James Patterson appeared from the Cook County courthouse’s holding cell area wearing a tan-colored shirt and pants with capital, bold, black letters “DOC”, which stood for Department of Corrections, written on the back. His hair was braided in unneat lines of cornrows, much different from the wild afro he had on the last day of his freedom almost four weeks ago. Eve smiled inwardly thinking of James sitting between the muscular legs of a fellow male inmate nicknamed Killah getting his hair did. Eve and James raised their right hands, as much as one could still being handcuffed, and swore before God and the court to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She knew that the judge didn’t really want to hear the whole truth; she wasn’t sure if she even knew the truth anymore. The two jilted lovers, occasionally talking over one another, gave their final accounts of that miserable evening the previous month that landed James behind bars and Eve in the hospital. They both stood there with visible and invisible scars from that evening. Although their physical scars had mostly healed, they were still fighting – James for his freedom, Eve for her sanity.
James, a roguishly handsome 33-year-old man with the physique of a football player and more kids than Ray Lewis, lived his life on the edge – the edge of getting shot, the edge of getting caught slanging drugs, and the edge of drama with women. Eve saw past his tattoos and reputation to someone who had an unexpected amount of potential. They’d grown up together and she hoped that after giving in to James’ advances after many years of pursuit, he would turn out to be different than his reputation and all of the other men who’d hurt her in the past. She envisioned herself loving him into becoming all that he could be and him trading in his beer and weed for a briefcase and wedding. She imagined that he'd repay her loyalty and encouragement with a wedding ring bigger than Chicago's potholes that she would floss in front of all the women who'd missed out not knowing how to love a black man the right way. Eve stood by his side through 1 A.M. phone calls from his other female lovers; two trips to the abortion clinic; and the removal of three bullets after a nightclub shooting.
On that not so faithful Saturday evening, Eve opened an unmarked envelope addressed to her that had been slid underneath their apartment door while she was at the grocery store. There was a letter accompanied by over a dozen pictures inside the envelope of James posing with what the letter detailed as his newborn twins and fiancé. The dates on the lower right hand corners of the pictures lined up with a few weeks in the not so distant past that James didn’t come home alleging he'd gotten locked up while visiting a cousin she’d never heard of in Indiana. He claimed he couldn’t get in touch with Eve because of a block on their land line to receive collect calls; he didn’t have any money to purchase a stamp, paper or envelope to write her because he had no cash. He even got mad at Eve and accused her of cheating which was why he said she didn’t have time to do more research to find out how much trouble her man was in. He'd had an excuse for everything, and his anger and accusations led him to leave the house for two more days. After many unanswered calls and text messages, James coolly strolled in at 4 A.M. drunk and high as Eve was packing the last of her clothes. James and Eve frequently argued. He’d pushed, slapped, and choked her before but he’d never punched her. Eve’s physical altercations with James never left her face black and blue like how a lot of his boys did their women. James told her she was lucky that he had as much self-control as he did. On that evening Eve’s luck ran out as James punched and kicked her – he was no different than the rest. James put Eve’s face in the pillow to soak up the blood and muffle her sobs as he forced himself upon her sexually. James, exhausted and intoxicated, fell asleep on top of Eve. She slowly slid her body from underneath his and scooted as far to the opposite side of the bed as she could still in shock and full of rage. She sat up on her elbows, touched her sore eye and allowed the blood from her mouth to drip onto the sheets as she reached underneath the bed to grab one of the weapons that they kept in every room. Images of castrating James danced in Eve’s mind. It was always hard to wake him up when he was that intoxicated. She knew that she could easily tie his wrists and ankles to the bedpost without much of a stir from James. If he did wake up in the process of her preparing him for the ceremonial removal of his manhood, she could seductively convince the very arrogant James that she was just feeling naughty and he’d gladly let her finish tying him up without a struggle. Eve got out of the bed and sat the butcher knife on top of the dresser as she put on a t-shirt. She wanted to do serious bodily harm to James but he wasn’t worth her going to prison. She wanted to still have the opportunity to date another mistake within the next 25 years to life. She grabbed her cell phone and the knife and went into the living room to call the police. After placing the call, she contemplated taking her own life. She wouldn’t have to worry about going to jail for ending her own life, if she didn’t take her life at her own timing it’d probably be taken from her at the hands of someone else. While Eve continued to engage the inner thoughts listing all of the reasons she didn’t have to live, the officers rang the doorbell. Eve put down the knife and the thoughts in her mind moved from death to life as she let the officers inside to apprehend a still nude and intoxicated James.
Eve and James’ case had been continued several times but this day James was officially charged and traded in his county jail garments for new colors to be worn in an Illinois Department of Corrections due to the violation of his parole. Eve felt relieved after the judge issued his verdict, but she still felt like she was wearing invisible handcuffs and her own DOC outfit – Definition of Crazy. She had shared the details of every part of that dreadful evening except the rape. She still loved him and, though she knew their relationship was over, she was ashamed of what had happened and didn’t want him to face even more time in prison.
Eve didn’t bother trying to lock eyes with the attractive Officer Pierre before leaving the courthouse to get into her navy blue Buick. She had taken half the day off of work for court and only had 15 minutes to get back to the office, but she needed to see a familiar face. She started her car and drove to the McDonald’s she frequented in the opposite direction of her job. When Eve pulled up in the parking lot, it was almost 11 A.M., the time when her intended target would arrive. Eve knew that she needed to high-tail it toward the office but she felt weak and worn out. She reached inside her glove compartment as she waited and pulled out Granny’s Bible. She opened Granny’s Bible quite often when she felt overwhelmed, which seemed to be more often these days. She didn’t read its contents, instead she turned to Psalms 23, as she always did, to gaze upon its beautiful bookmark – a picture of her biological mother, Vivian.
