Almost Crimson (13 page)

TWENTY-TWO

GUT

 

 

“HI, BRIAN, THIS IS CECE Weathers. I got your message and wanted to let you know I talked with the agency that writes my renter's insurance. They'll be able to write the house policy, too. Thanks for the other number, though. I'll send a copy of the certificate once I get it.”

CeCe placed the cell phone on top of the spreadsheets on her desk. She hadn't gotten much work done after Kester popped into her office earlier and made her cry. Her office door was closed now and the hallway blinds drawn, both rare gestures in their office and universally respected as Do Not Disturb Unless You're Kester.

CeCe picked up her tea and cupped the mug with both hands. She rested the rim against her chin, letting the steam scale her face. CeCe loved the ritual of tea, selecting new flavors, steeping the water, breathing in the exotic aromas. Her old roommate, Terri, had converted her from coffee to tea.

Terri.

CeCe scanned her phone directory for Terri's number. They'd traded random texts from time to time, but hadn't had a long, leisurely conversation since Terri's birthday party earlier in the year. Terri had been busy with her new job as an art therapy instructor as well as planning for her own exhibit later in the year. Terri would always be CeCe's unofficial big sister, something she desperately needed right now.

She answered right away with her usual cheer. CeCe could hear the wind flicking at Terri's earphones. She had caught Terri on her daily walk.

“Call me back when you're done?” CeCe asked.

“No, sis, this is good. I thought about you the other day,” Terri said, her voice strained but steady. “What are you up to?”

“Having a cup of tea,” CeCe said, looking down into her mug. She listened to the rhythm in Terri's breathing.

“Really?” Terri said, her voice full of humor. “I just knew you would go back to coffee.”

“Nope. I'm hardcore, now,” CeCe said. “I even buy the expensive stuff.”

Terri laughed. “Your body thanks you.”

“And I thank you,” CeCe said.

“Again,” Terri said, a large truck rumbling by in the background, “what are you up to?”

“I'm moving out,” CeCe said.

“I thought you loved that place,” Terri said.

She was right. When CeCe had first moved into their apartment, Terri had been entertained to watch CeCe bask in a newfound independence. CeCe had been twenty-three, restless and dumbfounded by the reality of freedom.

“I did love the apartment. I mean, I do,” CeCe said. “I got a house this week.”

“A house? You bought a house?”

“No,” CeCe said, “Doris—remember Doris from the mall? She gave me her house in a kind of pre-bequeathing.”

“Get out of here!” Terri exclaimed, then CeCe heard her mumble an apologetic disclaimer to a passerby. “I guess that's great news and terrible news all at once. What's wrong with her?”

“Cancer,” CeCe said. She thought of Doris standing in front of the naked window then, filled with pride and illness. “Said she's done with treatments. Gonna spend the remaining year or two traveling.”

Terri was quiet. CeCe closed her eyes, knowing her friend was sending up a quick prayer.

Terri spoke again, “You feel guilty about the house? About Doris being sick?”

“Yes, I feel guilty about the house, but not so much because of Doris. She's working on one helluva bucket list. I'm grateful I was on it.”

“So . . . what's—” Terri caught herself. “Oh. Is this about your mother?”

“Yes.” CeCe's throat tightened again.

“She doesn't want to move . . . ?” Terri asked.

The sob snagged against CeCe's voice. “She doesn't know about the move yet.”

Terri was quiet while CeCe gurgled and gabbed. Finally, she said, “Let's do logistics, then we'll get to the real stuff, OK?”

CeCe consented and sniffled.

“Can she afford the rent on her own?”

“Yes,” CeCe said. “The trust will sunset in about three years, but she's also been getting SSI payments and back military pay of my father's. Of course, I'll continue to help her.”

“OK. What about living on her own?” Terri asked. “Is it safe for her to be by herself?”

CeCe thought of her mother in their living room, sitting in the recliner. This evolved version of her mother consumed news, spoke a fistful of sentences every day, and ventured out by city transit to the Stringer Center each week to attend her activity group. CeCe hadn't allowed herself to marvel at this reincarnation in quite some time.

“She's safe,” CeCe said.

Terri asked CeCe to hold on. CeCe listened to bursts of hard breath as Terri sprinted the last block of her workout.

