What You Don't Know, page 21
Silently, Cookie rose from her seat and plodded over to Blair. She unwound the tape from her wrists and chest, still unable to look at her. Once Blair’s limbs were free, she groaned from the release. Everything hurt. Her back, her neck, her knees—her ears even—every nerve ending, joint, and muscle prickled with pain. Cookie plucked the gag from her mouth and threw it on the counter.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Blair said, her voice dry and gravelly.
“Well, you ain’t going to use the one over there.”
“I’ll use my own bathroom. And my husband’s going to use it, too.”
“Whatever.” Tree propped his feet on a chair in front of him. “Go up there with her, Cookie.”
Cookie pressed her lips together and let out a short burst of air, as though she wanted to defy him, like she wanted to lash out at him for all of this destruction. Instead, she grabbed Blair’s arm and the two of them went upstairs. Blair rubbed her wrists and continued to roll her head around, hoping to dislodge the obstinate crick in her neck.
Her bed was a mess, still rumpled from Tree and Cookie lounging on it yesterday. Yesterday. Had that only been yesterday? The remnants of the torn tape from their ill-fated escape attempt and the scissors used to aid the flight, lay forlorn against the rug. Her fingers itched to snatch them up, stab that girl in the chest, and flee.
Blair went to close the bathroom door when Cookie slammed her hand against it.
“I have to watch you.”
She fixed her eyes on the girl. “Like you watched last night?”
Cookie looked away, another round of tears shimmering in her eyes. “He was just mad. Because ya’ll tried to escape.”
Blair pulled her pants down and plopped down on the toilet, already stripped of dignity, no longer caring.
“Have you ever heard of karma, Cookie?”
The girl folded her arms across her chest, looking away.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Blair said, flushing the toilet and washing her hands. “We all have choices in life and last night, you made a choice. Trust me, Cookie, or whatever the hell your name is, the choice you made last night—all of this—is going to jump up and bite you in the ass one day.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “I just hope to God I’m alive to see it.”
The girl’s tears fell faster. Blair let her gaze drift over the girl’s shoulder. How fast could she get across the room to those scissors?
“What’s going on up there?” Tree’s voice boomed from downstairs. Cookie jumped like she’d been reprimanded by her master. She wiped away her tears and grabbed Blair’s wrist, yanking her down the stairs, where Tree stood, his hands on his hips and scowling.
“What’s going on up there?” he repeated.
“You said you wanted breakfast, Tree.” Blair wrenched her arm from Cookie’s grip and walked past him, her voice a monotone. “Then you should let me do that.”
His mangled foot whispered across the tile behind her and he struggled to keep up with her as she headed to the dining room. Malcolm and Farrah were still tied to their chairs. Farrah was awake. Her face puffy. Lips swollen. Eyes dead and wild all at once.
“Hey, Wifey, I want eggs and bacon.”
“Untie my daughter. And let my husband use the bathroom.”
Tree scoffed, but complied, untying Farrah and Malcolm, who hunched over his knees, letting out a soft groan.
“Go. Use the bathroom,” she said.
“I’m fine, Blair,” he said, his voice raspy with exhaustion.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I—” He glanced at their captors. “I want to keep an eye on things.”
She slipped her arm around her daughter’s waist and hugged her. “How are you holding up, baby?” she whispered.
“I’m okay, Mom.” The lisp was still jarring. The muffled, pinched voice. Foreign. Horrifying.
Blair bit her lip to hold in the tears, unable to respond.
They all shuffled into the kitchen like zombies, easing themselves down into chairs. Her heart sank at the sight of her kitchen, her just-yesterday, beautiful, glittering, showroom-new kitchen, buried beneath this graveyard of crusty pans, dried-on, caked-on pots, and greasy dishes. The kitchen had become a metaphor for this nightmare. Saturday, a shiny, beautiful life. Today, soiled and unrecognizable.
