Pernicious (13 page)

         
There was a noise at the door, and Perry almost had a heart attack. Someone was turning the lock with a key.

         
The door swung open and nine-year-old Keshana walked in. She stopped cold upon seeing her mother, naked, kneeling next to Tyrone, also naked, clutching his chest, face deformed in pain, sweat pouring down his entire body.

         
“What are you doing here?” Perry screamed.

         
“Brenda’s mother told me to go home…I tried to call and no one--”

         
“Help me, Keshana!” Tyrone pleaded, reaching a hand out to her. “Call somebody! Help me!”

         
“Get out of here!” Perry shouted. “Go to your room and close the door!”

         
Keshana hesitated, staring at Tyrone.

         
“I’m dying, Keshana! Your mother poisoned me! Call for help! Please!…Call for help! Don’t let me die…please!”

         
Keshana met her mother’s eyes. “Mommie, do you want me to call someone?”

         
“I want,” Perry said through clenched teeth, “you to go to your room and close the damn door!” Keshana just stood there staring at Tyrone. “Did you hear me?”

         
Keshana moved toward the hallway, though not quickly enough to her mother’s satisfaction. Perry threw a glass… Keshana ducked and disappeared before it shattered against the wall.

         
Perry slapped her forehead. “Shit!”
That little bitch! She might take this wrong way…might go to school and blab her mouth.
 

         
“Tyrone, sugar, sweetie pie, would you excuse me a minute? I need to talk to my daughter.” Before she left, she donned the robe and made sure the front door was locked.

         
Keshana was going into the bedroom closet when Perry entered the bedroom.

         
“Get out of there!”

         
Keshana stepped out, her head down, sandy gold hair covering her face.

         
“You don’t hide from your mother. I’m not upset with you. Bold girls don’t hide in closets.” Perry tapped her sharply under the chin. “Bold girls hold their heads up!”

         
“I wasn’t hiding, Mommie.”

         
“Yeah. We need to talk about what you saw. What you think you saw wasn’t what was going on. What really was happening: Tyrone and I were playing doctor. You’re familiar with the game, aren’t you?”

         
Keshana shrugged.

         
“It’s a game where two people pretend they’re in a hospital. You see, someone has to play the patient, what Tyrone was doing when you barged in. He’s not really hurt. He’s just play-acting, you understand?”

         
“Yes, Mommie.”

         
“Here’s the important part. No one--and I do mean no one!--should know what goes on in this apartment! Do you understand? If someone--I don’t care who!--teacher, friend,
 
policeman--asks you what happened here, you tell them you haven’t seen nothing and you don’t know nothing. Do you understand?”

         
Keshana nodded.

         
“Good. Let me hear you say it.”

         
“I haven’t seen nothing and I don’t know nothing.”

         
“Good, good! Now stay in here until I come get you. Maybe later we’ll go see a movie or something.”

         
Later lasted ten hours; after paramedics had worn a path in the living room carpet. And later didn’t culminate in a movie or anything else.

         
Perry stepped out of the tub, water dripping on the diamond-white marble floor, and strolled over to the window and pulled back the blue China silk curtains.

         
She could see the new Target store, almost a mile away. Opposite that, a Wal-Mart Super Store. Farther away a glimpse of the green sign indicating Interstate 440. Less than a block away, several teenage boys were playing touch football in the middle of the street.
   

         
“Little bitch could have caused me trouble,” Perry mumbled to herself as she watched the boys halt their game to allow a car to pass.

         
Big trouble!

         
Keshana had insisted on going to Tyrone’s funeral. Not asked but insisted.

         
“For what?” Perry had said. “To see a damn dead man?”

         
“I would like to go,” Keshana had replied. “To say goodbye.”

         
“Believe me, he won’t hear you. Won’t even know you’re there.”

         
“I just want to go.”

         
“Go! Go talk to a damn dead man! Ask him for the PIN number on his debit card. He give it to you, call me and I’m coming. Otherwise, you’ll have to find your own way there and your own way back. I’m not going.”

         
Perry had quickly dismissed the matter.

         
Then, the day of Tyrone’s funeral, two elderly women dressed in black knocked on the door and announced they were there to pick up Keshana.

         
“What the hell for?” Perry said.

         
“A funeral!” one replied. “Tyrone Banks’ funeral. Your so-called husband!”

