Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo

by Ronda Pauley

  “That was fast!” Tina said. Nothing seemed particularly dangerous.

  “Take care now,” the taxi driver said, looking at her. “Nice neighborhood. Should be an easy walk.”

  “Thanks!” Tina said. She paid him.

  Tina held the address in her hand to make sure she was in the right place before getting out of the taxi. She stepped out, but suddenly a blue mini-van appeared and slowed to a stop, parking along the curb behind them. Tina quickly pulled her foot back into the taxi.

  “Can you wait just a minute, please?”

  “Sure,” the taxi driver said. “But just for a minute. I have another run. Did you want to go somewhere else instead?” the driver asked.

  A loud argument broke out in the blue mini-van, so loud that the taxi driver could hear it and commented.

  He asked, “You know those people?”

  Tina had to get away! She listened hard and thought she had heard a voice from the recent past, somewhere a long way from here. She slid down in the seat. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t go back. She’d rather die.

  “Do you?” the taxi driver asked again.

  “No!” Tina asked. “Get me away from here. I don’t feel safe.”

  The taxi driver revved his engine.

  “Want me to take you back?”

  If someone in the car knew who she was, or where she lived now, she could never hope to have a good life. She didn’t dare look at their faces. If she saw them, they would surely see her.

  “No! Just go! Can I ride with you for an hour?”

  He pulled away from the curb. “I can’t do that.You’re in trouble, aren’t you? Where do you want to go?”

  “Away from that car!” she said. “They’re bad people. They would hurt me.”

  “They’re not your family?”

  “NO! Just lose them and get me back to where you picked me up. Please.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” the driver said. He seemed to like the challenge.

  The thrust of the taxi threw Tina back in the seat. The safety of it was like a cocoon. This time she stayed low and didn’t try to watch where she was going.

  What would her father think if he saw her fleeing this blue mini-van? Would he think she was afraid of everything? She knew that was true. Tina also knew she needed more help than her father could give her. He seemed more distant to her after her rescue--smiling, but hollow, not quite accepting what had happened to her or what she had done. He also seemed to resent what she had put him through, the change of identity, relocation, new job. All of it. She couldn’t change any of that.

  This taxi driver provided her a safety net, if only for a few minutes. They soon pulled up at her apartment.

  “Did we lose them?” she asked.

  “They’re nowhere around.”

  “Please don’t let anyone know about me,” she said as she looked around for the blue mini-van.

  She reached up to pay the driver again.

  “No charge,” the driver said. “That was fun. I was driving past here anyway.”

  Tina laughed.

  “Well, that was very nice of you!” she said and put the money away. Then she closed the door. “Thanks!”

  “Now you take care,” said the driver, and he drove off.

  Tina started to go into the apartment and then decided, since it was still fairly early in the day, to do what she had set out to do. Before she started, she listened intently. There wasn’t much traffic. Mature shrubbery in this area could provide a cover if she needed it.

  She quickly tried to memorize her route and began walking, trying hard not to look scared. She thought of Miss Shoe who had looked so self-assured even in the face of danger. That’s how Tina wanted to be. She raised her head.

  After only two and a half blocks Tina found the corner where they had parked. Her destination was just two doors down. Tina kept on walking. What she saw was a yellow, two-story brick building.

  When she stopped in front of the house, she double-checked the address. This didn’t look like a place of business and she wondered why Miss Shoe would send her here, but Miss Shoe had put her life on the line to free her. This had to be a safe house. There was a tiny nameplate by the door. Yes!

  Tina took a deep breath and was about to go up to the building when she heard the same car approaching and could hear the same loud voices of the argument. She ran to a bush, one near the side of the house next door, and there she waited, hidden from view of the street.

  She huddled there and thought about ways to change her looks, starting with changing her hair color. Maybe cut it. Not too short. The tattoo on her neck stood out like the neon sign at that nasty cantina.

