her window and ripped open the blinds as if she'd never looked out her window before. Her grandmother's two-story home was old, kindling with a mortgage payment. She could shimmy out; the slanted roof's steep pitch was survivable. But what about her baby brother? Or her mother? One hand covered her mouth and nose, the other searched along the hardwood floor. The smoke burned her lungs. She tried to hold her breath, but when her air ran out, she only gulped down more of the acrid air. The sting of smoke brought tears to her eyes, further blurring her vision. She crawled toward the door. It was marginally easier to breathe down there. She opened the door cautiously. Events happened so fast, the surreal movement of time when the mind couldn't cope with all of the contradictory images.
Thick columns of smoke undulated with a knowing intent. They turned toward her, a predator catching a new scent. The flash fire roared through the house, hungry and desperate. Orange and yellow tongues licked at the curtains. Pictures charred in their frames, the faces, and background turning brown then black. Golden flames crawled along the thick carpet. She banged on the walls. So hot. She sucked in smoke, to the protest of her scalded lungs.
The house creaked as if assaulted by a gust of wind. The wall cracked and buckled, a filigree of ashy veins. Crickety things at the best of times, the stairs lurched in unsteady and tentative steps. Her head throbbed as if ready to explode, racing with wild speculation. Her grandma (Grandma!) sometimes burned a candle on a chair; maybe it had tipped over. Keeping her back to the wall, fearing the flames devouring the banister and her tumbling into the heart of the inferno, she sobbed, scared and anxious.
The door to Michah's room canted ajar. His crib used to be her cousin's and another cousin had already called dibs on it once Michah no longer needed it. Heedless of the fire, she swatted at the flames with her hands. Tendrils flared and bit into her with each swipe. His form tiny and still, his skin hot and bubbling. Lady G scooped up the bundle of flesh, the smell of burnt skin, both his and hers, seared her nostrils. She cooed at him in hushed reassurances that everything would be OK.
'Is he dead?' a hoarse voice whispered from the shadowed corner. 'I just need to make sure he was dead.'
Her mother's dark skin steeped in a cloak of night. Wizened fingers tugged at the edge of her shirt, threatening to pull herself into it. Vacant eyes, unfixed and filled with psychotic detachment, silently pled for understanding. From above, the ceiling cracked with the peal of thunder, then something hot fell onto her face.
Lady G snapped awake. Remembering the old hurts, she shivered in her bed and held herself. Not unlike when she woke from her two-month-long coma after the fire. January 22nd, 2001. The date burned into her mind. Pain reared up when least expected and had a way of never quite going away, but rather burrowed itself deep within. Like a wound healed over a piece of shrapnel, mended enough to make her drop her guard, but pain flared afresh when something bumped against it. She no longer wanted to feel, but only desired the lure of a morphine drip. The dreamy haze where nothing hurt as bad as it could. She just kept packing down the pain, stuffing it deep inside and moving on. Each hurt a tiny brick, each brick stacked upon one another, with her mother the source of many, many bricks in that terrible wall.
'I live with it, Vere.' Her mother's name for her. Lady G hated her name and only ever recalled it whenever she had to fill out government forms. Or thought about her mother. She could still picture her mother on the chair across from her bed. Her first sight after she had clawed herself out of the darkness of her coma, struck by how small her mother looked. So very, very small. The fire had been ruled an accident, but Lady G knew. They both knew. The pain, the memories, they were too much. Lady G peered at her, a tube down her throat, her hands in soft restraints, probably to keep her from pulling the piece of plastic out of her mouth.
'I was so young when I had you. Children change your life. You love them and they drive you insane. Bit by bit. And you love them some more. But Michah… Michah had his father's eyes.'
'Momma, did you ever love us?' Lady G's mind called out, needed to know. As always, her mother didn't hear her and went on about her own concerns.
