But she remembered her grandmother and how ferocious she’d been. Over the years, though, Tia had seen a steady decline in her grandmother’s health, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had been due to the stress of taking care of her husband, Henry, for three years before he died.
Although Mavis and Henry had separated prior to him getting sick, they had never divorced. And after Henry had a stroke, Mavis moved back into the house and took care of him until he died. Now that Mavis was getting up in age, Tia was glad that her own mother Ida, who had since been released from prison, was there to watch over her.
“Can you lay back down for me, please?” Tia said softly.
Francis slowly slid down onto the bed until she was flat on her back.
“Do you have any sons?” Tia asked as she pulled the covers down to take a look at her lower legs.
“I have one,” she said flatly.
Tia pressed on her leg gently. The varicose veins decorated her swollen limbs like swirls of green licorice.
“Are your legs still hurting?” she asked.
“A little.”
“I read that you came into the emergency room two weeks ago complaining of leg pain.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What happened? Did you do your follow-up?”
“I wanted to. But before I could make an appointment to see the specialist, I was back in the ER the next day ’cause I couldn’t breathe!”
“Yes,” Tia said flipping through her paperwork. “I see they ended up admitting you to the cardiac unit for a full workup. Now,” she closed her chart, “you’re here on our subacute unit.”
“What kind of floor is this anyway?”
“Well, it’s supposed to be for patients who are stable enough to leave the floor they were admitted to but who aren’t quite strong enough to go home just yet.”
“Do you think I’ll be going home soon?” Franny asked softly.
“We’ll have to see what the doctor says.” Tia tucked the covers neatly back around her. “Your lungs still sound a little wet so the doctor will probably want to continue your respiratory treatments for a few more days. But if they clear up, that might be a possibility.”
Francis turned on the television set perched on the wall directly in front of her bed.
“So, how old is your son?” Tia asked.
“He should be around fifty-one I think.”
Tia smiled. “You don’t know?”
“Well, I didn’t really raise him.” She rubbed her shoulder. “It’s a long story, you know.”
Tia finished documenting her assessment and looked at her. “You’re probably ready to go home, huh?”
Francis shrugged. She pointed to the television set. “You know that’s a shame about what’s going on over there in Africa,” she said.
Tia looked up at the latest news scrolling across the bottom of the television screen. More deaths in West Africa have been attributed to infections caused by the Ebola virus. “Yes,” she said sadly, “that is a shame.”
“Yeah,” Franny grabbed a tissue from the table next to her bed. “All those people dying and their children left without a mother or father. That’s some kind of torture,” she said as she began to cry.
“Oh, don’t cry,” Tia said rubbing her shoulder. “You’re right. It is torture. The only thing we can do is pray for a cure.”
Pray. Tia remembered how she’d begun praying when Scamp had started massaging the soles of her feet. “Lord,” she’d prayed between moments of euphoria, “please don’t let this happen.” But even as she prayed, Tia knew she had waited too late to call on God. The flickering flames of temptation that had danced around in her had, by that time, already begun to burn out of control.
Tia looked down at Franny. Her tears had been reduced to sniffles. “Are you going to be all right?” Tia asked.
Franny nodded.
Tia stared at her for a few more seconds before she realized she was not going to answer her question about going home. “Well,” she said, touching her shoulder gently, “I’ll be back to change that IV in a little while. If you need anything before then just call.”
“I will,” Franny said.
Tia walked back over to the sink and tugged at the outer rim of her latex gloves until she had pulled them down and off. As she washed her hands, she thought about all the patients she’d taken care of who were similar to Franny in that they never followed up with the doctor’s recommendations.
Victory Memorial Hospital had once been deemed a central dumping ground for the majority of city residents. But since the restructuring of its financial plan, the hospital had expanded not only in space but in technology as well.
Now its specialty services were offered to all of the counties surrounding the city of Chicago, and Tia hoped Franny would follow up with the doctor’s referral and take advantage of the services being offered to her once she was discharged.
Her thoughts shifted back to the memory of Scamp’s fingers and the massage he’d given her the night before. She turned off the faucet and sighed. Even if she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to put out that fire. There was no amount of water that could have doused the inferno that had burned within her.
Lorenzo, her husband, had neglected her needs for so long that the slightest bit of attention from another man was enough to cause her to subconsciously hunt for more. Scamp had made whatever she was looking for easy to find. When he’d introduced himself in the grocery store that cold day in January, Tia had initially been resistant. But when he’d let it be known that he could give a good massage, her interest had been piqued.
Once she’d looked into his hazel eyes, it was as if she had become hypnotized. She became blind to the consequences of what their meeting would eventually lead up to, thinking only about the opportunity standing before her . . . an opportunity she was desperate to take advantage of.
Tia snatched a paper towel from the wall dispenser in Franny’s room and began furiously drying her hands. They had been washed clean, but what about her soul? She threw the used paper towel into the wastebasket and walked out of the room.
