Mecca's Return

by Anna J.

  A pool of blood flowed from under the door of apartment 2A in the Sutter Gardens building. Neighbors peered and came out of their apartments after hearing a woman scream in the hallway. A few minutes afterward, a ten-year-old boy wearing an oversize G-Unit T-shirt pointed to the floor in front of apartment 2A.

  “Mommy, look at the blood,” the boy called out as noisy neighbors gathered in the hall. The revelation caused other neighbors to look. A middle-aged man, home only an hour from work at a construction site, looked at the blood and walked to the top of the staircase to called down to police.

  “Officer!”

  “Yeah, how can I help you?” A balding, short man in a suit and long raincoat looked up the stairs. The man pointed to 2A.

  “There’s a whole lot of blood coming from that apartment!”

  “Levy!” the cop yelled toward the front of the building.

  Detective Levy entered the hall. “What’s up, Joe?”

  “Guy says there’s blood coming from the deceased’s apartment. Let’s have a look.”

  Levy and the suited Joe Pesci look-alike walked up the flight of steps to Breeze’s door. Once there they looked at the pool of blood and shook their heads. Calling back to another cop, Levy waited until he brought him a pair of latex gloves, put them on, and then tried the doorknob to the apartment. It opened. What they saw was a scene out of a horror film. There was blood everywhere. It even dripped from the ceiling fan. The decapitated and mutilated bodies of Breeze’s seventy-eight-year-old grandmother, his twenty-two-year-old sister, whose eighteen-month-old baby’s headless corpse lay beside her, along with his five-year-old son, were all inside.

  “Holy shit!” the Joe Pesci look-alike wailed. Levy shook his head as his partner walked up next to him, looking at the gruesome scene. “Fucking animal, whoever did this shit!”

  Levy looked at his partner. “This is bigger than the Davidson broad.”

  “Yeah, this is the work of foreign organized criminals, Colombians, Chinese, or some Caribbean gang,” his partner commented.

  “Hate to say it, but we may have to rub shoulders with the government dicks.” Levy shrugged.

  He walked out of the building, welcoming the drizzling rain on his face. It made him feel like God was looking out for him and washing away the sight and smell of death.

  Reluctantly, he removed his phone and made the call. When a voice answered, he simply asked, “May I speak to Agent Doyle?”

  Levy was put on hold. Putting his hand in his tight blue 501 Levi’s, he grunted, “Fucking feds.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  If everything in a dream were realistic, it would have no power over us... .

  —Robert Greene, The Art of Seduction

  “So this was your plan? Lie to me, cause trouble between all the people you hate, and watch them kill each other off, while you live happily ever after away from the mess you’ve created?” Lou asked as he and Mecca sat on a worn couch in what she recognized as a project apartment Ruby once lived in with an ex-boyfriend.

  “Smarter than you thought I was, huh, Lou?” Mecca responded, then swung her small legs back and forth without them touching the floor. Mecca was shocked at the sound of her own voice. It was the voice of a young child, about nine years old. It was the first time she realized she was in the body of a small girl.

  “I never denied your intelligence, Mecca. I felt that you didn’t know how to use your smarts. You could have been anything you wanted, besides a contributor to the death and destruction of your community. You could have—”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Damn, Lou! You can’t show me any kind of appreciation for saving your life, can you?” she interjected.

  “You haven’t shown me appreciation for saving yours,” Lou replied.

  Mecca fell silent. Lou’s comment made her feel a tinge of guilt. He was right. Lou did save her life. She could have died in that coma, but it was Lou who wanted her to live. Yet all he expected in return was for her to fly straight. Nobody in her life besides her parents had wanted that for her. Then she thought about Monique. She wanted Mecca to do good, but Monique had lied to her.

  She could have gotten any man she wanted, but she chose Bobby Sykes to sleep with and disrespected Mecca’s mother by not telling her everything. Lou never lied to her. All he did was tell and reveal the truth.

  “Lou, I am sorry for lying to you. Please understand I’m human. Everything I’ve ever loved wasn’t real. It was all a sham. The people, the life I lived, were all nothing. It wasn’t my fault, Lou.” Tears dripped down her face.

