But a sistah had to do what a sistah had to do. I picked up my phone and called my other partner in crime solving, Kalaya Naylor, ace reporter for the City Beat tabloid newspaper. At least we could brainstorm some more.
I punched her numbers, excited before she even picked up.
“Bell!” Her voice rose in what sounded like a mix of surprise and excitement.
I grinned. “Happy to hear from me?”
“I’m always happy to hear from you. I’m at the Gap in Briarwood Mall looking at babyGap stuff for my godchildren.”
I acted like I didn’t understand the massive hint she’d given me. “I didn’t know you had godchildren, Kal.”
Pause. “Don’t start no stuff, girlfriend.”
Kalaya loved my Ma Brownisms as much as Jazz and I did.
I laughed. “Relax. It won’t be no stuff, especially if you purchase said godchildren something like matching itty-bitty jeans. Little pink cowgirl shirts. That would be so cute!”
She gasped. “I see some totally major ones.” She whooped and cracked up. “They’re, like, so little.” I pictured her studying the tiny denims. “This is dope. I so have to get pregnant before I turn thirty-five. No offense, girl.”
“None taken. Just make sure you and Souldier get married before you get started on that. Can you pick me up an Auntie Anne’s pretzel?”
“Yep, especially since you implied I’ll actually marry the man of my dreams.”
“And hurry.”
“I’m working on him.”
“No, hurry and get here. Jazzy wouldn’t let me go on interviews with him today.”
“I’ll be there soon, you big, whiny baby.”
“For that you have to bring me a Mrs. Fields cookie, too.”
“Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, white chocolate macadamia nut? What’ll it be?”
“Yes, please.”
“Which kind do you want me to bring you?”
“You mean I have to pick one? Out of those great choices? Just get all three and I’ll decide when you get here. Or not.”
I could imagine Kalaya shaking her head. “If you weren’t pregnant…”
“Just get over here.”
We rang off.
I looked around my apartment, crowded now with my things hastily moved around to accommodate my new housemate. I hoped within the week I’d feel well enough to arrange things a little nicer. I’d be spending much more time at home, and I wanted to be comfortable.
Dr. McLogan had already let me know he considered my pregnancy high risk. Twins practically ensured an early delivery. I didn’t mind that, as long as they stayed inside long enough to live and be healthy outside of the confines of my womb.
Tiernan also informed Jazz and me of the challenges the large fibroid tumor growing on the outside wall of my uterus might pose. Estrogen would continue to feed it, which would keep it growing. If it grew too fast, I’d get that pain again. I knew I could expect more bed rest. How much, no one could say yet.
Honestly, I could see the value of Jazz’s moving in. But how he did it grated on my nerves. Not that I didn’t drive him crazy as well.
“God, will we ever get it right?”
I tried to quiet my mind long enough to hear his answer. I closed my arms and rested my head on the pillow.
“I love him, Lord. Help me get it right.”
I’m giving a lecture somewhere, and I’m disturbed because only Jazz and a few of my friends attended, and they keep asking me to talk louder because they can’t hear me.
My talk is on women who kill.
I look out at my audience, and now Nikki Thunder is there and she’s telling me to be quiet. I keep going over the characteristics female sociopaths share, and she’s yelling for me to shut up, and my friends are yelling for me to talk louder.
I open my mouth to speak, and nothing comes out. Nikki laughs and laughs, and my friends disappear one by one until no one is left but Nikki—laughing.
I feel something trickle down my legs. I reach down to touch the moisture sliding down to my feet, and when I look at my hands, they are drenched in blood.
I try to cry out that my babies are dead but nothing comes out of my mouth. I see Nikki leaving, and she takes Jazz with her. He’s wearing a red suit, and she has on a black wedding dress.
Jazz says, “I’m going with her.” And he looks so sad.
I’m trying desperately to say “Noooooooo” but nothing comes out.
My own voice crying aloud “Noooooooo” startled me out of sleep. I jerked my body up and heard Kalaya’s voice screaming with me.