Chapter Two
Lorenzo Sparks stood nervously in the middle of his parents’ kitchen, staring at the stainless steel toaster on the countertop behind his mother. The small appliance glistened in the setting sunlight that filtered through the window, and he was thankful for the rays that bounced off its metal rim. It created a blinding effect and gave him a reason not to look directly into his mother’s disbelieving eyes.
“Son, are you sure?” his mother asked feebly. “Are you sure that’s what happened?”
Lorenzo glanced at his father. “Yes,” he said. “He took me up to the attic and told me to take off my pants—”
“That’s enough!” Lorenzo’s father yelled.
The sudden loudness of his voice caused Lorenzo to jump. He jerked his head just in time to see the hostility in his father’s eyes.
“I won’t sit here and let you smear my brother’s name!”
Lorenzo lowered his head as his father stormed out of the kitchen.
The crushing silence that followed was soon interrupted by the swishing sound of bundled straw sticks as his mother began sweeping the already immaculate kitchen floor. He watched her as she swept invisible crumbs of debris into a neat little pile. She scooped them up into the dustpan, and then deposited them into the wastebasket where they would be escorted out with the rest of the trash.
Lorenzo knew then that relinquishing the weight of what had happened to him twenty-seven years ago had been a mistake. The apathy and hostility in his parents’ eyes told him so. It confirmed what he’d always feared, and what the perpetrator—his uncle—had told him would happen if he ever told anyone.
They would not believe him.
And they didn’t.
The realization that his parents wouldn’t or couldn’t accept the truth made the burden he’d carried for so long all the heavier. Lord, would he ever be
able to release this load? His shoulders slumped as his heart began to swell from the inward pain he felt. Would he ever be free?
“I guess I’ll be going,” he said awkwardly.
His mother continued with her make-believe cleaning.
Lorenzo slammed the door behind him and shuffled quickly to his car. With every step he took, he wished he could take back the words he’d just spoken to his parents. The car rocked gently as he squeezed his large frame behind the steering wheel. He let the engine idle while he turned on the CD player. The lyrics from a popular Gospel artist filled the surrounding space:
“Lord at thy feet I fall, and Lord I surrender all, and if You can forgive me of my sins. . .”
Lorenzo turned off the radio and sighed. He put the car in gear and headed toward the interstate.
His parents lived in an upscale suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, almost parallel to I-94. As he drove along the highway, the views quickly transitioned from suburban neighborhoods to grungy residential to industrial by the time he made his exit.
He drove toward Lake Michigan, passing through an eclectic neighborhood of auto shops, liquor stores, restaurants, and churches until a winding road led him directly to the lakefront. He parked his car on a nearby parking lot and turned off the ignition.
As Lorenzo got out of his car, he looked up at the smokestacks from the factories nearby. The stream of soft gray smoke paled against the night sky that was illuminated by the city lights. There was not a single star in the sky as he watched airplanes returning from unknown destinations. He closed his eyes and prayed. Just make it better, Lord. Please make it better.
The flashing red light from the pier danced about his face. Why didn’t his parents believe him? Why . . .? He stopped and opened his eyes. There was no use in starting another internal dialogue.
He shuddered as he pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck. Then he started walking until he found himself standing directly in front of the lake. It had been an unusually cold winter, and the temperatures for the first week in February had fluctuated between 25 degrees above zero and -25 degrees below with the wind chill factored in.
The picnic tables had all been lined up neatly against a toolshed that stood deserted for the season, and mounds of snow that had been plowed from the walkways surrounded the benches, trees, and any other area that was not in the direct path of would-be pedestrians. Off in the distance he thought he saw someone running; his dark outfit a mere silhouette.
He stared at the frozen water; its exterior decorated with never-ending patterns of cracks and curves. He could hear a soft, steady rumbling just below the surface where the water had not completely frozen. It was as if the massive body of water moved in unison, rushing to reach an unknown destination. He stood listening until the sound began to blend in with his own thoughts, until like the horizon, he could not tell where one ended and the other began.
It had been twenty-seven years and Lorenzo was still reliving the memory of what happened to him when he was eleven years old. Each time he recalled the incident it induced a kind of internal explosion within him, and the internal void he lived with became a gaping tear. It was a tear with shredded edges that continued to expand, and Lorenzo could not mend it.
He remembered the subtle curvature of the man’s (whose name he refused to speak out loud) mouth, and the lies he’d used to bait him back then.
“I’m telling you, little man,” the perpetrator had said to Lorenzo, “this is 1987. You better get with the program.”
Lorenzo recalled the perpetrator’s finger poking into his blue jean-covered thigh while he talked.
“I know what I’m talking about,” he continued, “and you need to let me help you. Your girlfriend is gonna need you to tell her what to do. How are you gonna tell her if you don’t know? You don’t wanna look like a chump, do you?”
Back then, Lorenzo hadn’t known what a chump was, but he remembered shaking his head slowly, thinking it was probably something he would not want to look like.
“And,” the perpetrator added with persistence, “if you let me do this now, it won’t hurt you later when she’s doing it to you.”
