The Bridge (28 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: The Bridge
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She was tired of the secrets and lies that, for years, had helped her to maintain her sanity. She was tired of pretending that the truth didn't exist.
“Are you all right?” Wilson asked.
Daneen nodded.
“Do you want a lawyer?”
“I ain't do nothin', so what I need a lawyer for?”
“I don't know,” Wilson said. “But I do need to know why you won't tell me the truth.”
Daneen breathed in deep, steeling herself for what she was about to do.
“I guess it been so long since I took the truth out and looked at it, I don't even know what it look like no more. I just know it hurt.”
“What's so painful about the truth, Daneen?”
“Same thing that's painful about it for everybody else,” she said. “Truth don't dress up. It just stand there smilin' through them raggedy-ass teeth, lookin' at you like you crazy for callin' it ugly.”
Daneen began to play with her hands, nervously pulling her fingers out of the sockets and causing her knuckles to crack.
“Truth was when my mom died and we had to come up in Judy house with nobody to look out for us. I guess that's what made me and Darnell so close. It's what made us look out for each other. See, if I was around, couldn't nobody mess with my big brother. Not even Judy. I remember the first time she tried to give him a spankin'
for stickin' his hand in a socket. I stepped in the middle, little as I was, like I was gon' do somethin' about it.”
Daneen smiled. “She whupped us both that day.”
“But it wasn't all pain. It was plenty o' days when me and Darnell had all the fun in the world. We would push each other on the one Big Wheel we had between us. We would race up and down the sidewalks with our shoes off. We would hide in the closet and act like we was campin' out in the woods somewhere. When I got my first little boyfriend—I guess I musta been about nine—I kissed Darnell to see if I knew how to do it right.
“I guess it was around that time shit started gettin' ugly. Sonny was around—had been around for a while, to tell you the truth. And so was a lot o' his boys. Uncle this and Mister that. I don't remember half they names. I just remember a lot of 'em used to be drunk all the time. They would come in and sit around, lookin' at me, and lookin' at Judy. I think I even caught a couple of 'em lookin' at Darnell. Course none o' that mattered to Judy. She just wanted Sonny to keep bringin' home money. And that's what he did. He brought home money. But it's always a cost to that, ain't it? Like Judy used to tell me, ain't nothin' in this world free.
“Sonny cost us. Not that he was all that bad. He wasn't. It's just that it felt like, once he came around, we was left to raise ourselves. After while, I started runnin' away to get Judy attention. But all that did was make it worse.
“I still remember the last time I ran away,” Daneen said, breathing heavily. “I ended up down the basement, hidin' and tryin' to figure out where I was gon' go next. It was dark down there, and hot. Plus I thought I heard rats scurryin'. I started cryin' cause I was scared, and then I started runnin' toward the door.
“Somebody grabbed me. I tried to scream, but he put his hand over my mouth. Then he tripped me and threw me down on the floor. He pulled my shorts and my panties down, and then …”
The tears began to run down Daneen's face.
“I was nine years old,” she said. “Same as Kenya is now. I came home all bloody, with my elbows all scraped from tryin' to fight my way off that cement floor. I told Judy what happened.”
Daneen's voice caught in her throat. Wilson reached out and held her hand. When Daneen finally gathered herself, she continued.
“She ain't take me to the hospital or to the cops or nothin' like that. She just said, 'That's what your dumb ass get. I bet you won't run away no more.'
“That's when I knew I hated Judy,” Daneen said. “But she ain't the only one I hated. I hated that guy who raped me, too. And even if I couldn't see his face in the dark, I knew one thing. I was gon' find out who he was, and his ass was gon' pay for what he did to me.”
“Did you ever find out?” Wilson asked.
“Yeah, I found out,” Daneen said. “But it wasn't 'til eight years later.”
Daneen paused.
“That's when he raped me again,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Nine months after that, I had Kenya.”
 
 
 
