Mikayla

Two Days Later…

 

 

My eyes are puffy with tears. Not sure which I’ve cried for more of the two very divergent pasts that I have left behind. I certainly miss my parents. My mother and I are quite the pair when it comes to ‘crying’ happy tears and sad ones, too. Hell, she’s probably crying with me now, for reasons that are vastly different than I am. Because my cheeks have wetted with thoughts of Jagger Johansson. Where is he? Time is a blur. The South African that I’m with has only given orders.

Eat.

Walk.

Don’t speak.

I have asked if he is Zihula or Nivean and my response is a hard laugh.

If he nabbed me for Prince Fari, then why did I get a Las Vegas Excalibur T-shirt and sweats to wear? I’ve been in the same attire since I woke up from the cocktail he injected into me. Or I could suppose the man I’m to be married to was tired of waiting for my arrival… very far-fetched. However, my new abductor hasn’t treated me with much respect, more like disdain. If he’s from my nation, then the bastard needs to learn a thing or two about how to treat a woman, royal or not!

We traveled by cargo plane and I was unable to keep up with his order to ‘eat.’ Everything he tried to give me as far as food goes, came straight back up. And his lips tensed even more with each attempt to offer sustenance.

Now, my eyes are closed. I don’t know what is worse. Those night terrors that always escape my mind or dreams of pitch black nothingness. As I sleep, I can feel us moving. I tell myself to recuperate and save up my strength.

If Jagger is alive, he’ll come for me. Then my mind runs rampant with another thought.

If Jagger is alive… he’s grown tired of me. And when I didn’t murder Freedman the other night, he came to the conclusion that I’m not like the Sinclair woman. I’m not like them and unworthy of whatever psychotic thoughts he came up with.

Or Jagger’s dead, and I can feel myself crying in my sleep at that thought.

What’s worse? Jagger died, or he decided that a petty, judgmental, too-scary-to-pull-the-trigger woman like me was unworthy of his time?

Maybe it was all a lie and he took my virginity for sport, now I’ve been thrown to the wolves like he planned all along! Or, he completed his mission… to sex traffic me!

I gasp awake with a start. A crick in my neck forces me to wince in pain.

“Iphupha elibi—eh, uh… bad dream?” He asks, spitting out the words.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to reply that I’m a slave to my own cognition. Jagger didn’t complete his mission. Of all the faults that he has, selling a woman to captivity for the means to further deprecate her is not one of them.

But he can’t be dead…

Instead of responding, I glance out of the window of the Toyota Hilux we got into after leaving the airport. Unlike the start of our drive, there aren’t green mountain ranges depicting a coastal land, like before when my abductor began to drive. Flat gold terrain and occasional trees can be seen. Although, I didn’t research Nivean, I figure we have to be going toward my birth home.

Umama ufile—mama’s dead… roams through my mind. It means nothing to me now, but I can recall the intense hurt, like an elephant sitting on my chest, when I mumbled those words as a child.

“What’s your name?” I inquire. My eyelid twitches from all the tears that have fallen down my cheeks, and I commend myself for the question instead of more negative self-talk.

Mikayla Bryant you have been through so much, further than you can even recall… and I know without a shadow of a doubt that you’ve endured worse than most can imagine. Focus on him and getting away from him.

“Shaka.” He glances at me, “Shaka Mthembu.”

I nod my head.

“That means nothing to you?”

“What?”

“Mthembu.” Once again my new abductor gives me the once over like I’m a new experiment in his Bunsen burner. “Makuachukwa, her royal highness, Makuachukwa Mthembu, oh that is until she married.”

“Makuachukwa,” a manly voice called out my mother by first name.

Her spine stiffened. My tiny feet tripped over each other, as we stopped moving with a jolt. I gasped for air.

The flash of memory fades to oblivion so quickly that I have no time to assess it. Shaka’s laughter grates against my ears.

“That was my mother,” the words stumble out of my mouth before I’ve even thought of them.

He slaps a hand against the steering wheel. “Yes, Makuachukwa was your mother until she married,” he ends with a frown.

“I assume you’re related to my mother somehow?” And that my father must’ve ruined everything? I stop myself from the usual stereotype of my culture, man impregnates woman and either ruins her life for a while or perhaps they’re enjoying life somewhere.

When Shaka peers over at me this time, his dark gaze isn’t masked with ridicule. He licks his thick lips and his shoulders dip. “I am your cousin. My father is the little brother of Makuachukwa.”

A heaviness weighs down my tongue. Though the terrors stopped when I was a child, I could recall all the nights I woke up screaming and instantly wishing I hadn’t. I didn’t want Joyce or Earl giving up on me.

Joyce or Earl!

I mean my parents. As far as I’m concerned, they are the only family that I have. I contemplate on the newspaper clipping and am ashamed at the racing thoughts I just had. My biological mother may or may not have ran off with my biological father. But she died. “Can you tell me about them?”

