Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings

by Shewanda Pugh

  It was Saturday morning, which meant the girls were gone. After dropping their daughter Mia off at ballet practice, his wife, Deena, usually headed to work for a few hours before picking her up later. Today, the girls had plans for an afternoon of shoe shopping and a trip to the pet store for a replacement goldfish after Pokie, his daughter’s old one, went belly-up a week ago. The game, a few drinks, and an afternoon of food his wife would have a conniption about if she knew he was eating it, were all within sight.

  But seconds into the first inning the doorbell rang.

  He decided to ignore it.

  It rang twice more, the quick and obnoxious ring of a person who’s lost patience, and Tak leaped to his feet with a groan. By the time he crossed the living room and foyer to open the broad double doors, he was muttering to himself about time and the point of having gates.

  Tak threw open the door and glared at nothing. After a blink of confusion, he looked down to find a boy, short and golden, with gold-flecked eyes and the thickest brown hair unencumbered in a wavy, shoulder-length afro.

  “I don’t want cookies, and I gave to the Boys and Girls Club last week,” Tak blurted.

  The boy stared.

  “I . . . uh, don’t . . . have anything to sell you.”

  It sounded like an apology.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m looking for Deena Hammond.”

  Tak raised a brow. “Why? What do you want with my wife?”

  The boy’s eyes widened. Tak somehow encouraged the kid at a moment when his aim had been the opposite. A shout rang out from the next room, and Tak strained to hear vestiges of the game.

  “So, she’s your wife?” the boy whispered eagerly.

  “Uh, yeah,” Tak said, eyes keen on seeing whether the Yankees would use Villanova or Rousseau as their starting pitcher. He couldn’t tell from where he stood.

  “Her, right?”

  The sound of crumpled paper caught Tak’s attention. The kid fumbled in his pocket before coming away with a stack of clippings that shook in his hand. He turned them to face Tak, holding it just below his eyes.

  He held an old picture of Tak’s wife from an issue of Architecture Digest, her grinning as she held up a plaque. He remembered it from a ceremony in Phoenix where she was honored with the Young Architect of the Year Award. They’d done a full bio spread on her, making a fuss of her difficult upbringing. As his father’s protégé and the principal architect of the single most desirable address in South Florida, the sordid details of Deena’s life—worthy of a full seven pages—and her shy smile on the cover—helped create what would become Architecture Digest’s best-selling issue in recent history.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Tak said.

  The boy swallowed visibly. “Good.”

  He folded the pages neatly and placed them in his pocket.

  “Then you must be my uncle.” Tony extended a hand. “I’m Anthony Hammond Jr. Maybe you knew my father.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tak opened the cupboard and frowned at the selection of canned goods. He closed it and opened another, filled with his wife’s Raisin Bran, his daughter’s Saturday morning Cocoa Puffs, and the Wheaties he ate by the shovel full. Mrs. Jimenez, his maid since childhood, was out for the weekend, so really, there were few other options.

  “Anything’s okay,” the boy mumbled from the table.

  But Tak frowned at the loose way fabric hung from limbs on the kid. Nephew or not, he wasn’t feeding a starving child a bowl of cereal.

  Remembering the lasagna from the night before, three thick layers of tangy sauce, ground sirloin and blended cheeses, he pulled it out. Tak microwaved a palm-sized square and placed it before Anthony Jr. with a glass of milk before taking a seat across from him.

  “Eat as much as you want, OK? The whole pan if you like.”

  Tony nodded, cheeks already stuffed with food.

  “Thanks,” he said, bits spewing.

  Tak glanced at his watch, then the door. Thankfully, his wife wasn’t coming home straightaway. The boy ate in silence, unperturbed by the audience. A lifetime away, an announcer shouted enthusiasm for a wholly inconsequential game.

  When Tony finished his plate, he rose and grabbed more from the glass pan on the counter. He warmed it, brought it to the table, and found his seat again.

