When Love Hurts (11 page)

“We can’t find Jessica. We think she’s in trouble, and we were wondering if she came here,” Malcolm says. We watch our mother’s facial expression go from skeptical to fearful.

She puts her hands on her hips. “What do you mean you can’t find her? Ain’t she living with Chris or whatever his name is?”

I blow out a breath at the mention of his name. “She’s not now. We just need to find her, and we came here.”

“Why the hell haven’t y’all called the police?” she shouts, throwing her hands in the air.
 

“We’re going to, but we figured we’d search all the basic areas first,” Malcolm answers.

“I think you should call them now.”

“If we don’t find her by tonight we will, Mom. I promise. You know we wouldn’t jeopardize her safety,” Malcolm says.

Mom covers her face in her hands and says a prayer. When she’s finished, she stares at us with watery eyes.
 

“I just don’t understand how this could happen. How could she be missing? How long has she been gone? Why was I the last to know?”

Malcolm grips her shoulders and embraces her in a hug. He holds her closely. “I mean, have you tried calling her? Oh, I can’t stand this,” Mom says, crying into Malcolm’s shoulder. “I remember when she was just a little girl. You guys would all play around in the backyard when y’all was eight years old. She would come here and eat ’cause her grandmother, rest her soul, couldn’t always cook.”

“I know, Mom, I know,” Malcolm says, rubbing her back.

I turn around and leave. I can’t take it anymore. I walk across the yard and pull down one of the weak boards off the window. I climb through the window and land into Grandma Mae’s old kitchen. Everything is gone. There isn’t any stove, countertops, fridge, or light. The only light I have now is the twilight shining through the hole in the window.
 

I take a deep breath and start to walk toward Jessica’s old bedroom down the hall. I know the place better than I’d like to admit, and, light or no light, I keep walking. When I reach the hallway it’s completely dark, and I can hear the sounds of rats scurrying about. I push open her door and use my cell phone light to scan her room. It’s too small for a young lady to grow up in, but Jessica made the best of it. The walls are pink and white with dents from furniture scraping up against them. The floor’s carpet feels like a pile of mush beneath my feet due to rat droppings and something else.

I think about the time I first came in this room to play Legos with her when I was eight. I hated it because the room was so small, and I was very claustrophobic. I would sit by the doorway with the door wide open, and she’d sit in front of me while we played, smiling the whole time while I frowned and complained about the room size. She was just so tolerable.
 

“Hey,” Malcolm says from behind me, patting my shoulder. “We gotta go. She’s not here.”

The sun has gone down completely by the time we make it back to Chicago. Malcolm glances over at me as he drives and tries to lighten the mood. “Maybe she went back to my place. She went there before, so she might be there now.” He smiles. “We probably just missed her.”

“If we just missed her, then that would mean she ain’t gon’ be there,” I say, staring straight ahead.

“I mean, we can go there and check around the neighborhood, you know. We should have done that first,” he says with new energy.
 

We drive back to his apartment and walk inside, but Jessica isn’t hanging by the outside entrance or waiting by his door. My shoulders slump, and I feel like someone drove over my stomach. The best chance now is to hope that she will come back to the apartment on her own and we’ll see her here. Just as the thought crosses my mind, I realize Jessica would have been here if she wanted to stay with Malcolm. She wouldn’t have left, and if she did, she wouldn’t have gotten too far. Something must have happened to her.

I storm out of Malcolm’s apartment, and he’s quick to follow. I don’t go to the car. She has to be around this stupid building somewhere, and I have to find her. I circle the building, then I walk back to the streets. I walk two blocks searching for her face, but still can’t find her. Malcolm’s by my side, and we’ve probably walked three blocks south of his building by now. As we walk, people coming my way cross the street as soon as they see my facial expression. Mom always told me I looked angry when I was determined.
 

“Let’s go back and get the car,” Malcolm says.

“Nah,” I say. “We have to find Jessica. I’m not stopping.”

“Jessica?” a voice beside us says, and we stop and turn around. There’s a middle-aged woman with a white wig and red lipstick leaning against a building and holding a spare-change sign. “Did you say you’re looking for someone name Jessica?”

