by SLMN
Her face was bruised and scarred where the glass from the coffee table had lacerated it, but she was numb to it all. The doctor walked in, an older black woman with gray dreadlocks and pity-filled eyes. “Do you want to file a report?”
Mona couldn’t meet her gaze when she answered, “File a report from what?”
“Sweetheart, I see everything on any given night, and believe me, I know what abuse looks like.”
“It… wasn’t like that,” Mona tried to respond.
“Oh? Really? Then what was it like? Trust me, if he hits you once, he’ll hit you again and he’ll keep right on hitting you until you’re either dead or broken, and sometimes dead is better.”
Mona looked at her with tears in her eyes.
“It wasn’t his fault. I… I lied.”
Mona fell into the doctor’s arms and cried cathartic tears.
The woman held her, letting her get it out.
After the initial torrent of tears had subsided, the doctor said, “Baby, we all make mistakes. But no one, and I mean no one, has a right to put their hands on you because of it. Now… I’m gonna ask you again, do you want to make a report? There are people out there who can help you.”
Mona thought about Othello’s words.
Bitch, as much as I loved you, I hate you now even more. You better walk on goddamn eggshells around me, because if you don’t, your whole goddamn family is dead!
She knew if she made any sort of report, the police would get involved, and nothing could be worse than having the police involved in family business. That had been drilled into her head since she was knee high to Joe Hamlet. Besides, then her family would know what happened and her daddy would to go war with O and everybody would suffer.
Mona took a deep breath, knowing it was better to suffer a few broken ribs over a broken family.
“No… No, I’m okay. It’ll get better, I know it.”
The doc knew there was nothing she could do. Even so, she said, “You are wrong sweetheart, it never does. Now, if there isn’t anything else….”
Mona slid off the table.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be praying for you.”
Mona walked out, looked back with hesitation, wondering if she was making a mistake, but took a deep breath and walked out.
By the time Mona got in her car, her head was literally spinning.
The pain meds had her feeling floaty and free, like the buzz of a blunt of exotic or a couple of glasses of Hennessey.
She wasn’t usually one to drink and drive, but she didn’t have anyone else to drive her. And the first person she would have called to help was O, and she couldn’t call him, and the second was Cash, and he wasn’t there anymore. Calling Celeste or anyone was putting them in the mix and she couldn’t do that to anyone she loved, so she got behind the wheel, looked at her own eyes in the rearview, and told herself, “We can do this.”
She looked at her swollen eyes, her bruised cheek, all of those little glass cuts and her busted lip and hated herself.
No man had ever hit her before, and up to that point, she had sworn no man ever would, but now she saw how easy it was to become that girl.
“Lord, help me,” she prayed, but the gods of whoever looked after gangstas’ girls weren’t listening.
She started the car and drove off.
The trip home wasn’t that far, but because of the rain, her visibility was cut to almost nothing.
Mona turned on the radio, but her spirit rebelled, needing silence, like a funeral procession. She turned it off. Her thoughts were jumbled and fuzzy. Lacking shape. She put it down to the medication, but she knew her mind was caught up in a whirlwind of emotions that went way beyond any cocktail of pills.
The nurse was right.
Of course she was.
Othello would only get worse. He was violent by nature. She saw it in his eyes every time she looked at him, but up until now there had been love to balance it out.
If she walked out on him, Joe Hamlet would burn the streets down.
Or try to.
He was an old man. He played a different game now. O was something else. He had grown so powerful, too many people had pledged allegiance to him in the wake of Cash’s murder, no one would go out on a limb for Joe any more knowing O would be waiting for them to fuck up.
Mona swerved.
Not a lot, but her drowsy mind had dozed for a split second. It was almost enough.
The only thing that brought her back was the blare of an oncoming horn.
“Shit,” she said, sitting up in the seat, but it was no use.
The medication was too strong for her to be driving.
She thought about pulling over, but she reasoned that wasn’t much farther to her home.
Home…
That one safe place…
What she and Othello shared was a space, it would never again be a home.
He would never forgive her and she would never feel safe in the hands that had brought her so much pain.
Leave him, her mind urged, just get on the highway and don’t look back. Go. Now.
For a moment, it seemed like the thing to do.
It would be easy.
She had her own accounts, easily over half a mil in them. More than enough to buy a new life somewhere Othello could never find her.
