Chapter 11

Long sleeved Alabama Crimson Tide t-shirt, gray red striped sweat pants, and black socks. Red was Wissy's favorite color and he looked content as could be in one of the home snapshots, Karisma had selected to go in his casket. Circa 2003, he was on the floor with his newest toy, a remote controlled Hummer, red of course. To his left was No-No with her own car, in yellow to make identification easy. No-No, the tomboy had wanted one, and for the sake of peace Wissy got one too. The two were playing on Wissy's side of their shared bedroom, evidenced by the red Looney Toons linens on the full sized bed behind them and lava lamp oozing reddish goo on the cherry oak nightstand. Many times, Dorinda had been jerked awake in the middle of the night by his screams of pain and shock when he would get out of bed to go to the bathroom and bang his toes against that nightstand. No matter how often she reminded him to crawl to the foot of his bed before getting out, he still bashed up his toes at least once a week. Had he not been wearing socks in the picture, white medical tape would have undoubtedly been holding 2 or 3 straight so they didn't heal crooked. 

"You know." Karisma said to nobody in particular. "We could identify this boy just by the marks on him alone. God knows he didn't have no off switch and was forever getting into something."

She looked up feeling tears pool in her eyes. The children's bedroom had remained virtually untouched over the years they had been gone. It almost felt like a crime to sit on No-No's bed and crinkle the conservative black and white world map linens. Dorinda had tried to persuade her to get a bright and bold color, but prudent No-No hadn't been interested, unintentionally taking all of the fun out of having a daughter. When Dorinda and Karisma went out shopping and to the salon, No-No usually stayed home with her brothers and was perfectly content to be left alone to her books and lego sets. 

Only the presence of a hand painted ornate jewelry box along with various decorative music boxes and collector's Barbies still in their boxes on a tall repurposed cherry oak bookshelf told that half of this bedroom once belonged to a little girl. Above her bed was mounted a small display shelf showing off a souvenir spoon collection that Dorinda said had been gifted to No-No on one of her first few birthdays by a family friend along with a few of her framed High Honor Roll certificates. She didn't have any posters to brighten up the space because whenever she had been taken along on trips to Walmart and offered the chance to get some, never really looked for any she might like. "I'm good." She would say dismissively manifesting yet another quirk of her's. Even when you were trying to be good to her, she remained difficult to please and you ended up begging her to just accept your kindness. 

"Only little girl I've ever known that you asked if she wanted some candy or something and she would always say no, then when you kept insisting, would act like she was doing you a favor and get it." Karisma went on talking as she thumbed through pictures.

"Naw, what really use to get on my nerves...." Dorinda spoke suddenly.

"Was what?" Karisma didn't bother looking up.

"Was when I would buy things for her then when I'd give it to her she wouldn't ever be grateful or happy. Most of the time she'd barely look at what you'd gave her." Dorinda didn't sound remotely annoyed or angry though. "Those eyes and strange ways of her's. Some days I'd wonder where I got her from."

"Same place you got the one before her."

"Them two were my babies." Dorinda admitted sitting down on Wissy's bed. "I still wake up thinking something is wrong when I don't hear them in here stirring." 

"So what you're telling me is you keep getting these bad migraines, because you haven't been able to get much sleep since April 2006?" Karisma guessed. 

"Something like that." 

Silence fell and she resumed choosing pictures. 

"You know." Dorinda set her piercing glare on her elder daughter. "If you had been here watching them like I told you to, my baby would've never got hurt." 

"I left them alone together for 10 damn minutes." Karisma tried to stifle her anger. "They were 11 and 13 d****t, Mama." 

"And you was 17. That's why I left you in charge." Her mother was relentless. "You couldn't even tell me what the Hell had happened!"

"I asked your little demon repeatedly." She gritted her teeth audibly. "He was trying to act like he'd been asleep. I snatched him right off that bed you're sitting on and hauled his little a*s right back downstairs, because I knew he hadn't been asleep."

"When I asked him what happened, he said he didn't know!" Dorinda reminded her.

"He told me the same lies and kept saying No-No fell, but I told him she wasn't that damn clumsy and if he put his hands on her, he needed to tell me now." Karisma restrained herself from rolling her eyes. "He kept saying she said she was hot and fell."

