by Cydney Rax
Nate gave her an odd stare. “Sorry, but that won’t be necessary. If you need to tell Burg something, just pick up the phone and give her a call. She’s at the mall. I think Target closes at eleven, so you might be waiting awhile.”
“Nate, are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No, no. I just don’t want you wasting your time hanging around when Burgundy won’t be back for hours. I know you have better things to do on Christmas Eve.”
“Yep, like visiting Baby Sis. I’ll go up to her room for a minute.”
Nate looked as if he wanted to say more, but he changed his mind.
Alita ran up the front staircase. She walked over to Elyse’s bedroom door and twisted the knob.
“Damn, why she lock the door?” Alita reached inside her purse and took out her pocket knife.
She unsecured the lock, then entered the room.
“Baby Sis?”
Elyse’s yellow-and-white-striped comforter remained unruffled, pillows intact.
By sheer instinct, Alita ambled toward the closet and swung open the door. Elyse was on the floor, sprawled sideways. A wool blanket covered her from the waist down.
Thinking her sister was asleep, Alita got on her knees and gently shook her until she stirred. The closet smelled like sweat and ammonia.
Alita violently shook the girl again. Elyse sat up with a start and quickly pulled the blanket up to her chin.
“Sorry if I scared you, Sis. You all right? Why you in here?”
Elyse smiled awkwardly. Her eyes reminded Alita of Chance after he’d been crying.
“Baby girl, why you in here all by yourself?”
Elyse smiled even wider and nervously played with a black hat that she was wearing. She didn’t say a word.
“Elyse, we need to talk. Last time we had a real good conversation, and I loved how you opened up to me, but now you acting scared again.” She paused and closely examined Elyse and everything around her. “You haven’t done anything to hurt yourself, have you?”
Elyse’s eyes widened. She shook her head no. Her eyes swept past Alita. Nate was standing in the doorway, quietly staring down at her. He reminded her of a judge sitting on his bench, and she felt like the criminal waiting to be sentenced.
Alita scrambled to her feet. “Nate, do you know why she’s in this closet?”
“I have no idea. Maybe she’s playing a game with her nieces. Hide and go seek, maybe?”
“My sister is not the type to play these kind of games. I think I may need to take her back to the doctor.”
“Did you say the doctor? What are you talking about?” Nate asked. His tone was sharp.
“Um, nothing,” Alita said. “Never mind. Family business.”
He glared at her for so long that Alita finally said, “Okay, I think I’d better go now. Um, you sure you okay, Elyse? You want to come spend the night with me?”
She stared down at her lap, then grabbed her pillow. “I all right. Just sleepy.”
“Then go get in the bed like a normal person.”
“I had accident. In da bed.”
“Then go take a shower. Damn!”
Disgusted, Alita decided to leave. She wanted to make Elyse go home with her, but she decided to hold her tongue and avoid any arguments. She left the house and walked outside and stood under the thick, slow-moving clouds. She placed a call to Burgundy, but the woman didn’t answer. Alita made a mental note to call her sister back in twenty minutes. She got in the car and headed toward home.
Meanwhile, Burgundy had been catching last-minute sales for hours. Her final stop was at Target, where she scooped up adorable winter wear for Coco’s kids. She found a couple of small appliances for her kitchen and grabbed a few holiday bedspreads and pillows that caught her eye.
Even though it was getting late, and she really needed to use the restroom, there was one more item on her list. Burgundy was dying to surprise the girls and buy them something really special. It was called a Disney Princess Carriage Ride-On, a battery-operated pink carriage that could fit two people. It went backward and forward, and it cost four hundred dollars. Earlier that week, after Natalia sweet-talked him, at the last minute Nate had secretly had a conversation with his wife, and he agreed the girls could have one.
So Burgundy was in Target, on a shopping list mission. But this store was out of them; after doing a search and placing a few calls, Burgundy gleefully discovered that a Walmart located fifteen miles away still had a few left.
“Please hold one for me. My daughters will die if they wake up and this carriage ride-on is under the Christmas tree.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll hold it for you.”
Burgundy hurriedly drove to the Walmart Supercenter and rushed inside.
The pickup department was located in the back of the gigantic store. A lot of shoppers were milling about. As Burgundy walked to the rear of the store, she sneezed very hard and felt a trickle of urine wet her underwear.
“Damn it,” she said to herself as she raced down the aisle. “I can use the bathroom first, then pick up the toy.”
When Burgundy went into the women’s restroom, the room seemed quiet. She noticed there were four stalls on the right-hand side. She began to walk toward them. But as she approached the first stall, she noticed that the door was closed. A handwritten “Out of order” sign was taped against it.
“Dammit,” she said.
As she kept walking she noticed that all the doors had the same sign taped on them. When she reached the last stall there was no sign on it. The door was slightly ajar. Feeling relieved, Burgundy tucked her fingers on her slacks and was about to pull them down.
She pushed open the door and gasped.
A heavyset woman was already seated on the toilet. Her underwear and pants were resting around her ankles.
