The Between

by Tananarive Due

  “I don’t want to hear this,” Hilton said.

  Stu nodded, glassy-eyed. “She’s back at Jackson Memorial with fluid in her lungs. She may pull through it again, but there’s not much they can do except keep trying to drain them because there’s so much tissue damage. I stopped by to see her yesterday, and her uncle is still being a prick. She’s not getting any visitors, not a card, no flowers. It’ll break your heart, this kid in a hospital room by herself with four walls to stare at all day, not knowing if she’ll live or die.”

  “I’ll post a notice to let the counselors know,” Hilton said, and he cleared his throat to regain his voice. He would never get used to seeing kids dying. Never. “You think I can hold off for two more days? I probably can’t make it there until Saturday.”

  “I’ll warn you if I think she’s deteriorating.”

  Hilton didn’t speak for a second, and Stu simply stirred his coffee. “Goddammit,” Hilton said finally.

  Despite Dede’s cautioning, Hilton ended up involved in his clients’ lives outside of the center; he’d found himself helping Danitra move into her new apartment Saturday because one of his counselors couldn’t make it and Hilton didn’t want her stuck trying to move by herself. Now, this weekend, Antoinette.

  “Just go when you have time,” Stu said. “You can’t save the world all by yourself. And you’re not looking well yourself, Hil.”

  “No?”

  “You’re wearing some mean bags under your eyes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hilton said, still preoccupied with thoughts of Antoinette. “I haven’t been sleeping much this week.”

  “Well, you know my spiel on that,” Stu said. “You can’t take care of anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself. Right?”

  Hilton smiled at his friend. “Okay. Right. Now, lay off.”

  By four-thirty Hilton was several hours behind in his work. Between the reporter’s tour, inquiries from his contractor, and attempts to reach the mayor for reassurances, much of the paperwork he had planned to read that day, including a grant proposal that needed to be postmarked by morning, was still untouched on his desk. While he was on his telephone holding for the contractor, Ahmad walked into his office and dropped a new stack of papers in front of him. “A petition,” Ahmad said, turning to walk out. “Next we’ll be getting threatening phone calls.” Hilton scanned the blur of signatures.

  your herd won’t live

  On impulse, he raised his eyes and locked them on the framed family portrait before him on his desk. His family posed for a new photo each summer because the children changed so much each year, so this one was barely three months old; they all looked exactly as they had last weekend at the park, except that they were all smiling in front of a hokey meadowland backdrop, unborn seeds

  Gazing at his family huddled together, their round faces and smiles, Dede’s hand on his knee, Kaya and Jamil side by side, Hilton felt a searing sadness, a claw at his insides. He sat up straight in his chair, hung up on the contractors office, then dialed Dede’s number.

  “Sorry, Hil. She’s away from her desk.” “Is she gone for the day already? Is she in court?” “She was just here. I think she’s in the powder room.” Hilton knew that if he didn’t leave a message with the secretary now, he would forget as he had all week. “Just tell her to remember to bring home that letter she mentioned last weekend.”

  “Oh, that nutty one?” the woman laughed. Hilton couldn’t remember this woman’s name, although he’d dealt with her for years. He wanted to tell her there was nothing funny about it, and that only his friends could feel free to call him Hil. Most of all, he was annoyed Dede had shown the letter to her office as a joke.

  “The one with the threats,” Hilton said patiently.

  “No problem, Hil. I’ll leave a note on her desk.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Hilton lived at the end of a cul-de-sac just east of the boundary—and accompanying higher property taxes—of courtly Coral Gables, on a street where even at midday ficus trees and live oaks blanketed everything beneath them in shade. His house was bordered from the street by a waist-high wall built thirty years before from pure coral rock that had turned brown and crumbled slightly, and the house had coral-rock arches at the end of the path leading through the yard to the front door. Bougainvillea hedges with bouquets of pink blossoms grew against the house like a crown of colors.

