Crave

by Laurie Jean Cannady

  I stood in my bedroom, afraid what I was hearing was true. I didn’t know what a shelter was and I had no idea of where one would be, but I wanted to get out of that house and as far from Mr. Todd as I could. I thought Momma wanted the same. I walked into the boys’ bedroom where we all exchanged worried glances. We sat on the bottom bunk together and listened as Momma and Mr. Todd talked to the officer.

  “I’m not leaving,” Momma said.

  “Me either,” replied Mr. Todd, with a hint of laughter in his voice.

  I heard the policeman clear his throat as he said, “Well, I guess you don’t need me anymore. I think you two can handle this together.” His snickering followed him out of the front door. Momma stuck her head into the bedroom and told us we didn’t need to pack our clothes.

  “We’re staying here?” Champ asked.

  “Yeah,” Momma responded. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

  I wanted Momma to be speaking the truth, but all I could see were Mr. Todd’s hands wrapped around her neck. All I could feel was her struggle to gasp air into the lungs that he had almost silenced. It couldn’t be all right because of what I was seeing and feeling. It just couldn’t.

  “Momma, can me and Mary sleep in here with Champ and them?” I asked

  “Yeah,” she said. “Y’all can sleep together if you want.”

  I did want that. I feared Mr. Todd would find his way into Mary’s and my den-bedroom and his hands would wrap themselves around my neck just as they had Momma’s. I feared I couldn’t hear as much as I needed in the middle of the house. If he hurt Momma again, if Champ or I needed to save her, the boys’ bedroom would make for a quick rescue. And, as I drifted off to sleep, listening as intently as I could to every creak in their bedroom, to every squeak of the bedspring, I prayed he wouldn’t kill her, that he wouldn’t hurt my momma again.

  Later that night, I heard Momma say, “Don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t you touch me,” Mr. Todd replied.

  “Get on your side of the bed,” Momma said.

  “You get on your side,” he said so softly I could barely hear. With that, only creaks and squeals of the bed followed. Through the quiet, I heard all I needed to hear. Momma was in his arms. The same hands that had held her neck were touching her back and her breasts. Her lips were kissing the same ones that had been snarling in her face hours earlier. Momma’s hands were caressing the chin Champ had struck. What had once been pain was now ecstasy between the two, but it was still pain for me. The danger still loomed over Momma just as it had in the dining room. The bedroom, the dining room, it was all the same to me. He was the same to me. I had seen what Mr. Todd had gone to prison for, what damage he could do, and from that point there was no undoing that image of him for me.

  Guard Duty

  That night of passionate healing between Momma and Mr. Todd did not last long. Their marriage was collapsing like the center of a cake in a tepid oven. I watched as they continued mixing, adding parts of themselves to their battered relationship, only to find they would always be the wrong ingredients for each other. As all of the joy of marriage and the possibility of having someone help raise us began to flatten in Momma, I mourned what I knew had already been lost.

  Mr. Todd was staying out later or he was not coming home at all. When he did make his way through the door, he was slow, disoriented, and the world seemed to be moving too quickly for him. He and Momma began to fight longer and harder, and oftentimes we weren’t there to shield her from him. Her tears and her bruises on arms and legs told of those missing episodes. It wasn’t long before “the stuff” had robbed him of his job at the construction company, too. No job meant less money, an extra mouth to feed when he was there, and a heap of dysfunction in the many altercations he and Momma had. Even we children grew tired of the rising and falling, the mixing and mashing as we were pulled like eggs blended into flour. The whole house was stressed, filled with tension that couldn’t be released even if we had opened all the windows, all the doors, and shot a fire hose through our home.

  However, my angst and anger were not only reserved for Mr. Todd. I feared and, at times, even hated him, but I felt something different for Momma that I couldn’t quite name. She had married this man and she kept taking him back. He no longer had a job; he no longer even had a temperament, so I couldn’t understand why Momma still wanted him. It wasn’t until years later, when I duplicated those same actions, I understood the hold nothing can have on one’s heart.

