by Leigh Lennon
Hiding the test deep in my bathroom trash, I plan to purge all evidence. I need to speak with Iz. This changes everything. I have two priorities now; this baby and the little girl I basically have raised. I can’t choose between them but fuck, this could get messy.
I need Iz. He was hydrogen to my oxygen and together we formed the one element neither one could live without, each other.
Heading down the steps that lead to our expansive large spiral staircase, my father stops me. “Liz, hold up a second.”
Twisting my head while on the first step that leads downstairs, I respond, “Yes, Daddy?”
My heart is damaged but it still beats and ramps up when I notice what my daddy has in his hands. He stops, gripping my hand tight against the railing. “Liz, what the hell is this?”
He shoves the pregnancy test in my face. What can I say? The evidence speaks for itself. “You just can’t keep your legs shut, can you? My daughter, the whore.” Laughing in my face, my knees begin to shake. “You know, it’s one thing when it’s with a person of good quality. But not a…” My ears shut before I can hear the word—the worst word that can be used to describe Iz or anyone who’s human, just born different than what my racist daddy thinks is proper breeding material.
“Daddy, this is different. I love him. He loves me. Let me leave with Candace. I won’t be your concern. Neither one of us would be anymore. You never wanted Candace. You don’t even like her much. For you it’s about the vision of superiority. We’ll disappear. I’ll even sign over Mama’s fortune she left us. If you could give us just fifty thousand of it, you can have the rest of the two million.” Mama’s money is really just a drop in the bucket of what is daddy’s own self-worth. But still, two million is two million.
“You think I’ll allow you to go traipsing off all over the planet with a colored baby as my grandchild?” He takes my hand off the railing and pushes me back. As I fall for what seems like forever, the only thing on my mind is my and Iz’s baby.
22
Israel
I shoot off the couch I’ve been sitting on next to Liz like I’m a sprinter in the one-hundred-meter and I’ve just come out of the blocks. My hands are in fists and I walk as far away from the woman on my couch as I can get. Stopping just because the windows are there, I turn to Liz when I feel water forming in the corners of my eyes. A knife somehow has found its way into my soul and my grief is as real as if I see her lying at the bottom of the stairs.
As her words flow from her mouth, telling me of how her father flung her down the stairs, destroying any trace evidence of myself growing inside of Liz, my whole body witnesses the scene in my mind.
Anger isn’t what’s raging inside of me. If anger and fury had children and those babies were triplets; times it by a million—that could be the very emotion coursing through my veins.
How could I even begin to enunciate the explosion of emotions that plague me? Betrayal, hatred, grief, anguish, and those would just be the beginning. My eyes are glued to my hands, which are ready to pound something. Anything. My face rises to search Liz’s eyes, which are now swollen by her own sobs that had accompanied her story.
“Iz,” she begins and I lift one hand, opening my palm to look like a crossing guard at a bus stop. She complies with my wish as I turn my eyes to the sky in front of me.
Can I be mad at Liz? This is the first obstacle I sort through in my head. Then I’m glad her dad is dead or I’d be in jail after I choke the life out of the man. Her daddy hated me so much he was willing to kill his own grandbaby. But as my mind is compartmentalizing these events in order of importance, I turn to Liz, shaking my head in disbelief; a telltale sign to the woman who knows me so well with what’s about to happen.
“How could you be pregnant and keep this to yourself? The second that stick popped positive, you should’ve been on the phone with me.”
Her head, which is now in her hands, rises gently. “You were going to be that phone call. It was so early, maybe not any earlier than six a.m. Eastern Standard Time.”
“That’s bullshit, Liz, and you know it,” I retort, the curtness of my tone being understood when her eyes widen. “Even after the blow-up we had at the airport and the breakup, I’d have answered your call. You know that.”
“It was the last thing I’d expected, Iz. I was processing it all and how I could get back to you with Candace.”
