Broken Seed

by R J Machado De Quevedo

I sat on the edge of my couch, sipping my lemonade, wrapped up in my fuzziest throw blanket and comfiest slippers. Dexter was curled up, purring next to my thigh in a tight fluffy ball. I sat glued to the TV with anticipation. The news anchor had mentioned a brief statement about the shocking disruption at a local Elk Grove restaurant this evening, and of course, they had immediately cut to a commercial. How typical.

  My right knee was bouncing like a dribbling basketball as I sat impatiently waiting to hear their presentation of the story. What had they uncovered, and what would their interpretation of what had happened be? How could they possibly explain it? And who did they find to interview? David hadn’t mentioned seeing any news reporters there. And since I had been in the bathroom in a time warp for well over an hour, I hadn’t seen half of what he had told me had happened.

  When I had arrived home this evening, I went straight up to my room. I stopped outside my bedroom in shock. The splintered, busted door had been replaced with a thick, solid oak door. Even the door frame had been replaced and appeared to be reinforced to accommodate the new thicker, heavier door. A sheet of lavender floral designed stationary was taped to the outside of my new door with a note neatly scribed in Elisabeth’s hand writing.

  Mel, I am so sorry! I felt so terrible all day. I made some calls and found a highly recommended repairman willing to meet me after his regular business hours to put in a new door before you’d get home from work tonight. It’s the least I could do. I even tested it. Yes, I kicked it. Hard! Nearly broke my ankle. Didn’t even make a dent! No one will be getting through this door. Not even me. Again, I hope you can forgive me. The key is on your night stand, and you have an extra chain lock near the top inside the room. I hope you’ll feel safe there. Even from me. I love you.

  —Your BFF, Lizzy

  I read the note twice before I opened the heavy door and slipped inside my room. It closed with a satisfying click and solid thunk. We had already talked on the phone and made up, but she had still wanted to make it right in every way she could. I touched the door affectionately, feeling her apology in the strong wood and her love in her note.

  After playing with my new locks a few times and hitting the door with my hand to hear how solid it sounded and felt, I began to undress. I picked out my jammies before heading to the shower. I had too much excitement tonight not to want to scrub myself down. After having been intensely sexually aroused a few times, having an outbreak of feverish cold sweats and tremors, throwing up and sitting on the bathroom floor at work, I really, really needed to decontaminate myself head to toe in the shower with a good, hard scrubbing. At least, it would clean off the physical slime I felt. Hopefully.

  I was planning on holing up in my room afterward and trying to open the book, but had decided to come downstairs for a late dinner snack before I got cracking at it. I was eager to look at the book again, but my stomach was complaining too loudly to be able to focus. And since I had emptied everything out of it I’d eaten in the past month, well, food sounded unbelievably good right now.

  Comfort food, Mel. It’s just comfort food.

  Do you ever get like that? So hungry, you feel like you’re going to implode if you don’t eat in the next sixty seconds and you can’t focus on anything until you do? No? Well, maybe it’s from not having enough food growing up because your father is a violent drunk who only works half the year because he didn’t have any meaningful ambitions in life.

  However, since he was forced to have a job of some kind to pay for his beer and his hunting or fishing expeditions, he chose long haul truck driving. He only took the jobs that offered him lots of money and had the longest treks. But as you can imagine, he was such a combative, brawling, sexually harassing jerk he didn’t get a lot of callbacks for jobs.

  When he did have a job or was on an out-of-state delivery, it was like Christmas for us, but Christmas with hardly any food in the house. He was so controlling, only he was allowed to do the food shopping, and when he wasn’t there to buy what we needed, nothing was bought at all. You were left to get creative or starve. So not only are you dealing with your hunger pains, but to top it off, you’re afraid to admit you’re hungry or need anything at all for that matter for fear of being smacked into the wall and sent to your room hungry anyway.

  Well, I was hungry tonight, whether it was from a need to feel comforted in some carnal way, or the fact my body felt a bit shaky from all the spent adrenaline.