Blair beelined for the sink and turned on the water, mentally scrubbing the pots, loading the dishwasher, wiping down the counters. Those thoughts, those inconsequential thoughts about inconsequential things, were all she could focus on to keep her tears at bay.
“You supposed to be cooking me breakfast, Wifey.”
“I’m washing the dishes.”
Tree popped out of his chair and hobbled over to her, proverbial steam pushing out of his ears. He wrenched a pot from her hand and flung it to the floor, the metal clanging against the tile.
“I don’t care about no damn dishes,” he said as he reached into the sink, grabbing another pot and two small cookie sheets, throwing those to the floor, as well. “I care about my breakfast. I care about getting some food in me.”
“Leave my mother alone!” Farrah screamed, her eyes darting between their captors. “She said she would cook for you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Baby girl, don’t—”
“This is our house. This—”
“You best stop talking little girl, before I come over there and—”
“Before you what?” Farrah stuck her chin out. “What are you gonna do to me, Tree? Huh? Rape me again? Slam another bowl in my face? Huh?”
“You gonna wish that’s all I do.”
Farrah’s eyes wobbled as she scanned the room, finally landing, her body coiled, ready to spring loose. Blair looked at her daughter. She was going for the knife block. She leapt across the room as soon as Farrah did and intercepted her, struggling to clamp her arms down to her sides.
“Stop it,” she hissed. “It’s not worth it.”
“You’re telling me to calm down? You.” Farrah laughed, incredulous. “Are you joking?”
“Yo, you should listen to your mama.” Tree coughed. “Wifey knows what’s up.”
“Farrah, please.” Blair closed her eyes, the exhaustion seeping back into her bones. “We just have to get through today. Please.”
Farrah slumped against Blair, clearly spent. She held onto her daughter, rubbing her back, whispering to her to calm down. She pulled back and took her girl’s face in her hands. “Okay?”
“How touching.” Tree laughed, his gaze falling on Cookie. He reached over and snatched her by the ear. “Why you just sitting here? Huh? You ain’t got nothing to say? You not gonna defend your man?”
“Don’t do that, T—”
He continued to tug on her ear, yanking and twisting it as she screamed. The Gilberts glanced at each other, while Dio looked uncomfortable. Tree pulled Cookie from the chair and she dropped to the ground, cries and screams mingling with each other. Finally, he pushed her away and she lay against the kitchen floor, whimpering like a dog.
Tree banged on the cabinet. “Yo, I’m not going to ask you again. I want my breakfast. Now.”
Blair inhaled. “Shut up.”
“What?”
“I said I’m making you breakfast.” She shuffled over to the stove, fear and exhaustion pulling at her with equal force.
“That’s what I thought,” Tree said.
She motioned to Farrah to pull pots and pans from the cabinet as she trudged to the refrigerator, glancing at a hunched-over Malcolm, his elbows digging into his thighs as he rubbed his eyes. She knew the fog was descending, curling its way into the cracks and crevices of his brain. What would the fog take today? What pound of flesh would this entire nightmare extract? Would it be a debilitating headache? The dizziness he said made him feel like a spinning top even when he was standing still? Would it be the irritability, the moody petulance that could rival Blair’s? The incapacitating fatigue, the only thing, aside from the sleeping pills, that put him to sleep?
She knew what would flush out the fog, though it wasn’t likely he was going to get any assistance from these jackasses.
Blair grabbed a K-cup and popped it into the coffee maker. Coffee was a poor substitute for Grade A Kush, but it was all she had.
The coffee maker beeped and Blair grabbed a mug, filling it with steaming Kona gold. She handed the hot mug to Malcolm. He went to reach for it and it slipped through his seared fingers, alarmingly more red than yesterday, sending steaming black liquid across the floor.
“Oh, shi—” Blair jumped back to avoid the splatter. She searched Malcolm’s face for signs of a faculty beginning its inevitable decline. The doctors said Parkinson’s was a possibility. His eyes could start to go. Dementia could be around the corner.
