Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings

by Shewanda Pugh

  Keisha whirled on her brother. “I know you ain’t talking! Them six kids ain’t but the ones you claiming! And anyway, Deidra Dee down at Winn Dixie told me you got three kids wit’ her sister, and the youngest ain’t but a year old!”

  Pauline jumped up. “She a motherfuckin’ lie! Tariq ain’t been wit’ nobody but me!”

  “Jump up stupid, you wanna,” Caroline said.

  Pauline turned on her. “Momma Caroline, Deidra Dee don’t know nothing. What, was she in the bed with ’em? Stood watching to make sure Tariq bust a nut? And she one to talk! She don’t even know who her baby daddy is! Been so many niggas running up in there, can’t nobody get ’em straight!”

  Caroline and Keisha exchanged a look of scandalized delight and burst into laughter.

  “Okay,” Tariq said. “Back to Grandma,” and cast a cautious glance at his trembling girlfriend as she lowered herself into her seat.

  It occurred to Deena then that the Hammond family was a wash, a waste, an unequivocal parasite on society. Jobs were a novelty, education an oddity, welfare an entitlement for them. Killing Caroline Hammond by her fifteenth birthday would’ve saved the U.S. government money spent on a lifetime of welfare for what had to be upwards of forty recipients by now, including children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Deena thought that she could kill them now and save society at least some money. Or, she could kill her aunt and cousin and make an example out of them. Deena massaged her temples tiredly. Anytime she had thoughts of mass familicide simply meant it was time to go.

  “If someone in the family can make room for Grandma Emma,” Tak said, glancing at her with a knowing expression, “then Deena and I can make sure we cover her expenses and compensate for the person’s trouble.”

  They leaped at once, Caroline surmising that Shakeith, who was still to move in, could crowd into one room with baby mommas and babies alike; Keisha, that she and Snow could have her three daughters in a single room, and Tariq wondering aloud if maybe his oldest son, Donte, was ready to move in with his baby’s mother as he’d been planning.

  After lots of shouting and a little rearranging, Caroline’s place was agreed on, with the caveat that Keisha’s children would move faster than originally planned, and that Keisha’s house would be open to Shakeith’s ex-girlfriend and her daughter Sara, should the two-baby-mamas-in-one-house thing not work out. In exchange, twenty-five hundred would be given to Caroline a month, in addition to the burden of expenses Tak and Deena would shoulder. At the agreement’s end, Deena left her family with a deep sense of fatigue and overwhelming relief.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Keisha blew into her apartment and came to a full halt at the sight of her man. It was rare for him to seek her out in the evening.

  “You coming from seeing your family?” he asked, and took a drag on a blunt so weighted that it swelled at its center. He sat at a small round table made for four, the home of countless plots and plans.

  “Yeah,” Keisha said and dropped her purse on the couch.

  “See Lizzie there?”

  Keisha sighed and headed for the kitchen. “I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “And I told you money is short without her!” He stubbed out his blunt and rose to full height. “You my girl; you’re supposed to help me when I need you.”

  Keisha threw open a stained freezer door and scowled at the contents. Feeling his gaze, she finally turned to face him. “Find another hoe, Snow. Can’t be that hard.”

  He closed the space between them, quick, and slammed the freezer door shut in her face. “All right,” he said. “But maybe I won’t go far to find her.”

  Keisha met his gaze head-on.

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  Snow held eye contact a fraction of a second longer, and then dropped it. He dissolved into a smile. “Nothing. I’ve got some new girls, some young girls, so that’s good. Niggas always like doing crazy type shit to ’em. They like all that tightness and crying.”

  Keisha forced an image of Lizzie underneath her fiancé squirming and crying out of her head and turned back to the freezer. She decided on some ground beef and set it on defrost in the microwave.

  “Help me find her, Keish. It’s the only way we to pay for this big-ass wedding you want.”

  Keisha smirked. What seemed an eternity ago, she’d sat in on a shoreside ceremony, where the smiling bride’s wild and curling hair fluttered in the wind. Afterward, they’d sailed aboard a yacht, drinking their fill of champagne and eating shrimp cocktail, steamed lobster, and oysters Rockefeller while a seven-piece band played the hits. Once again, she’d wanted the thing that had been promised Deena. Once again, Keisha would settle for second best.

