And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The only person who felt a bigger jolt at the mystery spot than me was my mother. She could have lived at that spot if they let her. She could have pitched a big top tent over the spot and been quite happy for the rest of her days, but Chandler frowned on that kind of thing.

We tried to camp out there once when I was in seventh grade, but the security guards didn’t think it was a good idea for two colored women to lay out all night like they were homeless. It wouldn’t be good for tourism, they said. Still, they couldn’t stop us from walking through a public park as often as we liked and dawdling a little and dancing around the spot.

After we finished our dinner, instead of turning right to walk back across the tracks to our house, Mama insisted on turning left and strolling through the park.

“It’s a lovely night, Julia, and the fireflies will be out in full. It will be glorious.”

“I’m not really that interested in seeing bugs, Mama,” I replied. “I’ve been on my feet all day. All I want is a hot bath and sleep.”

“Then, you can go on home. Leave your poor, old mother to her own devices. I’m going to stay, walk around the park, and enjoy the night air. I spent too many nights not doing that when I was bending over backwards trying to raise you.”

A mother’s guilt trip transcended race, creed, and social status. It hit every child right in the cockles of their heart. When they wanted to, moms knew how to turn the screws and bend you to their will. My mother was no different, which is why, even though my feet were aching, and my constitution was fried, I followed her around Mystery Spot Park in the late hours of the evening.

“Your father liked to walk me past this park, in our better days,” Mama said.

“I know, Mama. He didn’t like being hung here though, so I’ll bet all those good memories were drowned out by that bad one in his last moments.”

“Memories don’t work like that, honey.”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

Mama looked up at the sky. Chandler was small and had very little light pollution, unlike Chicago. We could make out half the stars in the sky when we craned our necks skyward. “We might yet, child. We might yet.”

I had nothing else to say to my mother. I just wanted to do my bid and walk her home, just like it was my bid to live in Chandler for as long as my mother saw fit to keep her house and hold onto her life. That could be five minutes or five hundred years for all I knew. Freeman women tended to live long, unnaturally healthy lives.

My hair stood on edge with the sparks of the mystery spot when I heard a man’s voice. “Hey!” No Chuck Dixon this time. It was Duncan’s deep growl. Now, every hair on my body stood at attention.

I whipped myself around to see Duncan and three of his thuggish friends stumbling through the park, drunk, as if they owned the place. Who am I kidding? They did own the place. Duncan’s daddy had funded the mayoral and city council campaigns for every powerful person in town for the last twenty years. Duncan and his father, more than anybody, owned Chandler.

I put on my nicest face; the kind Mama taught me to plaster on myself at the first sign of trouble. “Good evening, boys. Nice to see you on this fine day.”

“Don’t talk to me, colored,” Duncan sneered, taking a deep swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels. “We ain’t in school no more. You ain’t got no authority here.”

The whiskey on his breath knocked me backwards, and when he lurched forward, I stumbled into Mama. His flunkies hovered behind him, like wolves waiting to strike. “I don’t want no trouble, Duncan. I just want to make my way home in peace.”

“It’s Mr. Lewis to you.”

“Excuse me?” I said, disgusted at the thought of showing him any deference.

Duncan strolled up to me, an ugly grin smeared across his face. He had the power and he knew it. Plus, he had backup that egged him on with every step he took forward.

“You don’t get to call me Duncan, do you understand me?” The words oozed out of his mouth. “It’s Mr. Lewis to you from now on. I don’t even wanna hear that you called me Duncan to your colored friends in the privacy of your colored home Got it?”

I wanted to shout out, but I knew the consequences. I looked down at the ground, just like Mama taught me. “Yes, sir. I sure do see your point.”

He laughed and took another swig from his whiskey bottle. “That’s what I thought, colored. You don’t have no bones and you don’t have no spine. Like just like your mama.”

I don’t know where it came from inside of her, but Mama pulled back and slapped Duncan across the face. I’d never seen my mother so angry. She was the one who taught me to take it on the chin, and now, without warning, she exploded.

“Listen here, boy! I’ve been called a lotta things by a lotta white folks, but I ain’t never gonna let you talk down to my daughter in front of me, you hear? Learn you some respect!”

But Duncan couldn’t learn respect, because nobody was willing to teach it to him. Even if they were, he was too dumb to comprehend the concept.

His baser instincts took over. I watched the humanity drain out of him and a wild beast take its place, egged on by the chanting baboons behind him.

“I ain’t never been hit by no colored,” Duncan said, balling up his fist. “And I ain’t ever gonna let no colored live who struck me.”

Duncan charged at my mother. I leapt in front of her, holding my arms out wide to protect her. “Duncan! No! She doesn’t know! She’s old!”

Duncan threw me out of the way like I was a ragdoll and charged at my mother. “She won’t have to worry about being old no more, cuz now she’ll be dead!”

I rose to my feet and leapt on Duncan’s back, holding back his arms as he tried to swing. He grabbed me under my shoulder and flung me. I crashed into Mama and sent us both onto the grass.

“Fine. I’ll kill the both of you. It’ll be a nice family plot up in Potter’s Field with your daddy. And I’ll come piss on it whenever I get drunk.”

I clenched my fists. If I was gonna die, I wasn’t going down without a fight. I might’ve looked like the meek girl who left Chandler, but I learned how to fight in Chicago, and I wasn’t gonna let those karate classes my roommate dragged me to go to waste.

I pulled back my fist, but Mama stayed my hand. “No! I already done enough. If you hit that boy, they’ll run you out of town for sure.”

“So, you want me to let him kill us?” I shouted.

Mama looked Duncan in the eyes as he watched us on the ground. “Look at that boy. He’s a coward. He won’t kill us. It takes an ounce of courage to kill a person in cold blood, and he doesn’t have it. His father might come for me, but he doesn’t have the stones.”

“I’ll show you who has the stones!” Duncan shouted.

He charged us. I held onto Mama tight, trying to protect her from the savage beating sure to come. I had been beaten within an inch of my life before, back in high school, and I ended up in the hospital for a week. I wasn’t looking forward to it happening again, but I would survive. A beating like that would destroy Mama’s old, frail body.

I braced for the brunt of his assault as Duncan swung back his leg. His friends circled around, ready to join in on the violence...and then the whole world shook. Purple sparks fanned out in front of us, a bolt of light cracked where we lay, and we were gone, leaving Duncan to swing his leg at empty air and land on his behind in the wet, dewy grass.