Jump

by Terra Little

  I start to crack. That is the only way I can describe what happens to me, to Kimmick. I start to lose my mind. Pieces of my brain separate themselves from the whole and turn colors. Pink and blue one minute, and black and red the next. A curtain falls over my eyes, and I feel myself go numb. I walk around in a daze, and I see nothing but visions of death dancing in front of my eyes.

  “That motherfucker touched my child and took the game to a whole new level,” I say. “Do you have kids, Kimmick?”

  “Two,” he says.

  “Then you know.”

  “Yes . . . I think I do.”

  “Tell me what you would’ve done.”

  “Tell me what you did.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Nothing, at first,” I say. “I couldn’t believe it was happening all over again. Couldn’t believe it was happening, period. I thought it was over and done with after me and Vicky took a stand. I guess here’s the part where you can tell me I don’t get paid to think.”

  It takes me three months to disassociate mind and matter from each other. I manage to put off doing what every cell in my body tells me to do for at least that long. Like any good mother, I spend a significant amount of time researching child therapists. I weigh the pros and cons of one over another, and come to a decision about who I will trust with my child’s impressionable young mind. I never get the chance to utilize the resource I find, because there isn’t time.

  “Explain to me how your daughter keeps ending up at your grandmother’s house.”

  Kimmick wants me to make sense out of something that makes no sense. His mind is clicking, trying to fit itself around a square when it is really a circle. His thoughts don’t fit, but he still stretches them and tries to make them fit.

  “My mother,” I say, and there is finality in my tone. “The last time Beige was over to my grandmother’s house, my mother had picked her up from my apartment to taken her to see one of those live shows.” I frown at Kimmick and then I make a disgusted face. “You know the ones. Big Bird on Ice or something silly like that. Or maybe the purple dinosaur. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s where they were going when they left my place. She called me later on and told me she had to cut the day short right after the show, and she’d dropped Beige off at my grandmother’s house. Her hairdresser had a last minute cancellation and she wanted to get in.”

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “I had a boyfriend back then. We had gone out to lunch and then back to his place to spend some alone time together. I was supposed to be home to get Beige at six, and I was there at five-thirty, just in case.”

  The phone is ringing as I let myself into my apartment. I leave the keys dangling in the lock and skid across the living room to answer it before it can go to voicemail. I think it is my boyfriend, calling to inform me that I left my bra at his place, and I am ready to have a good laugh about it. Falling asleep and then jumping up, rushing around makes me forgetful.

  “I know I forgot something,” I say as soon as the receiver is pressed to my ear. A smile claims half of my face.

  “Helena? This is your mother.”

  “Oh. Hey, Mama. Are you guys on your way here?”

  “Not exactly,” she says, and I hear the whir of a hair dryer in the background. “That’s why I’m calling. Beige needs to be picked up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the beauty shop. You know the one over on United Drive? Betty worked me in at the last minute.”

  “Beige isn’t bouncing off the walls, is she? Tell Miss Betty I’m sorry and I’m on my way.”

  “She ain’t here,” my mother says. “I dropped her at Mama’s house. You know Betty don’t allow kids in the shop unless they’re being serviced.”

  I’m stunned speechless. When I do speak, I don’t recognize my own voice. “You took her to Grandma’s house, Mama?”

  “I had to do something with her, didn’t I? You wasn’t at home and I couldn’t get Vicky.”

  “You said you were bringing my baby home at six and it’s not even that now, so, no, I wasn’t home. But even so, I don’t know what would possess you to take her there, of all places.”

  “It ain’t like she hasn’t been over there before, Lena. She knows Mama. She wasn’t crying or anything when I dropped her off.”

  “When?” I bark. “When was she over there before, Mama?”

  “I took her by there a few times when she was out of school a while back. Far as I know, everything was fine.”

  “You took my baby over there, Mama?”

  “What’s the problem now, Lena? I swear, let you tell it, I can’t do anything right. Mama was glad to see her ’cause you never think about letting her see her greatgrandbaby. She didn’t mind watching her for a while so I could make some runs.”

  “What’s a while, Mama? How long has Beige been over there? What time did you drop her off?”

  “Around two, I guess,” she says. “Right after the show was over, I called Betty to see if she could squeeze me in and she could, so—”

  “You bitch,” I say and drop the phone.

  I drive like my car has rubber bumpers and wings attached to it. I almost cause two accidents, and I am sweating like a bull by the time I pull up in front of my grandmother’s house. Beige is nowhere in sight, not on the porch playing and not two houses down, where there is a group of kids clustered on another porch, playing. She is not outside, like she should be on a mild and breezy spring evening, and that does not feel right tome.

  I kick at the front door with one foot. Stomp on it and make it rattle on its hinges. Scare the shit out of the kids two houses down and send a few of them inside the house to alert a grown-up to my presence. She takes her time answering my demands for entrance, and the look on her face when she finally opens the door tells me everything I need to know.

  “Where is my goddamn child?” This is what I say as I push past her and fly into the house. She closes the door at her back and leans against it, watching me carefully. “Did you hear me, bitch? Where is Beige?”

