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It was in the way Twyla did not answer that question that brought me to a true understanding of the woman. The look on her face was stunned, as if she’d just been slapped—hard. But even though she was out of it, she kept to the silence that had been imposed upon her and her foster mother, her real mother, and her father since long before she was born. It was a strong curse, bad juju indeed.
“Malto,” I said, “Melton Lamming… he hurt your mother, humiliated her. And her looking for justice put a death warrant on her head. Then she had you…”
“Stop. Please stop.”
I thought I was going to duel with a worthy opponent, but instead we entered a confessional pact that wanted, on both sides, to remain unspoken, and yet the truth was pressing against an imprisoning shell.
“What did you and Mr. Blass want with Paulie Jr.?” I asked after a time.
Twyla was lost. Maybe she heard the question.
“Twyla.”
When she jerked her head to look at me I was reminded of another truth: that words are indeed magical, powerful, beyond the limits of our bodies and even our conscious minds.
“What?” she asked, exasperatedly.
“Why were you and David trying to see Paulie Jr.?”
Looking into my eyes she said, with emphasis, “I don’t know you.”
“Okay. We don’t have to talk about it. You wanna drive out to your mother’s place and talk it over with her?”
Her eyes squinted while her jaw set, and her ungloved hands balled into fists. She wanted to ask a question, to shout me down, to obliterate one thing so that something else might take its place.
“To Queens?” she whispered hopefully.
“No. You know your mother but, for whatever reason, to protect you or maybe from shame, she never revealed herself, completely.”
“I don’t, I don’t…”
“Aurilia’s your mother and Arman is your dad.”
Tears poured from her eyes, but she wasn’t crying, not really.
“You know where she lives?” she asked, seemingly unaware of the torrent.
“You don’t?”
“She… we decided that she would reach out to me if she needed to.”
“But you still didn’t know that she was your mom?”
“Mama Mara said that she was my godmother—the woman I could go to if anything ever happened.”
“But you never got her address.”
“Aurilia told me that somebody was after her. That guy you said—that Melton.”
“Does she have your cell number?”
“Not anymore.” Twyla turned away.
“That’s okay,” I said, trying to reassure her. “I know where she lives.”
“Maybe so,” she allowed. “But I don’t know you.”
“Why were you going to see Paulie Antonucci Jr.?”