“Holy Moses!” she said, after I realized it was only a dream and stopped screaming. “You almost scared me to death.”
I couldn’t quite catch my breath. My heart rattled rapid-fire like a snare drum.
Kal eased beside me on the bed. She pulled me into an embrace. “Girl, you’re about to shake right out of your skin. Are you cold?”
I nodded. I didn’t feel ready to talk yet, so I squeezed her.
Kalaya pulled the quilt around my arms. “You want me to get your pretzel or the cookies?”
I shook my head. Rarely at a loss for words, I knew my silence worried her. Frankly, she should have called an ambulance when I turned down a Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie.
“Can I get you a drink?”
I knew my poor girlfriend spooked easily. If I pulled myself together, she’d feel so much better. But I could no more bring myself to act on my intellectualism than I could bring Zeekie back from the dead. I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears slipped out the sides and Kalaya wiped them with her thumbs, cradling my face.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
I didn’t want to say. Didn’t want the horror of the dream to materialize in real life. If only I could stay quiet, maybe…
Kalaya hugged me more fiercely than she ever had. I knew I’d scared her, but I couldn’t help her anymore than I could help myself. I started rocking my body on the bed. Still shaking. Silent as a stone.
She seemed reluctant to move away from me, but she whispered, “You hang on to me, okay? I’m just going to make a call.”
Her cell phone hung off a chain on her jeans. She unhooked it, flipped it open, and furiously dialed a number. She tapped her foot as she waited for the other person to answer.
“Jazz?” she said.
My heart dropped. I wanted to see him so badly.
“Can you come home? Bell is looking bad.”
I couldn’t hear Jazz’s response.
“I’d have called an ambulance first if that’s what I thought she needed. You just need to come home and see her for yourself.”
She flipped the phone closed. My guess is that he hung up and was on his way before she had time to say good-bye.
Thank God.
I’d been a single woman for so long, it was second nature for me to give Kalaya all the phone numbers of the important people in my life. I did this just in case she knocked on my apartment door and I didn’t answer even though the Love Bug was outside. Being an avid consumer of truTV, I had the worst images in my head. I could picture Kalaya using the key I gave her and coming into my place welcomed only by the smell of death wafting about the room. There’d I’d be. Dead! Having lain there for six weeks because nobody loved me and nobody noticed when I didn’t call them or show up for work or hadn’t been seen in the land of the living.
I hadn’t died however. My remains were not decomposing, and I did not bear the stench of the not-so-recently departed. Yet Kalaya must have felt inspired, because she called all my in-case-of-emergency people. I didn’t complain, but only because of the emotional trauma clutching me in its evil grip.
Jazz, being closest, arrived first. Honestly, I’d never heard him unlock my locks so fast. My whirling mind fixated temporarily on the fact that it was he who insisted on all those locks. Bet you wish you didn’t have to go through all those locks, huh, Jazzy?
By lock number three, Jazz’s frustration must hav
e got the better of him. He pounded on the door, just about knocking it off its hinges.
Kalaya pried herself out of my hug and went to open the door for him, though I’d have been interested in seeing if he’d have gone so far as to kick the door open like a television cop.
She unlocked the third lock and flung the door open. Jazz exploded into the apartment like the Tasmanian Devil—the cartoon one—and was at my bed faster than if I’d had on that silver nightgown he liked so much and was saying, “Come hither.”
He stopped cold when he saw me. I’m not sure how I looked, but it must have been compelling, since Kalaya called my entire family to come help. He eased over to the bed and sat down next to me. He spoke in soothing, therapeutic tones, which scared me. I’m used to macho man speaking to me in strong, authoritative tones. Or sexy Marvin Gaye “Let’s Get It On” tones. He rarely deviated from the two.
He may not have puppy eyes, but his Godiva chocolate yummies looked at me with such compassion and concern that my lip trembled, and I lunged at him like a linebacker at the quarterback.
When he could breathe again, he stroked my hair. “Baby…” Soft, soothing tones.