  Tina listened intently as the blue mini-van slowed and then went on by. She waited for its return, knowing it would. She stayed hidden. It seemed like a long wait, and her stomach was already growling, as if it could digest itself.

  From where she hid, she could see the front of the building. So close, but the walk up to it seemed so hard to do. What would she say? Now she wished she’d waited until her father could be with her. The trauma of the past two months had given her an everpresent fear of every shadow, touch, sound, car, and of every person. She huddled under the shrub and cried.

  A car horn sounded and reminded Tina of the Mariachi band that would play on the weekends and the awful, groping, dirty men. She had to leave. She had to get back to the safety of the apartment, with or without food.

  FIFTEEN

  A slight touch brushed Abbi’s arm. She opened her eyes. When she did, she felt refreshed and looked to see if anyone was there. No one. Again. This kind of experience happened frequently when her parents were gone, but more than usual recently. Abbi had given up trying to know how it worked. It needed no scientific explanation. The touch was simply real.

  When she moved the desk chair over by the window to study the folders, she saw a girl outside on the sidewalk, a tall, thin, strange-looking girl. The girl stood there and stared at the Pelletier house.

  “Look here! Is that a friend of yours, Louise?” she asked when Louise slipped in with bowls of popcorn.

  “No, I don’t know her. She might be the new girl, a friend of Lowell’s. I don’t know much about her,” Louise said. “Here, have some popcorn. I thought it might help you feel better.”

  “Thanks! Just what I needed!” Abbi said, grabbing a buttery handful.

  She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the window. She wondered about the girl who came to stare. She watched as the girl turned and walked away.

  Abbi said, “That was weird, gives me the feeling I’ll meet her someday but I’m not sure I feel good about that.” Abbi made a mental picture of the tall thin girl, maybe not much older than herself, with a large distinguishing mole under her left eye. “Very odd behavior.”

  “It is. Makes me wonder if she’s mentally disturbed.”

  Abbi absent-mindedly ate handfuls of popcorn, allowing some to fall on the floor, and then turned on some music and grabbed the folders from her mother’s briefcase.

  “I’m going to take a short break and then get onto these folders. I can’t wait to find out what’s in them. Dance with me, Louise,” she said, seeing that the girl was no longer in sight. “Just through one song.”

  Abbi turned to dance.

  “I’m relieved that you’re not doing that dreadful contest!” Louise said with a dramatic flare. “Oh, it could be a wonderful dance! But no. Maybe in another life. On the other hand, if you still want to work on your looks, I would simply love doing your make-over!” Louise whirled around for emphasis, not really dancing, just being theatrical.

  Suddenly, Louise saw something out the window and actually ran downstairs, something Abbi had never seen her do. She locked the door and called to Abbi, “That blue van is out front again and going by way too slowly!”

  “Is that girl in it?” Abbi asked as she peered out the window to see better.

  The land line rang again. Louise yelled upstairs that
she didn’t see the girl and picked up the phone.

  “It’s Shoe Clerk for you!” she said and brought the phone up to Abbi. They both peered out the window.

  Abbi immediately started gushing to Shoe Clerk, wanting more answers.

  “You know my mother’s been kidnapped. Don’t you? [pause] Don’t you!!!?”

  “No one knows that for sure, but we’re following up on it. We have an excellent team in that area. This may take time.”

  “Wait. Don’t hang up! There’s a blue van, and whoever broke into my house is probably in this van! I saw a face. And…oh, my gosh! There was this girl!!!”

  “Whoa. Stay inside,” Shoe Clerk interrupted. “We’ve got a lockdown on that vehicle. It’s stolen. Police are doing surveillance. Call them if it stops again. Continue to keep a low profile. And, by the way, it’s Mrs. Hightower who will be calling you, just so you know. I know you want some answers right now, so we’re going to start pulling you in if that’s what you want.”

  Abbi tried to ask more, but Shoe Clerk was already gone. Who was Shoe Clerk really? His voice sounded somewhat familiar but muffled, like it went through a sort of distortion chamber. And the woman.

