by Naomi Niles
I was pulling on my pants as I went into the hallway and didn’t see her. I looked out to the pool but she wasn’t there, either. I figured she’d probably had some guilt about the night before and had maybe gone for a run. I put on the coffee and waited.
She didn’t come back. I knew something was very wrong and decided to go looking for her. Maybe the heat got her; she wasn’t used to the climate here yet and probably went out without enough water or anything over her head.
I ran to my room to get my keys and that’s when I found the note and the keyring.
I’m no good for you—you deserve better. I didn’t expect the drop-off. I took five hundred dollars; figured it as wages due. Please don’t look for me. ~Meli (Silver)
I felt gut-kicked. The breath went out of me and I got dizzy, swirling pictures of Silver went through my mind. The day at the park when we’d danced at the wedding, when she snapped my picture at the event, her in the pool, at the stove and then, beneath me in bed.
I grabbed my keys and went looking for her, no matter her request. The Escalade sat mutely in the drive. There was only one road leading to my ranch and I drove ten miles in both directions: she couldn’t have gotten further than that. I headed downtown to the bus stop and she wasn’t there, but there had been two buses out of town already that morning. The guy at the ticket window wouldn’t tell me anything; even when I tried to bribe him. I drove to Jill’s apartment and banged on the door until she finally came and opened it.
“She’s not here,” she responded to my question. “You guys have a falling out already?” She seemed a bit bitchy in this remark, as though it somehow made her happy to hear it. I left in utter frustration.
I went back to the bus station to get the routes for the buses that had left. I chose the more likely, which was headed north where she would be going back to familiar territory. She was a gorgeous woman; I knew men would remember her. Stop after stop I followed the route but no one who was still hanging around could remember seeing her. The guys at the ticket windows were equally unhelpful, but finally one guy burst my gut entirely. “You know, fella,” he said, “she could have gotten off anywhere. A hundred different places. You can ask the driver to let you off anywhere along the way, not just the official stops.”
I headed back to the ranch, knowing that every inch I drove past could have been where she’d stopped. Hell, she might be sitting in a window somewhere watching me drive by that very moment. I felt sick at my stomach and so entirely useless. At the same time, I was beginning to realize how much I loved that woman. I’d never said those words to anyone before, not even my own mother. It was that one thing I’d saved back my entire life. To me it was like a talisman, because once I said those words, that would be it … for life.
When I got back to the ranch, I dug out the bottle of whiskey I’d kept in the back of the kitchen cupboard. It was considered the same for me as bottled water and dehydrated food would be for a prepper. At that moment, it was the only thing that would keep me alive.
I must have passed out about three quarters of the way through the bottle. I woke up on the floor and I’d been sick as the stench surrounded me and caused me to lose it again. I couldn’t remember ever feeling that miserable; not even when the bulls had kicked in ribs, lacerated my gut, or knocked me into month-long headaches. Nothing compared … absolutely nothing.
I checked my phone for messages, made sure the volume was as high as it would go and that it was completely charged. There had been nothing. I had called her number a hundred times in the previous hours, and she must have blocked me because it continued to go to voice mail. I was worried how she would survive. She had practically no money on her. She’d left the clothes she’d bought with my money and had no transportation.
I went for a soak in the pool, aching to see her come through the slider and smile, call out, “April Fool’s,” and then leap into the water beside me. The doorway remained empty.
I got things cleaned up and went back to Jill’s. I banged on the door and when she finally answered, I held out a thousand-dollar bill. “Here. I’m hiring you,” I told her. She snatched the bill before saying a word.
Cocking her head she asked, “You’re hooked, aren’t you?”
This was no time for pride. I nodded.
“What do you want for the money?” came the suspicion in her voice.
“Find her for me. If you do, and I can get to her, there’s another five thousand in it for you.”
I was pretty sure I had Jill pegged. She was a sellout, obviously, judging by the string of assorted company that filtered in and out of her bedroom. I counted on her need for money and what it could buy her to be stronger than her loyalty to her sister.
