by Ni-Ni Simone
It was my mother, dressed in a fitted, peach, and off-the-shoulders dress that hugged every one of her curves to perfection, and six-inch python-skin stilettos that made her gleaming milk chocolate legs look as if they went on forever.
And there she stood outside of Justice’s apartment, bearing gifts.
My brown eyes beamed, my mouth watered, and my heart fluttered. In one of my mother’s hands was an extra-large shopping bag from my favorite Parisian boutique. And in the other hand were two small red bags from my favorite jeweler.
Truthfully, all I wanted to do was fall into her arms and squeeze her.
But I had to be strong.
My mother gleamed as she reached into one of the small red bags, pulled out a red velvet box, and popped it open.
“A pink diamond choker!” I screamed, clutching my chest. “Dear goddess, yes, bish, yes! That has got to be at least three karats!”
I looked up at Logan, and she grinned from one yellow-diamond studded ear to the next. “In the other bag are the pink diamond studs to match. They will go well with your new coming home wears.”
Fight, queen, fight! And do what’s right! I threw on a fake frown and arched a brow. “So, what, you came here to bribe me? After you let your hoodlum son and his gang-bangin’ daddy come for me? My dignity is worth more than diamonds, Mother.”
She smiled and practically sang, “Three-karat necklace. Three-karat earrings—”
“That’s nine karats!” I screamed.
“Three plus three is six, Rich. But no worries, I’ve arranged for you to return to Hollywood High and receive tutoring.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
Now let it rip! “You are real live tacky showing up here like this, trying to buy my womanhood with gifts. First of all, Shakeesha, you said to meet you at Sweet Teas.”
She shot me a look, as if to remind me that she wasn’t above attacking me, her own child. She closed the red velvet box and put it away. “That was two hours ago, Rich. And when you didn’t show up, I figured I’d come to you.” She looked over my shoulder and took Justice’s apartment in. I knew she was criticizing everything, from the blue tweed sectional to the small sixty-inch, flat-screen TV. She asked, “May I come in?”
“No.” Then I paused, blocked the doorway, and let her marinate on that.
She swallowed.
I continued, “This is me and my man’s home, which we take pride in, and I don’t need you judging our mod-del surroundings.”
“You mean modest?”
I sucked my teeth. “See, there you go.”
“Look,” she said as she softly reached for my hair and twirled the end of a curl, “I have so many new things for you. I’ve ordered you an entirely new wardrobe, new heels, new bags, and all I want is for you to come home, Richie-Poo.”
I wanna come home too, Mommy. “I am home.”
She looked over my shoulder again. “This sweat box is not your home! You are a château kind of girl.”
I sure am. “First of all, this is not a sweat box. It’s a one-bedroom-studio apartment-townhome. And just so you know, there are more important matters in life than material things, Logan Montgomery.”
“Oh, please.” She pursed her lips. “That’s cowshit, and you know it. Your closet is the size of this place. And your bedroom alone makes two of this raggedy dump.”
Amen! “It’s not a dump. It has a balcony with a view!”
She clenched her jaw, swerved her neck, and pointed behind me. “A balcony?! First of all, that thing jutting from the living room to the outside is about as wide as a basement windowsill. And second of all, what view? The broken-down jalopy in the parking lot? Dear God! Have you lost all rhyme, reasoning, and class?!”
She looked me over, from my swollen feet to my round and chubby cheeks. “I know you, and I know that you miss Chef Jacque, and his specially made strawberry crepes, goose eggs with Gouda, and beer-mosas.”
I’m dying for it! “No, I don’t. I don’t even like goose eggs. Gross.”
“Then what are you eating? Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonald’s, Chinese food?!”
“No, I am not! I resent that! For one, I don’t eat sushi, and for two, I’m not some low grade. My man cooks for me, and when, and if, we do eat out we don’t eat fast food, we eat Chick-fil-A! Thank you!”
She hesitated. Then she blinked, and blinked again. “Look, I’m not going to keep standing here in my good heels, debating with you. I’m your mother, and you’re only seventeen years old. I tell you what to do! And what you’re going to do is gather your things, come home, and take a good and long bath to wash this hood-bugger stench off of you! Get your behind back to school. Go to therapy. Have a conversation with your brother and apologize to your father!”
