Violet Grenade

by Victoria Scott

  I don’t reply.

  If I found Cain’s father today, he says. I’d show him what it means to hurt.

  Hush, Wilson, I respond. Just once, let’s focus on recovery instead of revenge.

  I’m just saying…

  Cain murmurs in my ear. “Madam Karina knows what happened with my brother. The cops didn’t believe my dad when he said my brother and I were just messing around, and that him hitting his head like that was an accident. But Madam Karina said she could give me a place in her home, and that full-time work would make the cops stop asking questions about me.”

  Uneasiness pulls on me like a noose. “That’s why you work for her? Because you think the cops would arrest you if they knew the truth?”

  Cain doesn’t respond, so I turn and face him. The thunder sounds again, but it can’t touch me here. Not with him lying so close. “Cain, your father would be the one arrested. No one would ever blame you.”

  His face scrunches. “But it was me who hurt him.”

  “But that’s not what—”

  “Domino,” Cain says, cutting me off. “It was my fault.”

  I press my lips together and turn back around. I know this guilt. It’s the kind we want to hold on to long after the pulse is gone. So I let him have it. Cain may not want a reason to leave Madam Karina’s. He knows what to expect here, and it’s a big improvement over where he came from. It’s a big improvement for me, too. But it isn’t enough. Not for me, and not for Wilson.

  Ten minutes of silence pass. Ten minutes of thunder and lightning and rain pelting the roof. Ten minutes of warmth and safety and dreadful secrets. It feels like forever before I hear Cain speak again.

  “I’m glad you didn’t hurt her,” he says. “I know she probably did something awful to you, but I’m glad you didn’t hurt her.”

  His heart kicks softly against my back. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Mercy,” he responds. “When I found you outside her room that night, I didn’t know what to think.”

  I shift until I’m looking up into Cain’s face. My insides feel like they’re trying to tear their way out. He must see the question in my eyes, because he says, “Don’t you remember? It was a few nights after you got here. I saw you outside her room.”

  Though I’m afraid he’ll learn my own terrible secret, I shake my head.

  No, I don’t remember.

  “You were just standing there, Domino.” He licks his lips, worry folding the space between his eyes. “You had a butcher knife in your right hand.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Mama’s Good Girl

  When I open my eyes, I’m in my bed. Not in Cain’s bed. Not my bed on the second story of Madam Karina’s home. Not even on the mattress I claimed in Detroit.

  I’m in my bed at my parent’s house. My father is already gone. I sense his absence like a missing foot. Like someone has asked me to walk without it for the first time and they say, stupidly, can you feel the difference?

  It’s light out. Sunshine pouring through my lace window drapes like a rainbow arching over a funeral procession.

  “Domino, are you awake?”

  My mother’s voice. It comes from down the hall.

  I curl into a ball and turn my back to my bedroom door. She knocks on it once before opening it.

  Would you look at that respect?

  She moves inside my personal space, and I clench my eyes shut. It’s been forty-nine days since he left us. Forty-nine days since my father decided he wanted a new life. Mama moves closer, and I try not to breathe. Ever since he left, she’s been cracking like an egg on the side of a mixing bowl, her innards running yellow down the lip.

  “I got us some things when I went out.” Her voice is a songbird warbling a falsetto tune.

  I don’t want to hear about the things she got. They won’t be good things. They won’t be a new green jacket with gold buttons or a pint of apple juice or body lotion that smells like grated lemon.

  They will be bad things.

  “Don’t you want to see?” she says, sweetly. “We’re so much closer to completing our plan now.”

  Her plan. Not our plan.

  “Come on, sweetie. Don’t you want to make me happy?” She pauses for effect. “We only have each other now.” Her hand comes to rest on my arm. I don’t flinch because, at the end of the day, she is my mother. “Who would you have if not for me?”

  I open my eyes and sigh.

  She takes my sigh as the encouragement she needs.

  “Here, I’ll lay them on your pillow.”

