Read Little Girl Lost 6: The Return of Johnnie Wise Online
Authors: Keith Lee Johnson
“Uh-huh.”
“And he’s married?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, Sadie has a history of lying down with married men, huh?”
“What do you mean, Brenda?”
“Don’t play dumb, Johnnie,” she snapped. “I know she was sleeping with Benny when we were there. And you know it, too. If Benny wasn’t your brother, you would have told me what was going on behind my back.”
Silence.
Brenda inhaled deeply before saying, “Nevertheless, she didn’t deserve to be raped and neither did you.”
“Brenda, Detective Meade didn’t rape her. She did it to keep Santino out of jail.”
“It’s the same thing, Johnnie! She didn’t want to do it, so it was rape plain and simple. The fact that she was coerced into doing it only reveals the deep depravity of Detective Meade and Santino Mancini.”
Silence.
“Well, Benny caught a plane out to New Orleans this morning,” Brenda continued. “He would have come sooner, but he blew almost all the money he won in the Las Vegas fight. He had to borrow some money to come down there to see about you.”
“What? He lost all the money?”
“He didn’t come home after the fight. He stayed in Las Vegas for two whole weeks. Only God knows what he was doing.”
“What did he make on the fight?”
“I don’t know for sure, but it had to be at least six thousand dollars . . . maybe ten thousand.”
“He lost that much money, Brenda? How?”
“He said he lost it gambling, but you know your brother. I bet he spent it all up on women and drinking and his good-for-nothing friends who always disappear whenever he runs out of money.”
“I wonder what really happened.”
“Me, too. So, where are you?”
“I’m in Jackson, Mississippi now.”
“What are you doing in Jackson?”
“I’m on my way to East St. Louis, but I ran out of gas and found out that I didn’t have any oil in the car. The mechanic is checking it out right now. I’m in a restaurant called Lucille’s.”
“Well, I haven’t heard from Benny. I hope he’s alright. You know how them whites can be down there.”
“Yeah, especially since they burned down Ashland Estates. The good thing is Lucas got outta town before they burned it down.”
“Yeah, he was in jail. I never thought I’d say jail was a safe place for a black man, but thank God he wasn’t there. Who knows what might’ve happened.”
“He’s out now. He’s on his way to Fort Jackson in South Carolina. They let him out early.”
“When did he decide to join the Army?”
“The judge offered him a deal, and he had to take it. Otherwise, he was looking at fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years? What was he selling, heroin?”
“Yeah.”
“What? Where would he get heroin?”
“They set him up, Brenda. It’s a big mess.”
“Um. I guess it is. So, what are you going to do for money?”
“Depending on what it’s going to cost to fix my car, I’ll probably have to stay here and work. I was just offered a job by the lady who owns the place. I guess I can be a waitress for a little while. I’m about to call my father and see if he can help me.”
“Okay, if he can’t, let me know, and I’ll send you what I have. I’ve been putting away a little extra because Benny don’ blew most of ours, and he just got it. Every dime he wins in that ring, he spends like its water, and there’ll always be plenty of it. But one day it’s going to run out, and where we gon’ be then? It’s a shame what the devil is doin’ to ya brother. Can you talk to him and get him to straighten himself up? We’ve got a baby now, Johnnie. Jericho needs to see a strong black man he can look up to. It’s time to stop this wild livin’ before we lose everything we have, too.”
“Brenda, no. You keep your money. God knows you can’t depend on my brother to do right with the money. I can’t take your last when I just got offered a job right here in Jackson. I’ma hav’ta work for a living, and I might as well start now. As for talking to my brother, I don’t know what good that’s going to do. I’m not making any excuses for him, but I don’t think the man knows any better. I think it’s just in him to do the things he does. All I can tell you is to keep praying for him.”
“Will you let me know what you decide, so I can let Benny know when he comes home?”
“Yeah. No problem, Brenda. Before I let you go, can you ask Benny if he knows anything about the Baptiste mausoleum in the cemetery?”
“The Baptiste mausoleum?”
“Yeah, I was there earlier this morning before I left. I wanted to say my goodbyes to my mother. It was the strangest thing, Brenda.”
“What do you mean?”
Johnnie hesitated for a moment before saying, “I think I saw some angels.”
“Angels? What makes you think that?”
“I saw this white woman and this little boy with these blue eyes going into a crypt. The boy had this red balloon. I didn’t think much of it at first, ya know? But then, the boy let go of the balloon and it kept floating and stopped at the Baptiste mausoleum. I went in and looked at the vaults and saw what I believe was our ancestors, going all the way back to . . . wait a minute . . . I wrote the names down and put it in my purse.”
“Aren’t those crypts locked?”
“Yes. That’s the strange thing. This one was unlocked. Ah, here’s the list. Josephine Baptiste was the only name I recognized, but there was this woman named Lauren Renee Bouvier-Baptiste, but underneath that name was another name in parenthesis: Ibo Atikah Mustafa. Sounds African, doesn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. But you say the other names were Baptiste, and the woman’s last name was Bouvier-Baptiste?”
“That’s what was on the vault. And another thing . . . she was in a double vault with a man named Prince Amir Bashir Jibril.”
“What’s strange about that? He was obviously her husband.”
“I don’t think he was her husband.”
“Why not?”
“Well, his name was Jibril. Her name was Bouvier-Baptiste.”
