by B. N. Toler
I nodded like an idiot, even though I had no idea what she said. One of the young girls handed her a pair of latex gloves, which I appreciated given that she was no doctor and we were in the back room of a shack in the slums. Maela quickly put them on and raised the sheet. After a brief moment, her fingers probed inside me.
Another contraction seized me and I groaned loudly. Now about two minutes apart, they continued to get worse and worse. One of the downsides to having a baby in a Cuban shack in Little Havana was no epidural.
Maela yelled to the girls, and one ran out of the room bringing Hudson back in with her. Maela spoke to Hudson with great emphasis motioning with her hands.
Hudson looked at me, worry in his eyes. Whit came in and waited for Hudson to say something.
“The baby is breach. She’s worried that you may not be able to deliver naturally.”
“Breach? What does that mean?” I asked, panicked.
“Seriously, Aldo! You didn’t read any of the books we bought, did you?” Hudson scolded, his lips pursed in disappointment.
“What does it mean?” I yelled back in a voice that must have made me sound possessed because Hudson seemed surprised.
“It means the baby is coming out feet first,” Whit answered in a calm voice.
“That’s bad?” I asked like an idiot.
“Can be,” Whit shook his head.
“You read those books too, huh?” Another contraction hit me like a ton of bricks and I moaned.
“I bought one with cliff notes.” He winked, and I smiled through the pain. “Hudson, ask her if she can deliver the baby?”
Hudson and Maela shared a short dialogue, and then she sat back down between my legs and inserted her fingers again. She spoke something and the pretty, young Cuban girls came on either side of me and grabbed my knees while Whit and Hudson grabbed my hands.
“She said push like hell.” Hudson nodded, squeezing my hand.
Fear raptured my body. Holy shit. I’m about to have a baby, and it really fucking hurts. Sweat dripped down my face and chest. My mind filled with rantings. I hate sex! I hate vaginas! I hate little Cuban shithole shacks with no air conditioning!
Hudson quickly grabbed the washcloth that had fallen to my side and wiped my forehead.
“Thank you,” I sighed in exhaustion.
“You are really going to need a shower after this,” Hudson noted.
“Ya think?”
“Hey, you got this,” Whit assured me while trying to stifle his laugh.
“Does my immense, fucking pain humor you, Whit?” I snarled.
“A little,” he laughed. “Sorry, Aldo, it’s just a weird situation, and you are very rarely in this form. Come on, I’m ready to meet my niece or nephew.” Whit nodded with a let’s get ‘er done expression.
“Now push, Aldo!” Hudson cheered.
.
twelve
Present
“What happened, Thomas?” I ask when he finally emerges from the bathroom. I stand mostly naked, leaned over my kitchen counter. Aggravation plagues his face when he realizes I’m still not dressed.
“Get dressed. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m getting you out of here.” He turns away from me as if he felt inappropriate seeing me naked. “For the love of everything that is good and holy, please get dressed,” he begs again when I don’t move.
I smile, enjoying the thought of torturing him. I wrap my arms around him, my chest pressed against his bare back. I found him. He’s alive. Now I can tell him he’s a father. I can share with him that we created another creature, a beautiful human being.
“Dressed, now!” He interrupts my thoughts. “We have to go.” He peels my arms from around him and walks towards my closet.
His rejection feels like a knife in my heart and every time I push and he continues to reject me, it feels as if he’s twisting that knife. I always envisioned that if I found Thomas, he would embrace me and never let me go.
“Do you have a shirt that will fit me?” He stares into my closet.
Still in nothing but my thong and red boots, I join him at the closet and arch my back so that my breasts are raised as I slide by him.
He backs away from me as I move hangers around. I find a large green t-shirt and stare at it. I didn’t even know I had this. “Will this work?” I hold it up to him.
“Yes.” He takes it out of my hand without even looking at it. What was happening? Why was he being so cruel? He faces away from me while I dress, his head hanging as if playing out some inner turmoil.
I watch him as I put on new underwear and a lacey black bra. I slip on a black tank top with a jean skirt. I gather up my pre-paid cell phone, some cash hidden in a shoe box in the back of my closet for emergencies, some underwear, and a few clean tank tops. I stuff them into a leather satchel. I grab some of my makeup and shove it into the front pocket after applying my lip gloss. My heart is racing with joy at the thought of leaving with Thomas. Going home to my brothers and being with our child is too much to imagine. He must be worried about someone taking us. That has to be why he’s so tense. Once we get out of here and are on our way he’ll relax. We’ll finally be together. In my immense joy, a sad thought comes to mind: Alina. I have to see her. I have to say goodbye.
“Thomas, I have to work. One last shift and then I’ll go where ever with you.”
“No.” He still won’t look at me.
“Yes, I’m going,” I reply firmly. “I need to say goodbye to someone. It’s just one night. You can sit at the bar and wait for me.”
“I don’t want to watch you strip.” He shakes his head.
“Then don’t come, but I’m going.”
“Please just listen to me,” he begs softly, and I can’t help but bend to his whim.
