Milk-Blood Read online

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  No, he wasn’t moving. Maybe he was dead.

  She nudged his boot slightly with the edge of her foot, and it swayed one way and then back. Her eyes traveled up his body to his arm and figured out what had happened. A needle was sticking into his underarm liked he’d been hit by an arrow, and something was tied around his bicep.

  Shadows from overgrown grass gave much of the body cover, but the skin she could see was a dark black and a shade deeper than hers even. She waited to sense for motions. His boot remained still, his chest seemed stationary. He was not living. Or perhaps this was the sleep of the overdosed, the coma of the high, and he had nodded out right there but would soon emerge.

  She tightened her grip on the plastic bag, took a step forward to move on, and then heard a rustle in the grass.

  Her head turned, she took another step, and then she felt it. Clutching onto her ankle. It was the grip of his hand.

  She tried to kick her leg forward and pull free but could not. The clutch was strong and full of life. Long fingers squashed her bone the harder she pulled. She tugged with her whole body and dropped the bag of groceries. The milk hit the ground and burst.

  A second hand grasped her leg and pulled her to the ground. She landed with a thump and he hovered over her. The smell was rotten. His skin was dark, crispy, and mixed with the reddish scabs that weren’t bleeding but the color of blood. The whites of his eyes were huge. He had no eyebrows or eyelashes.

  She’d fought off tweaking crackheads before, but this creature was strong and mentally ill. She could feel the power of his sickness. She screamed, gained power, and freed one leg to kick at the man’s face. Smack, she made contact, like kicking a soccer ball. His head jerked back.

  But he was not fazed and was back on top of her. His smell penetrated and filled her lungs. She beat on the man’s chest and felt it thump like it was hollow. Just the whites of his eyes shined in the dusky air under a street full of broken street lights.

  “You,” his voice spoke with rotten breath. “You will like a little piece of me. You’ll see. Just a little shot of me.”

  She fought back but her arms felt frail as a child.

  With one hand he grabbed the needle from his arm. It was stuck there like a dart that needed to be tugged out of cork. The needle came free and he held it in front of his eyes. Traces of a liquid dripped from the tip. In an instant he smashed the needle into his own chest. Thwack, and his body pulsated with energy. He began to draw from the syringe, slowly, like what was coming out from his chest was too thick to fit through the needle.

  She fumbled on the ground for something to fight with. Tiny rocks, pebbles between her fingers, nothing that could help. The milk puddled under her head and made her hair wet. The milk was still cold. She remembered that. And she remembered how warm his body felt on top of her. Feverish.

  “You’ll always be a part of me...”

  He stabbed the needle into her groin. The hard, thick metal made her gasp like she had been impaled through her slit up her spine. Time seemed to stop, and everything was motionless. The sky above was the dark blue of dusk and a fluff of cloud looked down. She laid there like she was six years old and gazed up, hoping the ice cream man would brave her street and she’d hear the sweet jingle of the white truck.

  The needle had impaled her, crucified her, and something pulsed inside. She was being filled with all the dirt and grime of the gutter of this street. All the discarded waste of dying skin and lost hopes and crumbling walls and peeling paint and broken 40 ounce glass and tweaking crack head nerves filled her insides.

  She woke in her bed.

  How she got there she was not sure.

  Days that followed were not the same. A pit of despair expanded in her stomach. She imagined it like a peach pit, hard and shriveled, but this one grew. Despite not taking care of herself, it grew. At times it would kick, often it would make her puke, and she imagined the substance that came up was the result of a miscarriage. Her body was discarding the poison.

  When she got the ultrasound and they rubbed the cold gel on her belly and found a heartbeat, only then did she believe it was human. It was not waiting to be born, but waiting to come and get her.

  The hospital that day was the dusk of a night she didn’t want to face. Even the clean, well-lit hospital felt dirty. Spasms stretched her muscles and pain came in unrelenting waves. She needed the evil out of her. The nurses came and went and wrote their name with a blue marker on the dry erase board in her room. Medical equipment stood guard and waited.

