“It’s just a few doors down.” I hold my breath while Jack decides. I know it’s a longshot but what if?
“Fine but I’ll need to ask permission from Young, first.”
“What if he says no?”
“We go. I’m not risking you again. The sooner we leave the better.”
With Jack gone, I make a cup of coffee from the hotel-like maker in the room. When he returns, his face is grim. “David says you can visit your mother.”
“Thank you.”
“Hmm. We’ll see if you’ll be thanking me if they make us both disappear.” He adjusts his gun under his jacket.
Then, we walk out of our room and down the stairs to a sidewalk that winds around the complex. Three buildings away, I see my mother’s apartment with the number three-twelve over the arch of the door.
“This is her.”
The porch has an old mattress, a refrigerator, broken toys, and too much junk piled high to inventory. When the doorbell doesn’t respond, I reach to knock and Jack stops my hand.
His warm, yet worried eyes greet me. “Ask to use the bathroom. You’ll have about five minutes to search.”
“Okay.” I rap and soon my mother’s grim face greets me.
She eyes me up and down. “What do you want, now?”
Thank God, Jack responds because her angry demeanor leaves me speechless. “Open up. David wants her to say her goodbyes.”
“By all means, come in.” Voice thick with sarcasm, my mother ushers us into her small apartment, strewn with dirty laundry, dirty dishes, and dirty everything.
In order to sit, I need to move some filthy plates onto the floor. Then, as we rehearsed, I look to Jack for permission to speak.
When he nods I say quietly, “We won’t be coming back anytime soon and I won’t have a cell phone to call. Will you write to me if I send you a letter?”
She looks to Jack to answer. “You’ll see to it she turns into a God-fearing woman?”
“You dare ask?” His smile, so unlike this morning, is full of dark malice.
She has no idea what a good actor he is and a small smirk crosses her face. “This is all I have ever wanted for you, Blakely. Go be happily married and live as the prophet intended.”
I want to puke but instead I keep my eyes on the floor, visions of my past flooding my memories. I remember my father for the first time in years, his harsh hand across my face or bottom for the slightest infraction of rules. He hit way too hard for my five-year-old mind to comprehend.
Real tears pool.
Next to me, Jack’s angry voice booms. “Are you crying? For God’s sake, go clean up. We have a long ride ahead of us.”
His cold tone, even though acting, sends chills down my back. However, his nastiness makes it easier to feign to be miserable as I shuffle down the hallway into the messy bedroom. Once there, I open the top dresser drawer and find a stack of Polaroid’s under gray underwear and stretched-out bras. I thumb through all the pictures until I find gold.
Oh my God. It’s my sister as I remember her on her wedding day.
She has on the dress I admired so, made with hand-crocheted cotton lace on the hem and sleeves. Her husband is there as well, dressed in a black suit, smiling widely. I remember at the time, I only stared at his shiny black shoes or at the creases in his pants, never daring to look higher.
Oh, for shit’s sake! She married David Young, not Uncle James.
I get a flash of memory so strong I have to sit on the bed or fall down. It happened right after the wedding. I’d followed my sister from the recreation room into the small adjoining kitchen at the sound of her crying.
David was shaking her. “Damn it. Shut up and smile.”
“I don’t want to marry you.” My sister had her hands in front of her face ready for the blow sure to come and it did.