  I close my eyes again when she leans over my frame. The mattress groans against the added weight, and then she’s gone. Backing out of my room, closing the door behind her. I grit my teeth, remind myself I am brave and good and would never let a man push me around. All the things my mother has told me.

  When I open my eyes, I see the gift she’s left me.

  Two things.

  A pair of surgical gloves.

  And a shiny, happy knife.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Top Floor

  The next morning I tell Cain I need to get out of the house. I don’t tell him my plan to eventually leave, just that I need a break. I’m on edge after hearing that Cain saw me outside Mercy’s room. With a knife. Add to that the fork I almost used as a weapon on the Daisy, and the memories of my mother, and you’ve got a seventeen-year-old girl who’s about to blow.

  I need to relax. Feel the sun on my skin without watchful eyes. Poppet said Eric would take girls into town for a fee, and it’s a fee I’m now willing to pay. Cain watches me rise from his bed and hesitantly agrees to bring it up with Madam Karina.

  I’m about to go upstairs when he stops me. “When are you going to tell me your secrets?”

  “You mean, now that you’ve told me yours?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “I can’t tell you, Cain,” I say softly. “It’s not like your secret.”

  I turn and stride up the stairs before the sun has risen. I’m not sure what Mr. Hodge or Madam Karina would think if they found me in Cain’s basement, but I’m certain it wouldn’t be good. When I near Poppet’s and my room, nerves tick behind my eyes. I shouldn’t have left her alone that long. Anything could have happened.

  When I open the door, though, I find her alone and safe. She’s rolling her bedsheets into a bundle and stuffing her clothing, accessories, and makeup inside. Poppet stops and looks at me when I sit down on my bed.

  “Where were you?” she asks, cleaning her glasses against her yellow blouse.

  I hesitate, but decide against lying. “I slept with Cain.”

  “Oh, wow.” She laughs. “I did not see that coming. How was it? I bet it was good. Tell me it was good, even if it wasn’t.”

  “What? No. No, we didn’t sleep together. I just slept in his bed.”

  Her face falls. “Okay, next time that happens you open the story with, ‘I slept in Cain’s bed but nothing happened.’ It’s cruel to get me all excited like that.” She tilts her head. “Are you guys like into each other for real?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s more that we understand each other. I don’t know a lot about him, really, and he certainly doesn’t know me, so there’s no concrete reason for us to be attracted.”

  “So you don’t like him?”

  I smile to myself, remembering the heat of his body next to mine last night. And the way he makes me feel protected without uttering a word. And our nights spent behind the house, Cain with his cigarette, me with my wobbly chair.

  “Oh, God. You do like him. Look at that grin.”

  I laugh. “It’s complicated.”

  Poppet returns to packing her things, muttering that it doesn’t seem that complicated. Then she spins around suddenly and holds out the bottom of her yellow blouse. “See what color I’m wearing? Yellow. Know why?”

  I know why. I also know if I stay quiet, she’ll spell it out.
<
br />   “Because today we become Tulips, Domino Ray. I’m so excited I could burst. Top floor and everything!”

  I glance at my hands. “What makes you think it’ll be any different up there?”

  Poppet groans and drops down beside me. “Listen, Minnow, you can’t give up on people you haven’t gotten to know just because the ones you’ve already met are lousy.”

  I nod, and she slings her arm around my shoulders.

  I cringe for only a moment before laying my head against hers.

  “What’s your story, Poppet?” I ask.

  She removes her arm. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know about you. That’s all.”

  She stands up and fidgets with her belongings. “Not much to tell. Born in a trailer park in Mississippi. Mother had four other kids to take care of, and didn’t mind one bit when I threatened to run away.” She shrugs. “So I did. Came to Texas with a boy who said he’d always be mine. Then he said the same thing to a woman twice his age once we got here. I met Eric in a town not too far away. I was living with an elderly woman who let me stay there so long as I did her chores and let her knock me around when she felt like it. Eric saw me singing in a bar one day and said I sounded like sunshine in Alaska.”

