For every mile I put between myself and Florida, a new question formed concerning Towanna. Things just weren’t adding up, like why she’d wait over a year of establishing a fake friendship if she was after Rah’s money. After I’d shot her, there’d been no news on the radio; I hadn’t gotten any phone calls. I should have checked her body. Trey needed to be in school, and my business couldn’t run itself. I could probably home-school him. And strangle him in the process. It wouldn’t take long to find an acting manager to run my real estate company. I could hold web conferences to manage and check in on the manager once I got one in place. I just needed to keep my head down until I could find Honey and get her locked up again or taken out for good.
“Child, you gonna stand there and stare me down or you and my grandbaby . . . wait, you had another one?” She was staring down at Lataya, who’d just woken up in her car seat sitting near my feet.
“No. Well, I mean Rasheed did. Just not with me.”
“That little red heffa ain’t come from my son. Yella an’ cocoa, yella an’ yella, hell yella an’ pitch black don’t make no red baby. Was the heffa a white girl?” She furled her face up and I almost laughed out loud.
I chuckled. “Her momma is a little reddish-yellow if I recall correctly.”
“That ain’t Rasheed baby. I know what a White look like. Done birthed, burped, an’ outlived ’em. She ain’t got the White nose or the ears.” She sighed heavily before continuing, “Come on in anyhow. Wit’ your imposter crumb snatcher.” That last part was a grumpy mumble under her breath.
“Um, Momma? Why is that rotten cantaloupe on your porch over there? You want me to throw it away for you?” I couldn’t help offering; flies were buzzing around the thing and it was stinking up the entire corner where it sat.
“Hell no. It showed up one day. Don’t know where it came from because I damn sure ain’t ask for it. I ain’t touchin’ it, and don’t you go touchin’ it neither.” She leaned in so close I could see the gray rings around her cataracts as she whispered, “I think it’s a body snatcher.”
All I could do was stare at her, waiting for a laugh or the punch line, but she just turned and hobbled inside ahead of us. She was dead-ass serious.
The carpet was so worn down I could barely tell the difference from being outdoors to stepping inside. It was as if I’d stepped into a dumpster with ambient lighting. I sidestepped empty soda cartons, stacks of newspapers, and piles of old lottery scratchers and empty bingo markers.
Trey tugged at my leg, put his hand around his mouth, and whispered, “Mommy, is this Oscar the Grouch’s house?” His little face was all scrunched up in confusion.
I couldn’t even get mad; that was a better description than what I was thinking. At least he’d asked quietly. Aside from the old newspapers and cardboard, there was the overwhelming smell of cigarette butts.
She closed the door behind us, whispering, “Child, I don’t know if it’s safe. Ever since they told me my baby passed, I been sensing things. Hearin’ folk creepin’ around outside. They are tryin’ to get in my house. You saw it. They leavin’ pods out there, hoping one’ll snatch me up. Body snatchers and peepin’ Toms. The Illustration been watchin’ me.”
I needed a damn minute. Here I was worried about real people and real-life threats and Momma was worried about . . .
“Wait. Momma White, are you talkin’ about the Illuminati?” Our situation was bewildering enough as it was. I needed to get this craziness nipped in the bud, fast.
“Shhh. You know that pod can hear you, girl. That’s exactly who I’m talkin’ about.”
She waddled her way through the clutter and sat down in the only clear spot on the couch. I couldn’t figure out where to set Lataya’s car seat and I for damn sure wasn’t about to take her out of it. It was hard enough keepin’ an eye on Trey’s busy little fingers.
“Now, lemme see the baby toes. All the White babies have stubby, fat, li’l Flintstone-looking feet wit’ a baby-dick second toe,” she said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms across her chest.
Trey gasped. It was too late to cover his ears.
Shaking my head at him, my eyes silently said, “Boy, you’d bet’ not repeat that.” He’d better not add any of this to his already-colorful vocabulary. We’d have to get a child-friendly filter on Momma White’s mouth, and soon. I was sure I’d heard her and scared to ask for clarification.
