CHAPTER
The chirping of my phone wakes me from a deep sleep and nightmare of an angry boss hunting me down. My heart is pounding in my chest as I sit up in the middle of my old bed I’ve had since high school. It is narrower than the one I have back in Detroit and the mattress on the lumpy side, but it is familiar and comfortable and the last couple nights since I’ve been back in Birmingham, I’ve never felt better.
I yawn and reach for my phone that stopped chirping which is my message tone. I blink my eyes to clear the sleep from them so I can make out who the message is from. Since I left my work two days ago and returned to Alabama, every day I expect my phone to ring with a call from Axel, demanding I return to work. But nothing.
It’s strange that instead of being relieved, I am disappointed. Jessica had also stated last night when she called me that he never showed up at the apartment. How silly I felt. Sillier still for my disappointment. Why had I thought I was so important that he would search for me when I didn’t shown up at work?
More than likely he has already replaced me with someone else.
It’s Jessica who has sent me a voice message. “Good morning. Just letting you know I stop by your office to see if I could get your stuff but the security guard said no. You have to come get them yourself.”
Damn. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t demand I get back to my job but he doesn’t want anyone else to collect my things from the office. What a hard man to read! What does any of this even mean?
I record a voice message to send her. “Thanks for trying. I appreciate it. Didn’t they ask you where I was or anything?”
Almost immediately she responds. “No, nothing at all. I’m at school now so I’ll talk to you later.”
With a frown, I place my phone on the bedside table and get out of bed, stretching. This is weird and doesn’t feel right at all. In the little time I’ve come to know Axel, I’d like to think I could read the man. Axel doesn’t let things go even if in reality he can. Because he likes to win. He shouldn’t be giving up so easily that I had walked out on him.
I use the bathroom before following my nose and the delicious aroma into the kitchen. My grandmother is standing at the stove, making eggs the way I like them, scrambled with sliced sausages and sprinkled with melted cheddar cheese. I could smell biscuits too. Oh man, do I love coming home.
“Morning, gram. You’ve not lost your touch in the kitchen at all.”
Grandma Pearl looks up at me and smile. She is my mother’s mother, tall and though lined, her face still show the beauty she had been when she was younger. Her hair is mostly gray now and she has it cut short to her chin.
“I’ll be cooking till the day the good Lord decides to take me,” she responds and I frown.
“Gram don’t talk like that,” I tell her as I take a seat at the table. I hate talking or thinking about death. I’ve already lost so much, my mother, my father. I couldn’t lose the one family member I have close to me.
“Ah baby, you’ve got to get used to it. Some are born and some die.”
“Yes, but we don’t have to talk about it.”
“Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away,” she responds softly, scraping eggs onto a plate along with biscuits and a slice of toast and placing it before me. “Just in the same way, you not talking about what your dad did doesn’t make it go away.”
I remain silent at the sore topic and she placed a cup of coffee before me before sharing herself a plate and sitting with me at the table for breakfast.
“There’s nothing to talk about where my dad is concerned,” I say, then bit into the delicious eggs. “Umm. These are as good as I remember. You’ve got to teach me how to cook like this before I find myself a husband. I can’t believe I grew up with you and my cooking is terrible.”
“But how will you ever find yourself a husband if you push every man away. Not every man is like your father, Joyce.”
“I know that and I don’t push all men away.”
“You are still a virgin, aren’t you?”
I blush at the unexpected question. “Granma! That’s kind of personal.”
“I’m not saying I expect you to sleep around,” she clarifies. “But there’s not bee one man in your life that you’ve been able to share with. Not just sex but love and laughter. You’re missing out on a lot.”
“I’ve got lots of time for all that,” I remind her. “I’m only twenty-four.”
“But I’m afraid you pushing men away all these years will become a habit you find you can’t break. Then there’s your inexperience in not knowing how to handle a relationship with a man. And again, I’m not referring to sex. Men are different than us, you know. They express themselves in a more obscure way while we tend to be more straightforward and sometimes these little things will miss us about how a man truly feels about us.”
It feels weird my grandmother talking to me about these things. My seventy-year old grandmother whose husband had died some twenty-five years ago.
“Umm do you… was there anyone else after Papa died?” I ask her though I wish the floor would swallow me. I half-expected her to box my ear for asking such as a question.
“Of course there were,” she chuckled and her eyes twinkled mischievously. “I loved your Papa every day of our marriage and I didn’t hop into bed with anyone else right after but we can only take feeling empty for so long. We were made for companionship…”
“I’ve Jessica,” I add.
“Companionship, sex,” she continues. “Unless you’re telling me, you and Jessica are romantically involved. Not that I’m judging of course. As long as you are happy.”
“No way!’ I protest. “Jessica is just a close friend grandma. I do have feelings for men. Just not strong enough for me to want anything.” Until Axel. What I had felt when he touched me even though he was a little rough was stronger than anything else I’ve ever felt.