  “So you came with him.”

  “Once he brought Madam Karina to meet me, yeah. Couldn’t get in her car fast enough.”

  I smile, but deep down my uneasiness remains. I distrust Madam Karina every ounce as much as I yearn for her approval. It’s twisted, and I think she knows it. The thing is, Madam Karina is as messed up as we are. She both loves and detests us at once. Regardless, it feels different when Poppet tells me her story. Both Eric and Madam Karina must have known she was desperate. They took advantage of her.

  Or is that too strong a word?

  After all, no one lays hands on Poppet here at Madam Karina’s House for Burgeoning Entertainers. Not until I arrived, anyway. Sounds like maybe I’m the problem in Poppet’s life. Then again, pervy Mr. Hodge did cop a feel the other day. Wonder how often that happens?

  “What about you?” Poppet asks.

  My hands clench in my lap.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “My father left my mother and me, and my mom went nuts afterward.” My breathing grows shallow, because I can’t believe I said that much aloud. It’s more than I’ve ever told anyone. I’m waiting for Poppet to press me for details or to say that doesn’t sound so bad. But she only gathers her things.

  “Let’s go start our new life on the top floor, shall we?”

  I roll my bedsheets, wigs, and Dizzy’s unwashed shirt into a ball. I leave the fork where it lays. “We shall.”

  The sun is rising when we say good-bye to our empty bedroom on the second floor. Right before I close the door behind us, I grab Dizzy’s shirt and toss it into the wastebasket.

  Nothing but net.

  Chapter Forty

  Joyride

  The Tulips are unlike the Carnations and Daisies in every way imaginable. They ooze class and pedigree, though I question whether either is more than skin-deep. When I sweep my eyes across the third story family room, I see tight buns, long dresses, straight spines. I hear soft words, smell subtle perfumes. There are windows on the third floor, even in the bedrooms. It casts an ethereal glow over the seven Tulips and the yellow silk flowers they wear above their right breasts.

  Even the chores they partake in—polishing silverware and folding linens from the wash—are white-glove. Poppet and I settle into our room and gaze out the small window that overlooks the backyard and guesthouses. The Tulips never introduce themselves. Ignoring us is their unique form of showing us we don’t belong. I’ll take it over what the Carnations and Daisies dished out.

  We’ve only just begun to ask the Tulips’ Point Girl, a mousy brunette with rosy cheeks, what we can do to help, when Cain appears at the top of the stairs. He glances down the hallway at Madam Karina’s door and then strides toward me.

  “Cain, carry these down to the kitchen, won’t you, please?” The Point Girl presents an armful of neatly folded table linens. There’s a yellow sash tied around her waist that matches the tulip she wears. She paid handsomely for it with her earnings, and that tells me what I need to know.

  She isn’t going anywhere.

  She’s in no rush to move up, because she’s a lifer.

  Cain takes the linens and then turns to me. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

  At first I don’t understand the question, but then a smile quirks the corner of his mouth, and I feel myself jumping on my tiptoes. “I can be ready now!”

  Poppet walks over. “Where you two off to?”

  I turn to Poppet, excitement coursing through my veins. “I’m going into town. You should come.”

  She eyes the Tulips. “Nah. I want to get to know our new place. Plus, I’m saving my pennies for a dress that’ll stop your heart.”

  Poppet sidles over to the Point Girl and speaks to her in hushed tones as Cain moves closer.

  “It can only be you,” he says. “Madam Karina said as much.”

  I roll my eyes, but I can’t stop smiling. “You’re the one taking me? Not Eric?”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to know how much it will cost?”

  I wince, afraid he’s going to spoil my fun. “Lay it on me.”

  He curls four fingers toward his thumb, making a zero.

  “Nothing?” I yell. The girls glance over, and I lower my voice. “I get to go for free?”

  He cocks his chin toward Madam Karina’s room. “Not if she changes her mind. Let’s get out of here.”

