Crimson Footprints

by Shewanda Pugh

  She didn’t answer, and he didn’t need her to. He rubbed her thigh in a slow and circular motion as the windows fogged and rain blasted the car.

  “Let’s get in the backseat for a second. My defroster isn’t working so we’ll have to wait this out.”

  Lizzie hesitated. He’d fucked her before, even since she’d lost her virginity. He had this way of nudging himself in even when she didn’t want him to. Like offering her a ride in the rain only to never drive off.

  She climbed into the back seat and Snowman followed. He was too tall to scale over as she’d done, so he threw open his door and dove into the back. Drenched by the rainfall, he turned to Lizzie and kissed her, no questions asked. His hands squeezed and groped, tugging on her clothes until she had none.

  “Come on,” he said. “Suck my dick.”

  When he pulled on his pants later, an hour had passed.

  “What I owe you?” Snowman said, reaching for his wallet.

  Lizzie hesitated. She hadn’t been sure if she’d get paid since she hadn’t made that clear beforehand. “Let’s see, twenty for the blow and a hundred for the fuck.”

  Snowman peeked in his wallet. “I’ve only got ten on me.”

  Lizzie sighed. “Fine. Give me that.”

  He handed her the crumpled bill and watched her slide it into her jeans. “How much you made today?” he asked

  Lizzie eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

  “Cause I want to know.”

  She shrugged. “A few hundred. Like three.”

  “And how many dudes you fucked for that?”

  She shrugged.

  “What if I told you that you could make a lot more money doing the exact same shit?”

  Lizzie frowned. “I’m not standing on no fucking street corner, Snow.”

  “You don’t have to. Listen, I know dudes with real money. Dudes that pay two hundred, two-fifty for the exact same shit.”

  “Two hundred dollars? For one guy?”

  “Yeah. Now what I’m thinking is that you and me can clean up. I send ‘em your way, I get my referral fee and you get the rest.”

  “Referral fee? How much is that?”

  “Does it fucking matter? You’re not paying it, they are. What I’m saying is I can send one guy your way that’ll pay you for what you’re getting for a shitload of guys. So, what do you say? We in business, or what?”

  Lizzie laughed. “Hell yeah, we’re in business.”

  The drugs came soon after. Alcohol and weed were the first, while the X, the coke and the heroin came later. They were what she needed, and they made getting through the jobs easier. Snow was the one who gave her the stuff, and when his supply ran dry, she began to look elsewhere for a high. She began to look anywhere.

  Everywhere.

  WHEN GRANDMA EMMA and Deena were ushered into Principal Williams’s office, the man brightened at the sight of her. He’d aged in the years since she’d last seen him, sprouting a belly where a tight stomach once sat, and white speckle in the patch of thick black hair. But his smile was the same, big and congenial, eyes nearly shutting with the joy of seeing Deena.

  He gushed over her for a moment, wanting to know about her life and career, before ushering them to the hard-back plastic seats in front of his desk. Lizzie sat in a corner donning a fitted white t-shirt that failed to reach her waist and had ‘Hot and Bothered’ printed on the front. Not even in hell would this shirt and skirt be within the dress code.

  “What are you wearing?” Deena hissed.

  Principal Williams shot her a sympathetic look. “Ordinarily we send students home when they dress like this, but quite frankly, we’d be sending Elizabeth home every day if we did that.”

  With everyone seated, Principal Williams folded his hands and gave a tired smile.

  “I wish we were here under better circumstances. I am so proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” Deena said quietly. She shot Lizzie another reproachful look. There wasn’t a lot of time to dawdle, considering she’d taken Tak’s car and left him back at the firm. Despite what he’d said, she didn’t want him to have to catch the bus on her account.

  “Mr. Williams, I know you told my grandmother over the phone that you wanted Lizzie out of your school, but isn’t there some way you could give her another chance?”

  The principal frowned. “I know it was quite some time ago that you were a student here, but do you remember the zero-tolerance policy I had?”