“OK,” Terri said, heaving her words now, “so you're not worried about leaving your mother in the apartment; you feel guilty. Is that right?”

CeCe turned her chair away from her office door and window, as if the fresh stream of tears might be detectable through the blinds. “I know I'm not wrong, but I feel wrong,” CeCe said into the cell phone. “I want a regular life for myself, and I feel like the worst human alive for it.”

“And, if she moves with you?” Terri prompted.

“It would be more of the same, with more space,” CeCe said. “It wouldn't be awful. I mean, at this point, it's all we know.”

Terri's breathing fell easy now. CeCe could tell she was still outdoors, maybe on the front steps of her new high-rise apartment building. Or maybe Terri had already made it up to her apartment and was standing out on the balcony. CeCe had sat near its sliding doors the night of Terri's birthday party. “Is this what you want,” Terri said, “or what you think you're supposed to want?”

CeCe thought for a moment. “Both.”

“When you visualize yourself in the house, do you imagine yourself alone or with your mother there?”

“Alone, but—,” CeCe said, hesitating, “I kinda know Mama is there, somehow. Like she's always in another room.”

Terri was quiet a moment before she spoke. “Sis, I don't think guilt is what has you stuck. I think it's fear. Pure, intense, and unadulterated fear.”

CeCe stopped flipping the paperclip on her desk. She looked at it, pinned between her fingers, as if it were as foreign as the suggestion Terri had made. CeCe couldn't list many things she'd ever been afraid of. Uneasy? Uncomfortable? Uncertain? Absolutely. All the time. But fear? She'd never had the luxury of being afraid. CeCe'd had to be brave and make complicated decisions for both of them her whole life. The threat of being ferreted away by social workers had made her afraid until she figured out how to answer their questions. CeCe hadn't been afraid of much since.

“Think about it,” Terri continued. “Your mother isn't the only one who's been shaped by this life you've shared. When you first moved in, with all your lists and notes and routines, you lived like someone who'd just gotten out of military school. And you were so awkward, bless your heart.”

CeCe laughed with Terri, remembering their apartment's steady stream of artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and grad students whose personalities spanned the spectrum of “eccentric.” After hiding in her room during the first few months, not wanting to infect Terri's frequent gatherings with her inexperience, CeCe realized no one was interested in her broken pieces. They all had their own. All of them. CeCe had been grateful to test her social wings with Terri's circle of brilliant misfits.

“Awkward doesn't make me scared,” CeCe said.

“Girl, ain't nothing wrong with being scared,” Terri said. “You're talking about untangling a lifelong codependency. With your mother. Not a small feat.”

CeCe was quiet. She wasn't crying anymore. The imagery of their lives in a tangle resonated with her. Codependency? Until now, CeCe had seen herself as the straight rod with her mother's frailties winding themselves around her. It hadn't occurred to her that they could entangle each other. Codependency. The term felt vast in her head, full of echoes. How could she be dependent when she had always been the same? Their address changed, the severity of her mother's depression changed, the presence of family changed, but CeCe had remained the same. Methodical, reliable, resourceful, and furious. Their life had kept CeCe consistently the same.

CeCe couldn't imagine herself any differently. Trudging through life had prepared her to build the humble life before her. Her logistical mindset had made her invaluable to Kester's firm, had siphoned a modest pot of “rainy day” funds from their trust. Her rigid reasoning had also kept her distant from new people, second-guessing their friendliness or affections. Mostly, CeCe's thoughts were always on cooking the next meal, scheduling the next appointment, researching the next pharmaceutical trial, or cushioning them for the next time her mother might implode.

As a kid, CeCe had always been told being a grown-up meant she could do whatever she wanted, all the time. Not really, she discovered. Grown-ups had more options, but couldn't choose most of them. It was only as an adult that CeCe could smooth the edges of her resentment. Most of her mother's life options had been chosen for her by death, war, and injustice. Even her mother's mental illness had been a life defense chosen by genetics, CeCe knew.

How could her own life be different, CeCe wondered again. She hadn't known anything else. Maybe she wasn't meant to be anything else. She laid the paper clip on the desk. What if she wasn't meant to be free?

“You still with me?” Terri said. Her voice wasn't surrounded by the sounds of outside anymore.

CeCe blew out a breath. “Yeah, I'm here,” she said. “I was just thinking you might be right. I don't know anything but this, and I don't know what that means. What it says about me.”

