Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  ‘Elodie?’ he whispers after a long silent moment.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You ever do that before?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  He doesn’t say anything else, for a while, until, ‘Me either.’

  They smile in the darkness.

  sixteen

  Queens, New York, January 2000

  It’s a few months later that Kiki finally makes her move. Christmas and New Year have passed and Elodie has been at the apartment for almost a year. She’s woken one night by the bedroom door opening, light and music and voices flooding in from the hall. She sits up, blinking at the figure silhouetted in the doorframe.

  ‘Kiki?’ she asks, shielding her eyes in surprise.

  ‘Wakey wakey, Elodie.’ Kiki takes a step further into the room, where she stands for a moment, swaying slightly.

  ‘Kiki? What are you doing in here? Is Tyra OK?’ Nervously Elodie flounders around until she finds the lamp, and switching it on, takes in Kiki’s dishevelled appearance, the make-up smudged across her face, the cat-like eyes unfocussed and glittering.

  ‘Come on, Elodie, pretty little Elodie.’ She smiles and stumbles closer to the bed. She bends and with a sudden swipe manages to grab hold of Elodie’s wrist. Sharp nails dig into her skin as she’s yanked up out of the bed. ‘Got some friends who want to meet you,’ Kiki slurs in her scratchy voice.

  ‘Kiki, let me go.’ As she’s dragged across the hallway she hears Tyra begin to wail. ‘Please, Kiki,’ she begs, ‘let me go.’

  But Kiki drags her into the living room, where Elodie finds herself in the presence of four men, two sprawled on the couch and two in the armchairs, bottles of beer around their feet, the air heavy with smoke. Music blasts from the stereo while one of Darnel’s porn movies plays on the TV screen. She stands in the doorway, desperately tugging at her T-shirt with her free hand to pull it further down over her hips. She tries to back out but Kiki gives another violent yank on her wrist and pulls her into the room.

  ‘This is Elodie,’ announces Kiki as she shoves her onto the couch between the two men. She goes over and seats herself on the lap of one of the others, picks up a bottle of vodka and takes a long gulp. Her glinting eyes are fixed on Elodie’s face. ‘She’s going to party with us a while. About time she found herself a boyfriend, ain’t that right, girl?’

  Sitting stiffly on the couch, Elodie nervously looks around the room. The two men sat next to her seem, thankfully, more interested in a little pipe they are passing jealously back and forth across her. It seems to be made from a little glass bottle, filled with a white sickly-smelling smoke that twirls within the glass until it’s inhaled by their eager, sucking lips. As each one takes a hit, the other waits impatiently for his turn, one eye fixed all the while on the sweating, heaving bodies on the screen in front of them.

  But, like Kiki, the other two men don’t take their eyes off Elodie.

  ‘Kiki, I’ve got to go and see to Tyra.’ She makes a move to get up but the venom in Kiki’s voice pins her to the spot.

  ‘Quit whining. You ain’t gonna be impolite to my friends, are you?’

  ‘She one of Darnel’s?’ asks the one Kiki’s not sitting on.

  Kiki laughs. ‘No, she too good for that, ain’t that right, Elodie?’

  Elodie shakes her head. ‘No.’ The man continues to eyeball her while he slugs from his bottle of beer, so she turns away from him, and notices that Kiki’s man has eased the strap of Kiki’s dress down to expose her left breast, which he’s now pummelling with his fingertips. Kiki, her eyes still on Elodie, begins to kiss him. Next, the man slides his hand up her thigh until the skirt rides up over her hips. Elodie lowers her gaze to the floor.

  After a while Kiki stops kissing him and, smiling sweetly at Elodie, says, ‘Why don’t you go keep Kenny company?’ She jerks her head at the other man.

  Elodie shakes her head and the room is silent for a few moments.

  Then the man called Kenny says to Kiki, ‘No. Why don’t you come over here and give me some head?’

  The two men on the sofa laugh loudly at that. There’s a brief, fraught pause while Kiki looks over at Kenny as if he’d just thrown his bottle at her. But quickly pasting a smile back on her face, she replies lightly. ‘No thank you, honey, I got my man right here, ain’t that right, TK?’ But beneath her sweet, sing-song tone there’s the faintest hint of uncertainty. And now it seems to Elodie that the temperature in the room has just dropped several degrees.

