The tall, slender replica of Brandi shrugged as she come into the room and dropped onto the love seat with an iPod in hand. “Don’t know. She wasn’t on the bus.”
“And you didn’t think that was strange? You’re supposed to come in together.”
Simone draped a jean-clad leg over the arm of the love seat and didn’t look up. “Well, I’m where I’m supposed to be,” she said, voice laced with sarcasm. “Hey, she’s got her life and I’ve got mine. She’s ten years old and able to keep up with herself. I am not my sister’s keeper.”
Tanya snatched the iPod. “Technically, you are. Did you think about the fact that maybe something could’ve happened to her?”
“Like what?” Simone spat back. “She’s too fat and stupid for anyone to want her for anything.”
“That’s real insensitive coming from her own sister,” Tanya said, appalled at the girl’s nasty tone. “I hope you don’t say that where she can hear you.”
Simone’s angry brown eyes shot daggers. “She knows she’s fat and her grades say she’s stupid. What’s it to you, Blondie?”
Tanya gasped at the blatant disrespect. She had never seen either girl act this way and was sure that Brandi didn’t tolerate such behavior. “What you’re not saying is that she’s caring and kind, and she loves you,” Tanya replied. “Now where is she?”
The feisty little girl looked up—eyes just like her mother’s—staring at Tanya in silence.
“Your mother’s gonna kill you.”
Simone shrugged. “If she’s ever home long enough to try.”
Tanya ran to the phone, glancing out of the window just as a strange moving van pulled off.
Tanya glared at the defiant girl waiting impatiently for Brandi’s assistant to answer. Finally! “Renee, is Brandi in her office?”
“She has asked not to be disturbed. May I ask who’s calling?” Renee asked, almost spitting out the words.
“Tell her it’s, um, her wi—” Tanya caught herself just in time. “Tell her it’s Tanya, and it’s urgent. Her daughter didn’t show up after school today.”
Suddenly Renee sounded as panicky as Tanya. “Oh, she had to make a run downtown. Do you have her cell number?’
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Thanks.”
Seconds clicked by as Tanya dialed several times and it went to voice-mail. Simone tried to get up from the sofa, but Tanya grabbed her before she got away, and pushed her back down.
Finally Brandi picked up. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Sierra didn’t come home from school today. Simone walked in but her sister wasn’t with her.”
Brandi gasped. “Did you call the school?”
“That was my next move, but I wanted to call you first.”
“I’m on my way home. Call me back if anything happens.”
Tanya quickly dialed the principal’s office. She didn’t bother with formalities. “Have you seen Sierra Caldwell-Spencer?”
“Her bus pulled off twenty minutes ago. She should be home by now.”
“She didn’t make it to the bus. Can you have someone check the grounds?”
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
Simone propped her legs on the freshly dusted coffee table, a soft liquid smile on her thinly curved lips as she stared at Tanya. The girl’s face was a blend of Brandi and Vernon, but that steely, stubborn determination in her eyes belonged solely to Brandi.
So would her ass if she didn’t start talking.
Tanya took a long, slow breath. “I know this whole situation must be hard on you, being the oldest and all, but you can’t take things out on Sierra.” Tanya softened her tone. “Your mother says you’ve always looked out for your little sister. Sierra looks up to you. She even tries to buy clothes like you and do her hair like yours. You’re her role model and don’t even realize how important you are to her.”
Simone’s head whipped up, lips pursed in a thin, hard line. She folded her arms over developing little breasts.
“She loves you and you don’t even speak to her sometimes.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What do you know about us? Daddy said you won’t be here long no matter what Mommy says. You’re on your way out.” She picked up the iPod again. “So why do I have to answer to you?”
“You don’t, but I’m sure your parents taught you to be respectful. I’m sure they taught you and your sister to look out for each other.”
“Yeah, well, their stuff’s messed up, too.”
Tanya opened her mouth to speak and shut it just as quickly.
Damn, the girl did have a point.