  “You mean about illegal activity?” She shot her sister a single, warning look. Lizzie wouldn’t meet it.

  “Illegal activity is exactly what I mean.”

  He reached into his desk and pulled out a sheet of folded paper before sliding it over to Deena.

  The first set of handwriting was in pencil, scrawled in haste, but clear nonetheless.

  ‘What can I get for $25?’

  The answer was small, careful, tightly written. Lizzie’s handwriting.

  ‘A bj.’

  Deena dropped the paper.

  “She also offered her services to me,” Principal Williams said, too loudly, “when I told her that I would have to withdraw her from school.

  “She’s troubled, Mr. Williams,” Deena blurted, pushing back the hot and sour feel of her stomach. “Don’t kick her out. You—you know my family. You’ve had them all here! My aunts and cousins! You—you know how troubled we are!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So give her another chance! I’m begging you. You know my family. We have babies in high school and go to jail before we’re twenty-one. I’m trying to teach her what’s right, but all around her are bad examples! She needs you around. She needs to see people who are educated and self-respecting, who look like us.” Her eyes filled with tears. Nearby, both Grandma and Lizzie were stone silent.

  “I have to treat this with an even hand. If I found a male student pimping out girls, everyone would expect me to deal with him harshly. I can’t appear light in this matter.” He sighed. “I can’t have her prostituting herself.”

  “She won’t!” Deena turned to her sister. “You won’t, right?”

  Lizzie nodded as if bored. “Yeah, sure thing.”

  Principal Williams gathered Kleenex from the box on his desk and handed them to Deena. “Stop crying. If she promises…” He hesitated, his reluctance clear. “I guess I’ll let her stay.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “But not today. Take her home and get some sensible clothes on her. Tomorrow we start again, and I expect to see a new attitude.”

  “Yes, sir,” Deena was already standing. “Thank you so much. God, thank you.”

  Williams nodded. “Alright, alright. Go on now. And no more crying.”

  Outside, Grandma Emma strode right past Tak’s Ferrari and kept on going. She clutched an oversized black pocketbook in both hands and her feet moved faster than Deena had ever seen.

  “Grandma, where are you going? It’s this car, remember?”

  She whirled on her, like thunder and fury.

  “What? You think I’m so ignorant I can’t remember the fancy car you drove up here in?”

  Her mouth creased to an angry pinpoint, dark eyes narrowed. Around them, high schoolers poured out the double doors to mill in the street.

  “No, I—”

  “The next time you want to go somewhere to badmouth my family, leave me at home.”

  Deena paused. “Badmouth?”

  “Yeah!” Emma took a step closer. “Or do you say those things so often that you don’t even know when you saying them? Talking about how we uneducated and what not.”

  “I didn’t mean it as a slight. I just—”

  “If we shame you so, why don’t you just go back to that other family of yours? The one that likes to kill people?”

  Deena’s lip trembled. “I never said I was ashamed—”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “Grandma, please. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I take you in, clothe, and
feed you. And you badmouth me and my family.”

  She started off again, an angry gait ailed by arthritis. But Deena didn’t follow.

  “Me and my family,” she’d said.

  Her family.

  Hers.

  TAK TURNED TO Deena, smiling at the sight of wild brown locks framing her face as she lay on the pillow. She was frowning. It was the end of the summer, August, and he knew what occupied her thoughts at this time of year.

  “You don’t have to do this. They can’t make you.”

  Tak propped up on an elbow, his tanned skin contrasting with the stark white of the bed sheets.

  Deena sighed. “They would die if I didn’t. I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “You’d hear the end of it if you stopped listening.”

  “Anyway, I’m the reason they do it every year. I came up with the idea.”

  He couldn’t fathom why she would want to not only attend a banquet honoring the life of her grandfather, but plan one. Yet she’d done so year after year, honoring a man who’d spent years grinding her into the dirt. She owed him nothing. In fact, she owed him more than nothing. She owed him hatred.