“Fine,” I exhale loudly. I can come back later to find Alina once I figure out what Thomas is so worked up about.
“Ready,” I sigh as I gaze at my apartment for what might be the last time. Can’t say I’ll miss it, but I certainly won’t forget it. This will be the end of my long journey. Thomas and I will find my brothers and he will meet his…
“Let’s go.” He interrupts my train of thought.
At the ground floor, Thomas glances out the door, checking to see if anyone is watching. He pulls me behind him and opens the passenger door to a black SUV of some sort that’s parked on the side of my building. We climb in the car, he starts the engine, and sets off for the interstate.
“Where are we going?” Why is he going in this direction?
“The bus depot.”
“Why are we taking a bus?”
“We aren’t,” he replies curtly.
I try to understand what is happening. Then it occurs to me. He means I’m taking the bus.
“No, Thomas. I’m not leaving.” I turn to him.
“Yes, you are.” He nods and still stares forward.
“Not without you!” I shout.
“You have to. They found you. You have to go so I can distract them and get them off of your trail.”
“No, we’ll leave together. We can lose them together,” I demand, grabbing his arm as if this will convince him.
“Aldo, you don’t understand.” He shakes off my hand.
“Then explain it to me.”
He is quiet for the remainder of the drive, despite my pleading for him to talk. When we finally reach the bus depot, he parks the car and turns to me. “Aldo, you won’t want to be with me when you find out the truth.” He runs his hands through his hair, and I can see the years we have been apart have been hard for him. He’s thirty now, not the strapping young man I fell head over heels for, but an older version of a young man, with worries that have worn him down. My Thomas is still handsome as ever, in fact more handsome.
“Please tell me,” I beg.
He rests his head on the steering wheel. “The last night you saw me, the night we made love in your dreams, I was the h
appiest I had ever been in my life.”
“Then why did you leave me? You told me we would run away together in two days, and then you just disappeared.”
“I know.”
“Why, Thomas?”
He sighs heavily. “I never told you, in fact I lied to you about something the day we met at the restaurant.”
“What did you lie about?”
“Well, it’s a natural instinct for people like us to be cautious. I trusted you, but I wasn’t sure what your aunt was like. I mean, you were so young and naïve, how could I not trust you? I moved around a lot when I was younger. My father always worried we would be found, but your family seemed to move even more often. I thought maybe Lucy was more paranoid than a normal healer might be so I withheld a few things from you.”
“Like?” I ask curious.
“Well, you asked if I could shift in dreams, and I told you I couldn’t. That was a lie.”
“Really?” At least it wasn’t something really horrible.
“Yes, I can make myself into anything I want.”
“Wow.” I try to understand why he thought this would change how I felt about him.
His hands grip the steering wheel before he drops them to his lap. “Well, that night when I left your dream, I somehow crossed into Lucy’s subconscious.”
“Had you been in her dreams before?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” I scoot myself closer to him, but he doesn’t respond.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Whit and Hudson?” I question.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes I can’t walk twins minds.” He shrugs.
“But Lucy was a twin.”
“I can’t explain why. It’s not all twins, but sometimes there are a set of twins and I can’t link my mind to theirs. Lucy was one I could.”
“How come you never told me?” I stare down at my hands. Why is he acting so odd?
“You never asked.” He shrugs.
“What was she dreaming?”
“Well, she was speaking with vampires.” He runs a hand through his hair again.
“What do you mean by speaking?”
“She was negotiating.”
“Negotiating what?”
“The price for selling you, your brothers, Lucas, and myself to them.”
I felt like the wicked witch of the west must have felt in The Wizard of Oz when the house fell on her. Lucy selling us to vampires?
“That was just a dream. She would never do that,” I stammer through my shock as I slide away from him.
“I thought maybe that was true. But I couldn’t ignore certain details. She argued that they needed to wait until after your graduation so it wouldn’t be obvious. She kept reminding them about her husband and her son, how they promised to give them back if she taught you three. Aldo, she wasn’t even your blood. She was an imposter.” He turns to look me in the eyes, but I am too busy staring into the darkness. My mind feels like mush. This couldn’t be possible. Lucy loved us. He’s wrong.
“She moved us to keep vampires from finding us. She protected us.” Tears stream down my face.
“Or to keep someone else from finding you.”
“Who?”
“Your parents?” Thomas frames it like a question.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. The idea that my mother and father could be alive is unimaginable.
“Aldo, she didn’t even have one photo of them to show you. Why do you think that is?”
I had never seen a picture of my mother. Not one photo or relic of her life. We asked once if Lucy knew who our father was and she said he wasn’t anyone worth knowing. Try digesting that when you’re twelve years old. I remember Thomas asked once what our mother looked like and when I told him we had no photos of our parents, he made a face. But I didn’t question what his expression meant. He must have thought it strange, and I guess it kind of was. How could it be Lucy couldn’t have obtained one photo of her? I never thought about it. We always had so little, photos never even went up in our home because we never stayed places long. I imagined my mother looked just like Lucy, since they were twins. I always wondered did I favor my father more, because I really didn’t share many of Lucy’s features. She was pale, blue eyed, and tall. I was short, olive skinned, with brown eyes. Could it be Lucy was some crazy woman who stole us just to turn around and sell us to vampires?