CHAPTER Twenty-Four
“God, why is this happening now? Why now? Please, Lord, protect my little girl.” If there was a God, how could He have let this happen? Brandi wondered, hoping the Creator would hear her even though she hadn’t set foot in a church since she was thirteen.
Brandi grabbed the handheld from the receptionist and sprinted toward the elevator. She placed a quick call to Renee. “Go home Renee, we’ll do this tomorrow.”
“You want me to stick around just in case she calls here?”
“No, they’ll call my cell if anything happens.”
Brandi reached the marble-encased lobby, punched the silver button three times, as if that would make the elevator come faster. Where was her little girl?
She got on, flicking a quick glance at a man wearing a plaid shirt and corduroys, then to another tall, tattoo-riddled man with a long beard, and a bald head, and minus any type of deodorant. His menacing green eyes seemed to bore straight through her, sweeping aside her fear for a brief moment and making her uneasy.
Punching the button for the lobby, she turned to face the little display screen showing quick bites of today’s news and stock quotes, and said a quick prayer. She had trusted a total stranger with her children and look what happened! The Polish woman who kept an eye on the kids for a couple of hours every day and cleaned the house had to quit because of her arthritis. She hadn’t had time to replace Mariska, and she had become consumed with Vernon and Tanya. Actually, Tanya couldn’t have come at a better time. But then again, maybe Brandi was paying for her role in this unfolding saga.
As the traffic and weather splashed across the screen, the elevator came to a screeching halt between floors eighty-two and eighty-three. All three occupants managed, with great effort, to keep their balance. The little screen went blank. The lights dimmed, died out, then flickered back on, all within a matter of seconds. The sudden whirr of the overhead mechanisms shrieked and whined momentarily. Then all was quiet. Trapped on an elevator? Exactly what she needed!
“Shit! I wish they’d get this fucking thing fixed. This is the fifth fucking time this fucking month,” the man in the plaid shirt muttered.
Brandi turned to him. “You know, there are other words besides profanity.”
She opened the gold door near the bottom of the elevator, yanked out the phone, keeping a wary eye on Mr. Plaid.
“Well, right now it fits the fucking situation.”
“Yeah,” the bearded one said, his raspy voice echoing in the elevator’s tiny space. “I think hell and damnation would be a pretty good way of stating the obvious.” He leveled a steely gaze on Brandi. “Especially since they haven’t fixed the fucking phone in this thing.”
Brandi, already filled with worry, barely hung on to her temper. She replaced the phone and frantically reached in her briefcase and tried her cell, but of course—no signal. Where was Sierra? The one who reminded her so much of herself—sure the girl was carrying around a few extra pounds, but her open smile and willingness to do anything to help people reminded Brandi of how she used to be before she was raped.
Her baby girl! She prayed that what had happened to her at thirteen would never happen to her little girls—ever. It was one of the reasons she had been so adamant about not having children. The world was not safe for little girls. Come to think of it, little boys didn’t get off so easy, e
ither.
A quick glance over the bearded man’s body made her wince and clutch her case. Glaring back at her as though to taunt anyone’s religious beliefs were tattoos on both arms stating the devil rules, a skull and bones on his upper chest, and a dirty shirt with the slogan: There’s enough Satan to go around, have you tried him on for size? Suppose someone like him had gotten to her daughter. Oh God!
The combination of the man’s odor, his disdain for positive reflection, worry for her daughter, stress, and a sleepless night worrying over the business were too much. She closed her eyes, sending up a fevered and heartfelt prayer. As her whispers grew louder with each plea to God to protect her child, and to shield her from the poor man and his love for Satan, the bearded smelly one roared with laughter. “Peddle it somewhere else, Nigger, we’re not buying today.”
“And I’m not selling,” she snapped, ending her prayer. “I refuse to be locked up in this little silver cell with someone who thinks that Satan rules over the Creator and still thinks Black people can be that word.” She flexed her fists. “And if you don’t back up, I’m gonna ram this briefcase up your ass and follow it with my size elevens to make sure it stays put.”