“Oops. I’m so sorry,” Burgundy said as she began to back away. But then she got pushed back into the stall by someone behind her. The person shoved her so hard that soon her lips touched the shirt of the woman sitting on the toilet. She was so close she could smell the chick’s perfume.
She grunted and wanted to tell the lady sorry again.
But before she could do it, Burgundy felt something hard being shoved against her back.
“Hand over your purse, lady. If you don’t do it, you’re dead.” A female voice behind her made her knees weaken. She locked eyes with the woman on the toilet, letting her know that she needed help. But the lady just gave her an amused smile and held out her hand.
Burgundy realized that a scarf was being tied around her head, and she could no longer see anybody. She heard the women laughing and digging around in her purse. The woman rose up and she aggressively pushed Burgundy until she bumped her head against the stall door. Then she collapsed to the cold, hard, smudgy floor.
By the time it was all over, and Burgundy was sure that she was alone, she got up and yanked off the scarf and grabbed her purse. It felt much lighter than usual. Burgundy cupped her mouth with her hands, left the bathroom, and practically ran out of the store.
By then she knew she’d totally wet her pants. She felt dirty and naked, disrespected and violated. She kept looking behind her hoping that no one was following her.
Burgundy managed to get inside her SUV and quickly locked the door. She turned on the ignition, pressed her foot on the gas, and backed out of the parking space.
As soon as she was a mile away from the store, she burst out crying. She searched around in her purse. Her cell phone and wallet were missing.
“I can’t even call the police,” she said. Her mind raced as she tried to think of what to do next. She ended up driving to a gas station a couple of miles away. The store clerk let her use the phone to report the robbery.
“Thank you, sir. Now I need to call my husband. My driver’s license was stolen, all my credit cards, my cash.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Go ahead, take your time.”
Her underwear was drenched in urine, and s
he could smell herself. For the first time, she realized that even a woman like her could hit rock bottom.
Burgundy let out a moan and dialed Nate’s phone number. It rang and rang. She hung up and called their landline. When no one picked up, she slammed down the phone.
“Where is everybody?”
The clerk watched Burgundy, her face puffy by now due to the tears she openly let fall from her eyes.
“No one is ever there when you need them,” she said aloud. “You give and give and give. You try to be supportive to the people that you love, but they don’t even care when you go through things.” She laughed and shrugged, by then not caring that she was talking to herself. “Maybe this is what I deserve for acting like I have it all together, that I’m on top of the world, like they need me more than I need them.” She let out another frustrated groan.
Burgundy decided to go home to the Woodlands. Even though she was upset, she drove the speed limit, not wanting to draw attention to herself. And when she stepped foot inside the door of her house, it was eerily quiet.
“Nate?” she called. “Elyse?”
Alita had left already. It was Christmas Eve and pretty much the worst night of Burgundy’s life. She went into their bedroom. And there her husband was, knocked out on his back, mouth open, his face buried in the pillow, and she could hear him snoring.
Burgundy thought for a second, then went over to Nate and violently shook him until he sat up. He blinked and scowled when he saw her glaring at him. Her eyes were void of light; they were dark, sad, and hollow.
“Why didn’t you answer the phone when I called you? I tried to get you like ten times, Nate. I called your cell, the house. Why didn’t you pick up? Were you even here?”
“Where else would I be?” he answered and scrambled to his feet. But the big man immediately fell back down on the bed. He was drowsy like he’d been aroused from the deepest kind of sleep.
“I was knocked out cold,” he commented. “I-I didn’t hear the phone.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “Did you finish getting that Disney thing for the girls?”
“No!” she snapped at him. “I couldn’t.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t? They ran out of them or something?”
“I did not buy the fucking toy because two low-down women robbed me at gunpoint. When I went to the restroom, they forced me to hand over my wallet and cell phone. I hate Walmart. It’s so ghetto, and I won’t ever go there again.” She broke down for a minute. “Here I am once again. Trying to do good for others, make someone else happy . . . but where are the people that want to make me happy. I am so tired, Nate. Tired of you, tired of my sisters, tired of everything. I give and give. But people take and take.”
“Burg?” he said, now more alert. “Are you blaming me for what happened to you?”
“You weren’t there for me, Nate.”
“Burg, come on. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“You sure don’t act like it. You act like it means nothing to you. You don’t seem upset at all.”
Now Nate was really listening, as well as thinking. He thought about what he’d been doing while his wife was getting a gun pointed into her backside. What if the situation had grown worse and her assailants had shot her and left Burgundy for dead? Nate blinked a few times, wondering how it would have been if the worst has happened to his wife: his wife getting gunned down while he was getting Elyse to service him for the second time that night. The first time was right before that stupid-ass Alita decided to pop over. And after he got her to leave, Nate went to Elyse for a second helping. Man, it felt so good. Releasing the stress, getting rid of his sexual frustration. And now this? All of this was Burgundy’s own fault.
He came back to the present and saw his wife’s lips moving, her hands frantically waving as she went on and on about how she was the real victim of the family.