  “Who is Mrs. Hightower?” Abbi asked after she turned off the phone.

  “I couldn’t say. Lowell calls her HT. He knows her pretty well,” Louise said.

  Abbi began to suspect that the Pelletiers, each one of them, knew a whole lot more than they were willing to tell.

  “I am not going to enter that dance contest, but go ahead and work on that look for me. I think I could use the disguise!”

  SIXTEEN

  So much had been happening lately. Louise was trying unsuccessfully to call her father and let him know about the break-in at Abbi’s house.

  Abbi chose a big comfortable overstuffed chair and sat down, letting memories wash over her. The last time Abbi talked to her mother played repeatedly in her mind and filled her with regret. Words and actions that she had tried hard to forget were no longer blocked out of her memory. She remembered them now with shame.

  “A life, if not in service to others, serves no one,” her mother had said the day she and Abbi’s father left on their last ‘business trip’. Her mother had looked so noble and mysterious when she said it--hair pinned back in a French roll, dark-rimmed glasses on her chiseled porcelain-like nose. She always wore just the right touch of lipstick and shadow. Putting on the trenchcoat added to the total mysterious effect.

  “Yeah? Well, that’s bull!” Abbi had said, spitting the words at her mother.

  Her mother actually stepped back when Abbi threw the tired dialog about shoes back in her mother’s face.

  “Who are you doing this for?” Abbi asked. “Who cares that much about shoes or boots anyway? Not ME! Who benefits from your so-called service to others? NOT ME! Tell me, how is selling shoes and boots such a noble service to others? Can’t we just talk straight up? Fred’s Boots Incorporated? For Heaven’s sake, come on! I’m not a baby!”

  Shame and humiliation swept over her now as she remembered the look on her mother’s face. What was her mother involved in? And why couldn’t she say?

  Abbi’s mother had left the room in tears and her father intervened. With camera in hand, he called Abbi into his study. He spoke to Abbi quietly, metaphorically.

  “See these lenses?” he had said. “They can pull in things you want to see as well as things you don’t want to see. Sometimes you pull in the focus, and you catch something and then, suddenly, you’re compelled to look deep even when you want to look away. Pull in the focus, Abbi. Look. We can’t do it for you. You’ll see when you’re ready.”

  “I’m trying, Dad!”

  “You look but you don’t see,” he had said.

  Then he had pointed the camera at the leaves on the tree outside the living room window and moved aside so Abbi could see. As she zoomed the lens and adjusted the focus, she could see a bird’s nest that she didn’t know was there. A spider’s web fresh with dewdrops loomed just above it.

  “Did you know there was a bird’s nest there?” she asked. “And look at that web! It’s beautiful, like pearls on a string!”

  “Ah! You’ve had one of life’s happy moments! Serendipity! But always remember, things are rarely as they appear to be. It’s in studying patterns, analyzing, that you really begin to see. You recognized the leaves by knowing their pattern, and you were able to identify other things that didn’t fit that pattern. Your mind’s eye did that for you. It can alert you to happy little surprises as well as danger. Watch for what doesn’t fit. You never really know the heart of a person until you pull the person into focus. Zoom and focus. But, and this is critical, before you decide to do that, be certain you can live with the truth. Otherwise, embrace the unfocused illusion.”

  Her anger with her mother was based on things her mother refused to discuss. Maybe Abbi hadn’t seen the clear picture because her mother, not Abbi, held the lens. Her mother, not Abbi, had controlled how much Abbi was permitted to see.

  Now Abbi realized that she was ready to take the risk, to seize the high-powered lens and look closely at both her mother, the girl, and the woman who referred to herself as her “grandmother”.

  “Louise, do you still have that woman’s contact information?” she asked.

  “Only a phone number.”

  Louise pulled Abbi up by the shoulders and with a firm voice said, “Call now. It’s very important.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” Abbi said.

  She dialed the number.

  “This is Abbi,” she said when the woman picked up. “How do you know me?”

