She looked around at us to be certain we were clear on some point I’d missed entirely. Or was she lost, confused? It was hard to tell what her emotions where, her ancient face was sagging so profoundly.
“We finally defeated the British in October of 1781.” Hannah said with finality.
“Yes.” Victoria said, her voice full of tremors and doubt. “They were finally defeated. But it wasn’t until the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that the British formally abandoned their claims on the Colonies.
“Why I tell you all of this is because for the British, the Americans had kidnapped their colonies. The grievance was theirs to their way of thinking. We were attempting to steal their lands from them, not free them.”
And so we were back on topic. My phone rang again. I stood and moved the call into the bathroom this time.
“It’s definitely a Mexican gang Rache. We’re all in accord on this now.”
He meant from Mexico. So it was true, no longer just our supposition.
“How do they know?”
“They found the poor kid’s head. It’s been mutilated with the trademark cutting the Hidalgo Gang in Mexico uses.”
I didn’t want to hear. Hidalgo. They were vicious. They were cruel beyond sanity. I shuddered and leaned against the wall. Abigail. Oh, no.
“We have to find her, Matt! We have to.”
“We’re looking. Others are joining the search. We have about two hundred now, mostly parents, some cops. It’s growing. They can’t ignore the situation any longer.”
“What do you mean? Do you mean there’s no Amber Alert?” I said bitterly.
“Calm. You and I need to remain calm,” Matt said. It was his favorite line when neither of us felt calm and hell was breaking loose.
I was trying, but the wildness I’d seen in Gloria’s eyes earlier worried me. She had to be kept safely in this house. And yes, calm.
And I kept telling myself I was helping her by continuing to quilt with her. Then suddenly Matt’s voice changed, down an octave, and to a mixture of coffee grinds and honey, with some street-wise jalapeño tossed in.
“Mrs. Lyons, your man is right. You need to keep your mind calm. We will find your young friend and we will find her alive.”
Then Matt returned.
“That was Harks, he’s just arrived. I’ve got to go.”
When I returned to the quilt I overheard Elixchel asking, “Do you think maybe they’re going to take the three girls to Mexico? You know, to sell them?”
The terrifying question was left unanswered by my sudden return, or maybe she’d struck us all dumb by going there.
Chapter 68
No one asked me questions this time. I had pie flakes on my face, hopefully covering up my emotional turmoil. After ten minutes of silent sewing, the bravest woman in the room began to speak, although she had several stops and restarts.
“As my daughter’s representative, I tink ve should tell stories from our teen years. She vas so excited to share her story dis morning. I didn’t know vat it vas about, but…but…it vas trilling her no end dat she would share a virtual teen experience vith all you old people…as she put it. Anyway, I’ll begin vith mine.”
I fought the tears, swallowed hard, and blinked repeatedly trying to fan my tears dry, all with my head bowed sharply toward her quilt, praying I wouldn’t start a tidal wave of emotions by showing my own. Breathe. Breathe.
Andrea stood and walked toward the living room. A few minutes later she returned with some music flowing behind her like…well, it was indescribable.
At least I thought it was until Elixchel said, “How lovely. A cross between an eighties rock band and a Pakistani funerary dirge performed under-veil by three shrouded slave women after a night of sex with their main-mullah.”
Yep. That was what it sounded like.
“Glad you like it, Shel! But it’s actually a modern Ukrainian rock band. Found it on the ‘net.”
“Turn it off.”
We all looked up. I smiled. The queen had just spoken and Andrea stood with her imp smile fixed firmly on her adorable butch face and turned off the music.
Adorable butch face. Was I beginning to find something sexy about Andrea? I reassessed.
“Ukrainian teenage years. I thought the music would be perfect,” Andrea tossed over her shoulder on the way to the stereo. “But…I thought Abigail would be telling her tale, something sappy, something second-gen ‘krainian.”
Krainian sounded like cranial.
“Okay, varning heeded. I keep it light, little sister. Actually dis story is,” Gloria said, and began.
For the next thirty minutes I strained to understand Gloria’s tale of the dating practices of Communist Ukraine blended with memories of the natural wonder and beauty of her homeland.
She softened the story, but it was sad nevertheless. Ukrainian women often left their homes in an effort to find a more modern world to live in, but sometimes they got lost in the underworld bars of Europe, and their fatherless babies were sent to state orphanages.
Gloria was lucky. Her parents and her superior school work saved her from any of the bad endings that Ukraine had to offer young women of her generation. Gloria added that in Communist Ukraine, school was almost free, even nursing school.
Near the end of the story my phone rang again. Sighing deeply, I rose and moved toward the bathroom again.
“The parents of the Indian girls have gone to the FBI to claim that one of them heard their daughter saying they thought the gang was out to get Abigail. We have an Amber Alert now.”
That was most of what he said. I had a celebratory piece of blueberry pie to choke down the bitter news and tears. Even knowing it was coming, I felt gut-punched. Abigail was being declared an official missing person. I waited for Gerry’s phone to ring so Tom could tell Gloria for me. I wasn’t going to be able to without bursting into tears.