  They’d never have afforded the four-bedroom house with its Spanish-tile roof, swimming pool, and polished wooden floors if the old widow selling it hadn’t liked his family instantly. She couldn’t keep her fingers from pinching Kaya’s cheeks, which made Dede tense because she recoiled when she believed whites were treating her children like objects of amusement. But this woman was sincere, if a little condescending, and the house had them enchanted, so Dede held her tongue.

  The woman told them how happy she was to see a fine young black family, how she’d been brought up by a black nanny in Virginia, how she’d always hired blacks to clean for her and became such good friends with them, how her husband had marched with Martin Luther King. “I know you all think I’m a silly old fool,” the woman had said, tears glistening in her rheumy eyes, “but I know what struggle is all about. If Aaron were alive today to see you here, he’d be tickled pink. Tell me what you think you can pay, and let’s talk about a price.”

  Now, after dark, the bright solar lamp Hilton had installed soon after they moved in cast a surreal light over the house and painted shadows from tree limbs and leaves across the walls. Through the living room draperies he could see the blue glow of the television set. Dede’s Audi was already parked in the gravel driveway; Hilton pulled up behind it and sat a moment in an awe-inspiring solitude in which even the crickets didn’t stir. He broke the spell by opening his car door and slamming it shut.

  Jamil cornered him to talk about his after-school soccer game while Hilton sat at the small kitchen table and wolfed down leftover African beef stew, which Dede made with a taste of peanut butter for flavor. (He’d balked when he first heard the recipe, but he’d loved eating it since the first time he tried it.) Then it was time for “The Simpsons,” so Jamil excused himself to watch television after assuring Hilton he had finished his homework and had left it on the kitchen counter for inspection. Hilton didn’t hear a fight about which child would watch the big TV in the living room and who would have to go to Kaya’s room, unusual for a Thursday.

  “This stew is something else, my queen,” Hilton said to Dede, standing to kiss her when she wandered into the kitchen wearing a loose-fitting African housedress and a casual head wrap. This was her time for freedom; she never wore African clothes in court or at her office.

  “Did you see the rice Kaya made on the stove?”

  Hilton patted his stomach, which was taut from overeating. “It’s right down here. Where’s Kaya tonight? Rehearsal?” When Dede sat at the table and looked at him with a searching smile, Hilton expected news of the rape case she’d been arguing for weeks. “A verdict?” he asked.

  Dede shook her head. “More important,” she said. “Kaya got her period today.”

  Hilton stood still, aware that his face must be frozen in a comical expression of bewilderment. “Already?” he asked.

  “She’s thirteen, Hil. All her friends got theirs by last year, so thank God she finally did. You know how children hate to be different.”

  Hilton sank back into his chair. In the short time since they’d lived in their new house, Kaya had grown from ten to thirteen, and what an immense difference that small journey made—the difference between “Daddy” and “Dad,” and now the difference between a tree-climbing child and an appearance-conscious young woman biologically equipped to make a new life herself.

  “I see you getting misty over there,” Dede teased. “We went through the same thing on her birthday. She’s a teenager now.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s nauseated and a little shy about you and Jamil, so she’s d
oing her homework on the patio. She had a little accident at school, but I told her it’s nothing. A spot of blood on her dress, and I’m sure no one noticed except her friend.”

  “You womenfolk catch hell coming and going, don’t you?”

  Dede laughed ruefully. “Coming and going. That’s right.”

  Hilton picked up a newspaper and walked through the kitchens French doors to the east end of the patio. Its paved pebbles glistened in the moonlight, and reflections from the lighted pool swam everywhere in shimmering designs. The screened-in patio was a man-made jungle, with palms lined against the screen and air plants clinging to trellises. The wispy, spiderlike air plants fascinated Hilton with their ability to thrive without soil or real roots. They were so odd, so heroic.

  He saw Kaya sitting at the white wrought-iron patio table at the opposite end, furiously at work on an essay. She wore her permed hair in two long ponytails that rested against her shoulders, a hint of Nana’s ancestry, and she still looked quite childlike to him at that moment.