I cleared my suddenly dry throat and asked, “A . . . a what for a second toe?”
She snorted in irritation. “A baby dick, like a monkey finger, a damn cobra-clutch grabbits long as hell second toe,” Momma White responded, and with an attitude on top of that.
She even added terms for toes that I’d never even heard used in reference to a toe in all my adult life, as if they were medically defined terms I should know.
“Mommy, do I have monkey fingers?” Trey questioned.
Shit, he definitely had a long as hell second toe, but I wasn’t about to give him a complex about it. I ran my fingers across my eyebrows, mentally wiping away all this toe business.
“Okay, yes, Momma, she has a long toe. Now, how about we get you away from the Illustration, and go to a nice hotel? I’ll let you hold Lataya and you can examine her for yourself all you want.”
“No. I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Mona be done came up in here and took all my shit. Shit I worked for. I’ve got to be a vigilante.”
I sighed, wondering what on earth I’d walked into. “Vigilant, Momma?”
“And that, too,” she replied, twisting her mouth up at me.
Lord, please build up my patient, side because I’m sure there ain’t nothin’ right about chokin’ out an old woman.
Chapter 10
Shot at and Missed, Shit at and Hit
Me and the kids spent the night at the Hilton. I’d been doing all kinds of mental gymnastics trying to come up with ways to get Rah’s momma up out the house. Aside from setting fire to it or flooding it, she wasn’t budging. The least I could do was get off my bourgeois ass and pitch in with cleaning it up. There was no way I could leave her with it like that. She’d have these hacking painful sounding coughing fits that would leave her doubled over wheezing for air. It was probably from years of smoking, and I’m pretty sure there were all kinds of dust mites and mold spores making it worse. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, my own momma sounded somethin’ like that when the doctors said they couldn’t do anything more for her. They just sent her home telling my Daddy to make her as comfy as possible.
The timer on the oven went off, and I opened it to see the oven cleaner eating through all the black crud on the racks. I’d nearly asphyxiated myself with bleach and scrubbed through a whole box of Brillo Pads. I don’t know what I was thinking when I’d decided to tackle this cleaning job by myself. Momma White needed Molly-maid, Super-nanny, and an extraction team up in here. We could finally see a hairline of a dent in all of the filth she’d accumulated. For every spot I’d managed to clean, she’d be right behind me, taking something out of the trash or pulling an item or two back out of boxes.
It took a carton of Newports and a bottle of Merlot but I’d managed to bribe her into letting me clear one of the bedrooms for me and the kids. All we really ended up doing was shuffling items from that room to other parts of the house. The woman was a bona fide hoarder of empty cigarette cartons, cup noodle cases, and little else. There were no pictures from when she was growing up or when Rah was little. Nothing was left of value because her sister had squandered all of that for heroin or whatever else.
This particular morning I found Momma staring out of the kitchen window.
“Momma White? What are you doing?”
She was so still she could have been a wax sculpture. I’d have named it Rebellious Domestication. Momma White was holding her coffee mug full of wine with a lit cigarette perched carefully between her fingers. The ash hanging off the end looked almost as long as the cigarette itself. She was staring intently at the trees i
n the backyard. Thankfully the kids were still asleep, but I wanted to get to the sink and wash dishes before they were up and all in my way. She didn’t seem to be paying me or the dishes any mind.
“Momma? Are you all right? Is something wrong?” I gently tapped her shoulder.
“Shush, girl. He gonna hear your loud ass, and then we all gonna be dead.”
My pulse raced as a memory of my last night at Towanna’s created a massive pileup of emotion in my throat. I swallowed past the lump. “Who are you talking about? Who’s gonna hear me?” I whispered cooperatively.
She gave me an annoyed glance, briefly curling her lip in disgust before pointing at a tree closest to the house. “Right there in the corner. He got that shit turned on though, guess he call himself hidin’. Damn Predator sitting right there. I see him. Camouflage don’t fool me. See the leaves movin’?”