“Says a lot,” Terri said. “There were a half-dozen people who wanted to move in to that apartment when I left, but you chose Carla.”

“She was—”

“I know,” Terri said, cutting off CeCe's explanation. “The old apartment was going downhill and you wanted her safe. I know. Again, I'm not judging. I'm just saying. You used to roll your eyes, grumble about the errands you had to run for her, but never missed a Sunday going to sit with her. I think you were relieved to move her in back then, for your sake as much as hers.”

CeCe groaned, falling onto her forearm. Her voice sounded trapped in tunnel when she spoke. “Oh my God,” CeCe moaned. “I am a walking tragedy.”

Terri laughed. “Join the club,” she said. “Good news is, you get to decide what that looks like from this point forward. Let go of the notion that you can make a wrong decision. You can't. I keep telling you, follow your gut. It won't steer you wrong.”

TWENTY-THREE

BOOBIES

 

 

CECE SLID A HAND DOWN her dress, working her fingers until she'd gathered a small clutch of fabric on either side of her hips. The stockings were crawling away from her waist again. More accurately, away from the new threat of her butt.

Cousin Coretta told her she should be glad to grow a booty. “It's beautiful, powerful, and dangerous, all at the same time,” Coretta had said, laughing. “You'll see.”

All CeCe could tell about her new curves was that they caused problems. First, it was the tight fit of her favorite jeans. Then there was the anonymous pinch at the bus stop. Now, at the end of the school year, CeCe had to buy ladies' nylons for the completion ceremony instead of girls' tights.

In addition to her physical reshaping, CeCe experienced shades of change all around her that year: Pam took her to get her ears pierced for her birthday; she started painting her fingernails and toes; her mother had her order them a television set; her father's letters came from Detroit instead of San Francisco; the new neighbors in their apartment building were louder, rougher, and younger; Dr. Harper kept monthly appointments for her now; and she received weekly phone calls from her family in Decatur, which CeCe regarded as call-ins from heaven.

At school, CeCe had to share her library assistant job. She was hurt, at first, until Mrs. Anderson explained that CeCe would help train the new assistant before leaving for middle school.

“Like a boss?” CeCe asked.

“Well, I'm still the boss,” Mrs. Anderson had said, smiling, “but you're like my manager. So, think of everything you've learned to make you such a good library assistant.”

CeCe's smile was broad. “I should write it down?”

“That would be fantastic.”

 

CeCe had looked forward to their completion ceremony for weeks. She hadn't felt this good in school since her kindergarten year, and she was excited to stand in front of the auditorium and be handed her certificate and applause from the attending crowd. Plus, she got to dress up. Her dress had arrived in the mail with a note card tucked inside that read: “Special dress, special occasion, very special young lady! Congratulations. Love, Rosie, Coretta, and Family.”

Family.
CeCe liked the way this word felt in her head.

CeCe gave the hosiery another fierce tug, panning the small orchestral room to make sure the other students weren't watching her behind the piano.

“Bathroom,” a voice whispered, startling CeCe. Before she could turn to see who it was, Michelle had hooked her arm and begun pulling her toward the door.

“Dang, Michelle,” CeCe said, stumbling to keep her balance. “You gonna make me run my stockings.”

“Come on,” Michelle said, steering CeCe from the their chattering classmates, through the hallway, and into the girls' room. Michelle was swift, CeCe realized, even though she'd gained quite a bit of weight. Her twin, Michael, was still slim and promising to have an athletic build. Some girls even thought he was cute, but CeCe and Michelle only saw the saucer-eared boy obsessed with Matchbox cars.

Michelle bolted straight for one of the stalls once they reached the bathroom. CeCe watched the door rattle as Michelle locked it from the inside. She stared at the closed door for a moment, wondering why Michelle had pulled her into the bathroom instead of one of her closer friends, Marissa or Bethanne. CeCe turned to the mirror to check her hair. She'd styled it in a half-mushroom, with one side pulled up in with a sparkly hair comb. She'd slept in hard curlers and everything, just the way cousin Coretta had taught her during Easter vacation. CeCe turned on the faucet and ran water over the tips of her fingers, which she smoothed against the edges of her hairline.