Instead, Malcolm grabbed her arm, digging his good fingers into her flesh, the still brutish strength surging through him and straight into her. He pressed six sleeping pills into her palm, glancing at their captors and back at her again. Blair clamped her hand over the pink pearls, nodding. Understanding.
“I’m sorry, honey. Let me get you another cup,” she said, her heart racing. Should she offer them some coffee and drop the pills into their mugs? Would they dissolve?
“Man, I don’t know how you drink coffee. That shit gives me the runs.” Tree laughed and made farting noises with his mouth.
So much for coffee. Blair racked her brain. She spied her monster blender on the counter next to the sink. Smoothies. She’d put the pills in a smoothie. Would six be enough? They were pretty potent. She’d pour them into small cups. More concentrated that way.
She flung the refrigerator open, pulling out a carton of eggs, a package of bacon, and the bright yellow box of frozen waffles Dio had thrown into the basket yesterday, careful to juggle the pills in her palm to keep even one from slipping. Blair took out a carton of strawberries and blueberries and five cartons of yogurt, plunking everything on the counter. A banana that hadn’t made it onto the dining room table stared at her from the bottom shelf and she grabbed that, too.
She dumped the blueberries into the blender and glanced over her shoulder. Cookie had taken a seat next to a wilted Malcolm at the kitchen table, a distraught look on her face. Tree sat hunched over the table, sketching something on a napkin with a pen someone had left behind. Dio had folded himself into a corner, staring down at the floor. Farrah cracked eggs into a bowl, her purple, puffy face impassive.
Blair dropped the pills into the blender, careful not to let any of them clink against the glass. Her fingers shook as she peeled the foil from three cartons of yogurt and dumped them one by one on top of the mound of blueberries, the pills disappearing beneath the pink goo. She plucked the green stems from the strawberries, throwing fruit into the glass jar by the handful, tossing the banana in last.
She hit the power button, her heart thumping as loud as the blender. She watched the jaws pulverize the contents, the hard shell of the pills clinking against the glass as they turned to powder. She bit her bottom lip and took another glance behind her. Malcolm tapped his thumbs against each other, watching her. She pressed her lips together.
Let’s see if this works.
He nodded in return.
It has to.
Blair shut off the blender. She placed her hand on the handle of the cabinet where she kept the glasses.
“What the fuck you doin’?” Tree asked. He was looking up from his drawing, scowling.
“Oh my God, I wish you would stop talking,” Blair muttered, then froze, forgetting for a split second, where she was, who she was with. What was going on. She sucked in her breath, waiting.
Tree jerked out of his chair yet again, limping across the room with lightning speed. He picked up the blender.
“You want me to stop talking?” he asked.
Blair flinched, the flash of what he did to Farrah yesterday with the bowl careening across her brain. The twitch of awareness ripping through her at the realization she could be seconds away from the same fate.
Instead, he slammed the jar to the floor. Purple sludge oozed out of the broken husk of glass and across the tile. Blair and Farrah jumped back to escape the explosion, clinging to each other.
He picked up the package of bacon and the box of waffles and threw them at Blair, barely missing her. “How about you shut your damn mouth and talk me up some bacon, some eggs, not whatever the hell you were doing. You hear me, Wifey?”
“Tree!” Malcolm yelled across the room, causing the boy to whip his head around.
“What?”
“My wife is going to make you a nice breakfast so will you just calm down?”
“Man, don’t you—” He reared back as though he was ready to fly across the room to pummel Malcolm. He sniffed and dropped his fist. He sauntered back over to the chair and picked up his pen, resuming his drawing.
“Just make the damn bacon and eggs.” He propped his bad foot on a chair. “And them waffles. And a big glass of grape pop.”
Farrah slunk back to the counter and resumed cracking eggs. Blair looked down, the liquid continuing its exploration of the kitchen floor and held back her tears as she watched yet another escape attempt slither away from her.
