Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings

by Shewanda Pugh

  She’d asked him where to start. So, Kenji thumbed through the book atop a stack, Ace the GED, and suggested she begin with a few of the assessments. He plopped an alarm clock on the table to time her and left to put on a pot of coffee. Grinds in the filter, water in the machine, Kenji leaned against a solid granite counter and watched her watch the clock. She looked at it. And looked at it. And looked at it. Finally, Kenji marched around the counter and snatched the clock from sight.

  “No clock,” he said. “Just . . . take your time, okay?”

  Lizzie turned back to the book. Eyes wide, she inhaled so deeply her chest bloomed in response. How long she held it, he did not know.

  “Breathe, Lizzie.”

  Him, book, him, book, her gaze flitted back and forth. Finally, finally, she settled on the book.

  “O-P-E-C, or the or—or—”

  “It’s O PEC. The letter ‘o’ and then ‘pec’ altogether. Like a bird pecks.”

  She looked up at him.

  “It’s an abbreviation. See? O-P-E-C.”

  She held up the book at him. Kenji took a seat. “Just trust me, okay? It’s O, and then PEC.”

  Lizzie turned back to the book with a scowl. “OPEC,” she shot him a look. “OPEC, or the or—or—”

  He leaned over. “Organization.”

  “Right. Organization of puh—puh—pet—”

  “Petroleum,” Kenji said.

  Lizzie looked at him.

  “They make gas from it.”

  Lizzie leaned forward, faced pinched as if constipated. “OPEC or the or—organization of petroleum eh—ex—ex—puh—por—ting cuh—countries is a per—per—”

  Lizzie sighed hopelessly.

  “Hey, listen,” Kenji said, “it’s okay. How about this? I’ll write down every word we have trouble with. Then we’ll work on them one by one.”

  It’s what I should’ve been doing, instead of fucking her. Helping the girl figure out how to read, how to be self-sufficient without selling her body. Not getting your fill.

  Color drained from his cheeks.

  “Maybe you and me can just hang out,” Lizzie said with a weak smile.

  She placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed. It felt obscene. After all, somewhere in her passion for him had to be realities of which neither could avoid. She had to realize that it was he who fed, clothed, and provided a roof over her head. She had to realize that it was he that protected her from what she perceived as her only other option: Snow. And she had to be grateful for the stupid rescue mentality he’d taken on, whereby he whisked her from poverty and into rehab, and even now, taught her to read and write. How, then, was it that he could treat this as love, when a romance comprised free will and a willingness on both ends? He’d all but bribed her into loving him, it seemed.

  “Liz, let’s focus on the schoolwork, okay?” He removed her hand from his lap.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The drive to Broward Corrections took forty-five minutes in relatively minor Saturday-morning traffic. Deena drove with the windows down and the wind in her hair, keenly in tune with the tremble of her hands. Nearly two-and-a-half decades stood between Deena and her mother, two-and-a-half decades between that moment and the one when she murdered her father.

  Who knew that anxiety could seize her like this—stiffening her spine, dotting her forehead in sweat, parching her throat in pain? The sun was especially brilliant this morning, emblazoned against a lackluster sky, blinding and heightening her unease. But where fear and anticipation mingled for a powerful potion, determination propelled her forward. Years of unanswered questions, of a life damned at the hands of one woman. Her brother, her sister, her own pain, even—she blamed her mother for it all. She had a right to know why it’d happened.

  Deena exited the interstate and veered left onto Sheridan. What she expected, she couldn’t be sure. But the sheer normalcy of the short trek that lay before her was perhaps the most obscene thing of all. Clusters of single-story, pastel suburban homes on the right and left, a McDonald’s here, a library there, unnerving in its ordinariness. And at the end of it all, at the end of her yellow brick road, stood a concrete complex of captivity, unassuming in the morning sun. It lied to Deena as it stood there, belying a sense of safety, hiding the horror of society’s truths.

  Deena pulled into the parking lot, eyes focused on the fortress before her. For more than twenty years her mother remained there, caged in confinement with killers.

  Good.

