Jackal, page 9
Be it denial or belief, Mel silently accepts my assessment.
The trees around us swell with a soft breeze. Their leaves blow, making a wide sound. After a few moments, I can make out my own stilted breathing. Mel goes still in the dark. Her breath is soft. My ears throb from the effort of my heart. We are two opposites in the wood. Like Garrett and Mr. Parker. Listening to the way Mel told it, I had wondered what Garrett had gained that day. Now I ask myself, What did he lose?
ELEVEN
“And?” my mother asks the moment I walk in.
“They haven’t found her yet.” I take off my shoes and notice, for the first time, there’s mud in the mudroom. My mother has a pair of sneakers drying upside down.
“What happened?”
“I was in the garden.” She waves her hand, conjuring the memory for herself. “I like to work in the sunset, the heat is less, and today, one of the neighbors, she comes up to me. She tries to offer me a cutting from her rhododendron. Blue flowers.” My mother scrunches her nose. “Non. Once they take root, you will never be rid of them. And this is not the time of year for cuttings. They will not take.”
“Mom? The neighbor?”
“Yes! This one, she is not a close neighbor. She is from a few streets over. She likes to visit with Mrs. Cleary across the road. This woman is a ‘gossip woman’ and the stories from this part of town are more suited to her taste. Well, she wants to talk about the missing girl, the search, all of that.” My mother leans on the kitchen counter and sips her evening coffee.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“The truth: I do not know. These people are bored, cherie. Do not give them something to talk about.”
I laugh. “You make it sound easy.”
“It is,” she insists. “When you are here, remember, there are eyes everywhere. You help your friend and that is it.”
I call her bluff. “What if—I don’t know—doing something ‘crazy’ is helping her?”
“No, no. This is different. You do not want your name in these people’s mouths.”
“People talk no matter what. And not just here.” This isn’t about the town anymore, this is about me. “I’m…I’m…” Everything I’ve kept a lid on, busied away, and left in New York lurches up to the surface.
My mother seizes the break in my thoughts. “Was there no way to work things out with him, or were you being stubborn?” She’s trying to make me admit I’m the reason the relationship fell apart. “Did you care for him? Though they seldom ask, men need to be cared for.”
“Like Dad?”
“Your father and I were different,” she insists.
“How?”
“I do not like to revisit such things, Elizabeth. I am talking about you, not me.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna revisit things either.”
I think of all she doesn’t know about my relationship, how I nearly lost myself. I want to tell her, but I don’t know what I will do if she still blames me.
“Elizabeth?”
I cross my arms. I’m not answering her questions and I’m not backing down.
My mother waves the air again to banish the argument. I let her. I don’t have the energy to fight. She comes in for one of her strange hugs. Her embrace locks around me like a shackle. I’m not the daughter she wants. I’m not thin enough. I don’t live close enough. Unmarried. The moment I feel her arms start to part, I make my way out of them.
“I’m gonna check out the garden,” I mumble. Before she can stop me, I head outside.
Using my phone as a flashlight, I go to the front of the house. I wasn’t lying. I am truly interested in these flowers. Gardening has been one of my mother’s only consistent hobbies. When she worked, she never could keep it up. She refused to hire someone to do it. This is my land. My piece of earth. I will make it mine. And she did. Her garden is a chance to engage with a bit of her from a distance. Space has helped us before. Now that I’m home, I’ll take any separation I can get.
It’s quiet outside. Another difference from the city. I search for a siren or a loud conversation out a car window. I find my thoughts instead. Mel and I have the same gut feeling: Something isn’t right. But there’s nothing the police can do about a feeling. They’re taking the best course of action with the evidence they have.
I get to the front of my mother’s house. The motion detector turns the floodlights on. Before I can find the garden, I see a car sitting at the end of my driveway. The same car as last night. Lights off. Idling. Blue. Four doors. Before I can glean any other details, it pulls away with a definitive screech, leaving no doubt in my mind.
Someone is watching me. Watching the house.
I chase after the car, determined to get more information. Racing past the end of the driveway, I can make out part of the license plate. I recognize the PA colors but can get only the first letter and the last three digits: Q and then 588. The car turns at the end of the street and speeds off into the dark.
“Q-five-eight-eight,” I whisper. I take a moment to catch my breath, only to realize I’m breathing normally. I look back at my house. I covered a good distance at a full sprint and I’m not winded. Maybe I’m not as out of shape as I thought? That puts a spring in my step as I speed-walk back to the house.
Thanks to my newfound cardio endurance, I keep my cool demeanor when I come back inside.
“What did you think?” my mother asks.
“Lovely,” I lie. I didn’t even look at the flowers. I make my way up to my room. I recite the plate number.
Q-588.
The light striped wallpaper of my room mocks me. I’ll always be a little girl here. Looking around the room, everything is still the way it was when I went to college. That’s because this isn’t so much my room as it is my mother’s. I was never allowed to decorate it. No posters. No fun colors. Just white and pink. I guess my mother saved me from any unfortunate boy band posters. It means that my apartment in New York is colorful. Bright. Teal accent wall with a red couch. Statement on statement. Bold and bold. Tacky for the sake of tacky. I’ve had time to develop my style, but owning things my mother would consider “in poor taste” is my minor act of daily rebellion. I have my limits, though. I still have white ceilings.
