by Autumn Sand
I sign the cross in the name of God and for the twentieth time, I grab the instructions to make sure I’m reading the stick in my hand correctly. Who would have known that a stick that is six inches long could hold my future in it? Desperately, I rub at my eyes to near rawness, to make sure I’m seeing the positive sign and not the negative that I prayed for.
Pregnant? How can I be pregnant?
Tears well in my eyes that overflow and stream down my face. I can’t have this baby. I can’t have this baby. Dear God, please hear me.
I can’t.
My hand clutches my stomach as I curl into a fetal position on the bathroom floor.
“Tallie, are you ready for church, hon?” My mother knocks softly on my bathroom door. She knows there are no locks on any of the rooms in the house and she can easily come in if she wanted. But for once, she allows me this moment of privacy and I am grateful.
Instantly, I stuff the items in the trash and cover it with a tissue. “Momma, I’m not feeling well. May I stay home?” I swallow down my sobs in order to ask this question.
“You caught a fever?” Her voice isn’t one of concern for me but more of annoyance at the inconvenience of it all.
“No, Momma. I think that potato salad I had at the church last night might’ve been bad.” Please, just let me stay home. I can’t face the world today. I just can’t. I mentally plead with my mother and will her to hear my thoughts.
“You’ll have to ask your father if it is okay.”
He’s not my father, I scream in my head but at least have the presence of mind not to say it out loud.
“Please, can you ask him for me?” I can’t face him now.
The door suddenly opens, and there he stands before me.
“What is this, you not wanting to go to church today?” He kneels in front of me on the floor. “That is the devil speaking within you. You must fight. Fight, I say, and prove the devil to be a liar.”
“Praise be the Lord,” my mother chants, her hands clasped in prayer.
He touches my forehead with his hand. “God, I beseech thee to give your humble servant the strength to carry on.”
When he removes his hand, I still feel his touch on my forehead. The same way I’ve felt his touch over all parts of my body. My body wracks with uncontrollable sobs that come from deep within my soul.
I’m cursed.
He turns to look at my mother. “Give us a moment. We will be down shortly.”
Like the obedient servant she is, my mother retreats, leaving me with what is possibly the devil.
I brace myself for the slap that is bound to come my way, but he doesn’t strike. Instead, he lifts my chin so my eyes could meet his own.
“You’re with child. Our child. And you shall keep it.” He stands to his full height and looks down on me. “Your body does not belong to you. This is a product of God and this is His will. Your mother, bless her soul, has not been able to give me a child. But you, I believe God did this as a gift to me for being his most faithful messenger.” He walks towards the door. “Be downstairs in ten minutes. Clean up your face.”
Just like that, my walls cave in around me, creating complete chaos inside. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out.
Dear God, please forgive me of my sins.
Dear God, please forgive me of my…
Dear God, please forgive me of…
Dear God, please forgive me.
Dear God, please forgive.
Dear God, please.
Dear God…
Later that evening, my mother and I go home together. My father stayed behind to work with the youth group. The ride home was silent between us. For me, because of the weight of the world that has suddenly dropped on my shoulders, and my mother, for reasons I’ve yet to grasp.
We walk through the black doors with gold leafing, into the foyer. One of the wait staff greets my mother and asks if we’re ready for dinner. My mother tells her we will let her know when we will be ready.
Exhausted, I tell my mother I want to lie down before dinner. Instead, she invites me to her room to sit and talk. A dead calmness has come over me—the calm before the storm. Slowly, I follow her up the stairs and into her bedroom. She no longer shares a bed with my father, he saw to that years ago. The arrangement afforded him better access to me.
Normally, to be invited into my mother’s inner sanctum would be a treat for me. Rarely does she give me such an invite and I was never allowed to enter without invitation. Her room is decorated in various shades of pink or, as she calls it, blush. From the carpeting to the silk wallpaper. All shades of pink.
She walks to her vanity table facing the pool outside and sits. Because she hasn’t offered me a seat, I stand and take in the ivory-colored cherubs on her blush wallpaper. Some of them are playing a harp, some are shooting an arrow of love, while others float on clouds of dreams. I feel as if I am floating on a cloud of nightmares.
“So, you’ve proven yourself to be the whore that I always knew you would turn out to be,” she says with her back to me. Snatching up a nail file from her makeup tray, she begins filing her already perfectly manicured nails.
Terror grips my windpipes and I suddenly have no air to breathe. “No, Momma,” I gasp.
She turns in her chair and looks at me with glaring eyes. The same eyes she turned on me the night I killed my father and baby brother.
“Liar.” Her rage is barely contained and her words reach up like flames on a lasso, singeing my already weak soul. “You’re a sinner. The day you were born, the moon was blood red.” She stands, clutching the nail file in her hands, wringing it like a rag. Her eyes are wild and lips downturned, and I am frozen with fear.
“No, please don’t say that.” I clutch my hands over my ears as tears fall down my face. Are they cleansing me of my sins?
She throws the nail file like a javelin in my direction, missing me by inches. But it isn’t the nail file I feared—it’s the woman who is storming over to me. The dark cloud that has settled over us signals a storm brewing between us. Grabbing my shoulders, she shakes me so hard my neck whips back and forth and my back pains.
