Angel Over My Shoulder Read online

  As they ran to find her old house they passed the house that she lived in now with Grandmama. It was filled with people who were drinking and dancing and listening to music. She was curious as to why Grandmama had so many people in her house.

  Grandmama never had parties. Sometimes the ladies from church would come by for a women’s meeting but that was about all. She went up the walk with Angel following right on her heels.

  The entire house was counting down 10…9…8…

  Ahh! It was New Years Eve and Grandmama was having a party! She was talking about that in real, since they’d be starting another decade. Grandmama said it marked an important milestone. She would pinch her cheek and say, ‘Maybe you will talk for the new decade.’ But she didn’t push. She never pushed.

  When Leslie looked across the room she suddenly understood. This was no longer a dream, this was going to happen. This was going to become real. She and Angel stood right in the doorway, and she didn’t worry about the cold air coming in or the hot air leaving because she wasn’t really here. She knew this because she saw her other self sitting on Uncle Monty’s lap. Then, as sometimes happened, Leslie became her other self and she could smell the alcohol on Uncle Monty’s breath and his wet kisses on her cheek.

  Uncle Monty was speaking drunkenly into her ear. “It’s 1980 now. You aren’t going to speak for the new decade? It’s been three years since your Mama and Daddy died.” She looked at the door where Angel was still standing, alone now and watching her. Leslie looked back to her dream Uncle and he was looking at her real funny.

  “Give Uncle Monty a big New Years kiss.” Leslie didn’t want to. He smelled funny and was acting funny. But she did as she was told and leaned forward to kiss his cheek and he turned his head swiftly and she kissed his wet mouth instead. She immediately wiped her lips of his spit.

  He laughed like he had told the biggest joke. Leslie slid off of his lap but he clamped his hand on her wrist.

  “It’s after midnight, young lady, time for you to go to bed. Your Grandmama said that you can stay up to midnight only.” The drunken man stood and then swiftly lifted her into his arms. He carried her up the stairs and Leslie watched the rest of the people in the room continue their dancing and drinking in slow motion, oblivious to her and her dream Uncle. The only person that didn’t seem to be moving in slow motion was Angel. He didn’t move at all, but his eyes were glued to hers.

  Chapter 3

  ~1989 Summer~

  The telephone was ringing and her hands were covered in black sticky hair gel. “Shit!” Grandma was going to have a shit fit if the phone woke her up. She quickly wiped her hands on her jeans. They needed to be washed anyways. This was her third straight time wearing them. She sprinted out of her bedroom, hurtling over the ottoman until she reached the phone on the end table.

  “Hello?!” She said breathlessly. She’d caught it on the third ring and was half listening to the voice over the phone and for her grandmother’s movements in the other room.

  “Leslie! Girl, April’s mother is spending the night at her boyfriend’s house and April has the place to herself! I’m on my way over there now, I’m a come pick you up-”

  Leslie scowled. “You know I don’t like April and she don’t like me.” April used to be one of the girls in school that made fun of her when they were both back in elementary-- back before she had began talking again. The kids used to pick on her, calling her retarded. April had even gouged her with her sharp nails because she wouldn’t yell out.

  She heard her friend sigh over the telephone. Missy was her best friend, but that didn’t mean she was a good friend. It wasn’t as if Leslie could tell her that April made her feel like the lost little girl that she had once been…a girl that she had fought hard to bury down within herself.

  “Come on, bitch! You can steal some of yo Grandma’s liquor and pain pills.”

  “Hey!” Leslie said in a hushed yet hard voice. “I’m not stealing pain pills for everyone. She will start missing those.” But the liquor was easy. For a while now she had been responsible for managing the household. Grandma’s check would get deposited into the bank account and Leslie had the ATM card to withdraw the cash when she had to do the shopping or the checkbook when she had to pay a bill. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday by getting herself a fake ID that said she was 21. And Grandma had plenty of pills that she stole for herself and Missy when she wanted to share. Leslie didn’t even really look at it as stealing. Grandma couldn’t do things now that she was sick. It wasn’t really stealing when Grandma didn’t use the money…

  “Look Leslie, come to the party. I don’t want to go by myself.” She heard Missy’s voice become sly. “Derek is going to be there.” Leslie felt an involuntary chill run down her spine at the mention of his name.

