Brooklyn, page 11
“Thank you so much.” This time Brooklyn heard her father’s voice loud and clear.
She heard their footsteps approaching and rushed over to a nearby chair. By the time her father and Mrs. Hutchinson emerged, Brooklyn was sitting cross-legged pretending to read through a Sunday school booklet.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Hutchinson said. She smiled at Brooklyn as she stepped out. “Y’all have a good night.”
She exited the same way she came.
Brooklyn looked at her father. “Everything okay?”
He nodded. “Yup. Come on.”
She followed him out, thinking about what she’d overheard. It sounded like Alonzo was in big trouble. Despite the fact that he had broken her heart, she still felt bad for him. She prayed that he was safe and things worked out in his favor. She wondered what was in the shoebox his mother had rushed into the pastor’s office carrying, and what the police had already found in their case against Alonzo. She wondered how much of an “offering” Mrs. Hutchinson had given.
They stopped at McDonald’s on the way home. As they pulled into the parking lot, Brooklyn groaned.
“I know you’re not ashamed of me. But I’m too ashamed of myself to walk in there looking like this. It’s bad enough I have to face my friends at school.”
He nodded. “Okay. I understand.”
They used the drive-through and ordered their food. Then they parked in the lot and sat eating together in his car. Brooklyn marveled at how much her father clearly loved her. He seldom let the family eat in his car unless they were on long road trips. But Elias made an exception for Brooklyn that day. They spread their paper wrappings in their laps and dug into their cheeseburgers together.
She felt guilty for lying to him and wished she could tell him the truth. That she had suffered her first heartbreak and gotten beaten up as the icing on a very unsavory cake. The thought of her father’s disappointment kept her from telling him what was really going on. Her goal now was to keep the illusion going. To make him believe that she really was the daughter he wanted her to be.
“I’m sorry for embarrassing us,” she said as she finished her Quarter Pounder. “I know Miss Nancy is gonna spread the news all around the church. I know it makes us look bad. I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“People are gonna talk. There’s no stopping that. Let them talk.” He finished his own burger and looked over at her. He took her hand in his. “You’re my daughter and I love you. I want to protect you. But as much as I love you, God loves you more. And when I can’t be there to protect you, He’s always there watching over you. So, I don’t worry about you too much. I know that you’re protected by your father in the physical and by your Father in heaven.”
She loved him so much at that moment and knew it would be seared into her memory for life. Without realizing it, Elias had said exactly what she needed to hear to comfort her weary soul. There was so much about her life that her father wasn’t aware of. The drugs she had transported, the child she had aborted. Reminded that God had been watching over her through all of it, she became emotional. Tears poured forth from her eyes and Brooklyn cried. Elias reached over and held her until her quaking shoulders stilled and her breathing steadied. Then he started the car and drove them home.
It was just after 6 P.M. when they got home. They walked in and found Hope and Amir sitting in the living room watching TV. The second they saw Brooklyn’s battered face, they both reacted.
“Brooklyn!” Hope exclaimed, her hands covering her mouth.
“Who did this to you?” Amir demanded, standing to his feet.
Brooklyn gave them the rundown.
“It’s okay. I got into a fight with a girl from school.”
“What girl?” Hope asked, frowning. As far as she knew, Brooklyn was popular and loved at school.
Amir frowned, too. He thought about the side of Brooklyn the rest of the family knew nothing about. He wanted to believe her story about a fight with a girl from school. But something in his gut told him there was much more to the story than that.
“It’s okay,” Brooklyn said again. “I promise it’s not a big deal.”
Amir was still skeptical. He didn’t respond, looking from Brooklyn to their father and back again. He had arrived home from work that evening and found his mother storming around the house frantically, mumbling to herself, clearly agitated. Seeing his father and sister coming through the door with Brooklyn looking like she’d been to hell and back again was further proof that something wasn’t right.
As if reading her son’s thoughts, Sabrina charged into the room ready for war.
