LAYLA
“You looking for the girl?”
This is why Ruby can’t leave. He’s terrifying. He imposes himself; a monarch, a pharaoh, a vengeful god of all around him. He circles me like prey. His smile, even and iceberg white, one that charms so many, seems more of a snarl. He might kill me. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
The bravery I thought I had. The Three Women and the faith I thought guided me into Ruby’s small room begins to abandon me.
He takes only two steps and we’re inches apart.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.”
I try to step around him but he matches my stride. Dancing with an unwanted partner.
“Again, I ask what you’re doing here? You collecting her belongings? She leaving?”
“If she is gone, what the hell are you gonna do about it?”
He laughs and I think the devil must laugh this way. He’s a shuddering bag of yellow-brown bones. His green eyes slice into me.
“That little bitch thinks she can go?”
I flinch when I hear what he calls Ruby. I remember the bruises on her neck. I remember the black eyes that Auntie Alice so expertly learned to cover up and the lies she knew how to tell and how people believed her because they didn’t want to believe anything else. All that pain, hate, anger, wasted time, wasted lives. And I can’t let him intimidate me. I can’t give him my power. I breathe deep. I remember again the Three Women. I’m not alone. I have my faith and that’s going to give me courage. Something has to.
“You’re the reason she left.”
“She better get her ass back here before the sun goes down.”
“You don’t own her. She’s not property.”
“That girl owes me.”
“That’s your problem. You think everyone owes you.”
“Little girl, you better stop talking before you say something that’s gonna get you hurt.”
“Like what? Like you’re a shitty father. Like you were a terrible husband to one of the sweetest women in the world. Like you’re nothing and I know you’re nothing! You’re a bully. You’re a coward. A scared, little boy.”
It feels so good to say all of this. I am burning with righteous anger and my mouth is firing out everything I’ve wanted to say to Lebanon, maybe to my father, too. All the hate and the rage, the sadness and the loathing I’ve let myself feel, I get to free it, put it on someone else. I get to breathe!
“I’m going to tell everyone, any person who’ll listen, at the church, on the street that you’re the reason a woman is dead. You’re the reason my friend is broken. You are everything that is wrong.”
“Shut up,” he whispers, trembling like someone experiencing an earthquake only they can feel.
“Or what? You’re gonna shoot me like you shot Auntie Alice?”
Fingers grip my face and squeeze. He tightens enough to make the muscles throb instantly. He can break my jaw. He can bloody me. I think he might kill me. I think of Mom and J.P.
I think of Dad. What would he do if Lebanon killed me? Would that break the spell, destroy their connection? If Lebanon killed me right now, would it be enough to free my father? And I want to believe it will.
Looking into Lebanon’s eyes my stray thoughts flicker like those bugs in the summertime.
“You know, your dad tried to play the hero, even when we were younger. You should ask him how playing the hero turned out.”
It’s a few seconds, a minute at the most, and he lets me go. “Tell her to get her ass back here and you get your ass out of my house. If I see you in here again, you’ll get worse than Ruby or Alice ever got.”
He doesn’t yell or scream. His voice isn’t raised. It is so even and soft, his words spoken don’t sound like threats, but they are.
“I’m not scared of you, Lebanon.” My left arm begins to break out in small bumps again.
“You should be scared of your daddy. So busy looking for me, you don’t realize monsters live in all families. Not just mine.”
I walk out of the bedroom and try not to look back at him. He utters one final question as I make my way to the front door: “Who’s the coward now?” There is an unmistakable smile in his voice.
My face still pulses like it remains in Lebanon’s grip. I almost run out of that place.
Ruby wasn’t there, but bad memories and sadness and violence still reside in the cute bungalow with an apple blossom tree in the front yard. Worse, Lebanon still lives there and none of us are safe.
Who’s the coward now?
Fear is such a warm blanket and I feel it fold over me, but I still hear this:
Go!