Dior continued to yell at the top of her lungs until she grew too tired. Thirty minutes passed; no one came to her rescue. Scared and alone, she sniffled miserably. “Help me, somebody. I fell and I can’t get up.” She replayed her words after they reminded her of a television commercial that made her laugh. However, there was nothing to laugh about when it was her who’d collapsed on the cold hard tile. Why am I stuck to this floor and what is that smell? she thought. Ooh, it stinks. It smells like somebody used the restroom. Dior wrinkled her nose again, blowing breath through her nose to spare herself the pungent odor. As she opened her mouth to verbally complain of the foul smell, she made a startling revelation. The stench was emanating from her snuggly fitting shorts. She huffed to keep from crying at the thought of losing control of her bowels. Disgusted and frustrated by her debilitated state, Dior couldn’t fight off the tears pouring from the wells of her eyes. She whimpered uncontrollably, feeling less than human. “I’m sorry!” she said, wincing at the pain she felt in her hip. “I’m sorry, Richard. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I’m sorry, God, and I mean it this time, not like before when Isis died and I thought it should have been me because it was my fault. That was guilt talking for me. This time, I’m really sorry. I’m sorry with all my heart,” she blubbered. “Please believe me. I put that on everything I love, God. Everything!” She sniffled and wagged her head from side to side. “I’m sorry! What else you want me to say! All I’m asking is for somebody to help me get up since you won’t give me the strength to do it on my own. Do you hear me, God? Do you hear me!” Tormented, Dior waggled her head from side to side. “Ahhh, I’m so cold. I’m freezing down here, God. The Bible says you help people in need so I’m asking, I’m asking for one more chance to do right. Please,” she added much softer than before.
As Dior’s energy waned, she began to fade in and out. Trapped in a semi-sedated state, she remembered things she’d forgotten too many years ago to matter, or so she thought. Sitting in a fourth-grade classroom, she scowled at Mrs. Wellston, a snooty white woman who’d gotten stuck in an urban school district that had turned black too fast for her to land a cushy and less challenging position in the suburbs like many of her contemporaries. The prim and proper teacher had Dior’s best interest at heart when telling her, “Good looks will only get a pretty girl so far. You’d better concentrate on your multiplication tables and stop letting those mannish boys look under your dress. Soon enough they’ll start trying to get under those fancy dresses your mother obviously overspends on. Now, get back to work before I have to call your mother and report your unladylike behavior.” Mrs. Wellston would have slapped the taste out of her mouth had Dior actually voiced what was hidden behind that nine-year-old’s sneer. “I like boys and they like me back. Maybe if you had some really cute ones trying to get at what’s under your ugly old dresses, you wouldn’t care about who I’m letting look under mine.”
Dior also recalled hard times and hardly getting by with enough food to eat. One night, Billie Rae had to pull a double shift at the lounge. Dior couldn’t have been more than eight years old at the time. During a midnight snack run, she couldn’t find anything to eat that didn’t require cooking, so she devoured half a pack of frozen wieners. Her tiny stomach swelled so badly, Dooney thought it was going to pop. Dior moaned as she lay on the floor of her house, remembering how it felt worse than death then. “What kind of mother stays out all times of the day and night, leaving two children to do for themselves? Not anyone I want to be like,” she scoffed.
Grunting erratically from the phantom pains, Dior bellowed that she was sore all over at once. “Ouch, ouch, ouch. I hurt so much. Please send somebody to see about me.” As the hours faded by, the sun shone through the windows in the back of the house, opposite from the spot where she lay at the mouth of the foyer. “I’m going to get up from here one day,” she cussed. “And I’m going to settle up with all those tricks who messed me over too. That superfreak Marta Mills, who stole my boyfriend and date to the junior prom. I’m coming for you, Marta! I hope you’re fat with a million babies and no husband to help you feed them nasty crumb-snatchers. Ooh!” Dior yelped, when a cord of pain spiked in her back. “Don’t think I’ma let this little setback stop me from putting my foot up that conniving-flunking-the-twelfth-grade-twice behind of yours, Marta. I’m not forgetting about the dirt you threw on me either. I won’t. You’ll get yours.” Dior laughed heartily when she remembered hearing rumors three days following the prom that Marta contracted a subsequent bad case of gonorrhea from the ex-boyfriend she stole. “Ha-ha, that’s what you get!”
