by Lori Titus
Still, she showed him more kindness and respect than the woman he was actually with. He wouldn’t forget that.
As he drifted to sleep, he felt calmer and more at peace than he had in weeks.
But the blackness was still there, spreading across his vision, a mire sucking him into nothingness. He told himself it was a pool of dark sky and that he could rest. With a smile on his lips, he surrendered to the darkness.
SITTING ALONE IN HER living room, with daylight waning beyond her window, Diana watched the leaves blowing across the front yard. She tried to pull her mind away from thoughts her son, but couldn’t.
The hours came and went, and Diana held the domino in her hand, turning it over again and again. Just how had it gotten there, just underneath the couch? She had cleaned the living room thousands of times - and never found anything from that night.
Before she even learned of the crash the next day, she had gotten rid of the set of dominoes, along with the beer cans, the paper plates and pizza boxes, the chicken wing bones, and the nearly empty bottle of tequila that she, Ahmad, and Jonathan had drank from.
So how could this dark marker of her sin remain?
TWO WEEKS AFTER AHMAD’S Death
Arturo Soltero, Jonathan’s father, came to visit Diana after Ahmad’s funeral. He was a proud man, sunburned and thick in the arms and chest, with a receding hairline and light brown hair. If he had lived, this was the man Jonathan would have become given thirty years or so.
When he asked to come in, she would have liked to refuse him. But something in his eyes—the pain there that matched her own—would not allow her.
They sat down at the table together and sat in silence for a while. She offered him coffee, and tea, and water, but he wanted none of it. He folded his hands together and took a deep breath. When he spoke, his words were barely accented by Spanish, and they flowed in a lovely way, like water over rocks in a pond.
“I don’t come to accuse or prod or say anything at all that could hurt you,” he said. “You should know that I met your son a few weeks ago, and we thought that he was a fine young man. In the past my wife and I were not as . . . accepting of our son’s life as we should have been, but we truly liked Ahmad. And they seemed happy together.”
Diana put her hand over her mouth.
“I have trouble . . . sleeping at night because I do not know why this thing has happened to us. Jonathan was not one to get drunk and then get in a car. I know that as parents sometimes we have these illusions about our children.” He smiled sadly. “But this is one thing my son would not do. At least not under normal circumstances. Is there anything that you noticed on the night that he was here? Was he upset?”
“No, he was not,” Diana choked. “He was in a good mood. He won some money playing dominoes. Ahmad and him were getting along just fine. I don’t know. Maybe they stopped to get a nightcap on the way home. Maybe they had a little too much.”
It was a poor, thin excuse. Especially since the only bar in town, Finny’s, was in the opposite direction of Serenity Road, where their car had been run into a ditch.
Something hardened in Soltero’s eyes. He knew that he was being lied to.
“As I said before, I wish not to cause you any further pain than what you already suffer. Thank you,” he stood up, “for speaking with me today. I will keep your son in my prayers, along with my own.”
She walked him to the door.
“Thank you, Mr. Soltero,” she said. “It was kind of you to stop by.”
“Yes,” he said softly, looking her directly in the eye. “I will keep you in my prayers as well, Mrs. Bell.”
“Oh?” she was taken aback.
“Yes,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I believe that you will be needing it.”
DIANA PUT THE DOMINO down on the middle of the kitchen table.
It was half past eight, and there was no sign of Henry. If it weren’t for the girls, she would have gotten in her car and went looking for him.
That doesn’t matter, Bugaboo.
Travis Bell’s voice came from just behind her. She didn’t bother to turn around.
“You put that domino there, didn’t you?” she said. “How could you do that to me? Didn’t you know that would hurt me?”
Not nearly as bad as things are about to hurt, he said.
WHEN JENNA GOT HOME, she noticed Henry’s car wasn’t there.
Diana was home, that much she could tell. Her car was parked out front. The lights were off in the girls’ room, and she imagined they must be sleeping at that late hour. It was a little past ten.
Jenna hurried past their house and down the steps to her property. She was glad that she’d left the porch and the floodlights on to brighten her way. After what happened with Diana the night before, she decided that she would always keep some exterior lights on.
Once inside, she checked all the windows and doors and made sure that she was indeed alone. Once that was done, she settled in front of her computer.
Patricia’s story was coming along hard and fast without any planning on her part. Jenna felt she was almost channeling it, transcribing the story as it was given to her. She was sure that there had to be some reason that she felt so strongly about it, that this woman seemed so much more alive to her than a name and a few bare facts she had been able to draw up in her research. There was an odd comfort in writing this woman’s words, despite the suffering that they conveyed.
Wanting to clear her own mind and plunge ahead into the narrative, she opened her document and began to type.
It was not long before I was with child, and it was no surprise to me.
Thadd’s visits were at least twice a week and often more. And he preferred to have me at the house rather than to see me in the quarters. This served me fine, as it meant more comfort for me. If it were to happen, I preferred it be there so that when I did go to my room it felt like my own and not a place where he came and went as he pleased.