  After making myself a grilled cheese sandwich with pickles and sliced tomatoes, I grabbed some corn chips and a drink and walked off to the living room. I turned on the TV and ate my dinner. Then, there it was, a special news report interrupted the brainless sitcom I’d been watching with talk about a local restaurant in chaos and details to come about the shocking disturbance.

  Of course, they hadn’t mentioned Kate’s Café by name yet, but what else could they be referring to?

  Oh, I don’t know. How about a well-known restaurant with a good reputation who’s been around for a long time, such as ours, where all the employees flipped out on each other, got into a brawl, and took some of the customers down with them? Now, that might warrant landing a special report and interrupting the scheduled program. Besides, no one would dare interrupt a popular sitcom unless it was important. One of the actors might tweet about it, ya know…

  Anxious, I got up and refilled my glass with some more lemonade from the fridge and put my plate in the sink. As I glanced back at the TV in the living room, the little red blinking light of the answering machine caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed it when I had been making my dinner. Food had been my focus then.

  “Do I want to listen to you right now?” I mumbled.

  I probably should. It might be Liz checking to see if I was safely home. She would most likely have called my cell phone too if I hadn’t answered at the house, but she hadn’t. Maybe she was trying to show me she trusted my ability to take care of myself after our argument earlier today.

  That reminded me, someone had tried to call my cell phone again earlier, too. I pulled my cell out of my jammie bottom pocket and looked at the missed call log.

  “Unknown number. Figures. I hate that,” I grumbled. It couldn’t have been too important since they didn’t leave a message.

  I glanced back up at the TV to make sure I wouldn’t miss the story. A commercial had started about car insurance, so I knew I’d have at least a minute or two more to listen to the new message.

  I reached over and pushed the Play button right as I had the thought, What if it was him again? I still didn’t know how he had gotten my number in the first place when he’d left me a message today. I hadn’t spoken to him in years.

  “One new message. Received today at 6:17 p.m.,” the automated female voice of the answering machine said melodically.

  “Melo, hey, it’s me again, your father. I called you hours ago, girl. Why haven’t you called me back like I told ya? Don’t make me wait around like that again. What, you think I get a lot of opportunities to chat in here or some’in’? It took a lot for my cell mate to get this phone smuggled in here. Listen to me. I need you to do some’in for me. You have to come pick me up tomorrow at noon outside the visitor’s gate at Folsom. That’s when I’m get- ting released from this shit hole. Bring me some money too. Two hundred dollars to start. That should get me back home and some better clothes, I think. Well, unless I come stay with you. Get to know each other again.” He said know with a suggestive swagger to his voice. I felt sick.

  “Yeah, I like the sound of that. Come stay with you for a few days, and then, you can drive me back home.” My father coughed and mumbled something to someone who must have been nearby before continuing his message. “Oh yeah, and bring me new tennis shoes, size 10. None of those cheapie shoes neither. Look, Melanie. I know you don’t much care for me, but I am your father, and you will do what I tell ya to do. You hear me? If you don’t call me back or, at the very least, be here on time to pick me up tomorrow, you’re going to make me r
eal angry. I know you don’t want your old man to be unhappy now do you? Besides, you owe me. You owe me big. You haven’t come to visit me once since you moved out and not once since I’ve been in here.” He broke off again. I heard someone mumble something to him again.

  “Eh, like my friend here says, maybe you didn’t know nothing about me being falsely accused and sent to prison and all that. But you know, you should’ve tried to find me at least. It is the duty of a faithful daughter after all. Well, I ain’t one to put much stock in that God garbage your mama used to ramble on about, but I do feel pretty damn lucky to be gettin’ out a whole seven years early. Thank God for no budget and overcrowded prisons, eh?” He laughed a creepy satisfied chuckle.

  “Hey, Melo? I can’t wait to see you, girl. I bet you look real pretty all grown up now and mature and all. Hope you got more of your mama’s body than your squealing sister. At least, your mama had some meat on her bones and some puff in her fun bags. You grow any yet? Well, guess I’ll have to wait and see for myself. Hmmm. Can’t wait. Call me.”