  Deena abandoned her purse to the trunk of her car and headed for the looming guards at the prison entrance. Already a small line had begun to form, toddlers and children a part of the queue. She frowned distastefully. Never would she bring Mia to such squalor. And what would be the purpose anyway? To remind her of the poor choices others made? Of society’s wrath for those who rightly deserve it? She could turn on the TV for that.

  A tall and broad-shouldered man with a star tattooed on the backside of his skull cut off Deena in line. She opened her mouth to protest and shut it, deciding she’d prefer any spot out of his view anyway.

  Despite the usurper’s height and girth, Deena could make out the line’s destination: a narrowed entryway bathed in light. She looked from it to the guards just before. Vaguely disturbed by the restrictive nature of the hall, the men with guns at the entrance, and the curt, skeptical nature by which they raked gazes over each member of the line, Deena experienced an unfounded feeling of terror.

  Claustrophobia.

  But was it possible? She’d never had it before. However, now that she inched forward, toward that compressed, threadlike hall, she felt something like panic titillating her senses.

  It was what they wanted, she realized; it was purposeful. After all, hadn’t she designed a prison in which every wall, ceiling, and floor was created to incite this overwhelmingly oppressive feel?

  A guard gestured to her with massive hands, demanded her name, and nodded for her to step forward. Immediately, she was stopped by a second guard near a table, unseen from her place outside. He too demanded her name and checked it against a short list.

  “Gloria Hammond?”

  Deena gave a curt nod and looked away. Her mother’s name still held power it turned out, even after all those years. She supposed, in some way, that the truth of what she was doing had not occurred to her until those words had been uttered. Before then, she thought herself in a fairy tale of nightmarish proportions.

  “ID,” the guard barked as if she’d been stupid in not producing it thus far.

  Deena slipped her driver’s license from the pocket of her slacks. He scrutinized it, turned it over, and handed it back.

  “Go,” he blurted, impatient that she had not instantaneously moved on to the next step.

  Deena walked alone, down a hall that stretched on, walls grungy white and narrow enough that her fingertips would sweep both sides should she extend her arms. At the end waited a metal detector and two more guards. When she slowed, one waved her forward impatiently.

  A pat down. Fingers in her pockets, under her armpits, sweeping her breasts. Two men who could’ve been thumbing a grapefruit for all of the attention they paid to curves they so generously touched. The lack of acknowledgment, the gruff handling, was but one more indication of humanity’s absence.

  “Go,” one said and nodded at the metal detector.

  She stepped through.

  Silence.

  Deena pushed through a set of double doors. And into sunlight.

  She blinked in surprise.

  For all their touching and searching and double checking, they’d led her to believe she’d be admitted into the very depths of confinement, and certainly not this bastion of open-aired freedom. But then, commonsense set in and Deena’s gaze flitted upward, till she caught a glimpse of a guard tower shaded in the trees.

  “Take a seat at a bench and wait.”

  Another voice: a surprise waiting to the right of the door.

  Deena dully registered
a woman that could’ve been a man, or vice versa, and headed for the picnic tables. She took a seat at what she hoped was an indiscriminate location in the middle, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

  Underneath her, smooth metal stretched out both left and right, bolted to a concrete slab poured into grass. One table away, a toddler burst free of his mother and laughed as the distance grew between her and him. She retrieved him from under a tree just next to the canteen. Were it not for the guard in foliage and the now plainly visible electronic fence that threatened them, she would’ve thought herself in a park or playground.

  “Deena?”

  She snapped to attention. A voice—lost to memory, lost to nightmares, now addressed her in daylight.

  The woman before Deena was a cruel caricature of her mother. Once tall and graceful with milk ivory skin, high-perched breasts, and the slimmest of hips, this woman had sallow, pitted features, brassy limp locks, and slack, wrinkled skin. Brilliant, Carolina blue eyes were now flat and lusterless, as if belonging to the dead. The fiery orange jumpsuit draped over her hollow frame and patted-cake breasts were scandalous to a girl who’d first learned of designer fashions by watching this woman dress in the morning. Words escaped Deena.

  “You’re beautiful,” Gloria Hammond whispered.

