Ada Unraveled (9 page)

When…his grandpa Jake just showed up! Told
him to get in his truck. Said it wasn’t safe, that the fires were
moving fast. Drove him away. Took him to the long crooked house he
remembered from his early years.

His grandmother was ancient! And his
aunts…they were old, too. Maybe in their fifties and sixties. It
made him sad. But then they fed him. Told him about their bakery.
They seemed happy. Full of joy. At first.

Now Eddie stood outside, glorying in the
feel of wind on his skin. Standing beside the small outbuilding
that Luke was so afraid of. Something about snakes. It had been
decades since he’d been outside. It frightened him. It thrilled
him.

Around him, the winds were blowing with a
mix of emotions as great as his own, twisting his long hair about
his head, taking his mind with his matted hair. He was alive! He’d
been discovered. He would get help now.

Eddie was taking refuge from the people he’d
dreamt so long about being with. He found their presence
overwhelming. Needed to be alone. To watch from afar for a few
restful moments. Besides, they’d started arguing.

Eddie tried to block out the shouted
emotions coming from the long, disjointed house. Beyond the house,
to the east, he could see the fires approaching in the distance, a
long band of orange and blood-red on the horizon—looking like a
spreading wound ripping open the uneasy seam between land and sky.
Earth and heaven.

And between the howling gusts, angry voices
flew like hawk cries--carrying only snatches of meaning.

“
How long have they…down there? How
long…known…horror?”
It was the big woman, one of his many
aunts. Her voice carried well.

Before, inside the kitchen, the littlest
aunt with sad eyes had told him she’d thought he’d died long ago.
She said they’d even had a funeral.

No wonder no one ever came looking for
him.

“And where is Luke? Are you still helping
him hide…you always knew...?”

The words made him look around nervously,
suddenly afraid the madman was out there behind him in the crazy
dark. He shook his head, trying once more to clear his thoughts.
Eddie was fighting the drugs by hiding the horse pills under his
tongue. But a couple of times he’d been made to swallow.

Suddenly his grandfather ran out the back
door. A wiry, skinny, ancient man, he turned to yell back at the
furious women,
“She lived just up the street…to see her so
badly, why didn’t you? She been missing for three months!”

Eddie watched him as he went around the side
of the house and disappeared into the darkness. Then he surprised
himself by deciding to follow, carefully stepping across the dry
grasses. But it only took a few feet down the narrow path for his
legs to start hurting.

He stopped, letting a sadness reclaim him.
There was no point denying it. He was old and frail, not as old and
frail as his grandfather, but in some ways…. ¸

His breath came hard and shallow along with
his disappointment.

He couldn’t even keep up with a guy twice
his age.

The winds screamed around him as if they
were being chased by something even greater and he leaned against
some boulders, waiting for his heart to stop fluttering. He slid
down the hot stones. He would rest a moment. He would….

Something moved nearby him, also going
down.

Maybe it was just the wind tickling the
chaparral--wind and shadows toying with the light flowing over the
hill from the long disjointed house. He wedged deeper between the
rocks, half-hiding, half-dreaming in the sultry stupor he’d
suffered from for years.

Since…since….

A memory flitted into his brain. Of a time,
just before his sixteenth birthday. He was sneaking back home late
at night. He’d been in the fields, with Vera.

Beautiful red-headed Vera.

A teenager all caught up in his
testosterone.

He’d thought they were asleep. He’d thought
his parents had passed out in their bed from another hard day’s
drinking. So he’d quietly snuck upstairs and fallen asleep on his
bed, dreaming sexy dreams of sexy Vera.

He’d awakened in the basement, barely able
to comprehend, barely able to separate real from unreal. Barely
awake, barely moving, and then they’d put him under again with
another needle in his arm. His mother and father.

So long ago.

The old man suddenly returned, making
mewling sounds of fear, grabbing at his leg, his face screwed up as
if in terrible pain. What should he do? Should he get the
others?

But then the shadowy presence he’d sensed
before moved back up toward the house. So he knew. He knew--he
would do nothing. Just like always.

He would hide and wait for the terror to
pass.