  Before he hung up, he rattled off the phone number, and I heard him mumble a sloppy “stupid cow” under his breath at the phone or rather at me. I stood staring at the answering machine, my palms were sweating and my knees felt weak. He had called me earlier this afternoon too, and it had nearly made me collapse and want to run and hide in my room with one of Elisabeth’s guns instead of going to work. But I had mustered up the courage to not let him cripple me with fear again.

  “No. No!” I yelled at the phone. “Who do you think you are?” I paced back and forth in the kitchen, thinking as hard as I could. He must have gotten my cell phone number too. Those missed calls on my cell were probably from him! I couldn’t be sure since the number had been blocked.

  “Oh, God. Oh, God.” I almost sobbed, my voice threatening to break as I fought myself not to go into hysterics. I would not cry. I would not!

  His message on the house answering machine earlier today had been a lot shorter. But it hadn’t been any easier to listen to. He had growled into the phone in a hushed whisper. “Melanie, this is your father. Glad to hear ya voice again after all this time even on a recording. I’m even happier I finally found you. You’d be surprised how many Melanie Bishops there are in California. Had a feeling you’d still be in the state. Too much like your damn mother. Don’t like to stray too far from home, do you? Must be because you know you belong to me. My bitches don’t stray far.

  “Oh, before I forget, tell your roommate your father says hello. I haven’t forgotten how she took you away from me as soon as you was eighteen. You know you should’ve stayed here with me, don’t ya, Melo? Taken care of your old man. Well, enough of this small chat crap. Call me back. You got that? Call me, Melo.” He had rattled off the phone number and then hung up.

  “You bastard. You freaking bastard!” I shouted furiously to the empty kitchen. I paced back to the answering machine and looked down at it like it was the enemy.

  I hated it when he called me his little nickname Melo. His attempt at being clever was adding part of my first name with my middle name initial. It was also his way of reminding me I was quiet, weak, and under his domination.

  “I will not let you tell me what to do anymore! You do not control my life! Leave me alone!” I screamed at the machine.

  Dexter meowed from the couch and popped his little head up to see what my problem was. He was too comfortable to come see for himself.

  “Don’t worry, Dexter. You won’t ever have to see that monster. And neither do I,” I said defiantly.

  How dare he even call me! How dare he try to barge into my life and tell me what to do after everything he had done to me— to my family! He hadn’t even bothered to ask how I was or what I was up to. For all he knew, I could be out of town on vacation. He knew from our outgoing message Elisabeth lived here too. But that hadn’t stopped him from talking to me the same way he always had, with a dominating cold tone in his voice and the pleasure of being cruel dripping off of him.

  Regardless, it was none of his business what I did, where I was or who I lived with. And even if hearing his voice did make me want to shrink into the corner of my closet and hide like I was four years old again, I wouldn’t do what he was ordering me to do. I wouldn’t call him back or go pick him up from the prison. I didn’t care if he did get angry at me. I wouldn’t let him control me anymore, and I wouldn’t be afraid of him anymore.

  I won’t!

  I gripped the counter and hung my head with my eyes closed. I took in several deep breaths and allowed myself to feel my lungs expand with oxygen and the pulse of my blood swaying my body ever so slightly. I was in control. I would remain calm. I wasn’t alone. I had the Lord. Even if I couldn’t see him, he was here with me.

  “Lord, please help me stay strong. Please help me not to let him affect me like this anymore. You touched me, Lord! You touched me, and I felt you healing me and breaking the power he had over me. You pulled out all the deadly roots of hate and pain and fear he had driven into me. Oh, God, help me not to hate him again. Help me not to fall back into that trap too. I can’t give him that power. I won’t give Satan that power either. Please Lord, protected Liz and I,” I fervently prayed with all my might, my eyes squeezed tight shut with effort to mean every word I prayed.