I followed her withered finger through the smoke burning my eyes and stared at the few remaining Reese’s Pieces–colored leaves that were barely hanging on the tree branch. I was looking and thinking, you know, hunter, apex predator, and then my shoulders slumped. I rubbed my eyes in aggravation and looked at Momma White, who was still staring, fascinated with this tree.
“You mean Predator, like on TV?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.
“He obviously ain’t on the TV if he in my damn tree spying,” she snapped back, taking a sip from her mug.
Left with nowhere to go and stuck with my ex’s bat-shit crazy momma.
This had to be God’s way of punishing me for all the fucked-up shit I’d done in my past. I’d have pointed out the fact that it was just a squirrel, but that would turn into another one of her “Illustration” arguments and I wasn’t even in the mood for it right now. On more than one occasion I’d started to ask her if she was on something. I was thinking maybe Mona wasn’t the only one doing “the hard stuff.” The house would be dead silent and Momma would start yelling for everyone to shut up. She even had Trey convinced the walls melted every day when the sun came up. He’d sit on her lap and they’d whisper about where they thought the drywall came from when it grew back at night and what color it might be.
I noticed a trickle of blood down the back of her leg.
“Momma, did you cut yourself?” I asked her.
“Hmm? Oh no girl. It’s a boil. Put fatback on it and a few home remedies. It’s fine.”
“Oh, okay. Well, let me have a look then, you don’t want it to get infected.”
I’d already figured it was infected because it was the leg she’d been limping on. She reluctantly walked over and slightly lifted her house dress. She had a huge mean looking hole on the back of her thigh about the size of a soda bottle cap. I’d gotten a rag and some peroxide to clean it with.
“Momma, you’ve got to go to the doctor. Um . . .”
“Spit it out child.”
“You have maggots, in your leg Momma.”
“Oh, girl tell me something I don’t know. They only eat the bad parts. They making it healthy. How you think they got there. That’s why I let you look. Do you think they done yet? You gonna need some tweezers to take ‘em out, some of them little buzzards’ll latch on good and won’t wash out.”
There weren’t too many options since I wasn’t exactly her kin. Momma wasn’t going to be happy with me, but hopefully she’d thank me one day.
The hospital wasn’t exactly what I expected for a mental institution. After seeing Trey and Lataya settled into a quiet, guarded play area on the main floor, I checked in and went to see how Momma was handling herself. You’d have thought we were sentencing her to life in prison when they came by the house to speak with her and diagnose her condition. Her stay in here was completely contingent upon her cooperation. Turned out she was schizophrenic and in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. I’d already agreed to take care of her once she agreed to get with the program. I’d found a ton of unopened Risperdal prescription bottles littered around the house. At some point, she’d decided to start boycotting her meds. It made me wonder if that mess was a dominant or recessive trait in the gene pool. I’d need to start watching Trey and Lataya’s asses, because shit like that always skipped generations.
I was escorted through at least five different checkpoints by a well-mannered, broad-shouldered guard. My cell, keys, and belongings were left at check-in, as nothing could be taken inside. Hate to say it, but it was all very reminiscent of visiting Rah in prison. There was a rundown of do’s and do not’s. Such as “do not leave the visiting area, do sit quietly, and do not be alarmed if other patients randomly join your conversation.” Oh, and “do not stare.”
All the visitors were corralled into a large dining area with bare ocean-blue walls. A row of barred windows let in sunlight, greeting us with a view of the concrete walls. They surrounded the entire building.
Well, isn’t that a cozy sight to see. They could at least put up some shrubs or rose bushes; these folk already depressed enough as it is.
Momma wasn’t at the stage in treatment yet where she could have unsupervised visits in her room. That would come later. I sat down at a long cafeteria-style table and waited. A few patients were already seated in the area. It wasn’t like on TV where you’d see people wandering around in raggedy hospital gowns. I was instructed to pack warm, comfy clothes for Momma, and to be sure not to put any belts, razors, or mouthwash in her suitcase. All the patients wore brightly colored hospital bands and clothes of their own choosing.