My head pounds and I hear my pulse in my temples. This would be the only thing to signal I am alive because a part of me has just died.
I no longer have hope and that was the one thing that has kept me going. Hope that one day my mother would love me again. Hope that one day I would no longer be abused. Hope that I would fit into a family.
Hope.
Hope no more.
I have died.
“I’ll see you dead before you have his child! You hear me!” She lets go of my shoulders and shoves me to the floor. The impact causes me to clamp down on my tongue and I scream out in pain.
Coughing up blood, I try to plead once again. “B-but—”
Her foot rears back and comes forward, kicking me in my stomach. I ball over in the most magnificent pain I’ve ever felt.
“You can’t let me have anything! He’s mine! That baby should be mine and not yours.” She kicks me again. And again, I double over with pain in my stomach.
I feel something in me—the baby? Something doesn’t feel right. I look down and see blood staining my white dress.
My mother’s eyes move to the freshly made stain as I clutch my stomach, with tears streaming down my face.
* * *
I’m losing my baby. The little life, created out of a traumatic experience, was one I never knew I could love. But I do, and now I’m losing it.
Startled, I sit up in the bed, clutching the sheets in a death grip to my naked chest. My eyes try to reorient themselves, adjusting to the unfamiliar environment. A slow chill goes up my spine and I shiver from my core. My breathing is quick and erratic like my heartbeat.
Flashes of recollection of last night and El holding me floods my brain. Why he needed to console me and settling on my dream. It was a dream, wasn’t it? My hand instinctively goes to my stomach and feels an empty womb.
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Just a dream.
I swallow down my relief and allow it to flow through my veins.
My hand reaches down to the bed to steady my trembling body and I find the sheets soaked from sweat. I rub the back of my neck, feeling my cold, clammy skin, and the need for a shower overwhelms me. It also is a welcomed distraction over thinking about my past problems.
Every day is a fight to keep my past in the past and to live in the present, except when I let my guard down. Like I did last night. Like I’ve been doing for the last few weeks.
Tallie, pull yourself together. You can’t afford to fall for someone like him. He’ll hurt and disappoint you, he already said as much before. Tiny bubbles of fear creep up into my psyche. What happens if I fall in love with him and he casts me aside, like Tick did. Would I survive it?
Maybe that’s why he isn’t here now. Maybe I drove him away last night. Could this be his way of letting me down easy? My insecurities play at my usual confident persona.
“El?” I call out, hoping for a response. My forever companion, Disappointment, joins me in the room that has suddenly become lonely.
Finally feeling steady enough, I rise from the bed and walk towards the closed bathroom door. Knocking on it, I wait for a response.
Silence.
I decide to knock again, just in case, before opening the door and confirming what the stillness already told me. He isn’t here.
I startle when I hear a knock on the bedroom door. I know it can’t be El—why knock on his own door? I grab his robe from the bathroom door and slip into it before yelling, “Come in.”
The door opens slowly and the first thing I see is a breakfast tray carried by a man who looks like a smaller version of El.
“Hi, I’m Kenny, El’s brother. I thought you would like something to eat,” he says, placing the tray on the small table next to the window.
Still tying my robe in place and rolling up the long sleeves, I walk over to the table to look at the food.
I smile tenderly at him and thank him. “I’m Tallie, nice to meet you. Where is he?” I ask, in between chews of bacon.
He shrugs. “Not sure. There wouldn’t be a reason for me to know.”
Kenny holds the chair out for me. I sit, while he lowers himself into the opposite chair.
“So, I guess it’s just the two of us today.” Mmmm. I close my eyes, savoring the bite of the hot croissant and then I swallow a sip of orange juice.
“You like it?” He smiles before reaching over to smother tomato and bacon jam on his croissant.
I lick each one of my fingers the same way I would lick a man. “Oh my God, this is sooo freaking good. Where did you get these?” Greedily, I reach for another, pushing the thoughts of the calories going to my hips. I’m sure El will help me to work off the pounds later.
Laughing at me, he takes a bite of his. “Get them? I made them.”
I drop my much-loved croissant onto my plate and stare at Kenny. “You made these?” It wasn’t until the words were out of my mouth that I realized how it sounded. “Kenny, I, uh—”
He holds up his hand and shakes his head. “No offense taken. You look at me and see nothing but skin and bones, not exactly what you expect a chef to look like. I’m a recovering drug addict. Before my addiction, I was studying to become a chef. I even went to the Cordon Bleu for a bit.” He smiles proudly.
I just met him and I already know we will be great friends. “Wow, the Cordon Bleu? Did you graduate?”
His hands drop to his lap and his eyes lower like a child being scolded. “I met someone and I… Let’s just say things didn’t work out and drugs became my escape. Flash forward ten years later, and here I am.” He spreads his arms wide, his eyes flickering with shame.
I reach across the table and grab one his hands, giving it a squeeze. “You will go back one day. You will earn that degree.”
A large smile forms on his lips and he says, “You got that right. I’m going to go back and finish my degree. I’m going to open my own restaurant in Paris too.”