When the sun eased over the horizon, Dior shifted her mental energies toward the men in her past. She named each of those who shared what the snooty teacher warned her about giving up years before. There was Byron, the finest ninth grader ever to keep a full beard neatly trimmed on a daily basis. Eric and Travon came after Byron, although Dior couldn’t determine in which order she’d slept with them. Charles and Patrick came sometime later, in the summer of her senior year. It wasn’t necessary to recall which of those she had first because she did them together. Dior accepted the threesome on a dare when her girlfriends chickened out. Sorting names, faces, and intimate details became cumbersome. She kept losing track somewhere in the thirties so she rounded up to an even forty male conquests, as she put it. Having contracted three different sexually transmitted diseases during her fast and feverish flings, Dior figured treatable offenses were the cost of doing business. Other girls she came up with, some who slept with far fewer men, weren’t as lucky while paying the cost of doing theirs.
The very moment that absurd hissing started up again, Dior’s eyes opened wildly. She panicked just as she had on the previous morning. “What’s that! Who’s there!” she scolded it frantically. “I’m in here. I have a . . . I have a gun!” She raised her chin as far as she could then she made an attempt to search the floor for the pistol she used to threaten Richard. Failing to locate it, Dior assumed the pastor had swiped it during his disappearing act. Dehydrated and desperate, Dior howled wearily. Her lips were crusty and split. She’d grown tired of swallowing saliva and her throat was sore and itchy. “I’m so thirsty. So thirsty,” she muttered silently. “And I want a bubble bath. I could drink a bubble bath.”
Dior was in the middle of making a mental list of things she couldn’t wait to eat and drink once rescued. She heard a rustling sound behind a magazine rack placed near the sofa. Her eyes stayed trained on the metal rack. Please, let it be the magazines shifting, she mouthed. Ooh, there it is again. Dior shrieked as a green salamander shimmied from behind the stack of periodicals. “Go back, go back,” she panted, but it kept on crawling toward her in a slow and curious manner. The six-inch reptile came even nearer to get an up-close-and-personal view. She wailed helplessly when the lizard mounted her chest then waved its long head at her. Dior was afraid to blink. She was literally nose to nose with the predator and afraid to breathe. She was afraid of it clawing her eyes or making a play to get into her mouth. While a host of negative scenarios rummaged through her mind, Dior swallowed hard. Since it required less energy to whistle than to scream, she puckered her severely chapped lips and blew. Surely enough, the salamander raised its head, stuck out its tongue, then dashed off as quickly as it appeared.
Proud of the way she’d chased off her live-in reptile, Dior imagined voices cheering her efforts. I must be hearing things, she thought. Dior raised her head to peer at the drapes covering the windows. She did hear someone outside. “I’m here!” she said, much lower than she did two days ago. “I’m in here! I’m still here!” she asserted. The couple who lived across the street didn’t hear her weakened voice. They continued walking their ridiculously large poodle with the French salon hairdo. Dior screamed their names but it was no use. Her voice was worn, too timid to be heard from passersby out on the sidewalk. Dior drifted into a deeper pool of sadness with each passing hour. She felt dizzy when the sun fell on the third full day. She re
mained calm as best she could, although she kept getting confused over how many days she’d been lying on the very same spot. Slipping in and out of consciousness over the next few hours, she contemplated how the bridges she burned and the bad roads she traveled down all led her back to this place. She heard her cell phone ring but there was no way to determine who called or if anyone was looking for her. “I should have been a better friend to you, Tangie,” she whispered. “If I had, you’d come looking for me. I know you would. I would, if we were tight . . . really tight.”
