by Jessie Cooke
“I’m coming, Ma.” He laid the pendant on his dresser while he got ready to go bury his father. Before he left the room, he picked it back up and tucked it down in his pocket. He didn’t understand why, but it made him feel better, knowing it was there…like Krissy was with him, to help him get through this horrible day.
4
Zoe stood at the edge of the yard, next to the quiet street, and watched her nana. As long as Zoe could remember, her nana would go out into the garden first thing in the morning and pick every little weed that dared intrude on her flowers’ sanctuary. When Zoe was little she always knew she’d find her there when she first woke up. Nana would have a smile on her face and dirt underneath her fingernails. Zoe loved the way her nana smelled, like flowers and soil and dew on the leaves. She missed her so much sometimes that her chest would ache, yet she was so ashamed of what she had become that she dreaded looking her in the eyes.
She had another dream the night before and when she woke up, drenched in sweat, she’d started walking. She didn’t have a destination in mind. She hadn’t meant to go home; it was just where her feet had taken her. She hadn’t even realized where she was until the sun began to come up and she was standing at the end of the familiar street. She’d sat on the corner for a while, until she saw her papa leave for work and then she’d carried on to where she stood now. She watched her nana and thought about the dream. They were getting more intense every night. It had been almost two weeks since she’d watched the girl die, almost three weeks since she’d given in to the call of the magic potion her dealer doled out, but the struggle was getting harder by the minute.
She stood there and asked herself why she’d come home. What did she expect to find there? As her thoughts raced, the old woman in the garden stood up straight and pulled off her floppy hat. She was pushing seventy, but there was no stoop to her shoulders and Zoe would bet that her short, gray hair was curled perfectly underneath the bandana she wore around her head. She watched her wipe the sweat from her brow and smiled at how, even at dawn, Nana’s bright red lipstick lined her lips perfectly.
She sighed heavily, trying to decide what she should do. She wanted to run to her nana and let her hold her and tell her everything would be alright. She knew that her nana would be happy to see her, no matter what; she always was. She also always gave in to her and had Zoe been there for money, the only thing Nana would have asked was how much. But Zoe wasn’t there to take from her this time. For once in her life the urge to manipulate the love that her grandmother had for her was absent. Zoe’s nana let her heart dangle from her sleeve and the stubborn, selfish girl she was had always been able to manipulate it. When Zoe was younger, she hadn’t cared that Nana had to argue with her papa every time she gave in to one of Zoe’s whims. As long as Zoe got what she wanted, she didn’t care about anything or anyone else. There were days and sometimes even weeks when her grandparents didn’t speak to each other, all because Nana had given in to something that Papa had forbidden. Zoe knew that her mother’s death and then Zoe’s antics as a willful adolescent had very nearly torn the couple apart, more than once. When she was little, all she’d ever wanted was a love like theirs that would last forever, but yet she’d never done anything but hurt them both, over and over again. She realized at that moment that no matter how badly she wanted to be home, she couldn’t do that to them again. She took one last look at her nana and turned and walked forlornly away.
She was almost across the street when she heard her nana’s voice: “Zoe?” She froze, torn between the need to feel her grandmother’s arms around her and the resolve to walk away. “Zoe, is that you?” She hadn’t seen Nana in months and she’d lost a considerable amount of weight since then. She knew her long brown hair was stringy and even worse; her once smooth skin was now marked with scars from the sores the drugs had infected her with. She didn’t want to turn around and see the disappointment in Nana’s eyes when she looked at her. “Please don’t go.” The plea was heartfelt and more than Zoe could stand.
With a huge lump in her throat she turned toward her nana. The old woman dropped the gardening tool in her hands and started toward her. Zoe told herself that she still had time to run away, but once again her feet took over. When she got close to her grandmother, they both stopped. Nana took in her appearance then and Zoe could see the pain etched into her wrinkled face. Several long, uncomfortable minutes passed and then Nana did what she did best, she opened her arms and Zoe melted into them.
“Oh, baby girl. I was so worried,” Nana said as she brushed a weathered hand through Zoe’s hair. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I prayed for you every night.”
Zoe swallowed hard around the lump threatening to cut off her oxygen supply. After what her grandparents had gone through, letting them worry like that bordered on evil. In a weak voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Nana.”
“Shh,” the older woman said, rocking her back and forth like she was a child. “It’s okay now. You’re home now. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Two hours later, Zoe was showered and scrubbed clean and dressed in a pair of her grandmother’s sweatpants and a tank top. She sat at the kitchen table in front of a plate that held more food than she’d eaten in a week. Nana was sitting across from her with so many questions in her eyes. Zoe knew that with their history, Nana was probably afraid she couldn’t afford the cost of the answers. “You’re not eating,” she said, instead. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“My stomach is a little upset…nervous, I guess.”
“You don’t have to be nervous here. This is your home.”
She looked up from the plate into her grandmother’s brown eyes. They were so faded from years under the sun that they were almost translucent. “It’s not my home anymore, Nana. I shouldn’t have come here. Papa is going to be so angry.”
“Oh, baby girl, he’s as worried about you as I have been. You know him. He just has a hard time showing his emotions.”