  The man, TK, lets out a short bark of laughter before shoving Kiki off his lap. ‘Get off me, bitch. You heard him.’

  Standing marooned in the middle of the room, all eyes upon her, Kiki looks in that instant much smaller and younger than before and Elodie feels a tug of pity for her. But with a short, brittle laugh Kiki shakes off her crestfallen expression and walks toward Kenny, who takes a swig from his beer and guffaws. She shoots a look of pure hatred at Elodie as she passes, making her scalp prickle, but worse than that is the resigned humiliation that replaces it, just before she gets down on her knees between Kenny’s legs.

  While the two men sitting next to her watch Kiki bleary-eyed, Elodie stares at the floor, steeling herself for the moment when she will get up and leave, acutely aware now of her own nakedness beneath the inadequate covering of her T-shirt. With a start, she looks up and notices that TK is staring over at her. ‘You going to come here and be friendly?’ he asks.

  Slowly, Elodie gets to her feet. ‘Good girl,’ he mumbles approvingly, already fumbling with his zipper. He doesn’t notice that she has begun to back out of the room until she’s almost at the door.

  ‘Hey!’ he calls to her, a look of hurt bewilderment on his face.

  At the door Elodie turns and runs, making it to Shanique’s bedroom within a matter of seconds. Tears of relief fill her eyes as she slams the door shut and turns the lock. For a moment she stands in the darkness, wishing desperately for Bobby. The sound of footsteps in the hall outside spurs her on again and going over to Tyra’s cot she lifts the child out and rocks her gently for a while, in an attempt to calm her tears. The door handle rattles, and TK’s voice shouts angrily from the other side. At once, Tyra’s snivels turn into frightened wails.

  Quickly, Elodie goes to the phone by Shanique’s bed and with shaking fingers dials the number for Pinkies. ‘Come on, come on,’ she whispers into the mouthpiece as the handle on the door rattles more violently. Finally someone picks up.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Can I speak to Shanique please?’

  ‘No, she working.’

  She looks in desperation down at Tyra’s distressed face.

  ‘Please. Please get her. It’s an emergency,’ she urges. ‘Tell her it’s about Tyra.’

  The woman on the other end sucks her teeth in annoyance and Elodie hears her drop the phone with a clutter. At last she hears Shanique’s voice squawking urgently back at her.

  ‘Shanique, you’ve got to come back,’ Elodie tells her against the noise of banging on the door.

  ‘Why? What’s happened? Is Tyra OK? She hurt?’

  ‘No, Tyra’s fine, it’s Kiki. Will you come back? I don’t know what to do, I’m scared, Shanique.’ She’s barely started explaining when she hears the line go dead. She sinks down onto the bed and sits hugging the child to her.

  There’s no more banging at the door now, but the music has been turned up loud, and there’s the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor, and Kiki arguing with one of the men. She hears the panic in Kiki’s voice now and Elodie holds Tyra even closer, willing Shanique to hurry. Just then, she hears another loud crash, an eruption of male laughter, and the sound of Kiki’s cry.

  It seems to take forever for Shanique to arrive. At last though, she hears the front door open, her name being called, and the sound of footsteps hurrying into the hall. She is surprised to hear Darnel’s voice next. Abruptly, the music stops. Dizzy with relief, Elodie puts Tyra back into her crib, turns the key and creeps o
ut into the hallway. When she gets to the living room she stops in her tracks.

  The four men are standing now, their hands raised in the air, their faces blank with shock. Darnel is pointing a gun at TK’s head. ‘Get out,’ he says, his customary mumble forgotten. Behind him, Princess and Shanique stand, frozen. The four men begin to edge out of the room, and as the last one leaves, Darnel taps him sharply on the back of the head with the barrel of his gun, making him stumble forward and then run from the apartment.

