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Yesterday's Eyes (Urban Books)

By Catherine Flowers

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Part One

Chapter One

1988

Ida needed to escape. Not for the moment, but forever. Her six-year-old daughter, Tia, sat at the kitchen table looking at her silently as she brought the bottle of vodka up to her lips. She took a long swallow, and felt the hot sting of the liquid as it rushed down her throat. Her shoulders slumped over.

“I can’t take it no more!” she cried out. “I can’t take none of this no more!”

She stiffened her back suddenly. “You,” she said, pointing a rigid finger at Tia, “ain’t nothing.”

She turned and pointed the same finger towards an old bassinet sitting in front of the kitchen window. “Your brother, Him, ain’t nothing either. You know that, don’t you? Y’all just like me. You ain’t got nothing, ain’t never gone have nothing…”

She stopped abruptly and stood up, steadying herself with the back of the kitchen chair. “I gotta get out of here. All of this,” she spread her arms wide to embrace the sparsely furnished four room upper flat, “all of this,” the anger in her voice gaining momentum, “is about to drive me crazy!”

Tia followed her mother as she staggered to the bedroom. She tried to ignore the familiar growling pang in her stomach as she watched her stand in front of the bedroom mirror and apply a thick layer of blue powder to her tiny slanted eyes. Next, she drew a straight red line with what looked like a crayon down each of her cheeks, and then gently rubbed it into her skin until only a lighter version of the redness remained. It made Tia think of caramel with a cherry on top, and her stomach growled again as she swallowed her own spit. Using the same crayon, her mother began to color in her lips until Tia could no longer see the natural tan color of them.

Finally, she squeezed her small frame into an even smaller black dress with sequins that sparkled and glittered every time she moved. Tia picked up her mother’s wig and began twirling it, thinking how it reminded her of a Halloween mask with its long brown strands of hair that, no matter how vigorously her mother brushed, would never stay in place.

“Here,” Tia said, handing it to her mother.

She snatched it from her, and without turning away from the mirror said, “Now go to bed.”

Tia walked into the living room, which was adjacent to her mother’s bedroom. A tan chair with brown and gold flowers on it sat in the center of the floor, and there was a matching sofa pushed against the wall that served as her bed.

“I’m hungry,” Tia said, plopping down onto the chair. “I didn’t eat dinner.” No sooner had the words left her mouth did she realize her mistake. She had only meant to think those words; to actually say them, she knew, would make her mother mad.

“Then go in the kitchen and fix a hotdog. You see I’m busy.”

“Ain’t no hotdogs.”

“What you mean ain’t no hotdogs? It was two in there this morning. What happened to them?”

Tia was silent.

“What happened to them?” her mother repeated as she walked unsteadily from the bedroom to the kitchen. She swung open the refrigerator door and found a half-liter bottle of cola and a hand-full of grapes inside. Turning her head swiftly to the left, she looked down into the wastebasket and saw the empty package that had once contained the last two hotdogs. “Tia, get in here!”

Tia slowly pushed herself up from the chair and went into the kitchen. Her arms and legs felt like a stretched rubber band that, after being plucked, continued to wiggle for a while.

“You ate the hotdogs didn’t you?” Ida grabbed her arm and stared at her with eyes that were like an inferno. “Didn’t I tell you not to go eating up all the food? Didn’t I?” Her grip was tightening around Tia’s right arm, and saliva was beginning to form at the corners of her mouth.

Tia inhaled the smell of alcohol on her mother’s breath, and it made her nauseated as she nodded her head up and down.

“Get in the living room and sit down.”
Slowly, with small steps she followed her mother’s orders. Every muscle in her six-year-old body twitched in response to the increased danger signals being sent from one nerve ending to another.

Four steps, and she was out of the kitchen. She counted with dismay the next four steps that would place her directly in front of her mother who stood watching her with both hands on her hips. Now, just five more steps and there set the sofa, waiting for her, beckoning her to safety. She squeezed her hands into tiny fist. She could do this. She could make it to the sofa. But half-way into that first step she felt the sting of her mother’s hand on the back of her head. The blow sent her stumbling two or three steps along her course, but she maintained her balance and scurried to the sofa.

“You get on my nerves!” her mother yelled.

Now, shaking uncontrollably, Tia kept her head down, and tried hard to focus on the top of her dirty white canvas shoes. If she raised her big toe high enough she could almost poke it through the hole that had formed on the top of the left shoe. But with each blinking of her eyelids, the hole became secondary to the spreading circle of moisture just below it.

“Didn’t I tell you not to eat those hotdogs?” Ida stood bellowing from the kitchen. “Didn’t I?”

Still looking down at her shoes, Tia began nodding her head, crying silently.

“Then why,” Ida was crying now, “why didn’t you listen to me?”

Tia kept her head down, and did not answer.

Suddenly Ida was angry again. “Look at me when I’m talking you!”

Tia raised her eyes just in time to see the half-empty two-liter bottle of cola fly directly towards her. As she dodged the bottle, she heard it smash into the wall behind her, and felt its cool liquid dance across her hair and face like rain. Only it wasn’t rain. It was soda, soda that she could have been swallowing instead of feeling it running down the side of her face.

“Lay down on the couch and go to sleep, and you better not move. I’ll be back,” Ida said, slamming the door behind her.

Slowly, Tia bent down to pick up the empty cola bottle from the floor. She could feel the lukewarm liquid trickling down the back of her ear. She ran her hand over the top of her head, and felt the moisture intermingling with the coarseness of her hair, the sticky substance clinging to her ebony, bone-like fingers. Warm droplets took turns landing on the back of her neck after the liquid had reached the end of her two ponytails.

A cockroach had already begun making its way towards the puddle on the floor, having sensed sweetness nearby. She watched it for a while as it enjoyed its new-found treat before finally giving it one good stomp with her foot. It lay almost void of life, semi-paralyzed from the weight of the heavy pressure. Even if it had wanted to crawl away, make its way back to safety, it could not for its insides were crushed, its tiny legs weakened by the unexpected blow.

Excerpt from Yesterday’s Eyes, Copyright © 2012 Catherine Flowers

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