Breathing Black

by Piper Payne

  “Hey, it’s okay.” June stepped closer to me, rubbing my shoulder sympathetically as I began to shake. “Take a breath. I don’t need you going all panic attack on me. If there is anything you can’t handle, just tell me and I’ll come over and look through it.” She brushed a curtain of cobwebs away and flipped on the light. With a determined look on her face she said, “I’ll take this side and you take that side. Let’s look for … Oh God, we don’t even have a clue what we’re looking for!” I let out a strangled laughed. This was ridiculous!

  Three hours later I’d only had one major panic attack when I opened a boxed that had Little Bird written in black Sharpie. It was empty. And that’s exactly the way it made me feel. It was symbolic. There were no traces of my life in here because I had no life. I only existed as a daughter she never wanted and never loved.

  I thought I’d blocked out these memories, but as I continued, every box I opened was like slicing into an old, festering wound. I may have let my wounds scab, but I’d obviously never let them heal.

  “If I have to look through anymore of her ‘divorce boxes’ I may need to see a shrink daily.” I’d forgotten about half of these men. It was like she was the serial killer of love. I actually felt bad for a couple of them. The rest, I wanted to find, douse them in kerosene, and light them on fire. These boxes contained her winnings from each man she’d been with—a trophy case of mementos. Funny how in the end she had nothing to show from any of it.

  We found boxes and bags of clothes, lingerie and sex toys, dishes, garbage, Christmas decorations, an old popcorn maker, a stack of Playgirl magazines from the 1980s, a dresser, and gardening supplies—or at least that was what June thought it was until I corrected her explaining cannabis cultivation. I didn’t even know she had some of this stuff. Half was already here when we found the place and the rest we packed up from my apartment and threw inside. I never wanted any of it.

  “I really fucking hate Nancy right now,” June said, sorting through a garbage bag of financial statements. “Let’s just light a match. Then NO ONE will find whatever it is we’re looking for.”

  “Ask me in a couple more hours and I might agree with that plan.”

  Another three hours passed and we still hadn’t found it. The sun was setting and we were dirty, freezing, and starving. We were almost finished. We had three more large piles to look through. I’d flipped through every page of every book, thinking that would be a good place to hide a piece of paper you didn’t want anyone to find. I checked every pocket of every item of clothing thinking maybe it was a USB flash drive or something. Every drawer opened, every nook and cranny looked through. If I were Nancy where would I hide something?

  We kept searching but most of the remaining things crammed in the back were all of her drug paraphernalia and a box of her childhood belongings. As I searched through the last box I realized I had no idea who my mother was. There were old, worn photos of her with friends when she was younger. She was always smiling and looked healthy and beautiful. Years of drug and alcohol use had changed her. Brittle and thin hair, underweight, and her skin was sometimes yellow with sores. There was a photo of her with her parents, whom I had never met, standing on an Air Force base. Her father was dressed in uniform and her mother held her small shoulders, each standing there happily. She had academic achievements awards from school and piano sheet music with comments from her teachers saying how brilliantly she played. The mother I knew was nothing like these pictures and papers described. Something changed her.

  After I finished searching through the last box I lay on the floor, exhausted. There was no way we were going to find it if we didn’t even know what it was.

  “FUCK!” I screamed, defeated, slamming my hands on the cold ground.

  We had a half an hour left and there was nothing more to look through. I couldn’t even pretend to look around and think of any other places it could be hidden or stashed. I sat up and looked over at June. Her deflated face and slack shoulders told me she felt the same way.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here and never come back.” I got off the floor, reaching my hand out to help her up.

  “You sure? We can come back tomorrow and do it all again if you want.”

  The laugh that came out of my mouth sounded like a crazy person. “I’m positive. Let’s go and try to figure out what we do now.”

  We shoved what’d spilled out of the unit back inside and started to close the door before we realized that the mattress from Hell was still sitting outside.

  Now June let out a crazy laugh. “Agh! Can’t we catch a break? It’s not going to fit back inside!”

  “Here, hold the mattress and I’ll start shoving things toward the back to make room.”

  I started picking up Nancy’s belongings, chucking them to the back of the unit. The more I threw things the angrier I got. I didn’t ever want to come back here again! Nancy had ruined my life, and even after her death she continued to destroy it! Everything was an ugly reminder of a life I tried to forget. A life that was as empty as the box that had my name on it. That was all I ever was to her, and all I wanted was for her to love me. I screamed and a sob broke from my mouth as I grabbed her pictures and threw them as hard as I could across the unit, spilling them into the air. Tears ran down my face as I grabbed dishes, lamps—anything breakable—and started shattering them. I took a knife from the kitchen box and started hacking into the mattress, a motion that felt murderous. I was scaring June, and quite frankly I was scaring myself. My ears rang as I collapsed to my knees finally giving into my sadness. June took the knife out of my hand and I could hear it fly through the air and land somewhere inside the pile of destroyed memories. I wiped my face trying to control the horrible sounds that came from my mouth.