We stare at her unsure for a second. If she has
any
information about Jessica, I’m going to listen. “How do we know we’re talking about the same Jessica?” Malcolm asks, looking her up and down.

The woman shrugs. “Is your Jessica the woman with that pretty long hair, bandages, and nice smile?”

I walk closer to this woman. “Where is she?”

She smiles back. “My name is Compella, and I’ll take you to her—for a price.”

I stare hard at Compella and wonder if she’s just trying to scam us. But how the fuck would she know about Jessica’s bandages if she hadn’t seen her? “You can be lying,” I say.

Compella shrugs like she doesn’t care one way or the other. “You can take that chance if you want to, but I’ve seen her. She’s actually pretty nice. Confused but nice.”

Malcolm speaks up. “Where you see her at?”

“That’s where the price comes in.”

“No,” Malcolm says, “you said if you take us to her there’s a price. We just wanna know where you seen her.”

“Oh.” She laughs. “Why didn’t you just say so? I saw her today, yesterday, and the day before. I see her all the time.”

“Just tell us where she is now. Fuck the damn price.”

Compella shakes her head. “She told me all about you . . . Chris.”

My eyes widen, then narrow. “I ain’t Chris,” I spit out. “I’m Jaylen, and this is Malcolm. She knows us.”

“Oh,” she says, but her blank expression doesn’t change. “That’s better, but it’s still not good enough. She told me what you said to her too.”

“What, are y’all friends or something?” Malcolm asks.

She nods. “You can say that. I don’t want you guys messing up what she has going for her.”

“What’s that?” I ask, and she shoots me a look. “No, I’m not trying to say she had nothing going for her before. I mean, what new thing is she doing?”

Compella rolls her eyes. “Nothing too new. She’s taking pictures a lot with a camera I stole for her.”

“Man, what the hell does this have to do with where Jessica’s at?” Malcolm asks. “We’ve been looking for her all day and ain’t found shit. You’re the best lead we’ve got, so tell us your price or tell us where she might be. No games.”

Compella stares at him for a moment. “My price is a hundred dollars cash.”
 

Malcolm looks at me with a blank face, and I shrug. “I guess we’re going to have to pay her, man. She’s serious.” I almost want to laugh, and I swear Malcolm’s reading me like a book.
 

“Damn, that’s fifty bucks a piece though, bro?” Malcolm says, rubbing his stubble. “That’s a lot.”

Compella starts to look worried. “I can do half now, half after you see her. I’m not impatient.”

We both smile at her and she smiles back. I turn around and walk a few feet away so she can’t see my wallet. I dig past the hundred-dollar bills until I get to my fifties pile. Jessica probably didn’t tell her I own my business and have been getting stacks since the second year, and this is the fifth year now.

I walk back to them and hand her a fifty-dollar bill, and her smile gets bigger. “Okay,” she says. “Do you have a car ’cause she’s a few miles away from here.”

I nod, and we all start walking back to Malcolm’s apartment three blocks from where I stormed off. She sits in the backseat of the car, but still directs us to make a U-turn so that we are heading back south. “You may have seen her if you’d kept going. You wouldn’t have known that, though, if I didn’t help you,” she says. “Just as well. We all win in this deal.”

I see Malcolm roll his eyes, and I feel like doing the same, but I’m too busy watching the streets for any signs of Jessica.

 
After a mile or two I get anxious. She couldn’t have walked this far from Malcolm’s. “Where are you taking us?”
 

Compella jerks a little at my tone, but tries to be reassuring when she speaks. “Where Jessica is. You said you wanted to find her.”

“Why the hell is she so far away?” Malcolm asks, getting annoyed.

“It’s just a few miles.”

“Is she staying at a specific place?” I ask, turning around to face her.

Her face is sweating, and I can tell we intimidate her. “Yes. It’s called Peace Tribe. It’s a homeless shelter.”

“You’re homeless too?” Malcolm asks Compella.
 

“Yes. But I’m fine with it. Much more affordable. I don’t have a family to live with in a house anyway. And you know houses run in the thousands. I get to eat for free, sleep for free, and I meet so many people, it’s crazy. I just don’t like the winter, though, or any bad weather. That shits a killer.”