  “Where do you live?” Tak said.

  The boy licked sauce from his fingers. “I don’t live anywhere. Used to live in a group home.”

  The sound of fork-scrapping-plate filled the silence. He took his milk in big gulps, as if afraid Tak might change his mind and take it.

  “So,” Tak chewed on his lip, “you caught the bus over?”

  Tony shook his head. “Hitchhiked.”

  Tak stared. “You . . . hitchhiked?”

  “Yeah. From Bismarck.” He smacked his lips in appreciation.

  “Bismarck . . .” Tak trailed stupidly.

  “North Dakota,” he said. “That’s where my group home was.”

  Tak squeezed his eyes shut. A dull throb started at his temples and radiated outward.

  “I don’t understand. I thought you said you were from here.” He massaged his temple vigorously.

  “Not me. My dad. I’ve never seen the place. Beautiful though. I can see why people make such a fuss about it.”

  The boy was twelve, tops, but talked as though he were forty. Lived as though he were forty, too, judging by the offhanded way he’d just hitchhiked from Bismarck.

  “So . . . did you grow up in Bismarck?” Tak ventured.

  “Yeah. Well, in the Dakotas for a while. I lived in Rapid City, Sioux Falls, and Bismarck for a good long while.”

  “But where’s your family?” Tak insisted.

  “You’re my family.”

  The boy scraped up the last of his lasagna and returned to the pan for thirds. Tak followed him with his eyes, unable to keep the skepticism from his voice.

  “Besides us. Where’s your mother, for instance?”

  “Dead. Died in a three-car pileup when I was seven.”

  Something like panic surged in Tak. Not just from the kid’s confidence, but from his appearance—especially his appearance. Bronzed skin, wild brown locks wavy and streaked with auburn—and the molten brown eyes, far too close to his wife’s for comfort. All of that was in addition to the unequivocal evidence that was his name, the same as his wife’s dead brother.

  “Where’s your mother’s family, Tony? Here? In Miami?”

  Tony shoved his plate in the microwave and faced him. “Mom was a foster kid, like me. Didn’t have family.”

  Tak pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. It was then that Tony looked past him and into the hall just beyond the kitchen. There were pictures there, and he ventured toward them, wide-eyed, enamored. Tak followed him and together, they stared at a family portrait. Deena on the left, Tak on the right, baby Mia in the middle, gurgling between the two.

  Tony brought a hand to the picture and touched Deena’s face, eyes unblinking, entranced.

  What was he thinking? Feeling? Wanting? Whatever it was, did they have it to give?

  A jingle of keys at the door interrupted Tak’s thoughts. The sound made him freeze, breath stolen as he waited.

  His daughter Mia spilled in first, dashing at the sight of him, a tangle of jet-black mane at her back. Behind her, Deena fumbled, fussing with the lock, a Macy’s bag in one hand, a fish bowl in the other.

  “Hey, let me help you with that,” Tak said, rushing to her side.

  It was his hope to cut off her view, prep her for what was to come, but as it turned out, he never got the chance.

  “Oh, Mommy, look! There’s a boy in the hall!”

  Deena lifted her head, confused, before her gaze settled on Tony. Her lips parted, a myriad of emotions overwhelming her face, before the fishbowl ended up crashing to the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Have you eaten, yet?” Deena whispered, hands clasped beneath the kitchen table. Sh
e clenched them to stave off the shaking and reminded herself periodically to breathe.

  “Yeah. Your husband gave me some leftover lasagna. It was really good. Thanks.”

  They were alone, Deena and Tony, as Tak had put on a cup of coffee, flushed another in a long line of dead goldfish, and whisked Mia away next door.

  Tony went silent for a moment, gaze lowered thoughtfully before returning to her face. “Did you make it?” he asked conversationally. “The lasagna?”

  “What? Oh. Yeah.” Deena shifted.

  “Then you’re a good cook.”

  He stood, unfolded really, his long narrow frame like that of the brother she once had.

