helped her.
“Can’t. They’re closing down the building. Gotta fix it.”
“Do you like the new place?”
“I like the yard. There are trees and stuff. And the apartment’s sunny. Mica likes the windows. She spent all yesterday standing in front of them. She even smiled.”
“Good, Michael, I’m happy to hear that.”
“Mom says we don’t gotta pay yet.”
“No, you’re okay for a bit.” I’d prepaid the first two months of the rental, the top floor of a converted house, within walking distance of a park, as well as a decent elementary school. I’d worked hard to find the apartment, hoping that a nice unit, conveniently paid up, would help Tomika realize that she could live alone and be happy. But maybe that was naive of me. I wanted to judge Tomika, call her up and tell her to grow a backbone. But mostly, I remembered being a little kid in a big emergency room, injured once again by my own mother and never saying a word.
“Mom wants to go to the funeral. She says now that he’s dead, maybe we could get some money.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know.
“I don’t think we should go. We’re supposed to be gone. We should keep it that way. Safer, if you ask me.”
“Maybe the three of you could have a funeral for your father.”
“No,” Michael said, and his voice was hard again, a boy sounding as angry as a man.
“It’s okay to miss him, Michael. He wasn’t always a bad guy. I bet sometimes he was nice to you. I bet you liked those moments. I bet you miss that dad.”
He didn’t answer.
“My mother used to stroke my hair,” I whispered. “In the middle of the night, when I had a bad dream. She would stroke my hair and sing to me. I loved that mom. I miss her.”
“You gonna see your mom?”
“No.”
“Are you…are you still afraid of her?”
I wanted to tell him no. That I was all grown up now, ready to shoot, hit, and chase all the shadows in the dark. But I couldn’t lie to Michael. I said, “Yes. Always.”
“How’d my daddy die, Charlie?”
“All is well, Michael. You’re a strong boy and your mother and sister are lucky to have you.”
The ground beneath my feet started to tremble, announcing the arrival of a subway in the tunnels below. “I gotta go now, Michael. Thanks for calling. I might be away for a bit. If you call and I don’t answer…Know that I’m thinking of you, Michael. I have faith. You’re a strong boy and you’re gonna be okay.”
“Charlie…Thank you.”
He hung up quickly. I slipped the phone back into my bag and ran for the train.
I MADE SURE I LOOKED BOTH WAYS before boarding the subway car. I took a seat with my back to the far wall, where I could watch all doors, monitor all people coming and going. My black leather messenger bag sat on my lap, my hands fisted around it.
I studied faces, met stares.
Until one by one, each of my fellow passengers stood up and moved away from me.
I sat alone, and even then, I didn’t feel safe.
“CHARLENE ROSALIND CARTER GRANT.”
Detective D. D. Warren uttered my moniker slowly, allowing each name its own weight and space. She’d met me in the lobby. Asked about my dog, asked about my gun, appeared genuinely surprised, perhaps even skeptical, that I’d dared to journey to Roxbury without either of them.
Instead of her tiny office, she’d led me to a modest-sized conference room, furnished with a table large enough for eight. Only other person in the room, however, was Detective O. She stood against a huge whiteboard, wearing a button-up men’s dress shirt in light blue.
When Detective Warren moved to her side, I realized they matched, as D.D. wore nearly the same shade of blue, but in silk. She’d paired hers with black slacks, while O had charcoal gray trousers with pencil thin stripes of blue and gray. D.D. had her short blond hair down, in loose curls that almost softened the hard lines of her face, while O’s rich brown hair was pulled back in a fat knot at the nape of her neck.
Two coordinating and contrasting images of female cop. One older, one younger. One athletic, one more feminine. One with direct blue eyes, one with deep brown eyes.
Both of them all business.
I wished I’d brought Tulip, just to have a friend in the room.
“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” D.D. repeated, testing each word. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Turns out, my past is a work in progress.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “You gave us the two names to run, Rosalind Grant, Carter Grant.”
I nodded.
She tossed a file on the table. It landed with a faint thwack and I flinched. “There you go. Full report. Sister. Brother. Mother. Ever read it?”
I shook my head, eyed the manila file folder, made no move to touch it.
My aunt said the doctors had advised her that I should remember on my own. That forcing the issue, before I was ready, might do greater emotional harm.
Greater harm than what? Waking up each morning, knowing that when I had nightmares of my mother digging midnight graves with coiling, hissing snakes in lieu of hair, I wasn’t totally wrong?
A perfectly pale and still baby girl. The nearly marble-like form of an even smaller baby boy. That is what I’d spent the past twenty years trying to forget. Rosalind Grant. Carter Grant. The baby sister and baby brother I’d once loved, then lost to my mother’s madness. The babies, crying down the hall, that I’d known, even as a toddler, that I needed to help. Tell a nurse. Bolt with them out into the rain.
I’d tried in my own way. But I’d been small and vulnerable, my mother all-knowing, all-powerful. In the end, what I couldn’t change I’d opted to forget.
One crazy mother. Two murdered siblings.
Was it any wonder my head was so fucked up?
I stared now at the manila file. I thought it was unfair that my sister and brother’s entire lives could be distilled into a single thin folder. They had deserved better. We all had.
“Why you?” Detective O spoke up crisply. “You lived. They died. You must think about that, have some theories on the subject. Were you more cooperative, the good little girl? Maybe they were sniveling little brats-”
“Stop.” I wanted my voice to come out firm. It sounded more like a whisper. I cleared my throat, tried again. “You want to beat me up, fine. But not them. You don’t get to pick on them. They were just babies. You leave them alone, or I’m outta here.”
Detective Warren was scowling at her partner, clearly agreeing with me. Or maybe not. Maybe this was just the latest episode of good cop, bad cop. But then I realized a couple of things: They didn’t need me to come down to HQ to talk about two twenty-year-old homicides from an entirely different state. Nor were they mentioning the Facebook page, or how to bait a killer in preparation for tomorrow evening’s murderous deadline. Instead, they had a single manila folder holding police reports from my childhood.
They wanted something from me. The question was what, and how much it would cost me.
“What do you remember?” Detective Warren asked me now. “About your childhood?”
I shrugged, gaze still on the closed file. “Not much. I can’t…I don’t…” I had to clear my throat, try again. “I don’t even remember a baby brother. Not a smile, not a whimper…Just, his body. His perfect little form, so still, like a statue.” I paused, cleared my throat again. Still wasn’t working. I looked away from both detectives, stared at the carpet. “I’m sorry.”
“Might be that you never saw him alive,” D.D. suggested. “ME’s office consulted a forensic anthropologist on the remains. Based on the size of the skeleton, the baby boy was approximately full term, but could’ve been born a few weeks premature, maybe even died in utero. Either way, let’s just say he didn’t make it long in this world.”
“Boys are icky,” I heard myself say. “Boys just grow up to be men who want only one thing from girls.”