  Zach was there and spoke but she pretended he wasn’t. She wanted some dope, some Oxy, she wanted an epidural stuck inside her forever. If she could have reached, she would have grabbed something sharp to cut her own veins and take the pain away.

  When the child was out of her, she felt such relief. The baby was barely human and still a tiny fetus. Its skin was blue and translucent from a “cyanotic” heart defect. It was defective, she already knew that, and here it would die. Time to go home and leave the defective baby at the hospital.

  She went home, but Zach remained.

  Days at home alone and she felt cold and hollow. Zach’s mom was home too but Latrice paid her little mind and the new grandmother was barely fed.

  Latrice wore sweaters on top of shirts and pulled the sleeves over her hands. She wasn’t sure when to change, wasn’t sure if she ate. Xanax become her vitamins. Each quiet moment was just waiting to be shattered by a phone call from Zach saying that the baby had died, that the infant wasn’t fit to live. Instead, every call from Zach was asking how his mom was doing and if the house was ready for the baby to come home. Latrice said little, and what she did say was muttered without conviction.

  When Zach finally carried the tiny infant through the door, Latrice looked down at the creature for the first time. Breathing on its own, outside of an incubator, and part of her family. Maybe this will spark something in me, she hoped, maybe looking in her eyes will change things.

  But the baby’s skin was still blue, like she was amphibious. It was like you could see the rotting wood of her insides ready to crumble if held the wrong way. Eyes were bulged. Skin was soft but wrinkly. One large hand could squeeze and crush her to death in an instant.

  The first night was quiet and easy.

  The second night, the infant’s tears cut into her eardrums. It went on day and night, each time stopping only long enough to tease her hopes that the quiet would persist. The infant’s high-pitched wails became the background of her life. Especially at night in the darkness it shattered her sleep. The Xanax and Oxys were like cotton cushions for her ears. Glances from Zach burned her with disdain while he tried to comfort the baby. Trips to the hospital in the middle of the night happened more than once, and she prayed the doctors would say, “This is serious, we better keep her here,” but it never happened. Instead, they stayed in ERs with glances from others and drove home with the same infant.

  “It’s not supposed to be like this,” she told Zach.

  “This is how it is,” he forced back.

  “No. You can take care of this. Take care of her like you do. Make it like it was before. She’s not meant to be alive.”

  She saw the shift in his eyes. She had convinced him, and he would kill for her again. He was going to put to sleep for good the horrible child she created. The aching in her gut that never left no matter how many pills she took would probably live on, but maybe it would fade and decompose with the child’s body.

  She heard him leave the room with purpose to take care of the child. His feet were heavy with his years. She closed her eyes and curled up into a tiny ball, tight as she could. The inside of her eyelids weren’t as dark as she wanted them to be so she pulled the covers over her head. But then she heard the footsteps return. He was back. She pulled the covers down and rolled her body to face him, and saw the whites of his eyes hovering above.

  Then the pillow smothered her face, pressed against her mouth with Zach’s full weight.
>
  She was the one being put to sleep.

  Brought to life by the fear of death, her body burned with a new strength. She reached up for his arms and scratched, grabbed, and beat on anything she could. Nothing let up. His arms were taut and thick like a piece of firewood. She tried to murmur something but there was no room for words or screams.

  A burning started inside of her where her lungs ached for air. Her head got fuzzy. She saw visions of Zach raising this child on his own. Both of them were smiling, both were monsters. This was his plan all along, to make her have this baby and then get rid of her. All she could do was scream on the inside with her lungs on fire.

  You and this child will not live in peace. I will come for her.

  The beating of her heart was so loud she was sure it would be heard by neighbors and they would save her. This couldn’t be the end. Something had to happen.

  It did not. The last heartbeats of her life were the most rapid, powerful ones she had in all of her 26 years. Her brain went dead, her heart stopped beating, blood no longer passed through her veins, but the fire inside burned eternal.

