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Chapter Thirty
Bacardi and Butch were sleeping like hibernating bears. It was 6:20am, and their bedroom was dark and silent. The house phone was the first to ring, and when they failed to answer that, Butch’s cell phone started to ring nonstop. And then Bacardi’s. Someone was desperately trying to reach them, and they didn’t care how early it was.
Groggily, Bacardi got up and turned off all the phones in the room and then got back into bed and turned over to go back to sleep. She had a late night with Butch, and it was too damn early in the morning to be answering phone calls.
Thirty minutes later, she heard the banging on their front door. Now the entire apartment was up. The two female renters had to go to work soon, but the heavy banging at the door had them worried. The banging was consistent, and it sounded desperate.
Bacardi shot up from the bed with an attitude and threw on her robe and slippers and marched out of the bedroom looking like she was ready to go to war. She grumbled to herself and was ready to give whoever it was that was knocking loudly so early in the morning a strong piece of her mind.
Bacardi swung open the door to find her neighbors, Lester and Tisha, standing there looking strange. “Now why the fuck would you two be knocking on my door at the crack of muthafuckin’ dawn?”
“Bacardi, didn’t you see the news?” Lester asked her.
“What? No, I didn’t see the news, Lester. It’s six in the goddamn morning,” she said.
The look her neighbors exchanged told Bacardi that something was wrong. Lester’s look was sorrowful, as was Tisha’s. Her anger transitioned to concern.
“What’s on the news, Lester? What happened?” she asked fretfully.
By now, Butch had joined his wife at the front door. “What is it, Bacardi? What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s something fucked up—I know it,” Bacardi said.
Tisha was the one to say it, because it seemed Lester was too shaken up to spill the news.
“NY1 is reporting that Claire Brown, the student expelled from Harvard University, took her own life last night by jumping in front of a subway train,” she informed them with a quivering lip.
Bacardi and Butch stared at Tisha in disbelief before Bacardi broke the trance.
“What? No! Stop lying to me, bitch! My daughter isn’t dead,” Bacardi hollered.
Butch spun around and moved toward the TV and hurriedly turned it on and changed the channel to NY1. And there it was. The news story was running with Claire’s graduation picture and the heartbreaking headline in the lower third of the screen.
Bacardi ran to see it too. Both were overwhelmed with grief, and Bacardi felt her knees weaken. No, this wasn’t happening. Not their daughter. Not Claire.
“I’m so sorry, y’all,” Tisha expressed with profound sympathy.
They didn’t hear her. They both were in shock. How could this have happened? Why did she do it? Suddenly, Bacardi was torn with guilt and anguish. Claire had called and begged to come back home, but Bacardi had treated her coldly and held firm to her grudge. Now their middle child was dead.
Bacardi nearly fainted, and Butch raced to catch his wife from falling.
The renters and their neighbors were all trying to console Bacardi. She screamed at the top of her lungs in agonizing grief. It was a bone-chilling mother’s shriek that would become eerily embedded in the memories of those who heard it. No mother should lose her child, regardless of what kind of relationship they had.
Chapter Thirty-One
Chanel wanted to lock herself inside her room for the day. She didn’t think she could face Pyro without the awkwardness they both deserved. Visions of him spending the day with Mecca ate away at whatever dignity she felt she had left.
Last night wasn’t supposed to happen. Her first consensual sexual experience was supposed to be with her fiancé, Mateo. Chanel was at an age when you still believed in relationship fairytales—when you believed in Prince Charming and happily ever after. It was the fantasy mindset where you remained a virgin until marriage and raised your two-point-five kids in a house with a white picket fence. Now those dreams had gone up in flames thanks to God and his perversion.
Chanel felt like a slut. She wondered if the rape had changed her, or if this was who she truly was. She was Mecca’s best friend, who had slept with her soon-to-be fiancé. She was also Mateo’s fiancée who had slept with his best friend. She had done that. But wasn’t that kind of thing Charlie’s MO? Charlie was the remorseless one who would do something just like this.
By noon, she felt like she was suffocating. Her guilt was shutting off her air supply. She got dressed looking extra modest in a loose-fitting turtleneck dress and trench coat. Her face was bare—no blush, lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, or eye shadow. Her first stop was St. Benedict’s Roman Catholic Church for afternoon mass. Chanel wasn’t Catholic or Baptist or any denomination, but she was in pursuit of absolution. Quietly she slid into a back pew and grabbed a Bible as the priest read his sermon. The verses didn’t matter to her. Chanel clutched the Bible, looked at the numerous statutes of white Jesus and the other saints, and began to cry her eyes out.
Later, Chanel went to see Mateo. When she walked into the room, she perched herself on the side of his bed and kissed him deeply and passionately. It was a sensual kiss that probably could have created a miracle in his pants. It was something she hadn’t done since before the invasion.
Mateo stared at his lady and worriedly uttered to her, “Have you been crying?”
Chanel’s eyes widened. “No. Of course not. Why would I be crying?”
