The Secret Life of Lula Darling

by Alex Dean

  “Sure,” said Haupht.

  “I’d really like to know how you found out about Lula’s secret—her journey?”

  Haupht slipped his hands into his pockets. “I bet you would. Let’s just say that word travels extremely fast, especially when there’s a ton of young people involved. I’m not sure if there was any malicious intent behind the leak. But be assured, there’s very little that can get by the NSA these days, especially when it comes to potentially jeopardizing the national security of the United States.”

  “Well, she’ll be graduating from high school at the end of this week, as valedictorian, I might add. Of course, I’m no Edward Snowden. But I’m quite sure you guys already knew that,” said Randy.

  Haupht nodded. “Yeah, we know. That’s a huge accomplishment for a girl like Lula, given her past, or shall we say … the lack thereof. I’m sure you must be extremely proud of the job you and your wife have done, Mr. Evans.”

  Randy smiled. “Well, we truly are, although we can’t possibly take all the credit for her incredible transformation. Lula is an incredibly smart, brave and gifted child. Quite frankly, all we’ve done was enhance what was already there.”

  “Remarkable indeed,” said Haupht. “But before we leave, Mr. Evans, there are a few things we’ll need to agree upon. For starters, this little meeting of ours never happened. Everything discussed here today is considered classified information. Secondly, see to it that Lula remains safe. We can’t risk her being harmed or injured in any way before our evaluation.”

  Randy nodded in agreement. “Understood.”

  Haupht walked forward and extended his hand for a shake. “Appreciate your understanding and cooperation regarding this unprecedented situation we find ourselves in, Mr. Evans. Of course, once the media eventually gets a hold of this story, you’re going to have a serious firestorm on your hands. So please do us all a favor and tell your wife and daughter to keep their traps shut. You have yourself a good day.”

  Chapter 21

  BACK IN TIME

  * * *

  Natchez, MS 1857

  * * *

  IT WAS AN OVERCAST DAY, and the field hands were finally done with picking tobacco leaves on two designated acres of wet, soggy ground of the Mansfield Plantation.

  Ella Mae Darling shuffled to the stairs of the big house, set down her last filled bushel and wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

  She had always been a favored servant of the Mansfields, splitting time between working inside doing chores, and picking either cotton or tobacco outside.

  So it would come as no surprise to anyone who lived here why Ella Mae had been summoned inside for an urgent matter.

  She walked up the steps, holding her right side. It had been painful from bending over ever since the field hands had started their work early this morning.

  Ella Mae made it all the way to the end of the hall—to the main bedroom, where the Mansfields had slept comfortably at night.

  The barely dressed woman sat on the edge of the bed in a severe coughing fit.

  “Mrs. Mansfield? Ma’am, you all right?” Ella Mae asked the woman gently.

  Martha Mansfield turned her head in between hacking coughs. “I’ll be all right. Just want my robe and slippers. No sense lying around in bed until the wee hours of the night, draining myself of what little energy I have left.” Martha cinched the front of her gown across her chest by its laces. “I can be doing something more productive, I guess.”

  “Think you should rest. Take it easy,” said Ella Mae.

  “That’s very kind of you to say, Ella Mae. But I don’t want to spend what time I have left on this earth doing nothing. I’m supposed to see Dr. Wharton in the morning. I imagine he’s gonna come by here, prescribe me something and then commit me to bed rest until he makes it by again.”

  Ella Mae walked across the room, pulled out a bottom drawer from the dresser and pulled out a flannel robe. She unfolded it and wrapped it around Martha.

  Then she knelt and pulled out a pair of beige slippers from underneath the bed, sliding each one onto Martha’s feet.

  “Be good to listen to Dr. Wharton, ma’am. And pray. The two do you some good,” Ella Mae said gently, rising.

