The Glamorous Life 2 (22 page)

He took in a deep breath, and started filling her in. After giving Bambi the quick version of the situation (yet no less painful), she screamed, “What do you mean, missing?”

Her voice vibrated through the earpiece, bouncing off the three walls of the monkey cage he was in.

“I know you’re upset,” he said. “But listen to me. I need for you to stay calm. We’re going to find her.”

“You know I’m upset? Lynx, I’m way past upset. My fucking daughter has disappeared. You lost our daughter at a damn football game. How could you lose our child and then turn around and get yourself locked up? Who’s looking for her?”

She stopped to take a breath. Lynx used the opportunity to promise, “I’m going to find her. The police are doing their thing, and the minute I’m outta here, I’m back on the streets searching high and low.”

Bambi wasn’t satisfied with his plan of action. “I’m on my way there now,” she said.

Lynx could hear the anguish cutting through her vocal cords. Over and over and over, he butt his head against the cold steel bars. Bambi was one of the strongest women he knew. But the right blow had knocked heavyweight champions on their backs for the count.

“No,” he said. “It’s best if you stay home. Nya might try to call you. Imagine how she may feel if she did, and couldn’t reach you?”

Bambi was thinking about Lynx’s suggestion when the officer that had brought the phone returned. “Time up.”

Lynx put his finger up, gesturing for one more minute, but the line went dead.

“Bitch!” Lynx threw the phone down. “Fuck you hang up for?”

“Wasn’t me. The phone is on the ten-minute timer. It hangs up on its own, tried to tell you.”

Not appeased, Lynx questioned, “How long before I get a bond? So I can get the fuck outta here.”

32

It was somewhere north
of midnight and the lower-middle-class neighborhood was as quiet as a sleeping baby with a full tummy and a soft mattress. Besides the porch lights that lined the manicured yards along the U-shaped street, the other light was the full moon shining down.

There was a night-light still on inside the yellow, two-story home on the edge of the cul-de-sac.

“Mommy, where is Daddy?” a cute, bright-eyed little three-year-old with jet-black curly hair asked his mother.

“I don’t know, baby. I think he’s still working,” Calliope told her inquisitive son. The truth, she had the foggiest idea where her baby’s father really was. “Now come on out of the window and get ready to go back to bed.”

“But he said he’d be here to tuck me in,” Junior told his mother, his little face twisted into a defiant pout. The sight of him was too cute, warmed her heart.

Calliope hugged her son. “I know, baby. But I think he might have gotten a little caught up at work.”

After a few more hugs, which probably comforted her more than it did him, and a warm glass of milk, Junior was ready to go back to sleep.

“Mommy, I want to sleep with you.”

One look into his half-closed eyes and she couldn’t say no. Calliope knew that her son liked sleeping in her room so he could lie on the side of the bed closest to that window. That way he could sneak and peek out at the cars’ headlights going past the house, hoping and praying that they belonged to his father. The fact of the matter was that the boy loved the ground that his father walked on and whatever the man said was law.

To the little con artist, she said, “If you promise to lie down and close your eyes.” Then she pulled the covers back on her queen-sized bed so he could climb under them.

“I promise,” Junior said with a smirk so big that his mother knew that he was telling a huge fib.

“You have to get your sleep and be rested for day care in the morning,” she told him as she tucked him in.

“I don’t want to go to that day care anymore.” His defiant face popped up again.

A kiss on the forehead. “You always say that until I get you there,” she said.

“I just want to stay with you, Mommy.” He was stubborn, just like his father.

“You should be with other children, and play games with them.”

“But I play games and have a whole lotta fun with you, Mommy.”

“Junior, I know what you are doing, and you better start playing the go-to-sleep game.”

He just closed his eyes tight, thinking he was fooling her, but he wasn’t.

“If your daddy comes, I promise, I will wake you up,” she whispered.

“Why isn’t he home, Mommy?” he asked again, trying to fight sleep, but slumber was getting the best of him.

