Chapter 7
Betty in her only dress, which is stained, but not damaged from some of her late night action, is about to enter the local department store. She walks into the store as soon as they unlock the front doors. She had been waiting across the street for an hour before it opened because she couldn’t wait and had hoped they were open earlier.
She walks around the store as employees continue to put up displays and finish their opening procedures. This is a good size ladies department store that Shadow only chose because they had the biggest sale ad in the “The World Daily”, McLaughlin City’s biggest newspaper.
She figured because of this fact that they must have a lot of stuff to choose from and she wanted the perfect outfit. Betty stops in front of a mannequin wearing a half-shirt and capri pants, “Why would anyone want to expose their bodies like that? It leaves too many targets.”
She tries to tone down her cautiousness. Being here with all the people coming and going in broad daylight is stressing. To her it seems that people are moving in every direction. This is the reason why she wanted to be there early to avoid the crowds.
A sales clerk approaches her from behind and it took almost all Shadow had to neither hide nor break the approaching woman’s neck. Before the lady could get out her rehearsed two-part greeting, Betty turns toward her, “I need clothes, special nice clothes.”
She said this with confidence. The sales lady with a friendly smiles asks, “Well...um what’s the occasion?”
“Reunion. Reunion of a long time.”
“Ah, that is so cool. Reunions are usually a blast. So is it a family reunion?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid! Okay, so is this going to be a big gathering? Indoors or outdoors? Or a little of both?”
Shadow didn’t expect questions and doesn’t realize that this is not prying but just a salesperson doing their job.
“I just need nice special clothes.” Shadow stated firmly.
This professional sales lady has classified this customer into one of the many categories sales people use. The category is ‘non-talker and direct buyer’. A simpleton who thinks they are smarter than they actually are. She daily gets her share of these types. The sales lady leads Shadow over to a rack of dresses.
After looking through the rack briefly, Shadow pulls out one that is similar to the one she wore the day she told her high school boyfriend Jack, her only boyfriend ever, about Mark shooting her mother.
“Do you need shoes, too?”
“I guess.”
That wasn’t the answer the lady expected, but still she doesn’t miss a beat as they head over to the shoe department. After choosing several pair, that didn’t go with her outfit, the sales lady asks, “Are you trying to achieve comfort, appeal or a little bit of both?”
Shadow wasn’t really worried about either. She was more concerned if she could kick butt effectively in them.
The salesperson holds up a pair of high heels of matching color of the chosen outfit, “How about these?”
Betty thinks, “Definitely no heels. How do people walk in those anyways?” She shakes her head no.
Shadow notices a pair of black boots on display that will go good with that long dress she picked. Boots are pretty much the only type of shoes she’s ever worn or at least remembers.
After fitting the boots, the sales lady trying to add add-on sales asks, “And will you need any under garments?”
That’s something else she didn’t think about beforehand, either, “I guess.”
“What size are you dear?”
“I don’t know.”
Finally a kink in the sales lady’s rehearsed sales pitch, “You don’t know?”
Shadow answers plainly, “No.”
“Not top or bottom?”
Shadow doesn’t respond.
The sales lady trying to gain her composure smiles, “It’s okay, dear. We can just measure you now and go from there. Haven’t done too much clothes shopping lately huh?”
“Never have.”
The look on the sales lady’s face reveals she believes her. As she measures Shadow, she thinks, “Poor child. Not to know the joy of shopping.” Shadow is visibly uncomfortable with this lady so close to her.
As she backs away after measuring, she thinks, “She’s so beautiful and well-built and no one has ever bought her clothes or undergarments? She must be pulling my leg.”
Betty chooses every undergarment in black. At the register, the sales lady rings up her big sale, “That’ll be 187.73”
Shadow reaches into her fanny pack and pulls out a large wade of money. She peels off a handful of it to the lady without counting it. “Here.”
The sales clerk counts out the money. It’s four hundred and fifteen dollars.
“Ah...ma’am this is too much money.” The clerk tries to hand it back.
Shadow says, “No, it’s my tithe.”
The sales lady, who’s not too religious, doesn’t quite understand. Shadow only said this because she didn’t think about counting out the money. That mistake makes her feel embarrassed. “Damn emotions!” She fumed inside.
She hasn’t had to count money in a long time. Even when she pays Mike, he tells her the amount and she just hands him a stack of money. He trusted her, “For crying out loud he trusts everybody!” It’s not that she can’t count. She simply didn’t think about it.
This pause causes the sales lady to wonder if a “tithe” is a tip or something similar. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, but I’m in a hurry.”
The sales lady bags the merchandise as fast as she can. Once it’s bagged, Shadow leaves.
Big Betty stands on the front porch of her mother’s house, in the same place for five minutes, too nervous to knock and unsure if her mother is home. She knew her pattern; she had studied it over the week, so she should be home. Shadow didn’t feel it would be appropriate to watch her mother, as a mark today, of all the days.