  Gingerly, as he always did, Hilton walked to the table at a careful distance from the edge of the pool. Water. He wouldn’t have purposely sought a house with a swimming pool, but he couldn’t bring himself to sour the deal on the house after it had won Dede’s heart. And it was glorious; thirty yards long, eight feet deep at its deepest end, with elaborate, Roman-style steps leading to the shallow end. Black tile spelled out in four-foot letters the name D-E-E at the pool’s bottom, the previous owner’s tribute to his wife; Hilton was amused by the similarity to Dede’s name, and he usually told visitors that workmen had misspelled Dede when the pool was built. The coincidence was nearly uncanny.

  The few times Hilton had been coaxed into the pool, he felt a gripping lethargy when he held his breath and plunged below the surface. His limbs grew heavy, frozen, and he invariably ended up choking on the chlorinated water. As though something intended to keep him there. Dede told him it was psychological, but Hilton was convinced it was more than that. Like that day on the beach, with the undertow. It was best to keep his distance from the pool.

  “Hey,” Hilton said, taking the chair beside Kaya’s.

  She didn’t look up or stop writing. “Hey.”

  He struggled a moment with words, then exhaled. “So your mom told me about your little adventure at school today.”

  Kaya rolled her eyes theatrically. “Great. She’s already called everybody else in the world and told them.”

  “I’m not everybody else in the world, you know. I’m your dad. No secrets, remember?”

  She looked at him as though she couldn’t imagine a more foolish statement from an adult’s lips. “You’re a guy, Dad. Guys don’t like to hear about this stuff.”

  He was silent a moment, acknowledging her point. The less he had to know about menstruation, whether Dede’s or Kaya’s or anyone else’s, the better. “Right. But you didn’t mind me being a guy when we built that treehouse, or when we used to go to ball games. Remember? The only Dolphin Jamil knew about was that damn Flipper. So it was just you and me. No secrets.”

  “Yeah,yeah . . .”

  They hadn’t attended any ball games lately, and the days of treehouse-building were long past, Hilton thought. He’d been fifteen when he lost his virginity, only two years older than Kaya. Soon she’d be showing up at the door with hormone-crazed young punks with their arms around her waist and their minds inside her pants, just the way he’d been when he charmed his girlfriends’ parents with his smile and erudite conversation. Hilton and Dede had believed in frank sex education from the time their children were old enough to ask questions, but this would be new territory. Yes, the time for secrets had begun now. Secrets were the first wall between parents and children. Children, in the end, were only adults in disguise.

  “You feeling okay?” Hilton asked.

  “My stomach hurts some. I hope I won’t have PMS like Mom,” she said, and they both laughed.“Don’t tell her I said that.”

  “I won’t, princess,” he said. “Listen, Kaya, I know you’ve got a busy schedule with drama workshop and the mall and your friends, but why don’t we do something this weekend?”

  Again, that look like he was crazy. “Like what?”

  “Well, we could go to a movie. We could go horseback riding . . .” Kaya sighed, so he went on quickly: “Or not. You pick something. Just a couple of hours.”

  “You’re not going to talk to me about sex, are you?”

  “Not the whole time, no.”

  “Dad . . .” she said, turning her attention back to her homework.

  He reached over to take her pen to prevent her from writing. “No, I’m being for real, Kaya. Let’s do something Saturday. We’ll do any movie you want.”

  Kaya looked at him questioningly a moment, but he knew she understood. Yeah, I love you too, Dad, she said with her soft brown eyes. I didn’t mean to grow up so fast, it just happened like that. Now leave me alone so I can do my work. “Okay,” she said.

  Sorry, the dispatcher apologized for the third time, Sergeant Curt Gillis hadn’t been raised on his radio yet. He was doing a night shift at the projects, and he might not return his messages for several hours. Was it an emergency?

  Hilton paused. He wanted to say yes, it was an emergency, but how could he? Curt was in the thick of crack dens and drug busts, and Hilton was calling from the serenity of his bedroom near the City Beautiful. “Just tell him to please call me when he gets a chance,” Hilton sighed.

  He’d been about ready to go to bed, even contemplating back rubs with Dede to help them both relieve stress, when she found him in the bathroom and gave him a single piece of paper. “Here it is. I didn’t forget,” she said.