Chapter 69
11:45 pm
We opened the quilt another three feet and took a second break from the sewing. Hannah did her first round of neck massages, working the tension out of our upper bodies slowly with her magic hands. For a few minutes I was calmer. The anxiety that had taken up residence in my belly in the form of butterflies and a shark, briefly slept.
We stood around the kitchen and living room preparing for the next two to three hours, stretching our bodies, soothing our fingers on hot cups of tea. There wasn’t much talk, just a lot of eye contact, mainly toward me. They expected me to do something. They expected me to enlighten them about the phone calls. But it was all unconfirmed bad news.
Gloria was more than agitated. I did the best I could to convince her Abigail was better off knowing her mom was home waiting for her. Tom had apparently found some good words, too, because between the two of us, Gloria stayed put.
Finally we returned to the quilt.
Anne would tell the next teen story.
But before she began Gerry said, “Look at the little figures. There are embroidered figures on the quilt. Do the rest of you have any?” Gerry had come in late.
I searched my part but all I could see was hundreds of small squares of fabric.
“What is it?” Elixchel.
“I’m not sure. Can you see from your side, Anne? I think it’s positioned facing you.”
“Sure. It’s a boy and girl holding hands in between the scales.”
Scales?
“Right, and there are a couple over here, too. Only here they’re reading a book together,” Andrea said. “That’s so sweet.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
“Maybe we’ll find others when the quilt is opened even more,” Gerry said.
Anne cleverly steered the conversation.
“Speaking of boys and girls together, Martha set me up with a date for my senior prom. She didn’t want me to graduate from high school without experiencing one. Martha had gone to hers with one of our cousins, but she said it was worth it just to see the gymnasium all decked
out and all the other girls in their beautiful dresses.
“This was in 1968 and lots of girls were still dressing up in those days. I can’t imagine what they’re wearing now--our whole culture has changed so. I was seventeen and still pretty sweet, but the dance was bittersweet at best.
“Martha made my dress, who-who. She bought yards and yards of red velvet material. The skirt went to the floor. It had a scooped neck, and long Arthurian sleeves—you know, the ones that end in a point over the back of the hand? And even though crinolines weren’t very in that year, I wore two to lift the heavy shirt away from my body.
“The fellow she told me to ask to take me was a year older than me, so he’d graduated already and was making a living working at his dad’s garage. Martha knew him. He wore a nice dark suit, and everything was just fine, the dinner, dancing and conversations, all of it was fine. Except at the end of the evening I realized he was putting something in our punch. He didn’t give me very much but he sure drank a lot of it himself.
“I think that’s when I first realized how unhappy he was, being back at a high school dance and all, who-who.
“From the prom, we went to the home of a friend of his. I didn’t know any of them. And there was more drinking there. Finally we left.”
“He drove toward our house but parked a short ways away on a side street and I knew I was in trouble.
“He started kissing me. He smelled awful, and his beard was very rough. He rubbed my chin raw. I realized he was struggling with the back of my dress, looking for the zipper. His hands were all over me.
“I kept pushing him away. He kept telling me I ‘owed him’. He grew angrier and angrier as he tried to get at me under the tight bodice of the velvet dress, but Martha had hidden the zipper under my arm. He kept pulling up my skirt…but then got all caught up in my crinolines.
“Finally he quit and lit up a cigarette. He rested his head in my lap as I sat in silence wishing he would take me home, too afraid to say anything.
“When he finally did, he just dumped me out at the main road and as I ran up the long driveway to our house my crinolines fell off. My hair was all torn out of its lovely do. That was when I started crying.
“When Martha found the burn hole in the front of the red velvet dress she’d made she was furious. I’m not sure what about, me getting nearly raped or her lovely dress being ruined.”
“Jesus, Anne. That’s really shitty. What’d you do about it?”
Victoria was so surprised at Anne’s story she didn’t even reprimand Andrea for the bad language.
“What could I do about it? The damage was done. Martha and I tried to figure out a way to save the dress, but it was right in the middle of the front panel. And frankly I hated the dress by then. I knew I’d never want to wear it again.”
“The dress didn’t matter, Anne. You mattered,” Gerry said quietly.
“Yes,” Hannah intoned. “You were damaged by this event, not the dress. I hope you find a way to deal with this long dormant pain.”
“I would have snuck into his dad’s garage and slashed every tire on their shelves! I would have broken the windows of his car in the middle of the night. I would have….”
“We get it Andrea,” Elixchel said. “You’d have fire bombed his house. But revenge is….”
“Damn right I would have! The son of a…”
“Enough swearing!” Victoria said.
Me being who I am, I said, “Shit, Victoria, why not let a little venom loose? Maybe it would be damn therapeutic for her.”
“Hell yes! The son of a bitch should have been punished.” Elixchel. Victoria turned to stare at her as if she’d been struck across the face. Then she turned to look at Anne.
“Of course. You are all right. I’m sorry, I don’t remember this event at all.”