  Deena stared at him until a smile cracked her sullen expression. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as last year.”

  Last year, he thought, God help us if it were.

  She’d planned her menu with care and called it a “veritable smorgasbord of the safe and daring”. It included cracked crab and caviar, shrimp cocktail and pâtés, canapés and imported cheeses, and all that was before the rosemary lamb chops and herb crusted salmon.

  They’d argued in the caterer’s office and in the car afterwards, and she started to cry. He couldn’t understand this, he shouted, wouldn’t understand this. And she dashed tears, trying to explain.

  “You think I don’t know how my grandfather felt about me? Do you think I need you to constantly remind me?” She shook her head. “This isn’t for him, it’s for my grandmother. The only person in the world that wanted us. Eight days we sat in that foster home, before Grandma Emma and Grandpa Eddie came. They took one look at us and disappeared for another two. Later, I found out that my grandma used that time to convince Grandpa Eddie to take us in.”

  He was treading in deep and treacherous waters, he knew, where a banquet was no longer a lavish dinner but gushing gratitude for crumbs kicked her way. So he backed off, and let her be. And the result had been a sobbing and heartbroken Deena, returned from the banquet with a stain on her dress and stories of how they made fun of her, her food, her clothes, her everything.

  This year she stayed firm in not planning the event. Tak suspected part of that was due to the fight she’d had with her grandmother. At the last minute, when the Hammonds realized that Deena wasn’t going to be footing this year’s bill, they threw something together, and it was this something that she was considering attending.

  Tak sat up with a thought. “I tell you what,” he said. “Let’s stay busy today. Then you won’t have time to think about it.”

  Deena shook her head. “I have to at least go, Tak. My grandmother’ll be disappointed.”

  He shrugged. Last he’d heard, she still wasn’t speaking to Deena for the scene at the principal’s office.

  “Disappointed in what, is the question. And maybe the answer is in not having you to bully.” He swung legs out from the bed and stood. “Not sure how sad you need to be about that one.”

  Deena closed her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. They could be a cruel bunch, those Hammonds, and not going could be worse than enduring. She’d go, he thought, because in the end, that was easier.

  But she surprised him.

  “What’ll we do instead?”

  Tak smiled. “Whatever you want. Large or small. Name it and it’s yours.” An idea occurred to him. “Hey, let’s redecorate the place. Your apartment gives me the creeps, anyway. Looks like the inside of a mausoleum.”

  Deena pouted. “That’s a bit strong.”

  “No, not really,” He reached for the pajama pants he’d discarded by the bed the night before and pulled them over his naked torso. “Listen, I’m an artist. You can’t possibly expect me to spend so much time in such drab surroundings.”

  Deena stood. “Hmph. I wouldn’t have thought you’d notice. Your eyes are closed so often.”

  Tak stared at her. “What was that? A sex joke?” He snatched a pillow and heaved it at her. “That was terrible. Now get dressed so we can get to work.”

  Like everything else about her, he found her penchant for bad jokes adorable.

  They spent the morning shopping and the afternoon redecorating. Sunshine yellow curtains, goldenrod paint, a cream throw rug, several pieces of his artwork and a crystal floor lamp were all in tow as they returned to the apartment.

  At the furniture store she’d balked at the idea of a living room set, crying poverty and the like, only to have him spring for the one she showed the most interest in. When she complained about the amount of money he was spending, he threw in an entertainment center as well.

  They changed clothes, moved the old futon to the center of the room, and went to work layering the floor with newspaper and cracking open cans of paint. They worked in silence for a while, with nothing but the slick sounds of wet paint being slathered onto walls to entertain them.

  “You’re making a mess, Dee,” Tak scolded as he watched her poor painting skills. She looked at him baffled, then down at herself. In an effort to paint higher than her wingspan allowed she’d leaned against the wall, lathering paint all over the torso of her t-shirt. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Sorry,” she mocked.

