Crimson Footprints (30 page)

“
Six o’clock. Starbucks,
like usual,” Deena whispered, feeling the collective heat of their
stares.

“
Good. Till then love.” He
hung up.

“
I suspect that the reason
you ain’t got no time to help come Sunday.” Grandma Emma scowled as
Deena put her phone away.

“
I don’t know what you
mean,” Deena murmured.

“
She’s talking about your
soon-to-be baby daddy over there,” Deena’s cousin Keisha, piped
up.

Deena balked. “I have never,
nor will I ever, have a ‘baby daddy.’”

Keisha raised a brow. “Why
you gotta say it like that, Deena?” she demanded, thinking of her
four children and their four fathers.

Keisha never liked Deena.
Right from the start, she acted like she was better than everyone
else, with her light eyes and white folk’s skin. When they were
kids, she would go on and on about her good grades like someone
gave a damn. And when they were in high school, she flaunted her
virginity like it was fucking priceless. And the guys, well, they’d
act as if it were some precious prize, too. Keisha could still
remember the way they’d stand by their lockers rambling on about
Deena’s pussy like it was the Holy Grail.

When they were in the
9
^th
grade, Keisha had sex with Snow in the school’s broom closet.
She’d never forget what the eventual father of her child would say
as he pulled up his pants. “Man, if only your cousin was so easy.
I’d be in heaven.” If ever there were a moment when Keisha became
certain of her hatred for Deena, that was it.

And as the family continued
with their meal, Keisha stared at Deena, with her matching manicure
and pedicure, her light eyes and her light skin, and wished her all
the harm in the world.

“
You know, Deena,” Keisha’s
mother Caroline piped up. “Nobody’ll get mad if you wind up
pregnant. I mean, your mother was pretty much a hoe and well, you
know what they say.” She stood and reached over Lizzie for the bowl
of collard greens, her tank top and jeans squeezing her belly so
that it looked like a split peach.

“
Shut up Caroline,” Grandma
Emma snapped. “The only one been having kids is your children. Look
at that son of yours, Shakeith. Seventeen with a baby on the way.”
She shook her head. “And anyway, Deena ain’t interested in
affronting the Lord no more than her presence already do. Ain’t
that right, child?” Emma turned to her granddaughter.

Deena sighed. “Yes
ma’am.”

She avoided Lizzie’s
piercing gaze.

An awkward silence followed
before Rhonda reached over and touched Deena’s hand. “Tell us about
your friend.”

Deena trusted Rhonda, and if
there were anyone she’d want to tell about Tak, she would be it.
When Deena moved in with her grandparents seventeen years ago, Aunt
Rhonda had been the only member of her new family that she knew
from her old life. Even after Grandma Emma and Grandpa Eddie
disowned Deena’s father for marrying her white mother, Rhonda
visited her older brother each week. Deena loved her aunt at first
because her father loved her, but after his death, that love grew
when Rhonda became her only ally.

Still, Deena hesitated.
“Well, he paints for a living.”

“
Paints!” Grandma Emma
bellowed. “Who done heard of scraping a living like
that?”

“
Lots of people, mom.
They’re called painters,” Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Go ahead,
Deena.”

“
Well, he’s really
talented. His work is featured in two galleries—one in Coconut
Grove and another in Manhattan. He sings, plays three instruments
and writes music in his spare time.” Deena ticked off each item
proudly. “Oh! And he’s fluent in three languages: English, Spanish
and—” Deena faltered, horrified by what she almost
revealed.

“
And?” Rhonda
prompted.

Deena looked down at her
plate. “And Japanese.”

Keisha snickered. “I can’t
see no Black dude speaking Japanese.”

“
I know, right? All that
ching ching chong!” Aunt Caroline hooted.

Deena sighed. They were
impossible. If she were another woman, a braver woman, she’d stand
up and demand an end to this foolishness. She’d declare her love
for Tak and do so unflinchingly. She would seize this opportunity,
and in doing so, tell them everything. But she couldn’t. She
thought of the way Aunt Caroline would look at her after finding
out she was sleeping with an Asian man—as if she were somehow less
Black, and less of a woman for desiring him. And she thought of
Grandma Emma and the way she’d turn her back on her when she found
out that Deena was sinning against the Lord.

Rhonda glared at Caroline.
“Must you always be offensive?”

Caroline rolled eyes at her
younger sister. “Boy I swear! Let a nigga go to college and they
come back siddity every time,” neck rolling with each
word.

“
Maybe a lil’ bit o college
would of did you some good, Caroline,” Emma surmised with a point
of her fork. Her eldest daughter was 52 and a shift manager at a
fast food restaurant.

Rhonda turned back to her
niece. “What’s your friend look like, Deena? Handsome?”

Deena’s cheeks flushed
scarlet. “Well—”

Grandma Emma’s fork
clattered to her plate. “Child, what is this foolishness? You think
somebody here thinks this just your friend?”

Deena turned to her food,
adamant about avoiding her grandmother’s glare.

Emma sighed in exasperation.
“Well, is he a good man at least?”

Deena looked up, surprised,
smiling. “Very.”

“
Not liable to run off and
leaves you with no kids, I ‘spect?”

Grandma Emma glanced out the
corner of her eye at Caroline and Keisha. Caroline stared back at
her mother, saucily.

Deena thought of Tak’s
playful declaration while in Sayulita that he would accept no less
than a dozen children from her.

“
No,” Deena assured her
grandmother. “No chance of that.”

“
Well then child,” she
nodded to herself thoughtfully, prodding at black eyed peas with a
fork. “When you finds a man you loves, you make sure you keep ‘em.
Any fool can tell you that.”

CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE

Deena concentrated at her
clock in an attempt to ignore the pulsating pain at her temples and
the insufferable waves of nausea. Were it not the day they broke
ground on Skylife she would’ve stayed home. But this was her
opportunity to pose alongside Daichi, the city’s mayor, and
powerful businessmen who had the potential to be her next clients.
So, she would spend the morning grinning for pictures with pangs of
nausea and too high pumps, smiling a smile that never reached her
eyes.

At the groundbreaking,
William Henderson, the project’s primary investor, spoke of the
Skylife project as though he were the one to design it. It was a
“re-envisioning of the Miami skyline” he said, and a challenge to
investors everywhere to start rethinking their place in history.
Would they rise to the challenge, as he had done, and create models
for the future of environmentally conscious yet posh
accommodations? Or would they fall short, as so many do, in making
excellence meet conscientiousness?

As she listened to his
jabber, Deena’s head throbbed with the heat of the morning and the
memory of their battle over expenditures. She couldn’t recall him
possessing such lofty principles on that day.

“
As I conclude,” Henderson
said with a flourish of the hand. “I ask each of you, not what
architecture can do for you, but what you can do for
it.”

Deena groaned.

“
And here I thought I was
the only one unable to stomach Henderson’s grandstanding,” Daichi
said as he stood next to Deena. He turned with a secret smile.
“Perhaps we should let him lay hammer to nail, as he seems so
inclined to do.”

Deena giggled.

Deena spent her morning
hobnobbing with bigwigs. She was most excited not by that, but by
the opportunity to meet Mahmoud, Hudson and Marshall, her dream
team turned reality. The four of them, along with Daichi, took
pictures and answered questions, and when
Miami Design
asked Deena if they
could have a word with her, she nearly hemorrhaged on the
spot.

When Deena finished shaking
the hand of the stocky blonde who’d interviewed her, she found her
way over to Daichi, centered in a cluster of fellow architects. He
ignored the refreshments as he usually did at events and opted only
for a bit of soda water.

“
So, I tell this intern,
listen, if you want to be ‘imaginative’ then head down to Brickell
and see if Tanaka’s accepting new recruits. He’s got interns over
there working million dollar projects,” Michael Cook
guffawed.

Cook, the former professor
who saw fit to confront Daichi so many years ago during his M.I.T.
appearance, was met with a roars of laughter as he brought a glass
of ice water to his lips. Deena wasn’t surprised that he didn’t
remember her as a former student; he could never be bothered with
learning the names of undergraduates.

Daichi wasn’t smiling.
“Interestingly enough, I’ve found that genius discriminates not in
terms of age or race. Perhaps if my peers were better able to grasp
that concept, then our field might better reflect the
populace.”

The laughter
died.

“
Incidentally, Ms.
Hammond’s not an intern. She’s a registered architect and the
genius behind the innovative design you’ve spent all morning
fawning over.”

He gestured to the
small-scale model on display. A stately stem, once completed,
Skylife would be the narrowest, tallest, most graceful creation to
dawn Miami’s skyline to date. With a walkway like an undulating
ribbon, the building curved in its ascent as if to mimic ocean
waves. Its lean appearance gave residents a startling three-sided
view of the water while its 125 floors served to shatter the
skyline.

“
She designed this?” Cook
said incredulously, no doubt considering the engineering ingenuity
such a slim structure demanded. “You’re being far too
generous.”

Daichi stared at the man
with impatience. “I’m not.” He glanced at Deena. “Are you
ill?”

Deena blinked in surprise.
He’d only spoken to her once that morning and could think of no
other time where he’d so much as looked her way.

“
I’m—I’m feeling a little
under the weather.”

“
Then why are you still
here? Are the hors d’ oeuvres so delightful?”

“
No.”

“
Then leave.”

“
Yes, sir.” Deena turned
away, then paused. “Would you like me to meet you back at the
office?”

“
Is that where the ill go?
To the office?”

“
No.”

“
Then no, Deena.” He turned
back to Cook.

Still, she hesitated. In her
four years at the firm, she’d never taken a sick day. Better still,
her days of month long vacations weren’t far enough in her rearview
mirror for her to feel comfortable.

“
So, Daichi,” Cook said. “I
hear you’ve been short listed for the Pritzker.”

The Prizker Prize was the
architectural equivalent of a Nobel.

Daichi rolled his
eyes.

“
I’ve no information
indicating such and considering what I know about you, I suspect
you know even less. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have business
elsewhere.”

CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX

Deena had no idea that
something could be both really good and really bad at the same
time. But she’d discovered just that when Daichi invited her to his
California mansion for the holiday season. He wanted the
opportunity to comb through their plans and ensure perfection for
what was fast becoming a daunting project. His extended family
would be in attendance because of the New Year, as it, and not
Christmas, was the apex of the holiday season for the
Tanakas.

It should’ve been cause for
excitement. Meeting her boyfriend’s grandmother, aunts, uncles and
cousins. And it was, except for the fact that they couldn’t know
that Tak was in fact her boyfriend. Or that she even knew
him.

Two weeks at Daichi’s
estate, under the same roof as Tak, forced to feign indifference.
The thought made her sweat.

Daichi’s sweeping estate was
in Encinitas, a cliff-side retreat just north of San Diego. It
boasted twelve bedrooms, three floors, five bathrooms, two dining
rooms, a private stretch of ocean and a tennis court. Its views of
the Pacific were breathtaking, made possible through generous
floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors.

Daichi hired a driver to
pick up Deena at the airport. He was a dapper fellow, with white
gloves and the lot, and it was all Deena could do not to giggle as
he took her luggage and helped her into the back of the town
car.