  She would take her wedding the best way she could get it.

  ~*~

  Tony pursued Tak and Deena the moment they entered the front door. In the months he’d been with them, he sprouted a full inch—hair, limbs, and feet alike, shoulders broadening to accommodate an ever-changing boyish build. Deena had taken to braiding his hair, fat cornrows from hairline to shoulders, walnut with the occasional streak of rust. She was now a pro, having dropped tears in his scalp on only the first two occasions. Every day, he looked more like her brother, she kept saying.

  “Tak, I cut some of the grass,” Tony declared at the door stoop. “But I couldn’t finish. It was too much.”

  Indeed, dirt striped his face, while a single winter leaf rested in his hair.

  “Good thing about grass,” Tak said, “is it’ll be there later.”

  He shouldered past Tony for the kitchen, ignoring both the look of scorn on his wife’s face and the disbelief on Tony’s. He’d give him another day of torment, allowing him to think that he’d be expected to cut two acres of grass alone. Anyway, Deena would’ve killed him if he got anywhere near the botanical gardens.

  Tony looked from Tak to Deena, the latter of which set about making coffee. She had a special airtight canister that she used, and when it emptied, Mrs. Jimenez ground coffee beans from a vacuum-sealed bag that smelled intoxicating. As he stood, peering over her shoulder, she’d told him in Spanglish that they were the rarest beans in the world, imported from Indonesia, but only after a four-legged civet ate the coffee beans and shit them out later.

  Tony hadn’t believed her, of course, so he Googled as much with his cell. Sure enough, he found a four-legged mammal, like a long and disturbing raccoon, and a description of the digestion process—a necessary first step in processing the four hundred-dollar coffee. It was with horror that Tony recalled sipping Deena’s coffee behind her back when she’d told him he was too young to have his own. And it was with horror that he realized what it now meant. He’d drunk shit and liked it.

  Deena made two cups of coffee, set one before Tak, and sat down across from him at the table. Tony pulled out a chair for himself. Without asking, he spooned two large heaps of cream into Deena’s cup, and then three into Tak’s. He followed it with sugar.

  “Why couldn’t I come with you guys?” he asked. “They’re my family too, aren’t they?” Tony looked from Tak to Deena.

  The two exchanged a look of constipation.

  “Yeah but . . .”

  Deena shook her head. There was no way to tell a kid the family he’d just found was hardly worth his trouble. That they were worse than the worst caricature of black people. Crass and ignorant, boorish, without hope or ambition, they were content with gaining sustenance on the milk of society’s crudeness. Poor didn’t equal ignorance, but a thirst for nothing did. The Hammonds weren’t the norm, not even by impoverished community standards. They were only the loudest and most visible, a sideshow from life’s true experience.

  She couldn’t protect Tony from Caroline’s crude assessments, Keisha’s foul and indiscriminate mouth, or the three dozen children that rotated them in a gravitationally compelled orbit. She could only prolong it. But holidays would come. Weddings would come. Funerals would come. And the Hammonds would come
out.

  “They’re basically assholes,” Tak said.

  “Tak!” Deena cried.

  Tak sat up straighter, as if warming to the conversation. “You go over there and it’s like sinking in a sea of assholes.”

  Tony grinned deliciously, as if thrilled by Tak’s use of profanity. “Is it really?”

  “Absolutely. There’s Dee, and then there’s Rhonda and Grandma Emma. I think there’s a cousin—Crystal?”

  Deena nodded, tight-lipped.

  “And she keeps away. Lives in Daytona Beach or something. You’ll notice that any Hammond with a shred of self-dignity puts some distance between them and the brood.”

  “Tak!”

  He was teasing . . . but serious, and while he hadn’t said a word untrue, she’d thought they’d break it to Tony a little gentler.

  “Back to the distance. For Crystal, it’s a few hundred miles, so she’s safely away. For Rhonda, it’s working 80 hour weeks so she can always look busy. And for Deena, well, Deena built a moat around the house. Dragon should be here shortly.”