Family Ties
Gwen Majors: Oh, man. Their mother. Bibi. Now she was a piece of work.
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: Bibi said she was an actress, but I think the only thing she ever really did was six months as a waitress on As the World Turns or something.
* * *
Elena York: Bibi Johnson was a sometime cocktail waitress, sometime model, and wannabe actress. She was beautiful, but not especially talented. She pretty much floated from one unremarkable modeling job to the next, one bit part to the next, never really making much of a dent in either. The bulk of her modeling gigs were comprised of layouts for those old confessional magazines and ads for things like cigarettes and pimple cream that you’d find buried in the back of girlie magazines. Her acting career consisted mostly of “under five” roles—a coat-check girl, a florist—things of that nature. She always had dreams of making it big in show business but just didn’t have the talent.
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: We only met Bibi a handful of times. It was obvious Blair was embarrassed by her. Bibi would always be saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. You could tell once upon a time she’d been really pretty, but the years had not been good to her. She was tiny, like skin and bones tiny, so her skin would kind of hang off her like a curtain or something. And too much make-up, like this really bright hot pink lipstick that was always on her teeth, which were yellow—like banana yellow—and really cheap, ratty-looking wigs she’d probably had since the sixties that were always crooked.
* * *
Gwen Majors: Her clothes were always a mess, too. She’d wear these faux fur stoles that had holes like moths must have lived in them. And these satin dresses. Oh my God those dresses. They were in these really bright colors—blues, greens, reds—they were a mess, too. Full of cigarette burns and grease stains, with the hems coming apart and strings hanging off everything.
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: It was kind of hard not to feel sorry for Blair for—God forgive me for saying this—being stuck with Bridget for a sister and Bibi for a mother.
* * *
Gwen Majors: I’m sorry, but Bibi and Bridget were just straight-up vultures. Those two would eat the carcass.
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: Blair told me some things, like how her mother, from the time they were little, would leave them alone for days on end with like a loaf of bread and sugar to eat while she chased after the latest loser. Or how, when she wasn’t ignoring them, she’d beat them with hairbrushes or her shoe, or play the girls against each other. You know, “Bridget, Blair borrowed your dress. You’re not going to let her get away with that, are you?” “Blair, Bridget’s so much prettier than you. You’ll never be that pretty.” Stuff like that.
* * *
Jenny Valentine: Blair had hired Bridget as her personal assistant. Well, that’s what she was supposed to be anyway, but she didn’t do anything except be a pain in the ass. There’s something about her that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. The way Bridget pranced around, the way she talked to people, you would think she was the famous one.
* * *
Gwen Majors: Bridget really took advantage of Blair. Was always using her sister’s name for extra perks and stuff, you know like restaurant reservations or to borrow clothes from designers, free tickets to other singers’ shows, whatever. Blair just kind of put up with it. Guilt, I guess.
* * *
Jenny Valentine: Once we were in Dallas, doing a bunch of promotional stops—radio stations, in-stores, malls, that kind of thing and we were staying at this hotel, a really nice hotel. First, Bridget was going to the spa every day for manicures and facials while she was supposed to be working. Then, the rest of us were at a listening party somewhere, and Bridget said she was too tired to go and was going to stay in her room, order room service. Anyway, she got the most expensive things on the menu—lobster, steak, caviar, champagne. The works. None of us were ordering stuff like that—we were so busy, running all over town, we were lucky if we got a Happy Meal.
* * *
I guess she wanted the steak well done and it was medium rare. She went ballistic. Starts throwing food all over the room, smearing it everywhere—the walls, the bed—everywhere—throwing plates and glasses at the poor server. She calls down to the restaurant—“Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?”—before she finally marches downstairs to the restaurant, still screaming about how they’re supposed to respect her and how this is the worst hotel she’s ever stayed in—barrels her way into the kitchen and stands there while they cook her a whole new steak, a whole new meal. And then sits in the kitchen and makes them watch her eat it.