  One night during one of our many slumber parties, I heard Momma talking to someone on the phone. I wasn’t too concerned with her conversation because Mary and I had invaded the boys’ bedroom and we were knee deep in a kick-fight for the ages. We joked and took turns kick-fighting long after the moon had traveled out of view from Champ, Tom-Tom, and Dathan’s window. In the midst of one of our most heated fights, we heard the doorbell ring. Our legs froze midair as we wondered who would be at our door in the middle of the night. Mr. Todd would never ring the doorbell because he had his own key. No one else, not even Aunt Vonne or Uncle Bruce, would have been visiting our house so late. Champ and I scooted to the window and looked onto the back porch. There was a tall man there, leaning his bike against the back of the house. I strained to see the man through the cover of night, but all that I could make out was his height—he was taller than Mr. Todd. What I could see clearly were the wheels of his bike and the way the moon, even though it was no longer in my line of vision, reflected off of the silver spokes.

  Momma’s house shoes flapped to the door and then there were two sets of footsteps, one flighty and one heavy, in the kitchen, then the dining room, then the hallway, then the bedroom. Champ and I looked at each other, the bike, and the door, waiting to hear what we knew would come next. I heard talking, then laughing, then kissing, then bed springs creaking.

  “What is she doing?” I asked. “Who is that man?”

  Champ shook his head, with clenched teeth and squinted eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “But what’s he doing here?” I asked.

  “You know,” Champ said.

  Mary asked, “What y’all talking about? What man?”

  Champ hissed, “Momma got a man in there with her.”

  “Oh no.” I said, “Mr. Todd’s gonna see his bike and come and kill her.” Tom-Tom and Dathan sat up straight in the bed,

  “Mr. Todd’s gonna kill Momma?” Dathan asked.

  “Nooooo,” Tom-Tom’s long whine evolved into a stifled cry.

  “Why is she doing this?” I asked.

  “She knows he’s crazy,” Mary added. “Why?”

  Then one of us said it. Still today, I don’t know which one of us it was.

  “I hate her. I hate her so much.”

  “Me too.”

  “Me three.”

  “Me four.”

  “Me five.”

  “She’s stupid.”

  “She deserves what she gets.”

  “Mr. Todd has a right to be mad at her for bringing some man here.”

  “She got this man here and now Mr. Todd’s gonna kill us all.”

  This banter went on for hours, interrupted only by one or more of our cries, our pleas for Momma to get that man out of the house before Mr. Todd came home. We sat up all night and when sleep was calling one of us to silence, someone else jarred the culprit awake. This was our vigil to keep, our post to guard, and we five lay in the top bunk until we heard the feet again, until only Momma’s returned to her bedroom door, until the moonlit spokes rode off into the dark night.

  Cool It Now

  Despite the growing dysfunction in our home, there were moments of normalcy, when I could suck what it meant to be a kid into my lungs and run until breath became one with the wind. One of those moments occurred when Momma and Mr. Todd took us to visit his nephew in Academy Park. I was excited about traveling to our old stomping ground and hoped I’d be able to wave “hello” to our old house on Dorset Avenue, where things had been q
uieter, before Mr. Todd.

  As we pulled onto the road, which ran parallel to a line of houses decorating it like Christmas lights, I felt a giddiness flowing through me, like I was traveling to a meeting with an old friend. I didn’t get to see our old house, but there was some comfort in seeing parts of a place that had once held our family as a unit in harmony.

  When we pulled up to Mr. Todd’s nephew’s house, there were several people sitting on the porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking. Mr. Todd introduced us to each of them, but by the time he was done I couldn’t remember most of their names. The only people I remembered were Carmen and Michael. Michael was Mr. Todd’s nephew. He was a handsome fellow, with a small goatee and a mini-afro to match. He had dark eyes that were the same color as his hair and he smiled so widely his teeth looked as if they had been chiseled inside his mouth. Next to Michael stood his fiancée, Carmen. When I looked at her, I heard songs without words. She stood majestically, with cocoa skin and long wavy hair plaited into a thick rope.