A slow smile came over her face. “Why does she always get the good stuff?” she said to no one in particular. “So, when did she leave?”
“Sometime early this morning.”
“Did you screw her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she want it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“She said she wasn’t good enough for me.”
“Agh, that old shit again,” Jill said, and didn’t seem surprised.
“What’s that all about?”
“Did she tell you anything about our childhood?”
“Very little.”
She looked at me, waiting. I peeled off another thousand-dollar bill and she motioned me inside the stinking filth that was her abode.
Jill motioned to the couch and I sat, if only to get her going.
“Our mother was a whore. Mostly sailors who made port in the harbor, but that’s what she did to take care of herself. Meli and I are only half sisters, different dads, neither one known. Me? I deal with it. Her? She can’t. It has ridden her ever since she was hold enough to understand what a whore was. One of the sailors came after her one night. I don’t think he screwed her, but he came damned close, and that’s when she ran. She was gone for days and finally showed up at my school one day, just as I was leaving for home. She begged me to come with her; said she’d found a place for us to live. I loved her more than our whore of a mother, so I went with her.
“Turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. They had a little apartment upstairs that constantly stunk like soy sauce and rancid grease. We cooked, we cleaned the place and we lived like two mice in an attic. In winter we just about froze to death and in the summer, there wasn’t a breath of air. It was hell, cowboy—hell. We were always on the run from the people at the child welfare offices. They suspected we weren’t living with our mother and tried to grab me at school. Meli is six years older than me, you see. She was old enough to drop out, but not me. She forged papers and moved me from one school to another until I was finally old enough to drop out. After the Chinese restaurant, it was a Jewish delicatessen, and then a whole string of other places. Always the same gig, always the same problems.”
I felt my stomach turn at what she was telling me. I had no idea from Silver’s behavior that she’d gone through what she did.
Jill wasn’t done. “Well, finally one day I’d had enough. I told her I was getting out of town, going south to where it was warm. I hitchhiked and walked and finally found myself here, in Dallas. I went back to the same restaurant gig until I could afford this place,” she held out her arms to indicate the apartment. “Meli somehow got herself into a GED program and then City College. She graduated with honors because she’s damned smart. Must have got that from her bastard father. She was with Jeremy and then he dumped her and she came down here with me. You know the rest.”
“Find her for me, Jill.” It was all I could think to say, and she was the only one who knew her sister’s tendencies well enough to pull it off.
“Won’t be easy, cowboy. She goes to ground without thinking twice.”
“I can have her driver’s license tracked,” I realized aloud.
Jill laughed. “Where did you get the idea she has a driver’s l
icense? She’s smarter than that, cowboy, and anyway, she’s a New Yorker. People in our income bracket don’t own cars in the city. You don’t have a hope in hell of finding her if that’s the way you’re gonna think.”
I stood up and pointed my finger into Jill’s face. “Find her,” I said evenly and left the stench behind me.
Chapter 13
Meli
I couldn’t seem to stop crying. For a woman who never sheds a tear, that was tantamount to a nervous breakdown.
I could still feel his hands on my breasts and his mouth feeding off the tender skin behind my ear. He had been gentle and yet assertive; he had been everything I had ever wanted a lover to be. Moreover, I knew I had laid claim to him; as much as a brand. Only, I wouldn’t be the woman in his arms ever again. He deserved so much more than a bastard from the inner city. He was made of good stuff; no matter the drinking or the women, he was still, simply by being born, better than I. I should have recognized this before I agreed to be his publicist. My roots wouldn’t touch him as long as it was all business. But once I lay in his arms, the game had changed. He would be judged by the trash he took to bed every night.
Deep down in my soul, I knew I was pretending to be someone other than who I was. I thought if I stayed close to him, I could maintain control and maybe, just maybe, my past wouldn’t matter so much. Just maybe I could leave the filth of the city behind me. I was so smart, and yet so naïve.