She stepped back, admiring her work for the day—the hair, the dress, the lip gloss, the pantyhose—when she heard a muffled whimper coming from Michelle's stall.

“Michelle?” CeCe said, turning to walk toward the stall. “You OK?”

More whimpers.

“Open the door,” CeCe said. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Michelle cry. Their friendship had ranged from hues of fierce to convenient since kindergarten, but it was always an honest alliance. Considering their bonding moment was the horror of watching their mothers get into a catfight in front of their school, they had no choice but to have each other's back.

“Open the door,” CeCe said again, giving the metal door a push. She could hear Michelle moving and shuffling inside the stall. When the door opened, Michelle stepped out and CeCe stepped aside, looking at her friend's stricken face.

Michelle took long, slow steps to the sink and began to wash her hands. CeCe was used to her dramatic flair and, for a moment, prepared for a wail about chipped nails or someone looking at her funny. As Michelle dabbed at her face, CeCe calculated how long they'd been away from the orchestra room and whether they might be missing the processional lineup.

When Michelle crumbled into fresh torrent of tears, CeCe forgot the ceremony march. Michelle sank the heels of her wet hands into her eyes and turned to face CeCe.

“Michelle, you're scaring me now,” CeCe said. “What's wrong?”

CeCe placed her hands on her friend's shoulders and waited. She'd seen teachers do this in the hallways many times. It always seemed to make the students stop crying.

“What's going on?” CeCe repeated to the back of Michelle's hands. Right before CeCe's patience expired, Michelle lowered her hands and began to speak.

“I want to die, CeCe,” Michelle said, her voice was thin and her lips hardly moved.

“What are you talking about?” CeCe said, grabbing her chin. “Don't say that.”

“But I do,” Michelle said, unshaken by CeCe's bark. Her gaze stretched far from them in that bathroom, the same way Mrs. Castellanos' did before moving to the hospice last year. CeCe knew these were not theatrics.

“You can't die,” CeCe said, folding her arms across her chest. She didn't know what else to say. In the after-school movies, the friend always offered the perfect uplifting speech. CeCe had nothing else.

“You can't die,” she said again, even more gently.

“Yes, I—,” Michelle began, melting into more warm tears. “You can't tell anybody, CeCe.”

“OK,” CeCe said.

Michelle took a deep breath, looking toward the ceiling, and then down to her shoes.

“Papa,” Michelle said to the tops of her black wedge pumps. “He comes in my room.”

CeCe thought how pretty they looked today, Michelle wearing a turquoise-and-navy panel dress and CeCe in the soft gray dress with its thin pink vinyl belt. Everyone looked so grown up tonight.

“When?” CeCe said, more like a rush of air than a word. “Did he hurt you? Did he—?”

So grown up.

“Last summer was the first time,” Michelle said, alternating her attention from her shoes to the turquoise fabric pinched between her fingers to CeCe's eyes and back to her shoes. “I woke up and he was rubbing on my chest. It felt . . . it felt nice. So I fell back to sleep.”

CeCe crinkled her nose.

“When your boobies come in all the way, you'll see,” Michelle said. “They'll be sore and stuff. I thought he was helping 'em not hurt so much. He came in my room all the time after that. My boobs stopped hurting and grew really fast.”

CeCe nodded, trying not to look at the heaping bosom Michelle had now.

“Did you tell your mother?”

“No,” Michelle said, her eyes starting to swell again. “Papa said it would hurt her feelings that she hadn't figured out how to stop me from being sore.”

The bathroom door opened, breaching Michelle's confessional with the girlish giggles of two classmates. CeCe grabbed Michelle's hand and led her friend into the open hallway, down a short corridor and inside a stairwell.

Seated on the hard stairs, Michelle told CeCe how her father kept coming into her room at night to reach under her covers and under her nightgown to rub her breasts. By Halloween, Michelle said her breasts weren't swollen anymore and she told her father she was OK.

“He didn't stop?” CeCe asked.

“He stopped rubbing my boobs,” Michelle said, shrugging one shoulder and looking down to her shoes again. “He told me to lift my gown and breathe slow, like a music bar.”

Michelle demonstrated four staccato intakes of breath, and one slow four-count to exhale. CeCe knew Michelle loved to sing. She tried to understand her friend doing vocal warm-ups in bed with her nightgown lifted.

