Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings (26 page)

C
HAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Grandma Emma was over at the stove, cooking again. And she said odd things when she dumped food before Tony, about needing black folk’s food. Was it true? Could a race of people need a particular kind of food? He would ask Tak when she left.

Before him was dinner. On that day, he’d already eaten enough food to shame him into contacting a homeless shelter and confessing—but that was the norm with Grandma Emma. She was a damned good cook, flavoring food so skillfully that he watered at the thought of it, anticipating the moment it would dance on his tongue.

Wendy came by. First on the pretext of returning a magic marker she said she’d mistakenly taken from his room. Grandma Emma forced her to eat, though she protested at the idea of eating fried food. After the first day, she came back three more times, for more fried food and to watch M*A*S*H with Tony and Grandma Emma. No one could make him admit it’d been fun.

Tony sat at the table with a mound of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and succulent gravy, country biscuits, and collard greens, all on a Wednesday evening. As usual, Grandma Emma sat at his elbow, inspecting his plate, demanding he eat more and fatten up.

“It’s good, ain’t it?” she demanded.

“Of course,” Tony said. He’d taken to smacking his lips like Tak when he ate her food. It came automatic.

Tak, who painted in the living room that evening because Deena wasn’t there, cast sidelong glances at Tony’s plate. He remained steadfast in his assertion that he would finish his work before eating.

“I needs to ask you something,” Grandma Emma said and stole a glance at Tak out the corner of her eye.

The hushed tone was so at odds with her usual bellow that Tony paused.

She leaned forward, arms on the table. “Why you tell these folks yo momma died in a car accident?”

Horror singed Tony. He turned to his plate with vigor.

“She did,” he mumbled.

“Regina Sanders ain’t die in no car accident! Regina Sanders—”

“I know how she died!”

Grandma Emma glanced over at Tak, and Tony’s gaze followed. He continued to paint.

“If you knows, why you ain’t tell the truth?”

Tony’s nostrils flared. “Cause she’s not my mother. She’s nothing. Only mother I knew—”

“Is your aunt Pam.”

Tony scowled.

“If you know so much,” he demanded, “why you didn’t know to come get me?”

Emma shrugged. “Anthony says you wasn’t his. Who was I to say different?”

Tony stabbed at his drumstick with a fork.

“My mother killed herself. You think I want somebody to know that? My dad killed people, and my mom killed herself. Who wants a kid like that?”

Grandma Emma snorted. “Let me tell you something. And I hope it shows you how far and how much in life you still got to learn.” She tilted her head toward Tak.

“You see that man over there? He’s a good man. Good as they come. He loves hard. Him and Deena.”

He believed her. Somehow, he believed her. 

Tony found Tak the next afternoon on his feet and before the TV, scowling. His first thought was to come back later. He shook it off.

“Tak?”

Tak glanced up at him, the frown still etched on his face.

“Can I talk to you?” Tony said.

In old cartoons, little mischievous boys always dug a toe in the dirt when they were under scrutiny. There was no dirt here, only Deena’s ten thousand-dollar carpet that Tak had covered with tarp the day before. Tony dug his toe in that, instead.

Tak turned off the TV.

“Of course. What is it?”

“I told you a lie when I got here. About my mom.”

Tak waited.

“My real mom . . . didn’t die in a car accident. She killed herself after I was born. They said it was post partial or something. I don’t know what that means. But it was my aunt, Pam, that raised me till I was seven. She’s the one that died in the car accident.”

Tak looked thoughtful. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

Tony shrugged. “My dad killed people, and my mom killed herself. I didn’t want you to think I was a nut job.”

Tak nodded as if conceding the point.

“I should be honest, too,” he said. “Since you gave me a secret, I should give you one.”

“You have a secret?”

“I always wanted a son,” Tak admitted. “But I didn’t think he’d be four feet tall when we met.”

Tony laughed, stupidly, a big guffaw that turned into a sob. He didn’t know how. When Tak embraced him, he returned the favor.

“I love you,” Tony said. “Is that okay?”

He couldn’t tell the rules anymore, or if there were any at all.

Tak squeezed. “Of course, kiddo. I love you, too.”

Was this what a father was? How a father made you feel? God help him, Tony couldn’t be without one again.

He looked up, sniffling. “Should I call you ‘dad’?”

“Only if you want.”

“And what about Deena?”

Tak shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t want to be called that.”

Tony grinned.

“You’re ridiculous.”

But he soon turned serious with the thought of calling Deena ‘mom.’ He’d never had a father before, didn’t know what they were like. But mothers—mothers left him. They killed themselves, died in cars, or changed their minds about being a mother altogether.

“I don’t think I could take another mom leaving me,” Tony said.

Tak hugged him again. “Neither one of us would ever willingly leave you. You’re our son. And you owe us money.”