  Tony giggled. He had a broad smile, reminiscent of his father’s goofy grin. When his smile faded, his eyes were on Deena.

  “I must look an awful lot like my dad,” he said.

  Whatever whispers of a smile Deena’s face harbored soon melted. “Why . . . why do you say that?” she said.

  Tony shrugged, gaze averted. “It’s like you think I’m haunting the house, the way you look at me sometimes. At first, I thought the worried looks were ’cause I was always screwing up. But I can see by your face it’s ’cause I look like him. ’Cause you think I am him. Sometimes you make me feel like Pinocchio trying to convince Geppetto he’s a real boy.”

  Shame lowered Deena’s gaze and kept her from seeing him even then. How much of her bliss at Tony’s arrival had been because she felt she’d been given a second chance? Hadn’t her first thought at seeing him been that Anthony had come back to her? She’d seen Tony and not seen him, seen through him to a father now dead. How different had that been from the Hammonds, looking at Deena and seeing her mother for all those long years? Just because hate marred their version and love buoyed hers didn’t mean he’d been any less invisible to her. Still, she couldn’t look at him.

  Her first thought had been to get up, to separate herself from them. She could hardly think of a destination, yet knew her next moments had to be away from that table and away from him. The foul mouth, fighting, and stealing had all been Anthony Hammond’s early mantra. From there it was the drugs, girls, and guns. Three paths: all rushing him to the same destination. It was there that he lay.

  But Deena stopped at the door. She was doing it again: behaving like a Hammond. Sins of the father, or in her case, the mother, burden of the child to bear. Anthony Hammond was dead, and the dead ought to be left dead when there was so much life to live. Deena turned to face her nephew.

  “Would you like to see the deadliest animal on the planet?”

  Tony raised a brow.

  “What do mean?”

  Deena and Tak exchanged a whiff of a smile.

  “I mean an animal so ferocious he’s responsible for hundreds of human deaths a year in America alone.”

  Tony blinked. “It’s not like, a dog or something, is it?”

  Deena grinned. He was a sharp one. “No. They keep him caged. We have to see him at the zoo.”

  This perked him.

  “All right,” he said. “Just let me grab my jacket.”

  It was November now, closing in on his birthday, and a Miami breeze occasionally necessitated a windbreaker.

  Once Tony was out of sight, Tak rose to clear the coffee cups from the table. “Taking him to see a few deer, huh?” he said.

  Deena grinned. There were still a few months left on her annual passes to the zoo. “Yeah and maybe ice cream afterward.”

  “Make sure to promise him that you’ll capture a monster responsible for murdering millions each year.”

  He’d terrified his daughter with just such a declaration not long ago, before returning to her bedroom with a common mosquito.

  When Tony reemerged, his long face set solemn, as if preparing for battle with the wild.

  “Hundreds of deaths a year, huh?” he said as they headed for the door.

  “Absolutely.” Deena grinned. “Maybe more.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Deena woke with the feeling that she’d overslept, temporarily forgetting she had no job to go to. She sat up with a start before Tak’s hand shot out to slow her.

  “Whoa,” he said and pulled her back to the bed.

  Deena fought back the momentary panic at the sight of an insistent sun just outside her window, and only sat back against a towering walnut headboard when Tak applied pressure to her shoulder.

  “Hungry?” he said.

  Still in his variation of pajamas, a ribbed tee and gym shorts, Tak nodded toward the nightstand. Only then did Deena notice the breakfast waiting for her. Belgian waffles, whip cream, heavy on the strawberries.

  “Cliché, I know. But the six-piece Mexican Mariachi band couldn’t make it on such short notice.”

  Deena blushed.

  “I don’t deserve this,” she said, even as she reached for the food. “Breakfast in bed after the way I carried on?”

  Tak shrugged.

  “Then I should probably get rid of the car,” he said.

  “You bought a car?” Deena blurted.

  “No,” Tak said. “Were you expecting one?”

  She hurled a pillow at him. He caught it and set it aside.

  “You’re never serious,” Deena complained, cutting into the buttery soft waffle with the silverware once resting on her nightstand. “It’s what drives your father crazy.”