I buried my head in his coat.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to peel me off him. “Baby, tell me what’s going on.”
I didn’t feel ready to disclose yet.
Being the stronger of the two of us, he eventually succeeded in wrenching me away from him. “Bell, will you tell me what’s going on?”
I wanted to tell him. I opened my mouth to speak, but how could I explain the unspeakable horror that had enveloped me? There are dreams, and there are Dreams, and I hadn’t confused the two since I was a teenager. To do so could mean the death of someone I loved. I’d had a Dream, with a capital “D,” and for me Dreams were real in a way that life sometimes wasn’t. And I couldn’t lose Jazz right now, even though the Dream said I would, and Dreams really did come true.
I squeezed him again, praying with all my being—albeit silently—that God would intervene. It was my only defense, crying out to God.
Hurricane Sasha arrived with Carly in tow. Neither of them seemed surprised that my apartment now overflowed with man stuff—and had a resident fine man. Traitors! They must have all been in on this move, while I lay helpless and vulnerable in the hospital, carrying my precious bundles. Evil people!
Sasha and Carly hung their coats in my closet. Jazz, Kalaya, and I had taken our little party to the living room. They thought tea would cure me and I’d spill the whole story over a steaming mug of Hot Cinnamon Sunset. I had to admit, they had chosen my favorite tea. Only, they’d have to pull out bigger guns than that to get me sharing.
Sasha breezed across the room and sat opposite me on one of my upholstered chairs. Her eyes locked with mine, but she directed the question to Kalaya.
“What did you say happened, Kalaya dear?” Ma used her tough, efficient queen voice to get answers. Kalaya sat trembling in fear, terrified of her. Most of the time I was, too.
“Um—Mrs. Brown—”
“Sasha!”
Kalaya sprang up to a standing position. “I’m soooo sorry. Mrs.—uh, Sasha.”
“What happened?”
Words spilled out of Kalaya like wine pouring out of a bottle. “Bell called me over because she was mad because Jazz wouldn’t let her investigate with him.”
Ma’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t take kindly to any notions I had about involving myself in crime solving, particularly when it involved a murderer or someone who could beat me up.
Kalaya went on, never missing a beat. “And I hurried up and got the baby stuff from the Gap. She was asleep when I got here and didn’t hear me knocking, and I got scared thinking maybe a nutjob came in and killed her, but I didn’t smell any decaying flesh. I smelled lavender candles. I came in with the key she gave me and when I saw she was asleep I said, ‘Coolness. I’m hungry.’ I raided the refrigerator because I thought she’d have real food now that Jazz lives here, and—”
Carly yawned. “We’ll be here forever.”
Sasha wouldn’t. “Dear,” she said. I knew that “dear.” The first dear had been a real dear, but this second one, especially since it was accompanied by the insidious expression of polite yet controlled rage, wasn’t. If Ma didn’t get some answers fast, she’d blow with such impressive force, Mount St. Helens would applaud her.
Sasha sighed, an ominous release of breath. Kalaya had crossed the line and gotten on Ma’s last nerve. “Did she say what she dreamed?” The tundra had more warmth than Ma’s voice.
Kalaya sank back down on the couch next to me. “Um. No, ma’am. She woke up screaming, ‘No!’”
Jazz pulled one of his arms from around me to join the fun. “She had a dream the other day that made her wake up screaming.”
Ma’s head snapped in his direction. “And why were you present when my daughter woke up? Mr. I’ll Leave You High and Dry Whenever I Feel Like It.” The devil himself would have been frightened by her withering scowl. “Or shall I call you Mr. Unavailable?”
Jazz’s cheeks reddened. He pulled his other arm from around me, no doubt to protect himself if my mother threw a few blows. “Ma.”
I think any variation of the word “Ma,” coming from anyone besides Carly and me—oh, who am I kidding? She rankled when Carly and I referred to her as our mother, too—but coming from anybody else…
She roared like she was a demon possessed. “Call me Sasha!”
