by Earl Sewell
“Drug addicts,” I whispered to myself with a trembling voice.
“T.J. What’s up, baby?” LaShaunda called out to her guy who was resting on yet another mattress with his back propped against the wall.
“You finally decided to come back to me.”
T.J. had what looked to be dreadlocks and scraggly facial hair. He was very thin and his eyes were set deep in their sockets. LaShaunda kissed him and my stomach did a flip. I didn’t understand how she could possibly feel good about kissing a guy who not only looked dirty, but smelled like he had not showered in months.
“You’ve put on some weight,” said T.J., who was standing on wobbly legs. My intuition told me that he was coming down from a drug high.
“Where is the bathroom?” I politely asked.
“Who is that?” asked T.J., pointing at me.
“She’s good people. She treated me nice while I was out in the world trying to live. She’s new to this life, but she’s ready to be part of the family. She needs to be broken in, though.” LaShaunda spoke as if I was suddenly meaningless.
“Broken in? What are you talking about?” I swallowed hard after I asked the question.
“Would you relax, girl. Damn. You’re making everybody nervous,” LaShaunda scolded me. This was a new side of her personality that I had not seen before. I knew she was jagged around the edges, but not to this extent.
“The bathroom is anywhere you can squat and pee, but most of us use the pantry at the end of the hall,” T.J. answered my question.
“What?” I asked, horrified.
“If you don’t want to go in there, there is a McDonald’s down the street.” T.J. offered me another option.
“LaShaunda, can I talk to you for a moment?” I think I was going into shock.
“Chill out, okay? I am going to spend a little time with T.J. Just sit down someplace. No one is going to bother you,” LaShaunda insisted.
“Hey, don’t nobody mess with this girl,” T.J. yelled out. The couple sleeping together didn’t move. The guy with the needle in his arm was higher than a satellite in orbit, and Bebe was standing behind me.
“Do you want to do it together?” Bebe whispered in my ear and I jumped. I turned and glared at her.
“I got crack, meth and a little heroin.” Bebe continued talking slowly. “I got it for you for a small price.”
“Get away from me,” I warned her.
“Suit yourself, baby girl. No sweat off my back. Just means more for me.” Bebe held up the palms of her hands in a nonthreatening manner. “I was just trying to make you feel at home. Help you take the edge off.”
“Viviana, what have you gotten yourself into?” I asked myself as I thought about what to do next.
I crawled back out the window and into the sunlight. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t sure which direction I needed to go to get to someplace that was safe. I reached for my cell phone to call my mother and ask what I should do, but my cell phone was dead. In my hastiness, I hadn’t grabbed my charger. It would not have mattered because I doubted if there was electricity in the rotted-out structure LaShaunda had brought me to. I decided to just walk, but stopped and dropped to the ground when I heard gunshots. Someone was driving down the alley opposite me, shooting. I heard someone return fire, but I was too afraid to lift my head. Once the shooting stopped, I crawled backward, found a wall and squatted down on the road. I rested my forehead on my knees and tried to figure out why my life was spiraling out of control.
I decided to go back and force LaShaunda to at least point me in the direction of the bus terminal. I stupidly hadn’t paid attention to exactly how I got to the location I was at. I would rather sleep in a bus station than squat in an abandoned building. I rose to my feet and went back toward the boarded-up house. When I got there, I saw that both T.J. and LaShaunda were spaced out. LaShaunda could barely hold her head up.
“LaShaunda.” I shook her, but she was incoherent. I placed her face in my hands and looked into her eyes. She was nodding in and out.
“LaShaunda?” I tapped her cheeks rapidly several times. I thought she may have just been in a deep sleep.
“LaShaunda!” I tapped her cheeks again, but her soul was not at home. I scanned the floor around her. That was when I noticed her exposed arm, the needle mark and dried blood just above her forearm. It all suddenly made sense. The blemishes I had noticed on her arm were the result of drug usage. When she asked if I got high, I assumed she meant smoking weed. I had not considered that she meant another type of drug.
“No!” I cried out as I tried to understand why I had missed the warning signs of LaShaunda’s addiction. I wanted to cry, but I was in shock and couldn’t remember how.
There was no way I was going to sleep. I stayed awake. I don’t why I didn’t leave. Perhaps a part of me felt sorry and responsible for LaShaunda. When T.J., LaShaunda and the rest of her crew came down from their high, the morning sun had come up. The couple that was asleep on the mattress and the single guy awoke first. They moved past me like three zombies. Neither one said a word to me or each other. They crawled out the window and disappeared. Then T.J. and LaShaunda awoke. LaShaunda was more coherent, but different. Her eyes and behavior were different.
“You’ve got to try it, girl.” LaShaunda was jittery.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, noticing that several candles had burned out.
“T.J. took me to another level yesterday. Heroin is amazing. You would not believe how it makes you feel.” LaShaunda spoke as if she’d taken a flight into outer space. “I told T.J. about you and how you know how to pickpocket people. You can steal stuff and take it to the pawn shop up here and get us money so we can do this again and again.”
“Have you been on drugs all this time?” I wanted to cry, not out of sadness, but anger.
