The Dying Ground (27 page)

“Yeah.”

“You been by the hospital?”

“No. Is everybody still there?”

She nodded. “They’ve been there all night. You heard from Holly?”

“No.”

“How long have Holly and Cissy been together?”

I was surprised that she knew. Was I the only one in the dark? “How do you know about that?”

“Noone came by the hospital. He told us about Holly being picked up. How he and Cissy were together and how the two of you went down to the jail.”

“Oh.”

“Cissy came to for a minute this morning. She kept asking for Holly. Daddy’s crushed, and Miss Antonia too. How long have they been together?”

“Six months.”

“Did you know about it?”

“Not until yesterday.”

She moved out of the way so I could make it up the stairs. I saw an envelope stuck in the screen door. My name was scrawled across it in angry script. Rachel pulled the envelope out of the door. “I was going to leave this here if you didn’t come home soon.”

Inside the house, the answering machine flashed with eight messages. The first was straight to the point. “This is Sterling Travel calling to confirm your flight arrangements from Oakland International Airport to Shreveport, Louisiana on flight—”

I turned the machine off and Rachel handed me the envelope. “You should pack.”

I expected Rachel to be gone when I got out of the shower but she sat at the top of the stairs with my duffel packed with clothes. “I got your bag together for you.”

“I didn’t say I was going.”

“Yes, you did. You agreed to go as soon as you and Cissy arrived at the hospital. It’s not your choice anymore. You think Daddy can stand for that? Can you face Miss Antonia right now?”

I couldn’t.

“I called Numiel and Donna, and he’ll pick you up this evening.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And what am I supposed to do, all the way out there?”

“Be safe. Helping Cissy is all Daddy and Miss Antonia can deal with right now. It’s all they should have to deal with. You’re a grown man, Maceo, you can make your own decisions, but leaving is the
right
thing to do.”

I knew she was right but I was still angry. It felt like running away from trouble, leaving Holly, yet again, to clean up my mess.

“You know, Maceo, when Ellie died you were very important to this family. You helped us all heal and we loved you, at first because you were a link to Eleanor. Then, of course, we started to love you because of
you.”

“I know that,” I said, but my heart said otherwise. Daddy Al’s “my baby” had rung in my ears all night.

“Do you? Sometimes it seems like you’re trying to punish yourself.” She grabbed my chin and forced me to look into her eyes. “Like you’re trying to punish yourself for something you had nothing to do with.

“I know about your burden, believe me I do, but what Ellie and Greg did after you were born had nothing to do with you. They chose that life, not because they loved you any less but because they didn’t love themselves enough. It had nothing to do with you.”

I understood her words, I even heard what she said, but my heart didn’t quite translate it the same way. It was abandonment, pure and simple. The two of them together had chosen a life that didn’t include me.

“I don’t blame
my
mother, I don’t agree with what she did, but I understand it.” Rachel rarely referred to her birth mother, Elizabeth, or her suicide.

“Well, I don’t agree and I don’t understand” was my angry reply.

She reached a hand out. “Miss Antonia and Daddy know that, and they’ve spent a lifetime trying to make up for it. They
made you a priority, Maceo, and you’ve treated them like their efforts don’t mean anything.”

“This has nothing to do with them.”

She rolled her eyes. “The ignorance of youth. You can still say that after everything that’s happened?”

“Cissy wasn’t meant to get caught in the crossfire.”

“I’m sure she wasn’t, but
somebody
was meant to. And that’s what has everyone confused. You knew that someone would get hurt but you still made the decision to keep going. You and Holly both, like nothing and nobody else mattered. That’s what Daddy can’t forgive.”

I had no answer. She was right. I picked up the plane ticket and shoved it into my bag.

Rachel drove me to the airport, eager to get me away from the house before my grandparents came home or more violence could erupt. I hadn’t heard a word from Holly, and the streets were eerily quiet as we passed through town. Oakland was boiling around me, and not just from the heat. Guns would sound at nightfall, and I was going to be as far from it as possible. The idea of running made me cringe, but I also felt torn by loyalty to my family.

At the airport I kissed Rachel good-bye and jumped from the car. Halfway to the ticket counter I turned and made a beeline to the pay phones. Louisiana was the right choice, but it wasn’t my choice. Not by a long shot. It was time to stop hiding.

I pulled the crumpled paper I’d taken from Regina’s notepad from my pocket and dialed L.A. I knew Felicia’s aunt as Venus, the pet name Flea had bestowed on her, but Regina had written Venestta Bennett on the paper. I dialed the number.

“Hello?” A smoky voice crawled through the telephone wires.

“Can I speak with Venestta Bennett?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Maceo Redfield, Felicia’s friend from Berkeley.”

“Maceo. I remember. What can I do for you?”

“I’m on my way to Louisiana, but I wondered if I could come out and see you. I’m at the airport now. I can make it out and back and take a later flight to Louisiana.”

There was a long pause. “This about Felicia?”

“Yeah. I haven’t heard from her, and I—”

“What time you coming in?”

I looked at the departure bank near the phones. “There’s a flight leaving in thirty minutes. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”

“You need directions to the house?”

“Yeah. Let me grab a pen.”

I wrote down the directions and shoved them into my pocket. Another split-second decision, but I had to play the hunch to the end. Louisiana could wait. It would have to wait. I had to right a wrong—three wrongs as I saw it: Billy, Felicia, and Cissy.

T
he plane circled LAX for a total of thirty minutes, giving me a bird’s-eye view of the freeway-choked city. It had been years since I’d set foot on southern California soil, and the previous trip had been one of pleasure, a round-robin tournament of the state’s best collegiate athletes. The tourney had been played on the UCLA campus, set smugly in the middle of the manicured lawns of Westwood, but this trip promised no such glamour. The South Central home of Felicia, Reggie, and Crim was a breeding ground for gangstas.