I questioned that logic when I saw an awkward-looking, pale, middle-aged man sitting slouched in a corner. He wore nothing but biking shorts and brown penny loafers with no socks. Blinking seemed to take a conscious effort as if he were snapping himself awake from a quick nap. He was giving me the thousand-yard stare down with his dark, beady eyes in between blinky jerks.
Humph, but it isn’t okay for me to stare, though?
The guy seated next to him slid out of his seat and began holding an intense conversation with the chair. He started crawling and sliding it around the dining area. His sister or wife sat by, watching sadly, and I gave his crazy behind a cautious side eye.
Momma was finally led in, strolling like a regal mafia matriarch. A short, stocky woman, who made a Shih Tzu come to mind from looking at her, bounced along beside Momma. She had a pinched face and stubby little legs with a pink bow in her hair. They were followed by a hunchbacked old man with graying hair, and a towering, serial-killer Green Mile–looking somebody.
Shit, I should have been allowed to at least keep my cell phone, my Mace, something. Momma rolled her eyes at me and sat clear at the opposite end of the table. She promptly folded her arms across her chest and sat gripping her upper arms with a sour look on her face. Sighing, I got up and walked around to pull out the chair beside her. If she wasn’t going to come to me, I’d just have to go to her. Regardless of what she thought, putting her in here was my way of helping, not hurting.
Green Mile had been giving me his version of the thousand-yard stare from where he stood. Before I could plant my ass firmly in the seat, I gasped as something cold and wet splattered across the front of my blazer. The room erupted into chaos as Green Mile decided it was just time to go ape shit ballistic. He flipped the table and started launching chairs at the orderlies with missile-like precision. I was literally watching King Kong live and direct. If there’d have been something in there for him to climb, he’d have scaled it and been roof bound in a matter of seconds. Panic alarms went off and a squadron of orderlies, guards, or whatever you call them, stormed in. I stared down in disgust at the brown ooze ruining my cream Marc blazer, and I shut my mind off.
Lord, please don’t let this be what I think it is.
I fought back a gag. Figure the odds. I’d been shot at and missed, shit at and fucking hit. Momma glanced up at me with a smirk on her face.
“Ms. Laurel, I am so terribly sorry. Please come with me we’ll get you cleaned up.”
A gorgeous, thick-hipped
nurse with dimple piercings manifested in a mango sugar-scented cloud. Giving me a reassuring smile, she took me by my elbow and led me through one of the side doors into a maze of hallways.
I will not ask for her number. I will not ask for her number. Hmm . . .
But, what if she asks for my number? No. I will not give out my number.
We are on a break. Mentally chastising myself for even thinking about cheating on my sexual diet, I continued to follow along and keep my eyes above hip level. I was sure these were the areas they left off the tours when they solicited you for your money. The friendly dark blue walls gave way to a more institutional-feeling, split-pea, soup-colored green. We passed rows of rooms with “fit your face” sized square windows. They lined the hallway on either side. People screamed or cried nonstop like they were being tortured behind the stark white doors. My nosey ass tried to peek in, and every now and again I could see people curled up in their beds; sometimes they were strapped down.
And this is supposed to be the place where we send depression and mental illness to be cured? When I went through shit with Rah, I’d tried to sleep the pain away, sometimes for days at a time. And then Ris would save me. Bowling, jogging, drinking, dancing, and fucki—
I could hear what sounded like a life-sized bug zapper humming at the end of the hall. “Is that . . . ?”
“Electroshock therapy? Yes, some people actually need it,” she answered before I could even get my question out.
She led me into the women’s locker room. “You can get yourself cleaned up in here.” She smiled sweetly and disappeared around the side of the lockers to go get me a fresh shirt.
Baby Momma Saga, Part 2 Page 8