“I don’t believe this,” I manage through soft sobs.
He leans over me and opens his glove box. “Here.” He hands me a napkin from a stack he must have kept from a fast food restaurant. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you these things. I was at a loss. They were coming the day she died to collect us all. I didn’t know it was that day until I got to your house. When I got out of her dream I told Lucas to start packing. We were going to take you three and leave. I was going to tell you everything, but it all got messed up.” He pauses and turns away from me. “After Lucas and I packed up, I went to your house while he waited outside. Lucy answered the door and was acting strange. She insisted I come in, even though I refused. I thought if I didn’t go in, it would set off flags. Plus I didn’t think they’d actually be there at that point.” He sighs and lets his head fall back on the seat.
“She said you referred a woman to her for a healing. That’s why she made us leave.” I lay my head on the dashboard, nausea washing over me.
“She lied to you. She had to get you out of the house so the two blood healers could enter and wait for you to return.”
“So she was going to trade us for her husband and son?” I still couldn’t comprehend what he was telling me.
“Of course, later when she realized you possessed other gifts, she decided to raise the negotiated price. He pulls a pack of gum out of his pocket and proceeds to unwrap it.
“Which was?”
“Well, the three of you for her husband and her son originally. Later she decided to ask for money in exchange for me, my brother, and your talent, which she had helped you develop.” He holds the gum out for me, but I shake my head, and he places it back in his pocket.
“But blood healers? Why would blood healers buy us?”
“I don’t know, Aldo.” His voice held an edge to it as if annoyed and very uncomfortable explaining all of this.
“That’s how they came during the day, they were blood healers?”
“Yes.” He threw his hands up.
“So what happened?” I try to calm my crying.
“I got ambushed. I walked in, and as soon as she shut the door, someone hit me over the head and knocked me out. If it hadn’t been for Lucas, I would be dead. Or they would have taken me. He came in and shot the place up with wooden bullets. He killed both of them.”
My mind tries to imagine stoner Lucas busting in my house and popping wooden caps in two blood healers. An odd visual. “So how did Lucy die?”
Thomas’s eyes shift slightly. “I killed her.” His voice hitches with his words. I knew deep down that this is where this story was leading, but to hear him say the words wrenches my gut. This woman loved me, raised me. She took care of me. How could it all have been a lie? How could she pretend everything?
“How?” is all I can manage.
“One of the vampires snapped Lucas’s back. He was dying. Your aunt had been shot, and I took what was left of her life to save my brother.”
“You drained her?”
“Yes.” His voice held no remorse as he stared straight ahead.
“That’s impossible. She never would have let that happen.”
“She didn’t fight me at all.”
“But they only found her body.” I sit up and try to match my pieces of the story to his.
“When blood healers or vampires die, their bodies dissolve.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Who burned the house down?”
“We burned the house down to hide as much evidence as
we could. We had to leave, but we took the money the vampires were going to pay her with the return of her husband and son. That’s how I left you the car and the money.”
That hadn’t even occurred to me. Lucy didn’t set us up, Thomas did. He left the car and the money. I thought he had forgotten us. “Why didn’t you find us so we could be together? We were so lost and scared,” I sob, remembering.
“I knew you would hate me for killing her. I knew I could keep an eye on you from a distance. I could track you in your dreams and she could continue in your heart as the wonderful aunt you always thought she was.”
“But you never came to my dreams. If you had explained, we would have believed you.”
”It’s no matter now, Aldo.”
“So that’s why you’re saying we can’t be together?” The words pain me. Even after everything he just told me, life without him seems unbearable.
“Come with me. I have so much to tell you, Thomas.” I bring myself back to my original goal. “Plus if what you are saying is true, we’ll need your help finding our parents.”
“No.” He turns to me.
“Why?”
“Because you need to find your brothers and be with them. Where are they?” His tone is direct, business like.
“They’re safe,” I assure him.
“You need to go to them.” He touches my hand and my skin tingles.
“But you don’t understand. We have a—”
“No, Aldo. Here.” He hands me a large roll of money secured with a thick rubber band.
“What are you, a crack dealer now?
He ignores me. “This is to get you home.” Tears roll down my face and I turn away from him. Five years I searched for him and this is what I get?
“I’ll just keep looking for you.” I turn to him, so he can see I’m serious.
“Don’t come back. We will never be together.” His tone is harsh.
My heart sinks to my stomach. I back away from him, realizing I’m that seventeen year old girl loving a man who will never be with me. He does love me, he loved me then, but he would never allow himself to be with me. Maybe it’s best. After all, he did kill Lucy, or the woman pretending to be our aunt. I lean back in my seat for a moment, trying to scrape what is left of my pride from within and force myself to move. If I am able to forgive him, what would stop him from being with me?
