“How would it work?” I mumbled, scared. Reaching out for help was humbling. “I mean, I’d have my own room, right?” With a lock.
“Yep. I was thinking it would be somewhere between roommates and foster care.”
“Like a big brother?” I suggested.
“Exactly,” he nodded happily, “there would be rules.”
“Aren’t there always?” I offered him a tight smile.
“I was thinking you could move in whenever you like. I guess I thought the sooner the better, since it’s getting colder by the day.”
“What are the rules?” Better get that out of the way.
“You have to get your GED. Once that’s taken care of, I thought you might get a part-time job, maybe take some classes. I don’t expect you to pay rent or anything until you get yourself settled.”
I listened to him talk about community college and all the great opportunities for me. I was going to be able to relax a little. I’d have a bed to sleep in again. Hot showers anytime I wanted one. No more sleeping during the day and staying up all night. Part of me wanted to get out of the car and do a little victory dance, but the other part of me, the one usually in charge, was still holding back waiting for the ball to drop.
Chapter Seven
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave Stewie. He had no one but me to take care of him. Lying on my side, facing a sleeping Stewie on a cot beside mine, I watched him dream. He was smiling and had a thin line of drool flowing over his chin onto his pillow.
The sun was glaring in through the windows, warm and comforting in the drafty wide-open room. It was a little after two in the afternoon. I’d made sure Stewie got his lunch: ham and cheese on stale white bread. Then used some baby wipes to clean him up and tucked him in.
I couldn’t sleep. I was too busy thinking about Cass and how mad he was when I explained to him that I wouldn’t leave Stewie. He’d railed, and ranted, and finally turned on his heel with a “Fine!” over his shoulder and bolted out the door.
That was two days ago. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I let myself drift off, escaping my grim reality.
I woke up with someone shaking my shoulder.
“Cherry? It’s dark out. I’m hungry,” Stewie whispered in my ear. I rolled over, burrowing deeper under the scratchy wool blanket.
“I’m hungry,” he whined louder.
I sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Stewie stood over me, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, wringing his hands together. I stood up with a groan, stretching out the kinks in my back.
“Can we have pancakes today?” he asked, looking concerned.
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see,” I said, yawning. There was an all-night diner a few blocks away. One waitress treated us a meal if we happened in on one of her nights.
The clock mounted on the wall told me it was almost 9:00. I tossed my pack over my shoulder and led Stewie to the door. The street was quiet as we walked past the empty buildings. Shops had closed up for the night, lowering the metal gates over their windows and doors. A few residential places had windows trimmed in light around pulled shades.
We turned the corner and crossed the street. The diner’s neon sign flickered brightly. Stewie picked up the pace. I smiled to myself. It didn’t take much to please him. As our good fortune would have it, Estelle, our friendly waitress, winked at us from behind the counter.
“Heyhon,howareya?” Her words all ran together in a speedy singsong as she stepped around the waist high partition to hug Stewie. Her grey hair was twisted in a knot and secured by a million ancient bobby pins.
“I’m hungry. Can I have pancakes?” Stewie blurted out anxiously.
Estelle laughed, a big booming noise. I shook my head, settling into our usual booth by the window.
“You bet hon.” She shooed him to the booth then looked at me, her soft blue eyes casting warmth and compassion. “How ‘bout you, hon? The usual?”
“Yes, please.” I smiled.
“Okay, pancakes and bacon for the big boy and a cheese omelet for the lady.” She winked, hustling away to place our order.
Stewie giggled like a two year old when the plate of pancakes was placed before him. Estelle had made a smiley face, with a bacon mouth, two strawberries for eyes, and a wig of whipped cream.
I ate slowly, savoring the taste of melted cheese and hot buttered toast.
“What will we do tonight, Cherry?” Stewie asked, his mouth painted with a chocolate milk mustache.
“I don’t know.” I sighed. I was tired. There wasn’t much we could do at this time of night except walk the streets, maybe hang out at the all-night Laundromat.
We finished our breakfast, thanking Estelle like we always did, with promises of payback before we hit the road. We ambled along, like we had all the time in the world, which we did. Stewie decided he wanted to swing so we headed east to Patterson Park.
During the day it was great. There were playgrounds, UTZ Stadium, an ice skating rink, a lake. A couple weeks ago I took Stewie to the annual Great Halloween Lantern Parade & Festival they held. We had a blast.
However, this was not the best area of town to be in after dark, but I thought it was still early enough that I didn’t expect any trouble. I should have known better.
“Look at me, Cherry!” Stewie laughed as he swung past me, his legs pumping like twin hydraulics. I was sitting on the swing next to him, dozing.
“Hey!” Someone hollered from the dark.
I came to with a start.
“Skank, I’m talkin’ to you!”
I pushed to my feet in one fluid motion, scanning the darkness. A young boy was walking purposefully toward us.
“Get off the swing, Stewie.” I tried to sound casual.
“Not yet, Cherry. I need to go higher, so I can jump off,” he said, legs pumping harder.
“Now!” I snapped. The chains on the swing squeaked as Stewie flew off the seat. He landed on his knees and rolled to a stop. I took him by the elbow, helping him to his feet. I kept my eyes on the stranger.