I’d walked out to the main road and hitched a ride to the bus stop. I rode for about twenty miles and then changed buses and headed east. I knew he would look for me; he was one of those kinds of men. He’d look, north, though, figuring I’d go back to what I knew best. He was wrong. I had no home. I didn’t belong anywhere, least of all with him. So, I chose east.
I’d ridden most of the day and finally crawled off in a sleepy little town in northern Louisiana. I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb, but sometimes people would leave you alone just for that reason.
I did, however, do one thing that came naturally. I headed for the first café I could find and looked for a job that would pay in room and board. I had enough coming in with my blogging to support myself otherwise.
Maudie’s Café was just the sort of place I was hoping to find. Maudie was a heavyset black woman with a heart of gold and a steady business. She was getting on in years, though, and couldn’t be on her feet all day long. She had a small room overhead with a bath and said she’d pay me all I could eat and $50 a week for pocket money, as she called it. It was perfect and I started the moment I set my bag down.
I knew how to cook; God knows for all the restaurants that Jill and I had lived over, I’d learned to cook almost every cuisine … except that eaten in the Deep South. Under Maudie’s tutelage, I learned to bread and fry catfish, hush puppies, and to bake peanut butter pie. I mastered the art of buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy and eventually could flip a pair of eggs in a cast iron skillet by tossing them in mid-air. Maudie would sit on the stool at the counter and talk me through most of the preparation; her feet were swollen and painful to stand upon.
Maudie stayed on hand to talk to her customers. Her charm was in her personality and she knew everyone by name. Perhaps the best part of Maudie’s charm was that she never asked questions or tried to pry into your personal business when you didn’t offer anything up. She knew I was on the run, so to speak. She didn’t care, saying that I’d been a gift from God just as she was about run out of blessings. That gave us a sort of comradery and we clicked immediately.
To say I stuck out in town was an understatement. First of all, most of the community was African American and I was a tall, willowy blonde who spoke like someone from a New York diner. I had no family, no man in my life, and very, very little money. Maudie knew I wrote blogs and while she wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, she knew when it was a time when I needed to concentrate and she let me alone.
I had a twin-sized bed and one of Maudie’s quilts to cover up with at night. I hung what clothes I owned on hooks along one wall and alternated between two bath towels. I’d bought a small fan for the window and other than that, had nothing. There was no ranch guest room, no Escalade, and most of all, no Blake. To say I was miserable was an understatement, but then I was used to misery and welcomed it like a black-sheep family member who was worthlessly predictable.
I had switched cell phones so no one could find me. I figured that eventually Blake would think to go over to Jill’s and ask her help in finding me. He might even bribe her; in fact he probably had to bribe her since money was the only thing that routinely worked to make her give me up. That, and drugs.
To be on the safe side, however, I gave Maudie Jill’s phone number and address and asked that if anything ever happened to me, that she contact her. Maudie didn’t ask any questions and knew better than to send out any inquiries at the moment or that her star employee would walk. She needed me as much as I needed her.
Summer was fully underway and the heat in my little apartment and hanging over the grill was hell itself. I could barely breathe and my stomach was constantly in turmoil. I felt horrible and twice had to run for the bathroom in the middle of making someone’s lunch. Maudie watched me and finally confronted me.
“You’s gonna have a babe,” she said simply.
I whirled around. “What?” I shrieked in a horrified voice.
“I seen it afore and I knows what I lookin’ at. Girl, don’ you know nothin?” Her eyes were knowing and she was wagging her head, clicking her tongue in a manner that made me feel ridiculously naïve. How could I be so stupid?
I felt like such a fool. My cycles had always been irregular, a byproduct of anxiety and too many missed meals. Once Jeremy and I split, there wasn’t any reason to stay on the pill. Not until that one night in Dallas. A home pregnancy test that night confirmed Maudie’s statement.