“Try it. Girl, I’m telling you. You will feel so good,” LaShaunda said. It was then that I knew she was no longer my friend, and I had to get out. I backed away from her and bumped into Bebe.
“Where are you going so fast?” Bebe asked.
“I need some air,” I said and moved toward the window. The three of them moved along with me.
“We need some air, too,” said T.J.
“And some food,” said Bebe.
“Let’s go hit Family Dollar,” T.J. said. “You’re coming with us. There will be people there that you can rob.”
“She’s really good, too, man.”
I couldn’t believe LaShaunda had offered me to the group as if my feelings and thoughts were meaningless. I wanted to grab my duffel bag, but didn’t think it was a good idea since the three of them had forced me to walk past it. I crawled out the window, and my first thought was to run, but I didn’t. I felt lost and confused. I had never been in a situation like this. I had never had someone turn on me or set me up like this. The fall air was cold and goose pimples formed on my arms. I hugged myself in an effort to contain my body heat.
“Come on.” T.J. grabbed my right arm just above my elbow. Bebe stood on the other side of me and did the same thing.
“LaShaunda.” I looked over my shoulder and called to her. I wanted to tell her to get her friends before I beat them down.
“Relax, girl,” LaShaunda said and began laughing like a lunatic.
“She told me about your fighting skills. You try anything and I will shoot you down like a dog.” T.J. lifted his shirt and showed me the handle of a gun.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“So we can get high. That’s the goal for the day and the goal every day. Get money and get high,” T.J. explained.
“We’re going to walk into Family Dollar, snatch some food and walk out. Once we eat, we are going to take you someplace where there are people you can rob.” T.J. wasn’t so bright and neithe
r was his plan. I came up with an alternate plan to get away from them. All I had to do was use my pickpocketing skills to take the gun away from him. As soon as he and Bebe let go of my arms, that’s what I had planned to do.
We walked toward Family Dollar, and I noticed that there were two police cruisers sitting in the parking lot. The three drug addicts must have still been partially high because they didn’t even notice the police. Their only goal was to rob the place of food and rush out. Bebe and T.J. let go of my arms once we walked inside the store. I pushed them away and ran out the door. I thought for sure T.J. would run out of the store and shoot at me, but he didn’t. I ran a safe distance away and then turned to see if they were following me. What I saw next made me stop cold. The three of them ran out of Family Dollar with bags of chips and snacks. They had not noticed that the police were in the store. Four cops chased them and easily tackled them to the ground. LaShaunda screamed out obscenities at the top of her voice. T.J. puked and Bebe tried to resist being handcuffed. More police showed up, and before long, they were taken away.
* * *
Once the police activity ended, I began walking. I didn’t dare go back to the abandoned house to retrieve what few items of clothing I had hastily grabbed. It wasn’t worth running into the other three zombies who had left earlier. I was cold, alone and in a strange city. I didn’t know where I was headed. I only knew that I had to keep moving. I came across the McDonald’s that T.J. had mentioned. I walked inside and searched for the bathroom. The people inside looked at me and cast judgment upon me. Their eyes said that I was a degenerate, immoral and the scum of society. I didn’t think I was any of those things, but their eyes told a different story. I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. I looked at myself in the mirror and was horrified at my reflection. I had no idea how I’d gotten so dirty so quickly. My hair was a mess, my skin had dirty smudges on it and my top had black grime on it. I must have gotten the filth on me when I sat against the wall. I tried not to touch anything in the house, but I must have and then unconsciously touched my face. I turned on the water and snatched several paper towels from the dispenser. I wet them and squirted a healthy amount of hand soap on them. I cleaned myself as best as I could and then walked out.
I wandered around the streets for hours replaying the events of the day over and over in my mind. I tried to make sense of everything. I tried to understand my crazy rationale for following LaShaunda to her personal hell. I tried to understand why I felt so alone, so hopeless and so unloved. I didn’t have a single answer to any of my questions.
I had been walking aimlessly for so long that I had not noticed that the sun had set. Nightfall was less than thirty minutes away, and I had no place to sleep. I had no blanket, no warm clothes, no bed, no money and no phone. I looked toward the heavens when I heard the rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning crack across the horizon. A few minutes later, the sky opened up and it rained hard and heavy. I shivered and trembled because I was so cold and wet. I came to a church and pulled on the door. I thought I would be able to go inside and get warm, but the doors were locked. I continued on to a place called Mitchell Park. There was an overpass there, and I took shelter from the rain under it. I sat at the highest point of the sloped concrete, pulled my knees to my chest and hugged myself to keep warm. I prayed. I prayed to the angels. I prayed to my father and asked him for help, strength and guidance. I was tired but I knew that falling asleep beneath an expressway overpass was out of the question.
The next morning I crawled from beneath the overpass and continued walking. I was hungry and had to get food from somewhere. It was still drizzling and the temperature had dropped to around the high thirties. My breath formed clouded puffs that lingered. Then the strangest thing happened. A very odd feeling washed over me, and I stood very still. The wind blew and it was no longer cold, but warm instead. In my mind I heard the voice of an old man pleading with me to call home. The voice sounded familiar, as if I knew the person, but I had no idea who the voice belonged to. The voice and the feeling disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
“Young lady, do you need help?”