  “Let’s go, Larkin. You never have to come back here again. I promise.” I stood up and helped her push the mattress inside but as we were sliding the door closed I stopped.

  “Wait.” I pressed the door up just enough to get back inside to flip the light back on.

  June held the door above her head as I ran my fingers over the slices I’d made in the mattress. I dug and found another knife from the kitchen box and came back and stood in front of it. I didn’t know what made me do it, I didn’t know if I even really believed something could be in there, but I started pulling back and cutting the layers of sliced mattress until I got to the springs. When I saw it I just stood there in disbelief.

  “You girls almost finished out here? We’re closing up in a few minutes.” I threw the fold of the mattress down and stood in front of it, hiding my trembling hands behind my back, clenching the knife.

  “Just finishing up,” June said anxiously, trying to block him from looking inside.

  “Alright, just hurry up and make sure you lock up tight.” The security guard turned back around with his flashlight and walked away.

  “Holy shit!” June threw the rolling door up all the way and walked over beside me. We both stood there, mouths slightly opened and wide eyed.

  I opened the mattress up again; it was like cracking open a smoker’s rib cage—black and rotted. Wrapped inside sat a large heavy-duty black duffle bag in the center of the mattress. June pried open the twisted springs as I grabbed the bag trying to force it out.

  “This has to weigh at least sixty pounds!” I grunted, my fingers clutching the straps trying to pull it free. It took us a couple minutes, but after one hard yank landing me flat on my ass we finally got it out.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’m too scared to open it. I’m scared to know what it is.”

  It was almost midnight when we pulled off the highway. We’d both been paranoid since we left the storage unit. I kept looking in the rearview mirror thinking someone was following us, but eventually we were the only ones on the road. We were half way back to Utah, but there was no way either one of us could drive through the night so we decided to check in at another random motel so we could rest.

  Once we got to
our room with our vending machine dinners consisting of stale chips and warm sodas, we collapsed onto the disgusting trucker bed and tried to fall asleep. Neither one of us wanted to be the one to open the bag; we knew once we opened it there was no going back so we chose to wait.

  An hour passed as I stared out the window at the flickering vacancy sign. I felt June roll toward me, her wet cheek soaking the shoulder of my shirt as she rested her head on me trying to sleep. Her hair was so dirty and dusty I could barely smell her sweet baby powder scent.

  “Lark, can you sing to me?” June whispered.

  “I thought you were doing better with that?” I searched for her hand underneath the sheets and grasped it in concern.

  “I was. I mean I am. It’s just … Landon brought back Aspen for me too, you know. I just don’t have my normal routine here to go to sleep and I …”

  “What do you want me to sing?” I asked softly.

  “Anything.” She let out a sigh.

  She fell asleep to the lyrics of Liz Lawrence’s “Bathroom Spoons.”

  “What are you doing?” June said groggily, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun shining in through the torn and battered motel curtains. I’d been sitting cross-legged on the bed with the duffle bag in front of me, staring at it for the past hour. It was as if I was staring at Pandora’s box knowing that I had no choice but to open it. I knew the moment I unzipped that bag my life would change. Everything would be different. All I could think about was that this stupid bag was the reason Landon came into my life and I hated that a tiny part of me was grateful for it, even though it had caused me so much pain. I pictured myself on Landon’s doorstep offering it up in sacrifice for my heart.

  June pushed her sleep tangled hair out of her face. “You’re going to make yourself go mad.”

  “What if this changes everything? I don’t want to regret what I find.”

  “Lark, there is a 99.9 percent chance you aren’t going to like what you find. It’s your mom’s.”

  “You’re right.” I swallowed the meager amount of saliva left in my mouth.

  My whole stomach was sick in suspense, rolling in waves like I’d eaten something bad. I grabbed the zipper and slowly opened the bag. That was the easy part. Bringing myself to look inside was a lot harder, but once I did I sat there in shock.

  Stacks of hundred dollar bills, all bundled and wrapped in neat increments stared back at me. I reached in and pulled out a large stack to show June.

  “Holy shit!” She threw off the sheets and crawled over to me.

  I almost didn’t dare touch the contents, but I knew I needed to see if there was anything else inside. As I started pulling out the wads of cash the numbers started to roll into my head. Every stack was a hundred thousand dollars. So as I laid each one on the bed I kept counting higher and higher. June was counting right along with me. I don’t know how long it took, but as I finished pulling out the last of the cash I had counted almost three million dollars. At the bottom of the bag there was a sealed manila envelope with something inside. I broke the seal and pulled out a videotape.

  “Larkin what are we going to do?” She gasped.

  I had no clue. The Blacks would wipe their rich asses with three million dollars so it couldn’t be the money they were after. It was the tape.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there is no way we can go back home. Whoever was trying to get into your storage unit is going to quickly figure out we’ve found what they’ve been looking for and they’ll come after us. You know it.”