Bayot was afraid. Being in a police station for the first time in his life made him feel like he'd done something wrong.
The two white detectives stood over him, staring down as he thumbed through the book of mug shots they'd had shipped down from Central detectives.
“You see him yet?” the blond-haired detective asked.
“I ain't sure,” Bayot said.
“Not sure, huh?” the detective said, jabbing his partner with his elbow. “I'm starting to think it was you in that elevator with her.”
“What you mean?” Bayot said, looking up at him with a terrified expression.
His brown-haired partner, smelling blood in the water, chimed in.
“What were you doing on the stairway looking at a little girl on the elevator? What are you, some kind o' child molester or something?”
“What's mo-les-ter?” Bayot asked, struggling to pronounce the word.
“Oh, we got us a slow one here,” the blond detective said to his partner.
Both detectives laughed. It was a harsh, humorless sound. It was meant to intimidate. And it accomplished its purpose.
“Tell you what, Mister Learning Disabled,” the blond said. “Why don't you do us a favor and take another look at the book.”
“I don't wanna look at it no more,” Bayot said, folding his arms and pouting like a little boy. “I wanna go home.”
“Well, that's just too bad. You're not leaving here until you tell us who you saw with that girl. That's if you saw anybody at all, because I think you're lying.”
“No I'm not,” Bayot said. “I ain't lyin'. I seen him. He be up in Judy house. I know him, too, 'cause he always be tryin' to act like my friend when I see him up there.”
“Well, if you're not lying,” the brown-haired detective said, “then why don't you show him to us in the book?”
Bayot looked from one detective to the other, then reached for the book and flipped quickly through the pages. He was sure that he would spot the man he'd seen. But then he flipped the last page, and there was nothing.
“Lemme look at it again,” Bayot said.
“Go ahead, we've got all night.”
Bayot went back through the book again, more slowly this time, and when he got to the page where Sonny was pictured, the blond-haired detective placed his hand on the book.
“I want you to look at this page very closely,” he said. “There's
two pictures there, and I think one of them might be the man you saw.”
Bayot stared up at the detective, searching his eyes for approval, then looked at his partner, who nodded to indicate that he wanted Bayot to take another look.
He buried his nose in the page for a moment, then sat up and pointed to the man on the left.
“Are you sure that's him?” the brown-haired detective asked. “Because it would be okay if you weren't sure.”
Bayot looked up at him, confused.
“You're not sure, are you?” his partner asked. “What about the other one? Do you think it could be the other one?”
Bayot looked at the opposite page, and moved his finger until it was pointing to the man pictured there. He looked up at the detectives again.
“Do you know who that is?” the blond one asked.
Bayot wasn't sure of anything anymore. He just knew that he wanted to leave.
“I seen him before,” he said.
“Where did you see him?”
“I think he be at Judy's.”
“You said the man who got in the elevator with Kenya is always at Judy's, right?” the brown-haired detective asked. “So it's possible this is the man you saw?”
“I guess so,” Bayot said.
“What the hell do you mean, you guess so? Either you saw him or you didn't.”
“I don't know,” Bayot said, covering his ears as he always did when he was frustrated and afraid. “Leave me alone.”
The blond-haired detective had seen enough. He snatched Bayot out of his seat and held him at arm's length.
“He's the one you saw,” he said, tightening his grip on Bayot's collar. “Do you understand? He's the one you saw.”
“Get off me,” Bayot said quietly.
“Tell me that the man in the book is the one you saw, and I'll let you go. After that you can go home.”
“Get off me now,” Bayot said.
The detective looked at his partner, who leaned back against the table, laughing at the two of them.
Bayot's face began to tense. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt as he took on the look of a two-year-old poised to throw a tantrum.
“Get off me!” he yelled.
Bayot lifted up one arm and brought it crashing down on the detective's wrist. The detective drew back, cradling the wrist in his hand as his partner stopped laughing and sprang toward Bayot. As he was about to swing, the door flew open.
“Stop it!” Wilson yelled, running into the room. “What are you doing to him?”
“He just identified Sonny Williams as the man he saw with the girl,” the brown-haired detective lied.
“No he didn't,” Wilson said. “Because Daneen Brown just identified someone else as Kenya's abductor.”
“Who?” the detectives asked, almost in unison.
Wilson paused to look from one to the other.
“Herself.”
 
 
 
Lynch rushed to join Wilson in the interrogation room. Judy could wait. So could everything else. If what Daneen was saying was true, Lynch wanted to hear it for himself. And he wanted to hear it from Daneen.
Sensing his need, Daneen stared past Wilson and the homicide detectives who sat in the room with them. She took a deep breath and focused her eyes on Lynch, staring as if her words were for him alone.
“The last thing I wanted was for my baby to end up livin' down
the Bridge with Judy,” she said. “She had already messed my life up—or at least let it get messed up—and I wasn't about to let her do the same thing to Kenya. They took that outta my hands, though. Not that I'm blamin' nobody for what happened. I shoulda treated Kenya right when I had her. But that was hard to do, 'cause she was a trigger for me. She reminded me o' that basement floor.”
Lynch looked down as he realized that he didn't want to hear it after all. It was too late, though. Daneen wasn't about to spare him anything.
“I was raped, Kevin. Once when I was nine, and again when I was seventeen.”
“Why didn't you say anything at the time?” Lynch said. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“What you was gon' do, Kevin? What was anybody gon' do? When I said somethin' the first time, Judy blamed me. So when it happened again, I thought everybody would think I was lyin'. And I couldn't take that. So I kept my mouth shut, wore my clothes loose, and hid my belly 'til I couldn't hide it no more.
“Then I told Tyrone the baby was his, 'cause I just couldn't see bringin' that child in the world with a rapist for a daddy.
“But I couldn't even do that right, could I? Tyrone died, and everybody blamed me for that, too. And all Tyrone left behind was the truth. So every time I seen Kenya, I would see the truth about her real daddy. I would feel his hands on my ass, his breath on my neck, his tongue on my skin. I would feel him poundin' into me while I scraped my elbows tryin' to fight my way up off that floor.
“I could ignore what I saw in her when I was clean. But when I smoked that shit, I couldn't, 'cause the high always turned from magic to poison. I would smoke, and then I would feel him inside me again—hurtin' me, rapin' me.
“And when I looked at Kenya, it was like she was him. When I would hit her, it was like I was hittin' him—gettin' him back for what he done to me.”
She stopped and stared at Lynch for a long time.
“That's why I killed her, Kevin. I couldn't take seein' her daddy no more. So Friday night, I waited 'til Wayne went to sleep, took some money out his wallet, caught a cab down the Bridge, and I took me a blast. And right after I did that, I saw Kenya comin' out the projects.”

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