by Kiki Swinson
“I’ma have to let some of my niggas know this shit is here before five’o get wind of this stiff up in here,” I huffed out loud to myself. I knew once the police found Ryan they would be stealing all of that cash themselves. Might as well had let niggas in the hood know before the crooked-ass cops got to it.
I raced toward the front door of Ryan’s house. The bright lights of a couple of his computers caught my eye. I was suddenly struck by the idea that those computers could’ve been recording or booby-trapped, so I paused for a few seconds. Then I lifted the gun and let off one shot into each of Ryan’s computers and into his server. If the cops came knocking, hopefully the computers would be fried and there would be no evidence left of our crime. I couldn’t let the cops find me or Lauren before I found her first. Now that I was stacking things had just become much more promising for my mission to destroy Lauren.
LAUREN
I jumped out of my sleep to my cell phone buzzing on my nightstand. Instinctively my eyes shot over to the cable box. It was 7:45 in the morning. Who the hell was calling me? Barely anyone had the number to my TracFone so I just dismissed it as maybe a wrong number. A few minutes later, the phone was ringing again. It was apparent that somebody was trying to reach me.
I gently lifted Drake’s arm off of my waist and carefully untangled my legs from his. He let out a grunting snore and turned over on his side with his back facing me. He was still asleep. I was jealous.
I cracked a little smile but that quickly changed to a frown when my phone began ringing again. This was out of hand now. Maybe it’s Daysha, was my first thought. She was the only person aside from a few important contacts and Drake who had my number. With my eyebrows furrowed, I reached over and picked it up.
“Hello,” I whispered, my voice still gruff with sleep. I slowly sat up on the side of the bed.
“Ms. Kelly?” a nasally female voice filtered through the phone. A flash of heat washed over me. I hadn’t been called by my real name for almost three months now.
“Who is this?” I whispered, peering over my shoulder to make sure Drake was still asleep. With my face crumpled in confusion, I slowly stood up, but once I was on my feet I realized how shaky my legs were. I almost fell backward. I gripped the phone so hard it felt like the bones of my knuckles would burst through the skin on my hands. I walked slowly toward the bathroom, careful not to make any noise that might rouse Drake from his sleep.
“This is Mrs. Karrington from the Sunrise Assisted Living and Eldercare Center. I’m calling regarding your mother,” the woman said. Her sharp, nasally voice was annoying, but it had a very familiar twang to it. A cold shiver went down my spine and caused me to shiver. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. The call itself was very alarming. Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay, I started chanting silently in my head.
“Yes. What is it?” I asked in a barely audible tone. I could hardly find my voice because I was so afraid of what this woman had to say.
“Um . . . your mother, Clara Shepherd, has been admitted to Sentara Hospital. She’s had a severe stroke. You should get to the hospital as soon as you can. They are not sure if she will be released because the situation seems very grave. I hate to sound crass, but our policy is that once a resident is admitted to the hospital and might be there long-term or is not expected to return, we need to have their room cleaned out.”
“Um . . . I’ll be there to get all of her things. Don’t remove anything until I get there and see what is what,” I snapped nervously, cutting the woman’s words off. “It’s going to take me a little while to get there. I am in another state . . . don’t remove anything. I pay a lot of money every month to have my mother there so I would think a courtesy should be extended to me,” I said in a low but gruff tone. I could feel my nerves tingling all over my body. A line of sweat beads cropped up at my hairline, too. This was the moment I was dreading, I just didn’t expect it this soon.
“Okay . . . okay. We can give you twenty-four hours to get here, but I can’t promise that my administrator will allow you more time than that. Please try your best. We will see you when you arrive,” Mrs. Karrington said.
“Thank you,” I huffed.