She didn’t know what else to say, so the lie rolled off Calliope’s tongue, like a bedtime story: “He’s working, baby.” Then she lay down beside her son and put her arms around him until he fell off to sleep. But the truth of the matter was, she wanted and wished that she could say to him,
although I love him to death
,
your daddy ain’t shit,
and frankly she was getting tired of him acting like her house was a revolving door, walking in and out of her life and house whenever he pleased. But she didn’t want to be responsible for turning the boy against his father. When it happened, it wouldn’t be on her account.

Convincing her son that his father must have gotten tied up and would get there when he could—and finally getting him to sleep—was mentally exhausting. She thought that after all that she would be able to fall off to sleep immediately, but she couldn’t put her finger on it—there was something definitely keeping her up. She looked at her son, who was sound asleep on the other side of the bed. She contemplated taking him to his room, but then decided that since he was sleeping so peacefully, by no means did she want him to wake up. So she’d let him stay right where he was, even
if
his jive-ass daddy decided to show up.

For the life of Calliope, she couldn’t understand, as tired as she was, why in the world she could not get a wink of sleep. She damn sure wasn’t losing any Zs over her baby’s daddy. She knew the type of bullshit the man was knee-deep in when she first got involved with him. She should have listened to her head instead of her heart and her coochie. She was attracted to his honesty, she guessed, the fact that he never lied to her about his circumstances no matter how crazy they were. In a strange funny kind of way this seemed to have turned her on. And the fact that he was just so handsome filled with swagger and always showed her a good time even while schooling her to lessons of the game called life.

Calliope was wet behind the ears about a lot but had a great understanding about everything.

Tired of tossing and turning she got up, careful not to wake Junior. It was hard enough to get her son to sleep—since he went to sleep disappointed that his father had not come by to spend time with him or tuck him into the bed like he had promised him earlier that day when the two FaceTimed—that she didn’t want to keep moving around in the bed and wake him up. She wished things were different. Well, something had to give.

She finally had both feet on the floor and then she heard something.

What was that noise?
she wondered. It sounded like someone was on the steps. Her baby daddy had a key but he always called first even if he was right outside, but it was late still. She peeped out of the window to see if his car was outside and it wasn’t.
Hmmm,
she wondered.

Afraid to admit that she was afraid, Calliope cautiously peeped out of the bedroom door to see who it was. Her heart almost jumped out her chest when she saw a man, not her baby’s daddy, holding a gun in his hand.
Shit,
she said under her breath.

The home invader wore all black that matched the gun in his hand. She had no idea what the man wanted but she knew he didn’t come there to have tea and sing “Kumbaya.” She had to think quick to find a way to get her son and herself out of the house and out of harm’s way.

Her first thought was to get her son and take him out the back door, but she thought again. The home invader may not have come alone, his partner could be watching the back door. All she knew at that very moment was that she had to act quickly. She gently shook her son. “Junior, Junior,” she quietly said to him in a whisper. No soon as he opened his eyes up, she put her finger up to his lips, motioning him to be quiet, by zipping his lips.

“Daddy’s”— he tried to utter, but she shushed him before he could get it out and by the look on her face, he knew better than to say anything. She continued to try to analyze the situation. She could hear the intruder in her son’s room, searching for what she had no idea.

“Listen, be very quiet. There are some bad guys in the other room, and I think they may be here to hurt us. So I will need you to be very quiet and we’re going to activate our superpowers, okay.”

Junior nodded.

More footsteps; there were two of them. When she heard them headed down the hall to the guest bedroom, she knew that after they left the guest quarters then they would be coming to her bedroom. That’s when she grabbed her son’s hand and made a quick but quiet run for the basement.

Now what? She thought about hiding behind the hot-water tank when she heard the door open. “The basement,” one of the men said. She picked up Junior in her arms and quickly scurried across the floor. Luckily, the basement was filled with junk, so that they could not see her as she shoved her son down the crawl space and then proceeded to squeeze herself into the small space behind him.

“Come out wherever you are,” the man called out. “There’s no way out.”