This old ho is buggin’! “Shakeesha, you are straight out of order! Coming up in here disrespecting my man, where he pays rent, bearing gifts, like I can be bought! Then you’re talking about goose eggs and strawberry crepes, which I have never liked! And therapy?! You need to send your pimp of a son to therapy!
“And apologize to your rolling stone of a husband?! Like, I did something to him when he came for me, while you sat there and watched it all go down! That was real gutter and grimy. Real slimy. If anything, the three of you owe me an apology!
“And now you wanna be all in me and my man’s hallway, crappin’ on Justice’s name and trying to lure me home! Get this through your head: I am home, and I ain’t leavin’! So what you can do is gather your gifts, your nose, and your good heels and march yourself out of my business!”
I slammed the door in my mother’s face, and as the sinking thought of not being able to wear those pink diamonds stabbed needle pricks through my skin, I fell across Justice’s bed and made tearstains on his cheap sheets.
51
Spencer
I sat at the kitchen table, staring out at the mountains through the wall of glass, my eyeballs bouncing back and forth from the magnificent view to the manila folder on the table, a folder that I’d gotten from my PI less than an hour ago.
“I had to search high and low for this,” he’d stated when he’d handed the nearly empty file to me. “Someone wanted to make sure it was nearly impossible to find out anything.”
I’d taken the folder from him, then rolled up my car window and sped off. It’d taken me weeks to dig up these god-diggitydang bones; now all I needed were the meat and potatoes to fill up the plate.
“Who is Cleola Mae, Kitty... ?”
“Spencer, stop with this nonsense . . . Maybe she’s some dead woman, some ghost your father sees in that little pea-brain mind of his . . .”
“Who is Cleola Mae . . . ?”
“There is no Cleola Mae. She doesn’t exist. She’s some crazy figment of your father’s overactive imagination . . .”
“Tell me now, Mother. Who is Cleola Mae . . . ?”
“Okay, fine, Spencer... she was some ole country bumpkin your father was once infatuated with . . .”
Absentmindedly, I ran my fingers along the edges of the folder. I was many things but one . . . two . . . three things I wasn’t was dumb. Some bimbo. Mmmph. I could smell a pile of crappy mess a mile away. And all that mess Kitty was trying to stuff down my throat was some hog crap!
I flipped open the folder and stared. This was not some country bumpkin Daddy had been infatuated with. Inside were two photos of a crooked-toothed, cinnamon-colored girl with a wide nose and two unkempt, lopsided ponytails. The part in her hair looked crooked, and her roots needed a good scrubbing. She couldn’t have been any older than twelve or so.
Her eyes.
Sad, hazel eyes with thick dark lashes.
They (those eyes) looked strangely familiar, yet very foreign to me.
I’d already gone upstairs to ask Daddy who this little girl was, but conveniently he wanted to play like his brain was all of a sudden freeze-dried. All of a sudden he didn’t know of any Cleola Mae. “Don’t go hunting in no empty nests,” he’d
warned, before shooing me out of his room. Well, goshdiggitydanggit. Motherfudgepop him and some ole dang empty nest! I wanted answers, and I wanted them now!
I picked up the black-and-white photo and studied the girl’s face. It was the face of a child who could have easily ended up on the side of a milk carton. But it hadn’t. And yet there was a caption that read:
MISSING.
CLEOLA MAE PICKENS
IF ANYONE HAS SEEN THIS CHILD, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL
AUTHORITIES.
What happened to her? Was she kidnapped? Had anyone ever found her? And why was Daddy all of a sudden tightlipped and senile about it?
I placed the photo back inside the folder, my jaw clenching as my gazed drifted over to the box of red dirt sitting up over on the island. Dirt I had my little dickie-dick bring back with him from his eight-day trip to some hick town in Emm-eye-crooked-letter-crooked-letter-eye-crooked-letter- crooked-letter-eye-humpback-humpback-eye.