He pushed back against the hard stones,
willing them to take him in, begging them to make him as implacable
as they were.

His tears evaporated in the parching air,
benefiting nothing, as his grandfather suffered his death.

He wouldn’t tell them what he saw.

Andrea stood and took off her jacket. She
turned and draped it over the back of her chair. I stared, open
mouthed again. The tortured skin on her breastbone had not been a
birth mark! It was some kind of tattoo, a raised tattoo…in the
shape of a cross. No, it was a full blown
Catholic crucifixion,
complete with suffering Christ!
And I knew this because now I
could see three more tats on her thin body. On her right shoulder
was a raised tattoo of the Hebrew Star of David. On her left
shoulder was an elevated tattoo of a happy Buddha. And on her back
was an engorged tattoo of the Islamic star and crescent.

How the blazes was that done? How did you
raise
a tattoo?

So did this mean that Andrea was a religious
zealot? I was thinking not. A religious zealot would pick just one
religion to zeal about. These body art icons, or this tissue
torture, was a political statement of some kind.

The three just revealed tats looked new, not
just fresh new, but angry new, bruised, reddened,
infected
.
I glanced at the faces of the other women. Yes, they were new. The
other women were as shocked as I was.

Andrea did a model’s turn so we could take
them all in again.

“What are you thinking Andrea?” It was
Elixchel.

Finally, grinning from ear to ear, Andrea
pulled herself up as tall as her little body would allow and said,
“So, what do you think of my latest, girls?”

She was no longer a petite and feisty—even
edgy--Peter Pan, she was a warrior elf with pink and purple spiked
red hair and painful-looking scars.

I realized I was smiling and forced myself
to stop. Part of me had to like her. She didn’t give a hoot what
anyone thought.

Part of me was afraid for her.

Ruth snapped at her angrily, accusing her of
ruining her body in the name of political art—spitting out the
phrase as if it were a deadly poison. Hannah defended Andrea’s need
for emotional space, to be more present in her own thoughts about
religion.

Gerry worried her infections would worsen if
she didn’t use antiseptics. And Elixchel cautioned that we
shouldn’t speak about politics, religion or sex at our bees lest we
offend someone.

Throughout, Andrea sprinkled swear words.
They flowed from her mouth naturally. I could see and feel the
anger from the others at each nasty word.

Victoria stayed silent—I wasn’t even sure
she was hearing us. If her fingers weren’t steadily laying down
stitches I might have believed she’d died an hour ago.

“Okay, now that you’re awake, how about I
share my secret?”

Still standing, Andrea began. “This is
mostly for you, Rachel, ‘cause the others have already heard my
complaints about my childhood. My mom is a dorky doe and my dad’s a
bullheaded ram. And together they made dumb sheep. That sums us up
completely. Except that I’m the black sheep. I’m not what they
wanted. And my not so secret secret is that my dad and I fought all
the time. We were too much alike. Redheads. He was a blue collar
guy, still clinging to his religion. My mom was always making
excuses by labeling me a tomboy. Nice try, but not even close. I’m
a lesbian.

“I was already living with Victoria when my
dad had his first heart attack. When my mom called me, when he had
the second one, I went into the hospital to talk…you know, just to
try to straighten….”

She buried her face in her hands and stayed
that way for several minutes. When she looked up again her pale
complexion was blotchy with emotion.

“Well, it was too late. He never regained
consciousness. There wasn’t really anything more for us to say to
each other, anyway.” Andrea’s fingers toyed with the needle and
thread stuck in the quilt in front of her.

“I just wanted…to, you know, let him
know….”

She got up and walked into the hall and
disappeared. It was many moments before she returned.

I bowed my head to my sewing, feeling badly
for her. She was really hurting. And now that her dad was gone,
there was no way for her to make peace with him.

My thoughts wandered out the door again,
this time revisiting a trip to my grandchildren. I wished I was
seeing them again tomorrow.

I wished I could go home to bed.

The wall clock chimed again--the whole batty
tune and three solitary Big Ben chimes. Three o’clock. Good grief!
Why was I doing this
sew-all-night-long
thing? It was
horrible. My hands were burning and cramping. My stomach was
churning out gallons of acid—which chewing three extra strength
antacids hadn’t helped. My neck had long ago solidified into a
pillar of pain
. And my eyes were crisping from overexposure
to 900-megawatt florescent light.