  I bound down the stairs, nearly taking a tumble twice. Cain keeps pace with his daddy longlegs. I surge outside and clap twice when I see the black sedan we traveled in from Detroit. The one with leather seats, slick with polish, and wheels so mean they bring tears to my eyes.

  “I called the guy who lends us cars. He brought her over this morning.”

  I jump in the front seat and drum my hands on the console. “Start her up, Jeeves.”

  Cain slides into the driver’s seat and tosses a bag into the back. He starts the engine and punches the accelerator a couple of times while in park to really get me squealing. He’s about to throw the thing in drive when I grab his arm.

  “Wait, why is the madam letting me go for free? And why is she letting you take me instead of Eric?”

  Cain leans back. “She said she still felt bad about the other night. Said you should go and enjoy yourself, but to be back by dinner. Oh, and she thought it was fine that I took you. I think she’s pissed at Eric right now for whatever reason.”

  I buckle my seat belt, because who am I to question good fortune?

  “One more thing,” Cain says. “She said the favor you asked for…”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said to consider it ongoing.”

  I grin and clap my hands together again. When I spot the confused look on his face, I explain that it means I can become a Lily sooner if I play my cards right.

  Cain’s eyes fall on the east guesthouse. “You really want to move out there?”

  The smile on my face falters as I follow his gaze. “I have to do what I have to do.”

  “You say that because you don’t know what goes on there.”

  I look away from him. “I know enough.”

  I know everything, Wilson mutters.

  Cain sits quietly for a moment before lightly punching my shoulder. “Hey, let’s focus on the day.”

  “Damn straight.”

  He pulls us out onto the dirt road leading away from the white farmhouse with the blue door and green shutters. Then he sends us rocketing forward, dirt spitting from our back tires.

  He drives fast and hard with the confidence of someone who’s never been told he isn’t good enough. On the drive, Cain tells me something about himself. He used to play football. I pry out of him that he was good. Really good. Talented
enough to get a scholarship to a small out-of-state college.

  “Why didn’t you go?” I ask.

  He stares ahead. “It was before. If they knew what happened, they’d pull their offer. Plus, if I’d left the state, it would’ve made the cops even more suspicious.”

  “Because you went to school?”

  He waits a beat before responding. “My dad said they’d come after me. He’s right.”

  I turn my entire body toward Cain. “He’s absolutely wrong. Do you think you could still get into that college in…wherever it is?”

  “It’s in Kansas, and I doubt it. That was almost two years ago.”

  “Think you could try being a walk-on? Isn’t that a thing?” I grip my knees. “What I mean is, do you think you can still play?”

  Cain looks at me. Our eyes meet, and he’s as serious as I’ve ever seen him. For Cain, that’s pretty damn serious. “All I need is turf beneath my cleats and a chump across from me who’s ready to meet his maker.”

  I laugh. “Is that so?”

  “It’s so.”

  “You could have majored in something food related. You make a mean meal.”

  Cain cocks an eyebrow like he’s thinking this over. I bite my lip, terrified of what I’m about to say. I stop myself several times before blurting out, “What if we just went there now? You and I. Kansas. You try to get into that college, and I’ll…I’ll cheer for you from the bleachers.”

  Cain glances at me to see if I’m teasing. When he sees I’m not, he looks back at the road. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I ask, surprised by how crestfallen I am.

  “I just can’t.”

  But I hear the hesitation in his voice. Three beats before he answered. Maybe four. Enough so that I know he considered the idea, if only for a moment. I wonder how long it’s been since he thought about leaving Madam Karina’s home. Has he ever before now?

  I think back to Poppet and the money I’ve earned that I need to start a new life. I can’t leave, either, I suppose. Not yet.

  “I was just kidding,” I say, but my words ring hollow.

  Cain turns on the radio, and I watch as the landscape changes from empty fields and broken down cars to one-story buildings and soda machines on front porches. A stray dog trots in the distance, keeping weight off his back leg, and four children play jump rope outside a white brick house. They could be Poppet’s siblings, I think to myself.