Or maybe this tingle inside me wasn't a tingle of excitement so much as it was a tingle of fear. Roy was right. Blood was blood and we could have just as easily met someplace for the first time and fallen in love, but we hadn't, and all my life I thought we had the same blood in our veins. It wasn't something I could forget in a moment, even after a thrilling kiss. And maybe, maybe it wasn't something I should forget?
The more I learned about myself, the more twisted and entwined my life became. I felt like someone trying to unravel strings only to get things more knotted and confused. I had the strong sense that I wasn't anywhere near all the important discoveries. Something else loomed out there, some other dark truth that would make even all this seem like nothing.
All the turmoil and emotional tugs of war within me exhausted me. I fell asleep and was still asleep when Beni finally came home. Mama, fortunately for Beni, had not yet returned from work and Ken was probably still in some nm-down bar. Roy had to work late so it was just the two of us. I heard her sobbing and woke. She was standing there, looking down at me.
"What is it, Beni?" I cried and sat up quickly.
"More trouble," she said. "More trouble I caused."
"You mean being in detention?"
She laughed through her tears.
"Hardly," she said. "I been in detention many times before this and Mama knew it?'
"Then what is it, Beni? Did you get into a fight?" I asked, thinking that if she had, she didn't do badly. There wasn't a scratch on her nor did her clothes look a bit rumpled.
She took a deep breath and held something out in her closed right hand. I looked closely and saw it was a photograph. She opened her fingers and I gasped.
It was a picture of her sprawled on her back, naked, her legs apart. She started to cry harder.
"They did do it?' she bawled. "What I was afraid they'd done at the party. See?"
"Oh Beni, throw it away. Tear it up and throw it away," I said unable to look at it.
"What good's that?" she said, even though she did rip it up.
"They've got more. They've got the negatives?' "Who gave it to you?"
"Carlton," she said with a bitter smile. "He claimed Jerad had it and gave it to him to give to me."
"Why?"
"They want two hundred and fifty dollars for the negatives. I have to bring it to the old mattress warehouse on Grover Street tomorrow night at eight or they swear they'll give out the pictures to everyone at school. I'm just going to die, Rain. I'm just never going back to school and Mama will hate me, have to run off like you did, only for real," she said.
"Don't talk like that, Beni," I said.
"What else am I going to do, huh? Mama's going to find out that I lied about the party. She'll want me to run away," she said.
I sat there, staring at her for a moment.
"We'll just have to get the money and see if they'll give us the negatives," I said.
"Where we going to get that much money?"
"How much do we have together?" I asked her.
"I have-twenty-two dollars put away in my drawer," she said.
"And I have fifty-seven saved in the old shoe box?' I threw all my change and extra money in it to save for Christmas presents.
"That isn't nearly enough."
I thought for a moment.
"I'll pawn my bracelet," I said. It was the most valuable thing I owned, a real gold bracelet with real diamond chips. Mama had scrimped and saved on things she needed herself just so she could buy it for me on my Sweet Sixteen. I practically never wore it for fear I might lose it.
"You would do that?" Beni asked, amazed. She always coveted it and envied me for having received something so valuable from Mama. Ken supposedly kicked in some money, but I always thought Mama had made that up.
"Mama will find out and then--"
"She won't know for a long time, Beni, and by then, this might all be over."
"What about after?" she asked.
"We'll buy it back," I said.
"How we going to get so much money if Mama won't let us work part-time?"
"We'll find a way."
"How?" she pursued.
"I don't know right this minute, Beni. We've got to deal with one problem at a time," I said sharply. She winced.
"Why do you care about helping me anyway? Look what I did to you today," she said.
"You're my sister, Beni. You'll always be my sister, blood or no blood?'
She nodded.
"I know," she said. "I tried to act as if you weren't my sister anymore, but it didn't work."
"We've shared too many laughs and tears in this room," I said.
She smiled.
"I really don't have any friend but you, Rain. I make believe I've got a whole lot of friends, but I don't have one like you."
We hugged.
"Let's get dinner going before Mama comes home;' I said and she jumped to help me for the first time in a long time.
I rose, got dressed and then went to my dresser drawer and looked at my precious bracelet. How proud and excited Mama was when she gave this to me, I thought. How beautiful it was and how beautiful it looked on my wrist. I recalled Roy saying I had the fingers and the wrist for precious stones. It was the best birthday of my life and gazing at the bracelet now brought back all those smiles and kisses. Mama could look so young when she was happy and she was never so happy as she was for me that day.
How could she be like that knowing I wasn't really her daughter? How could one small lady have so much love inside her? My real mother couldn't be half the person she was. How I wished it was all untrue. How I wished I was my adoptive mother's real daughter.
I put the bracelet back. I'd take it with me in the morning. Right after school, Beth and I would go to the pawn shop. I wasn't comfortable doing things like this behind Mama's back, but what was the
alternative? Beni was right: it would break Mama's fragile little heart to learn about this disgusting and terrible mess. Beth would be convinced that Mama would hate her forever. I had to help her.