“My sisters, they have nothing to lose. But me?” She barked out a long list of what she brought to her family, to the community. Nate quietly and skillfully tuned her out. He nodded but pondered evil thoughts. He wondered what gunshots would sound like if the robbers had pulled the trigger. Would it take four bullets to bring her down? Or would two have done the job? What would life be like if Burgundy wasn’t around anymore? Who would be her replacement? Could a wife as giving as Burgundy Reeves even be replaced?
The instant Nate realized where his mind had gone, he mentally apologized to her. This was his wife, for God’s sake. When he imagined his better half no longer being around, he felt stiff and cold inside.
Nate allowed himself to become more present in the moment; soon he heard the sound of his wife’s voice again.
“Nate, it was so scary. I never ever thought anything like that could happen to me. Women victimizing women. Of course, both of them had to be black. Why’d they have to be black?”
“Would you have felt better if they’d been white?”
“Fuck you, Nate.”
He walked over to Burgundy, hugged her tightly, then calmly told her that they’d need to make some calls.
“I’ll tell them to cancel all those credit cards. And we’ll go and apply for a replacement driver’s license as soon as we can. And we’ll buy you a new smart phone, and a smart watch too.”
She said nothing. Nate finally told her he was glad she got home safe.
“I’m glad about it too,” Burgundy answered. “But I still didn’t get the girls their toy. I wished I could have gotten that for them, Nate.”
Instead of answering, he crawled into bed, turned his back, and stared into space.
CHAPTER 19
Pow! Pow!
Christmas came and went. The mood at the Taylor house was somber. Burgundy soaked in the tub most of the day and read her Bible.
Alita and Shade hung out together and tried to cheer up Leno, who was still depressed about Zaida.
But on the day after Christmas, when Alita got in touch with Burgundy to ask how her holiday had gone, her sister informed her about the robbery.
“I’m sorry you went through that, B. Anything I can do to help?”
“Yeah, I need to take care of this little bit of business concerning my medical ID cards, gas cards, checkbook, and other shit that got stolen, but why don’t you drive over to my house and check on Elyse. Nate’s gone to work already. Maybe you can talk to Elyse and spend some time with her. I’ll be back at Morning Glory later on. You can bring Baby Sis to the restaurant for me.” She paused. “I’ll give you the gas money when you get here.”
“No problem. I’ll be happy to help out,” Alita told her. “I’m on my way.”
Her drive to the Woodlands took an hour. Elyse let her inside. Alita went and sat on the family room sofa. The TV was on, and Elyse was still sitting around in her pajamas.
“How was your Christmas, Elyse?”
She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Did you get anything special that you wanted?”
“What I want . . . it can’t be put under a tree.”
“Oh, okay,” Alita said, feeling happy that the girl was talking.
“And what type of present you want Santa to bring you?” Feeling silly and elated that she was there spending time with the girl, she said, “You want a new baby doll, Elyse? Do you still play with dolls?”
“I’m not child. I grown.”
“Oh, really?” Alita told her. “You hardly ever act like it.”
“You don’t know how I act. How I be. You not with me all da time.”
This was the most revealing thing Elyse had ever said to Alita.
“You’re right.” Alita sat down next to her. Even though they were blood-related, a family member could be mysterious. Yet the love was still there.
Alita reached over and kissed the girl’s forehead. She grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“What happens when I’m not with you? Tell me.”
Elyse cast her eyes downward. “I a woman.”
“You’re a what?”
“You mean, you mean that you have sex, Elyse? With a man or with a woman?”
Elyse tried to relax as she noticed Alita’s sudden interest in what she had to say. She fiddled with her fingers and examined them. Her nails were looking terrible. Elyse thought that maybe it was time for her to take care of herself, make herself look pretty, because going out of her way to make herself look ugly wasn’t working.
“I have sex with man. Only a man.”
Alita felt lightheaded. She stared at the girl. “With a man or a boy? Tell me, baby.”
“A boy,” she quietly told her, stuffing bravery back into her heart. She knew the truth would cause a family war. She had to keep this a secret for as long as possible.
“Oh, yeah? What boy? I’ve never seen you with a boy since you were in ninth grade.”
“He at Morning Glory.”
“Elyse, what? You been fucking with one of the customers that come in there?”
“No.”
“Oh, shit. Then you been getting it on with your co-worker?”
“Yeah.”
“But,” Alita said as she began to think, “I don’t know if there’s a lot of young boys there. You’re the youngest employee at Morning Glory. Who is it, Elyse? Tell me his name.”
She violently shook her head. Her body began to tremble. She swallowed deeply. She had met a boy there. His name? Gamba, a Zimbabwe name that meant “warrior.” For the past several weeks, Gamba had been eating lunch at Morning Glory every day. He’d talk to her whenever Nate wasn’t around. He told her about life, the ways of the world, and how she needed to take control, and she listened. Gamba became Elyse’s only friend, her one true ally. And she didn’t want any of her family to know that he existed.
“Elyse,” Alita asked in a frustrated tone. “Why you shut down again? It’s like you hiding shit from me. Don’t hide in there,” she said, staring into the girl’s eyes, looking for any sign of life.
“Is his name Darius, Elyse? Tell me.”
“No. You crazy. You hurt people.”
“That’s what I’m supposed to do. If someone hurts my family, I’m supposed to hurt him.”