  Derek made her want to keep her eyes downcast and to duck out of sight. Nothing much made her feel that way these days. Most of the boys she knew were hard; into drugs and stealing and skipping school. Derek wasn’t, and yet he was still cool.

  “I’m not going because Derek is going to be there, alright?” She finally consented, “but because I need to get pissy DRUNK!”

  Missy laughed. “I’ll be there in ten!” Leslie hurried back to her bedroom and looked at her hair. Every black girl in school wanted long hair except her. She had cut her hair short into a boy cut long ago. And before the phone had rang, she had been experimenting with making a faux Mohawk the way she’d seen the punk kids wearing on MTV. Instead of combing it out she turned to and fro in her mirror and decided to keep it.

  Living in a mostly black neighborhood, Leslie knew that others thought of her as the freak—and not just because she had spent several years as a mute. She wore all black; black eye shadow, black nail polish and proudly sported facial piercings and short hair with spiky bangs. Some kids in white neighborhoods dressed like this, but not in her neighborhood and not in her school. She quickly pulled off her dirty jeans for a pair of black ones that hid the dirt better.

  She sniffed her armpits and then liberally rubbed on deodorant. She did brush her teeth but mainly because she’d had onions on her burger for dinner. Afterwards she put on black lipstick to match her heavy black mascara. She didn’t have time to put in all of her piercings but did get in her tragus and replaced her rook, her labret always stayed in below her lip unless Grandma made her remove it. She put in the septum because she knew Missy hated it and would call her ‘bone nose’; she was just putting in the lip ring when she heard Missy blow the horn.

  She spritzed cologne on her neck and then hurried to Grandma’s room. She paused and took several deep breaths before she could enter. The room smelled of sickness. It was almost overwhelming to her. The television emitted the only light and for a moment her grandmother’s sleeping form looked lifeless.

  Leslie felt a moment of panic before she noted the slight rise and fall of Grandma’s chest. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and looked at anything but her. She tipped over to the bedside table and picked up one of the many bottles of pain pills. She snuck four pills…Grandma wouldn’t miss four. She checked the label. Fentanyl--the good stuff. She shoved them into her pocket grimly. Just make me numb, she thought as she tipped out of the room as quickly as she could.

  As she left the house, Leslie grabbed her leather jacket. She wore a black t-shirt that said simply; YUCK FOU written in bold white letters. As she locked the door behind her she could already hear The New Edition’s, If It Isn’t Love blaring from the sound system of Missy’s parent’s car. Leslie smirked. She was listening to The Clash and The Sex Pistols. She shouldn’t even be born in the United States with her style and likes. She was in the wrong time and place. They would accept her in The UK just the way she was.

  Missy paused to stare at her once she was buckled into her seat. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?” Leslie touched the hardening spikes on top.

  “Faux-hawk.” Leslie rolled her eyes. “Just drive, bitch and stop gawking at me
.” She reached into her pocket and handed her friend a pill. “Fentanyl.”

  “OOO. Jackpot!” They both dry swallowed their pills while her friend pulled out of the drive way and headed to the impromptu house party. Leslie reached into her jacket pocket for a tape.

  “Oh fuck NO, Leslie! We are not listening to that white-people-shit before the party!”

  “Just listen to this one song. It’s not rock or anything. It’s kinda soft, a little mellow.” Missy protested a lot but Leslie knew that she’d be open minded enough to give it a try. “Just listen to the words. This group is called The Cure and the song is Pictures of You.”

  The two girls drove silently, listening to the lyrics of the song. When it ended Leslie reached over and popped out the tape and then shoved it back into her jacket pocket.

  Missy nodded her head. “It’s cool. Good song.” She glanced at Leslie all joking aside. “You don’t ever stop missing them, do you?” Leslie suddenly reached for a cigarette and lit it, pausing to take a long drag.

  “No.”

  “When you stopped talking for all of those years…was it because you couldn’t, or because you didn’t want to?” The two girls had known each other back then when she had been mute. Missy played with her even when Leslie just seemed to be sitting back and letting the world go by. They were long time friends, but they rarely talked about this.