I made my way through the airport, ignoring the curious or horrified stares as I passed among the travelers. At a magazine kiosk I caught sight of my bruised and swollen face in the polished chrome of the cash register and slipped on my sunglasses in defense.

A half hour later, after two DMV checks and an obvious reluctance on the part of the counter agent to rent me a car, I was on my way. I entered the web of cars, circling the terminal
trying to find an exit and avoid an accident all at the same time.

I propped Venus’s instructions on the dashboard and managed to find my way east to the 110 North, until the exit for Slausen Avenue loomed above me like a beacon.

Felicia’s childhood home was on Fifty-ninth Place in the middle of a high-security street. The address for each house was visible atop the roof in five-foot numbers to make the location of criminals easier for LAPD’s aerial patrol. Venus’s house was a small Spanish-style structure with a red stucco fence and wrought-iron gate strung with heavy rusted cow bells.

Venus waved to me through a small window in the middle of a tightly locked metal door; then she waited until I was on the step before opening the gate.

I should have been afraid. The new territory, the unfamiliar graffiti, being alone—all of it added up to danger, but I was numb. I wanted answers.

“Oh, what happened to you, baby?” she purred when she saw my face and arm.

“Car accident.”

“Uh-huh.” She motioned me inside, and I crossed the threshold to step backward into Felicia’s childhood. The room was painted a dull yellow, faded to a dingy white over time, with unframed family pictures taped or thumbtacked to every surface. In pose after pose, Felicia smiled alongside her brothers, Venus, and, in one, her mother and father.

“Come on in. Have a seat. You want anything to eat or drink?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Venus took a seat across from me in a recliner chair. To say that Venestta Bennett was heavy was an understatement even in a community where heavyset women were commonplace. She was at least three hundred pounds on a five-foot-five frame
with a towering cascade of red-brown curls adding the last two inches.

“Have you heard from Felicia?” I asked.

“I heard from her right when all this nonsense happened, but I haven’t heard a word since. She didn’t tell me too much, but she was scared to death. I have my whole congregation praying for my baby girl.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. She just cried. I tried to get her to tell me where she was, but she wouldn’t say nothing. I must have sat on that phone with her for about an hour.”

“Hadn’t you seen her the weekend before?”

She looked puzzled. “No. Why?”

“’cause her roommate, Regina, said Flea had been down to see you at least twice a month for the last few months.”

“I haven’t seen Felicia since June, when she came out after school ended.”

“Haven’t you been sick?”

“Me, sick? Baby, I ain’t been sick since 19 72.”

“Then why would Flea say she’d been down to see you?”

Venus took her time before answering. “I raised my niece and nephews but sometimes I don’t think I know ’em at all. Reggie and Crim I don’t even allow over my house no more. I love them boys, but they more trouble than a little bit.”

“I met them.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. And Felicia, she always had a mind of her own. Plus, me and her had a few words about that boy of hers. I liked Billy and everything, but how could I turn my back on my nephews for doing what
they
did and then turn around and accept him?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t do it, and I told her so. And now that Billy’s dead she might not want to come home.”

A tear rolled down her cheek but she quickly wiped it away.

“I tried, you know. I tried so hard with them three babies, but it was only so much I could do. They wasn’t mine. I loved them like they were but they wasn’t mine, and them boys needed a strong hand from the beginning. Both of them was old enough to know what happened with they mama and daddy and that damaged them. Big Reggie thought he was saving them when he left, but he did more harm than good.”

“Why did he leave?” I asked.

“Felicia didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She looked away to avoid a direct answer. “You and she was close, I know that. She talked about you even after she met Billy. You were the first real friend she made out there. She loved you. She told me one time that y’all was the same but she didn’t tell me why.”

I’d often felt the same thing but had never been able to explain the connection beyond the absence of our mothers.

“She talk about her mama to you?”

“Not really. She told me she died when she was a little girl.”

“You know her daddy is my older brother: Reggie. That’s who Li’l Reggie is named after. The two of them was thick as thieves. I think my brother’s disappearance affected Reggie the most but I might be wrong. Crim was always to himself and Felicia was just a little girl. She changed after he left, but Reggie just combusted. It wadn’t too long after that he started to get in trouble.”

“What about her mother?”

Venus looked at me, surprised I was still in the room. The conversation had become one-sided while she talked. She used the opportunity to voice her concern about her brother’s children.

“Their mother.” She snorted. “She wasn’t but a little whiff of a thing. Women in my family is big, prone to meatiness, but
she was”—she snapped her fingers—“that big on a good day. Big Reg met her when we was teenagers. She came to our school from out by San Clemente, and he just couldn’t get enough of that little nappy-headed girl. I couldn’t see it myself. She was too lightweight for me. There didn’t seem to be anything holding her to the ground.

“And I was right. She gave Big Reg more trouble than you could imagine. She was plain to ugly on a good day, now. You look at Felicia and you think her mama must’ve been a movie star, but that’s not the case. Felicia got all her looks from our side of the family. And underneath all that death and destruction Reggie and Crim are nice-looking boys too.”

I kept a straight face. Crim could never be considered a handsome man.

Venus went on with her story. “Well, Big Reg married Felicia’s mama about 1964, right out of school. They lived with the family. That’s how you did it back then until you could get on your feet. They lived with us my senior year of high school, and I saw her go from being a little wallflower to a September tornado. She didn’t get no cuter, mind you, but after that first sex she got a better sense of herself and her powers. Some women ain’t equipped for that knowledge, and she was one of them. Boy, she started giving Big Reg hell after that. She didn’t run the streets or nothing but she always had somebody sniffing around while he was at work. Mostly neighborhood mens and a few of Big Reggie’s friends.