  Martha reached out and graciously put the palm of her hand to Ella Mae’s cheek. “You’re a kind soul, Ella Mae. Don’t ever let anyone change that about you. But I’d be a fool to deny the writing that’s on these very walls—that my time is coming to an end. Sometimes you just know. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  Ella Mae nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Martha focused in on Ella Mae with a glare and sharp eyes that almost scared the woman and said, “I’ve had many a day thinking about my own immortality. Something we all have to face at one time or another, this much I knew. Just never imagined I’d be going to see the Lord at my age, you know?”

  Ella Mae nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Martha craned her neck toward the only window in the room and looked out. “Fragile as falling snowflakes we are, even under the best of conditions,” she said.

  Martha then grabbed Ella Mae’s hand. “Now, enough rummaging about me. Let’s talk about you, Ella Mae. What do you think about?”

  This question brought a smile to Ella Mae’s face. “I think ’bout my children, Lula, and Clarence. I think about going to heaven. Gonna meet God someday. Gonna see my family again, includin’ my husband.”

  “Well, I hope you do. It sure seems like a better place to be than down here stuck in a scourge.”

  “Any regrets in ya life? Somethin’ you wish you’d done a little differently?” Ella Mae asked unabashedly.

  Martha nodded and tried to straighten up just a little. “Yes, I do. In fact, I’ve got quite a confession to make here.”

  “What that be, ma’am?”

  “Well, first of all, I want to tell you how truly sorry I am. Harland and I could’ve handled that whole thing better than we did … meaning the disappearance of your daughter, Lula.”

  Ella Mae turned crestfallen.

  “Not sure I’s understandin’ what you mean.”

  Martha leaned forward, turned and managed to pour some tea from a kettle into a cup on the nightstand next to the bed. Then she cleared some phlegm from her chest as she took a sip. “Lula was instructed to hide herself in the attic when those men came to Natchez from Washington, D.C., to confiscate Hartley Mansfield’s top-secret time travel invention.

  “Now, according to Harland, Lula must’ve found out how to make the machine work, and apparently ended up transporting herself to some other time and place.

  “Where, I wouldn’t know if God Almighty asked me Himself. Therefore, because we’d had no real answers concerning her whereabouts, we boldly concocted a tale about her being sold off to another plantation.

  “And that was a flat-out lie. Harland had threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t keep quiet about the whole thing. But I’m not staying silent any longer. Harland promised his father, before he died, that he’d keep that contraption out of the wrong hands.

  “Now, if you have at least an ounce of bravery in you, and you believe in God and prayer like you say you do, then why don’t you go up in that attic, invoke His will, and do exactly as Lula must have done?”

  Martha then let out a serious hack, grabbed a nearby handkerchief and spat about a spoonful of blood into it.

  “I’m going to be going home soon, Ella Mae. This is likely your only chance—the way I see it. You have my blessing. Do it now.” Martha lifted her hand and pointed.

  “The key to unlock the door is in that jewelry box, there on the dresser. I’m sorry.”

  Ella Mae reached forward and gently held Martha’s hand in her palm. “Whateva place I find myself in, I’ll never forget what you done for me. Thank you.”

  Ella Mae then assisted Martha backward onto her pillow to rest. Once Martha’s eyes had drawn shut, and Ella Mae was assured Martha was in a peaceful slumber, she
walked out of the room, went upstairs, and came upon the door to the attic.

  Ella Mae looked around before going in. She had never been in this part of the house and was amazed by its majestic nineteenth-century architecture.

  Her heart fluttered in cacophonic rhythms as she inserted the key in the lock and went inside. There were assorted pieces of unused furniture in the center of the room.

  Spiderwebs cascaded down from the roof’s dormer atop the fifteen-foot wooden ceiling. Dust motes swirled in the dim moonlight, which shone above a sign on the wall that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY OF H. MANSFIELD.

  Below the sign, the Transporter, as Hartley Mansfield referred to it, was seemingly calibrated just how he’d left it, just how Lula had found it.

  Ella Mae stared at the invention, slowly running a hand atop its smooth surface. The magnetic disk that Lula had inserted was still, ominously secured in its slot.