Zoe nodded, but inwardly, she disagreed. Papa didn’t have a hard time showing her how disappointed he was in her. He never had a hard time making her feel like the failure she knew she was. He hadn’t had a hard time showing her mother that he was finished with her. “When will he be home? I should go before he gets here.”
“You’ll do no such thing! Where will you go? Where have you been, Zoe?”
“Just here and there, Nana. I don’t want to make trouble for you, though.”
“You’re not trouble. You’re our granddaughter, you’re family. Family fights for each other no matter what.”
“I don’t want you to have to fight for me anymore.”
Nana sat back in her chair and folded her crepe-paper arms across her chest. “What did you come here for, Zoe? Money?”
It hurt that her Nana thought that, but Zoe didn’t fault her for it. It was usually what she’d shown up for in the past—that, or to hide out from the cops or whoever she’d stolen from on the streets. “No, Nana, not this time. I just…something happened and it did something to me. It made me want to come home. But I realized once I got here that I don’t want to put my stuff on you anymore. For the better part of seven years I’ve been in one mess after the other and you’ve always bailed me out. The financial cost was more than I deserved, but the cost of what it did to you and Papa…was inexcusable. I need to go, before he gets home.”
Her nana ignored the last part and said, “What happened?”
Zoe shook her head, slowly, and said, “I’m not sure. I watched a girl die and…”
Nana leaned in and reached across the table for Zoe’s hand. Zoe gave it to her and Nana said, “Did she overdose…on drugs?” Nana’s eyes were filled with pain and Zoe knew that the thought of anyone overdosing hit too close to home.
“No. She was in an accident. I tried to help her, Nana, but I didn’t know what to do. I called 911 and then I just held her hand until she was gone.” Zoe felt the tears rise again. She hadn’t cried since the night of the accident and she didn’
t want to cry now. She swallowed them down and said, “I didn’t help her.”
She felt Nana squeeze her hand. “Oh, baby, but you did. You were with her and that means so much. No one should have to die alone.”
“Like my mom?” Zoe said, regretting the words as soon as she said them. They were words that she’d wielded like a knife when she was an adolescent, knowing full well the damage they did to the woman who had taken her in and tried everything to give her a good life. “I’m sorry, Nana. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Her grandmother let go of her hand and sat up straight again. “You don’t have to be sorry, it’s the truth, as sad as it is. Your mama died alone because we didn’t know how to help her.” Zoe knew that was partially true. But, she also knew that her mother had come there to ask for help that night, and her own father had turned her away. That was the way Zoe saw it for most of her life anyways. Now that she was older and she was beginning to realize what she’d put them through herself, she knew that it wasn’t so cut and dried.
Her mother had been a junkie. She ran away from home when she was sixteen, had Zoe when she was seventeen, and spent the next seven years showing up out of the blue whenever she wanted money or a place to leave the kid she could hardly care for. Even as a little girl Zoe knew her mother wanted to care for her. She saw her try, and she saw her fail. But the child that wanted a mother so badly forgave her repeatedly. Papa always welcomed Zoe inside when her mother brought her to them, but he’d close the door in her mother’s face and without understanding what he’d been through, Zoe resented him for it. When her mother finished with her drug binge and sobered up, days, weeks, or months later, she and Papa would fight like cats and dogs over where Zoe would stay. In the end, her mother usually ended up taking her and each time the hell of their lives got a little bit worse.
That last night, when Zoe was seven years old, they had been living in a homeless camp by the river. Her mother was partying with a rough-looking street guy and as the night went on, his interests turned to Zoe. She was too little at the time to understand what he wanted, or what he might have done to her if her mother had let him. Instead, her mother had stabbed him in the back and she’d grabbed Zoe and ran. She hailed a cab, and Zoe knew then where they were going. She only ever took a cab if they were going home. She’d leave Zoe there usually, and Papa would pay for the cab. Zoe had been looking forward to seeing Nana and Papa that night, but when they got there and her mother told them what she’d done, Papa lost it. All he heard was that she’d stabbed a man. Papa worked for the police department. He was an evidence tech and the law meant everything to him. Before her mother had a chance to explain why she’d stabbed the man, Papa had his phone in his hand and was dialing the police. Nana was yelling at him to stop and Zoe was crying. She didn’t want her mother to go to jail. There was so much chaos in the house that no one even realized exactly when her mother left. It wasn’t until the next day that the police found her. She was dead in an alley in downtown Memphis, with a needle sticking out of her arm.
“I really should go, Nana.” Zoe pushed back from the table and started to get to her feet. Her grandmother stopped her with five words:
“Tell me about the girl.”
Zoe pictured the girl’s bloody face and her knees went weak. She wished that it was her empathy for the girl that caused it, but the truth was, it was her own guilt. Before she knew what she was doing, she said, “She kept asking for Levi.”
“Who was Levi?” Nana asked.
“The love of her life,” Zoe said, without a doubt.