“Paris? Why not New York?”
“I want to get as far away from my brother as possible.” He lets go of my hand and sits back in the chair.
“Don’t say that. He loves you.” I say the words, not really knowing if El is even capable of love. He holds each of us at a distance.
He crosses his leg over his knee. “They had an argument last night.”
“What? Who? Why?” My delicious breakfast is forgotten.
“El and Chicken.” He pours us both a cup of coffee. “There’s a meeting that he needs to go to in Colombia.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem with that? Why would they argue about a meeting?” I sip my black coffee, now feeling fully awake and alive as the caffeine takes effect.
He stands and paces the room. “He tries to keep me in the dark about everything. He says he’s ‘protecting me.’” Kenny rolls his eyes. “But I see and I hear everything that goes on in this house. What else am I supposed to do when I’m not allowed to go out?”
Suddenly, he grabs the empty chair and slides it directly next to me. He sits on it, facing me, our knees touching.
“This much I know. He needs to go to that Colombian meeting, but he won’t,” he whispers.
I lean in and ask, “Why wouldn’t he go? And why is it so important?”
He checks behind him before responding. “Whatever happened with you last night, well, that’s cause enough for him to not want to go.”
Shit! Now it’s my turn to pace the floor. My baggage is affecting his business.
Kenny reaches out and grabs my wrist. “Listen to me. There is a file that he has. He’s been acting strange since receiving that file. I know it has something to do with being able to get Manny home. Colombia fits into that equation. Whatever it is, he needs to go on that trip.”
We stare at each other for long moments, the only sound between us being our breaths.
“What do I need to do?”
“Convince him to go. Lives may depend on it.”
I arrive back at the house with Chicken. Since our altercation last night, Chicken has given me a wide berth. Tallie rises when we walk into the living room and Chicken disappears into one of the back rooms, most likely to be debriefed on things.
She looks at me with hesitation, her hands swiping the sides of her hips like she is wiping away the nightmares from last night.
Feeling the need for a drink, I head straight for the bar and pour us both a hefty glass of scotch. “I see you’ve gotten some rest,” I say as I hand her the glass.
She murmurs a thanks and takes a large gulp.
I look behind me—for what, I’m not sure—and turn back to face her. “Did you eat?”
Finally, her body relaxes as she smiles and takes a seat, tucking her long legs beneath her. “Yes, Kenny made breakfast for me earlier.”
My eyes widen and I again spin around to see if my brother is around. “Aren’t you lucky,” I say dryly, and then raise my voice a pitch, just in case he’s lurking in the shadows. “He doesn’t cook for me at all.”
I chuckle as she laughs. “Well, you’re a hard man to gauge. Perhaps he doesn’t want to disappoint you.” She pats the seat next to her.
I shift slightly instead of walking towards her. Something between us has changed and I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with it.
She frowns slightly when she notices I haven’t moved but she recovers quickly. “I just want to say thank you for last night.” She sets her glass on the end table next to her. “Listen, I know what this is between us. No strings attached and I don’t expect anything from you. The only reason you reached out to me that day at Pulse was to enlist my help to bring Manny home. Which is still our main goal.” She clasps her hands together and looks at the floor, as if searching for the words to say. “Kenny told me—”
Rage hits me at my brother’s meddling. “Kenny had no business—”
She holds up her hand. I close my mo
uth and wait for her to finish.
“Kenny loves you and he loves Manny. He just wants what is best for both of you.” She stands and walk towards me—not in the seductive way she’s known for but almost as if she is begging me to make the right decision. She slowly takes my drink and sets it down on the table, then takes my hands into hers. “Go. Go to your meeting and bring Manny home.”
El and Chicken left for Colombia a few hours ago, leaving Kenny and I behind in El’s penthouse. Kenny gives me the nickel tour of the house. With each room, I realize El is much more complicated than I could’ve ever imagined. Nothing in the room’s decoration is a reflection of who he is. Nothing is warm or approachable, like the man. It feels like he hired an interior designer who barely had a conversation with him and the person exacted the coldness they thought was him and placed it into the rooms.
Oh, they are richly decorated and show the opulence of his wealth, but it doesn’t show the man who held me last night when my past forced its way into our lives. So much of him is missing in these rooms that, in its own way, it might be a reflection of who he truly is.
Kenny walks towards the kitchen area to make us a snack after my tour when I see the spiral staircase that leads downstairs.
“What about downstairs?” I stop at the head of the stairs and peer down into the darkness.
Kenny, who was walking ahead of me, turns back and stands by my side. “Oh, that’s one of Ray and Chicken’s workshops. No one is allowed down there,” he says nonchalantly as he grabs my wrist and tugs me towards the kitchen.
“Workshop? They build things?” I ask as I follow him into the chef’s kitchen.
He shrugs. “I guess. They called it a workshop and I never asked further.” He swings open the fridge door and pulls out a few items.
“That’s strange,” I say absentmindedly as my cell phone pings with a message. My eyes scan the message as Kenny cuts and dices a few items on the counter.
Jason: Checking in. I came to make a delivery and Tick said you called out for the day. You okay?
