Daughter of Light (Kindred 2)

If so, what could I hide about myself?

The cold front Mrs. Winston had predicted was coming in quickly. I could feel a chill in the breeze, and the partly clear night sky had turned quite overcast. Dark purple clouds were puffing like flexed muscles, thickening the shadows that seemed to seep out of the darkness beyond the reach of streetlights, darkness that leaped to the right or left of car headlights. I could hear my quickened heartbeat, like distant drums. Something ominous was watching us. Of course, all Naomi Addison felt was the chill.

“It could rain tonight,” she said. “If it’s raining in the morning, I’d be happy to run you over to Dolan Plumbing Supply.”

“You’re up that early?” I asked, a little surprised.

She laughed. “Not usually, no. That’s why you won’t have trouble getting into the bathroom in the morning.” Then she stopped abruptly. She turned slowly and looked toward a line of hedges.

“What? Did you forget something?” I asked when she didn’t speak. “Naomi?”

“Nothing. I thought . . . I saw . . .”

“What?”

“A pair of eyes . . . illuminated in the darkness.”

She pressed her right hand against her breast just over her heart.

“Stupid of me,” she said. “There’s obviously nothing there. After all, what could it have been, a werewolf or something?” She laughed and started walking again.

I looked back.

Or something, I thought, yes.

But I walked on with her. Maybe, without her realizing it, to save her life.

7

I stood by my bedroom window, looking down at the street, for nearly twenty minutes before deciding to go to sleep. The night sky didn’t clear at all. Where we lived in Los Angeles, there were no streetlights, but I recalled that it was no different no matter where we had lived. Daddy always preferred the darkness, emphasizing whenever he could that the darkness was our friend.

“We exist because of the darkness,” he told me once. “All of you are daughters of darkness.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that back then, but I was sure now. Darkness, secrets, and anonymity were tools that helped keep us alive and safe. More than any other living thing on this earth, we fled intense scrutiny. When questions started, our skillfully orchestrated ballet of avoidance and equivocation immediately began.

Maybe that was why Ava thought I was different, why she thought I might be afraid of myself or for myself. She knew that I was never completely comfortable in the dark, or at least not as comfortable as she and Daddy were. I didn’t want to admit to being afraid of anything, ever, but I was, and “fear” wasn’t a word we used in our family. As far as I could see, there was nothing either Daddy or Mrs. Fennel feared, and Ava was capable of facing down a stampede of elephants.

The darkness I gazed down at outside seemed to follow me to bed when I turned away from the window. The lights were not shut off yet. There was just a sliver of illumination sliding under the door. For a while, I lay there concentrating on it the way a moth was drawn to a candle. It was as if as long as it was there, I was safe, protected. Then it went off, and I was dropped into a swirling ball of darkness.

The visions I saw spinning inside it weren’t nightmares. They were irrevocable memories permanently printed inside my mind. I saw some of the men my sisters had brought home being swallowed up in Daddy’s overwhelming embrace. I saw Ava’s eyes brighten lustfully at the prospect of a new, healthy young man. I saw my boyfriend Buddy sinking deeper and deeper into the trap my love was designed to create, and I felt my ever-growing inadequacy when it came to protecting him.

Closing my eyes and pressing my face to the pillow didn’t stop the visions and the memories. They twisted and turned, slithered and slipped in under my eyelids. I thought I might burst out with screams of frustration. Would this ever end? Did this mean that Ava was absolutely right, that I couldn’t escape because all that I had been and all that I was part of were attached to my soul like some horrid umbilical cord no one could cut or tear? Gathering up all of my resolve, I fought back as hard as I could, and eventually, I fell asleep.

The lateness didn’t matter. I didn’t need as much sleep as they did. I envisioned all of them down the hallway: Mr. Brady on his back sinking into a grave of repose, snoring; Jim Lamb curled comfortably in a fetal position under his blanket, dreaming about me; and Naomi across the way fantasizing a romance with Ken Dolan. It was as if I had the power to pull their heads apart and peer into their dreams like some voyeur of other people’s imaginings, other people’s deepest secrets. That at least distracted me and became my temporary form of escape from all that haunted me.

I woke early and hurried into the bathroom to shower, as if I thought I could wash away the bleak and morbid flashbacks that had attached themselves to my subconscious. It was as if I believed I could scrub them off me as easily as I could wipe away cobwebs I had gone through during my fevered tossing and turning in the darkness of my bedroom. I tried not to make much noise, as it was early, and contrary to what Naomi had told me, she wasn’t rising. I didn’t hear a sound coming from her room, and when I gazed at her door, I could sense her still in a deep sleep embraced by her dreams.

I dressed in the clothes I had arrived in, because I hadn’t had time to shop for anything new yet. The overcast night sky hung on and hovered over the Quincy morning. The clouds were lighter but still tenaciously dulling the morning sun. After I brushed my hair and put on a little lipstick, I went down to breakfast. Jim Lamb was the only other guest dressed and eating. He rose as soon as I entered the room.

“Oh, sit, please,” I said, pulling out my own chair.

Mrs. McGruder popped in from the kitchen with a platter of thin blueberry pancakes. There was sliced mixed fruit on the table, along with a jug of maple syrup, a small pitcher of milk, and a pot of coffee on a ceramic base.

“Orange juice, dear?” she asked.

“Thank you, yes,” I said. She placed the platter of pancakes at the center of the table. “They look delicious.”

“We get the blueberries locally,” she said, and went for my juice.