  “I know you better watch your mouth,” my grandmother says. She comes away from the door and tries to walk past me like all is right with the world, but I grab her arm and bring her up short, make her look at me. “Girl, if you don’t get your hands off me, you better.”

  “Get my daughter and get her now.”

  “She ain’t here. Vicky came running through here a few minutes ago and took her off somewhere.”

  “Took her where?”

  “Do I look like I’m in her back pocket?”

  I don’t believe her. I find a phone and punch in Vicky’s number with a finger that feels like a metal rod. I am breathing hard when she answers, and there is no time for her to speak. “Do you have my baby?”

  “Yes, Leenie,” Vicky croones soothingly. “She’s with me. I brought her home and put her right in the tub. She was—”

  I hear wind in my ears and see buzzards circling around in the air over my head. I cut Vicky off at the knees. “In the tub? Why the fuck is she in the tub? Why does she need a bath, Vicky?”

  “Leenie—”

  “Answer my question right now or I swear to God . . .”

  “When I got there, he was . . . touching her.” Vicky starts crying, and I do too. “I wanted her clean,” she sobs.

  I hang up the phone like I am in a trance. Walk over to where my grandmother is standing and stare at her. Then I am stomping down the hallway with a definite destination in mind. I know where I’m going, and when I arrive, the door slams back against the wall.

  She is right behind me, pushing her way into the room and blocking my range of sight. He sees me come into the room and he jumps up from the bed. He yanks his pants up around his waist and bellows like I should give a fuck. Like I should be afraid of the consequences of my actions. His dick is still hard because I have interrupted a masturbation session.

  An X-rated video plays on the television across the room, and the televi
sion is the first thing I shoot with the gun that I don’t even realize is in my hand. When did I grab it and shove it inside my purse? How long have I been holding it? I don’t know and right now, I really don’t care. I am just glad that I have it.

  Tree charges toward me, and then he sees the gun in my hand. He takes one, then two steps back, and stares at the gun like he doesn’t know what it is. He stares at me like he doesn’t know who I am.

  “Now do you understand, you sick motherfucker?” I say. I catch my grandmother’s eyes.

  “Do you?”

  “Leenie . . .” she pants. She stands directly in front of Tree with her arms out toward me, begging the way I have begged so many times before. “Put that thing away, okay? Put it away.”

  I pull the hammer back and the sound fills the room. “You put your filthy hands on my baby. Cocksucking motherfucker, how could you do that?” He is suddenly mute, which sends me over the edge into crystal clear rage. “Do you hear me, you bastard?”

  We stand there, frozen, staring at each other, and this is when Vicky starts beating on the door. I back out of the bedroom and jerk my head toward the sound. “Both of you, bring your asses out here where I can see you.” I aim the gun right between my grandmother’s eyes. “Get the fucking door.”

  They file out, one behind the other, and I am given a preview of what the next eight years of my life will be like: Follow the leader and do what you’re told. Vicky barrels into the house and approaches me from the side, moving slowly and taking small steps.

  “Leenie,” she whispers. “Put the gun down. They’re not worth this. Here, give it to me.”

  A bullet shatters a lamp and my grandmother screams. I point the barrel into the black hole of her mouth and she snaps it shut. “One more sound and I’ll blow your fucking head off,” I tell her, and I mean it. “Where is Beige?”

  “Back at my apartment,” Vicky says. “Rita from downstairs is with her.” She clutches her stomach and doubles over in agony. Starts up with the waterworks again and wrings her hands. “She’s okay, right, Leenie? You know Rita. You remember her. It was okay to leave her with Rita, wasn’t it, Leenie?” I don’t answer, and she takes my silence as a bad sign. “Leenie?”

  “Get out of here, Vicky. Go home and take care of my baby. Can you do that? I’ve got everything under control here, as you can see.”

  The bastard starts laughing. Tree throws his head back and howls like an animal, and my eyes get big with shock. My grandmother shushes him, slaps at his chest and tells him to be quiet. “This ain’t funny, Tree. You hear? Can’t you see this girl is crazy? Shut up now.”

  “You should listen to her, Tree,” I say. “Shut the fuck up right now.” He doesn’t, so I send a bullet whizzing past his head.

  He jumps and shuts up. He’s not so crazy, after all. He mumbles under his breath the way he always does, but it is different now. I can understand what he says. He whispers to God, wants God to help him. Wants to be saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost now, but it is way past too late.

  “Go away, Vicky.”

  “Leenie, please. Just—”

  “Go away. Now.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, I know what I’m doing all right. Know what I need you to do? I need you to go outside and get in your car and drive away. You don’t want to be anywhere near this shit, believe me.” Vicky doesn’t move. “Do it, Vicky,” I scream, and the sound of my voice is just shrill enough to send her running for the door. She has never seen me like this, not even when we were kids and living in hell. She fears what is happening to me more than she fears what I will do with the gun in my hand.

  It hits me in that moment. I realize that I have always been capable of doing something like this, of aiming a gun and feeling this kind of hate. The seed was planted the first time Tree touched me, and it has sprouted into a white hot rage over the years. I was only fooling myself, thinking that I could have a normal life, the way normal people do. It was there all the time, like a defective gene and a deadly disease waiting for the right time to strike. Vicky was angry, but I was murderous.