  “Abeni?” the woman said, pronouncing it correctly.

  Suddenly, Abbi’s head felt like it was swirling, like inside her head was a cotton candy machine. And she actually felt pure sweetness. The voice was familiar, taking her back to a happier time, but it belonged to someone else. Certainly not her grandmother.

  “That’s me,” Abbi said with cautious. “And you are?”

  “You know who I am, Sugarlump. Long story. Not over the phone.”

  Abbi’s surprise at being called ‘Sugarlump’ made her gasp. Only one person had ever called her that.

  “You still there? I need to see you tonight.”

  “Do you know where I am?” Abbi asked.

  “I am relying on my car’s GPS system. I believe I’m in the correct town and already nearby. Can you tell me a street name?”

  “Larkspur Court. Are you bringing anyone with you?” Abbi asked.

  “I will be alone. I’m only a few minutes away. The agent who planned to come with me has been delayed by an unexpected event.”

  Abbi contemplated that.

  “It will be so good to see you again, Abeni! I have some very important news to share with you about a mission. I’ll tell you more when I get there. Bye, Sugarlump!”

  Abbi could feel the lump forming in her throat as tears began to sting her eyes. She remembered this person and loved her dearly. But what sort of mission?

  “NANNY!” Abbi called, but heard only a click on the other end of the line.

  SEVENTEEN

  “That had to be her!” Abbi said as she puzzled over the conversation. She tried to sort out whether this could be Nanny Fanny or her grandmother or BOTH in one.

  “Your grandmother?” Louise asked.

  “No, Nanny Fanny,” Abbi said, still confused. “Posing as my grandmother, I think? My grandmother’s name is Francine DuBois but I hope I never see her again.”

  Abbi put down the phone and saw something Lowell had written on the message pad but not for her, for him.

  “Wait a minute. Look, Louise! The number I just called was for Mrs. Hightower!”

  Louise looked skeptical.

  “Are you sure, Abbi?”

  “Here’s the number you gave me, Louise!” The number was still in Abbi’s hand. Then she pointed to the message pad. “Explain this!”

  Louise looked at Abbi sideways
. Abbi got right in her face and challenged her to lie to her once again.

  “That has to be a mistake,” Louise said as she turned away, avoiding Abbi’s eyes. “Why would your Nanny Fanny pretend to be HT? Anyway, I thought your Nanny died. Isn’t that why you started coming to our house when your parents went away?”

  Louise hurried to the kitchen.

  “You know something, Louise! Spill it!”

  Abbi followed Louise into the kitchen, but Louise just shrugged instead of answering.

  “I started coming here when she left,” Abbi said. “Maybe you can tell me what happened.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Louise said firmly as she reached for an oven mitt.

  “I think you do!” Abbi said, trying unsuccessfully to spin Louise around.

  “Hold on there, Cowgirl!” Louise said. She pulled the pizza out of the oven.

  Abbi dropped the questioning. She knew the truth would come out sometime, but she would never forget the way Louise had kept her in the dark.

  “If it’s Nanny, I’ll be so excited!” Abbi added. “You’ll love her!”

  “I’m sure,” Louise said, still avoiding Abbi’s eyes. She offered Abbi some parmesan cheese topping.

  “What do you know about her besides that she practically lived with us and ran the house when my parents were away? She was always right there. She’s not my grandmother. I would know if she was my grandmother!” Abbi said, hesitating, sprinkling on the cheese. “Wouldn’t I?”

  “Stranger things have happened. You see stories in the news all the time,” Louise said. “What kind of psychic message are you getting with all this, Abbi?”

  “Are you making fun of me? I have mixed feelings, like things are coming together but it’s not all good. Still, I think a higher power pulling for us.”

  Abbi helped herself to potato chips on the counter.

  “OK to eat, or should we wait for our visitor?”

  “It’s been a long day, and I’m starving. I’m eating now!” Louise said. “My parents are supposed to go to the theater tonight. A couple of their friends got tickets to join them for them for their anniversary.”