But that would leave her family in danger.
Was she prepared to risk it all?
Mona felt trapped, beyond trapped, like she was heading toward her own slow, tortuous death. Dead woman walking. Being battered, abused and humiliated wasn’t a life worth living. It would diminish her, fist by fist, draining her away until there was nothing but a shell where a strong, determined, happy young woman had been.
Her lids grew heavy…
Rest…
The word echoed in her mind, like an invitation to the perfect answer.
Rest…
It would be so easy.
She felt her body begin to relax as she embraced her own peace.
The medicine lulled her deeper, like the song of a siren in the wind, promising a place where it would all go away.
She closed her eyes, and whispered, “Forgive me, Lord.”
The car gently crossed the yellow line, the rain beat down on her windshield, the shadow of the raindrops looking like tears streaking her calm face.
The last thing she saw were the headlights of the truck coming at her going sixty miles an hour. The lights looked like the warm beckoning illumination of the rising sun on a new day.
The blare of the horn blurred in her drugged mind.
Mona didn’t feel the impact.
The truck crushed her car head on.
She didn’t feel the heat of the explosion that ripped her body into thousands of charred scraps, strewn across the blacktop.
She didn’t feel anything but the all-embracing awareness of total and complete peace, then…
Her spirit rested.
Epilogue
Only hours after Mona’s death, Adonis ordered a hit on the entire Davenport family. Every last one of them save for the grandmother, Edna.
His reasoning was simple: neither family knew of Bianca’s death. Only Aphrodite knew. No one else. And certainly no one else could ever know the truth of what he had done. But he knew once it was out there, the fragile political peace it had forged between their houses would be torn asunder. That would mean war, even if it was a righteous war born out of grief. That was something he couldn’t have.
So the easiest thing in his mind was to ensure the rest of her family joined her.
But first, a proper celebration. After all, they had a wedding to celebrate.
He gathered them all, promising a feast. It was a family tradition, the entire clan enjoyed Sunday dinner together. It wasn’t about religion, it was about family. Both of Wingate’s sons, his daughter, wife and mother gathered for one last meal.
The cooks were the first to die.
The hit team entered
the mansion through the kitchen.
Automatic gunfire rang through the air like the ringing of trumpets. The family didn’t have time to react, or weapons at hand to save themselves. This was their sanctuary, their one safe place. This was their home, and they were gathered to celebrate the homecoming of the happy couple. No one brought weapons to such a joyous occasion. And that was the death of them. Heads exploded from the barrage that peppered the table, splashing blood, guts and brain matter everywhere. It was nothing short of slaughter.
A brutal blow to the back of the head knocked dear old Edna Davenport out cold, and she didn’t awaken for several days, in a hospital room. For the longest time, Adonis was worried the old bitch wouldn’t make it, that he’d hit her too hard.
But she opened her eyes.
“Mother Davenport, how are you?” he asked, stroking her leathery skin. He sat beside what could easily be her death bed.
She looked around, confused.
“Where am I? I don’t… How did I get here?”
Adonis dropped his head, solemnly. Practiced. He had gone over these lines so many times in his mind, but needed to deliver them just so.
“I… I don’t know how to tell you this… It… It was horrible… a tragedy… The whole family is gone. Dead.”
She drew in a gasp. “Lord, no!”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head, blue eyes still sharp as steel. “I only remember being at the table, looking around at all the faces…”
“You do remember me and Bianca, coming to join you at the table? She was so pleased to see you…”
The old woman looked at him as if she were trying to do just that, but couldn’t find the image in all the horrors stowed away in her mind.
Adonis continued, “I was sitting on your right, with Bianca to my left. The gunmen came in from the kitchen. I grabbed you and Bianca and pulled you both under the table,” he lied. “You hit your head… the bullets were flying, tearing up the room. It was a hit. They came for Wingate, but they took every last one of the family. I’m so sorry… I let you down. I failed you all. I tried… but…”
Edna, her mind putty in his hands, squeezed his hand and blurted out, “Bless you, young man… bless you for trying. Is Bianca coming to see me soon?”
Adonis shed crocodile tears.
“She didn’t make it, Grandma. You and I were the only ones who made it out of the celebration alive. It should have been the happiest time…”
It was.
Thank You
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