When he’d told me he was in—I glanced at the white label on the bottom right corner of the folder—LEFLORE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI . . . I insisted he bring me back a shoebox full of dirt.
“Strange request,” he’d said. “But whatever. As you wish.”
Mmmph. There was nothing strange about what I’d asked for. If this photo didn’t nudge Kitty’s memory about who that little girl was, then perhaps the box of red clay-dirt would.
They said LeFlore County was the home of cotton and catfish. Well, from where my booty cheeks were sitting, it was also the place for lies and dirty little secrets. And I planned on plowing through, excavating, every goshdang lie ever told, or, so help me sweetheavenlyjeezus, I was going to tear the roof off this mothersucker tonight.
I glanced over at the wall clock. Kitty should be here soon. And then it’s time to jumpstart this rodeo show.
* * *
“Dear God. Where did you get this?” Kitty asked, her smooth-silky skin suddenly going colorless and gray.
I narrowed my eyes. “Who is she, Mother? Who is that missing girl?”
Kitty’s hand shook. The photo dropped from her hand, fluttering to the table. “You meddling little bitch!” she screamed, before lunging at me. She was quick, too quick, as her hands wrapped around my throat. “I should kill you with my own bare hands!” She shook me, her grip tightening.
I gasped for air, trying to claw her hands from around my neck. I kicked and wailed, knocking items off the table, as she continued squeezing. “Why, Spencer? Why did you have to go digging up that little girl’s ugly past, huh, you little wretched slut?!”
I felt myself going light-headed as Kitty shook me like a rag doll. I tried to scream, but all that came tumbling out from the back of my throat were gurgling sounds.
“You have no idea what you’ve done!” She lifted one hand and slapped me, hard, across the face, while her other hand tightened around my neck, her nails digging into my flesh. She slapped me again.
“I spent my entire life burying that little girl so far down into the earth that no one would ever find her. And yet you”—whap!—“turn around and undo everything I buried with that girl!”
I had to figure out a way to get her off of me, before she strangled me on home to glory. The look in Kitty’s eyes told me she was planning to make me the next girl missing if I didn’t act fast. Lordgodlordgodlordgodjeezus! Help me!
I reached over and clawed at the table, trying to reach for the crystal tumbler until my hand wrapped around it. I swung with all my might, knocking my mother in the head until she finally let me go. Gasping, I leapt up from my chair, chest heaving, and my eyes full of tears.
“Aaaaah!” I screamed, wild and crazy like, charging her. “You tried to kill me!”
“I’m your mother!” she yelled. “And you had no business going behind my back, digging up—”
“I had every right, Kitty! You’re a liar!” In my hysteria, I ran over to the shoebox of dirt and slung it in her face. Red soil flew out all over the place—in her eyes, her mouth, the table, and all over the floor. “You clay-eater! You told me there was no Cleola Mae!”
Kitty gasped and coughed, wiping dirt from her face. “Aaah! You hateful little trollop! I told you she was dead!”
“And you also told me she was a figment of Daddy’s imagination. That he was crazy! You ole cotton-picking mud mouth! You snake sucker!”
Kitty charged me, and we both fell to the floor, rolling around in Mississippi soil, fighting each other like two rabid wolves, scratching, slapping, and punching each other, ripping blouses, and tearing at bras until we were both too exhausted to keep fighting.
After rolling around on the floor for what seemed like forever, we were finally exhausted and bloody and shredded to pieces with our boobs nearly exposed, breathing heavy, sore and bruised, muscles burning and backs aching, crawling.
I glared at Kitty as she held onto the table, before plopping down into the only chair that hadn’t been knocked over.
I crawled my way over to the island and grabbed onto one of the barstools, hoisting myself up.
“Now tell me, Kitty, who is Cleola Mae. And one more lie,” I warned through clenched teeth, “and we are both going to regret the day you gave birth to me.”
Kitty’s burning eyes met my face with a glare of her own. “I already do.” She shook her head. “I should have dumped you in the ocean and let the whales raise you. I knew you were trouble, Spencer, from the moment you slid out into the world. Your entire seventeen years of breathing, you have done nothing but try to wreak havoc in my life. Well, my darling daughter. You have finally managed to unearth my entire world. Bravo to you! You—”
“Oh, shut it, Kitty!” I spat, my whole body shaking with anger. “Just tell me who the hell that missing girl is?”