  Removing a silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his white linen blazer, he wiped away her tears and then hugged her around the shoulders. “Do you remember me telling you that you didn’t have to do anything to the people who betrayed you, because the laws of nature would deal with them?”

  Mecca nodded.

  “Mecca, even the most coldhearted people have a conscience. They hide it from others, but they can’t hide it from themselves.”

  “What do you mean?” Mecca asked, hating that he was beating around the bush.

  “Come with me.” Lou grabbed her hand and walked to the bathroom door.

  “I want you to open the door, walk in there, and close the door behind you,” he said.

  Mecca was confused.

  “Trust me, Mecca. You will see what I mean.”

  Mecca opened the door slowly and stepped into the small beige tiled bathroom. She looked back at him before closing the door and saw that he was smiling and nodding his head reassuringly. When she closed the door and turned around, she saw her aunt Ruby sitting on the toilet, crying, with a razor blade in her hand, holding it to her wrist.

  “Auntie, what are you doing?” she screamed, but Ruby could not hear her. Mecca looked to the floor and saw a folded piece of paper with writing on it. When she picked it up and read it, she realized it was Ruby’s suicide note. Tears fell as she began to read.

  My dearest niece,

  Baby, I’m so sorry for the pain I caused in your life. I wish I could rewind the clock and go back to the day you were born. The family has never been happier than the day you were brought into the world. Me and your mother’s lives have been extremely hard and stressful, but you eased that stress and made life worth living. I never meant for your life to turn out this way. I hate myself for things I’ve done. I’m no good for you, and if I can’t be good for you, then life ain’t worth living. I left enough money with Monique for you to live comfortably until you get a job and straighten your life out.

  The game ain’t where it’s at. I played it because it was my way of surviving without parents to hold me and your mother down. I hate the life, though. Understand, Mecca, it’s all I know. I love you so much, and I’ll carry that love with me to the hereafter.

  Loving you till death ...

  Auntie

  Just as Ruby put the blade to her wrist, a knock came at the door.

  “Ruby, what’s taking you so long? We got to go!”

  Mecca recognized Monique’s voice. Thinking for a moment, Ruby placed the razor blade back into the medicine cabinet and ran cold water on her face.

  “I’m coming. Hold on. I’m peeing. Don’t rush me!”

  After drying her face, Ruby examined herself in the mirror, making sure there were no signs of the depressed state she was in.

  Mecca threw the note on the floor and opened the door. Lou stood there with a blank look on his face. She turned her head to see if Ruby was still standing there and saw nothing. Feeling her eyes water, she wiped away the first of the forming tears. She never would have guessed how deeply affected Ruby was by her sister’s death and how it would affect Mecca’s life. She couldn’t imagine her going out like that. She figured Ruby would rather go out in a hail of bullets.

  “You seem nervous, Miss Davidson. I assure you that you have nothing to be nervous about. I understand that your situation, coupled with the stresses of prison life, can sometimes become unbearably stress
ful. And we sometimes need someone with a good ear and open mind to vent those stresses to. That’s what I’m here for. I assume you’ve never talked to a psychiatrist before.”

  Ruby shook her head no.

  “Okay, well, I will explain some things about psychiatry and let you know my opinion, then give you options on how to deal with them. I can make recommendations, but it’s all up to you. What’s said in this room is strictly confidential. Only me and you will know,” Dr. Clark said reassuringly.

  After explaining psychiatry and her job at the prison, Dr. Clark asked, “Can you tell me about Ruby? Not Ruby, the convicted felon, but the Ruby that no one knows about but you.”

  For the first time in her life, Ruby totally opened up about how depressed she was about her life. As she spoke, she surprised herself at the things she revealed to this strange white lady. Mecca listened to her aunt say things she never would have imagined her saying to anyone.

  “I’m a lesbian by choice, but the reality is that I hate being one. I want to have a family, get married to a good man, but I hate to show weakness,” Ruby announced as she began to cry. Dr. Clark handed her a Kleenex tissue.