  They all gaze silently down at Kiki for a moment, as she crouches half-naked on the floor amongst the upturned ashtrays and empty bottles. On the TV screen behind her, the pornographic film plays on. In the seconds before Darnel strides over to her, it strikes Elodie how sad the expression on her face is. What Darnel does next happens so fast that Elodie hardly has time to scream. First he slaps Kiki with such force that she falls backwards onto the floor. Next, he begins to kick her. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he shouts as he slams one foot and then the other again and again into her ribs and Kiki rolls back and forth beneath the blows.

  ‘Stop!’ Elodie screams. ‘Please stop!’ She turns to Shanique and Princess, but they both stand passively, their eyes on the floor. At last it’s over. Darnel is panting and looking down at her, his face a wall of fury. ‘Dumb fucking bitch.’ He shakes his head, wipes the sweat from his brow and walks out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

  There’s silence for a moment or two, while the three of them regard Kiki lying on the floor, rolled into a ball now, her arms still hugging herself in a feeble effort at self-protection. At last Princess goes over to her. ‘Come on now, love,’ she says soothingly, helping her up. ‘Upsie daisy, that’s the ticket. Let’s get you cleaned up shall we?’

  They shuffle slowly towards the bathroom, Kiki whimpering and bent almost double. When they’ve gone Shanique turns on her heel and heads to her own room. ‘Go to bed now, Elodie,’ she mutters.

  That night she lies awake for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, watching the room gradually lighten as she wonders just how, and when, Kiki will take her revenge.

  The strangest thing about Kiki’s absence from the apartment is the fact that nobody talks about it. Even Bobby, when she pushes him on the subject, is unforthcoming. ‘Heard she cracked a few ribs,’ is all he’ll say about it. ‘Think she’s staying with her cousin for a while.’ He shrugs and adds vaguely, ‘She’ll be back, though. Unfortunately.’

  They are lying together in his bed, the sweat on their naked skin slowly cooling. Since that first night their hunger for each other has grown by the day. ‘I love you,’ Bobby tells her once, and his words hang like startled gnats in the silence that follows. Abruptly she rolls away from him and thinks of what she knows of love. She thinks of Ingrid, she thinks of the man in the forest. She turns back to Bobby without answering, covering his mouth with her own.

  A week passes, and then another, and Elodie waits anxiously for Kiki’s return. But to her surprise, when Kiki finally does breeze back into their lives, she behaves as though nothing at all had happened, flirting with Darnel, quarrelling with Bobby and ordering Princess around exactly as she always had. Elodie she steadfastly ignores as usual, and though grateful for this, Elodie still can’t quite shake the suspicion that Kiki’s outward display of disinterest is merely an act. Payback, she’s sure, must be only around the corner.

  Three weeks later, she’s proved right. Elodie is sitting in the kitchen with Shanique when Kiki saunters in, fanning herself coquettishly with a rolled-up newspaper.

  ‘Well,’ she says with casual sweetness and to no one in particular. ‘Look what I found on the subway today.’ She throws the paper on the table and makes a show of studying her nails while Shanique unfolds it. Even before Elodie sees the large, black-and-white picture of herself, she instinctively knows, with a dull, awful thud of certainty what this means.

  ‘The Mysterious Disappearance of Little Bird,’ Shanique reads aloud. ‘Still no leads on the whereabouts of Elodie Brun.’ There’s a horrible silence as they both look up from the page and exchange a single, bleak glance of comprehension. Shanique passes the paper to her and she takes it with trembling fingers. Next to the picture of herself, is a smaller one of Ingrid.

  Elodie looks at the words beneath her photograph, but in her shock they are indecipherable to her. At High Barn, her slow grasp of reading and writing had been a source of constant irritation to Ingrid, and as she stares at the words she is transported for a moment back to the schoolroom, the tedium and frustration of having to go over and over the same simple sentences instantly returning to her.

  ‘You read it,’ she says, passing it back to Shanique.

  ‘Police are anxious to talk to Brun in connection with Klein’s death,’ Shanique begins. ‘The search for the missing teenager continues.’

