She’s nosy. Make her go, Darla. Make her leave.
“You’re nosy. You have to go. You have to leave,” Darla said, licking the dryness from her lips.
“Don’t you want to talk to your granddaughter?” Georgia asked.
Darla peered at her, “No, I’ve seen you before,” she said. “I’ve never seen my granddaughter.”
She’s lying. She wants your house, Darla.
Darla stepped back and pointed the sharp edges of the bottle in Georgia’s direction. “You’re a liar,” she spat.
“Look, is Jessa here?” Georgia asked as she took a step back. “She called me to talk.”
Liar, liar.
“But what if it’s her?” Darla asked herself, tilting her head to the side as she looked back over her shoulder. “I never met her. I want to say I’m sorry. I want to tell her not to hate Jessa. It’s not Jessa’s fault her own daddy raped her. That bastard raped my baby. I’m so sorry.”
“What?”
Darla turned her head quickly and looked at Georgia, her mood and affect changing in the blink of an eye. She blinked her lashes rapidly. “Get from here!” she spat. “Don’t come back here no more.”
She stepped forward, jutting the jagged edge of the bottle toward her.
Georgia continued to back away, her eyes wide and confused.
She wants to hurt Jessa, Darla. Don’t you let nobody else hurt your baby.
“Stay away from my Jessa. You hear me?” she screeched as she watched the young woman turn and sprint until she reached her car.
Darla watched the vehicle until it took off at a high speed down the driveway.
Good job, Darla.
She nodded, tossing the makeshift weapon from her hand. It crashed against the driveway.
“See, Jessa, I can protect you,” Darla said, before closing the door and locking it.
Interlude
I feel like shit.
Today I looked in the eyes of a crazy woman, but I believed every word she said.
“I want to tell her not to hate Jessa. It’s not her fault her daddy raped her. That bastard raped my baby.”
My grandmother’s words seemed to echo. I didn’t know if it was inside my head or inside the toilet bowl I clutched as I vomited for the countless time at the thought of my grandfather also being my father. The thought of the hate I had for her, the revenge I plotted and executed against her, and the pain I caused her, was too much.
I pressed my eyes closed, squeezing them as if that would erase the memory of the tortured look on her face when she caught her husband fucking me.
I fed off her embarrassment like a savage.
When I left Hammer’s bathroom and saw her on the floor like a discarded crumpled piece of paper, I felt nothing but pleasure that I brought her to knees. That cry she released seemed torn from her very gut, and I only wanted to mock her more. Push her. Hurt her. Denigrate her. Never did I imagine that some of her anguish was the violent history of how I was created. The impact that left on her life.
“Are you my daughter?”
“I stopped being yours the moment you gave me away.”
So clearly, I remember her eyes washing over with so much agony.
“I never gave away my daughter. That’s a lie. That’s a lie. That’s a lie!”
And now I wondered if it was. It was possible Eric Hall Sr. used me to get back at her and I was his silly, foolish little pawn. I was so starved for information on her that I willingly swallowed lies from someone I later discovered had reason to hate her as well. Still, I was so focused on my course of destruction that common sense never prevailed.
“I want to tell her not to hate Jessa. It’s not her fault her daddy raped her. That bastard raped my baby.”
Her daddy raped her.
Her daddy raped her.
Her daddy raped her...
My stomach wretched again, but it was empty and there was nothing left to purge. I shook my head and pressed my hands into fists, pounding them against the commode.
I was a child of rape.
My life was shitted on from the very moment of my conception.
It was all too much to bear.
Ding-dong.
I rose from the floor of my bathroom and rushed across the length of my apartment, dressed in nothing but a sheer thong and strapless bra. I paused long enough to grab money from my wallet before I opened the door, quickly snatching the plastic bag of Chinese food from the tall, dark-haired man with pockmarks on his face. He openly stared at my nipples pressing against the material. “You’ve never seen titties before, Jay?” I snapped, pushing a folded hundred-dollar bill into his hand.