“I wasn’t ready to jump,” Stewie whined, sounding a little disgruntled.
“We have to go.” I told him urgently, moistening my lips.
“But we just got here. I don’t wanna go!” he bleated.
“I know you better answer me when I’m talkin’ to you, ho.” The stranger was about twenty feet away. Now I could see his face through the shadows. He was just a kid, like me, but I knew he wasn’t coming over to be social. He wore gang colors. Little icy shivers rippled down my back.
“That’s not a nice word,” Stewie said. I squeezed his hand, telling him to be quiet.
The kid stopped about six feet away. He looked Stewie over and chuckled. “You and Rain Man here need to pay up.”
“Pay up for what?” I asked, trying to sound as polite as I could.
“There’s an admittance fee for being in my park after hours,” he snickered. He wasn’t the only one. I heard several snickers behind him. There were three other guys walking out of the night, all wearing gang colors.
I swallowed hard. My mind raced for a way to escape. Stewie wasn’t a fast runner. I had to think of a way to talk our way out.
“We don’t have any money,” Stewie said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Great, just what I needed, a Stewie melt down. I squeezed his hand again to reassure him.
The kid frowned at Stewie, studying him like a bug under a microscope. “I ain’t talking to you, Forrest Gump.”
“Look, we didn’t mean to trespass. We’ll just leave and never come back,” I said, inching backward, away from him. I reached out to pull Stewie with me, but Stewie was scared, and he didn’t listen very well when he was scared.
“Too late.” The kid smiled at me. It wasn’t friendly. “Since you didn’t bring me no money, than you gotta pay up another way.” More snickers.
Now I understood what they wanted. This was some kind of initia
tion. I was going to be his ticket into a thug family. My stomach flip flopped. I fought the waves of nausea threatening to erupt. I had to protect Stewie, as well as myself. God, why had I thought it would be safe to come here? This was my fault.
Please God, help us.
I took a deep breath.
“Run Stewie!” I screamed and shoved him into action. I ran the opposite direction, hoping to draw them all to me. When I looked back there were two thugs chasing Stewie and two chasing me. I saw Stewie’s wobbly gait, his backpack shifting over his wide back like a clock pendulum just before he tripped and fell. The two thugs were on him in seconds, kicking him.
I darted to the left to circle around back to Stewie. A pair of hands caught my coat. I heard the tear of fabric as I was yanked backward and off my feet. I fought like a caged tiger. Kicking and punching while I screamed my head off.
The kid was on top of me. His bright colored clothes flashing as he struggled to keep me pinned down. I looked up at his face. He had protruding front teeth, and as he laughed, I thought he looked like a deranged Easter bunny.
Hysteria bubbled up inside of me. This couldn’t be happening. After all this time, I was going to be taken down by a pint-sized wanna-be Crip.
Stupidstupidstupid!
The second boy held my hands down on the ground above my head while the kid straddled my thighs. I bucked and twisted so it wouldn’t be easy for him to undo my jeans, but it was a wasted effort. He didn’t even try to take my clothes off. I watched him raise his arm, hand clenched into a fist.
The first blow made my ears ring. I closed my eyes for the second hit, which felt like he broke my jaw. I barely felt the third. After the fourth, I sank into oblivion.
* * * *
I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t cooperate. I could feel the heat of the sun on my face. A thousand drums erupted in my ears when I turned my head to face the light.
“Easy now,” a voice whispered over the drums. “You got a good walloping, but you’ll survive.”
“Where...” I tried to ask, but my throat was as dry as the Sahara.
“You’re at Maryland General.” The woman’s voice carried a soft accent. “Try not to move too much. My name is Flor.” She rolled the ‘r’. She placed something hard and cold into my hand. “Just press the button if you need me.”
“Water...” I croaked. She tapped my lips with a straw. I took a long hard pull. “Thanks,” I murmured.
“You’re welcome. Try to get some rest. I’ll get the doctor, to let him know you’re awake.” I heard the sucking sound her orthopedic shoes made as she crossed the room then the heavy sigh of the door opening and closing.
I must have dozed off.
The room was darker than before. I was thirsty again. My tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth. I tried to swallow, but there was nothing but dust. I groped along the blanket for the button to buzz the nurse. A large hand covered mine. A man’s hand. Was it the doctor?
“What do you need?”
“Water.”
Once again the straw was put against my lips. I emptied the cup in no time.
“It’s the morphine. Takes away the pain, but makes you thirsty,” he said.
And then I knew who was there by my bed. Cass.
“What happened?” I asked. I remembered the kid beating me, but I wanted to know what happened after that. “Where’s Stewie?”
“Well, let’s see.” He blew out a breath. “You got your ass handed to you in Patterson Park. You’re lucky someone called it in when they did.”
“Who—”
“Who knows?” He cut me off. He was angry. “Probably a hooker. Does it matter? What were you doing in the park after dark?”
“We were swinging,” I explained. It sounded lame, even to me.
“Swinging?” He huffed. I could just picture the sparks shooting out of his light blue eyes.
“Yeah, you know, at the playground. It’s relaxing.”