We don’t say anything to that. She just told us the name of the place Jessica is staying, and even though Malcolm and I don’t need her help anymore, we let her enjoy the ride.
 

A few minutes later we pull up to Peace Tribe, and by the long lines I can tell people are either looking for dinner or a place to sleep for the night. Malcolm parks and we all get out. I start scanning the crowd for her, but Compella points at the door. “She’s probably already inside. She doesn’t go far from the building, and is first in line for everything.”

We walk straight to the door, and people look pretty pissed off and start complaining. Compella gets nervous again. “I’ll stay out here. I have to get in line anyway. Go ahead in. I’m sure you’ll find her,” she says, and then hops to the end of the line.

Malcolm and I squeeze through the crowd until we’re in the front door. The line for a mat to sleep on continues inside, and I see the lady behind the counter running low. She isn’t going to have enough for the next ten people, let alone Compella.
 

We walk around inside the building looking for Jessica. We step over a few sleeping bodies and look inside the cafeteria. It’s nearly empty, and a few people are sleeping on the floor, but none of them is Jessica. We walk around a little bit more, but neither of us knows where we’re going. Malcolm scans the whole area and picks a room to go in, but I look back at the crowd of people coming in. They’ve been here before, and they know where they’re going.
 

“Let’s just follow one of these people ’cause they know where they’re going. They might take us to Jess.”

“No, they’re just gonna find a space to fall asleep. And if Jess was here earlier, she might be in the most crowded room. Let’s go find it,” Malcolm says. I turn back to the line and witness a man grab a mat, then take three steps to the wall and collapse.
 

I nod at Malcolm and start searching the rooms again. One room is the gymnasium, and I wonder if this place used to be a Boys and Girls Club or something. There are a lot of people inside, and most are sitting up talking. I can’t tell if Jessica is in here or not, but we start walking through anyway. We step around people talking and step over the sleeping ones. I want to shout out Jessica’s name through the whole room, but don’t want to bother the people sleeping. Besides, Jessica’s name was as common as fuck, and ten people in this room could turn their heads.
 

“Yo, Jay,” Malcolm says, but I see it happen.
 

Jessica walks in the room on the other side and stands over a mat someone is lying on. We can’t see exactly what’s going on, but we can see her trying to wake the person up. The man gets up and towers over Jessica, and I can see his frown.
 

I get close enough just as he grabs her arm and pull him to the ground. I take my right foot and slam it into his guts and groin. Malcolm kicks his face and shoulder muttering curses under his breath. We stop as soon as the crowd’s screaming gets too loud. We know that cops are on their way, and we need to get out of here fast.

Jessica’s breathing wildly, and I know she’s shaken up, but she stares in bewilderment at me and I stare back. I want to apologize and beg her forgiveness, but she shocks me when she runs into my arms and cries out how sorry she is. I cradle her and rock her back and forth. I haven’t seen her in so long. I never want to let go of her again.
 

Malcolm taps me on my shoulder and points to the crowd stirring and says we should get out of here. I can’t agree more. I grab Jessica by the hand, and we all storm out the way she came in.
 

Jessica leads us out the back door of the building, and we walk around to the front. We stop when we see Compella still near the back of the line. She waves when she sees us. “Glad you found her.”

“You know them?” Jessica asks her.

“We just ran into each other,” Compella says before giving a wink. I witness Malcolm shaking her hand and know he’s giving her the last fifty dollars. “Well, I’m going to miss you, girl. Good luck and have fun.”

Jessica and I ride in the backseat, and I hold her in my arms kissing her wounded forehead and eye. The eye doesn’t look so bad, and I can definitely tell it’s healing. I kiss her whole face, and she just rests her head on my shoulder and cries. I wipe the tears away as soon as they come. Malcolm keeps looking back at us, and I know he wants to ask Jessica some deep questions, but they can wait until later.

We ride back to the front of my new sports bar, and even though I want to tell Jessica all about it and how I left the contract signing to find her, I know it can wait as well. When you lose one of the most important things in your life, nothing else seems that important, and you realize it when you get back the thing you lost. If you do get it back, that is.