  I find my grandmother’s stricken gaze and I smile. “You knew it would be me, didn’t you, old woman? You knew I was your worst nightmare, didn’t you?”

  “You talking crazy, girl,” she has the nerve to say. “You done lost your mind.” She makes one last attempt to save her precious baby. “Vicky,” she screams. “Victoria, come and get your crazy sister!”

  Vicky takes one last look around the house, and then she takes one last look at me. She thinks about her career and everything she has to lose, and she leaves without making a sound. She does what I fail to do—think. On some level, her mind still functions properly, where mine is completely shot to hell.

  Finally, it is just me and them. Them and me, and I am ready to do what has to be done.

  “Move,” I tell my grandmother. “Get your fat ass out of my way.”

  “I ain’t moving, Leenie. And you ain’t shooting nobody, so put the gun down.”

  “Move, goddammit.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not even smart enough to save yourself, are you? You don’t even see that this bastard needs to die for what he did, do you?”

  “If anybody’s gone die here today, Leenie, it’s gone be you. You ain’t shooting my baby.”

  “What about my baby? What about her, huh?”

  “What about her, Leenie? She gone be all right, just like you and Vicky are. Y’all turned out all right, didn’t you?”

  “Vicky can’t have kids,” I say. “Because of this bastard and his gigantic dick. He fucked her up and now she can’t have kids.”

  “She don’t need ’em anyway,” my grandmother says, and I can see that she means every word. “She wasn’t doing nothing here that she wasn’t gone do one day, anyway, and you know it. Tree ain’t never hurt that girl and you either.”

  “How does your mind work?” For a moment, I am in an alternate state of reality. She blows my mind.

  “My mind?” She rears back and looks at me like I am the crazy one. “You the one standing here with a gun and you asking me how my mind works?”

  “How could you let him do the shit he does and not do something about it? Explain it to me.”

  “Put the gun down and I will.”

  “No. Explain it to me now.”

  “Explain what? You girls was stronger than he was,” she says earnestly. “You know he’s sick. He can’t help what he does. His mind plays tricks on him and makes him do what he does. Y’all stronger.”

  “Do you really believe that?” It is important that I know this one crucial piece of information. “Do you really believe having him put his mouth on me was okay, because he can’t help himself? Touching my baby was okay, because he can’t help himself?”

  “You turned out all right,” she says.

  “We were babies.”

  “Girl babies who was gone grow up to have women’s pussies. Didn’t hurt you to start learning what to do with ’em. You act like that little girl of yours is something special, something that can’t nobody touch. Well, she ain’t nothing, and you ain’t either. Tree wasn’t gone hurt her no more than he hurt you. Come to think of it, he probably wasn’t hurting you no way. You probably liked it, just like your baby was starting to like it.”

  I can’t listen to anymore. “Move!”

  “No.”

  “I’m telling you for the last time, bitch. Move.”

  “And I’m telling you for the last time, I’m not moving. You can call me all the bitches you want to call me, Leenie, but I ain’t moving. You want my baby, then you gotta go through me to get him.”

  “You hurt me. You hurt Vicky. And you hurt my baby. I am not in the mood to be fucked with right now, so you better move while you still can.”

  “You can’t run me out of my own house, girl. You ain’t that big and bad. Be crying like a baby in a minute, like you always did, an
d your tears don’t mean nothing to me. They ain’t never meant nothing to me, just like you ain’t never meant nothing to me.” She moves closer to Tree and steps in front of him like a shield.

  I shoot her, because I can’t listen to anymore. Her mind is warped and it needs to be put to sleep. I aim the gun at her heart and shoot her. I don’t plan to kill her; it just happens. But I don’t regret it. She falls to the floor and Tree loses his mind. He comes racing toward me, and I fire the gun again. I hit him in his shoulder because my hands are shaking so badly. He takes the bullet and stumbles backward, falls over an end table, and struggles his way to his feet.

  In my mind, he says, “Five, four, three, two, one.” He counts like he is directing a movie, telling Vicky and me when to begin kissing each other on the mouth, touching each other, and fondling each other’s private parts for his sick amusement. We can begin when he says, “Action.”

  I count for him now. Walk toward him with the gun suspended in the air between us. He scratches and claws his way toward the door. “Five,” I say. “Four, three, two, one . . .”

  He is out the door and running across the porch before I can say action, but I still fire at him. It is my last bullet, and I need to make it count. I think I aim precisely, think I am about to send him straight to hell, but I don’t. I end up shooting him in his ass and allowing him to get away from a death that belongs to him.

  I see him fight his way into his car, parked at the corner. An old Buick Riviera that modern cars cannot touch. It is indestructible, just like he is. I watch him take off driving down the street, leaning sideways because his ass has a hole in it. I stare after his car long after it is gone.

  And then I start laughing. Then and now.

  “Why are you laughing?” Kimmick asks. His voice intrudes on my thoughts and startles me. I have forgotten that he is here with me, and now I look at him, clearly surprised to see him sitting up in his chair, hanging on my words.