Nana smiled sadly and said, “Did she tell you that?” Zoe shook her head. “Oh, did you meet him?” She shook her head again. Finally, she said:
“She used her last breath to call out his name, and I saw it in her eyes right before she died. She loved him so much. I’ve dreamt about her every night since. Some nights in my dreams, I watch her die again and other nights, I see her like she probably was…alive and happy. There was a picture of her and her boyfriend on her phone. They were both smiling, but there was something else…a look in both of their eyes that said neither of them would rather be anyplace else. I dream about them both sometimes and other times, it’s me in the dream, with him. How twisted is that? I’m having…” She started to say wet, but remembered who she was talking to. “I’m having dreams about a dead girl’s soul mate. What’s wrong with me, Nana?”
5
“Hey, you okay?” Levi looked at Grant. He was sick of that question. It had been almost four weeks since his Dad and Krissy died and if he had a dollar for every time someone asked if he was okay, he’d be a very rich man. It wasn’t his friend’s fault though, so he was doing his best not to lose patience with them. Nodding, he said:
“Yeah, I was just thinking about what Zack and Hash were saying last night.”
Grant cocked an eyebrow and looked at the silver heart Levi was turning over in his fingers. He’d done it so often for the past three weeks that he almost forgot when he had it in his hands sometimes. He stopped playing with it and stuck it in his pocket as Grant said, “Are you seriously thinking about changing clubs?” Grant whispered his question even though they were the only two in the great room at that moment. Changing clubs was a big deal. It was an even bigger deal to the Defenders, whose numbers had dwindled greatly over the past year. They had gotten into a turf war with a street gang who at first seemed like a minor annoyance. But after one of their SAAs had gone off the deep end and blown up their major source of income…a meth lab…things began to spiral out of control even faster.
“I’m tired of the killing,” Levi said. He had been the one to pull the trigger on the bullet that had killed one of his own brothers. Spider had gone off the deep end after becoming addicted to the meth their own club was cooking. Levi had killed him to spare the lives of his new friend Zack and Spider’s ex-girlfriend, Nicole. Since then, even before Krissy died, Levi had been thinking about his future. He’d known the club cooked meth and that was where the bulk of their funds came from. But he’d never really thought of the impact they were making on the community because of it. After watching Spider’s spiral into psychosis, it had made him think about all the kids and young adults whose lives were being ruined because of it. “And the drugs,” he said.
“Cheney won’t just sit back and let you leave, man. You know he doesn’t even like you hanging out with Zack and Hashtag.” Grant was looking around the room and still whispering. It was another thing that Levi had come to dislike about their club. When he was a kid, he had looked up to his father and the other men in part because of their incredible bond and respect for one another. After Cheney’s father, the club president, was killed, Cheney took over. He was young and he had a lot of radical ideas about how the club could make money. One of those ideas was the meth labs. Levi’s dad was a lieutenant and he voiced his objections to getting into the meth business, loudly. Cheney managed to convince the younger guys on the voting board that it was a solid business venture by showing them how much money was to be made. Levi’s father had held firm in his objections and because he’d been with the club so long and he was so well-respected, his objections had bled over into a large part of the club and caused major dissension. After Spider, those voices got louder with his father the ringleader of the group. But now that his dad was gone, Levi didn’t doubt Cheney would go right back to trying to build some kind of drug empire, and he didn’t want to be a part of that.
“Cheney wanted Dad out for a long time. Now that Dad is gone, why not me too?”
“It’s different with you. Your dad pissed him off, especially once he quit drinking and focused more on cleaning up the club and he might have eventually taken that out on you…but then you killed Spider. You saved him a hell of a lot of trouble by doing that, and you earned his respect. I just don’t honestly think he’d let you just walk away.”
Levi stood up and paced along the edge of the table. “He can’t ke
ep me a prisoner.”
“No.” Grant sighed. “But you can bet that he can make your life a living hell.”
Levi laughed, but not happily. “I’m already in hell,” he said. “All I’m looking to do is survive…for what, I’m not sure.”
Levi wasn’t surprised that Grant wanted to talk him out of leaving the Defenders. He and Grant had grown up together with their fathers in the club. Grant’s dad had arthritis that prevented him from riding any longer, but he was still an active participant in decision-making. Despite not agreeing with most of Cheney’s radical ideas, Grant’s father was old-school, and loyalty and respect were the two main things in his life. He’d tried to talk Levi’s dad out of being so openly oppositional, but Levi’s old man wasn’t about to roll over and take it in the ass from anyone, much less a “kid” half his age. Despite Grant’s objections, Levi almost looked at his own desire to change as a way to show respect for his father. There was one person whose opinion mattered more than anyone’s, however, and after he left Grant, he went to find out what they thought.
“Hi, Mom.” Levi walked into his mother’s little house through the back door. She was in the kitchen, making their lunch.
“Hey, handsome.” She had her back to him, and he saw her reach up and touch her face. He got the feeling every time he saw her lately that she just finished crying, but she wouldn’t admit it. He almost wished that she’d fall apart in front of him; it would make her seem more human and him less of the wimp he felt like since he lost Krissy and his father. He went over and kissed her on the cheek; it was wet.
“How are you?”
She put down the knife she was using to chop tomatoes and turned toward him. She was at least a foot shorter than him and when she reached up to touch his face she had to stand on her toes. “I’m good. How are you?”