  She reached out a hand, trembling, as if she might dare to touch her daughter, after all this time. Deena stared at those outstretched fingers, revulsion curling her stomach.

  “Don’t,” she managed. “I . . . can’t stand for you to touch me.”

  Gloria’s hand snatched back, eyes pooling for a fast-flooding stream.

  How dare she! Instinctively, fists balled in Deena’s lap.

  A guard to the right of Gloria Hammond placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on now. Take a seat,” he warned.

  Everything they said sounded like a warning.

  Deena’s mother sat automatically, and the guard left. Suddenly, they were very much alone.

  “I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” Gloria Hammond said again. Her voice was like a flutter of dried leaves, dead, a simpering sigh devoid of life.

  “I look like you,” Deena snapped.

  It was obviously not a choice.

  Gloria placed a hand on the table. Fingers curled and uncurled, as if massaging the metal tabletop. It was with horror that Deena realized it was her left hand. The wedding ring was gone.

  “I—”

  Gloria’s hand went still. She looked up, saw Deena’s face, followed her daughter’s stare to her hand, and snatched it from the table.

  In the distance, a child laughed.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” her mother began. “I never thought I’d see your face. And Anthony’s . . .”

  Gloria broke off and put a hand to her mouth. The right hand. No doubt the one that killed Deena’s father.

  “I didn’t come here to reminisce,” Deena said. “Or to embrace you like some brokenhearted daughter desperate to have a mother. I only want to know why you’re a murderer; I only want answers.”

  For a long time, Gloria didn’t speak. The toddler who cavorted to and fro giving his mother hell was now cradled serenely in the arms of an inmate, as angelic as a sweet-cheeked cherub. The inmate smiled, murmured something that had to be love, and stroked the child’s hair tenderly. Deena looked up from the pair with tear-filled eyes. They were mirrored in her mother’s own, glistening gaze.

  “Don’t you dare cry,” Deena spat. “You have no right. You murdered a man who meant everything to me. Do you know what’s happened because of that? Did you ever bother to find out?”

  Deena rose only just slightly, before a look of sit-your-ass-down from the guard calmed her.

  “Anthony sold drugs,” she hissed. “Trying to provide a life for the family you abandoned. He was only a boy! A child trying to do a parent’s job. He died like a dog because of it.”

  Gloria looked away, tears spilling freely over now-hollowed cheeks.

  “You look at me,” Deena demanded. “It’s the least you can do after what’s happened to us.”

  Again, her mother faced her. She was used to taking orders.

  “Lizzie’s a whore,” Deena continued. “A ten-dollar whore that stands on the corner and takes less if it’s all she can get. She needs it for the high, you know. Crack. Cocaine. Heroin. She does it all. You wouldn’t believe what she’s done for a high.”

  Gloria wept pitifully, face buried in her hands, audible sobs so violent that visitors from other tables kept casting curious looks. Deena only vaguely acknowledged them.

  “Stop putting on a show. You must’ve known that Anthony was dead. Only Lizzie would’ve been a surprise.” Deena’s lip curled in disgust. “You always did have a flare for the dramatic.”

  Gloria wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I cry easy,” she said. “Same as you.”

  Deena didn’t care. The verbal lacerations felt gruesomely rewarding, like slashing at a victim and dancing in the wounds.

  “I’m not like you. I abhor you.”

  Gloria laughed.

  “So, what now? You think you’re like your father?” She shook her head. “You always were in love with him.”

  Deena glared. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Her mother leaned back, the tears on her face now dry. The smile on her lips smug. “It’s not your father that you’re like, Deena. It’s me. Anthony was like his father.”

  “What?”

  Her mother sighed. “Come on. Have you never wondered how Anthony, as just a boy, was able to rise so quickly in the RIP gang? Or why grown men coalesced behind a child, almost overnight?”

  Deena withdrew. “No.”

  Gloria eyed her. “Yes, you did,” she said quietly. “Your father was one of them.”

  “He was not!” Deena cried.

  Gloria stared. “Of course he was. Think. Remember. You already know.”

  “He worked for the city,” Deena said frantically. “He did maintenance . . . for the city.”