  “You want me to make you a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  “Make what?” she said, certain she’d misheard.

  “Coffee. Do you want me to pour you a cup of coffee?” He nodded toward the already-filled pot. “Seems like you need it.”

  Deena sat up straighter. She was used to taking extra precautions with Mia, a boisterous and inquisitive kindergartner, and would’ve never let her pour coffee. But he was no five-year-old.

  “How old are you?” Deena whispered.

  He was opening cabinets now in search of cups. “Eleven,” he said. “Eleven and a half, really.”

  She did the math quickly. Her brother had been dead for ten years, nearly ten and a half. She couldn’t imagine him having a child and not telling her, even if he had been a child himself.

  “My brother never had a baby,” she announced. “He would have said so.”

  Tony looked at her, staring with eyes that were hers—wide and bronze and tapering up like a smile.

  “He didn’t want me,” he said and turned back to the cupboard. “You can understand that. Too young to be a dad.”

  Deena sputtered at his obscene maturity.

  “Want you or not, he would’ve said something! He wouldn’t have—left you.”

  Deena and her siblings had been raised without parents and knew the heartache of it. They could never do that to another.

  Right?

  Tony pulled a white coffee cup from the cabinet and filled it with dark brew.

  “Try not to be angry,” he said. “He didn’t know the whole story. Mom was a foster kid, living with a foster family. But they kicked her out once they found out she was pregnant—bad influence on the other children or something. Anyway, she went from home to home, getting kicked out or running away, or whatever was going on, you know? And all the while waiting on public assistance, an apartment, all that. When Housing gave her a place, she started looking for my dad again, so she could tell him about me. But by then, this was the only trace of him.”

  He set the mug before Deena and dug in his pockets, coming away with a sheet of newspaper. She took it, unraveling with shaking fingers, not wanting to see, but wanting.

  Her brother, sixteen and smiling in a picture taken months before death. Above him was the headline seared to her memories with grief: Liberty City Teen Found Slain. Beneath him were the details of his murder and discovery atop a heap of garbage.

  “Why do you keep this?” Deena whispered.

  “It’s the only picture I have of him.”

  Sniffling, Deena smoothed out the clip purposefully, set it on the table, and rose. She hesitated only a moment before grabbing her purse and keys and brushing past Tak on the way out. She hadn’t noticed when he’d returned.

  “Dee? Where’re you going?”

  She turned on him, their space in the hall narrow as they stared at each other. “There’s only one person I can think of who would know whether this is true or not. One person still alive, anyway.”

  He glanced past her to the kitchen where Tony sat.

  “Let me go with you,” he said.

  Deena started for the door again.

  “Stay with Tony. I’ll be back.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The drive from tree-lined Coral Gables to seedy Overtown was twenty minutes long, a short romp up I-95, as the sun made a hasty retreat from the sky. It took Deena thirty-five, with the stop at McDonalds, before she reached her destination.

  The streets narrowed with her arrival in Overtown. If Liberty City was the bowels of Miami, then Overtown was the back end, split like an ass by dodgy old railroad tracks in the place once known as Colored Town. Deena could feel eyes on her, the eyes of the city, wide and threatening, as she crept down the streets, searching for one of their own. An outsider now, no longer poor, not really disadvantaged. She supposed they could smell her; smell her money, her fear and what she risked, just by coming among them.

  She used to live in a place like this. Back then, poverty embraced her, as the scent of death and rank were as much her home as the house she held keys to. She knew them intimately, though they couldn’t tell it now. Without money, without chance, without anything except fear and pain, both gifts given to them in abundance.

  Deena drove at a crawl’s pace; the narrow, brightly colored shacks with tattered fences lining either side of her. Dark eyes stared, dark eyes with black faces, waiting, promising.

  A man of forty or fifty, shirt tattered, shorts frayed, both yellowed and smeared in dirt, began to walk alongside the car, keeping pace with her window. He kept an even gait, gaze unblinking, expectant.