“You going to fire me?” I asked her the next morning, confessing the truth about the test.
“Why would I do a fool thing like that?” Maudie was wise and had seen many things over the years. An unwed mother ranked pretty low on her scale of life’s tragedies.
I shrugged.
“I takes it you don’ want the daddy to know?”
I shook my head vociferously. “No!”
She didn’t ask the details and I didn’t offer. “Don’ you worry none. I raised my share of babes and we’ll raise this one, too. At least as long as I’m ‘round to help ya.”
“I can’t ask that of you, Maudie,” I told her, ashamed at the predicament I’d gotten into. I was having flashbacks of my mother and realized I wasn’t any better than she was.
“Don’t wanna hear that, now. Not like you come in here ‘spectin’ the help – you didn’ know. Anyhow, I got myself in a fix coupla times and we all help on ‘nother.”
I hugged Maudie and she patted my arm. “Now get in there and cook!” she shooed me away.
* * *
Thus began my new norm. By day, I was a cook and a growing part of the community. My appearance had been enough to warrant attention and once the word got around that I was with child, I somehow qualified to become their darling. It was the general assumption that the father of my child was “no account,” as was the local expression, and if it meant keeping my privacy, I was content to let that viewpoint exist.
By night I was a freelance blogger and I began to seek more and more positions so I could augment my income. I had to pay for this baby, and then there was the question of insurance. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to handle it all, but I knew I could do it. I was grateful I’d chosen to get off the bus where I did. It could have all been so much worse.
I was on the Internet constantly, and it was my primary source of contact with the world. Rural Louisiana was quiet and disconnected from the rest of the world, so I wasn’t subjected to CNN or the sports channels. I had no idea what was going on in Blake’s world.
A storm came in one evening and I’d always loved viol
ent weather. I huddled over my computer, composing a post about haircare products when his gray eyes and dark black hair invaded my mind and eyes. I wanted so badly to look him up, but wouldn’t allow myself to do it. I knew I was weak and in this time of trouble, I knew I could reach out to him and he’d rescue me. I knew this without a doubt. It was that very reason I had to keep my distance. I would ruin his name, his career, and everything he stood for if I came in dragging a bastard’s reputation with another one in my arms. My pride had a price, after all.
As I grew in girth, there was general speculation about how I would get along. The ladies from the Baptist Church held an impromptu shower for me and I suddenly had a baby’s wardrobe. Women began dropping off care packages for me: a few articles of clothing with elastic waists, an old crib that had been repainted, a bag of used, but sparkling clean diapers, their patches neatly fixed. It was probably the greatest sense of family I’d ever known in my life. I would never forget the people in this community and their help.
It was a rainy day in late May. Maudie had taught me to bake cinnamon rolls and the smell was escaping out of the café’s fan and customers were piling in, tapping off their umbrellas and settling in for fresh rolls and large cups of Maudie’s chicory coffee. My back had begun to ache just after noon and by two o’clock, I had a pretty fair idea of what was happening. Nothing escaped Maudie’s eyes and she went into action. Customers were shooed out of the restaurant and the closed sign turned to face the public. Maudie had put in a call to the local midwife show showed up promptly. Between the two of them, they got me upstairs and the intense labor began.
Maudie had a rocker brought upstairs and she sat there and held my hand, wiping my forehead from time to time as she regaled me with stories of her childhood. This was oddly comforting, but in my heart, I just wanted Blake to be there. At that moment, I’d have even settled for Jill.
The emotions I was feeling were completely out of character for me. I was fearful—of the pain, of the uncertainty of the future and of travelling the same path my mother had chosen. I was angry—for having gotten myself into this position and of not being able to provide the child with a more solid beginning to his or her life. Lastly and finally, I was jubilant—for I finally held my baby son in my arms. I named him Kirk David Christian and as the midwife handed him to me, I felt an immense joy and pride and at that moment, no longer lived for myself.