“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” he said, using a pen to check if the bill was counterfeit.
“Fuck off, Jay,” I drawled before I slammed the door shut in his face.
I trembled from my hunger, dropping to the floor by the door to tear the plastic and remove the containers of food. There nestled atop the beef and broccoli I wouldn’t dare to eat was my old friend. Nothing made me feel as good as OxyContin. And I was anxious to feel any kind of good. To forget.
It was all too much to bear.
I knelt on the floor, crushed the pills beneath the weight of a Buddha statue by the door, and used the side of my pinky finger to break the powder into two separate lines. As I snorted my savior from the floor, I realized I was in the same position as my mother in her husband’s apartment that night I sought to destroy her world.
Tears raced down my cheeks and wet the residue I left behind. Pain and disgust haunted me as I lay on the floor on my back and waited to rise high above the pain.
Chapter 13
The next morning
“And I’m feeling good,” Jessa sang along with Nina Simone playing on her satellite radio.
Her day was jam-packed with plans, and she couldn’t wait to get started. All night long as Delaney slept in the bed of the two-star, midlevel hotel they were forced to check in to, Jessa nursed cheap champagne that locked her jaw with every sip and made devious plans. She plotted with the same selfishness and reckless abandon that she had when she decided to send that message all those years ago. Being deceitful felt good and familiar, like a well-worn coat that she easily slipped on.
“Today is going to be a good day,” Jessa said as she glanced up in the rearview mirror to look at Delaney happily munching away on the McGriddles from her McDonald’s breakfast meal.
Bzzzzzz . . .
She reached for her iPhone on the console but was disappointed when it was Hammer. She answered, hating that there was even one instance when she needed him . . . but she did. “I want you to sign a special power of attorney allowing us to get divorced in the Dominican Republic,” she said without hesitation, her tone cold.
There was a long pause.
“Jessa, I’m not giving up on us that easily,” he said. “No. I’m not giving up. I will fight for this marriage. Can’t you tell she set me up to get back at—”
“Don’t do that. Don’t you dare put your actions on her,” she said, feeling disgust.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know this is a lot to handle at one time. I want to be there for you.”
She turned her sports car onto the drive leading to her home. “Go fuck yourself,” she said, ending the call.
She was thankful to see her nanny’s car already parked in front of the two-car garage. Before she could get out of the car, the front door opened and Jessa knew from the look on Winifrid’s face that Darla had done anything but sleep off her drunkenness last night. What now?
Jessa climbed from the car still in the clothes she wore yesterday and paused at the sight of the shattered glass on the drive. Some of the pieces were stained with dried blood. “Is she okay?” she asked when Winifrid walked down the stairs to stand beside her.
“She’s asleep on the stairs,” she said. “There’s blood—”
“Stay with Delaney,” Jessa ordered before rushing up the stairs and into th
e house.
Her once beautiful foyer now looked like a crime scene. There was a trail of blood spots from beneath the railing over to the front door. She turned her head and grimaced at the garish bloody handprint on the wall. “The fuck?” she said aloud, walking over to where her mother was slumped across the bottom four steps as she snored loudly through her open mouth.
Jessa’s eyes dipped down to her mother’s hand, punctured and covered with dried blood that had also spilled onto the stairs. For a few foolish moments she tried to piece together what might have happened, but then she realized the futility of that. There was no way to find sanity in the actions of the insane.
“Ms. Bell, your phone,” Winifred called through the open door from outside the house.
Jessa rose and turned on her red heels to make her way back to her car. “Shit,” she swore, when she saw it was Georgia.
She held her phone and sat down sideways on the driver’s seat, tapping her feet against the pavement as she allowed herself a moment. She was torn, but she knew it was best to let Georgia go on with her life without the same burden carried by Jessa and Darla.