I close the distance between Liz and myself in light speed, pulling her from the couch to face me. “It’s always Candace, Liz. It’s always been about your sister. I understood from the beginning you love her, from that day in your dorm. I love my sister and would move heaven and earth for her. But fuck, Liz, nothing would come between the wellbeing of Nevaeh; not for anyone or anything. I adore Candy—always have. But this was our child. My child. I’m finding out now I could’ve had a baby with you.” Lifting her hand to my mouth, I kiss it, trying to indicate the level of intimacy and excitement of growing my child inside her brings to my soul, only to have it sucked away. “C’mon, you chose to barter our child’s happiness and safety for your sister.”
I let go of her hand and back away from her until the coffee table blocks my path and I’m left giving her more space than she’s comfortable with.
“Iz, there’s a reason. Fuck, there’s so much more to the story,” she interjects and I act like a fucking crossing guard again, waving my hands at her when I shake my head no.
“I need to think. You can’t go home. Gimme some space and I’ll call Lang in a bit and see if you can stay with him and Candy for tonight.”
Slinging her purse my way as she walks by, she stops and turns straight into my face, yelling, “I’m a fucking adult, don’t you fucking dare tell me where or how I can live my life!” With Liz walking toward the door and my attempt at my own need to go on the defense standing between her and her exit, the overhead buzzer alerts me of a call that has gone to voice mail five times. My security is linked to my phone and when I’m in the building, it knows when I miss a call from those places on my “close” list like Lang, Mama, and Nev. In those cases, it will call for me over the intercom.
“Mr. Laita, you have five missed calls from Mr. Jamison. Should I connect you now?”
The computer system is enhanced in a way my brain has never been able to quite comprehend but it can recognize my commands without wavering. “No, tell Mr. Jamison I’ll call him back.” I sidestep Liz, standing in front of her. “Liz, as fucking hurt and angry as I am, I’m still not letting you leave this house.”
Liz is athletic and played both basketball and volleyball. For this reason, her reflexes are fast but trying to sidestep me is as fruitless as her trying to step off a balcony and not fall to her death. Neither are fucking happening on my watch. “Get the fuck out of my way, Iz!” she yells.
I told her I needed space but I’m still blocking her departure, not allowing her out of my sight. Her mouth opens one more time when my intercom alerts me again, this time a person as though I’d been in an accident and OnStar comes on to assess my safety. “Mr. Laita, this is Celeste from Security for the Stars. Mr. Jamison says it’s an emergency and if I don’t connect him, he will fire my ass on the spot.” Liz’s brows raise at the expression the operator has used.
I had money to burn and Lang is a fucking computer whiz besides the best sports agent. I backed his Security to the Stars and it’s fucking paid off ten-fold. So, Lang would fire poor Celeste if he didn’t get his fucking way.
“I’m calling him now,” I reply to poor Celeste, then I twist toward Liz, almost roaring at her, “Don’t fucking move!” With Liz’s mouth open again, Celeste interrupts.
“Sorry, sir, I’m patching him through right now, at his command. You can talk to him through here.”
I agree, like I have a fucking choice, and soon I hear Celeste tell my stubborn best friend with bad timing we’re finally connected.
“What the fuck is wrong, Lang? I’m in the middle of something, shithead.”
&nb
sp; All I hear in the background are sirens. Why are they so close? With Liz within a six-inch reach of me, her breath hitches when Lang speaks, “Fuck, Iz. Do you have Eliza with you?”
My gaze locks on hers when her world seems to spin on its axis in slow motion. “Yeah, Lang, she’s here.” It’s all I say.
“I’m not sure what happened.” Lang’s speech is too animated, even for Lang. “We were upstairs, I was taking a call and Candy started toward the stairs to get something from the kitchen. Next thing I knew I heard a large crash. She fell down the staircase.” How is it, with Liz just sharing about how she’d lost our child, her own sister has intersected into our own part of deja vu?
“What?” Liz’s question is barely audible.