“You think you’re so smart, Brooklyn! Lying to us and running around like a slut. I ought to wring your neck!”
Brooklyn froze and stared back at her mother.
“WHOA!” Elias protested. “Sabrina, what’s wrong with you? She already told us—”
“LIES!” Sabrina yelled. “Everything she’s been saying is a lie.”
Brooklyn’s mouth fell open as her mother tossed her coveted belongings onto the coffee table. The gold earrings and necklace Alonzo had bought for her, the ticket stubs from their trip to the movies, her birth control pills, the aftercare instructions from the abortion clinic, and an open pack of condoms with a couple missing. It sunk in that she was busted. She looked at her mother with guilt written all over her face.
“Start talking!” Sabrina yelled.
“Ma…” Brooklyn shook her head, helplessly. “You went through my stuff?”
Sabrina scoffed. “You can’t be serious! Are you questioning me right now?” She looked at Elias with amazement. “You hear her?”
“Brooklyn, what’s all this?” Elias asked.
Brooklyn held her hands up in surrender. “I met Alonzo a few months ago. We hang out at the library sometimes, in the park. It’s no big deal.”
“Did Alonzo get you pregnant?” Sabrina snatched up the carbon paper from Planned Parenthood and waved it in Brooklyn’s face like a fan. “You had an abortion?”
“What’s she talking about?” Elias’s voice was much louder now.
Sabrina’s gaze remained fixed on Brooklyn. “I asked you a question,” she said. “Have you been out there messing around like a common whore?”
Brooklyn’s fists clenched. She felt her temperature rising. “Don’t call me that.”
“BROOKLYN! What the hell is she talking about?” He stared at her, threateningly.
Sabrina didn’t wait for her to respond. “Your daughter’s been out there disrespecting this family and the church we built. That’s what’s going on!” Sabrina shouted.
Brooklyn stared back at her wordlessly. She could feel her adrenaline rushing. Some sort of fight-or-flight response. She considered running back out the door.
“Did you get an abortion, Brooklyn?”
Elias asked the question even though he knew the answer already. The evidence was right there in his wife’s hands. She stood with her chest heaving, feeling like a failure as a parent. Over the past few minutes, she had discovered that there was a side of her daughter that she knew nothing about.
“Daddy,” Hope said, stepping into the room. “Calm down.”
Brooklyn looked at her sister, grateful for the interruption. Amir was close behind. He locked eyes with Brooklyn, sympathetically.
Brooklyn turned to face her father. She had always been daddy’s little girl. She knew that what he was about to learn would disappoint him and that reality filled her with dread.
He stared at Brooklyn. “Answer me.”
Sabrina didn’t wait for Brooklyn to respond. She handed her husband the paper in her hand and watched him read it. She picked up the earrings, the necklace, the condoms, and all the trinkets of young love that Brooklyn had kept tucked away in a shoebox at the top of her closet. Sabrina stuffed them all into her husband’s hands, one by one, disgust written all over her face.
“She’s a lying, dirty TRAMP, Eli! And I want her out of this house!” She snatched the paper out of his hand and waved it in Brooklyn’s face. “You’re going to a group home because I’m not going to stand here and watch you destroy this family!”
Brooklyn took a step back. She had never seen her mother so out of control. For the first time in her life, she worried that Sabrina might get violent.
“She’s cutting school, lying to us, having sex with a grown man. Some drug dealer driving her home in a car that cost more than the project apartment he lives in. She had an abortion, Eli! And it’s probably not the first time. She lies about everything.”
As she watched her mother lay it all out like evidence in the case against her, Brooklyn fumed. She felt violated and exposed. She felt that her mother was the least qualified to judge her. She avoided her father’s gaze as her mother continued ranting.
“Brooklyn, speak up!”
Her father’s voice startled her, and she looked at him, shocked. She couldn’t recall the last time he had yelled at her. She fought back tears.
“Daddy, give her a minute.” Hope stepped closer to the fray and spoke soothingly, doing her best to coax peace within her family, even at such a turbulent moment.