  Deena turned down a side street, then another, before he stopped, content to stand in the road and watch her. On porches, black teens sat or stood, drinking from containers in paper bags, hunched over dice games, or peering, hand poised above a pocket as they watched her pass. A regular Wild West in the heart of Miami.

  Up ahead, two brunettes walked, one in a black bra, red mini, and fishnet stockings, the other in knee-high black boots, silver panties with “Hustler” scrawled across the ass, and a plain white tee, torn short and baring the bottom half of too big tits. Deena pulled up alongside them driving at the pace they walked.

  The women glanced at her. One smiled; the other frowned.

  “Hey, cutie,” said the one in fishnet. “You looking for someone to play with? You and your man, maybe?”

  Deena looked past her, to the one outside in her panties.

  “I need to talk to you. Get in the car.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Working, Deena. And talking to me costs. Just like with all the other tricks.”

  Deena sighed. “Even about Anthony?”

  Deena’s sister froze, eyes narrowed.

  “What about Anthony?”

  Deena shot a distrustful look at the girl in fishnet before turning back to Lizzie. “Get in the car and I’ll tell you.”

  Lizzie shot her friend a reluctant look. “I’ll just be a sec.”

  “Hurry up,” the girl warned. “You know how he is.”

  Deena unlocked the door, and Lizzie jumped in, tugging on the shirt that exposed her bottom cleavage.

  “What?” Lizzie demanded.

  “What do you know about Anthony having a kid? Is that something you’ve heard before?”

  Lizzie stared.

  “Maybe,” she finally admitted. “Why?”

  “Because there’s a boy at my house claiming he’s his son. So I need to know when you first heard this.”

  “I dunno. Long time ago.”

  Deena shook her head. “Do better than that.”

  “Well, I really don’t know! And you’re holding me up,” Lizzie snapped.

  “Dammit, Lizzie!” Deena’s palm slammed into the steering wheel. “Do you think I’d even be in this shit hole if . . .”

  Her words trailed just as she contemplated tattooing her sister in the eye with a fist.

  “All right, all right,” Lizzie said. “Anthony was still alive, okay? And dating this girl. She had a stupid boy name, like Reggie or something. And when she supposedly came to him and said she was pregnant, he was pissed. End of story.”

  “Supposedly? What’s the hell’s that mean?”

  “Just what I said. I didn’t hear it from him. It’s what people on the street said.
Anyway, nobody believed it was his. She was into Anthony, but,” Lizzie grinned, “no girl with any sense would get serious about him.”

  When Deena didn’t share her smile it quickly faded.

  Lizzie glanced pointedly at the clock on the dash. “We done yet?”

  “I think he’s Anthony’s son. He looks like Anthony.”

  “Well, God help him if he’s one of us.”

  With a laugh like a snort, Deena reached for the burger in the backseat and handed it to her sister. She took it, tore the paper open, and swallowed it in four bites.

  “Tell Mia, Auntie says ‘hi.’”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Lizzie dropped the trash where she sat and opened the passenger-side door.

  “Take care of yourself,” Deena called. “And be careful!”

  Lizzie slammed the door behind her without answering.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  With Tony parked in front of the TV marveling at the high definition and broad selection of channels, Tak rounded the block with his cousin John’s new wife, Allison. Tak’s daughter, Mia, was back at the newlywed’s home, contentedly roughhousing with the chocolate lab they’d adopted the month before. Tak had the sneaking suspicion that the dog was John’s temporary fix for a wife who’d increasingly hinted at the immediacy of her biological clock.

  “How old is this kid?” Allison asked, heels clicking on cement.

  “Eleven.”

  “And what state did he come from?”

  “North Dakota.”

  “How long has he been at your house?”

  Tak shrugged. “Two hours is my guess.”

  “Okay. Well, in twenty-two more you can be prosecuted for harboring a runaway.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “Shit’s right.”