'I remember those eyes. How they'd follow me when I walked past him. How they lingered on my behind or down my chest any chance they got. How they sneered whenever I shut his game down. How angry they got. How quick they were to fill with hatred and something animal. And dangerous. I just couldn't help but keep wondering: would Michah's eyes glaze over, see me as less than human, as a piece of property or meat? Would I just be a pair of tits, a piece of ass, or a slick piece of pussy for him to decide to take? He had his father's eyes, Vere, and I couldn't take him looking at me, needing me, or depending on me anymore.'
Her mother collapsed into hard tears, hard because she never quite broke the way truly sorry people did. Her tears were defiant, sure, and angry, but tears nonetheless. She laid her head on the hospital bed. Lady G stretched out her hands. Her burnt hands. Third-degree burns, incisions had to be made to release the heat. In her last act as 'Vere', Lady G stroked her mother's hair in hard forgiveness. Hard because she didn't forgive, though part of her understood, and knew that she needed to release her mother. Her touch feigned love, but was concerned, scared, and angry. She resolved at that moment, 'I don't want to make someone else.' And she vowed not to get involved with them.
Men.
They were brutal and couldn't help but use others. Bottomless pits of selfish need they vented upon women and called it love. Or sex. Or fucking. It was a silly vow, young and foolish, like love. Her 'no men' rant became almost its own persona, a routine she put on for her friends. Going on about how she didn't need a man, how she was a princess who saved herself. How she'd remain single and unsullied by these dogs, these boys who played men games. She knew the image she projected, how people assumed that she was strong, capable, wise, and independent. Her life was her own. And she wanted to be the woman people guessed her to be. She presented that woman as if she had arrived. Yet she felt hollow.
A part of her believed she 'doth protesteth too much' when it came to men, but another part of her was equally adamant. She really didn't want to make someone else. She had no interest in bringing another messed-up person into her messed-up world so she could mess them up and have them go off and mess up others. She simply opted out of that life plan.
Dreams and memories. Lady G seemed trapped by them, not knowing how to move past them, becoming entombed in a morass of emotional quicksand she couldn't escape. The need for love, to fill the ever-present hole inside her; she remembered desire, but she had forgotten how it worked. How to lower her guard, allow entry past her wall of bricks, and allow someone in to see the most precious parts of herself. She had forgotten what it was like to have someone touch her heart. She only knew the cold comfort of loneliness and had learned to grow comfortable with it. Her heart had numbed over.
Then King brought her back.
The months since finding him had been good. Made her whole and rekindled desire in her. She enjoyed the flattery of his attention. It drove her girl Rhianna insane with jealousy. And Lady G enjoyed being needed and seen as special. Things were cute early on, but they turned into something selfish. She didn't think she misrepresented her intentions. He wasn't enough. No, that wasn't quite it. He couldn't complete her the way she wanted to be completed. And she knew part of him resisted her. He wouldn't let her in, not all the way, not to his most precious part: he loved her the best he was able, she knew that, but it wasn't enough.
She wanted more.
Big Momma fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. Every quarter she attended the condo association meetings. Every meeting played out the same way. Roger Stern, president of the board, sat front and center. Officious glasses rested on the tip of his nose to not only study the papers before him, but to be able to peer over them in his condescending manner at whoever was speaking. His wife Holly, a frumpy, pear-figured woman, dressed in floral patterns too bright for the season. Any season. She took the minutes as vice president and secretary. Lipstick smeared across her mouth with a clown's sneer, and blush applied by the brushstroke, she obviously got made up for her appearance as First Lady of Breton Court. On the other side of Mr Stern sat Neville Sims, the groundskeeper for Breton Court. The only black person at the table, but also the only one of the three who did any real work. His cap pulled low on his head, lifted whenever he wiped the sweat from his forehead. His matching blue coveralls had a thin film of grime on them. Leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him, he spoke with a hint of hesitation and appeared as uncomfortable as Big Momma.
A reporter from the community paper scribbled her notes. Perhaps the reporter's presence caused Mr Stern to go through the motions of paying more attention. Big Momma upticked the side of her mouth in mild derision, making a note to have her niece show up in a skirt, sensible shoes, and waving a notepad around during the next