It pleased him somehow, the idea that I was having the child. Once I was showing and was entering the time of confinement, I stayed in his room. All the women in the kitchen knew, of course. There was both hate and relief. They believed that Thadd might soon choose another girl to replace me. They hated that he favored me, because this meant a lack of such for others.
But he was attentive. We did not speak of it, but I wondered if he still dreamed of a daughter, a child light enough to be passed off as white and be sent to marry a white man somewhere in the North.
I grew scared. There was no one for me to talk to. I grieved for my mother, and at night, I dreamed of her. Sometimes, in the dreams, we would sit together at the lake, watching the clouds sail overhead. Other times we would sit in a shack and listen to the rain pour down. It seemed not to matter where we were—in her presence I was always at peace.
“Is this heaven?” I asked during one dream. I had my arm in the crook of hers and my head on her shoulder.
“Baby, no,” she said. “This is a place in between.”
AS I GREW HEAVIER, further along with the child, I grew weaker.
Lying in bed so much was sapping my strength. I tried knitting and embroidery. These tasks kept my fingers busy but did not occupy my mind.
I started sleeping a lot. And in my dreams, I searched for this place between, where my mother was.
It became routine enough that I could find her easily. Sometimes we would sit and sing songs together from back home. Words and stories flowed through my mind that I could barely remember in a waking state came to me anew, the meanings more vivid and rich than they ever were before. In this place where we rested, I was not in any pain. I was not burdened with child. There was no shame for me. There was just happiness. I longed for it.
I woke one night, shivering, feverish. I heard many whispering voices around me.
I recognized the face of the elderly woman that leaned closest to me first, a dark skinned woman with gray hair and button eyes.
She seeme
d to be speaking to someone on the other side of the room. Thadd.
“She is very ill,” the old woman said. “There is not much that can be done now. Keep her cool. Have the women bathe her in the coldest water they can find. I will sit with her, but it’s not good. We should pray.”
I know that he screamed something at her then, but not what. I slipped away, out of consciousness, to my place in the darkness.
AS JENNA TYPED THE last word, darkness, she looked up at her windows.
Had she imagined a shadow passing there? The lights were on in the yard, casting a long, yellow glow all the way down to the dry creek bed.
She sighed and looked towards the gun that sat on her right.
Stephen had always kept a gun in the house. That one had been destroyed in the fire with everything else. It was easy to get a new gun in Chrysalis, though, and after spending a few hours looking for apartments with Amanda, that was just what Jenna did.
If she was going to be stuck in this house for a month until the dust settled, she was going to have something better than a knife or baseball bat.
Blood or not, if anyone came past that door, she had the right to defend herself.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Four Years Ago
If it hadn’t been for her husband, Jenna would have never considered owning a gun.
“I have never lived in a house without at least one gun,” Stephen said.
Jenna shook her head. It was a Saturday, and they were planning on moving in together the following week. She was surprised when he told her that he kept guns for protection. They were lying in bed, and she was wearing his t-shirt. The television was on, but neither of them paid attention. Tom and Jerry were fighting, scrambling around behind each other on the screen.
“You just don’t strike me as the type.”
He laughed. “Should I be insulted?”
“No. Don’t get me wrong. My dad was military, so that’s why he kept guns. But you’re not. And I know you don’t go hunting . . .”
“Yeah. Well, you know it’s the two-legged types that are most likely to kill you. And honestly, I think any woman living alone, in particular, should have a gun.”
“Well, pretty soon I won’t be alone anymore.”
“How about this, why don’t we sign you up for some classes? You won’t feel so uncomfortable about it once you’ve handled the gun. It’s empowering.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Jenna,” he said, with a solemn expression, “what if something happened, and I wasn’t here? I’m very serious about this. I would want you to know how to take care of yourself.”
She took the classes at his urging, and he was right. She didn’t feel afraid using the gun once she knew how to handle it and how to respect it. In her hand, it was far more than a cold piece of metal.
However, it did bother her how sure Stephen was about the fact that she needed to know this. It felt like he was preparing her for a time when he would no longer be around to protect her himself.
Chapter Nine
It was hard for Diana to sit still.
But when she did, things were revealed to her.
Daddy didn’t always have to appear to her. In fact, she was beginning to understand what he meant when he said “the others,” because she was in tune with them. She could hear them in her head. They were inside her. Their emotions and their pain were in her skin, pulsing with her blood. The names were not distinct, though they need not be. The cacophony in her head pushed her.
She sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window. Through the prism of her mind’s eye, she saw the seasons change. She saw the leaves fall and the grass turn green again and felt the heat of the unforgiving summer sun. She saw the men and women. Their clothes gave them away. A brown girl in a flapper dress. A man in gray sackcloth, his pants and shirt torn in places. A woman in white, her dress covering her from neck to foot, her black eyes hidden beneath a Victorian hat. A man wearing the polished suit of a wealthy Cubano.