“Sasha!” Jazz shouted. Addie had raised him well. He tried to regain his swagger, not content to let an old lady best him. He lowered his voice. Spoke slowly, as if she were not in her right mind. “I left temporarily so I wouldn’t really kill someone, namely her puppy-eyed sidekick, Rocky. You’re aware, since we discussed it at length, that I am completely committed to honoring your daughter, who I love. I can assure you that although I feel like leaving right now with all this drama, I won’t be going anywhere.”
Honestly, I found his effort to control his voice modulations honorable. I’d be screaming if it were me.
Sasha opened her mouth, probably to lash out her acidic retort, but Jazz interrupted her. “My point being,” he said, loudly, then softer, “she woke up screaming from a dream she had Friday.”
My mother must have realized there was a time to exchange sharp zingers and a time to find out why her daughter’s behavior hovered just shy of catatonic—and not in a contemplative way. She turned her gaze back to me. “Did she tell you the content of her dream, Jazz?”
“Yeah. She said she had gone to the school building where Thunder had his crusade thing. She said the building was full of kids of all ages. She saw her daughter, Imani, and Zeekie, and for a minute she felt happy and was laughing. Then the kids started turning into zombies and skeletons, and they were begging for her to help them.”
“Ewwww!” That was Carly’s profound contribution.
Kalaya shuddered.
Ma pursed her lips. “But she told you everything?”
Jazz nodded. “Right.”
“Then it was a dream. Not a Dream.”
The difference must have escaped Jazz. Again he tried to control his volume. Slowly. “Sasha, what do you mean it was a dream, not a Dream?”
She sighed and hugged her arms. Released a deep breath. “Dreams, with a capital ‘D,’ are from God.”
Jazz’s face brightened. “Okay. From God is good, right?”
Sasha’s darkened. “I’ve never known them to be.”
Kalaya wrapped me in a tight hug, as if she could protect me from God’s wrath. “This is gonna give me the willies. I can feel it.”
Carly waved her concern away. “Nonsense. Some of the women in our family, including Ma Brown, had this weird God Dream thing.”
Jazz’s mouth hung open. “‘Weird God Dream thing’?”
“Right,” Carly said, as if creepy God Dreams were as common as varicose veins. “It seemed to skip generations. Nobody in my father’s generation had it
, so the old folks started speculating which of us would be dreamers. Everyone thought it’d be me, since God obviously gave me so much more than Bell.”
I would hurt Carly. I would spend many hours planning her ruin.
Kalaya, ever the reporter and probably driven by “the willies,” asked Carly, “So do you have the creepy God Dreams?”
She sighed, “God didn’t want to burden me. He knew that I was meant to be a butterfly, spreading peace and happiness wherever I go.”
I rolled my eyes, even though she’d spoken the gospel truth.
She got up, rounded my coffee table and got on her knees beside me. She placed her hand on my thigh. “No,” she said, “I was spared, but our little Bell is not a butterfly.”
“She is!” My husband lied. “She’s my butterfly.”
Although Carly sat on the floor, she managed to tilt her head back just so and stare down her nose at Jazz seated next to me on the sofa.
She shook her head at him as if he should be pitied. “You sweet boy.”
I don’t think Jazz enjoyed her calling him a boy, especially a sweet one. He bit his lip as if the gesture would keep curses from flying out of his mouth. “Does my wife have weird God Dreams or not?”
Kalaya, the youngest Christian among us, took this moment to show off her Bible prowess. “Maybe it’s like Acts, chapter 2, verse seventeen says: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.’ Only, Bell isn’t an old man.” She thought for a moment. “Does it count if Bell isn’t an old man? I can be a literalist sometimes when it comes to scripture.”
No one bothered to answer her.
Carly finally said, “She has weird God Dreams.” At this she got up and went back over to her chair next to my mother and sat down.
Sasha rubbed her chin. “It’s been years since she had one this bad, but when she was about eight, she had her first one about a neighbor of ours. The woman was traveling, and Bell dreamed she was on her way to her wedding, and she had on a red wedding dress.”
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