“Fine, Spencer. She’s me!” She reached for the photo and slung it at me. “I’m Cleola Mae! I’m the girl in that photo.”
I stalked over toward the counter and pulled out a dish towel from one of the drawers, and then slung it at her. “Tell me everything, Kitty. Why did you go missing?”
We glared at each other. And for the first time in my life, I saw them. Wet. Streaks. My mother had tears streaming down her scratched face.
“I ran away,” she said, closing her eyes. “I had to get out of that godforsaken hellhole of a life . . .”
Then, with tears falling heavy from her eyes, Kitty told me her whole life story: growing up dirt poor, with no money for food or clothes, or barely having a roof over her head, being called black and ugly and forced to sleep with a dirty old man just to keep her stomach from growling in the middle of the night.
“Momma knew what he was doing to me, but she’d let him keep doing it anyway. She said I had to earn my keep. Help feed my family. So I . . .” she choked back a sob, then shook her head again.
“And then he started in on Norma . . . I mean, Camille,” she corrected.
I blinked. “You knew Heather’s mother back then?”
“Yes. We were best friends. The little ugly black girl and the poor white trash girl in the dirty panties. Norma Marie and I were all we had. We were both broken. We looked out for each other. And then one day, I walked into Mr. Petey’s rickety shack and found him on top of Camille. She was crying and begging him, ‘Get off, get off... please, stop . . .’” My mother paused, and my heart stopped. “I stabbed him,” she confessed in almost a whisper, “until he stopped breathing, until he stopped hurting Norma—I mean Camille—until he could no longer keep hurting me.”
My jaw dropped when she told me how she and Heather’s mother set his lopsided shanty on fire with him still in it. Then—with a pinky swear—promised each other to never mention him or that night again.
“Two years later, Camille’s father moved them to the hills of West Virginia. Her great escape from her horrid past—and mine. But I was the one left behind to relive the memories day after day after day. Momma had too many kids to feed. There were eight of us, and I was second to the oldest�
��the only girl. But I wasn’t gonna let Momma pimp me out to some other dirty old man. I wanted out of that horrid life. So I ran. I ran until my chest burned and my legs ached. I slept in fields, under bridges, in Dumpsters, anywhere I could. And I did whatever I had to do, sleeping with anyone, turning tricks to get me what I needed . . .”
I blinked. Dearholyfathersweetjeezus. I had no idea. Kitty then shared how she’d finally made her way to Atlanta and danced in strip clubs, wearing wigs and dark brown contacts to disguise herself; she’d perfected a lie for a new life.
“And that’s where I met your father. My biggest catch.” She wiped her face, then offered a faint smile. “He was so big and strong, and handsome. And he smelled of money, lots of it. All the girls tried to work him, but I’d managed to snag his attention. He saw something special in me, something no one else ever wanted to see. He saw hope, Spencer. And I saw it in him. Ellington saved my life. He rescued me from my past. He took me with him and gave me hope. He gave me a new identity, and a whole new life.”
She sighed, then closed her eyes. “He made me trust again. And over time I’d grown to love him because he’d found it in his heart to love a poor little clay-eater—as you called me—like me.”
She looked down at the photo lying on the floor atop dirt from her past.
“I’m not that girl, anymore. She’s gone. Cleola Mae Pickens died the first time Mr. Petey touched her in her sacred places. I buried her—or at least I thought I did—the day I left with nothing but the tattered clothes on my back. And, yet, after hundreds of thousands of dollars of plastic surgeries, getting my education, going to charm school to learn proper manners and etiquette, after years of erasing that horrid rural Mississippi accent, and amassing hundreds of millions of dollars, branding myself as a force to be reckoned with, you have managed to find a way to remind me that, no matter how hard I tried to erase my past, somehow, someway, someone would eventually dig it up and remind me that there is never any escaping it. I just never thought it would be my own child.”