  Elodie grips the table as cold panic sluices over her. Dimly she hears Shanique reading another part of the article, and then commenting in a puzzled voice, ‘Says here that Mr Klein came home and found his wife dead, and you missing.’ She looks up at Elodie ‘But that ain’t right, is it? The lady was still alive when that Robert guy come home, that’s what you said, ain’t it?’

  Elodie nods dully, barely listenting. If the police wanted to question her, that meant they blamed her. She feels sick with fright.

  Across the table, Shanique shrugs. ‘Huh. Well, papers got that wrong for a start, didn’t they.’

  Elodie’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh Shanique,’ she whispers, ‘what am I going to do?’

  Before she can reply, Kiki, her eyes wide and innocent, says in a breathless voice, ‘I never knew we had such a celebrity in our midst.’

  ‘Kiki …’ Shanique begins in a warning tone. ‘This ain’t none of your business.’

  She sniffs. ‘Ain’t it? Sure is police business though.’ She smiles then, and walks daintily from the room, softly closing the door behind her.

  In the silence that follows, Elodie continues to sit motionless, her throat and mouth slowly filling with the dry, metallic taste of despair. ‘Shanique,’ she whispers again, ‘what will I do?’

  ‘It just says they’re looking for you, honey. Not that they hold you respsonsible,’ she says weakly, but her lack of conviction is palpable. Finally she gets to her feet. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ she says. ‘Try not to panic. I’ll talk to her.’

  She hears Kiki’s door open and close and then the sound of raised voices: Shanique’s pleading remonstrations, Kiki’s stubborn refusals. She hears it all and knows it’s pointless. It finally hits her how stupid she’s been, pretending for all these months that she had escaped it all, fooling herself that she could live a normal, happy life. She gazes around the kitchen: this was not her home; she didn’t have one. This had merely been a temporary reprieve. Stupid, how stupid she’d been. At that moment, a painful, intangible longing fills her for the mother she has never known.

  At last Shanique returns, slumping into her chair and not meeting Elodie’s eye. She rubs her temples with her fingertips and finally speaks. ‘She says you’ve got a week.’

  ‘A week?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Get out of here or she’ll go to the police.’

  After a long, silent moment Shanique reaches across the table and takes hold of Elodie’s hand. ‘Look, darling,’ she says, ‘the fact is it ain’t safe for you here no more. Kiki will go to the police, you can rely on that.’ She looks at her hands, before adding, ‘And I can’t have the police sniffing round here, Elodie. I just can’t.’

  Elodie nods, ignoring the tears that have begun to fall.

  Shanique gazes back at her, her face lined with pity. At last she gives her hand another squeeze. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll think of something.’

  ‘We’ll take off together,’ Bobby says to her as they lie together in bed that night. ‘I’ll look after you, I promise, Elodie. It’ll be OK, you’ll see.’

  ‘Maybe … maybe I should go to them. Tell th
e police what happened. Tell them I didn’t mean to hurt her.’ She eyes him hopefully.

  ‘Elodie,’ Bobby’s voice is stern, ‘you stay away from the police. What if they don’t believe you? What if they decide it was your fault she died and put you in prison? And even if they don’t, they’ll put you in care, they’d take you away from me.’

  She lies there thinking about his words, the thought of being locked up in a cell too awful to contemplate.

  He shakes his head. ‘They won’t find us. We could go anywhere. Fuck it, we could go to Hollywood!’

  She lies back upon the pillow, hugging Bobby closer to her, letting him continue with his plans, knowing all the while that it’s impossible. She remembers the feeling of unreality she’d had when she first arrived in New York, like being inside a TV set, but Bobby’s fantasy is even more unreal. She’s overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. She tries to focus her mind on Shanique’s promise that she’d find a way to help her, and hopes desperately that it’s true.

  To her alarm, Shanique spends much of the following two days away from the apartment, returning only to lock herself in her bedroom with Darnel, where their voices rumble steadily behind the closed door. Elodie loiters in the hallway trying in vain to make sense of their words, but they never rise above an urgent, indecipherable whisper. Once, she passes Darnel in the hall on his way to the bathroom and he eyes her thoughtfully before continuing on his way. She returns to Bobby’s room, and, in an agony of uncertainty, waits.