Finally Victoria called for a break.

The sweet smell of reheated pie was
triggering my gag reflex, so seeking distraction I volunteered to
wash the dishes. Gerry assisted me by drying. The others stood and
leaned in various poses of weariness around the kitchen, sipping
and munching.

Suddenly Gerry asked about something I had
casually mentioned hours ago, prompted by her revelation that her
brother was a Sheriff’s deputy. I had told her that Matt and I had
been contacted by someone asking us to revisit the circumstances
around a notorious mass murder case in her brother’s
jurisdiction.

“So someone called you about the Albanes
murders after all these years? That was in nineteen eighty-nine,
wasn’t it?”

“Come to think of it, that happened right
around here, didn’t it?” Elixchel said, overhearing. It wasn’t
hard. We were only a few feet apart.

“Albanes?” Abigail asked.

Victoria headed for the dining room table
with Andrea in tow, carrying her dishes for her, doing penance for
her anger.

Gerry said, “Yes. That happened in Julian--a
terrible tragedy. They never caught the men who did it.”

“Men?” I prompted.

“Wait, who are the Albanes?” Abigail.

Geraldine briefly explained. “The Albanes
family was murdered near here, killed in the middle of the night.
There was some talk about the way the murders were done, that there
must have been more than one assailant. But I’m interested in who
called you, Rachel.”

“Men,” Ruth murmured from across the
kitchen, then sipped her tea. Over the rim of her cup, her eyes
were staring off into another world. “Voice boxes were cored out.
Women were abused.”

Hannah gaped at her mother’s gruesome
description, and suddenly all eyes were on Ruth again. I made a
mental note to tell Matt to contact Ruth. I don’t know where she
got her information from, but the details could help with his
research. Maybe with artful questioning he could knock something
else loose.

“So what, they bled to death?” Abigail
asked.

“Actually I’d heard they had their throats
slashed,” Andrea said sprightly, returning from the dining room.
Where’d you get that their voice boxes were cut out, Ruth?”

But Ruth wasn’t answering anymore. She’d
turned slowly and was drifting away to join Victoria.

“Cored. Strange use of words,” I muttered.
Definitely no more apple pie for me.

Gerry asked, “So who called?”

All eyes were on me, but that was privileged
information, so I just shrugged and shook my head.

“The newspapers didn’t say anything about
voice boxes. Ruth must be doing one of her psychic things again.”
Andrea said, wiggling her fingers by her ears. “Your mother is
truly weird, Hannah. Truly.”

Hannah raised her brows and looked askance
at Andrea. I could suddenly read her mind. She was thinking…you
think my mom is weird?

But the talk didn’t return to the Albanes
and their strange deaths. Not this night, not this month.

We were back at the quilting rack, now mired
in an indolent mood. Lazy, slothful. Until Abigail told Ruth it was
her time to share a secret.

“Oh good! We’re gonna’ hear about Baby
Ruth!” chirped Andrea. “What d’ya think, Elixchel? Shall we change
her name to Baby Ruth? Or Babe Ruth. She had to have been a babe
back in the day, doncha’ think, El-shell?”

Elixchel loudly sighed, her exasperation
over Andrea’s teasing spilling over. Ruth out did them both.

“My guts are going bad.”

“Mom.” Hannah.

“No, you have to share something from your
childhood,” Abigail said. “But talk to me later about your guts.
Dr. Abigail cures all,” she said with an impish grin. Definitely
spending too much time at home with her nurse mom.

“No I don’t have to share. And besides I
can’t remember that far back.”

But she did. Ruth proceeded to tell a story
of how she was almost hung by a neighborhood gang when she was
three, because she wouldn’t stop jabbering.

“Not a gang like the gangs of New York, a
gang like
Our Gang
. Just kids who lived on the same street.
Victoria always talked for me when I was little. She was my second
mother. It delayed my speech. Then one day I began talking a blue
streak and ever since then I’ve been in trouble.”