         
“Get away from my door before I kicked your so-called--”

         
Keshana interrupted: “Mommie, you said if I found a way to go on my own, I could go.” Before Perry could protest: “I’ll be back in a little while.”

         
Boldly, Keshana accompanied the two women down the stairs to a gray Fifth Avenue.

         
A few minutes later Perry snapped.

         
The life-size portrait of her and Keshana snatched off the wall and ripped to shreds, a glass swan slammed on the floor, her collection of porcelain frogs smashed to pieces.

         
If Miss Keshana could summon two biddies at the drop of a hat without leaving the apartment, Perry thought as she seized the large mirror above the fireplace, no telling what else she might…

 
       
Perry, with the mirror held overhead, checked herself. The mirror was an antique and her most prized and beloved possession.

         
Keshana would have to go;
it’s that simple.

         
Now!

         
She put the mirror down and snatched up a phone.

         
“Momma, I can’t handle her anymore! She’s too fast. Down there she can’t get into any trouble. Up here in the big city there’s just too much devilment to tempt a hot-ass girl.”

         
“I’m sorry to hear that,” her mother said. “It’s rough here too. Burt’s not working…We cannot afford another mouth to feed.”

         
“Yes, you can!” Perry snapped. “You kept Nell’s three kids a whole year. Don’t start that shit with me! Besides, I’ll send you money.”

         
“Isn’t today Tyrone’s funeral?”

         
“Yes, it is.” Voice lowered: “Keep this hush-hush. Tyrone and Keshana were fooling around. The day he died I came home and found him on the floor…butt naked!…having a heart attack. I went looking for Keshana and found her in the hallway… pulling up her pants.”

         
“My goodness! Lord, no! Say it ain’t so!”

         
“I wish I could. Why I didn’t go to the funeral. It hurts too much. I get to thinking about it and I start getting all dizzy and nauseous.”

         
“Where’s Keshana now?”

         
“At the funeral. I asked her to stay here and help me, you know, just in case I passed out or got sick. Guess what Miss Keshana told me?”

         
“What?”

         
“Go suck a donkey’s dick.”

         
Her mother moaned. “Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! I-I can’t put up with that kind of mess down here. I’m too old.”

         
“Yes, you can. She’ll be better off down there. You’ll put something on her ass and she’ll love you for it. Look how I turned out, because you taught me right from wrong.”

         
Her mother sighed. “When is she coming down?”

         
“On the next bus headed that way.”

         
When Keshana returned from Tyrone’s funeral and found the apartment in total disarray and her clothes packed in suitcases near the front door, she asked, “Are we going somewhere, Mommie?”

         
Perry smiled. “Not we,
you
!”

         
The ride to the Greyhound bus depot, neither mother or daughter said a solitary word. After Perry purchased the ticket, Keshana started crying.

         
“Don’t start that mess!” Perry scolded her. “We’re in public. You’ll enjoy living with Momma. There’s so much more you can do in the country. Ain’t you tired of being stuck in a dingy, old apartment all the time?”

         
Keshana continued crying.

         
Perry grabbed Keshana’s arm and sunk her fingernails deep in her flesh. “Stop it!” she whispered. “Stop it! Stop it now! You’ll have everybody here staring at me. You hear me…stop it!”

         
Keshana, though trying to stifle her sobs, made more noise.

         
Perry dug deeper and shook her. “Dammit, didn’t I say stop it!”

         
“I love you, Mommie,” Keshana whimpered.

         
Perry released her. “Well, that’s nice. Kids should love their mothers. I have done a lot for you, you know. Anyway, I got to go. There’s no need for both of us waiting. Here’s your ticket, listen for your bus number. If somebody bothers you, tell that security guard over there.”

         
She turned to leave when Keshana wrapped her arms around her waist and bawled on her breast.

         
“You’re embarrassing me. I hope you realize that. You are
really
embarrassing me!”

         
“I love you, Mommie!”

         
Perry let her go on for a few seconds more before pushing her away. “Bye,” she said, and walked away without looking back.

         
Perry noticed the boys had stopped tossing their ball around. They were staring up at her. They looked like four statues, just standing there in the middle of the street staring up at her.

         
“Keshana could have caused me a lot of trouble,” Perry said to herself as she raised the window, to give the boys a better view.