I didn’t need to ask, I knew.
I had been with her when they met. A tall man, the color of sandalwood and nutmeg. His eyes were hazel and his hair was a tight mass of brown and blond curls. He had a wide smile that remained even when he spoke, and he smelled like the scent Glenna’s mother sprayed her bedroom pillows with when she happened to be between men and felt lonely.
“Hello.” The word came out his mouth like bright sunshine and Delia smiled in spite of herself but kept walking.
“Delia Hawkins?” he called out again, strong and sure he had the right person.
We both turned around and Delia said, “Yes?”
He was so tall and his legs so long that it only took him two steps to cover the six we had made away from him. “Jonathan Hall.” He extended his hand and I saw that his fingernails were clipped, clean, and buffed to a shine. They looked better than Delia’s and I blushed with embarrassment for her.
Delia shook her head in bafflement. “I—I don’t think—”
“Bookie. Bookie Hall from down home. Blue and white house, round the bend from the dairy farm.” His eyes sparkled and he licked his lips.
“Oh my goodness!” Delia screamed. The sound was familiar yet so unfamiliar. I heard Delia scream all of the time. Scream in anger; scream in pain and frustration. But this was a scream of delight.
“Bookie Hall! Oh my goodness!” She couldn’t seem to find anything else to say. Her hands were up to her mouth, hiding her bruised smile. Her lips had had an unfortunate encounter with Hy-Lo’s fists two nights earlier.
“You look good, Delia,” Jonathan “Bookie” Hall said and opened his arms and took another step forward. Delia almost did it. Almost stepped inside, and then she stopped, looked around like a frightened cat, and then extended her hand. If he was surprised or offended he did not show it. Without missing a beat his hand took hers and they shook.
“How you been, Delia? How’s your mama doing? It’s been so long.” He hardly let Delia get a word in. The words spilled from his mouth like music from a flute and Delia couldn’t stop smiling and blushing. It seemed like forever had passed before he noticed me.
“This must be your girl, huh? She look just like you!” He extended his hand but I opened my arms and Delia’s mouth almost dropped off and hit the sidewalk. Bookie laughed his musical laugh and hugged me. My head pressed against his chest and I inhaled as much of his scent as possible.
That’s why I knew how Delia was spending her Saturdays. She came home with that scent clinging to her skin.
“This is my daughter, Kenzie. I got a boy too, his name is Malcolm.” She was speaking slowly, looking from me to Bookie, unable to believe what I had just done.
“And your husband?” Bookie asked.
“Yes.” The word came out tired and remorseful. “Hyman. My name is Delia Lowe now.”
“Uh-huh, what a lucky man,” Bookie said, and his eyes settled on her bruised lips before moving over to the scar on her forehead and down to the blue-black bruise on her cheek, where she hadn’t applied enough foundation. “Can I call you?” he asked even though she had a husband, even though I was standing there.
I wanted to say yes. Yes, you can call her. Her lips started to move and I knew she wanted to say yes, but no came out instead. “Sorry, Bookie, I’m married. You know how it is …”
Her words sailed off and she stared past him.
There was a moment and then he pulled a card from his pocket. “Well, here’s my number. You keep in touch, okay?”
Delia nodded her head yes, took the card from him, and told him it was nice seeing him again, and that’s when I realized that their hands were still entwined.
We were done with our chores and Malcolm and I stood side by side as we waited for Hy-Lo to complete his inspection. “Where’s your mother?” he asked as he ran his index finger across the wooden surface of the television.
Malcolm and I shrugged our shoulders at his back and then answered in unison, “I don’t know, sir.”
“Humph,” Hy-Lo sounded and turned to look at us. “Don’t lie for her, you will only make it bad on yourselves.” He stared at us long and hard, his eyes picking over our faces.
“We’re not lying,” Malcolm said and his eyes narrowed. He was growing up, becoming a man himself; his fear of Hy-Lo was slowly being replaced with loathing.
We’re not lying,
” Hy-Lo mocked him and laughed. “You “speaking for both of you now, Malcolm? How do you know that Kenzie doesn’t know where your mother is? Do you know? Can your behind take a whooping for both of you if she does know and is lying to me?”