  Ella Mae closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. She could hear the overseer entering the house and asking the house slaves downstairs if they had seen her.

  Her heart pounded fiercely behind her rib cage. She raised her dress above the knees, hoisted each leg over one at a time, and lay down inside.

  Then she reached upward, closed the top and pushed the round button on the Transporter’s ceiling that would change her life forever.

  Chapter 22

  BACK IN FUTURE CHICAGO

  * * *

  ARIEL AND I drove to South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where there was a graduation-themed party for all ages at what she said was a former frat house.

  We pulled up to the curb of the three-story greystone, with its large front picture windows and a wrought-iron fence at the edge of the sidewalk.

  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about getting out of the house, where I’d constantly found myself inadvertently listening to baseball games whenever either the Cubs or White Sox were on TV.

  Ariel’s father’s love of baseball seemed to occupy most of his free time nowadays. Whenever watching, he’d prop his feet on the coffee table, sipping a can of Coors Light. In my estimation, with the ability to record, he seemed to have never missed a game. In fact, if I were a betting person I would have put money on it.

  Ariel even told me that on several occasions, she and her father had watched the Sox play from one of the stadium’s private and luxurious Diamond Suites, which had been rented by the company he works for.

  For me, coming here today was a one-off chance to party with fellow classmates before we went our separate ways, off to fulfill whatever destiny awaited us.

  But what I’d been most excited about was seeing Marcus perform his new song here tonight as the evening’s surprise guest. His performance was supposed to be kept secret, but two days ago Ariel had let the cat out of the bag when she did her best to convince me to come.

  Ariel keeping a secret was like me trying to drown a fish. It wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much of an effort went into it.

  I looked around as we got out, and then closed the doors to her parents’ Volkswagen Jetta. There were other students exiting their cars as far down as I could see along South King Drive, across the street, and apparently, even from around the corner. A few adults. Mostly teenagers.

  I recognized some of them from school. As Ariel and I walked toward the gate, Donna Braxton, a now-infamous senior at Chicago Prep, approached from our right, shamelessly surrounded by three other girls.

  Donna was like the villain in a movie everyone loved to hate. I knew she was going to have something nasty to say. She always did.

  “Well, surprised that you made it out tonight, Lula. I guess those white parents of yours don’t have you on a leash after all, huh?” The general consensus was that she always wore too much makeup, wore clothes that were too tight for her body, and had the worst weave imaginable.

  God, did I despise her ways. But I wisely kept my composure as Ariel and I continued up the crumbling concrete steps of the house. Just keep your cool. Do not give her what she wants, I thought to myself.

  Donna Braxton was a bully. And everyone at school knew it. But with everything that I’d achieved and had overcome up until this point, I simply refused to stoop to her level.

  As Ariel and I reached the top of the porch, a heavy black steel door swung open before we could grab the handle.

  “What’s up Ariel, Lula? Right this way,” said a young man I could not place. I looked behind us and there were still people coming into the three-flat. And no one was asking for IDs.

  “Oh, and hey, congrats on being valedictorian, Lula,” the guy said as he directed us through a large crowded kitchen, angling left toward the basement.

  “Thanks … um?”

  “I’m sorry, Michael Dobson,” he said over the beats and DJ blaring beneath us. “Sometimes I work in Marcus’s studio, so I’m familiar with who you are. You’re making quite a name for yourself at school,” he called back.

  Ariel and I exchanged glances and grinned. She’d grabbed ahold of a shaky banister but still almost tripped on one of her heels as we walked down the stairs to the basement.

  There were strobe lights blinking and “7/11” by Beyoncé blasting over the speakers on each side of a DJ standing in the corner. He was busy typing on a MacBook Air in front of him.

  Marcus spotted us and immediately came over. Playing along with Ariel, I acted surprised to see him. He threw his arms around me, wrapping me up in a huge hug.

  “I’m glad you two could make it. I’ll be performing my first single tonight. This’ll be the first time either of you saw me live,” he said excitedly.