  Chapter Three: Zach Talks to the Detectives

  Lilly’s tiny body was held up against his chest and her head rested on the top of his shoulder. With one large hand on her back held firm he was able to move about the house. He was making his mom a grilled cheese and tomato soup, but the damn soup splattered in the microwave and the grilled cheese got so dark he might have to start over. It made him dash about the kitchen, and the milk in Lilly’s stomach was surely swirling about.

  Don’t puke, damn it, stay down.

  She’d drunk half the bottle, which was more than usual, and he was just waiting for the vomit to come up. Each bottle she took this week has been followed by sticky and warm goop out of her mouth, like some bird shit, and it ended up all over his back.

  He was sure she could feel his chest vibrate with anger whenever this happened. This baby had become part of his own heartbeat, and her milky spit up began to coat his life. It would end up on her bib, her blankets, on the bed sheets, and dribbling down her chin. He got used to its smell everywhere. It was the stink of her sickened insides.

  But she needed to be fed and grow. She needed to get smart and fast. He couldn’t keep this up forever. He needed for her brain to grow inside that shrunken skull of hers.

  And the way her skin was, it seemed all of her organs could be seen by everyone. Hospital doctors called it cyanosis. They talked about surgery and survival rates. They explained it with low confidence but in high terms, talked with their hands, and went on as long as they needed to until everyone was bored and confused enough not to ask any more questions.

  The words mixed in with those of geriatric doctors who rambled on about his mom’s blood thinners and diabetes and wound vacs, until all of it was a sloppy mix of medical jargon and the two women had become one big patient.

  Zac was the one keeping both of them alive. You don’t put down a child’s mom without taking care of the child, that was a code he felt inside that was impossible to break. If Lilly’s heart stopped beating, so would his own. And you take care of your own mother, best you can with what you got. Now he had one baby in the crib, and the other woman on the couch, both needing to be fed. Easy the first of the month when Mamma’s check comes and food stamp money renews, but some days best he can do is not enough.

  Zach had just succeeded in chopping off the crusts of the grilled cheese, making it into squares of four, when there was a knock at the door. He knew from instinct it was a detective knock. Or a cop’s knock. Or Protective Service or someone with a badge and uniform. There were badges behind that rap.

  He didn’t answer, so harder detective knocks came. Meal’s gonna get cold, he thought, and his momma would have to wait on the couch. He tried to hurry, and the sharp ridges of the food-pantry soup can top cut into his skin, right on the edge of drawing blood, but none came forth.

  Never look down and to the left. Then they know you are lying. And never give anything up. Never give anything up. Mutter “lawyer” if you have to. And expect tricks. They will rephrase your words into something different and see if you agree to a different version. They will say they have an eyewitness. They will try to be your friend and say, “I am just like you. I understand why you did it, she deserved it.” These guys get off on confessions like it’s their smack. They sneak into your head and make you say shit and do shit and laugh to their family about you when they go home.

  Lilly was like a kangaroo cub nestled in the pouch of his hand when he opened the front door and saw the cops. Plain clothes cops. Or detectives, either way. One black, one white, and two more officers in a squad car on the street with the blue lights on. The lights flashed and spun, flashed and spun, hitting the house again and again, and were just part of the cop’s power play. His brother Nelson next door, who was too chicken shit to help take care of their mom, had certainly seen the squad cars by now as well.

  “We doing this once more?” Zach asked before they could speak. Lilly kept facing her head in different directions against his shoulder.

  “We will come back until she’s found,” the cop answered. “I know you want that.”

  “So you say. You get out there and find her then.”

  “It’s what we have been doing. And we know you have been too. We just need more information from you. We will work together. We know you want to find her.”

  “For sure I do. I can’t do this on my own. We all need her here. If she wants to, we are here waiting.”