  She had the daintiest of features, with a softly curved nose and lips that were slightly pursed. Every bit of her exposed skin was the same color, as she stood in front of us in a flowered dress, with a cast on her leg. I couldn’t find one blemish that interrupted the continuum of perfection she appeared to own. She too smiled with enthusiasm, but her smile was softer and more welcoming than Michael’s. Momma and Mr. Todd began doling out hugs and the adults went into the house. By that time, some of the neighborhood kids came over and asked if we wanted to play.

  That’s one of the things I always loved about Academy Park. You didn’t have to know anybody or be the best of friends. If we had open space, kids, and time, there was fun to be had. While we were playing, Carmen came to the door and handed us sodas and chips. “Y’all are so cute,” she said as she handed us the drinks. “And you have some pretty eyes, Laurie.” I knew from the aches in my cheeks I was smiling too hard, but she had called my eyes pretty, which had to mean something special because she was so beautiful herself. From inside the house, I saw the adults in the room dancing, drinking, and smoking. Surprisingly, Momma looked to be having a good time even though she never smoked nor drank. I think it was the normalcy she was drunk off of and the fact that this night was a reprieve from the prison that life had become with Mr. Todd.

  Carmen stood on the porch waiting for us to finish our drinks so she could collect our trash. I heard Don Cornelius’s voice wafting from the television screen as he introduced the next act. I almost screamed when I heard my favorite group, New Edition, singing “Cool It Now.”

  “I love that song,” I squealed as I grabbed Mary’s hand and began dancing around. Carmen laughed at me, which caused all my siblings to join in on the fun. Champ dropped to the ground and began doing the worm, which is not that simple a feat on a concrete porch. Dathan and Tom-Tom were breakdance fighting, throwing ticking punches and karate chops. Mary and I erupted into the synchronized snake, going lower and lower as we went from right to left. And we sang, “Cool it now/ You better cool it down/ Oh watch out/ You’re gonna lose control/ Cool it now/ You better slow it down/ Slow it down/ You’re gonna fall in love.” We sang that song as if we were New Edition and we were singing to Carmen. She clapped along with us and complimented us on our moves, which made us dance even harder. We danced for Carmen as long as the song was on and she was nice enough to let us peek through the screen door while Don Cornelius interviewed Ralph, Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, and Mike. We had more fun that night than we had the entire year Momma and Mr. Todd were married. Mr. Todd got credit for it because he’d given us a piece of his happy family.

  A week after our visit to Carmen and Michael’s, Momma was ironing our clothes for school while listening to one of the morning radio shows. I was trying to find my shoes and waiting for Momma to hand me my warm clothes. It was unusually cold that morning, and it seemed Momma was taking too long to finish ironing. I used that time to focus on Laid Back’s song, “White Horse.” I never understood why the singer instructed listeners to ride a white horse, white pony, and to be a bitch if they wanted to be rich, but I loved the beat of the song. The zips and drumbeat made me tap my feet even if I didn’t want to.

  The newsbreak interrupted my jamming, but I just kept on tapping my feet to the sounds playing in my head. Suddenly, I heard Momma gasp.

  “What’s wrong, Momma?” I asked, but her response was the raising of her pointer finger to her mouth. We both listened to the broadcast together: “Ratcliffe lived on Dekalb Avenue. Police have no suspects at the moment, but they believe she might have known her attacker because of information gathered at the crime scene. If you have any information, contact the Portsmouth Police Department.”

  Momma looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Oh my God, that’s Carmen.” It didn’t register as quickly as it should have. Carmen, not my Carmen from the other night. Not that beautiful woman with a smile that made everyone who saw her smile too.

  “What happened, Momma?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Laurie. I don’t know.”

  I heard the newscaster say strangled, beaten, raped. I knew what those words meant. I imagined Carmen’s pristine neck, the perfect brown being darkened by someone’s hands. I imagined someone hurting her in the way Pee Wee had hurt me, the way he’d hurt the girl he’d attacked. The thought was too much to wrap my brain around.