Amir stood quietly in the corner. Brooklyn looked to him for reassurance but found him staring down at his feet. Fury bubbled up inside of her like a kettle on high. Each of them looking like hypocrites to her. All but Hope.
“Let her explain,” Hope urged. She looked at Brooklyn and nodded, urging her to plead her case.
Brooklyn cleared her throat. “I met Alonzo at the ferry terminal after school one day,” she said softly. “I was sneaking around to see him, and I’m sorry.”
“Sneaking off and doing what?” her father demanded.
Brooklyn forced herself to look at him, her eyes pleading, but she didn’t respond.
“So, you’ve been sneaking out of school, dishonoring yourself and your body with a grown man.” His heart broke with every word he uttered.
“I’ll be eighteen in a few days,” Brooklyn protested softly. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
A look crossed her father’s face unlike anything she had seen before. Disdain and repulsion dripped from his downturned mouth and cold gaze.
“I’m ashamed of you,” he said.
The words hit Brooklyn like a punch in the face.
Her father wasn’t done.
“We trusted you,” he said. “Gave you everything you ever wanted. All we asked in return was for you to carry yourself with some respect and dignity.”
“Like you do?” Brooklyn asked, facetiously.
As the words flew out of her mouth, her father’s hand slapped her hard across it. She recoiled from the blow, sobbing.
Hope rushed forward, putting herself between her father and sister, defensively. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “Please, Daddy.” She blocked Brooklyn with her body, hoping he would back off.
Through tears, Brooklyn watched her father looming furiously over them, her mother standing idly by, and Amir cowering silently across the room. Brooklyn had never been more disappointed in her brother in her whole life.
“You DISGUST me!” Elias shouted.
“I disgust you?” she asked, her voice cracking with emotion.
Her father had always seemed to understand her, always protected, and defended her. He stood glaring at her now like an outcast, his love and adoration withdrawn from her for the same offenses he was guilty of. Lusts of the flesh. She couldn’t stomach his hypocrisy. His rebuke of her stung so deeply that it brought her to tears.
He nodded. “Yes!”
Brooklyn laughed. Now she was prepared to abandon what little respect remained for this so-called family. She backed up, aware that what she was about to say would cause her father to get violent.
“You sleep around with every woman you can get your hands on.”
Hope spun around and faced her, shock etched across her face.
“BROOKLYN!” she shouted.
Brooklyn backed up further as her father tried to push past Hope.
“Mom acts like she don’t know, but she knows.” Brooklyn turned her attention to Sabrina now. “Just like you knew about what Morris did and you tried to make me lie and cover it up.”
She saw her mother wince a little hearing that. Brooklyn turned her anger back in her father’s direction for good measure.
“And you went right along with her the second she reminded you to focus on the money. You got your handouts and built your rec center. And I got silenced.”
“Brooklyn!”
Everyone seemed shocked by the voice echoing across the room. Amir stepped closer to the melee with his hands pressed together, pleadingly.
“What are you doing?” He shook his head. “Stop. You’re going too far.”
Brooklyn’s eyes widened. “Really, Amir? You want to take their side?”
He heard the underlying threat in her tone and shook his head again. “Don’t do this. This ain’t right.”
“Wow,” she said, painfully. “I never thought you would turn against me, too.”
“I’m not against you,” he pleaded.
“You know me,” she said with tears in her eyes. “So, defend me! You’re gonna let them kick me out of here and talk to me like I’m garbage and all you can do is tell me to stop?” Her voice cracked with emotion.
“You made a mistake, Brooklyn. They have a right to be upset. I’m not taking sides. I’m just telling you to chill. Let everybody calm down.”
“Nobody’s calming down,” Sabrina insisted. “She’s getting out of here. The whole neighborhood is gonna be talking about this. The church! She’s an embarrassment.”
She lifted up the clinic discharge paperwork again and faced her daughter. “I know all about you now. Lying, sleeping around with some grown man, skipping school, living a double life.”