Q-588.
I look at my face in the full-length mirror. Bothered, I zero in on my eyes. They look normal. Not bright or tired. Okay, maybe a little tired. I yawn. My hair catches my eye. It looks longer. I reach up and stretch a curl with my fingertips. I can’t remember how long it was before.
Q-588. Q-588. Q-588. Q-588.
I need paper. I search.
Mirror.
Phone.
Flyer.
Denise’s flyer. My mother must have found it and left it for me. I grab a pen, open it to write the plate number down.
Keisha Woodson stares back at me.
It’s her high school yearbook photo. We had the same background, those rainbow lasers. Her box braids are fresh. Her smile is genuine. Her eyes are bright.
Beneath her picture is: Justice for Keisha Woodson.
I tremble, but I don’t look away. I’m not leaving Johnstown until I bring home the girl I lost.
MORGAN
June 1994
Morgan learned she was beautiful at the age of twelve. Her mother, Latoya, had always called her “cute.” Her father, Reggie, crowned her “princess.” It was church that taught her she was beautiful. Through glances during sermons, pointed looks from women in enormous hats, and lingering gazes from deacons, Morgan figured out her beauty. It was a problem. Girls were pretty. Women were beautiful.
A luxury of girlhood is being able to play on other people’s anxieties without consequence. If you make a girl cry, you must be sorry. If a girl offers you an imaginary phone, you answer it. If a girl reaches for your hand, you take it. In womanhood, all those exchanges become contingent on her ability to pay a price. Sometimes this toll is exacted with no regard for the willingness of the woman.
Morgan’s girlhood, like many Black girls’, was so brief she almost missed it. One moment she was a child and the next her mother was concerned about the length of her dresses and the color of her shirts. Morgan had seen enough girls grow up. She thought she knew what to expect. She was lucky to be beautiful. It was what you prayed for. She thought that was because beauty made your life easier.
Her mother, Latoya, corrected her. “It isn’t ease, it’s attention. Wherever you go, you are remembered.”
Morgan still felt like a girl. Sometimes being a woman made her sad. Other times, it made her reckless.
“Look at them,” Morgan said, referring to her older teenage co-workers. “Never want to help close up.” Even though it was late, it was still bright. Summer was here. After a long day of selling ice cream, Taylor, the co-worker closest to her age, could only nod in agreement. Morgan worked at the job the way only a fourteen-year-old could. She outpaced employees years older than her. She had her first taste of agency, and she loved it. Someone other than her parents gave her money and she could do whatever she wanted with it.
Breaking down a table that should have been a two-person job by herself, Morgan tracked the sun. They were behind. She looked over at her other co-workers and saw the reason. They were watching cars pass on the road. Checking. Waiting. Giggling.
“They’re looking for boys.” Taylor frowned.
Morgan folded her arms. “Stupid.” The teens weren’t much older than she was. From the way they spoke, how they practiced accentuating the curves of their bodies, who they smiled at and why: They were conjuring power.
“Hurry up!” the manager yelled. They shot the man a look. He backed off. “Please?” he added. The teens laughed. It was clear Morgan and Taylor were going to be the only ones to accomplish anything.
Morgan continued to stack the tables and chairs.
“Here they come,” Taylor said. She slouched, keeping her head down.
Morgan looked.
Boys, older boys, approached slowly in a car. The other girls were suddenly busy, engaging in the most diligent effort of ignoring them. Morgan couldn’t believe her eyes. After all that, they were going to pretend like these boys didn’t exist.
“Hey!” the boys yelled. The teens played coy.
“Hello!” Morgan waved at the boys. She smiled brazenly. The boys waved back to her in awe.
When they drove off, Morgan didn’t look over her shoulder. She knew she was remembered.
Her walk home was only a few blocks. The streetlights, though spread out, lit the way. That was the only reason she was allowed to be out after dark. Her mother told her to stay in the light. Not that bad things wouldn’t happen there, but anyone who would do something in the light would do much worse in the dark.
“Hey!” This man’s voice wasn’t like the boys’. The boys spoke to her with a wide-eyed sense of awe. Mutual excitement. “Hey, baby, where are you going?”
Morgan knew better than to look at him. She walked faster.
“You too good for me?”
Morgan did not know how to answer that question yet. No matter what the world deemed her, she was still a girl.
“I just want to talk.” He wanted her to be afraid. She knew that. When someone is afraid, they are easier to manipulate. Morgan set her face in stone, stayed in the light, and kept going. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him and noted his appearance. He was short for a man but taller than her.
“Bitch.” How quickly she went from baby to bitch.
One more turn to home. She stopped. If she went that way, he’d know where she slept. She didn’t know what to do. Morgan remembered what her father had taught her about bullies. Confront them. Don’t let them see you hunch your back. Show them you will fight. Morgan lashed out with the only weapon she had. She turned to face the man and smiled with all of her teeth.