  “So men are your weakness?”

  “That’s why I stay away from them.” Ruby nodded.

  “Why do men make you weak? What is it about them that makes you succumb to their power?”

  “When they fuck me good, I can’t control myself,” Ruby responded through her tears.

  Dr. Clark’s eyes grew wide. When the doctor changed the subject to Ruby’s relationship with her family, she noticed Ruby’s facial expression change. The doctor knew from the look that it would be a topic she would have to approach lightly.

  “You told me about your parents and how you and your sister had to go through life without them. Your sister’s death affected you more than any other death in your life, I assume.”

  Ruby looked away from the doctor and toward a framed portrait of the doctor with a tall, medium-built, silver-haired man in a tuxedo. The doctor wore a long black dinner gown. Tears ran down Ruby’s face.

  “I miss my sister so much, it’s killing me. Now my niece is out there on her own. She was unable to protect herself and got shot. She’s in a coma!”

  Dr. Clark came around the desk and rubbed her back. “It helps to talk about the pain. Don’t hold that in, because you’ll go crazy and do something irrational. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to carry all that pain and anger around. You want to release it. It will take time, though. Time will heal the wounds.” Handing Ruby more Kleenex, Dr. Clark sat back down behind her desk. “Did they find the people who shot your niece?”

  Ruby shook her head. “No. I don’t really know all the details.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  Ruby gave the doctor a gaze that bordered pure menace. It was one that made Dr. Clark nervous. She had seen the look before in the blank glares of sociopaths and psychotic killers. She would make a note of it in Ruby’s files, she told herself.

  “Like getting revenge on anybody responsible.”

  “Come now, Mecca. I think you saw enough.” Lou opened the door, bringing the vision to a close. The office turned back into the bedroom, without Ruby or the doctor. Lou grabbed her hand and led her back to the couch while she sobbed.

  “Why, Lou? Why didn’t you show me this before?”

  “What would have been different, Mecca? Do you honestly think that your aunt was happy about your mother’s and father’s murders? Do you think that she enjoyed hearing you were in a coma? You know your aunt, and you knew she would seek revenge. She didn’t have sex with Shamel to hurt you. She was having sex with him because she’s weak. He was just a symbol of her weakness. Your aunt doesn’t know love, because she doesn’t know what love feels like.” Lou’s words made Mecca sob harder while she held her face in her hands.

  “What did I do, Lou?”

  “What you did is take things into your own hands. What you did is start a war for revenge. But what you did not know ...” Lou lifted Mecca’s face to his by holding her chin up and continued, “The war was going to happen regardless.”

  Mecca awoke to the bright sun shining on her face. She squinted her eyes, looking at Miguel placing a tray of food on the table on the terrace. The food smelled lovely to her, and her stomach growled its agreement. She could pick out the various aromas of scrambled eggs and cinnamon French toast.

  “Good morning, pretty girl,” Miguel said while walking bare chested, with just a pair of black boxer briefs on. “I made you breakfast. I want to eat on the terrace with you before I leave.”

  Mecca got up and made her way to the large bathroom. She looked in the mirror and saw remnants of the dream. She wondered what Lou meant when he said that the war would happen regardless. One thing was for sure, she knew she had to get back to the States and try to stop what she’d started. Ruby deserved a second chance. She just wanted to be loved, and Mecca loved her aunt. She wanted Ruby to know that. When she sat down to eat with Miguel, he noticed the sad look on her face.

  “You wake up to your man cooking you breakfast in Rome and you got a sad look on your face? What’s up?” he asked while helping her sit in her chair. “Did I do something to depress you?”

  “No, Miguel. It isn’t you at all.” She placed her hand over his to reassure him. “I have a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

  “Talk to me, Mecca. What’s bothering you?”

  Mecca sighed. “It’s my aunt. I have to get back home to see her.”