“But I don’t even have a girlfriend,” Lorenzo remembered saying as he watched the perpetrator blow transparent circles of cigarette smoke into the air.
“But you will,” he’d said. “You will.”
“And boys can get hurt?” Lorenzo had asked.
“Oh yeah,” the perpetrator said, baring his crooked, mushroom-colored teeth. “Guys get hurt too.”
Before anything happened, Lorenzo attempted to verify the accuracy of what he’d been told. He’d asked his mother if it was true that “doing it” with a girl for the first time was painful for the boy. The sound of shattering glass from the plate his mother dropped was still vivid in his memory.
“Where’d you get that information from?” his father had asked, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Lorenzo had opened his mouth to tell, but then he remembered he’d been sworn to secrecy by the perpetrator. “Nowhere,” he’d answered. “I was just wondering.”
“Well, wonder yourself on upstairs,” his father had said sternly. “You ain’t got no business thinking about stuff like that. Go on upstairs and read a book. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
Several days later, when the perpetrator knew no one would be at home except Lorenzo, he came to the house. He took Lorenzo up to the attic, reminding him along the way about his vow of secrecy. He told him to lie down on the dusty wooden floor, and Lorenzo, surrounded by items long forgotten or no longer wanted, silently wondered why the thing being done to him for his own good had to be kept a secret.
Just a few days later, the perpetrator wanted to “help” Lorenzo again, and had carried him into the downstairs bathroom. But Lorenzo had begun to sense that something was not right with this kind of “help.” He remembered struggling and kicking until the perpetrator had given up. That had been the last time Lorenzo allowed himself to be in the same room alone with the perpetrator. Still, the damage had already been done.
He had wanted to tell someone what had happened, but his uncle had convinced him that if he told it would be Lorenzo who got into trouble. And so, believing yet another lie, Lorenzo kept the secret and grew up convinced that it had all been his fault.
He shuddered as he remembered lying in the attic, frightened and confused while the perpetrator “helped” him to become a better boyfriend for his nonexistent girlfriend. The intricate patterns formed by the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling were still etched in his memory. And Lorenzo wondered how long they had been there, hidden in plain sight.
He looked around the deserted lakefront. He had no idea how long he’d been standing in that one spot, but the numbness in his cheeks let him know it was time to go.
Chapter Three
Lorenzo left the lakefront and drove until he saw the petite gray and white house nestled between a boarded-up tavern and a dilapidated storefront. Empty plastic bottles, paper, and other debris littered the curbside, and he parked his car under the one streetlight still working. He carefully checked out his surroundings before getting out of the car, and then he walked swiftly up to the wooden door.
He knocked once on the unfinished surface, then three more times in rapid succession. The stench of sweat and smoke greeted Lorenzo as a tall, muscular man opened the door just enough for Lorenzo to squeeze through. The man turned his clean shaven head toward the basement of the crack house, and Lorenzo walked down the rickety stairs that creaked each time he placed his full weight of 380 pounds on them.
As it always did, the battle between his flesh and mind waged on. With each unsteady step he took, the morality of his mind fought to be heard over the lustful persistence of his flesh. Lorenzo licked his lips. He needed this, and that was all there was to it. He hurried down the steps, eager to become immersed in the darkness that kept his soul in captivity.
As he entered the dimly li
t basement, the intermingling odor of feces and urine quickly clung to his polyester jacket like a leech. He turned the corner and entered another semidarkened room where men and women, young and old, had all found a space where they could disappear right in front of his eyes. Lorenzo intended to disappear as well . . . just as soon as he got what he came for.
Although he had entered a crack house, the rock hard substance was not what he had come for. Opiates, in the form of painkillers, were his drug of choice. He continued down the grim hallway until he reached the last room on the left where the drug dealer sat behind a tattered and stained folding table.
This drug dealer was a jack-of-all-trades with a menacing demeanor when it came to assisting others in the destruction of their lives; little by little, one hit from the pipe—or in Lorenzo’s case, one pill at a time. But Lorenzo couldn’t see any of that. He couldn’t see beyond his misery or how much he wanted the pain to stop. All he knew was that the handful of pills he was about to purchase would make all of his unpleasant feelings go away.
“What you want?” the dealer asked Lorenzo without looking up. He was surrounded by three other menacing figures who did all the looking for him.
“The usual,” Lorenzo said as he quickly placed four twenty-dollar bills on the table. The tug-of-war within him continued as did his pain. He wanted to leave, just run up the steps and out the door, but his misery would not allow him to do so . . . not until he had gotten the pills.
The dealer snatched the money from the table, and then reached into a mop bucket underneath the chair he was sitting on. “Here you go,” he said as he slid a small plastic bag across the table.
Lorenzo grabbed the tiny bag with four round pills inside, and turned to leave without saying a word.
“See you next time,” the dealer said.
The condescending tone in his voice may as well have been an arrow piercing straight through the center of Lorenzo’s soul. He stumbled past the lifeless shadows lurking in the murky environment. He made it to the steps and left the same way he had entered.
A Sad Soul Can Kill You Page 2