I was startled out of my daydream. A policeman was standing in front of me.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Do you need help? It’s cold out here, and you don’t have on a coat.” The police officer was a tall Mexican man in his fifties who had eyes that looked familiar. They were sharp and distinguished, like eagle eyes. I suddenly remembered why his eyes were so recognizable. There was an old photo of my grandfather sitting on Grandmother Esmeralda’s dresser. I had looked at the photo countless times. I looked more deeply into the eyes of the policeman. It was bizarre how much he looked like the photo of my grandfather in his military uniform. I had never met my grandfather because he passed away before I was born, but this man reminded me of him. I don’t know why I thought about my grandfather at that moment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him and the stories my grandmother had told me about him.
“Why don’t you come inside the station with me? I’ll fix you some hot chocolate so you can get warm,” he suggested.
“Station?” My mind was still trying to clear away the fog.
“Right here.” The officer nodded in the direction of the station I was standing in front of.
“May I use the phone inside, to call home?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said and took off his long black raincoat and draped it over my shoulders.
twenty-five
MAYA
My house and world had been turned upside down. Viviana had been missing for two days, and no one knew if she was alive or dead. We didn’t know if she had been kidnapped or met some other horrible fate. My heart was filled with guilt and regret. I should not have shown the video to my mother. In my heart I knew that Viviana’s disappearance was related to my telltale heart. My big mouth had once again caused a major family crisis, and I felt awful.
Grandmother Esmeralda had spent countless hours praying, but her prayers for Viviana’s return had not been answered. It was time to call the police. My aunt Salena, Viviana’s mother, had been contacted and was on her way. Keysha and her family took the time to print missing person’s flyers and were out posting them.
Grandmother Esmeralda, Anna, Paul, my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table. My father, who was standing nearby, held the cordless phone in his hand. He was about to dial the police department when my cell phone rang. I removed it from my hip holster and saw that it was a call from the 414 area code.
“Who is that?” asked my father.
“I don’t know. It’s probably a wrong number. It’s from the four-fourteen area code. I don’t know where that is or anyone from there.”
“Answer the phone, Maya!” Grandmother Esmeralda urged me.
“Hello,” I answered, but no one said a word. All I heard was a bunch of noise in the background.
“Hello,” I spoke again. I looked at my family and shrugged my shoulders. I was confused.
I pressed the speakerphone feature so everyone could hear and spoke a third time. “Hello,” I said.
“Hello. Is anyone there?” a man’s voice asked.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“This is Officer Fernando from the Milwaukee Police Department. I have a young lady here who was wandering the streets. She looked very lost and afraid, so I asked her if she needed any help. She asked if she could use the phone, and she dialed this number.”
“Is it Viviana?” my grandmother asked.
“Is your name Viviana?” I heard him ask. “She’s nodding her head yes,” said Officer Fernando.
“Oh, thank You, God!” cried out Grandmother Esmeralda. “Thank You, thank You, thank You.”
“She looks very tired and like she has seen better days. Does she have any type of med
ical condition?” asked Officer Fernando.
“No,” Grandmother Esmeralda spoke. “Could you please give us your address so that we can come get her?”
* * *
A few days later, once the chaos had settled down, Grandmother Esmeralda sat down with me and Viviana. She claimed that something was heavy on her heart, and she needed to discuss it with us. I figured she was going to grill Viviana about why she had run away to Milwaukee and how she had ended up at the police station. When we picked her up, my mother began asking Viviana those types of questions, but Grandmother Esmeralda put a stop to my mother’s interrogation. The three of us sat at the kitchen table. I was silent and so was Viviana.
“What is going on between you two?” she asked, but neither Viviana nor I spoke.
“Come on. Tell me. The hostility you have toward each other is unmistakable,” Grandmother Esmeralda said. Viviana and I remained silent. “Okay, since you two will not talk, you will listen.” She paused, then cleared her throat. “There is a curse on the family.”
“A what?” I broke the silence.
“A curse, Maya, and it’s nothing to play with or make fun of.” Grandmother Esmeralda gazed at me with an intensity that I’d never seen before.
“Were you someplace dark and evil?” Grandmother Esmeralda asked Viviana.
Twisting her lip, Viviana answered slowly. “Yes. It felt like that.” Grandmother Esmeralda made the sign of the cross and said a quick prayer.
“The curse on the family comes from your grandfather. When he came home from the war, he said that he felt a demon on him.”
“Seriously? Is this conversation necessary?” Viviana appeared to be annoyed. Grandmother Esmeralda slapped her palm against the table and raised her voice.
“Yes. It is very necessary. Listen to what I am saying. Your grandfather, may God rest his soul, was a good soldier. He fought for the country in the Vietnam War, and it was a nightmare for him. He said that he felt like he had gone to hell. He was forced to do bad things that went against his Christian beliefs. He had to break up families, snatch children from the arms of their fathers and kill them. If he had not killed the men, they would have come back and ambushed their camp. He always talked about how horrible the fighting was. Death, destruction and evil were all around him.