“You have a pretty smile,” he said.
Her smile stayed. She crossed her arms over her chest but tilted her head. Her eyes burned with anger. Full of contradictions. She wanted to shove the man away, but she needed him to think it was his idea.
“You hear me?” he asked.
She grinned wider. Her lips cracked at the strain. Her cheeks ached. She showed her gums. She made the most horrifying image she knew, it was one she saw on a decaying box of pancake mix in the bottom cabinet in the kitchen. The red-lipped mammy on the box haunted her dreams with its image of forced jollity. She widened her eyes, to show the whites.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She let out a wild laugh. And without realizing it, she did exactly what her mother would have told her to do in the situation. Act crazy. People will try to mess with you if you look small, but not if you look crazy.
After taking in her strange behavior one last time, the man left.
Morgan’s expression relaxed. She felt a flutter in her neck. She pressed there and felt her heart pounding. Home was a block away.
Morgan could have become a woman who asked for things her mother would never have dared to. She could have shattered glass ceilings. She could have demanded the world give her what she was worth. Beauty aside, she wasn’t easily forgotten.
At the edge of her vision, she saw a shadow. She knew the childhood rhyme about the dangers of looking at shadows. That was in the woods. This was home. But in a town like this, the trees were always close. That fact was made very clear to her as she plotted her way back to her house. All the way at the end of the street, nestled in trees that bore gold leaves in the fall, her home was at the edge of the woods.
A new voice called out to her, “Morgan. There you are.” The shadow moved between her and her destination. She turned away. Don’t answer if your name is called, don’t go off the path.
Real violence doesn’t give you the chance to scream. It cuts through you before you feel the blade. Then comes pain. Then fear.
Snap!
A hand twisted around her wrist and yanked her down, taking her off balance. At first Morgan thought the man handled her without care, but when he twisted her arm, grating it hard in her shoulder socket, she knew he felt the opposite. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to scare her. He wanted to destroy something in her. She was unsure of what.
The violence of the abduction was swift. One moment she was there, the next she was gone. In the seconds before she was dragged into the trees, she still wasn’t afraid. She’d reached past that feeling to find something more useful.
Hope.
She prayed—not that nothing bad would happen. She clung to the hope she’d see daylight again. She’d have a chance to laugh with her friends again. She’d see her family. Whispers of these desires escaped her lips. With each one that did, his grip on her grew tighter. When her shoulder gave in a painful pop, she cried out. He looked back at her. He witnessed her pain with curiosity. Like it had never occurred to him she could feel the sensation at all.
Beyond this disconnect, Morgan saw him. Sadness morphed into apathetic hate: He made his misery hers. That was when Morgan felt true fear. She didn’t need to be an adult to know that sad men are the most dangerous.
Though I know Morgan’s heart well, they never found her body. Morgan, who was always remembered, slowly was forgotten. Her heart taught me the monstrosity in beauty. It showed me how people are often pulled to what hurts them the most. Desire and destruction. With her heart, I learned to wield both.
FIRST BAPTIST NEW YEAR NEWSLETTER
January 15, 2017
NEW HELP IN LOCATING MORGAN DANIELS
May the New Year usher in a season of blessings upon you. Thank you all for your years of support and care in locating our daughter, Morgan Daniels. She was last seen on the evening of June 21, 1994. She disappeared between the hours of 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. She was 14 years old, 5'3", and about 105–115 lbs.
In this new year, we are pleased to share this age progression to help find her:
[AGE PROGRESSION PHOTO: Morgan with glasses. Bright eyes. Full cheeks. Cupid’s bow lip. Delicate jawline. Smooth, clear forehead. Short hair. A girlish light pink shirt.]
She would be 36 years old today.
ONE
For the first time in a long time, I dream:
I’m outside.
Running.
It’s a sticky summer morning. The rising sun warms me, while a slow breeze keeps me cool. I run past the houses on the street I grew up on. The Lombardis’ three-story stone house looms at the top of the hill on my right. The organized field stones cast strange, heavy shadows on the ground as I run past. I reach the next street. The Bernardis’ place is coming up. They locked their pool behind tall, sinister gates.
I keep running.
Finally, I reach the end of the neighborhood and I’m ready to loop back around. The small outlet at the end of the cul-de-sac leads into the woods beyond.
I stop.
I catch my breath.
I look back the way I came and plan my route home.
Suddenly, I feel like I’m being
watched.
I turn.
And turn.
And turn.
I see no one.
TWO
Caroline’s Second Day Missing
I read the flyer with Keisha Woodson’s face on it at least a dozen times before I go to bed. The girl I can’t get out of my head was handed to me moments after I got into town. Below her face is a call for justice. The only reason to demand justice for an accident is if it wasn’t one. I wonder if Denise is her mother. I call the number and it tells me the mailbox is full. But I don’t have much time to focus on Keisha because someone has been watching my mother’s house. And Mel’s family has much more tension than I ever knew. In all this, there’s something beyond my grasp. A piece that, once I hold it, will snap everything into focus.