“I never told you mom. I was ashamed.”
“Again, I’m sorry Anne. You were always the sweetest. You seemed to be okay with…things. You deserved better.” Victoria bowed her head and returned to her sewing.
I looked over at Gloria, suddenly wondering how she was taking this mother-daughter conversation. She was blinking rapidly, trying to hold back the tears.
Maybe anxious over the pain she was causing her mother, Anne launched into a debate about the latest women’s college basketball teams, which she took to uproarious extremes. I watched her grow so energized, her budgerigar-hair bounced about her head like startled yellow miniature parrots. I thought Andrea and Hannah would wake the neighbors—or at least Nana--with their rowdy description of the last University of Connecticut game against Tennessee. They had us all grinning by the end of it.
Finally we sobered and returned our thoughts to the darkness surrounding this little home. That was when Hannah gently steered the conversation toward Eddie.
“Have any of you heard anything more from Eddie?”
And we listened and sewed as Anne recounted Eddie’s latest trials and tribulations on the East Coast, she talked of the attack in Boston Harbor and the massacre the week before.
When she wound down Gerry asked her, ‘Is he still in Boston?”
“No, he’s left there. I think he’s out in Kentucky right now visiting with some other family folks. He certainly is getting an education though. Learning all sorts of new things after all those years…well, you know,” she said, referring to his hellacious childhood of abuse and neglect that had surfaced after the events surrounding last month’s bee.
We did.
Chapter 70
Matthew Lyon’s LIRI Journal
Sunday, November 2, 12:15 pm, dictated in Los Gatos
Los Gatos was a closed door to us and it’s clear that the Hidalgos had slammed it. Didn’t help that I looked and sounded like a cop to the Pintos we were trying to get leads from. At house after house we were told to get the fuck away before we got them in trouble. They wouldn’t say with whom, but we knew.
Half an hour ago, learner had signaled me from the shadows behind a small store to tell me that wheels were turning behind the scene. The FBI and Homeland Security were finally working angles and using their contacts to learn what they could. I was glad to hear other agencies were finally getting involved. But it all came down to these people. Any real help had to come from these Pintos and their families and they were scared shitless of the Hidalgos.
Three of their boys had died brutally. What did they care about somebody else’s girls?
It was time for another visit to Luis Lewis.
Chapter 71
It was after midnight. The rain was thickening, the wind changing from whispers to howls. And the exhaustion of sewing for hours on end was once again reducing my body to painful fatigue. At least my neck was holding up, thanks to extra massages from Hannah.
Gloria broke my sewing concentration saying, “Abby was studying Phillis Wheatley’s poetry when she decided to run away.”
“She hasn’t run away. She’s just missing,” Andrea snarled.
Gloria waved a weary hand. “The whole homeschool group was studying the African slave who was allowed a pen and paper to write down her poetic thoughts. It was right after that Abby decided to return to school, so I reread some of Wheatley’s Poems in Various Subjects, thinking maybe I’d find a clue in them as to why….”
Surprising us all, Gerry interrupted with a spontaneous recitation. Later she explained she’d memorized this passage for one of her high school Spanish classes and then she had the class translate it into Spanish.
“’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand,
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too,
Once I redemption neither fought now knew,
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
‘Their colour is a diabolic die.’
Remember Christians Negroes black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic brain.’”
Andrea spoiled the mood by saying, �
��Sure. That’s the reason Abigail ran away to school. Because Phillis Wheatley corrupted her mind and made her rebel.”
“Wheatley was a British supporter,” Gerry said simply.
I pondered that comment. Did Gerry think Wheatley should have been a Rebel supporter, perhaps in hopes that one day she too would be liberated? Or did she think Wheatley supported the British because the poor frequently aspire to be rich, dream of it nightly, and therefore fervently follow the lead of the rich in any given society? The British of those times reeked of Kings and nobility.
Or was Wheatley’s locale the reason for her British support? I scratched my brain for a few seconds trying to remember which of the colonies Wheatley had lived in.
Hannah said, “Massachusetts. She was born in West Africa in 1753. At the age of eight, she was carried to Boston as a slave girl and sold to John Wheatley. They named her Phillis after the slave boat.”
“You’ve read….” Elixchel began.
“I teach,” Hannah answered simply. “I homeschool our children,” she added, and glanced at Anne.
“I know, hoo-hoo.”
Gerry. “By the age of twelve Wheatley was reading Greek and Latin. She loved the poets of the times the most….”
“Pope, Milton, Homer,” Andrea said.
I took the measure of the pixie again. We collectively smiled at her.
“I read the works of slaves, the few there are. I’m lacking in basic civil rights in my country, too.”
We collectively stopped smiling. I checked . Was she comparing her shtatus as a lesbian in the United States to that of a slave? Apparently. Andrea was beginning to open my eyes to things I hadn’t realized they might be closed to.
“Her first poem was published December 21, 1767.” Hannah.
“Wow, you really studied her.” Gerry.
“That’s my mother’s birth date.”
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