  “Come and get ready for school,” Momma said shaking her head as she handed me my clothes. I quickly dressed, trying to hide my tears for Carmen. I rushed past my siblings unable to explain why I was crying. Throughout that school day, I couldn’t concentrate. Even when Jackie tried to joke on me, I didn’t respond. There were things more important than putting him in his place. I needed to understand what had happened to Carmen. The killer was someone she knew. This perplexed me. How could anyone who had witnessed her light have hurt her in that way? How much anger did one person have to possess in order to look into those sparkling eyes and choke the life out of them? I had so many questions and the school day made me wait too long for answers.

  While walking from the bus stop, everything I saw, heard, and felt vaulted me back to Carmen. When the wind brushed my cheek, I was reminded it would never brush Carmen’s cheek again. As the birds frolicked in a puddle of water and sang songs to one another, I mourned the fact that Carmen would never hear those performances again. As I walked into the house and looked into Momma’s tear-stained eyes, I knew Carmen’s mother had those same eyes, but hers would never connect with her daughter’s again.

  Miss Minnie and Momma were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea. Their conversation stopped abruptly as soon as I walked into the house. I hugged Momma and went into my bedroom where I’d be able to hear everything they were saying. “I can’t believe the police came here.” Momma’s voice sounded labored. “Do you think he could have done it?”

  “Nah,” Miss Minnie replied. “They probably just came because he was in prison for killing somebody before.” At first I wasn’t sure of the “he” Momma was talking about, but then I understood. She was talking about Mr. Todd. I almost ran into the kitchen with Momma and Miss Minnie.

  “I know, but he was attracted to her. I saw that even when we were at the house. I could tell he liked her. Everybody could.”

  “That doesn’t mean he did it,” Miss Minnie replied.

  “But he wasn’t home last night. He stayed out all night and when he came home he had scratches on him. I even saw some blood.”

  “Lois, you told the police what you know and that’s all you can do. Didn’t they talk to him?”

  “Yeah, he told them he was with some girl and they were smoking, drinking, and I know what else they were doing.”

  “That’s not your concern. If you told the police what you know and they aren’t doing anything about it, then what can you do?”

  “But if he did this, Miss Minnie, I can’t have him around my kids. He stuck a coat hanger in her and strangled her with it. I can’t have h
im in this house.” Momma began to sniffle and her voice broke at the end of her sentence.

  “You can do it because you got to. You don’t have anywhere to take these kids and the cops haven’t said he did it. Don’t you think if they thought he did it, he’d be in jail or at the police station right now?”

  “But they found his fingerprints there and they said that she knew the person because she let him in. She even drank with him. I just know it was him.”

  “You don’t know nothing. You know you need to take care of these kids. You know you can’t put him out of this house. You gotta know that until you can know something else. Now, all you need to be doing is finding somewhere for you and these kids to live after all of this is gone. ’Cause the way he’s going, that’ll be soon enough. Carmen is dead. God rest her soul, but you and them kids are still alive and that’s gotta be your worry now. You gotta keep them in a house, fed, and safe.”

  I had heard enough. I’d never even considered Mr. Todd as the killer, but he’d already killed someone before and Momma said he liked Carmen more than he should have, more than his nephew would have liked. My heart ached for Carmen and I wished I could have warned her not to open that door, not to invite him in, not to pour that drink, and not to die. I closed my eyes and stifled my cries. Darkness allowed me to see her smile clearly and the innate happiness in her eyes, opening the door, welcoming family, as she often had. I see her dainty brown fingers pouring him a drink and saying, “Michael’s at work.”

  I see him walking toward her, saying, “I’m not here to see Michael. I’m here to see you.” And her face turning, like Momma’s had over the past year, from happiness, to anger, to terror. He grabs her as she attempts to run. Momma said he had scratches, which meant she had fought. I see those delicate fingers scratching, reaching for his eyes, his neck, any parts that will make him let go. He grabs a hold of her waist, flips her around, holds her down, covers her mouth, maybe even pulls her hair. His largeness on top of her, pushing the air out of her as she bites into him, claws him, closes her legs to him. And he opens her like scissors, just as Pee Wee had opened me, and he presses into her with the force of a battering ram, just as Pee Wee had done to me.