“Ouch!” Mr. Plaid Shirt said, coming to stand between them. When the Satanist moved back, the Plaid man slumped down to the thin carpet. “I don’t think either one of you have a leg to stand on. I don’t believe in God.” Then he turned to the grinning bearded man. “Sorry, dude, I don’t believe in Satan, either. And as for the N-word, only African-Americans are supposed to call each other that now,” he said, giving Brandi a sly grin.
Brandi bristled with anger, but being outnumbered she wisely kept her mouth shut.
The tattooed man’s smile vanished almost as fast as it appeared. He joined the other fellow on the floor, leaving Brandi standing in righteous annoyance as her reflection bounced off the silver walls, trying to ignore the two men, and keep a prayer line open to God, one that she hadn’t tapped into since she’d been a little girl.
“Well, you have to believe in one or the other, man,” he said. “It’s not fair to straddle the fence.”
“I don’t and there’s nothing that has happened in my life to make me feel otherwise.”
“Only white people can afford not to believe in the Creator,” Brandi said. “We’ve had nothing but God on our side.” This from a woman who hadn’t offered up a prayer before today—maybe a quick grace and not much more—in years. What a hypocrite! Brandi thought.
“For all the help it did bringing your kind over here.”
“Yeah? And I’m sure your kind had a lot to do with that. That wasn’t about God, that was about greed in the guise of Christianity. Nowhere did Jesus condone slavery or the mistreatment of women. Nor did he state that men were supposed to rule over them. All were equal—male and female, Jew and Gentile. Those who bathe and those who don’t know what soap and water are,” she said, leveling a stony gaze at the bald one, whose armpits, with the increased heat in the elevator, had suddenly kicked in to Level II funk. She put her collar over her nose.
Mr. Plaid Shirt folded his scrawny arms over his chest, daring either one of them to say anything more. Right now God and her child were all Brandi could think about.
Mr. Tattoo glanced up at Brandi. “Let’s see if we can persuade him to pick a side. I’m game if you are.”
Brandi hated small spaces with a passion. With each passing moment, the air seemed to become heavier and more humid. Her heart had jumped into her throat, clogging any ability to speak. She shrugged absently, not caring one way or another, continuing to pray for Sierra inwardly, and gestured for him to continue. Anything to take her mind off the increasing heat and the smell that became stronger by the minute.
“Maybe you haven’t been given a good argument,” Mr. Tattoo said. “What I—”
At that moment, the elevator lurched downward, throwing Brandi to the floor. Her heart did a solid flip and skipped a few beats. Mr. Plaid Shirt took a quick succession of fearful breaths as his eyes darted around the elevator car. The bald one reached for the metal bars, bracing for the obvious. The trio had no time to recover as the elevator picked up speed, whizzing past seventy, then sixty-five, then sixty at a pace any race-car driver would envy.
Brandi bowed her head in another prayer for her child and added only a brief one for herself.
The bald, smelly one grunted, knuckles growing white as he gripped the silver railing.
Mr. Plaid Shirt clutched a tattered briefcase to his chest, glancing warily at Baldy, then to Brandi, as both men began, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”
CHAPTER Twenty-Five
Vernon grinned as he hung up the phone. A frantic call from Tanya signaled trouble in paradise. She’d already failed at keeping the girls safe. A hushed call from his youngest daughter had set things in motion. Maybe he’d be able to go home sooner than he expected.
Vernon cased his mother’s house like a hardened criminal all afternoon. Damn, this wasn’t the time for her to take a vacation. He needed her! But he knew he would have to beg for help. He really hadn’t stayed in touch as much as he should have after the divorce. If he had, his father would have stopped the cash flow faster than a hooker cleans up for the next customer. A shame for her to have almost five thousand square feet to herself, he thought as he looked at the house as though he’d never really seen it.