  “And yet you lived in a beautiful white house, four bedrooms and a spacious yard, all in Coral Gables. How do expect we paid for that, Deena? I didn’t work. And you’re old enough to know the salary of a . . .” she paused as if to recall. “Maintenance worker.”

  Deena sat back. “You’re lying.”

  “He went away sometimes. Do you remember?” Gloria said. “A maintenance man away on business?”

  Deena suddenly had an image, her father, smile bright and hopeful as he hugged his sugar bear and promised to see her soon. Away on business, he’d said.

  Tears filled her eyes.

  “You didn't have to kill him.”

  But Gloria met her gaze. “You have no idea what I’ve had to do.” Gloria folded her hands on the table and cleared her throat.

  “Five men came to the house that night. You answered the door and came for me, just as you’d been taught to do. The moment I saw them, I told you to take Anthony and Lizzie and run. You already knew where to go; you’d practiced before. Our visitors marched me to the bedroom where Dean lay and pulled out guns. I was given two choices. Shoot my husband or else. ‘Or else’ meant that a sixth man, now watching my ten-year-old struggle down a back alley with my toddler and baby, would off the little ones and sell you to a man named Mondo who specialized in pimping children. Ten thousand was what he could get for a girl as pretty as you.

  “There were supposed to be round-the-clock guards. Three guys in the gang, lower ranking, who would keep watch since Dean had earned a bounty on his head. But they disappeared, still, to this day. Most folks figure they were killed, though bodies were never found.” Gloria paused.

  “In the end, it was Dean who told me to do it. ‘Just do it,’ he said and nodded toward the gun. He couldn’t bear the idea of someone hurting his children. Even for a minute.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “I love Dean. Still,” Gloria said fiercely. “Still. And we made the right choice.�
��

  Thick and humid air enveloped Deena, suffocating her in sadness. She rose, stumbled, flailing as if trapped. Desperate to get away. Images of the moment she returned to her parents’ home, the gun, the blood, her mother shrieking, melded like a syndication on madness. She could take no more. But then her mother said it, and even that was too much, too.

  “I love you, Deena,” Gloria said.

  Deena fled. From the table and between a bookend pair of guards who snatched her back and patted her down properly. The moment they released her, Deena broke for the hall, rushing, ever rushing, to make it to sunlight. She stumbled into the parking lot, blinded, fleeing for her car, until an emphatic thud and slice of pain made her howl and fall back.

  Tak emerged from the passenger side of the car she’d run into.

  “Hey, whoa, slow down, honey bun.”

  He scooped her with firm hands, and she submerged in his embrace shamelessly, sobbing, nauseated by a sudden upturning of life.

  Long moments passed, moments where he soaked up her tears and held her in silence.

  “What are you doing here?” she managed into his chest.

  Tak tilted her chin so that she faced him. His smile was unmistakable. “Hey, you said I couldn’t come with you. Not that I couldn’t come after.”

  She smiled faintly.

  “That’s better. So much better,” he said, nodding in approval.

  It was then that Deena noticed John Tanaka behind the wheel of Tak’s BMW, drumming out the beat to some muted and awful-sounding metal song.

  “He’ll drive my car,” Tak said. “I’ll take yours. Let’s go.”

  It was as if he’d known what she’d discover that day, as if he knew how uprooted she’d be. But even she hadn’t known.

  But on the car ride, she made sure to tell him.

  Deena stared at the ceiling of a bedroom whose price tag comfortably sat in the six-figure range. Next to her lay a husband who tossed frequently and woke every hour or so to see if he could help in some way. In his willingness was but one more reminder of the sweepingly dismissive attitude she’d taken with everything and everyone.

  Never had she thought to ask the “why” of her father’s murder, or to fathom that he might’ve somehow played a role in his own demise. For her, it was enough to dismiss a once-loved mother as evil and move on to the next concern. If she were honest, she knew that to be the mantra of her life: Lizzie was determined to be a prostitute and drug user, decisions her sister made willingly long ago; Tak was a once celebrated artist whose glory had waned; certainly he had time to pick up the slack at home. Hadn’t those been her beliefs? How faithless had she been to the truths of her heart, to the truths that lay bare before her, in thinking that way?