  He frowned at her, knowing he was only being particular because they were painting. Even this was art to him. He began turning back to the wall before something occurred to him.

  “Hey! Isn’t that my t-shirt?” he asked, suddenly recognizing the ruined tee.

  Knowing that it was, Deena began to whistle innocently as she returned to her painting.

  “That is my shirt!”

  She whistled even louder and made bold, dramatic sweeps of the brush to demonstrate how busy she was.

  “Can’t talk right now, Tak. Got a lot of work to get done over here.”

  “What! You’re gonna give me back my damned shirt!” He rushed Deena and hoisted her over his shoulder. Laughing, she squirmed to get free of his powerful grip. Paint smeared his shoulder and back as he carried her through the living room, past the bedroom and into the bathroom.

  “Sticking your tongue out at me! Ruining my shirt! I’ll show you!”

  Deena laughed fitfully as he carried her away.

  “And didn’t I tell you that you were making a mess?”

  He dumped her into the bathtub. Doubled over with laughter, she attempted to escape before he turned the shower on full blast. Yellow paint seeped from her now transparent t-shirt and lounge shorts, draining in the tub beneath her.

  With a single hand, Deena snatched him in, and in seconds they were saturated and giggling, her body beneath his. She kissed him as the cold water rained down.

  “Uh uh. Don’t try to distract me. You still haven’t taken off my shirt.” The water plastered razored black hair to his forehead and neck, as he murmured between kisses.

  “That’s because I’m not going to.” Deena traced the bridge of his nose with a single finger, then kissed him again. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yeah,” she replied.

  Suddenly they were struggling again, as he yanked at the shirt, as she fought to keep it. But her fight was brief, and her laughter long.

  “Deena, you made that way too easy,” he warned.

  Tak kissed her again, tossing his sopping wet prize from the tub. He returned to Deena, his heart pounding the way it always did when she was within his grasp. She made him feel in extremes, and her words, her touch, her love had done more for him in their near-two years of being together than anything had, ever.


  DEENA RAN THE flats of her palms across the broad dark table and tried to ignore the glares of those around her. Jennifer Swallows, sixty-nine, with the firm twelve years, in the industry forty. Herb West, two years her junior at sixty-seven, was with the firm ten, but also in the industry forty. Sam Michaels and Donald Mason, each in their fifties, had been with the firm over twenty years. There were others, twenty-five in all, and each had something Deena did not: decades of experience. And yet she was there, among this elite group, with seventy-five other architects on the other side of the door, snubbed from this all-important meeting.

  Daichi entered the room with a scowl and closed the door behind him. He held no briefcase, no notes, nothing to indicate the meeting’s purpose. He allowed his gaze to rake over each of the architects present, twenty-three men, Jennifer and Deena, and spared no one the invasive appraisals that so often bordered on molestation. Still, Daichi’s entrance conjured up stirring images of Tak, flickering like an 8mm film—Deena’s office door, a bare leg, his mouth at her neck, then lower. She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. This would be a long meeting.

  Deena’s cell phone vibrated from its resting place in her purse. She glanced down at her lap and willed herself not to peek. She turned to Daichi and concentrated on the cut of his Armani suit, the polish of his Prada shoes, and the glare of his face. The phone vibrated again. She decided to peek.

  Thought of U. Thinking of me? Call when U can

  Deena ran a finger along the screen, as if in touching the words she might touch Tak. Of course she was thinking of him. She was becoming incompetent because of him.

  Hurriedly she punched in a response.

  In meeting. Call after. Dad looks mad.

  Deena raised her gaze to Daichi and watched as he paced.

  “Whenever there is an economic downturn you will find that the building industry will suffer exponentially. A look out the window will show you that construction has all but halted in this city. Our economic crisis is a global one, with far reaching ramifications—”

  Deena’s phone vibrated. She glanced down. From his seat next to her, Herb West scowled, his distaste with her inattention clear.