“He had his finger in me,” Michelle said. “He would move it in and out when I breathed.”

Michelle told CeCe how her father's visits escalated from his finger to his cock. He promised Michelle it would only hurt the first time but would help his aches go away, like he'd done for her. For two days after that first time, Michelle said, she felt like she'd fallen on the cross bar of Michael's bike. Her father rubbed baby oil on her bottom for the next few nights, holding her and singing to her like a preschooler again. She thought it was over, until he maneuvered her onto his lap in the middle of a lullaby one night. Michelle said he came into her room almost every night after that.

“I made Michael sleep in my room every night during Christmas break,” she said.

“Did you tell him?” CeCe asked, her face wide with surprise.

Michelle nodded. “He didn't believe me at first, but when he saw Papa peeking in at night, he did.”

“Were you scared?” CeCe asked, feeling herself tremble in the cold stairway with these chilling secrets swirling around them.

“We both were,” she said. “Remember that
Amelia
movie they made us watch last year, the one with the guy from
Cheers
and he went to prison? CeCe, I don't want my Papa to go to prison. I knew he would stop one day . . . ”

Michelle's voice trailed off. Her arms were folded across her knees and she dropped her head onto them. She cried again. CeCe's eyes welled, too.

“He didn't stop, CeCe!” Michelle wailed. “He didn't stop! I hate him! I hate him! He didn't stop!”

Michelle's cries had turned beastly and CeCe began to tremble.

“He even made me sit in his lap today,” Michelle whispered hoarsely, once her sobs were under control. “Mama took Michael to get a new pair of shoes and we were alone. He made me do it in the daytime, CeCe. I still have creamy stuff coming out of me. I hate him, but if he goes to prison, my mother and my brother will hate me back. That's why I want to die.”

CeCe had tears rolling down her face now. She felt desperate, scared, and helpless. She didn't want breasts anymore, either.

“You can't die, Michelle,” CeCe said, sniffling. “I'll go with you to tell somebody. You gotta tell somebody.”

Michelle swung her head back and forth while tears poured down her round cheeks.

“We have to,” CeCe said, hearing how she'd included herself in the solution. “That's what the counselor said to do after the movie. It's not your fault and you gotta tell if you want it to stop.”

Michelle was quiet, head on her arms. Knees and ankles tucked tight.

“You want it to stop, right?” CeCe asked.

Michelle's head bolted up, her brown eyes ignited with rage. She leaned in dangerously close to CeCe's face and exploded, “You think I
like
having my own daddy put his nasty dick inside me?”

Neither of the girls heard the footsteps coming up the stairs. Mr. Markeweiz, the social studies teacher, stood frozen on the landing behind them. Only CeCe turned to face him. Michelle buried her face and cried out again. Stuttering, Mr. Markeweiz explained the class was lining up and he had been sent to look for them.

“CeCe,” he said, “why don't you head to the office and wait for me there. I'll let your mother know where you are.”

“She's not here,” CeCe said, remembering her own home woes. Worse, Mr. Markeweiz gave CeCe an “of course not” nod. CeCe had Mr. Markeweiz for social studies. He was corny but nice and seemed to own corduroy pants in a hundred different colors. He wore the forest green pair tonight.

“Can I stay with Michelle?” she asked.

“That's up to Michelle,” Mr. Markeweiz said, turning his soft eyes to Michelle. “I've got to be upfront with you, Michelle. I have to go and pull your parents out of that auditorium.”

Michelle's face contracted into a painful wince. “No!” she screamed. “They'll put Papa in jail!”

Mr. Markeweiz's face went ashen. He smoothed his hands over the pockets of his corduroys and CeCe could tell he was uncomfortable. A strand from his comb-over fell onto his forehead as he looked from CeCe and then back to Michelle.

“Honey,” he said, leaning on the stair railing, “I am so, so sorry for what has happened to you. You're a smart, talented young lady and you don't deserve this. But I'm sorry; if I don't report this, then I'm committing a crime, too.”

For the rest of their graduation night, CeCe, Michelle, and Michelle's mother and Mr. Markeweiz were in the office talking to Mrs. Patterson, the guidance counselor. Michelle's father had been left inside the gym to watch her twin brother, Michael, accept his lapel pin. He'd been told Michelle was having awful cramps and asking for her mother.