The car has started on Route 34, I notice behind us is a city. Ahead of us is the tourist city of Johannesburg approximately 180 miles away.

“What’s that?”

“New Castle.” He replies reluctantly.

“So where are we going?” I ask.

“Home.”

I wonder how safe I am with Shaka. What’s the use of veering off the main road, while navigating around cities? The past is scary enough. I’m not ready to re-break my heart with the truth about my birth parents.

***

A little less than an hour later, Shaka has driven past homes with abstract colors my mom would have a thousand questions about, and that’s after we’ve stopped and taken selfies.

“Those are Ndebele groups. They keep to themselves, mostly,” he says.

I’m too choked up, wondering what my mom is thinking, to respond. A few minutes later, on each side of us is homes, not as artistic, but with various shades of blues and green hues, a few pinks sprinkled throughout. Each home has some sort of straw covering. There are goats, chickens, and other animals.

Then we pass by what I’d assume are middle class homes, with rich stucco walls, and alluring trim fixtures.

After another ten minutes of driving through a township, with a strip mall that seems out of place with the outdoor market a few miles away. The cultures are clashing, in my opinion.

At last, Shaka’s car chugs up a hill like a wheezing train. Above us are palm trees and pops of pale yellow that still my beating heart. Butterflies take flight in my stomach with a long-ago familiarity. It’s like riding a bike. Place your feet back on the pedals and the memories come flooding in.

“You know where we are, finally?” Shaka sneers.

“I think so,” I murmur.

Colorful birds chirp. Despite the company currently keeping me, a tiny laugh bubbles from my throat as giraffes eat the buds off some sort of tree. Mom, I wish you were here. We’d never get to see anything like this unless we were on a safari. Dad would be learning the language, as an English instructor, he took pleasure in learning tidbits about the languages of places we traveled. Mom, well, she would find her way into someone’s kitchen after she knew about everything her eyes landed on. I wipe back the tears of sadness.

During our ascend, the valley becomes leveled out below. Further out there is more land. With my eyes squinted, the buildings look brick and colonized.

Jagger had said my uncle sold off bits of the land. Something tells me that this place use to look like gold shimmering in the wind from grain crops. Now, it’s much like a halo, surrounding what has to be Nivean land from what use to be, and has transformed into a metro area.  

“Do you have a phone I can use? Just to tell my parents I’m alright.”

“You’ve already asked, Mikayla,” his reply is short, again.

My shoulders tense. If I got away from Jagger, technically I did the night the Armenians came, then I can get away from Shaka, too.

The palace is yellow with white pillars and stretches much of the length of the hill, dominating the place above what is and was Nivean. Two flags, with black, yellow, and green, zig-zags, are posted on either side of the entrance. A double staircase leads down on either side to the circular driveway, with a few cars doting the area.

In the front yard, the grass is cut short around the circular driveway. Two baby elephants are filling their trunks with water from a tiny pond, and squirting it out at a much larger, sluggish elephant, laying in the warm water. Their mother or father doesn’t appear to be amused by their antics. With the animals comfortable here, it settles my heart a little.

“My father, the regency, will be home shortly.” Shaka pulls parallel between a Mercedes and Jaguar. “The servants, they are lazy. They should have come out to greet you, Princess Mikayla.”

I tilt my head. “Oh, I’m princess now?”

“You are.”

“And how do you feel kidnapping a princess?” I bite out each word. “and what happened to Jagger?” My hands balls into fists. Damn it, he’s grown on me. I have to know that he’s safe.

“As I’ve said, that devil is dead or dying. You were brought here the only possible way, as he has brainwashed you, just like your mother was…”

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

My hands slam toward my ears. My eardrums pop. That sound. I know that sound.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

The night had been beautiful. Stars high in the sky, a milky full moon. But the image before me is clear. There’s a little girl, with thick, beautiful hair. She’s wearing a gem studded tiara and donning a dress that puffs out around her legs. The material of her dress is washed in blood as she clings to a woman, classy in a ball gown. The woman is eerily at peace. The crown on her head bobbles each time her body is yanked, by a man in suit, down another stair and out onto the gravel.

The child keeps gulping back more tears.

Shaka starts to get out of the car. “Mikayla, you will respect and listen to me…”

“Tomorrow, our nation will mourn the end of an era. They will cry rivers because your parents were good. You too, will go away for a while.” The man grunted as he began to heft the queen onto the floor of the car.

I can’t understand the words, but the young child is asking the man about his love for her. She doubts it now, because he’s torn out her heart and trampled it under foot.

I want to close my eyes as he taps her nose with affection. I can’t walk toward her. I’ve gotten out of Shaka’s car, but my legs are rooted to the ground! I cannot help her.

“Yes, of course I do love you, Princess Mikayla,” the man said.

I blink. The humongous elephant from the pond is charging toward me. The damn animal is as big as a house, ears flopping, trumpeting as he comes. He can kill me!

Are you ready to remember, Mikayla? The words rustle through the trees and whisper across my skin.