Brooklyn shook her head at Amir and wiped her tears. She turned to face her mother. With Sabrina in her crosshairs now, she spoke with calmness and clarity. “Congratulations, Ma. Seems like you know everything. All the sins of your children. So, you must know that Amir’s gay. Right? That he’s been messing around with Jordan the drummer.”
A thick silence filled the room.
“What did you say?” Elias’s neck snapped in Amir’s direction.
Amir stood looking like a deer caught in headlights.
But Brooklyn wasn’t done. She glared at Amir, seeing him as a weakling trying to disappear into the corner of the room. He looked mortified, which only fueled her rage even more.
“So, you tell me, Amir,” she taunted. “Do they have a right to be upset about that, too? Or is it just the things I do? Let’s talk about your mistakes!”
Sabrina held her hands to her face and stared at Amir, horrified. Elias looked at his son, seething.
“What the fuck is she talking about?” he yelled.
Brooklyn saw the terror in her brother’s eyes, but she didn’t back down. The corners of her lips turned up in the slightest smirk.
“Tell them what I walked in on. Right here in this house.” She looked at her parents. “Ask him if he’s been having sex and who he’s been having it with. Then let me know if you’re disgusted.”
Sabrina lunged in Brooklyn’s direction and hit her so hard that it sent her spinning to the floor. Hope rushed in and gripped her mother’s arms.
“No!” she yelled. “Please!”
Brooklyn scrambled to her feet, clutching her face as it throbbed with pain.
Elias felt all the blood rush to his head. The sensation rocked him, and for a moment he felt like he might lose consciousness. His daughter had terminated a pregnancy. His only son was gay. He wasn’t sure who to pounce on first. He quickly stripped out of his suit jacket and charged in Amir’s direction. A guttural roar came out of him, causing all of the women to recoil in fear.
Brooklyn watched in silence as her mother and sister did their best to hold Elias back. She drowned out the sound of the raised voices in the room, the coffee table getting turned over in the melee. Deafened momentarily, she watched her father barreling wildly toward Amir, while Amir pressed himself against the wall with his hands out in front of him. She saw the fear on her brother’s face and hated him for it. She wanted him to fight back, to join her in the mutiny they had talked about in secret. Instead, he stood there crying like a bitch.
She wouldn’t remember the profane words her father called Amir that night. Or her mother’s pleas as she begged for mercy for her son, mercy she had not extended to Brooklyn. She didn’t hear her sister’s desperate prayers or her brother’s protests. But she would never forget the feeling she felt in the pit of her stomach as her father swung at Amir, landing blow after blow. She felt sickened by it and wanted desperately to get out of there.
Brooklyn thought about running out the door, but she had no money, none of her clothes, nowhere to go. She looked down at the floor, scanning it frantically for her prized possessions. Finally spotting them, she scooped up her earrings and her necklace. The ringing in her ears stopped and the ruckus in the room commanded her attention again.
“You satisfied now?” Her mother stood yelling in her face. “You happy?”
Brooklyn saw her brother doubled over in the corner and her father standing over him with his clothes in disarray. Hope was crying, pleading with her father to stop.
Brooklyn didn’t answer her mother. She rushed past her, ran up the stairs to her room, and shut the door. She could hear the arguing going on downstairs. Her father was demanding that Amir get out of his house. Objects were being tossed around, and Brooklyn could hear her mother weeping as she pleaded with her husband to calm down.
“Elias, please. Let’s pray, baby.” Sabrina begged. “Come on. Just stop for a minute.”
Brooklyn sucked her teeth as she folded her favorite clothes and packed them neatly into her backpack. She noted that her mother seemed so eager to protect Amir but had been unapologetic in her condemnation of Brooklyn. She turned as the door opened abruptly behind her.
Hope barged in, clearly upset. Tear stains streaked her face.
“Why would you do that to him, Brooklyn? What did Amir have to do with the trouble you got yourself into?”