In the light of day, with her emotions firmly in check, she rationalized it was better for her to be hated than for Georgia to know the truth of her conception. She didn’t dare risk the horrid secret being outed. No, it’s for the best.
Bzzzzzz . . .
She turned the phone over in her hand, biting her bottom lip to see a voice mail notification on the screen. Allowing herself a ten count before she retrieved the message, Jessa debated deleting it. She couldn’t. She entered her passcode and pressed the phone to her ear. She shook her head at the sound of tears echoing.
“Forgive me. He u-u-u-used me. My mama... enemy is my enemy, right, M-m-m-mama?” Georgia said.
She recognized that familiar thickness in her tongue that revealed a lack of sobriety.
Jessa pressed her lips into a thin line, fighting not to let the sound of her daughter addressing her as Mama tear into her. Emotions were a weakness.
“I didn’t know. I . . . I didn’t know you were . . . raped, Mama.”
How does she know? What all does she know?
“Your daddy is my daddy. I . . . I . . . can’t . . .”
Jessa sat up a straighter in her chair, pressing the phone to her ear.
“I wish I didn’t-didn’t-didn’t know. I wish your mother never told me,” Georgia wailed, her voice now dragging.
Mama, save me. “I’m too late,” Jessa whispered, rising to walk back up the stairs and into the house. She stood by her mother’s feet, one bare of a shoe, and nudged it with her toe. “Wake up.”
Darla stirred, smacking and licking her lips as her eyelids fluttered. The smell of alcohol seeped from her pores and tainted the air around her.
Jessa nearly snarled as she pressed the tip of her toe to the wound in her mother’s hand.
Darla cried out as Jessa stepped back from her. She looked up at her daughter with bloodshot eyes. “Mornin’,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Good morning,” Jessa said with false calm. “You hurt your hand.”
Darla looked down at it.
Jessa watched her closely and knew her mother could not remember. “Put your shoe on and let’s go to the emergency room to get it checked.”
Darla’s eyes shifted left and right several times before she looked up at her. “It’s fine,” she said, wincing as she attempted to close her hand into a fist.
Enough is enough of this shit.
“Let’s go, Mama, so they can give you some pain pills,” she said, luring the addict in her with the bait.
Her mother began mumbling under her breath, her expressions swiftly varying. “I thought you said I couldn’t have pills,” she asked, her tone accusing.
Jessa gave her a false smile. “I did, but you’re hurt and I don’t want you to be in pain,” she said, stepping back again as her mother rose to her feet with effort and stepped into her missing shoe.
She turned and rushed to the open front door. “Take Delaney in through the side entrance and please call Valeria to come in and clean this foyer,” she said to Winifred, who immediately did as she was told.
Darla’s feet dragged against the floor as she crossed it. When Jessa felt her mother’s hand on her arm to help steady her gait, she purposefully eased out of her reach and rushed ahead to climb into the driver’s seat. She couldn’t stand her touch. She couldn’t stand her.
From behind the wheel she watched her mother, usually composed and neat in dress, looking disheveled and out of sorts. She shook her head as Darla used the hood of the car as her crutch until she opened the door and dropped down onto the passenger seat, letting out a gush of breath that made Jessa gag from the mix of overnight breath and liquor.
They rode in silence, and for that Jessa was thankful, but she was also aware of her mother mumbling under her breath and clutching the door handle with both hands as if prepared to jump out and roll. Not trusting that she wouldn’t, Jessa hit the button to lock all the doors.
Darla shot her a look of aggravation before her chatter increased in volume and speed.
“I don’t trust her,” she said, giving Jessa another sidelong glance before pressing herself against the passenger door.
Jessa pressed the accelerator, anxious to be free of the burden.
Needing a diversion, she sang the words to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” again, wishing that she was.
Mama, save me.
She couldn’t imagine how Georgia felt knowing the family’s dirty little secret. She had wanted to spare her—to save her—from the truth. And Darla, in her drunken and crazed stupor, had obviously laid that burden on her daughter’s life. Her mother was a liability. She was the burden Jessa was no longer willing to bear.