  It rained for two days straight in New York, and like the weather, Ruby’s head had a black cloud over it that wouldn’t go away. The episode with Simone and Mona had put her in a bad mood. It lasted even into the next morning, when she awoke, and then throughout the day. She cursed the rain as she jumped into her Range Rover and drove to a diner in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn to meet Breeze to discuss her next move. The raid Breeze had mentioned had put a big dent in her business, and she planned on using the money he was to give her to buy a hundred more pounds of weed to set up shop in a spot in Harlem that Tashy had established for her. The spot was in the perfect place to make lots of cash.

  A young Dominican guy would sell the weed on consignment out of a car-repair shop. Ruby was paying fifteen hundred a pound from Tashy’s connect and selling the pound in New York for four thousand. Her deal with the Dominican she dealt with in New Jersey was for him to give her thirty-five hundred for each pound to make it appear as if he was getting a great deal.

  To calm her nerves during the drive, Ruby listened to her Anthony Hamilton CD. Yet, for some reason, even his soul-soothing voice couldn’t calm her restless nerves, which were jumpier than a fleet of Chevy Impalas with hydraulics at a Cali lowrider contest.

  To make matters worse, when she got to the diner, Breeze’s black Charger on double deuces was nowhere in sight. She looked through the rain-soaked windows of her truck for any sign of him as she pulled into the diner’s parking lot. It was packed with morning diners grabbing a bite on their way to work, those coming from a club, and those on their way to a motel to get freaky.

  “Where the fuck is this nigga?” Ruby grumbled as she fit the truck in between a beat-up, multicolored station wagon and a dull white minivan. Putting her hood on, Ruby jogged into the diner, which smelled of a mix of culinary odors, cigarettes, perfume, and wet hair. Ruby made her way to a booth far in the back that gave her a window view. A young, thin white girl with an apron on over faded jeans and a black T-shirt placed a menu on the table.

  “Are you ready to order?” she asked, popping gum in her raggedy-tooth mouth. Ruby removed her wet leather bomber and placed it on the leather-cushioned seat.

  “Yeah, let me get some scrambled eggs with cheese, home fries, and bacon, with a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel.”

  “Anything to drink with that?” The anorexic wrote down the order, still popping her gum.

  “Orange juice, fresh squeezed,” Ruby ordered.r />
  The girl grabbed the menu and walked with a strut, trying to show off a body that just wasn’t there. Looking out from her window, Ruby saw no sign of Breeze or his car. Once again, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed his number. The house phone just rang. Ruby spotted the pay phone by the diner’s bathroom and went to use it. She dialed Breeze’s cell phone; on the second ring she heard a voice answer.

  “Who dis?”

  “Who dis?” Ruby asked with attitude.

  “You looking for Breeze?”

  “Give Breeze the phone, whoever this is,” Ruby commanded.

  “Sorry. Can’t do that. Maybe you can come down to the Seventy-third Precinct and ...”

  Ruby quickly ended the call. If the police had Breeze’s phone, she knew Breeze was locked up. Damn!

  “Is there a problem?” the long-faced, skinny, greasy-haired waitress asked, holding a cup of orange juice in her hand.

  Ruby shook her head and glared at her. “Nothing you can help me with except getting my order.”

  The girl placed the cup down in front of her, rolling her eyes. She wanted to cuss Ruby out but thought the better of it. Ruby looked like one of those ghetto girls who could fight and probably carried a box cutter in her purse. She walked away without saying a word.

  Ruby dialed Tashy’s number. When Tashy answered, Ruby said, “Girl, I got problems.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Tashy responded.

  Ruby paused, hearing attitude in her voice. “What did you hear?”

  “Simone came in here last night, calling you every name a mother doesn’t want to hear coming out of her child’s mouth.”

  Ruby sighed, rubbing her forehead. “It was a misunderstanding. She didn’t give me a chance to explain why Mona was at my house.”

  “And the reason was?” Tashy spat in disgust.

  “Hold on, Tashy. Don’t give me attitude. I don’t know how that girl got my address, first off. She shows up at my door, soaking wet from the rain, after I got out of the shower. I give her a change of clothes, while I was going to wash her wet ones. Then your daughter pops up and throws a tantrum.”