Turned and Taken (Packed 1 & 2) (3 page)

The building reminded her of army barracks except the doors were brightly colored. Where she’d had her chemistry class, the door was red. Between it and the other door were clearly outlined concrete blocks painted like white dividers. After more concrete was the blue door. Next was a yellow door and then another red. That was the block.

The overhang above it had yellow trim and a metal aluminum roof, which was repeated on every block. Further ahead was a Christmas-type tree. It stretched up 20 feet higher than the buildings. Over to the right on top of the other hill was another large tree.

Hidden behind that tree was another building. This one had sun-bleached beige walls. It was more like a shack. She remembered this building from when she was a kid. It was a bakery run by one of the monks. Her mother had taken them there for treats. It was the one good memory she had of this place.

As Saki looked forward, she found herself back at the administration building standing next to the giant cross. How appropriate she found it after having been beaten up for nothing. She rested her bag on the empty bench that surrounded it and sat. This was where she was supposed to wait to be picked up. She tried not to think of anything as she sat there, but a myriad of thoughts slipped in.

Chapter 2

Saki lay on her side with her head twisted toward the popcorn ceiling. The twist of her body alleviated some of the pain. She was so glad she had fought for the room. With three bedrooms in the house, Saki was initially assigned to the pullout couch in the living room.

Her mother had promised two things: a comfortable pullout couch for Saki and cell phones for each of the kids. They still didn’t have their cell phones, and Saki suspected that the couch they had now was the only one they would ever have. Since her mother thought Saki would just be there for another year before college, she thought the twins should each get their own room. She couldn’t seem to understand why Saki might object.

Saki couldn’t let this happen, though. It was bad enough that she was being dragged back to this island; she couldn’t let her heartbreaks and disappointments be on display for them to judge.

Now licking her wounds, she thought about what she had fought so hard to block out: the fight, the isolation, being ripped from her friends and brought to a place where she never felt comfortable. The weight of it hit her, and the pressure took her breath away. The rawness in her throat returned. The tears that she is so successfully held back now seeped through. As her nose dripped and her face began to tingle, her chest heaved, releasing a silent flood of tears. It all hurt so much. All of life hurt so much.

Without warning, her bedroom door flung open. With it at her back, she fought to control herself. Whoever it was, she knew that she couldn’t show them weakness. They would use it against her in some way. She was sure of it.

“Hey Saki, is there a cute blonde boy in your class?” Tweedledum asked her. “One of the girls in my class told me that he was a senior, and he is scrumptious,” she said drawing out the last words for emphasis.

Saki learned two things from that question. One, her sister had obviously had a much better first day than she had. She had made a new friend and had a friendly enough conversation to focus on trivialities like boys.

The second thing was that her sisters hadn’t heard about her getting attacked in the locker room. If they didn’t know, Saki at least had a chance of maintaining her pride in front of her family.

“Get out!” Saki yelled in a voice that didn’t sound like she had been crying. “Or go through if you’re going. Didn’t you see that my door was closed? Get out of my room!”

The silence gave no hint of Tweedledum’s intention. Saki listened, using the time to gather herself and wipe her tears.

Saki knew that if her sister didn’t leave, she could still get her out without revealing her tear-stained face. She couldn’t give her sister a moment to focus on her, though. It all had to be done in one motion. So when another moment passed without development, Saki threw herself out of bed, ignoring the severe pain, turned to her sister, and rushed at her like a bull.

“Get out of my room!” Saki screamed before putting her full weight against her sister. Her sister didn’t move, though. She stood her ground, grabbing onto the door frame and not allowing Saki to push her into the living room. “Get out! Get out!” Saki put her full weight into moving her sister, but she wouldn’t budge.

“Mom! Saki‘s hitting me!” Her sister yelled.

“Mom, tell her to get out of my room!” Saki yelled in reply.

The two struggled with Saki unable to gain an inch. She wouldn’t stop, though. Establishing her privacy was too important to her. She needed her out. She needed her space, a retreat where she wouldn’t have to worry what someone else was going to say. She couldn’t give up on getting her sister out.

“Mom!” Her sister yelled again. This time, it was followed by a trudging across the wooden floor and a shove that pushed both girls into the room.

