ready.
“I’d be daydreaming, too, if I was sitting across from a man like that,” Janice said conspiratorially.
Her boldness flushed Nena’s cheeks with heat and made Cort look away sheepishly, as if women ogling him was new to him.
“And he’s in a suit too. Ummph,” Janice continued, swinging her long dark ponytail. Nena wondered how she could see through those extralong eyelashes. She wanted to touch them. Janice laughed at her patrons’ unease. “What are ya having?”
When Janice finally left with her inappropriate comments and their order, Nena allowed herself to relax. She was too aware of Cort’s eyes on her. They sat quietly because she didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t a job, and she was out of her element when it came to this stuff.
He said, “You’re a mystery, you know that?”
“My mum says the same thing quite a bit,” she replied, amused.
He squinted. “But I’m betting there’s a story behind it. A reason for your distance and caution when you’re around me.” He sat back in his seat, throwing an arm across the top of the bench.
“Story?”
“Yeah,” he said encouragingly. “Who are you?”
She opened her hands as if she didn’t know what to say. “Nena Knight. I explained about my family and where I’m from. There’s not much more story than that.”
They paused when Janice returned with a tray heaped with their orders. Nena’s usual of bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and Coke—milkshake to go. Cort had decided on a grilled chicken club with fries and a Sprite. Nena judged his choice of a sandwich over a juicy burger.
“But there is a whole history I want to learn about.”
Now she knew where Georgia got her chattering from. She swallowed her bite. “Like what?”
His eyes widened as if he might have offended her. “No. I don’t mean to pry. It’s the lawyer in me, I guess. Always questioning. I’m sorry. I just . . .” He shrugged, shaking his head. “I like you is all. I just want to get to know you.”
She needed to ease up. Cort was being truthful. His questions weren’t coming from a place of suspicion. He was truly interested in knowing who she was.
“You’re very intuitive,” she said, looking at him from beneath her eyelashes. “At reading people.”
“You forgot what I do for a living?” He laughed, making her feel good inside.
She pursed her lips again. “Have you returned to Haiti?”
He shook his head. “Not since Peach was a baby. I send money every month as every good Haitian does, but I haven’t made it back like I should.”
“My parents do the same.”
“Where to?” he asked slyly.
She raised an eyebrow at him. He was slick, trying to get her to talk. He gave her a sheepish grin.
She said, “I’m adopted, but my mum is also from Ghana, and my dad is from Senegal.”
He gesticulated with his hands. Go on.
She let out a sigh, resigned to the fact Cort wouldn’t let up until she opened up, and even more, that she wanted him to know about her.
“My mum found me living on the street, and they took me in. Been with them ever since.” Nena looked intently at her plate of food. “They saved my life.”
“They sound like great people.”
“They are lovely. And that is all you’re getting for now.”
“Well, all right then,” Cort said, laughing again as he dipped a fry in ketchup and popped it in his mouth. “You’re the boss.”
He grinned at her.
“Naturally,” she replied, and before she realized what she was doing, Nena was grinning right back.
44
BEFORE
The last time I had a night of uninterrupted sleep eludes me. So does the last time I slept without fear of harm, of being ripped out of whatever passed for sleep at someone’s whim. Without the fear of death or recapture. Up until tonight, the idea of peaceful sleep has been unfathomable.
But when I fall asleep in Delphine’s hotel room, on her lavish bed, which makes me feel I am sleeping on clouds, I sleep like the dead. I sleep so deeply I dream of my family, hoping they are at peace. In my dreams, Papa tells me to sleep, rest, let my traumatized mind and battered body recuperate.
When I wake, Delphine is fully dressed and on the phone, giving instructions in that take-charge tone I heard the night before. She notices I am awake, smiles at me, then turns back to her phone call. There is an important message in her actions. She is showing me there is trust. But I am not so trusting and again consider fleeing. I wonder if someone has found my nest and has taken it as their own in the short while I have been gone. Then I wonder about the men I killed the night before. Were they found? Did the Cleaners take them? Will the authorities come for me next? Is the woman on the phone with the police now, planning my capture?
I sit up in the bed. My own comfort confuses me because I cannot understand what compelled me to agree to staying here for the night, or how I could sleep the sleep of the dead when I haven’t known a good night’s sleep since leaving N’nkakuwe.
But I realize I am tired. Really tired. I am tired of living in the streets and of fighting every day with hunger and cold and fear and the threat of incarceration. I cannot yet put my finger on why, but she feels safe. So with my decision made, I remain. For now.
I swing my feet to the side of the bed and hop to the floor. My rucksack is still on the chair next to the bed, where I left it. I keep her in my periphery so I can track her. I peer into my sack, ensuring the Hugo and Olay were not disturbed. Monsieur’s knife and scissors are there, too, along with the rest of my possessions. Everything is untouched.
I leave the rucksack, walking the length of the room to the large window. The world is bright and beautiful beyond the white curtains. The street bustles with people on their way to work or wherever they are going. There are no authorities. No police tape blocking the alley across the way. No one coming to question me about the murder of two would-be—what? Rapists? Robbers? Murderers? There is nothing, only me and her.
“Nena,” she says, startling me.
I forgot I gave her my name the night before. My behavior is confounding. How is it I let my guard down with this stranger? Without knowing her true intent?
She holds her phone, wearing gorgeous red high heels, so high I wonder how she maintains balance in those things. Her black sweaterdress hugs her athletic but womanly frame. She reminds me of
a Hollywood movie star from the times movies were black and white.
“Won’t you have a shower?” she asks in English. “I took liberties and got some clothes for you. Breakfast is here when you’re ready. Tea too.”
“Thank you,” I say, my voice coming out scratchy and unsure of its volume. I have not used it in so long it is alien to me.
I do as told, entering the luxurious bathroom, where I spend what feels like eternity cleaning every part of me. My hair is wild and rough without the lotions and oils Mama, then Auntie, helped me use back home. It is in knots, damaged, brittle, and broken. The state of my hair devastates me. It has always been my greatest joy.
To my delight, the shower water never turns cold. The room fills with so much steam I can barely see in front of me. I shower off all the grime, dirt, and blood. Monsieur’s, the prostitute’s, the men’s, and mine—all cascade off me in rivulets. I wash until the water runs clean, and then I wash again. I do the same to my hair with the little tubes of shampoo and conditioner I find on the counter. I use the handheld showerhead in an attempt to wash inside of me until I can no longer tolerate the heat or pressure from the nozzle. I wish to be clean of all violations from the inside out.
When I am wrapped in fluffy white towels, beneath a turban of another towel, I wipe the mirror of condensation. I brush my teeth with the toothbrush given to me. I brush four times, then use Listerine. The golden liquid burns my mouth in such a way I gasp. It reminds me of the alcohol Monsieur made me drink before I killed him, so I do not think I will use it again.
I take more time to comb and brush through my softened hair. There is almond oil, a wide-tooth comb, and a brush. I oil my scalp and ends until they are soft enough to detangle the knots. The parts that are too fused together, I cut away with my scissors until my misshapen hair has some form again, a much, much smaller one. With hair this short I am a perfect likeness of my brothers, and it is like a stake in my heart as I grieve the loss of my family and my hair . . . my beautiful hair.