“Lang—details, man!” I roar.
“I’m not sure. We’re on our way to Good Samaritan. Meet us there.” The call isn’t disconnected, I can hear his breathing.
“We’re on our way.” I turn to Liz and hurry to grab my keys from where I’d hung them earlier.
Liz stands still and before I can breech this invisible barrier now created from our fight, she yells, “No, you stay here. I don’t want to be near you right now! Lang, I’m grabbing a cab. I’ll meet you there. Call me with any updates.”
My body’s adrenaline pumps like water at the Hoover Dam. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right? You’re not goin’ by yourself, not with your loon of an ex out there, and not when it’s Candy we’re talking about.”
Lunging at me with velocity isn’t something I’m expecting when she closes in on me. She spits my way, “Less than two minutes ago, you told me I shouldn’t have picked Candace over you.”
That’s not what I said, it was our child I’d wanted her to choose over her sister, but before these words slip from my tongue, I realize we’re still connected as Lang yells, “Enough, you two! We aren’t in fucking high school. Get both of your asses to the hospital.” This is when I realize our line has now been disconnected.
As I’m reaching for her hand, she storms past me. I follow her to where we’d parked my car just an hour earlier. It was just sixty minutes ago that my hopes of reconciliation were much higher than they are now.
15 years ago
It has been a week since our blow up, when Liz had asked me to give her time to ponder her next move. She told me, “It won’t be forever. Just give me time. I have to think of Candace.”
Her sister’s a special kid. I adore her but my mind doesn’t understand the reason she’d put her own happiness at risk for Candace. Now, I sound like a dickhead for not getting my way.
I’d walked away from her and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I’ll never change. I’m a proud man and I’ll be damned if anyone ever strips my heritage from me.
23
Liz
The car is packed full of complete silence. His hand reaches for me when I swat it away. Iz’s head flies back at my physical rebuttal but nothing good can come from me speaking.
The calm is broken when his voice attempts at beckoning me. “She’ll be okay, Liz. I know she will.” Another attempt at comforting me with his touch is futile when I pull my arm away with such force it slams into the side of the door. It hurts but not as much as the words he’d spewed at me earlier.
“You know I adore Candy. She’s always been special to me.” His pause is long and I hope silence follows. Pure anger and worry is a deadly combination in me. In a deep, long sigh, I understand I’m not this fortunate when he continues, “I didn’t mean it the way it came out, Liz. It’s just a shock. We made a baby. Our love created something that your father…” His words falter when I begin to finish them.
“Destroyed,” I say.
He squeezes my knee and I will myself not to flinch because I still have so much to share. I want this man next to me, more than I care to admit. It’s been Iz, always, since the first time I saw him, but I can’t start fresh without coming clean.
His words remain restrained in his head as silence fills the stale air between us. Pulling into the ER entrance, I’m out of his Porsche before he puts it in park. “I’ll meet you there in five minutes.” But like anything with Iz, there’s always someone at his disposal when a man appears at his side. “Mr. Jamison wants me to take your car. Code word 09N-E-V.” Apparently, the two digits and three letters is all it takes for Iz to hand over his keys to his hundred thousand dollar car. By the time I realize he’s escorting me, my elbow is in his hand, rushing into the hospital.
“She’s in the ER, Iz.”
With a tick in his jaw, escorting me through all the coughs and sneezes inhabiting the emergency room, his smile melts the woman behind the counter. Hushed whispers make their way around the glass enclosure partitioning the nurses and doctors from the waiting patients.
He walks quickly to the elevators. “We’re skipping the ER, Buttercup.”
Of course, he has connections. Why would he wait with the lowly sickies when he can ask for any doctor of his choosing? In the elevator, he punches in a secret code and it takes off and opens on the opposite end that I’m leaning against, and I almost fall to the ground. “Iz, what the hell?”
“Sorry, babe, this is L.A. Land of the stars. I’m not sure you’d find this in any other city but here, there are people who need their privacy.” He makes this seem second nature, like it’s the most normal occurrence in the world.