I saw Malcolm’s eyes move toward me and then back to Hy-Lo. “I don’t know where she is.” He changed his statement; we were all enemies in that house and enemies could not be trusted.
Hy-Lo raised his eyebrows and a smirk slowly covered his face. He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head sideways before he spoke. “Do you know where your mother is, Kenzie?”
I almost laughed, almost spit out the name of Jonathan “Bookie” Hall. I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and do the hokey-pokey, snap my fingers, and sing Jonathan “Bookie” Hall’s name until the whole block knew it by heart. “No,” I said quietly. I did allow a small smile to cover my lips as I said it though.
Hy-Lo’s smirk spread until his whole face became a crooked line. “Who was here last night?” He leaned in toward us, challenging Malcolm and me.
“No one,” we responded and then exchanged glances.
“No one?” Hy-Lo repeated. “Go get the belt,” he said and waited for one or both of us to move.
We stood stark still, staring at him as if he had lost what little mind he had left.
“Did you hear me? Go and get the belt!” he bellowed and I heard the startled flapping sound of pigeon wings outside the window.
“For what?” I asked. My voice was insolent and filled with malice.
“Don’t you question me!”
He had me by my arm before I even knew he’d moved. He was squeezing it tightly and I could feel the blue-black bruise beginning to form and swell. I tried to snatch away, but his grip was like a steel clamp.
“Get off of me!” I wriggled and jerked against his grasp. “Get ooffff!”
Tears, hot and fast, streamed down my face. He was dragging me toward the bedroom, toward the coiled leather that rested in the bottom drawer. “Choose!” he yelled and tossed me to the floor in front of his bureau.
I couldn’t see, my tears were clouding my eyes. “No!” I yelled back at him. He grabbed me by my hair and yanked me to my feet and then slapped me across my face so hard I flew across the room and landed on the bed.
“Fuck you!” I screamed.
He didn’t move. His face was covered in astonishment as he stared at me. Malcolm stood behind him in the doorway, almost a mirror image of Hy-Lo.
“What the hell did you say to me, little girl?”
Little girl. He hadn’t called me that since I was four, when I lifted my skirt up in the street to show his mother my new pair of pink and white ruffled panties.
I said nothing. My words had shocked me too. There was murder in his eyes as he walked toward me.
I tried to get away, scooting backward on my butt, but he caught me by my ankle just before I toppled over the edge of the bed, and he pulled me toward him. The bedspread, pillows, and the white stuffed poodle Delia had won at Coney Island three summers before came with me.
He caught me by my throat and squeezed until black walls started to form at the sides of my eyes.
“Dad!” Malcolm yelled out. “Dad! Dad!” He was on him now, trying to loosen his fingers, pulling them one by one from around my throat. I was gagging, clawing at his face and kicking at his legs.
Finally he let go and I collapsed to the floor coughing and retching. Malcolm looked down at me and then at Hy-Lo. Their noses almost touched, both of them breathing as if the air had suddenly gone thin.
Hy-Lo seemed to come back, the animal receding back inside of him, but not before he shoved Malcolm hard in the chest. Malcolm was taken off guard and lost his balance, tripping over me and falling to the floor beside me.
Hy-Lo stormed out of the room and then out of the house, leaving us afraid of what was to come next.
I was shaken and tried my best to get myself under control before I called Mable. “Maybe you should come tomorrow,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Why? Kenzie, are you catching a cold? Where is your mother?” Mable’s voice rose with each question. “Kenzie?” she said again.
“Yeah,” I replied in a listless voice. I was tired of fighting this losing battle called life.
“Kenzie?” Mable had heard that tone before. She’d heard it from Delia numerous times.
I just sighed. My throat hurt and my lips were tired of lying.
“I’ll be right there,” Mable said quietly and hung up the phone.
Maybe there was traffic on the Belt Parkway, or maybe Sam tried to keep her from coming. I can’t remember why she wasn’t there within her usual thirty minutes. Maybe if she had been there she might have killed Hy-Lo or maybe he would have killed her, or worse, they would have killed each other.
Delia came in just as I hung up the phone. Her lipstick was worn away, leaving behind a smoky red stain. Her hair was a bit messy and I could tell she had put it together in a hurry.
She walked in with a smile that bloomed when she saw me and withered when she saw the dusky purple marks around my forearm and throat.