I hoped I was doing the right thing. I hoped and prayed I wasn't just buying back my sister's love.
6
A Family Shattered
.
Roy didn't say anything about Beni's being in
detention and neither did I, of course. Fortunately, Mama was too tired when she got home from work to ask us much about our day at school. The trouble with Ken the night before had left her drained and she barely had enough energy to eat dinner. Ken came home after we'd finished eating and demanded to be served. Often, when he drank too much, he was belligerent, blaming us for his own failures. We had heard it so often we barely listened anymore. Even Mama behaved as if he wasn't there.
He babbled through his litany of complaints. "You're all a burden. None of you appreciate me. You should all be doin' more for me now. Roy shouldn't be thinkin' he's something special for
workin'. I had to work when I was only ten years old and I didn't resent my father. Latisha should stop naggin' me."
On and on he went, slipping into his diatribes about the government and race prejudice.
"Now that you know you got white blood," he told me with eyes of accusation, "you're probably going to pretend you don't know us:'
"I won't," I insisted.
"Believe me, Rain, you're going to lean on your white side more than your black. I bet deep down you're glad you got white blood."
"That's not true and I'll never deny Beni, Roy and Mama. Never," I vowed.
You I would deny, I thought, but I wouldn't say it.
He smiled with that irritating disdain I had learned to despise.
"We'll see," he said.
I warmed the food and served him, hoping a full stomach would quiet him down and put him to sleep early. I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable with him since he had revealed the truth about my origins and what he hoped to do. His eyes followed me about the kitchen, his gaze making me so nervous my fingers trembl
ed and I nearly dropped a dish. Roy had gone to his room right after Ken arrived. I knew he was brooding about everything and was especially furious at Ken. What Mama didn't need right now was a full-blown fight between the two of them. Roy was smart enough to realize that was exactly what would happen if he remained in Ken's presence.
I hated seeing father and son competing like two lions for the same territory, each needing to be recognized as master, circling each other, eying each other, ready to roar. Since Roy was bringing in the checks now and Ken was just wasting what little we had, Roy was seeing himself as more the head of the family and Ken knew it and resented it. With Beth's problem now, our little home was so full of tension, you could practically see it crackle like lightning in the air.
Beni was very anxious and afraid about tomorrow. She withdrew as soon as she could, not even wanting to watch any television. Mama fell asleep on the sofa while Ken finished his dinner. After I poured him a cup of coffee, he pushed back on the table and gazed up at me with his bloodshot eyes.
"I'm not sorry I let out the truth about you," he said. "Your Mama was the one who wanted it kept hid all these years."
"I wish I never knew," I said and began to clear away his dirty dishes.
"Yeah, well, you do and you should know you owe me. I took you in when your own folks didn't want nothin' to do with you," he said.
"You got paid well for doing it," I snapped back at him. It was like having a scab torn off a healing wound to have him remind me that I had been discarded, given away and forgotten.
"That wasn't enough. Now it's up to you. You're a grown up woman:'
"What do you want me to do?" I cried at him.
He shrugged.
"Nothin', except when you do get some work, be sure some of it goes to me. Payback. Both you girls oughta be workin'," he started again. "Help tide me over until I find something new. Maybe not Beni so much as you," he added, which just made me feel that much worse. "No one appreciates me," he chanted like some member of his own private cult.
I sucked back all the words that wanted to go flying off my tongue and finished cleaning up. Ken nearly fell asleep in his chair sipping his coffee and finally did get up and go to the living room. I heard him try to start a conversation with Mama and then give up. Less than a half hour later, he was fast asleep.
Beni lay in bed with her Walkman earphones over her head, her eyes closed. I knew she was trying to shut out the world. How often lately I felt like doing the same thing, but after a while, you have to open your eyes and take off the earphones. Reality wouldn't go away.
She jumped when I touched her hand.
"Sorry," I said.
She lifted the earphones and sat up.
"How are we going to get out tomorrow night, Rain? It's a school night. Mama won't let us go anywhere," she fired at me quickly; obviously she'd been brooding about the problem.
"I thought about that. You know how I hate lying to her, but in this case, I don't see any way out of it."
"So?"
"We'll pretend we have to study for math. It's exam time. You're going to work with Alicia Hanes and I'll be going to study with Lucy Adamson," I said. "We'll ask them to cover for us later if Mama should ask. She won't, I'm sure."
She nodded, surprised I had thought it out.
"I know how much you hate doing this kind of thing. I owe you big, Rain," she said.
"You don't owe me anything. We're sisters," I told her firmly.
She smiled.
"Yes," she said. "We're sisters."
Even so, my conscience was bothering me so much after I went to bed that I lay there feeling like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb. As soon as that clock struck seven and we got up, it would just explode. But maybe I was still the cockeyed optimist Roy accused me of being. I looked forward to going through the turmoil and freeing Beni from the chains of humiliation and scandal she had wrapped around herself. By this time tomorrow, I thought, it would all be over and we could get along with our lives. How I longed for that. It was funny how the life I thought was so terrible before looked so desirable now.