Jessa pulled up to the county hospital and turned off the car, removing the key from the ignition and grabbing her iPhone as she climbed out. She called her mother’s psychiatrist at his office nearby as she eyed Darla through the rear window of the car.
“Dr. Zevin, please,” she said, crossing one arm over her chest as she inhaled the spring air.
“Would you like an appointment?” the receptionist asked.
“No, this Jessa Bell. I have my mother, his patient, Darla Jordan, here at the ER and I would like her evaluated for an emergency psych hold,” she said. “She is off her meds and I’m afraid I can’t contain her to keep her or others safe.”
“Hold, please.”
Darla twisted in her seat to look at Jessa through the rear glass. When she turned and reached for the door handle, Jessa rushed over to the passenger side to press her hip against the door to shut it. She pressed the lock with her keys as she turned to look down at her mother trying her best to unlock the door and open it.
“Jessa, let me out,” she said, knocking lightly on the glass.
She shook her head.
Darla’s eyes widened, quickly filling with alarm and then anger.
“Ms. Bell, the doctor is at already at the hospital and coming down to the ER with an orderly to have your mother admitted,” the receptionist said.
Bam-Bam-Bam.
Jessa nodded as the force of her mother’s ramming her shoulder against the door caused her body to jolt with each hit as she continued to lean against it. “Please let them know I am right outside with her in my car and I need help with her.”
“I will,” the receptionist said, before ending the call.
Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam!
“Stop it,” Jessa said calmly.
Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam!
“Let me out, Jessa!”
Bam!
“Let me out!”
Bam!
“Let me out!”
Jessa turned her back on her. “And I’m feeling good,” she sang softly, looking down to study the chipped nail of her index finger.
Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam!
She was thankful the interior of the car was too small for her
mother to climb from one seat over to the next to try to escape via the driver side door. She heard the grind of the hospital’s automatic doors and looked up from inspecting the rest of her nails to see Dr. Zevin, a tall and broad middle-aged man with a smooth bald head and a long gray beard. “Thank God,” she said, moving from the door.
Moments later, Darla pushed it wide open and climbed out. She swung to slap Jessa, who effortlessly leaned back to avoid the hit.
“Darla,” Dr. Zevin said, his voice calm. “It’s good to see you.”
She turned, shaking her head as she eyed him, before turning back to Jessa. “You tricked me,” she said, pointing her finger.
I damn sure did.
Jessa felt nothing. No shame. No guilt. No remorse.
Mama, save me.
“Darla, I’m going to have one of the ER doctors check your hand and then you and I will talk, okay?” Dr. Zevin said, motioning someone forward with a hairy hand.
Jessa looked past him to see a tall and burly man in dark blue scrubs pushing a wheelchair out to them. Let’s see how much of an ass she makes out of herself with this . . .
And Darla did not disappoint, taking off at run. Unfortunately, one of her shoes slipped off and she tumbled down to her knees screaming obscenities at Jessa, who casually leaned against the trunk and waited for the melee to end.
“Ms. Bell, are you okay?”
The orderly helped her mother up into the wheelchair as she continued to release a string of profanities made all the more vile by her pain.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, looking up at the psychiatrist. “Why?”
“You seem different. Your behavior is a little disconcerting,” he said.
Oh no the hell you won’t.
She feigned concern about her mother, forcing a tear to her eye. “It’s been very hard, and I admit I’ve disconnected a bit to be able to function,” she lied.
He nodded. “Sometimes being the caregiver can be just as overwhelming as the person dealing with a mental illness,” he said. “If you ever need to talk, I’m available.”
Fuck you and fuck off.
“Actually, I think long-term care for my mother is now necessary,” she said, as her mother glared at her as she was lightly strapped to the wheelchair.
Mistress for Hire Page 19