I hung up the phone and clutched it against my chest. I stared at myself in the mirror that hung over the sink. I didn’t know who I was staring at anymore. I had different hair—it was now short and so light it was almost blond. I had different eyes, I popped in my gray contact lenses as soon as I awoke every morning. The fake lashes, the veneers on my teeth, the tattooed mole right above my lip—all of this was supposed to change me from Lauren Kelly to Lauriel Kelton but sadly as I stared at myself, I realized I was the same ol’ girl. I was that baby who was born from what everybody told me was a trick my mother had turned. I was that little girl who’d been removed from her abusive and neglectful crackhead mother only to be placed in a dozen different foster homes where I was being treated badly. I came to realize that most of my foster parents only took kids in to get a freaking check. That’s it. There were no safeguards in place to make sure you were treated well. If the foster parents liked you, then maybe you’d get three hot meals a day. If not, then you were either abused mentally or physically. I remember witnessing my sister getting touched by older male foster siblings and foster fathers who were supposed to take care of us. She was still a preteen when she’d gotten pregnant through rape in a group home and was forced to get a botched abortion. From there we were separated. I swear if I could turn back the hands of time, I’d do it. My sister meant the world to me. She was all I had. But my mother’s drug addiction caused us to lose each other. I will blame her for that for the rest of my life.
Tears streamed down my face like a waterfall as I thought back on my past. I was frozen and couldn’t move. I became so cold my teeth began chattering. Just the thought of returning to my hometown made a wave of cramps roll through my stomach. It had been so refreshing starting over in New York. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy back in Virginia Beach.
I bit down into my lip until I tasted the acrid metallic sting of my own blood on my tongue. My mind was stalled on how I was going to maneuver this one. Going back to Virginia Beach so soon wasn’t in my plan. I guess this was the one time I hadn’t planned things out thoroughly. When I stashed the money at Sunrise, I figured I’d have at least a year before I had to go get the rest of the money from the safe I’d placed in the secure storage area at the facility. When I left it there, my foster mother, Mrs. Shepherd, was doing fine. She couldn’t get around as well as she used to because she had had one of her legs amputated due to diabetes, but she wasn’t deathly ill when I had last seen her. This stroke the lady from the home reported to me just seemed to come out of nowhere. What if she didn’t make it out of this? I cringed at the invasive thoughts running through my mind. I didn’t even want to think about something happening to her. I knew I would take it very hard if it did.
Mrs. Shepherd was one of the sweetest ladies I had ever known. She was a short, round, cherubic-faced lady who always wore housecoats even when she went outside. She laughed a lot and gave out lots of hugs and kisses too. I had always remained loyal to Mrs. Shepherd, even after I was forced to leave her house, because of all of the foster homes I had ever been shuffled around to, she was the only foster parent who had actually acted like she loved and cared about me. I closed my eyes and thought back....
February 1996
I sat on the bathroom floor crying and rocking back and forth. I looked down at the blood. It was all over my legs, clothes, and hands now. I belched out more sobs. I jumped at the loud knock on the bathroom door. My eyes went round as dinner plates. I looked around for a place to hide the mess. I was twelve years old and I was about to die. That was all I kept thinking about.
“Lauren? Lauren, baby, what’s going on in there? You all right?” Mrs. Shepherd called to me softly from the other side of the door. I was frantically trying to clean up the blood. It had smeared all over the white tile floo
r of the bathroom. It was starting to stain the grout in between the tiles, too. My body was covered in sweat. Cramps stabbed through my abdomen, too. On top of it all, my heart was hammering against the wall of my chest, which was causing blood to rush to my head. I really felt like I would faint at any moment.
“Umm . . . um. Nothing. I . . . I . . . um. I’m coming out now,” I stammered. Really I didn’t know what I was going to do. There wasn’t even a window in Mrs. Shepherd’s bathroom for me to throw the bloodied clothes out of. I spun around a few times trying to decide where to hide the soiled items. My eyebrows went into arches on my face when I spotted the back of the toilet.
Thinking quickly, I opened the back of the toilet tank and stuffed the clothes into it. I closed it down as quietly as I could but the heavy porcelain top clanged against the tank.