She heard the footsteps coming down the stairs before she saw them. Seconds after, through the louvers of the small door on the crawl space, the black Nike boots appeared and started searching the basement. When there was no sign of them, he was pissed. “Where the fuck this bitch at, man?” The owner of the Nike boots got frustrated and kicked the box of Christmas decorations that Calliope had been meaning to put up on the shelf, almost startling Junior. Calliope quickly put her hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t let out a peep. “Hang in there, baby. We’re going to be okay.”

She just continued to watch, hoping and praying that the intruders wouldn’t find them.

“You got them?” Another voice called down from the top of the steps.

“Naw”—the one wearing the Nike boots sucked his teeth—“they ain’t here.” He sounded disappointed.

“Where the fuck could they have gone?” Deep-voice demanded to know from upstairs.

“I saw her when she turned out the light in the bedroom.” He shook his head feeling like he had failed at his task. “They gotta be in this house some damn where.”

“Well, we looked, they ain’t here.” Nike boots headed up the stairs and when he got halfway to the top, he stopped and said, “We’ll just have to go with plan B then.”

Calliope exhaled a deep heavy breath when she heard the basement door shut. She removed her hands off of Junior’s mouth but not before telling him to keep quiet, then, “Not a word, baby.”

Who were they?
she thought.
And what the hell was plan B?

Obviously, plan A wasn’t to steal her valuables. For a second she tried to think what she should do. How long should they stay put. She waited a few minutes before she slowly, cautiously removed the door to the space they had cramped into and scooted out. “Stay here,” she told her son.

“No, Mommy. Don’t leave me.” He was scared and shaking.

“I need to make sure that the bad guys are gone, so that they don’t hurt us.”

“I can protect us,” he said, pointing to the superhero on his pajamas.

“I know, baby.” She kissed him on the forehead. “But stay here for now.”

Once she was out of the tight crawl space, she could hear them doing a second tour around the upstairs.

She tipped to the top of the basement steps to evaluate the situation better. The door to the basement was ajar. Good. The latch had been broken for a while, and she’d been meaning to get it fixed.

“Oh! My! God!” she said to herself in shock.

At the top of the steps, she could smell the strong, distinct odor of gas.

Her heart dropped. Plan B was to set the house on fire.

She motioned with her hands for Junior to come over.

Through the cracked door she could see her purse on the counter next to the back door that led to the garage. She was about to make a run for it when she heard the front door of the house slam and that’s when she saw flames. Minutes later she smelled the smoke. Where there’s smoke, there’s always fire. She grabbed Junior’s little hand and raced for the bar chair where her purse sat and then ran for the garage door. The key to the car was in her purse. She shoved the key in the ignition, while saying, “Buckle up, baby,” and trying to help him with her free hand.

“Lord have mercy,” she said out loud, as she hit the garage door opener that rested on top of the sun visor. “Hold on, baby,” she said to Junior. Before the door was fully ajar, she took a deep breath, put her foot on the accelerator, and backed the Mercedes SUV out of the garage, barely missing the top of the door. In reverse she pulled out of the small driveway like the devil himself was after her, not giving a damn who or what was in her path.

From on top of the hill up the street Calliope watched her house go up in flames. She tried calling Junior’s father, to tell him of the bizarre chain of events that had happened in the wee hours of the night, but the call kept going to voice mail. She must have called him a hundred times and there wasn’t any answer.

For the life of her she didn’t understand why he hadn’t called and wasn’t answering any of her calls. He should’ve known she would have never called him so many times unless something was very wrong, and it was.

With her phone, she snapped pictures of her house, as the roaring fire engines began to speed to the scene, sirens blaring. She sent the pictures to him and that didn’t even make him return the call.

She left her baby’s daddy message after message. No return call. What was she to do? They didn’t have anywhere to go. She didn’t have a support system. After all, she had relocated to Virginia when she was pregnant and had been there with him since. The more she called and got the voice mail the angrier she got. She’d never blown up his phone before, so he should’ve known that something was wrong. The more he didn’t respond, the madder she got.