  Now, after hanging up the phone, Hilton sat in the bedroom easy chair beneath the light of an upright lamp with the letter in his lap. Once again, he raised the folded paper with its perforated edges to read the words that had ruined his night:

  Am I to believe it is mere coincidence they sent an African-coon-tarbaby-niggger-American bitch to persecute me? And you, the child of Ham’s clans, marked by Satan himself, beholding me with contempt and irreverence, your insides raging with unborn seeds of your insidious kind, of monkey-men?

  Do you believe I’m only a monkey, too, adept at the art of mimicry? You are wrong, sadly wrong. You and your herd won’t live to mock me further, nor will your offspring ever grow up to taint and murder mine.

  “Don’t keep reading that, Hil. You’ll just make yourself crazy,” Dede said from where she lay in bed. “I can’t have you sitting up there with that light on, baby. I have cross-ex with my rapist tomorrow, and it’s late.”

  Hilton’s eyes were glued to the neat words on the computer printout. The paper was a high grade, and the printer of superior quality. Those might be the only clues; there would be no hope of lifting fingerprints from this, since so many had touched it before now. “You don’t know how much I wish you’d kept the envelope.”

  “It may be on my desk somewhere, but I’m afraid it might have gotten tossed,” Dede said in a small voice. “There was no return address, I remember, because I looked. It was postmarked from central Florida somewhere. Maybe it’s from the Raiford prison.”

  Yes, Hilton, thought, he hoped to God it was from the prison. But would they allow an inmate to send a letter like this? Perhaps it was smuggled out. Or perhaps the sender was a free man walking around who had casually slipped it into a streetside mailbox.

  “He’s dangerous. He’s sick, and he’s dangerous.”

  Dede exhaled slowly. “I just didn’t want to confront it, you know? I think that’s why I made a joke out of it. I have to deal with ugliness fifty hours a week, like that scum now who’s on his way to convincing the jury a sixty-year-old woman is lying about getting raped. I didn’t want to bring it home with me. I didn’t want it to touch you or Kaya or Jamil.”

  “It does touch us, Dede,” Hilton said, his eyes traveling across line after line of the hateful words. Each ti
me he read it, he was stunned by the menace presented so calmly, so professionally. The sender had even spelled her name correctly in the greeting: Mrs. Dede James, Attorney-at-Law.

  “I know. That’s why we’re not in the book,” Dede said.

  “People can find you when they really want to. I don’t have to tell you that. And he knows you have children—that’s what I don’t like.”

  Dede chuckled into her pillow. “Shoot, Hil, you know folks figure all of us black women have babies. He doesn’t know. And what makes you so sure it’s a man? Could be a woman.”

  No, Hilton thought. It was a man, without a doubt. And as much as he wanted to believe it was from a lifer at Raiford, he also knew the man was free. He was free, and he was close.

  “Turn the light off, Hil,” Dede said.

  After a moment, Hilton reached up to turn off the floor lamp, leaving the room in darkness. He sat in the chair, the letter still in his hands, and waited for the telephone to ring. He could hear the bathroom sink dripping intermittently, then the click and hum of the central air-conditioning unit. These were sounds he had grown used to in his nightly flight from sleep. Soon he would hear Dede’s breaths slow until they were long and deep, interrupted by occasional snores.

  Hilton wondered why it was so dark until he remembered no one had turned on the floodlights outside to brighten the patio. He stood and fumbled for the switch beside the Venetian blinds, glancing through the sliding glass door. There, outside, he saw a light above the pool. Not the electric lights controlled by the panel; he saw a murky, phosphorescent gray-green mist that appeared to be rising from the pool like steam.

  Hilton’s hand froze above the light switch as he pressed his nose to the door, not breathing. What the hell—

  A woman. She seemed to be hovering above the pool. But no. She was standing ankle-deep on the surface of the glowing water, hands at her sides, returning his gaze. The dim light made the lines of her face look harsh, etched in charcoal. She wore a patterned dress, flowers. Her straight hair was silver, fine, whipping gently around her face in an unseen breeze. Hilton felt his head and chest swelling. Nana.