We didn’t say anything to each other for a long time, but just stared. We were each a victim. One by choice, the other by birth, but victims just the same.
Delia’s eyes welled up with her own tears and she came and embraced me. I smelled Jonathan “Bookie” Hall’s scent in her sweater and her neck and pulled her closer to me.
“I’m sorry, Kenzie, I’m so sorry,” she wept.
That’s how he found us.
“Well, well.” Hy-Lo walked through the door. “Isn’t this nice.” He rocked back and forth on his feet and folded his arms across his chest. The smirk was still there and I could see that the spiky black hair of the wild thing that lived inside of him had pushed through his skin and covered his chin and cheeks.
“Hyman, why did you do this? Why?” Delia had released me and pushed me behind her. Her voice was small but her tone was angry and disgusted. “You have a problem, Hyman.
You need help.”
I don’t know where she found the courage to speak to him like that, but that was the first time my mother had stood up to him in years.
The wild thing’s eyes were red and piercing, its teeth small sharp points that Hy-Lo bared before he spoke. “I need help? No, you’re the idiot bitch, you’re the jackass that needs help, Delia!”
He took a step forward; Delia and I took a step backward.
“Go to your room, Kenzie!” He was salivating as if what he was about to do was enjoy a feast rather than pound Delia senseless.
I grabbed her hand and tried to pull her away from him.
She resisted, it was fruitless. Where would she go? Hy-Lo blocked the door. She could climb out the window, if Hy-Lo didn’t throw her out of it first.
“Go to your room, Kenzie.” Delia spoke quietly and wriggled her hand free from my grasp. “Go on.” She turned and looked down at me. “Go on,” she repeated and then smiled like everything would be okay.
I didn’t go to my room, but stepped aside as she turned her back to Hy-Lo and walked toward the bedroom. He followed, bouncing his keys in his hands, the smell of vodka coming off of him with each move he made. He threw me a look, but said nothing. The wild thing’s tail trailed behind him as he went.
The front door opened again and Malcolm came in. The dark skin of his cheeks was flushed and he was breathing hard. “I saw him come in,” he whispered breathlessly. “He was at the Blue Moon. I—I followed him home.” He bent over and sucked in air. “She here?” he asked after looking toward the closed bedroom door. I nodded my head yes.
Malcolm sat down on the floor and rested his back against the wall. The length of his body seemed to have extended overnight. The soft boyhood curves of his features were melting away, leaving behind the sharp stony appearance of a childhood lost too soon.
We waited.
Their voices were low, muted, and rapid. Every once in a while there would be a blast of obscene words from Hy-Lo and Delia’s voice would rise, shrill and swift like a flock of birds.
The bumping and knocking came soon after. The labored breathing of one adult snatching, slapping, and punching while the other struggled to block, avoid, and protect.
It went on for some time. Malcolm stuck his head between his legs and pressed the sides of his knees tight against his ears. Me, I listened to everything and watched their bedroom door as it vibrated against the weight of Delia’s body.
It was the scream that pushed me forward. The resonance of her cry stood my hair on end and caused my heart to leap in fear. I decided, right then and there, that this would end. I jumped up and walked over to the phonograph, dropped to my knees, and reached my hands beneath its belly.
It was gone. I moved my hand back and forth, dug deep into the emptiness of the hardwood, and clasped nothing but dust and cat hair.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm looked at me as if I had gone mad.
“Nothing,” I said. My whole body shook. Where was the gun?
Delia’s scream came again and neither of us could ignore it. We burst into the room and found her cowering in the corner; her sweater was ripped almost completely off and there were deep, bloody scratches on her shoulder. Hy-Lo stood above her, the gun in his hand, the nozzle pressed to the center of her head.
Everything moved quickly after that. Like the early black-and-white soundless movies. The ones Malcolm and I watched on lazy Sunday afternoons, right before the Abbott and Costello flicks.
I remember my world becoming silent. The sound of my mother’s pleas, my father’s enraged words, and my own screams became nothing more than streams of red and orange lights that shot from our mouths and disappeared in midair.
My legs turned from flesh to concrete and I could not lift them or even wiggle my pinky toe. All of the life that was left in me moved to my arms and my hands; I know this because they were flailing about like a fish struggling for air on land.