“When the time is right, you’ll know,” she says smiling at me. “I’m just saying open up your heart so you’ll receive him when he comes along. Don’t let your father running out on you when you needed him the most, cause you to lose confidence in men. True, many are just like you’re father but there are also good men out there and a good man is worth his weight in gold.”
I nod although to be honest, it is a lot harder that she makes it out to be. While attracted to Axel for example, I know I could never be with a man like that. He is too aggressive and commanding. He has the potential to hurt and not just emotionally but physically. Witnessing what I had as a child how my father had abused my mom physically, I never want to find myself in the same predicament. Worse, to have child in a union like that and cause the child to be as traumatized as I had been. Waking up in the hospital with a concussion because my father had backhanded me into the wall.
And my mother was the one who had gotten the brunt of it. I’d watched as she lied to people around us, to Gram, to the police about how she got the broken arm, the cracked rib, the black eye. The day she developed a brain tumor, my father skipped town. I’d watched my mother deteriorate and I’d been with her in the room at the hospital when she took her last breath
I wash up the dishes while gram sits and scribbles on a notepad a list of items she needs from the supermarket.
“Hmm, I’ll have to get these later when my car that Reggie brings my car over from the garage.”
“I’ll get them for you,” I inform her. “I want to get out the house a little anyway.”
“But what will you do for a car?”
“I’ll just call a cab,” I tell her.
“I can’t let you do that. It’s too expensive. We can just wait on the car to be brought around later.”
“Gram, I insist. I’m taking a cab out anyway even if you don’t get the list.”
“Alright,” she conceded.
“Great. Just let me change.”
The air outside was a bit cool but warmer than in Detroit. I ring the cab company for them to send over a cab and afterwards get dressed. I pull on a short, pleated skirt, navy blue leggings beneath and a burgundy top. I shoved my feet into a pair of booties and grab my purse just as the cab pulled up.
“I’ve got this gram,” I tell her when she tries to give me money to buy the groceries, “I’ll see you later.”
I kiss her on the cheek and get into the cab, asking the driver to drop me at Aldi’s supermarket. When I ask if he could wait until I get the groceries, he advises me the meter would be running so I tell him he could go. I could call another cab when I’m ready.
Before going into the supermarket, I go over to a new clothes store I have never noticed before. I browse a bit deciding they do have some nice outfits but they were a little pricey. As I no longer have a job and couldn’t spend as much, I leave the store and stop at an ice cream shop next door. I have a caramel ice cream on a waffle cone while I stare through the glass enclosure at the people who go by.
Birmingham isn’t like Detroit at all. It is smaller and not as many people going around. That’s one of the things I like about Birmingham. Detroit tends to be crowdy. There isn’t much to do in Birmingham though which sucks for people who would want to settle here. People around these parts do get crazy about college football though and several persons around have something that display Crimson Tide, the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s football team. They wear sweaters, hats, even cars bear the team’s name.
After spending roughly fifteen minutes eating my waffle cone, and people-watching, I head on over to Aldi’s. I insert a coin in the trolley to get it out of stack and go inside the store. Though gram gave me the list, I also buy some other items that I could use while I’m staying here.
The queue to cash is long and I have to wait a long time before I finally get to the cashier’s desk. The supermarket is eco-friendly and only uses paperbacks that can be recycled. I pluck a couple from the pile and add it to the counter for the cashier to add it to the list of groceries. I pay with a hundred dollar bill which reminds me that I would need to watch my spending until I find a job.
I could always stay here in Alabama with my grandmother but that isn’t fair to Jessica plus we both have lease for that apartment so I couldn’t saddle her with the responsibility alone. As soon as I get home I would start job hunting, I decide.
I push the trolley outside and retrieve my purse to call the cab company again. I’m such a dolt. I should have called them when I was standing in the line waiting for my turn to cash.
I startle when the phone is plucked from my hands.
“What the…” I start to say then stare in horror. “You! What are you doing here?”
Axel is standing beside me, my phone in his hand. He is smirking at me in that insufferable way of his.
“How foolish of you to think you could escape me so easily,” he responds. “Foolish girl. Don’t you know wherever you go, I’ll find you?”
My heart skips a beat at his words and I couldn’t deny the thrill that goes through my body. I am supposed to be pissed at him and I am but I’m also feeling triumphant that he has come after me. I was right after all. Now to figure out what it means that Axel would travel all the way from Detroit to find an employee who doesn’t want to be found.
“I—”
Before I can finish my thought, a car drives up and two men step out from the front. What the hell! They look like bodyguards.
“Why are you here?” I ask him but he ignores my question. He opens the car door for me.
“Get in.”
The men move towards the trolley and ignoring my protests, load my groceries into the back of the Jaguar.
“Don’t let me repeat myself Joyce,” he says to me with a sharp voice. “You’re already in big trouble with me. Don’t make it worse. Get in or do you want me to kidnap you. Is that what floats your boat?”
I get it into the car, sliding over to the far corner to avoid him as he gets into the vehicle beside me. The two men who are with him, occupy the front seats.
I stare at Axel when he rattles off the address to my grandmother’s house. How does he even know?