"I guess that's why you hit him."

Karisma jerked in surprise although she knew exactly what her mother was talking about. It hadn't happened the way she thought it had though. "Guess you might as well know the truth now, but what I have to say is probably going to hurt your heart, so I might need to run downstairs and pour you a drink first."

"I can't hurt no worse than I already do." Dorinda's eyes dulled from blazing coals to watery pools of darkness.

"I didn't put those bruises on Wissy. Isaac did." Karisma set aside the pictures since she couldn't bare to keep looking at the face of the little boy she had helped kill with her silence. "Like a dummy, I told Isaac what I thought had probably happened to No-No and him being about lit(drunk), got up and pounced." 

There had been little Karisma could do to defend her little brother from her older brother. She was the shortest one in the family and had topped out at a stout 5'5". Even manuvering the unconscious No-No had been difficult for her. In disbelief, she had watched as Wissy was kicked, grabbed off the floor where he'd been laying to watch TV, and dragged to the top of the stairs. Though she could not see, what she heard told her he was being stuck while being dragged too. Their mother had been to the Urgent Care to receive injections of powerful narcotic painkillers for her latest migraine and was basically in a coma in her bed as a result. 

"If you throw him down those stairs I'll call the police and make sure they take your drunk a*s to jail!" Somehow Karisma had finally managed to muster a bit of courage when it dawned on her what Isaac intended to do. 

"Please tell me he didn't throw my baby boy down those stairs." Dorinda looked physically ill.

"No, he didn't." Karisma assured her shakily. "I wouldn't let him. I had my phone out. He threw Wissy over there. "She gestured towards the other bed. "On his bed and Wissy was so scared he jumped right back up and made sure the door didn't open again in case Isaac thought about coming back."

Dorinda shot to her feet as if stuck by a pin and rushed out of the room. 

Karisma picked up the picture of the smiling Wissy with his truck again and thought about how she had convinced him to wear similar clothes the morning after his first beating from Isaac, though April in Lousville often had balmy 70 degree weather. She wondered when Dorinda could have possibly seen the bruises on his arms, back, chest, and ribcage since she had not permitted him to wear a t-shirt for the next week and a half. He would get hot and complain, but shut up in a hurry when reminded that his beloved Mommy already had enough to deal with and needed to focus on hospitalized No-No, not his whining. 

Had she let him speak up and denounce Isaac, both Wissy and No-No would still be here in their mother's home.

"If I had known what he did to my child." Dorinda returned looking about ready to pass out. "There's no way in Hell I would've let him take them."

"So about this new evidence?" Karisma redirected the conversation to the reason for her weekend trip home.

Her answer was a thud. 

"Hayvn," She called to her 5 year old daughter. "Call 911 and tell them we need an ambulance!"

Dorinda lay in a heap in the doorway of her youngest children's bedroom. Her cocoa skin was ashen. The exhaustion had finally caught up to her. She had run herself into the ground.

With considerable effort, Karisma managed to drag her mother out into the hall the closed the door in a hurry, making a mental note to stay out of there. 

Alright, you win, little brother and baby sister! We won't talk about all the s**t Isaac put you through or go in your precious room anymore until we get justice for ya'll. That's all we can do for you now.

"Maybe they ought to take you to the hospital with G'Mama too, Mommy." Hayvn said stuffing her grandmother's cellphone back in her pocket.

"For what, baby?" Karisma muttered absentmindedly. 

"Cuz my G'Mama told me that only crazy folks talk to themselves!" Hayvn exclaimed shocked that her mother did not already know that.

In spite of the situation, Karisma laughed.

The little girl shook her head incredulously and skipped down the stairs to unlock the door for the paramedics.

Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

I am very glad to get a very clear picture of the bedroom and the children's possessions. Before this chapter, you said several times that No-No was spoiled and difficult and manipulative, but this is the first time I've had very concrete examples of how this manifested. I really like how this conversation brought No-No's character to life for me.

[MeratheRestless]

Glad you like it.

[MeratheRestless]

I've posted chapter 12, am working on chapter 13, and would deeply appreciate any more suggestions and critiques.