  “Then you need to tell us again when you saw her last. Maybe you remember something else. Then we can help. You mind if we come in?” The white cop feigned manners, and Zach remembered him. He was here a month ago for the search warrant with disdain in his eyes and a cocky walk. Today they sent a new black guy with him. Guy was young and wouldn’t lock eyes with Zach at all costs. Zach saw that.

  “You want me to lie? You tell your own lies like you want. This is my truth. And I told you, we had a fight, I went to bed, then she was gone. She’s with that man Jeremiah Puckett, I know it.”

  “It’s the Puckett family who say different,” the white cop said as the black one took a step inside. Zach squeezed tighter onto Lilly and let go of the door. “We might not even be here just for your woman missing. Figured she would leave you. That we might believe. Maybe that girl you’re holding wants her momma back, but nobody else does. But the Puckett family…they got friends.”

  “I already talked about all of this and that junkie ass Puckett. They recorded me. You heard it. But you want to keep coming to see me, go ahead come on in.” Zach stepped back and felt his skin start to itch. He sniveled in some mucus, felt sweat. He hadn’t had a bit of his own Vicodin in hours.

  The cops took a step in and their eyes scanned the place. One gave a nod to Zach’s mom who was on the couch. She didn’t nod back, but her mouth chomped, like a horse, always moistening her mouth and her lips. Swallowing was getting harder for her. Someday he’d have to suction it up they said.

  “Look, we aren’t accusing you of anything. We aren’t going there,” the cop who had been silent finally spoke. “Just tell us more so we can find out what happened after your fight. And… ” he paused as if waiting to see if Zach would speak, “we got a guy who saw you with her after that night you say she went missing, a guy who says he will testify you were angry if he has to. We thought that was odd he’d lie on you like that.”

  Zach adjusted Lilly in his arms. There had been no vomit. The formula she took down had stayed in her gut. Like him, she learned to keep shit in her mouth and not puke up at the wrong time when a cop was in your face.

  “You got a guy, huh? Everybody’s got a guy. You got a guy like that then I’m in cuffs. So be it. I got a girl. Two of them. I got to go. I got my momma who’s hungry and my daughter in my hands. You think I don’t want you to find her and to help take care of my momma and this sick little kid? My momma’s starting to forget thi
ngs and will need diapers soon as this girl needs none. And this baby girl goes to the hospital every few days. You want to arrest me. Again. You get me a fuckin nanny to take care of them. Go ahead, I need a break.”

  “Could be you just enjoy getting your mother’s check. We know you are her payee each month. And I can arrest you for something easy. We can get a warrant to search your mother’s ass, you know that.”

  “And I know y’all will. You will enjoy that shit. Now happy holidays, and be gone.”

  Zach could hear his momma’s breathing change from the couch. He grabbed the door as if to swing it closed, but just then the black cop stuck his finger towards Lilly’s chest. He placed it inside Lilly’s tiny palm like he was some politician. Before Zach could pull away, Lilly grasped it, as if a finger in her hand was new.

  “And don’t think child protective service is done yet.”

  Child protective service. CPS was worse than cops.

  Child protective service workers were just angry women trying to fuck with his life. They already had a CPS woman come to the house to look inside each cupboard. They made Zach get a new crib that didn’t have side-sliding gates. They talked to him like he was a child and warned him about heating up formula in a microwave and to swear he never would. Made him show where he would keep the medications locked. He had to get new screens upstairs. He had to sign a release so the woman could talk to Lilly’s doctors and confirm she was going to her appointments and getting treated for her heart defect. All of that, and she still wrote in her report that he may not be capable of taking care of an old woman and a young infant at the same time.

  The cop poked his fingers at Lilly like they were family. Zach waited, patient, felt like a dog getting its ass sniffed, but had nearly had enough. The man finally pulled his finger away.

  “If you ask me, this ain’t barely even a child. Some kind of alien. What is this damn blue thing anyways?”

  Zach’s chest beat in anger. Lilly was held up against it, and her own leaking heart certainly felt the thump.