  “You nervous?” I asked.

  Marcus shook his head and smiled while scanning the room. “Nope. Not in the least. I’ve performed in front of more people than what you see here. I just hope they like my stuff.”

  Ariel chimed in. “You know what they say about first impressions, right? So get it right, Marcus, or quickly become famous for all the wrong reasons.”

  “Yeah. I will. It’s just me. Got no one else to blame. My vocals will be live over an instrumental track courtesy of DJ Kali over there in the corner.”

  Marcus started bouncing on his feet like football players warming up before kickoff. “That’s my guy right there. Yo, I love that dude,” he said while pointing to a lanky kid in the back of the room, who wore a sunburst-orange football jersey and a pair of Beats headphones on top of his head, one over his right ear.

  “No lip-synching for me, not tonight.”

  “Well, I wish you all the best tonight, and with your rap career, Marcus,” Ariel said, doling out a playful shot in his arm.

  “Hey, I’ll be with you girls in a few minutes. I need to see if my guys made it here yet,” Marcus announced before he turned and went up the basement steps.

  Ariel and I backed away from the center of the floor and moved closer to the wall as more people poured in, crowding the basement floor.

  There were kids on every level. You could hear loud stomping coming from upstairs in the kitchen. As old as this place was, I wondered if the ceiling was about to cave.

  Suddenly there were several loud poppoppop! sounds coming from somewhere outside, followed by some yelling and furniture being flipped over upstairs.

  The DJ abruptly cut the music. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. Then, more popping sounds ripped through the silence.

  “They’re shooting!” someone yelled.

  Everyone in the basement rushed to the stairs, including Ariel and I. Kids were scattering throughout the house, running pell-mell toward the front and back doors.

  Mr. Honoré, one of our math teachers, went down on one knee during the mad rush, gasping for air.

  “My inhaler,” he cried, pointing underneath an old sofa in the living room. Ariel and I both knelt and looked for it. I reached inward about a foot beneath the couch, and thankfully, I was able to retrieve it with my hand.

  While still on the ground, I tossed the white
canister up to Ariel, who immediately put it to Mr. Honoré’s mouth. He held the device tightly as he took in a lungful.

  “Thank you. I’ll be fine now. You girls go on and get to safety,” he demanded.

  We headed to the front door and out onto the porch. Several young men were lying on the lawn in front of the house.

  “We’re waiting for the police to get here. We got two shot!” said a visibly shaken young man who had started up the steps.

  I quickly glanced past him and at another teen that had knelt over one of the victims, the front of his shirt splattered with red as he stood up and looked around, disoriented.

  “They just drove by and started shooting! For no reason! It was a gray Impala. Oh man … they shot Marcus!”

  Life for me had stopped at this truly defining moment. The thought of those words resonated throughout my brain a second time as I stood in total shock and disbelief.

  Oh, man. They shot Marcus.

  Almost as if on cue, Ariel and I bolted down the porch and out onto the lawn. Ariel cupped a hand over her mouth, outraged.

  Blood was on Marcus’s hands and pant leg as he lay either unconscious, or worse, dead. I did not want to believe he was gone. But I feared for the worst.

  I turned, looked up and followed a red-and-white ambulance as it screamed down Wabash Avenue. The paramedics stopped directly in front of us, got out, opened the rear doors and pulled out an aluminum stretcher, rolling it onto the grass.

  Ariel and I stepped back and watched as they checked for Marcus’s pulse, then attempted to stop the bleeding.

  “Is he alive?” I asked frantically.

  The EMT looked up from applying a tourniquet to Marcus’s leg. “Yeah. So far he’s still with us. He’s actually extremely lucky at this point. Had the bullet entered a little higher, or hit his femoral artery, this conversation we’re having now would be totally different.”

  The EMTs hoisted Marcus onto the stretcher, strapped him down, and then placed him into the back of the ambulance. One of them climbed in and the interior lights snapped on.