One thought transpires inside of me and makes its way out of my mouth, “How in tarnation will I afford this?”
“Liz.” His voice is stern as he thinks I will agree to this just because he says so.
“NO! Israel Laita! I can take care of myself. I don’t need a man. I never needed a man and I’ll be damned if I let you make me some damsel in distress. Fuck, thirty minutes ago you cursed the love I have for my sister and now you want to pay for her care.”
“Liz, calm down. We’ll work it out. This isn’t an issue to concern yourself with.”
I can’t back down. Every man I let into my life under duress has controlled me. If I allow him to do this, he’ll have power and not one person will ever hold that over me again, even if it’s Iz.
Looking over Iz’s shoulder, Lang makes his way down the hall when his frustration puddles from his mouth, “Holy fuck, you two are still at it?”
Making my way around Iz’s body, I interject, “No.” But I’m stopped at the deep-set worry lacing his furrowed brows as they set off alarm bells in my mind.
“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Langston.”
He stretches his left arm behind his neck, scratching an itch that doesn’t seem to go away. Still with his hand rubbing now his entire shoulder area, his eyes narrow in on mine. “Um, Liz. When she was pushed against the steel of the filing cabinet, she incurred an epidural hematoma.” My eyes flash from him to a room of nurses and doctors scurrying to and from the same door it looks like Lang had exited from. “Eliza, hon, she has to have surgery. The doctor needs to talk to you—to sign consent. She also needs blood…” He continues to speak and with the words consent and blood, I blank. Somehow the strong arms of the man I had needed as far away from me as possible only two minutes ago is now the one that catches me before my body hits the floor.
“What? The medics cleared her. How is this possible?” The words from my mouth sound mumbled even to my ears.
“The doctor says it can take hours for this to happen in some cases and with the fall down the stairs—we won’t know what really caused it but the doc thinks it was the shove from your ex.” His response is so matter of fact—so cold—and I’m left to wonder how he can be this calm. I’ve seen the way he looks at my sister. She isn’t just a fuck to him. How can he…then my mind floats to the last words he spoke to me, “I’ll take care of her, Eliza. She’s in good hands with me.” Replaying his promise in my own mind creates an urgency in me to claw his eyes out. I lunge like a cat on the prowl.
“You were supposed to watch her. You promised me. She fell and it’s your fault.”
I’m attempting to shred his designer suit to threads. Iz’s hands pull me from Lang instantly.
“Whoa, killer.” Iz’s voice is low, trying to make light of me attacking Lang when I mold into his tight body.
His eyes search my own when Lang responds to me, his voice leveled. “Fuck, Eliza. Candace, I see her as my world. She’s my future. You don’t think I’m torn up about this?” Turning his gaze from me to Iz, they seem to share a look before he turns around and slumps off to Candace’s room.
“Oh, shit, Iz. I mean…” I look up at him and in the chestnut of his eyes, they ground me, still. “I just lost it. Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry.” I struggle for release from him, not because I want to leave the comfort he brings me this second but I have to follow Lang and apologize.
“C’mon, Buttercup, he understands.” He lifts my chin to his. “He loves that girl. This is tearin’ him up.”
How can he love Candace? It hasn’t been that long. Hell, they haven’t even slept together yet, but looking through Iz’s eyes and to his soul, I understand loving the right person can be quick and raw but still very real.
Private doctors to the stars is what I call this prestigious wing of the hospital. I guess that, besides offering first class care away from the peons below, they believe in first class privacy, too. A receptionist, after my very public flogging of Lang, takes us to a mini suite that connects to Candace’s private room. I’ll have to auction a lung to afford these accommodations.
Everyone that works on this wing, the nurses, the doctors, even the receptionists appear to have that L.A. star vibe with their angular cheekbones and sculptured bodies. Was being beautiful a prerequisite for this floor?