Tony wrestled away from his embrace, declaring that he would never pay Tak, only to be tackled amid a fit of tickles that made him writhe and near pee. In the end, he agreed to pay.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

When Lizzie woke, it was to the sight of a blackened room, silenced like a sinkhole at night. Next to her, Kenji slept with an arm across his eyes and a smile on his face, naked beneath the sheets.

Her heart pounded. It was the pound of a marathoner’s run to exertion, pain, collapse. Sweat prickled her face, cool on clammy skin. She smacked chapped, stiffened, and fat lips as muscles yawned and creaked with the slightest of motions; though she supposed that could’ve been from so much sex with Kenji.

She looked back at him regretfully and stood.

It came all at once, a flood, an avalanche, a drowning so complete that even Kenji disappeared. She needed something. Something coursing through veins, ascending her up and out, showering her with pleasures so intense: so thrillingly intense that sight, sound, and touch magnified in a euphoric mania.

She couldn’t wait. There was too much time between that top-level condo and the streets of Overtown; she needed a fix, a buzz, a taste, a high—she’d die without it. Panic detonated and Lizzie shot like a rocket, out of the room and to the only place that promised relief.

She pitched into the bathroom with a fit, tore open the medicine cabinet and hurled Band-Aids, dental floss, cotton swabs, aftershave, rubbing alcohol, and various bottles over her shoulder. She dropped to her knees and dove into the under-sink cabinet swiping out great swaths of goods. And then she saw it. The tiniest bottle of Tylenol: unassuming in the shadows. She snatched it and stood, hurrying to unscrew the top.

Four.

Four goddamned pills. 

He kept no alcohol in the house. No beer, no wine, no vodka, no alcohol.

Or so it seemed.

Lizzie lunged for the bottle of rubbing alcohol and was snatched midair. Kenji’s arm swept her in a single motion, heaving her out the door.

Lizzie howled as they struggled down the hall. She clawed at him, through him, for the fix she’d been promised. No matter how she struck, how she tore at his flesh, he held to her—firmer and stronger than she ever thought possible, muscles flexing as they moved from bathroom to bedroom, where he tossed her onto the bed.

Lizzie shrieked and bolted for him, talons bared, but he snatched her into in an embrace, blunting her blows.

He wouldn’t let her go this time as he bear-hugged her in a side shuffle back to the bed, arms so tightly bound that she could only snort and pant her fury.

They dropped onto the mattress together, her beneath him, straining and beating in vain.

“Forever,” Kenji blurted. “That’s how long I’ll hold on to you, if it means keeping you from hurting yourself. So you might as well calm down.”

She continued to strain.

“We’ll grow old together, Lizzie, right here in this bed before I let you do what you’re thinking. Try me if you don’t believe me.”

Lizzie thumped against him, shuffling and shifting for an inch, no more. He’d meant what he said. He’d not let her go.

Only when she began to cry did Kenji loosen his hold.

The sudden tenderness of his touch deflated her, seeping out fury and panic, until only shame and fatigue remained. A scratch above Kenji’s brow stood fiery red while the boxers he wore hung torn and limp. Lizzie looked away.

“It’s okay,” he said.

But it wasn’t. She’d hurt him. The only person who’d looked at her and seen more. More than a hell-bound whore and discarded drug addict, more than there was, perhaps.

“One mountain a day,” he promised and kissed her forehead. “One mountain a day.”

~*~

Kenji rang the doorbell to Tak’s house and waited, grateful for the midday and absence of kids. He couldn’t go into work with a gash on his forehead, not to the company where the marquee bore his name. Deena would be looking for him, no doubt to weigh him down with one speech or another about the burden and honor of being a Tanaka in architecture, but as far as he was concerned, she could have that mantle, gladly.

Mrs. Jimenez opened the door.

“I need to see Tak,” he said, cutting off her concern.

With a scowl of disapproval, she led him to the gym.

Red faced and with puffed cheeks, Tak lay on his back, heaving a barbell weighted with iron in swift, even strokes. Kenji waited by the door.  

“Come spot me, you bastard,” Tak gasped, weights slowing.

Kenji rushed over and stood overhead, peering down at his older brother.

When the weights sailed up, Kenji grabbed hold and returned them to the machine.

His brother sat up. “What happened to your face?”

Kenji hesitated. He’d come to talk about Lizzie, but the wound wasn’t where he’d planned on starting.

His brother stood, a half head taller, scowling, disapproving, already knowing. Kenji looked away.

“So, she hits you now.”

He went for a towel. In Tak’s voice was distaste, disappointment, disgust. And Kenji couldn’t bear it.

“It’s not like that.”

Tak dabbed his face with the towel and tossed it to a corner. “Don’t,” he warned and went for the water cooler opposite him.

Kenji followed him, wanting to let the conversation go, but unable to.

“You think she’s bad for me.”

Tak filled a paper cup and tossed the water back in a go. Then he crushed it in a fist and dropped it in a nearby waste bin.