  She was right. It was only a matter of time before we’d find out just how desperate Landon and his father, Franklin, were to get this tape. We agreed we wouldn’t touch a dime of the money in the bag. As far as we knew, it was blood money, and without knowing what was on the tape we might end up having to go to the authorities. My mom was not above lying, cheating, stealing, and even murder to get what she wanted. We couldn’t go home and I was too scared to show up at Max or Austin’s house because I didn’t want them involved.

  As we drove and took the exit into Salt Lake, we realized we had to make a decision.

  “We can stay at the shelter we used to stay at on 9th?”

  June gave me a disgusted look. “I’m not going to a shelter! I didn’t work my ass off just to end up back where we started,” she exclaimed.

  “Well, I’ve already pooled our cash together and we don’t have enough for another night at a motel.” I smoothed out crumpled dollars bills on my knee trying to make a pile. “If we could just run home really quick I could grab our emergency stash.”

  “No way, its too risky until we figure out what we’re up against.” She twisted her lips and tapped her hands nervously on the steering wheel, “Okay, I know where we can go, but I need you to trust me.”

  “Okay, where?”

  “You just have to trust me. No questions. Just trust me.”

  I honestly had no idea where we were going. And since I’d been horrible at making decisions and trusting my instincts lately, I’d follow her wherever she wanted to go.

  At sunset we pulled up to a small, gray bungalow in the Salt Lake avenues. The home had white trim and columns, black shutters, and I smiled at the red door and large front porch that had a bench swing looking out into the neighborhood. I’d always wanted one of those. The neighborhood was nice. It had large trees lining each side of the street and you could tell in the summer they branched out over the road shading the neighborhood.

  June got out of the car, I grabbed the duffle bag, and we walked up the sidewalk toward the porch. “Just don’t be pissed,” she said as she rang the doorbell. That meant I’d be completely pissed off and she knew it. I didn’t have time to argue because I could hear footsteps already heading toward us.

  The red door unlocked and slowly creaked open. “Um, hey. What are you guys doing here?” His voice was confused, dragging out the words, trying to comprehend why the hell we were standing on his doorstep. He ran his hand through his brown and golden tousled hair, leaning against the doorframe.

  I felt capsized. It took me a second to compose myself, to physically pick my jaw up off the floor when Jesse White opened the door without a shirt. Yup, I was going to kill June.

  “Hey, Jesse,” June finally said with uncertainty. I guess I shouldn’t say finally; she spoke right when he answered the door. It was just that everything registered in slow motion since I’d been completely blindsided. “I hope this isn’t a bad time?” she asked, twisting her pearl necklace with a sweet smile.

  “Well, that depends. What’s up?”

  “You know the night when we happened to save your best friend Aaron’s life, and you said to me, if you could ever repay us or do us a favor to let you know? Well, I’m cashing in that favor. We need a place to crash for the night. Well … maybe a couple nights.”

  He just stood there staring at the two of us like he didn’t know what to do. It was mortifying and awkward. Then a half a second later we heard a woman’s voice panting. “Jesse, hurry up! I’m so fucking wet for you—”

  Then I bolted. I turned around and ran like the house was on fire. It may not have been my most rational or mature moment, but I was prepared to sleep behind a dumpster at this point.

  “Wait!” I heard him yell as I was seconds away from the car door. June stopped in between the house and the car chasing after me. “Just give me a second and you guys can come in and stay. I wasn’t expecting any visitors so you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

  He walked back inside and I marched up to June, going completely dramatic female on her.

  “Are you crazy?” I shrieked.

  “He owed us a favor and it was the only person’s house I could think of that no one would suspect us to be at!”

  “How did you even know where he lived?”

  “Austin and I dropped him off after we were at the hospital with Aaron.”

  I knew it made sense
for us to stay at Jesse’s, but I still didn’t care. We sat there yelling back and forth until I heard Jesse clear his voice at the doorway. “Sorry about that. You can come in now.”

  I knew I’d lost. She kept throwing things into our argument about Max and Austin’s safety and being able to stay somewhere inconspicuous until we figured things out. She started walking inside his house while he held the door open. I finally swore lots of expletives under my breath and followed her inside.

  I walked through his living room and was immediately and irritatingly impressed. I didn’t want to be, but I was. It looked like a guy’s home with the large flat screen television and electronics. His shelves were full of colorful records and music, and he had few instruments set aside by his fireplace and a comfortable looking gray couch. The interior had a few open brick walls. They were painted white in the living room, but in the kitchen there was one accent wall that was red brick next to all of the stainless steel appliances. The floors were wood and looked like they were refinished and may have been the original floors in the house.

  I would buy this house. Everything from the quiet, friendly neighborhood to the perfect porch, brick walls, and the stupid climbing vines wrapping around his garage. I could picture them in the summer growing green and twisting up the siding. I loved everything about it.

  “I only have one guest room with a single bed so one of you is going to have to take the couch.” He came walking out of the guest room with a few blankets and pillows.

  “Take the room,” I said to June. I knew she had to get up really early and work a twelve hour shift.

  “Are you sure? You didn’t even sleep last night.”

  “I’m sure.” We both looked exhausted. June had bags under her eyes so dark it looked like she’d been in a fistfight.