“Don’t,” he said. The hard edge to his voice told me he wasn’t in the mood to joke. “Don’t even go there with your smart mouth. Do you know how close you came to being killed?”
Yes, I did.
“So someone called it in?” I prompted.
He didn’t answer me right away. I could tell by his labored breathing he was calming himself down. It was kind of sweet that he cared so much.
“I heard it on the scanner. An anonymous caller said two kids were attacked in the park.” He paused, huffing out another breath. “I had a gut feeling. I decided to check it out. They were loading you into an ambulance when I got there.”
“The guys got away?” I knew they did. Thugs are street savvy.
“Yeah, they got away. But they did a great job rearranging your face first. You have two black eyes, swollen shut. Your bottom lip is busted. Your whole face looks like a damn plum,” he growled.
“Call me Violet Beauregard,” I smiled. Well, tried to. My lip started throbbing.
“You also have a fractured arm and a bruised clavicle, Violet.”
I felt the bed dip as he settled beside me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are? They almost killed you,” he said softly.
“I think it was a gang initiation.”
He cursed under his breath. “Did you get a good look at them or their clothes?”
“Yeah, but right now I wanna know about Stewie. Is he alright?”
I felt Cass shift his weight on the bed. He didn’t say anything for a while.
“Where is he?” I asked. My heart started skipping. My palms broke out in a sweat. Cass tried to hold my hand, but I pulled it back.
“I’m sorry, Arden,” he said quietly.
“No!” I yelled, ignoring the pain pulsing from my lips and the flames licking up my throat, still raw from all the screaming yesterday. “No. You’re lying! I wanna see him. I wanna see him RIGHT NOW!” I struggled to sit up, kicking the blankets off. Cass held me down on my right side; my left arm was numb. I fought against him as much as my drugged stupor allowed.
“Nurse!” he yelled.
I heard footsteps hurrying into the room.
“Shhh. Calm down, querido,” Flor soothed into my ear.
Big fat drops of tears collected in the corners of my swollen eyes. I killed Stewie. It was my fault he was dead. Oh, how I wished I were too. I felt the warmth of the sedative seeping into my body. I heard Flor humming a light tune, maybe a lullaby.
Then I didn’t hear anything.
Chapter Eight
“Your ride is here,” Flor swept into the room pushing a wheelchair. She was a tiny little Hispanic woman with a cropped cap of dark hair. I just stared at her.
“Mr. Cass is on his way up for you. He said I could perform a citizen’s arrest if you give me a hard time.” She laughed.
I’d been in the hospital for two weeks. I think they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to kill myself. I wouldn’t, of course, because that would require some sort of emotion for me to do that, and right now, I wasn’t feeling too much of anything. I was numb from the inside out.
“Mr. Cass will take good care of you,” Flor was saying. “You need to eat more. You are so thin. A body needs fuel to heal.”
She helped me ease into the wheelchair. I held my tattered backpack in my lap as she pushed me down the hallway to the elevators. Cass was waiting for me in the lobby. He loaded me into the Porsche without saying anything. I waved half-heartedly to Flor as we sped away.
I looked out the windshield, staring but not seeing. The little car purred down the busy street. I noticed we were heading in the opposite direction of the shelter.
“Where are we going?” I mumbled without looking at him.
“Home.”
“Home is the other way.” I thumbed to my right.
“My home,” he replied.
I closed my battered eyes. The swelling had gone down, but my face still looked like a patchwork quilt. I didn’t feel like arguing. I didn’t feel like doing an
ything. I just sat beside him, watching the city disappear behind us.
We drove for what seemed like forever, but in reality it was only about a half hour. The neighborhood was old. Most of the houses had that 1940’s baby-boom structure. Neat little square houses sandwiched together on small patches of land. The tiny yards were well tended and relatively clean, with the exception of a few rundown houses here and there.
Cass pulled into a driveway and parked under a walled carport. His house was cream colored with burgundy shutters. It was plain, no frills like flowers, or a decorative welcome sign. It looked like what it was: a bachelor pad.
The inside was the same. An undecorated living room that opened into a dining room that led into the kitchen.
“I’ll show you to your room, let you get settled,” he said, motioning for me to follow him down the hall. He opened the first door on the left and stepped inside. A narrow bed sat in the middle of the room, directly under the only window that overlooked the backyard. I suspected he recently purchased the soft butter-yellow comforter and sheets because they looked stiff. The walls were painted pale lavender.
He tossed the pack on the bed, turning to look at me with raised eyebrows.
“Is this alright?” he asked. “I didn’t know your favorite color—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. I didn’t care if the room was painted black and only hosted an air mattress. This was temporary. This wasn’t my home. I didn’t have a home. I didn’t have anything.
“Are you hungry? I could order a pizza.”
“Stop hovering, Ward. The Beaver is fine, just tired.”
He shook his head, putting his hands on his hips. “Now that’s way before your time.”
“I used to watch Nickelodeon a lot,” I said, crossing the room. A mirror hung over the dresser. I looked at my reflection, trying to find the girl I used to be. All I saw were two narrow slits between purple, yellow, and green bruises.
Love You to Death Page 6