In the morning I planted the seeds for our story about the need to study in the evening. Roy didn't look like he had gotten much more sleep than Beni and me. He sat with his eyes half shut and didn't question anything I said. Mama looked a little skeptical about Beni wanting to study, but I explained how important the tests were and how it might make the difference between passing and failing the quarter. Every time I looked at Beni's face, I had to look away. Despite her experience at it, she was a poor liar. Her face was a window pane. Anyone could gaze into those eyes and see right past the untruth.
Ken never got up before we left for school, not that he would have cared about anything I had said. I couldn't recall a time he had ever asked any of us about our school work. Even when we were little and we would show him our pictures or stars on homework papers, he would glance with barely any interest, grunt and move on to something else.
On the way to school, I learned why Roy was so tired and why he'd had so much trouble falling asleep himself. When Beni pulled ahead to talk to Dede Wilson, Roy practically lunged to my side, taking my arm to slow me down.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Just a little tired," I said thinking he might suspect something now.
"I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. It was too fast and it wasn't fair to you. It bothered me all night thinking about it. I couldn't sleep much and you know how unusual that is for me," he added with a smile.
"I know." I smiled, too.
"I don't want you to hate me, Rain."
"I could never do that, Roy," I said growing serious. He nodded and then Beni fell back and he drifted away from us.
"Roy suspect something?" she asked.
"He looks upset. I'm so scared, Rain," she said.
"Me too," I admitted, which widened her eyes. "But we'll be fine," I told her.
It was just as hard for Beni at school as I expected it to be for me. Because she had come to my rescue the day before, her hot and cold weather friends were running ice water through their veins and shunned her as well. At lunch, she and I sat together for the first time in a long time. We could see Alicia and Nicole mocking us across the way, and I knew it bothered Beni so much she couldn't eat.
"You ought to think about what a friend really is supposed to be, Beni," I told her. "Those girls are just using you for their own amusement. The fact is they would do the same thing to each other that they're doing to you."
She nodded, but she didn't look convinced.
"I won't have any friends in school. The other girls don't like me," she said.
"They will when they see you're not with those nasty girls anymore," I assured her, but Beni didn't think that was much of a solution. To Beni, most of the other girls were boring or immature. Once you go speeding along recklessly and are excited by the adventure and the danger, it's hard to slow down and cruise with the careful, ordinary folks. Despite what had happened to her and how she had been abused, she couldn't help but be attracted to those who lived on the edge. I knew I should have felt happy my sister was spending so much time with me, but I couldn't help feeling sorry for her too. She had to make great changes in her style and her thinking and I was afraid she wasn't capable of it. What was even more frightening was I was afraid I couldn't really help her.
After school she and I went to the pawn shop. We knew of other kids who had gone there--many of them to fence stolen items. In fact, the short, balding, pasty looking man behind the counter gazed at us suspiciously when I produced the bracelet. He had skin that was dry and wrinkled, and dull, watery gray eyes that peered at us with vague disgust. The shop itself smelled rancid, like a room that had been flooded. The wooden floors looked damp, as if they were rotting, and there was enough dust to choke ten vacuum cleaners. The lighting was dim, maybe deliberately so because it made everything you put before him appear plain and worthless. He put on thick glasses and turn
ed the bracelet around in his short, fat fingers that were stained with nicotine at the tips.
"It's real gold," I said. "You can see where it's stamped 18 carat right on the snap."
He raised his light brown, bushy eyebrows, looked at the bracelet and put it down.
"Where'd you get it?" he asked moving only the right corner of his thick lips.
"It was a birthday present. My sixteenth," I added to impress him.
"I can give you a hundred and ...twenty-five." "Oh, we need more than that!" Beni exclaimed. "It ain't worth more to me," he said.
"I know it cost close to five hundred," I said, "and that was nearly a year ago."
He laughed. It was more of a grunt with a half smile, jerking his shoulders.
"If you paid that, you were robbed."
"It has real diamond chips on it!" Beni pointed out. "You have to give us more!"
He stopped smiling abruptly.
"I'll go one-fifty," he said, "but that's final."
Beni and I looked at each other, mentally adding our own funds. With the one-fifty, we had a total of two hundred and twenty-two dollars. I thought for a moment and then reached up and undid the clasp around my cross necklace.
"Can I get twenty-eight dollars for this?" I asked him putting the cross in his palm. He smirked, but turned it around in his fingers. "It's a real gold chain, too."
"Gold ain't worth what you think," he said. He sighed. "All right. I'll give you twenty-eight."
"Rain!" Beni said. "Mama's going to notice you don't have it."
"We'll get it back. This is supposed to be just a loan, right?" I asked him. "You won't sell it."
"Not right off, but most times, you people don't come back and I get stuck with this stuff," he said.
"We'll come back," I swore. I turned to Beni. "Afterward, I'll get Roy to loan me the twenty-eight."
"You'll need more for the interest," the pawnbroker said.
"How much more?"
"Depends how long it takes you to come back." _ "I'll be back fast," I vowed.
He shrugged and put everything in his counter. Then he opened his lock box and counted out the money. I recounted it to be sure and we left.