“Don’t ask me obvious questions.”

“But she—”

Kenji halted at the squeak in his voice, appalled. Why was it always this way? Demoted to childhood in the presence of his brother, compelled to whine at his slightest disapproval. Where was the man he’d been last night; strong when Lizzie was weak? Could his brother know what it was to love an addict? To find doubt, turmoil, fear, and hope every day? Those were his realities; that was the proof of his strength. And it was high time Tak knew it.

“I know what I’m doing,” Kenji blurted. “And I don’t need you to approve of it any more than you needed Dad to approve of you and Deena.”

Tak headed for the leg press.

“Deena wasn’t on drugs,” he said and dropped low into the seat of the machine.

“And neither is Lizzie. She’s been off for months now. I know it because I see her every day.”

Tak grunted before shoving his machine’s metal plate with his legs so that his seat sailed backward to the hilt.

“Do you have any idea what the statistics are on drug relapse? Fifty to ninety percent, Kenj, depending upon the severity of addiction, drugs involved, and length of treatment.”

Tak’s knees rose and fell as he pushed against weights, the muscles of his calves straining.

“It means you’re biding your time,” he continued. “And from the looks of things, your biding’s just about up.”

Kenji’s jaw clenched. “She had a setback. That’s all. And she’s past it.”

Tak said nothing. 

“We will!” Kenji cried.

Tak glided to a halt and climbed off. Kenji, the inadvertent little brother, took a step back, uncertain of what was to follow.

“Kenj, I’m not trying to upset or hurt you in any way. I just know that you’ve been sheltered—”

“And you haven’t?”

“Listen. It’s obvious you care about her. I’m not making light of that.”

“Yes, you are.”

Tak sighed. “Fine. Be emotional.”

Again, Kenji’s jaw clenched.

“You
are
making light of it! And you did it right from the start. When I told you I’d been seeing her, you asked me how much it ran me an hour.”

“She’s a prostitute!”

Kenji’s fist smashed into the wall.

“She
was
! I told you she quit!” Chest heaving, nostrils flared, he stared at his older brother with a foreign sort of fury.

Tak looked at the stretch of rustic wood grain he’d pummeled, none of which had given way, before glancing down at Kenji’s hand.

“You okay? That’s probably—”

“I’m okay!” Kenji yelled. Meanwhile, he ignored the dull throb of his hand.

Tak stared at him, as if expecting some other truth to be revealed. When it didn’t come, he sighed.

“Listen, kiddo. I—”

“I’m not a kid, Tak! Now, I’m warning you! If you can’t talk to me like a man—”

“Hey! Calm down, already. What is all this? I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I’m not,” he gave Kenji a once-over, “questioning your manhood.”

A smile tickled at the edges of Tak’s mouth, forcing Kenji’s to do the same, until he looked away, cursing his brother for making him laugh.

“All right, come on. Talk to me. What’s going on?” Tak said and took a seat on a sculpted oak grain bench.

“I was gonna kick your ass,” Kenji said and sat down next to him. 

“Yeah, okay. Don’t get carried away.”

Kenji grinned.

“I thought the wall would break when I punched it.”

“Reinforced for hurricanes.”

Deena. Of course.

Tak frowned at him. “So, it’s serious, huh?” he said.

“Very.”

Tak pondered this, gaze on his black Nikes.

“What’s she like sober?”

“Smart. Funny. A little bit of a smart aleck. Sweet. Sensitive, sometimes.”

Tak stole a glance at him. “And the guys . . .?”

Kenji sighed.

“It’s a lot sometimes. She tells me stuff, and I listen, but I only listen because I’m supposed to. There were guys in her life that I think I would murder if I ever met them, and some of the things done to her that don’t make for decent conversation. But the other stuff, the stuff she willingly did for drugs or money,” he shook his head. “It’s hard not to be jealous. Or to not think that someday, some guy’s gonna see us out and offer her ten bucks for a blow job. He wouldn’t even understand why I’m choking the shit out of him.”

“And you’ve been tested? You and her?”

“When I sent her to rehab they did a full physical. But yeah, we’re clean, and we use protection. Who doesn’t these days?”

“Me and Deena didn’t. If we did, it was, like, once.”

Kenji stared. His older brother, content to be his role model, and Deena—the bastion of decorum and responsibility?

“You guys never had to . . . you know . . . did you?”

“No.” Tak paused. “Can I ask you something?”

Kenji hesitated.

“Do you love her?” Tak said.

Kenji opened his mouth, but denial wasn’t possible. “Yeah.”

“Then leave the past to memories. She’s not some prize to possess or be angry about when someone else seems to have possessed it. She’s a human being, with her own wants and emotions, however right or wrong they might’ve been.”

Tak gave him a sideways look.

“Got it?”

Kenji nodded.

“Good. Now go ice your hand.”

Relief washed over Kenji. It had been throbbing like hell.