If Giorgio or Suza had called from the clothing salon, she wasn’t aware of it. Actually, there were several calls demanding Dior show up for work or else. Giorgio wouldn’t think of firing her. He merely rattled her cage to elicit a response. If she hadn’t broken things off, there was a good chance he’d have stopped by to check on her.
Reconciling her life was a tough nut to crack with a weary mind. Dior’s hair stretched out on the hard and dusty floor. She scrubbed her head against the grout lines indented in the tile. “Ouch, ouch, my scalp itches. It must be filthy. Filthy.” Dior began to cough insistently. Her throat was raw and scratchy. She gasped, then sighed. “Why am I still here? I don’t deserve this. I don’t.” Saddened by the thought of dying alone, Dior was ashamed. I know I’m not all bad, God, but it seems like every good thing I did, I paid for it somehow, she thought silently, in as much of a prayer as she knew how. Please find room in your heart to forgive me even though I don’t have it coming. You don’t owe me nothing. My brother, Dooney, he deserves to see heaven. I won’t hold it against you if he makes it in. He went about his business scratching and clawing ever since the day my momma spit him out. I passed up some good jobs, I passed on finishing college, passed up on having kids because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life raising them all by myself. I know I’ll have to answer for each of the abortions, but what can I say. Condoms break from time to time and so do promises to do right. What I’m saying is thank you for my brother and my mama despite what she thinks of me. I’ll never be much in her book. It’s alright though. She’s as good as gold in mine. I’m not sure what it takes to be saved or if it’s too late for me. Hey, is heaven as beautiful as they say? I hope it is. Good people should have a nice place to go after putting up with the rest of us. God, look after Dooney. See about getting him a mansion, a robe, and a crown like that song he likes. A mansion . . . one with a big yard and a barbeque grill. He’d like that.
Dior couldn’t tell if she was in her right mind most of the day. She swore that her mother came to visit with platters of food. Then she found herself staring up at the same ceiling as before. She imagined eating her favorites, but it was sorrow that filled her stomach now. There were so many things to regret. Dior wanted to apologize to Billie Rae for all the years she neglected to visit before Dooney talked her into it. “I should have written you more, Mama, like Dooney did. He’d show me your letters and even read a few to me when I hung around long enough. I’m sorry for being mad at you when you worked two jobs to keep food on the table and us in nice clothes. I understand now that you did the best you could, the best you knew how to raise two kids on your own. It’s funny, you weren’t too much older than I am now. Oomph, picture me with two babies,” she rambled on. “Ohhh, I’m so hungry. I wish I’d never looked down my nose at your hamburger casserole when it turned out green, Mama. I was just a kid then. I was just a stupid kid. I’m so sorry for hurting your feelings.” Dior felt a gas bubble pushing its way up her esophagus. Instinctively, she laid her head to the side to spill the vomit onto the floor. She had nearly choked during the last episode. Strength to survive another rough one didn’t exist.
Nine o’clock the next morning, Dooney parked against the curb outside of Dior’s house. He could hardly contain his excitement when hustling to the passenger-side door. His mother waited impatiently for her son to show off his chivalrous charm. “See there, that’s that good home training paying off,” Billie Rae joked as he escorted her up the walkway toward the front door. She straightened the new outfit Dooney had sent ahead for her release day. It was a dazzling cream-colored Chanel pantsuit. “So, how do I look?” she asked nervously. “Maybe Dior could make some time for a mother-daughter day at the spa. I don’t have to report to the halfway house until four thirty.”