“And you say they were in a double vault together?”
“Yes, and there was another man next to them. A man named Rokk Baptiste. It said that he was the husband of Lauren. I guess they had a bunch of kids or something because all the other names are Baptiste.”
“What were the dates on the vaults?”
“Funny you should mention that, Brenda. I had forgotten to write down the dates when I left. But I thought it would be important, so I tried to go back in and the door was locked all of a sudden.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t get back in. It was like I was lead there so I could see these names, but I only had one shot at it. And then, when I left the cemetery, I saw the same white woman and the same boy coming through the gates. I figured they had come back to try and find the boy’s balloon. I stopped them and told them I had tried to find it and couldn’t. I was just trying to save them some time, ya know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, the woman said it couldn’t have been them because they had just gotten there. She also said that the boy had a red balloon, but it was at home. They didn’t bring it with them. So, I said I thought I saw you and your son going into the St. John crypt. The woman agreed that they were going there, but she maintained that she and her son had just gotten there. I left it alone and walked on, right—”
“Uh-huh.”
“But the thing bothered me, so I turned around, and they were gone, too. Just like the balloon. It was like they disappeared, too. So when I got into my car, I realized that the woman had mentioned a red balloon, but I never said the balloon was red.”
“You didn’t? Are you sure you never told her the balloon was red?”
“I’m positive, Brenda.”
“Um. I think you’re right.”
“So, you think they were angels, too?”
“Well . . . that’s an incredible story to me. You know I believe in the Lord, so I don’t have a problem believing that it happened. Apparently, the Lord wanted you to know what was in that mausoleum.”
“Why? I mean, everybody in it is dead. That’s why they’re there, right?”
“I’m not sure why, Johnnie, but I’d say you just had an encounter with the celestial.”
“If that’s true . . . why me, Brenda?” she asked.
“Why any of them, Johnnie,” Brenda said. “Why any of the chosen Old Testament men? Why Mary the mother of Jesus? Why Elizabeth, Zachariah, the high priest’s wife, who was too old to have children? Why Hannah? Why Deborah the prophetess and judge? Why Ruth the Moabitess?”
Hank knocked on the phone booth door. “Your perch and fries are ready, Johnnie. Come get it while it’s hot.”
Johnnie put up her index finger and nodded. “You sure do know the scriptures, Brenda.”
“Hmph! I have to know ’em to stay married to your brother. It’s the only way. Otherwise, I would have been gone years ago, Johnnie.”
“I can believe that. You married into a family of whores, Brenda. And when you do that, you can expect us to do what we do.”
“I didn’t mean you, Johnnie.”
“I know you didn’t, Brenda, but the truth is the truth. I’m starting to realize that more and more.” At that instant, she remembered the words of Richard Goode, who had been killed at her behest.
You can’t change what you are!
“Maybe someday I’ll be more like you, Brenda.”
“You can be more like me now, Johnnie. You have free will.”
“Do I? I wonder about that especially when things happen to me like what happened to me today. Like my mother selling me. Like Billy Logan raping me. Like Ethel Beauregard trying to kill me, and she was family. I mean stuff like that happens more than seeing celestial beings, if in fact that’s what they were, ya know? I mean, God lets too many bad things happen to me.”
“How much of it is your own doing, Johnnie? God’s got a law. It’s called sowing and reaping. And there’s no escaping it. Most folk are only worried about reaping what they’ve sown because they’ve sown far more bad things than good. But the law of sowing and reaping works equally well when we do right, Johnnie. Make doing right a habit and the law of sowing and reaping will work on your behalf, too.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault I got raped, Brenda? It’s my fault my mother sold me to Earl Shamus? Is that what you’re telling me, Brenda?”
“No, I’m only saying that you should consider your ways, Johnnie. Consider the things you’ve done and leave what others have done to you in God’s hands.”
“Okay, Brenda. I gotta go. The cook said my food is ready. I’ll talk to you later.”
Brenda was saying something more about God when Johnnie forcefully hung up the phone.
Chapter 9
“
Have you spoken to him?”
S
hake, Rattle, and Roll” filled the restaurant when Johnnie returned to her booth. She was breathing heavily as the anger she was feeling threatened to boil over. She took a sip of her ice cold lemonade, hoping it would help cool her off and gain a better perspective, but it wasn’t working. The more she tried not to think about Brenda’s comments, the more they invaded her mind. Her eyes narrowed as she replayed the conversation she’d had with her sister-in-law. She liked Brenda, and in some ways she felt sorry for her because she married a man who wasn’t husband material. She was a woman of God who had wanted a man walking in lockstep with the devil. In other words, she found the devil very appealing; so appealing, in fact, that she married him. Now she wished she hadn’t.
Nevertheless, it irritated her that Brenda was suggesting that she had brought much of what had happened to her on herself. She looked out the window. She could still see the reflection of the restaurant patrons. One woman in particular had been watching her like she wanted to hurt or humiliate her in some way. She was hoping the woman would come over to her booth and say something, so she could give her a piece of her mind. She turned around and locked eyes with the woman to let her know that she knew she was staring at her and that if she wanted to try something, she was ready for whatever happened, whether it was a verbal exchange, or heated words that led to a physical altercation. She stared back, but eventually, the woman looked away. Only then did Johnnie stop staring at her.