“Let go your sister. Let go your sister!” Saki heard before a meaty claw grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side. “What did I tell you about hitting your sister?”

“I wasn’t hitting her. She was in my room.”

“And what were you doing when I came in?”

“I was trying to get her out. That bastard…”

It was then that Saki felt a blinding pain shoot through her eyes. She wobbled dazed. She was speechless. She didn’t know what had happened. She focused her watering eyes and found her mother’s stern face looking back. Without warning, she saw her mother’s hand cock back and strike her for the second time across her face.

Saki was stunned. It wasn’t the first time her mother had hit her, but this time, it felt different. Barbaric, somehow.

Saki didn’t know what to say. She no longer wanted to cry; crying came from an innocent place. Her mother’s strike had transported her somewhere else. The world was cruel. She hadn’t quite realized that before. One doesn’t cry in a cruel world, they survive in it. They expect cruelty, and they survived it.

“What did I tell you about that language?” Her mother asked unforgivingly.

Saki stared back at her mother unsure of what to say. Everything was different now. The woman in front of her wasn’t her mother; it was the enemy she had to escape.

Where would Saki go if she left the house? How would she eat? How would she graduate, so she could be free of this place and these people forever? She couldn’t be sure, but the thought of it sent a chill down Saki‘s back.

As Saki stared at her mother, she noticed the aging face change. It was softening for some reason. Why? It wasn’t in sympathy. It wasn’t compassion. It had to be some sort of strategic move. When she took a moment to think, she realized what it was.

She felt something cold dripping on her lips. That, plus the throbbing in her nose, told her that she was bleeding. Finally, she had evidence of her mother’s brutality. Finally, she had something that she could point to and say,
this is what she did to me
.

Speaking in a softened tone, her mother stepped toward her. “Come here. Let me get that.”

Saki backed away in fear that her mother would take away the one thing that could save her.

“I said come here,” she said more sternly, before again stepping forward.

Saki took another step backward. She needed to keep her mother as far away from her as possible. She finally had her. With this evidence, her mother couldn’t deny who she was. She was a horrible mother.

“Let me clean that up for you,” she said as a gentle command.

“No. No you won’t.” Saki was forming a plan. “No. Everyone’s gonna see what you did to me. You like that? Now everyone will see what type of person you are.”

“Just come here, and let me clean that,” she said sounding a little more desperate. But it was too late, Saki knew she had her.

“No.” Saki turned toward her bedroom door and bolted. Her large mother chased after her in as close to run as she had gotten in years. Saki knew that she had to get out as quickly as possible. Her dripping nose was the most valuable thing that she possessed and she knew that like everything else she valued, her mother wanted to take it away from her.

Saki looked up and found the front door. Tweedledummer, who had been watching TV, was now standing with her mouth hanging open, staring at Saki. Saki knew that she had to get past her.

“Stop her, Maddie,” she heard her mother yell to her sister. But Saki couldn’t let that happen. She had to make it out. Once she was outside, she knew no one was quick enough to drag her back in. She would be free, and afterward, no one would question what she was living through.

Saki rushed past her sister without resistance. Quickly unlocking the door, she slipped out into the night breeze. She rushed down the concrete walkway between the waist-high plants toward the other side of the chain-link fence. That was when she turned back. Her mother and sisters easily filled the doorway. They looked at her in shock. Saki smiled back.

Free, Saki casually turned around and headed down the sidewalk. She had a lightness to her step. The pain of her beating was gone. She couldn’t believe that out of all of them, she had one this battle. Bruised, battered, and dripping in blood? Yes. But she had still won. The power was so foreign that she didn’t even know what to do with it.

Saki looked at all the quaint houses that lined her street. Their windows glowed like the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern. She wondered which of them would be most interested in what her mother had done to her. Should she knock on each of their doors and just let them see her? Should she scream out and have all of them open their windows in search of the godforsaken wail?

The possibilities were endless. But as the decision became harder, she found herself at the end of her street. She was at the corner of Belfry and Chippingham Road. Chippingham led to West Bay Street, and across the street was the Fish Fry.

The Fish Fry was something she remembered well from being a kid here. The Fish Fry was just a dock that a fisherman decided to sell conch from one day. With their rowboat tied it to the concrete pier, he unloaded the shelled mollusks and sold them for four dollars a conch. While the island already had a place like that, traffic had become overwhelming in 30 years. The fisherman viewed his dock as an alternative. It was just that one man’s idea.