The Ancestors.
God may have created you, but you passed through our flesh.
Through our suffering. Through our shame.
You owe us.
You OWE us.
You bring her to us, or we’ll take your flesh instead.
Sometimes they pleaded.
Mostly they screamed.
JENNA JUMPED OUT OF the bathtub. In the few moments it took her to dress and run down the stairs, she realized that it was Taleya on her porch. She shoved her gun into a cabinet before she opened the door.
“Aunt Jenna!” Taleya’s eyes were filled with tears. Maya stood silent, breathless, her eyes big as saucers. She clung to her sister, hiding behind her shoulder.
“What happened?” she said, shooing them both inside. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Gramma started screaming, and she won’t stop!”
“Screaming? Is she hurt?”
Taleya shook her head. “Auntie, I don’t think it’s like that.”
“What do you mean?”
Taleya pressed her lips shut. It was Maya who spoke up.
“Her daddy is back, and he’s at the house. That’s what she doesn’t want to say. We both saw him, and he said something that made Gramma scream.”
DIANA COULDN’T BELIEVE the cruel things that her father was telling her. Or even worse, the satisfied look on his face when he said them.
She screamed so hard that she felt her body might break in two. “He was my son. What you’re saying can’t be true!”
“It’s no use,” Travis said. “You can’t bring him back.”
Diana stumbled backwards. Her back hit the sink, and she reached for a knife from her cutting board.
The ghost of her father aged before her eyes, turning from a young soldier to a withered thing with hanging flesh, more ghoul than human. His stench filled the space between them. As he spoke, she felt the chill of the air that surrounded him.
“What happened to Ahmad was an accident. I know part of it was my fault. But you’re lying to me. The Ancestors did not take him,” she said.
“If you’re so sure, why are you shaking?” he said, the loose muscles around his mouth shifting into the twisted mess of a smile.
“Then you show me my son!” she demanded. “If you took him, why wasn’t he out there with the others?”
He shrugged, but it looked more like a twitch, his bony arm popping beneath gray, withering skin as stiff as cured animal hide.
“We took his life. We didn’t have authority over his soul. But with the life you’ve lived? You’ll be another story altogether.”
“I loved my son,” she cried. She took the knife and plunged forward, lunging at Travis. “Get out!” she cried. “Get out, get out now!”
He laughed. “Looks like you’ll be joining the show.”
Diana fell to her knees.
Outside the specters gathered close, pressing their translucent hands and flame-thin faces against the windows. They passed through the walls, gray and formless as smoke.
Now that they were close, she could see that they were all rotten, eyeless, hopeless, breathless things. There was no beauty left in these faces. No compassion. Only sagging flesh and rotted bone.
“What . . . ?” Diana said, her voice drawn to a whisper. “What’s happening to me?”
She looked down and dropped the knife.
She’d slashed both of her wrists.
“You move too slow,” Travis groaned. “So we had to make other arrangements.”
JENNA WALKED OUTSIDE.
The moon was out.
She didn’t hear screaming.
From what the girls had told her, she wondered if her sister could be having a seizure. She had called for an ambulance, but she felt obligated to check.
Thank God for Taleya. As frightened as she was, she thought clearly enough to bring her house key. Jenna slid the key into the lock, and the door swung open.
“Diana . . .
?” she called.
There was no answer.
She made a right into the kitchen, as that seemed to be the place Diana always was.
Jenna reached for the light. Her feet started to slip, but she grabbed the wall and flicked the light on.
Diana’s lips moved; her voice came out in a guttural whisper.
“Je . . . Jenna. Get my babies! Jenna. . . Run.”
ONE OF THE POLICEMEN offered to sit with the girls while Jenna went upstairs and changed her jeans. Her clothes and shoes were splattered in Diana’s blood, and she didn’t want them to see it. Once she’d done that, she came back downstairs to see Taleya and Maya sitting quietly in the kitchen.
The policeman edged towards her with a sad smile on his face. “Do you have someone to leave the kids with?” he whispered. “From what the paramedics said, it looks really bad.”
Jenna shook her head. “Um. The neighbors. Girls, we’re going to Ms. Norris’ house.”
“What’s going on?” Taleya jumped up. “Where’s our gramma?”
“Yeah!” Maya said.
“She left the house. She’s not feeling well, but she’s going to the hospital so they can make her better.”
“Can’t we go?” Maya asked.
“No. I’m going to go see her right now. Come on, we don’t have time to argue.”
“Good deal,” the cop said with a nod.
IT TOOK THIRTY MINUTES to drop the children off, tell Mrs. Norris what she could of what had just happened, and speed over to St. Matthew’s Medical Center.
When she arrived, the cop was already there.
“We need to talk,” he said. “I need your full statement.”
“I have to find out how Diana is . . .”
“Your sister is the same. They’re working on her. It’s going to be a while. Come on, there’s a conference room just down the hall.”