“Hey, baby . . . what is going on in there?” Mrs. Shepherd said from outside the door. She jiggled the doorknob this time.
“Oh my God,” I huffed.
“Um . . . nothing, ” I yelled back. Even I could hear the fear and panic in my own voice. I frantically rolled off wads and wads of toilet paper and balled it up. I wet it and began dragging it over the floor trying in vain to clean up the blood. I realized the wet tissue was making it worse, so I rolled off more tissue, this time I wiped it with dry tissue. All the while Mrs. Shepherd was gently trying to coax me to open the door. I’m sure any other foster home I had been in the parents would’ve busted the door down and kicked my ass for having it locked in the first place.
When I was satisfied that I had somewhat covered my tracks, I grabbed a towel from the back of the door, wrapped it around my waist, and opened the door.
“You okay, baby?” Mrs. Shepherd asked in a sweet tone. She was eyeing me suspiciously. I knew she was wondering why I had that towel wrapped around my waist, but as usual, she had a smile on her face. I didn’t think I had ever seen her with a mean expression or evil look on her face since I had been there.
“Um . . . ye . . . yes,” I stammered. I rushed toward the bedroom that Mrs. Shepherd had set up for me. I could hear her going into the bathroom. I was so scared that my entire body was burning up. I had come to the conclusion that whatever was happening to me was going to cause me to die. I just knew at any minute I would bleed to death. I put on a fresh pair of panties, a pair of pajamas, and climbed into the bed. I could feel another warm gush of blood rush from between my legs. I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the pillow waiting for all of the blood to drain from my body. Tears drained out of my eyes. I didn’t want to die but I had only ever seen blood when someone was shot, stabbed, or dying.
I was sobbing. Not only because I was bleeding to death, but because I had been separated from my mother and my sister and now I was going to die and never see them again. After about ten minutes, Mrs. Shepherd opened my bedroom door and came inside the room. I kept my eyes closed . . . waiting for her to react angrily or worse.
“Lauren, baby. Sit up,” she said softly. “Let me talk to you for a minute, honey.”
Mrs. Shepherd flopped her ample body down on the side of the bed. I could smell her lilac perfume mixed with the Werther’s caramel candy she always had in her mouth.
“C’mon, baby, sit up now,” Mrs. Shepherd coaxed.
I shook my head no. I was crying. I was ashamed. But, most of all I was deathly afraid.
Mrs. Shepherd touched the side of my face gently. She wiped the tears off of my cheek.
“Shhhh. Ain’t no need to cry. I know you’re scared but let me tell you what’s going on and maybe that will make it better,” she said sweetly. I opened my eyes and saw that she had the wet, bloody clothes that I had stuffed into the toilet tank in her left hand.
“I see the blood on your clothes. I know it’s nothing that you did on purpose. There was no reason for you to hide it. You can always come to me about anything that is going on with you,” Mrs. Shepherd said with a sincerity I had never heard in any adult’s voice. I sniffled back the snot and tears.
“It’s called womanhood, baby. It’s nothing to be afraid of or scared of. It happens to all girls when God says it’s time for them to become women,” she said softly. “Sit up. Come over here to me.”
Reluctantly, I did as Mrs. Shepherd asked. She reached over and pulled me into her ample bosom. She hugged me tight and rocked a little bit. I felt the tension easing from my body. I inhaled her scent. A warm comfort came over me like someone had covered me with a soft, cuddly blanket. I had never had a hug from an adult in my life. That’s right, I know it sounds exaggerated or crazy, but up to that point I had never had a hug from a human adult in my entire twelve years of living. My mother had never hugged me. I had no idea who my father was so of course he never hugged me. My grandmother did nothing but beat me and her abuse was the reason my sister and I were in foster care in the first place. All of the other foster parents I had were grimy, abusive, neglectful pedophiles or just plain mean. I never trusted adults because of all of my negative experiences with them. I let my guard down when it came to Mrs. Shepherd, though. She was the first adult to ever show me real affection that wasn’t followed by some sick attempt to have me perform some sordid sexual act on them or for them to perform one on me. I closed my eyes and melted against Mrs. Shepherd’s warm body. I sobbed and sobbed. Not because I was scared about the blood anymore but because I was afraid that if she let me go I would never feel love like this ever again in my life.