It was undoubtedly a success because within weeks, one fisherman became two. Two then became four. When one fisherman decided to sell conch salad, a mixture of diced conch, tomatoes, onions, celery, and hot peppers covered with lime, all the other fisherman had to do the same.

Quickly, the dock became known as the place to get fresh conch salad. When the first enterprising fisherman realized that getting customers would be easier if they had a place to sit and eat it, he built a small shack and placed a few chairs out front.

After that, the race was on. Each got a small shack, and each put out chairs. Soon, a small shack was not enough. What they needed was a small restaurant they could invite people into even when it rained.

The restaurants when up even faster than the shacks did. When the community saw the dock was no longer just for fisherman, they built around shacks and restaurants. Single-story buildings became two stories, and simple fisherman dishes became some of the best native restaurants on the island. The Fish Fry, as it became known, was now a restaurant row. It was still filled with native charm and quarry roads, but it also became the place to be.

This type of place was new for the island. For years, everything had been built for the terrorists who visited the island by plane and shipload. Communities where the natives could gather simply to have a good time didn’t exist. When the government, which was always looking for a way to ingratiate themselves with the community, saw the Fish Fry’s popularity, they assigned police to the area and opened up the adjacent grass field to anyone who wanted to come and walk up and down as a social night out.

The Fish Fry was the place where Saki would go and wield her new power. Hundreds of people would be walking by and all of them would see her bloody and bruised and wonder who did it to her. When they asked, Saki knew that she would get the satisfaction of saying, “This is what my mother gave to me.” Saki knew it would be her greatest victory.

Saki walked down Chipingham’s sparsely lit sidewalk for the first time in years. She examined the trees lining the bush-lined sidewalk, unlike what she had known in North Carolina. They were more densely populated. Although they looked greener, they also looked more weathered. Perhaps it was the effect of seeing them up close, but something about them felt both comforting and haunting.

When the trees came to an abrupt end at the open grass field, she knew that she was close. The light from the Fish Fry flooded the green space and lit her way, and she heard the music.

At the Fish Fry, someone was always playing Bahamian music. She had forgotten that fact. The rhythmic beat of cowbells and “scraping,” as it was called, was soothing. She still thought of it is as old people’s music. She much preferred the latest boy band, but she couldn’t deny it; something about Bahamian music told her she was home. Hearing it again for the first time, she felt better.

Crossing West Bay Street and entering the Fish Fry grounds, she was further taken aback. It had grown even more since the last time she’d seen it. The two-story wooden structures were all painted in traditional island colors of aqua, light pink, and bright yellow. The tables on the front porch were filled with laughing and drinking men. The second-floor balconies held tables lit by candle and sported smiling couples. They all seemed like they were having a good time.

Saki turned her attention away from the 10 or 15 restaurants that line the edge of the pier. The crowd of people was an unexpected addition. It was a weekday night, and it looked like the dock still held over 200 people.

Most of them just parked and mingled in the field. Others were strolling up and down the quarry path in front of the restaurants. Others still were seated on the concrete edge of the pier past the restaurants. Saki wasn’t prepared for all of the activity.

Saki moved forward, examining the faces of people passing her. She hadn’t seen this many dark chocolate complexions together in a while. These faces held something different than the black people she’d known in North Carolina. They looked darker here. Perhaps it was because they were more direct decedents of African slaves. Perhaps it was because of the bright Bahamas’ sun.

Whatever it was, the difference was clear. Many of those walking by would be profiled as criminals in North Carolina. They were fantastically lean and as black as tar, but it was all beautiful to her because this was what she knew.

Saki waded through the waves of people, getting the occasional nod of acknowledgment. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about her trauma. The Fish Fry was a place to escape it all, and they expected that the same would be true for the little round, light-skinned girl with the blood caked on her lips.

Saki saw an empty bench and claimed it. From it, she could see the entire field and all the restaurants. She could spend the evening here. The view was undeniably calming for her. All of the fighting it took for her to find it didn’t seem to matter. She was here now, and she could feel the muscles around her neck and shoulders relax.