~~~
“...It was my father who contracted the disease or whatever it was, but my mother...she was the one who suffered most. By the end, her skin had darkened and become shriveled as a prune-there was this ashen tint to it. You can only imagine the toll it took on my father to see her that way.
My mother was the epitome of what the world classifies as beautiful- blonde, porcelain skin, blue eyes...her family disowned her when she married my dad- a black man...even when his family came into all that money-even when she got so sick...they wouldn’t come around.
Dad’s work paid off, though. He found something that eased the worst of the symptoms. I never caught it- whatever it was. It darkened Saffron’s skin too but she’d taken more of my dad’s coloring so the change wasn’t so noticeable. By all accounts the ‘cure’ worked for him and my sister. Dad thought it was mom’s race that stifled her response.
Hmph...he latched onto all kinds of wild theories- the obsession to fix her just took over him and when he lost her...we lost him. He sent us away to live. We hardly saw him ‘til we were older, but we never forgot those times or our mother.
When we went our separate ways, we knew we’d
probably never see each other again. Even when dad drew us back
into the fold so he could position us to spy for him-he met with us
separately. I never tried to reach out-neither did she.”
~~~
Caiphus and SyBilla sat rapt with interest like children around a campfire being thrilled and terrified by a ghost story.
Bill had traded her spot on Caiphus’ lap for
one of the other rolling desk chairs in the room. She hadn’t
ventured far from his side though and kept a tight grip on his hand
since shortly after Lamont’s confession began.
***
The sun was beginning its late evening descent. The twins had, at last, run out of steam. They napped in the lounge chairs arranged beneath another of the massive palms dotting the landscape. A few yards away, their mother, grandmother and aunt continued to chat.
Persephone was reeling over the insanity of all her mother had shared. That was before she took time to ask herself what there really was to be reeling over. After all, given the events of...well the events over the course of her entire life, how could anything more strike her as strange?
“Why’d you bring them into it, Mama? The Ramseys? Later I mean? Why risk telling Carmen Ramsey what Mae and Eva had done to Cleon Raymond? Why trust her to watch over them?”
“Going to see Carmen was more than a preventive measure for me at first,” Tammy opened the top hatch on the bamboo ottoman near her chair and retrieved a small fleece blanket.
“It was also about a foolish young girl’s attempt to kick back at a man who hurt her. I wanted to kick back at my family too-told my sister I was married and that Will’s job kept him very busy out West. I’d left Cleon Raymond’s wife Odessa watching the girls when I made the visit. I took pictures of Eva, told my sister we’d visit as soon as possible. We never did. As for Carmen, I’d always sensed a decency in her, but I didn’t expect seeing her to change anything that first time. I only wanted her to know what her brother was… As I said...I got the feeling she already knew that better than I did.
Later, asking her to get Eva and Mae to safety after Cleon...I had no choice. Marc had already been around...snooping. I don’t know how, but I thank God I’d anticipated that he might be just that thorough one day- that he might want to know what happened to the one who got away before he was done with her. So yes, I split the girls up when they were infants. There weren’t many appropriate spots in Dolores but I accepted what I thought was best and where I could keep Mae as close as possible Odessa Raymond was a good woman- a real lady despite her poor taste in men.
Odessa wanted a baby, but Cleon wanted money- the kind only a Ramsey could supply. If that was all he’d wanted, Marc may’ve never gotten as close as he did. There was paperwork connecting me with the Raymonds...Cleon wanted government compensation for keeping Mae so I had to sign papers...I was young, stupid...never thought Marc would go that far to find...I never claimed Eva-she had no birth certificate, social security number. It was easy during that time for things to go overlooked especially there. I made disappearing so easy for her. Like I said...I was stupid...if anyone needed to be tagged with those identifying marks, it was Evangela.”
“How’d you find me here?” Persephone shifted her focus to Mae. The woman had been sitting quietly for the better part of the discussion.
“We always knew,” Mae’s full mouth thinned into a semblance of a smile. “A lot of people can’t do that thing you do,” she pressed down on her wrist to indicate Persephone’s acupressure technique.
“Evan...she’s smart. She found you that way. It was easy, but then she couldn’t figure how to get by your security. That was hard. She didn’t want the trouble. Not even after you shot Fernando. I think you still didn’t matter a lot to her then and you weren’t with Hill, so…”
“I was following orders,” Persephone finished when silence held the air for several seconds.
“I had to call Miss Tam to get me in when I came here,” Maeva was saying.
Persephone glanced at her mother and saw her weepy look. “How did you know it was her?” She asked before the woman’s emotions got the better of her.
Tammy swallowed, looked at her hands again. “When she said my name, the way she did just now...When I looked into her eyes-those amazing and lovely eyes, I knew.” Tammy looked up then, her mouth trembling on a smile.
“Why did you give me to him?” There was no blame- no accusation in Mae’s thick voice. There was only innocent curiosity, a distinct bewilderment as she addressed her mother. “Mr Cleon was a bad man. He made me eat off the floor when Miss Odie wasn’t there. Sometimes he wouldn’t let me eat if I didn’t do all the work he had for me. It was worse when Miss Odie left for good.”
Maeva sat stiff as a board in her chair, her big hands planted upon each knee. She looked straight ahead as though watching her past play before her eyes as she relayed it factually and without emotion.
“Eva was such a sick, weak little thing,” Tammy said, her gaze just as distant as she looked out over the landscape. “Seems peculiar, given her intolerance of weakness, but she could barely take a few breaths without wheezing. You Mae...you were the strong one. I knew Odessa would take good care of you and she deserved a healthy baby.”
“Miss Odie was nice,” Mae continued, though her voice shook then infinitesimally. “Somebody killed her. They said it was Mr. Cleon-he was a very bad man.”
Persephone heard Tammy’s breath catch on a sob. She could feel the first swells of emotion scratch her throat too as Maeva’s words nudged her sympathies. She wanted to feel no compassion for the woman, but could feel its subtle warmth beneath her resentment just the same.
“I can’t remember it all, Perry.” Mae shifted on her chair, watching Persephone in earnest then. “There is something- it wakes me up because I can’t remember what it is. I need you to help me find it, Perry. You can do it. You’re the only one.” She lifted her wrist again, indicating the pressure points there.
“Mae.” Persephone gave pause to quickly rehearse her explanation as she would before attempting to explain something complex in terms the girls would understand.
“What I do… it stimulates uh...makes you relax. Bringing back memories isn’t the purpose for it. The relaxation clears the mind which may bring up memories.”
“Before when you did it, the headaches left.” Maeva said. “I can think when I don’t have the headaches. Without you, I have headaches all the time. The Re-Gen, you remember it?” Mae waited for Persephone to nod. “It messed with my head and my head is already messed up. Now it won’t even work.”
“Maeva my...technique- the results, if they come, it won’t happen overnight.”
Mae was already nodding cooperatively. “I can wait. I have stuff to do.”
Realizing that dissuading Mae wouldn’t happen, Persephone acquiesced. “This memory you’re after-how far back does it go?”
Maeva sent her mother a hopeful look and
then studied her sister. “It goes all the way back. Back to the
night we killed Cleon.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Supposing I can help her and that’s resting on a very shaky supposition- what then? Mae gets what she wants, but what about you? What do you want?” Persephone watched Tammy across the kitchen.
They were the only two up then. The girls were tucked into their beds as was Mae who had returned to one of the guest rooms Tammy had put her in upon her arrival weeks earlier.