“This happens to all women and it will happen to you every month from now until you’re old like me,” Mrs. Shepherd said sweetly as she held me close. “This means that one day you will be able to have babies so that means staying away from picky-headed boys and their nasty willies,” she continued. I asked her a few questions and she had all of the answers. It was the only talk I would ever have about sex. Everything proper I learned about being a woman I learned that day from Mrs. Shepherd. Everything else I learned at the hands of pedophiles or by trial and error when I started dating. I loved Mrs. Shepherd from that very moment and every day after that.
* * *
I snapped out of my reverie and realized I was crying. My legs were trembling so hard I finally collapsed onto the closed toilet seat. I put my head in my hands and started thinking about my next move. There was no way I could allow Mrs. Shepherd to die without seeing her one last time. There was also no way I could allow that assisted living place to move my safe. Hell no!
But, now that I was practically living with Drake, he wasn’t going to just let me up and go back to my hometown alone. He was very possessive over me.
I would have to tell Drake that I needed to go back to Virginia Beach, but I know he would insist on going with me. Which would mean the possibility of Drake finding out my real name and identity. I couldn’t let that happen. All of this pretending would have been in vain. No other man had treated me like Drake had treated me in the few short months we had been spending time together.
I let out a long windstorm of breath. The more I sat and thought the more things I came up with that were just all wrong about returning to Virginia Beach. I mean, I couldn’t forget that I hadn’t left under the best of circumstances. I had to be very careful going back because I was sure that even after three months, Matt and Yancy were probably still searching for me. Not to mention, last week I had just gotten in contact with my best friend, Daysha, to let her know I was okay. Although the broken relationships I’d left behind were swirling in my brain, at the top of the list was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let Mrs. Shepherd die without seeing her one last time. And, my safe . . . there was still the fact that I needed my safe.
After about twenty minutes of being holed up in the bathroom, I finally returned to my bedroom. Drake was awake lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. When he heard me enter the room, he turned toward me and parted that sexy, lady-killer smile of his. He was too damn fine for human eyes, I swear. I had told him several times he should be a model.
>
“What’s up, sweetheart?” he asked. My heart started pounding all over again. I had told so many lies that I couldn’t just stop and go back to telling the truth. I hated to keep lying to him.
“Nothing, you sexy thing,” I faked as I slid into the bed next to him. I snuggled my body against his, hoping that his touch would ease some of the angst I was feeling.
“You sure? You kind of look like you’ve been crying,” Drake asked and told me all in one breath.
Damn, he noticed everything. I had never had a man who paid attention to every detail and was always so interested in my every move like this. It was flattering, but sometimes it was annoying and unnerving. Like now. I immediately grew annoyed with Drake’s constant probing. I let out an exasperated breath.
“Nah. My eyes were tearing up because I had an eyelash stuck in my eye,” I lied, thinking quickly on my feet. “Why would I be crying when you make me so happy,” I said all phony-like.
“Good, because I can’t have my lady crying and not knowing what I can do to make it all better. My job is to make you happy at all times. Remember that,” he said. Then he pulled me on top of him.
“Now stop all of the talking and kiss me,” he demanded. I cracked a halfhearted smile and let out a real phony giggle. I wasn’t in the mood for sex, but it was the only way to really change the subject and make Drake feel that everything was normal. I lowered my mouth on top of his and kissed him passionately. His hands ran down my back and over my ass and back up again. Although I wasn’t in the mood, my body began preparing for Drake. I felt myself getting wet and my nipples were hard and erect.