She’s having a tougher time reaching to push the doorbell than she’s had fighting trained and armed henchmen.
“Just do it! It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for,” she tells herself.
Finally she reaches and pushes the doorbell. She doesn’t hear it ring but she waits, then pushes it again. Nothing. “Does it work?” She decides to knock on the door. She waits with a huge grin that no matter how hard she tries, she can’t suppress.
No answer.
She knocks again, this time much harder, a police style knock. Still no answer.
“No...she’s not here. Nobody’s here. “This was not part of the plan. What am I supposed to do now?” She stands facing the door, hoping someone, anyone would open it. When it sinks in that no one’s going to answer, she turns and starts down the stairs but stops mid-flight.
“Well, I could always take a sneak peek inside the house. I mean this house might cause flashbacks too. Seeing all my mother’s things and probably pictures of me. I can’t be blacking out in front of my mom the first time we meet after all these years.” She makes up her mind to enter the house, kind of as a test run.
She checks the house for an alarm system, which she finds and disables effortlessly. “It would be better to have a watch dog,” she thinks as she picks the back door lock. She puts her tools back into the purse she picked up, at a little boutique, after she left the department store.
She steps inside and braces herself for another flashback, but none came. Nothing looks familiar. She takes a full tour of the house, each and every room, but nothing at all looks familiar nor are there any pictures of her. The lack of familiar things is no shock, Shadow’s never been in this house before and Mark is the one who packed up and moved away. She has no clue how much stuff Mark left behind for her mother. Despite this, the lack of pictures still hurt.
“Neither of my parents have pictures of me out? I can kind of understand why Mark wouldn’t, but my mom too? Did I mean that little to both of t
hem? Did they see me as the reason they fought?” Shadow wonders as she makes her way into the dining room.
She sits down in a dining room chair. She can’t believe it, the only person she felt truly cared about her, now didn’t seem to. “How could I’ve been so mistaken?” Shadow starts to think about all the fun and smiles her and her mother shared despite Mark’s abuse. As she was thinking and spaced out, the phone rings and snaps her out of it. She stared at it until the answering machine picks up.
“Honey, I was hoping you would be home, but that’s okay. I know this is your day and that’s actually why I wanted to talk to you. We need to talk about this. I know you still believe she might show up, but it’s been over 10 years, you know the chances are not too good now, plus Dailen is at the age where he’s going to wonder where his mother is going on that day. Well, I’m sorry to mention it, but it was on my mind. I love you and will see you when you get home. I’ll be home a little late, but I’ll still make dinner. Love you,” finishes the voice on the machine.
“What?! She still goes to meet me after all those years?! She really does love me!” yells Big Betty, “MY mom loves me and has never forgotten about me! There’s no pictures to help keep it from Dailen that I never arrived.” For a brief moment, Big Betty dances and doesn’t resemble a trained killing machine, she resembles Little Betty as she does a dance that Little Betty used to do.
“Where did I pick that up at?” she smiles referring to the dance. She laughs, then she heads to the park.
Shadow rides around the park until she finds her mother sitting on a park bench, the same one her and Jack were supposed to meet her many years before. With her enhanced vision, she can see her mother clearly, even though she’s over two city blocks away from the main street. She parks her bike on the road and starts to walk across the green field. Betty’s mother is looking down reading a book, Shadow tries to contain her enthusiasm and not break into a full sprint.
A man with an odd limp, wearing a long, ugly, brown beat up trench coat, that’s barely a few inches from the ground, approaches and sits down next to her mother.
“Who’s that?” Shadow wonders.
The man has the back of his head facing Shadow. It’s covered by his hat. Her mother turns toward him and suddenly a puff of purple smoke floats from the man’s face toward her, she’s approaching, Shadow notices something coming out from the man’s mouth, it looks like a tentacle of some sort with hooks on it. Shadow starts to reach in her purse as she closes it. Before the appendage touches her mother’s face, who is now unconscious, the man turns toward the advancing Shadow. This is not a man.
“What in the hell are you?!” wonders Shadow.
The creature withdraws his prong-like appendage and suddenly takes flight. What Shadow thought was a trench coat was actually some kind of wings.
Shadow throws several ninja stars at the fleeing creature. It shrieks as the stars make contact, then it disappears into the evening sky.
Shadow checks her mother, she’s out but she has a pulse. Next to her mother is a Bible and a rose that has a ribbon attached, that reads, “For my precious daughter.”
Betty scoots these to the side and tries to wake her mother up.
She can’t.
Betty holds her mother tight, crying and screaming for someone to help her. After a few minutes some people came over to assist, then an ambulance arrives. As they take her mother off, Shadow notices green blood on the ground. She smears some of it on her purse, then leaves.