The house had five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a solarium with an indoor pool leading out into the garden. His father had fought like hell in court for every square inch. However, Mama fought back in a vicious move fielded by Avie Davidson that laid his father on his back.
Bettye Spencer walked away with the house, two cars, a lump sum, the house in Florida, and a monthly stipend that made his father lose two years of his life every time he signed the check. Although Avie was Brandi’s lawyer, too, Vernon would make sure that what happened to his parents never happened to him. Brandi would end this foolishness and he would tuck his tail and go home. He could wait her out. Everything would blow over. He was sure of it.
Vernon had had enough. His father, Jeremy, Craig, and a few other friends had rejected him. He’d spent the last of his cash on a seedy motel, and the U-Haul late fees were still mounting. Never in his life had he slept with tissue in his ears and nose, and his mouth turned into the pillow. He didn’t even want to think about what could crawl into his mouth or what was growing in the mattress or that nasty carpet.
He cracked open a little used basement window, climbed into his mother’s house, unlocked the basement door, and scurried to deactivate the alarm.
Within three hours, he’d moved his stuff into the basement, hung his clothes in his old room, and lay resting on the couch, showered and totally refreshed, finally feeling a sense of peace, and ready for a serious power nap.
Home, sweet home.
♥♥♥
A shriek jerked him out of a sound sleep.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
“Mama, it’s me!” he said, jumping up when he realized Mama was packing a twenty-two. Where the hell had she gotten that?
She lowered the gun just a little. “How did you get in here? You don’t have a key.”
“Well, I um—I—um, broke a windowpane downstairs, then climbed through. I’ll have it fixed tomorrow.”
She dropped her hand, then retrieved her bag from the doorway. “Doesn’t explain why you did it.”
Vernon sprinted across the living room to help with a suitcase that was large enough to hold a dead body or two.
Mama’s golden brown complexion had turned a deeper shade of tan. Her eyebrows were arched in symmetric lines. Her thin lips had a bit of plum gloss—a color he had never known her to wear. Who was this new man? And what was Mama doing in the Bahamas with him?
He leaned over to kiss her. “You look great!” And in the next breath added, “I need a place to stay.”
“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” she snapped, wav
ing him and his kiss away.
“But all my stuff’s already inside.”
She pursed her thin lips, cocked her neck, parted her lips, and told him, “You didn’t ask.”
Vernon stared at her.
The expression on her round face was unchanged and unreadable. She pointed, gesturing toward him, then to the door.
Out? Oh shit! Nooooo!!!! His muscles were already aching from moving stuff in! “Mama, you can’t carry one of those,” he said, eyeing the gun in her other hand.
“Try telling that to Mrs. Steele,” she snapped.
“What happened to her?”
Bettye leaned back on the wall separating the foyer from the living room. “Burglar caught her off guard.”
Vernon spread his hands in protest. “I’m not a burglar.”
“Broke in, didn’t you?”
An hour later, he had everything in the U-Haul again, then knocked on the front door.
The silver-haired, graceful woman with a fresh tan that a supermodel would envy opened the door and stood menacingly in the door frame.
“Mama, can I stay with you for a while?”
“Why didn’t you go to your father?”
“I did, but—”
She cut him off with a raised hand. “He didn’t want you hanging around Julie.”
Vernon gaped. Was Dad that easy to figure out?
Mama laughed. “Wafer-thin heifer might like the younger player better than the washed-up, wrinkled version.” She folded her arms over her small chest, hair glistening from the foyer light. “One month. Tops.”
Vernon’s mouth went dry, his heart sank. “One month!” Hell, it might take Brandi longer than that.
“And you’ll have a midnight curfew.”
“Mama, I’m a grown man,” he protested.
Leaning forward, she whispered, “Then your grown ass can stay somewhere else. You’ve got a lot of nerve to ask me for a damn thing after taking your father’s side in the divorce.”
“Mama, he would’ve cut me off if I stayed here.”
Every Woman Needs a Wife Page 16