LA KAY

The House felt the sound when Its top bedroom floor collapsed. The boom startled It and Its newly discovered inhabitants in the back room. It felt their stomachs drop and knew that they were thinking the same thing It was—that Its insides were about to come down on them. It was trying to puzzle out how to keep that from happening. It wanted to keep them safe until It could let somebody know that they were there.

It was feeling guilty about having missed their presence. For how long? If It retraced Lucien’s steps over the years, It could deduce when he’d likely taken each of them. In honesty, It needed only to consider the distractions that would have kept Its attentions away from the back room.

Louima, Diallo, 9/11, the August blackout. No one could have seen anything, let alone those struck blind during a hot summer. The recession a few years later. Then everybody’s attention had been focused on the election of the first black president. La Kay gave Itself a pass for missing anything during that period. It had been celebrating with the rest of KAM, especially the ones who had finally become U.S. citizens in the years prior and had voted in that historic election.

And then It had felt the tumult of KAM patrons old and new who’d needed a place to gather and mourn an unlikely earthquake in Haiti. They’d scarcely completed their acknowledgment of their nation’s independence when, on January 12, a fault had split open their worlds. Feeling their pain, La Kay had joined in their mourning while watching news footage of the disaster that had knocked an already kneeling country flat on its face. It cried at the sight of the cracked statue of Nèg Mawon, a memorialization of a centuries-old maroon rebel from the hills. Behind its fallen body, the Palais Nacional had split down its middle like America’s White House in a Hollywood Armageddon film. It hadn’t known what to do, how to help, as Lucien’s comrades had sat waiting for phone calls with news of loved ones who may have perished or been displaced by the worst natural disaster to hit their country in over a century. There had been no name for this monster that had risen from the earth’s center to devour their capital city and its surrounding provinces. La Kay had listened for a year, hearing about an anniversary that had overshadowed Haiti’s independence. It had seen a resurgence of visits and purchases by newcomers and old patrons desirous of inventory from Lucien’s stockpiles that they would send to refurbish their shattered land. It had no idea that he’d found new prey to manipulate and victimize worse than what he’d done previously.

La Kay groaned and put away the memories. It tried to figure out the happenings that had usurped Its attention in the years after that. The president had been trying to restore the economy, health care…None of that would have been gripping enough to distract It from Lucien’s activities. It vaguely remembered him bringing home somebody who wasn’t Leona. It should have known about the white girl. It still didn’t know who she’d been, how long she’d stayed, if she was still there with the others in Its safe room. But It felt in the pit of Its stomach the boom of guilt that It hadn’t been paying enough attention to the women being misled, drugged, or dragged into Its basement.

Now It wanted to stay alive for two reasons, to get the girls out and to ask Lucien why he’d made It complicit in his evil. It hadn’t understood what he’d done to Veille or any number of women at KAM. It had thought that Asante had been a passing but important mistress who’d voluntarily entered Its basement. It hadn’t known enough about the white girl to pass judgment. It started to resign Itself to the fact that It might never get at the why. It might hear something about the how, if It managed to get the women out. But, like honest help for Haiti, the why would never come.

Knowing Lucien as It did, It knew that there would be no answers. It had learned long ago that Lucien tried not to ask himself questions. And It was right. Lucien would never explain why he’d taken Nihla because he hadn’t known himself. La Kay had peeped the posters in the garage, had seen the way Lucien had looked at the white women on the arms of KAM’s gamblers in their heyday. But It hadn’t gone far enough into Lucien’s memories, into his psyche, to know that the white girl must have reminded him of the glass dolls in his aunt’s curio. It would have wept to know that the white girl had not survived seven days in Its basement.

It tried to remember her, but so many years had passed. It had seen her only once or twice. It had heard only a minor dustup in Its basement bedroom. It had long ignored that part of Itself, ever since Asante. Nothing but Lucien’s endless garbage-quality television sets and stereos were down there. And whatever he’d done with that stuff, La Kay hadn’t cared enough to search. Now It had to search Itself for missed clues, for strangers dragged between Its legs into a hellhole. It found only one aberration in a consistently aberrant existence with Lucien—a baby boy who’d grown into a toddler and then a small boy. La Kay had been trying to figure out to whom the boy really belonged. Veille, Clair, and Dor would have never allowed Lucien access to their children. Now, reeling under the assumption that Lucien had somehow stolen or borrowed the child from one of his strays, La Kay had another reason to do away with Itself and Its owner to keep safe the newest child in Its midst.