  Tak snorted. “Leave my father out of this,” he said and plucked the fork from her hand. “He’s the last thing on my mind.”

  He guided the waffle into her waiting mouth. When whip cream dripped onto her lip, Deena paused with a memory of more than a decade ago—him, her, Atlanta, and loving him always, it seemed.

  “You were sloppy then, too,” Tak whispered and kissed her.

  The food could wait.

  Deena’s Belgian waffles were cold by the time she returned to them. But when Tak rose as if to get her more, she pulled him back to bed.

  Tak, without the energy to resist her pull, had collapsed next to her in bed. Now, Deena nibbled his neck.

  “Man down, Dee, man down.”

  She shot him an unimpressed look. “You’ll be up again. You always are.”

  Deena nipped at his earlobe, sucked it, and trailed a tongue down the length of his throat. Tak smiled sleepily.

  “You’re frisky,” he said.

  She climbed atop him. Already, they were naked.

  At night, when they were together, fear of being overheard restrained her. But now, there was nothing. With the children at school, it was just Tak and Deena, as it had been so many years before.

  “I want you again,” Deena said and brought her mouth down on his.

  Lips, tongue, taste, they wouldn’t need more than this. With a moan of longing, she guided him in.

  ~*~

  Only three times in her life had Deena had such lazy days. The first was on a cross-country road trip she’d taken with Tak—begun as friends but ended as lovers. The second was a week in Mexico they spent mostly making love a few years later. The third was their honeymoon in the South Pacific. Here was the fourth.

  A suspension from work for Deena had meant a suspension for Tak. He’d taken to bringing her breakfast each morning and pounding her after, as if one required the other. Sometimes, the pounding came first, but either way, it sat on one end of breakfast like the most erotic of bookends. He’d pinch her ass while she packed lunch for the kids, whisper about inserting himself in any number of places, and once, even swept her onto the counter for a quickie the moment Tony and Mia were off to bed. Deena suspected that the mere menti
on of receiving a few dozen desperately hurried pumps had been enough to rush her halfway to orgasm. But his breath in her ear, hands on her body, and her very own voice, bold and divorced from her usual subdued self, hurled her to abandon. Fuck her, harder, faster, begging, needing. She was wildly his in a way she never had been before. And it thrilled them both.

  In the evenings, Deena spent time with the kids, sitting in on Tony’s drum lessons, the new guitar lessons he’d volunteered for, or, doing things on a whim— miniature golf, Dave & Busters, boogie boarding. And while Deena did see all the ways Tony was like her brother, she saw the divergence as well—direct, where his father was rude; aggressive, where his father was reckless; headstrong, instead of abusive.

  “Funny sometimes,” Tony once told her, “how the simple stuff really isn’t and what’s complicated really is simple.

  “Take that building, for instance,” he said and pointed to a gleaming skyscraper in the distance. “To most people, that’s real complicated. Takes a lot. But if you think about it, it’s really not.”

  “Tony, I don’t think you understand—”

  “Now take the stuff everyone’s supposed to get, because everyone’s experienced it. Everyone’s seen something beautiful, loved a parent or friend, whatever.”

  “Okay,” Deena said.

  “Now there’s a formula for that,” he said, jutting a thumb back at the skyscraper. “You can go to school, sit down, pay attention, learn about the beams needed to support the weight, how to make it stay straight up and down, ’cause it must be easy to tilt since it’s really just a tube. But where do you go to learn what’s beautiful? Who loves you? Who you are? There’s no school for that. So is it always an experiment? Never knowing, just guessing?”

  She’d been struck by several things at once. One, that he’d been incredibly astute in his assessment of the skyscraper—referring to beams and weight support and even going so far as to call it a tube. Phenomenal, considering this particular skyscraper did have a tube frame.

  Then, there was the other thing, far more impressive than his spatial aptitude. His assessment of the intangibles of life: beauty, love, uncertainty. Children tended to be blank slates, canvases filled with what adults chose to illustrate. She had known him to be smart, but never had she guessed at this astuteness, this propensity for reflection.