  I opened my eyes and looked back at the answering machine. It was just a machine. Not my enemy. Just the messenger. I let out a big sigh and straightened up. He might not be here to see me standing up strong and tall in defiance to him, but maybe he could feel it. I hoped so. I hoped he could feel it when the Lord had cut the twisted soul ties between us and set me free from his power. I wanted him to know he didn’t frighten me anymore. Well, okay, so he did. But I wouldn’t let him frighten me into submission or into mental paralyzation ever again.

  I didn’t erase the message he had left me earlier today or this newer one. I wanted to keep them. Not because I wanted to torture myself with the cruel, rough, and smoky sound of his voice that used to terrorize me as a child. No, it was so I could listen to it again and again until the sound of his voice no longer affected me. I would know he had lost his hold on me for good when his voice no longer frightened me through a recording.

  I also wanted Elisabeth to hear it. I wanted her to know he had found out what our home phone number was. She had a right to know. He had mentioned her after all. And I wanted her to hear how he had spoken to me. I needed to share it with someone. She was my someone. She knew almost everything there was to know about my childhood and my life with that monster. She’d understand exactly how I was feeling right now and why.

  Besides, I was sure she’d want to know how he found our number in the first place. We had an unlisted number, so I wasn’t sure how he’d done it. I never gave a forwarding phone number to anyone from Redding. I had cut my ties, gathered a few belongings, and ran. And I had changed my phone numbers every year and a half or so to be cautious. He’d never called until now that I knew of, so maybe it had worked for a while.

  What were the chances of having some of the grisliest people from my past “bumping” into me in the past two days?

  “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns in all the world, they walk into mine?” The old movie line ran through my head and I almost smiled.

  Weird time to make a joke, Melanie.

  Or maybe it was the perfect time. It’s hard to get swallowed by the darkness when you brighten up the dark corners with laughter and light.

  Just keep it light. Right. Easier said than done.

  There was nothing I could do about my father calling me after all. And I wasn’t going to obsess about it anymore. I’d talk to Elisabeth about it later and get her ideas about the how and what, if anything, she thought we should or could do. Maybe we could call the prison and tell them he was using a smuggled in cell phone illegally from inside his cell. Maybe it’d be enough for him not to get released tomorrow. It’d be worth a try!

  I felt a flush of lighth
earted glee at the thought of possibly keeping him in prison longer where he belonged. But it faded off after a moment as I sobered to the realization it may not be as easy as calling the prison to report him. They might need to hear the recording, take an official report and require a full investigation.

  Great, I thought dryly.

  I was starting to feel slightly numb, but I was going to hang in there. I wasn’t going to fall apart and that was a good thing. Numb can be better than raving mad with hysterics.

  Special Report

  Chapter Twelve

  “A gain, we’re sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming,” the anchor woman’s voice said, drawing me slightly away from my deep thoughts. “This is one story you may not believe unless you were there to actually see it. Mark Jerseyman has the story,” she continued, sounding amused in a professional, you’re-not-going-to-want-to-miss-this sort of way.

  Oh, thank God. A distraction. A distraction would be really good right now.

  I grabbed my lemonade and headed back over to the couch on autopilot. I sat down on the edge of the cushion and stared at the television, holding the cool glass between my knees, numbness tickling the edges of my awareness.

  Honestly, I didn’t know which was worse: what had happened tonight at the restaurant or getting two calls in the same day from my father, Dwayne. Maybe even more, if those unknown missed calls on my cell were from him too. It was as if he and Jared had planned this whole night. Hell, this whole day!

  No, it wasn’t Jared and my father who had orchestrated today’s mishaps and madness. Their master had. It was all planned, deployed, and carried out and sent straight from the pit of hell. When all the odds don’t stack up but the cards keep being played, someone is cheating. And I knew who it was: Satan.

  Aren’t I the lucky one?

  The scene on the TV switched from the well-groomed woman with her blond shoulder-length anchor woman’s haircut in her high-tech news studio to her co-anchor, Mark Jerseyman, who stood bundled up in his grey trench coat. He stood in front of a bright yellow X of crime scene tape that blocked the big old-fashioned oak and glass French doors and looked eager to get his story started.