As the only child in the house, Eve frequently entertained herself alone with imaginary games especially when Granny was busy with chores just as she was that afternoon folding clothes a few feet away. Eve intertwined both arms above her head and moved her body back and forth in the shape of an “S” as she glided across the basement pretending that she was deep under water just like her favorite Disney mermaid. Eve, or Ariel, as she preferred to be called when she was deep in mermaid character, found many land items such as a clothes pin and a house shoe intriguing and stacked her treasures near the stairway to gather and share with her other deep sea friends when her adventure was complete. Granny chuckled as she watched Eve move across the basement with her chubby cheeks sucked in opening and closing her lips as if she were 100% fish. However, when Granny almost tripped over “Ariel’s” growing pile of land items as she raced upstairs to answer the phone, she knew her adventure was going to be forced to come to an end very soon. Knowing that sometimes the best treasures are those that are hidden, she decided to make her last find for the day a good one by going to the back of the closet where Granny stored her deceased husband’s belongings. Eve only knew two things about her step-grandfather: He was a photographer and his index finger had been bitten off by a catfish before moving from Mississippi to Chicago. Ariel moved past the fishing poles, scooted past a few boxes of clothes, and grabbed the smallest box in the corner of the closest as she emerged from what she imagined was a dark sea cave with sharks. Tired and dusty, she sat at the bottom of the stairs examining her findings. Ariel was intrigued by all of her findings but was mesmerized by the small box the most. She shook the box up and down and left and right. It sounded like there were cards inside. She opened the box and started packing her treasures inside before she swam upstairs with her other imaginary deep sea friends, Sebastian and Flounder. As she was placing a mirror inside of the box, one of the box’s original contents caught her eye. There weren’t cards in the box – they were pictures! She loved pictures! She loved imagining what was going on when the picture was taken and, since many people didn’t visit her and Granny, guess who was in the photograph. She grabbed the first picture and immediately recognized her mother’s straight smile, long dark hair, and the striped red and white bathing suit she wore in the picture she’d studied so closely in Granny’s Bible as she’d pretended to read Psalms 23. The setting of this picture wasn’t a pool, but right here in the same basement where Eve now sat. She stared at the picture in pure bewilderment – her mother, with not quite her entire swimming suit still on, and a man’s hand with a missing index finger. Granny came down the stairs calmly at first until her eyes beheld what they were both seeing for the first time. Eve, still in shock, did not hear Granny behind her. She only felt the box as it was slapped from her hands as one picture of the long-haired goddess more revealing than the last scattered across the floor. Granny beat Eve’s butt good right there in the basement. Eve didn’t cry while her grandmother lit up her backside; Eve was too angry to cry. It was Ariel, not Eve, that was too nosey. Ariel was too stupid. Ariel was a mystical mermaid that didn’t understand the real troubles that come along with breathing air. Pain did not choose its victims sparingly – the only pre-requisite for it to exist was to breathe up here on this land. Ariel got Eve in trouble and Eve hated her for it. Eve had longed to see more photographs of her mother, but Ariel had led her to something inappropriate that Eve did not want to see – Ariel was mean and had played a trick on Eve. Eve didn’t go upstairs and share her findings with her imaginary deep sea friends. On the contrary, she tore the Little Mermaid sheets off her bed, stomped and yelled at them, and slept on top of a bare bed. That evening neither Eve nor Granny slept. Obeying Granny’s command, she didn’t emerge from her room for the rest of the evening. First thing in the morning Eve grabbed a set of Granny’s plain white sheets from the linen closet and placed them on her own bed. She stuffed the childish sheets completely inside of her bedroom closet, slammed its door, and put the adult sheets on her bed. Eve, not Ariel, would be running the show from now on. She could not undo what she’d seen; childish fantasies were not a luxury she could afford any longer. When Eve went downstairs Granny was making breakfast. They never spoke of the photos.
After Granny passed, Eve lived with her mother, Vivian, for a few years. Eve recalled sitting quietly next to her mother that hot summer day in a navy blue Buick with a broken air conditioner. This was the first time she could remember them being in a car together. She wondered if her mother drove a car, caught the bus or walked Eve to Granny’s house when she left her. Whenever the light turned green, Eve did her best to discretely examine Vivian’s profile in order to compare their features. Granny, although proud of her five children, only had one picture of Vivian taken at age 16 in a white and red striped bathing suit at the local pool. Granny kept this picture of Vivian inside of her Bible always in the same spot – between the pages of her favorite scripture, Psalms 23 – she never framed it like the pictures of her other children. Eve had Vivian’s hair, eyes, and nose but a very distinguishable gap between her teeth comparable to her step-grandfather. Her mother’s close, straight teeth didn’t leave any room for an unsightly error such as a gap of which Eve hated about her smile.
It was finally 11 A.M. and the reason for Eve’s trip to McDonald’s and tardiness for work finally arrived. Eve got out of her car and placed some change inside of the cup of the homeless woman begging at the restaurant’s entrance before going inside to order two large coffees. Eve gave the homeless woman a coffee, as she normally did on cold days, before getting back in her car. Eve started her car and turned the defrost on high so she could have a clear view of the homeless woman. Granny was the closest person to a mother Eve had ever known, but Eve knew that beneath the homeless woman’s coat was a c-section scar that branded her as Eve’s biological mother, Vivian. Eve touched her own stomach and wondered what type of mother she’d be one day. Eve’s menstrual cycle was three weeks late. She longed to run over to Vivian and tell her all about her troubles. Instead, she left the parking lot and went 20 M.P.H. over the speed limit east on the Eisenhower Expressway toward her office. There was no time for fantasies such as speaking with her mother.
WOW!!
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