“I know, Mama. Relax. Dior ain’t no fool. She’ll do what’s right to make up for lost time. Now calm down before you ruin the surprise. It took all I had in me not to call and tell her you were getting out today.” Dooney rang the bell. When no one stirred inside, he stepped off the porch to peek in the window, but there was no movement. “Huh, I thought she’d be here when she didn’t answer at the store this morning. I hope she don’t have company, or it’s about to get real awkward up in there.” Dooney used his key to unlock the door. “Wait a minute, Mama. Let me check.” He tiptoed inside cautiously. “Dior,” he sang loudly. “Please don’t be naked . . . with some dude.” He took three steps before a repulsive odor sent him reeling. In the past, Dooney had committed his share of crimes, but never murder. Yet he still recognized the smell of death.
Anxious to see Dior, Billie Rae wandered inside the house. “What’s taking so long? Why are you taking off your shirt?”
Dooney feared he’d have to cover Dior’s body. “Mama, go back,” he growled, shoving her toward the exit.
Refusing to be moved aside, Billie Rae’s motherly intuition was piqued. “What’s the matter, Dooney! What’s wrong?” She darted past him and then immediately regretted that decision the moment her eyes discovered Dior’s body sprawled on the floor. Dior’s eyes were open wide. Her pupils were stone-gray and dilated. Urine and feces saturated her clothes. Dior’s hair was matted with dried vomit. Billie Rae clutched at her chest then fell to her knees. “No, no, no. Please God, no!” Dooney glared at his twin’s demise with his face taut and strained. By the looks of things, she’d taken her last breath more then twelve hours ago. Viewing the dreadful scene was heartbreaking. Billie Rae lifted her daughter’s shoulders off the hard tile floor then laid Dior’s head on her lap. She’d dreamed of holding Dior in her arms when her daughter had visited lockup at Azalea Springs. She finally got the chance. “My darling baby. I’m here now, Dior,” she moaned tenderly. “Oh dear God, what have I done? She needed me and I came too late. My baby needed me.”
Dooney raced through the house to search for clues. When every conceivable nook and cranny turned up empty, Dooney sprinted down the stairs. He paced the floor like a caged animal, collecting himself, plotting retribution. His growl began as a low, guttural groan, pitched from the depths of his soul. “Ahhhhh! They killed my sister! Somebody took her, Mama! Then they left her to rot.” He knelt beside Billie Rae to comfort her. “Don’t you worry about it, Mama. I’m gonna find out who did this to Dior and then I’m gonna kill him.”
Billie Rae held Dior’s face in her hands. It appeared that she hadn’t heard any of her son’s violent rants. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if she was looking for something. “Dior told me about this man with a family who wanted to marry her. Maybe he changed his mind.”
“I don’t care how long it takes, he’s a dead man,” Dooney vowed adamantly. “I’ll dig until I get the scoop on him. You hear me? He’s dead!” Grief-stricken and blinded by thoughts of revenge, Billie Rae nodded her consent.
“Dior said his name was Richard.”
Thirty-three
Everything and Nothing
Richard threw his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. Unlike the first three days he’d awoken in an Atlanta hotel room, this was going to be a good one, he’d decided. After having driven 750 miles in sixteen hours only to be put off by Nadeen continually, Richard had something to smile about. The night before, his wife agreed to see him over breakfast and discuss what, if any, chances existed for reconciliation. Begging and pleading had finally worn her down. For the first time in almost a week, Richard felt as if his life was getting back on track
.
Showered and dressed, he called Nadeen’s cell phone to inform her that he was on his way to the restaurant. She refused to be alone with him because that would lessen the control she needed to hold on to, along with her sanity. Tiny steps, Richard concluded as well, were as good as any toward making the journey back home.
When his repeated calls forwarded directly to Nadeen’s voice mail, it was clear that her cell phone was powered off. Fearing she’d had second thoughts, Richard dialed her parents’ home. Mahalia answered on the second ring. “Simon residence.”
“Good morning, Mahalia. This is Dad.”
“Oh, hi, Daddy,” she said, her voice light and easy. Richard sat on the corner of the bed wishing his was too.
Sinful Too Page 28