  Leslie took a while before she answered. Finally she spoke the truth. “I don’t know. I don’t think I even tried. I didn’t care enough to try.” They had never talked about what had brought on her muteness; not in all of these years…only what had stopped it; Uncle Monty. Uncle Monty was not going to stop what he was doing to her until she spoke; and so she did.

  She came to a sudden decision, perhaps because the pill was working on her, or perhaps old memories had made her vulnerable. She looked out the window. “Sometimes I visit them. We sit around like a real family.” She paused, staring out the window, waiting for Missy to crack a joke and then she could change the subject and never bring it up again.

  “You mean you visit them when you dream?”

  “Yes!” Leslie turned in her seat and looked at Missy in excitement.

  “Well it’s nice that you can dream about them.”

  Leslie chewed her lip. “Yeah…but sometimes it’s like they never died and I’m a different person-”

  “One without a bone piercing in your nose I hope.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t have any piercings. It’s like a world where things are different because they never died.” She never thought that it was a real world. She knew it was a dream, or maybe a fantasy. Missy watched her with interest as they stopped at a red light.

  “Do they look the same? Like you remember them?”

  “I don’t really remember what they look like until in the dream.” It always gave her a jolt as she thought, that’s my Mama, that’s my Daddy. Waking up after was always bittersweet.

  “Then it’s a good thing that you can at least see them in your dreams,” she said with a conviction that surprised Leslie. She had never thought to talk about these things with her friend and now wondered why.

  “Do you ever dream about stuff that comes true?”

  “Sometimes. It’s like, I’ll be doing something and then I’ll say, ‘damn, that already happened.’”

  “Yeah, Déjà vu. But do you ever…see the same person in your dreams?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Leslie shrugged. “I don’t know.” She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Then she just plunged forward. “There’s this guy that’s always in my dreams.”

  “What guy? Is he cute?”

  Leslie looked at her curiously. “You don’t dream like that? A dream with the same person who takes you places, shows you things?”

  “It sounds like maybe he’s your Dad.” Missy pulled up along the curb near April’s apartment building and cut off the car but didn’t move to get out.

  Leslie was shaking her head. “He’s always been there, even before my parents died. And he’s too young to be my Dad. Plus he’s white.”

  Missy was blinking. “Is it Jesus?”

  “Jesus? No! I mean, I used to think he was my guardian angel. But then he…”

  “What?” She prompted. Leslie shrugged but was squeezing her hand into a fist until her short nails dug painfully into her palm.

  “He showed me some bad shit, and didn’t try to help me.”

  “Well Jesus showed people bad shit. And he makes you help yourself, doesn’t he?”

  “Jesus doesn’t have a New York accent. And he doesn’t wear blue jeans and CHUCKS.” She opened the car door and began walking up the sidewalk with her hands jammed into her jacket. Missy locked the car doors and caught up with her.

  “Maybe he’s a hip Jesus.” Missy was joking now and Leslie relaxed a bit. “The new-age Jesus for cool people.”

  “He’s too cute to be Jesus. He doesn’t age, either. He’s like…my age now; eighteen, maybe even a little older, but not much. But he’s always been that same age.” She pictured Angel in her mind. “He’s got brown curly hair and sky blue eyes. He is really cute, but not like a model or anything. He’s not big, he’s not small, a little skinny but with muscles, you know? Like an athlete. And he’s got this hair on his face but not much. It’s like he’s too young to grow a beard. I guess that’s how I know he’s younger.”

  “You make him sound real.”

  “He’s not,” she said quickly and tossed her cigarette butt to the sidewalk.

  “Have you ever fucked him?”

  “What?!” Leslie almost choked on her laughter. “No! I’ve known him since I was a kid! And besides, I don’t see him anymore.”

  “Too bad, since you never did it with a white guy he could have been your first.” Leslie was no virgin, very much the opposite. But sex was the last thing she wanted from Angel.

  The two friends finally reached the door to the apartment. One was dressed in skinny jeans, combat boots and a leather jacket with a Mohawk. The other wore a fashionable suede mini skirt, matching suede halter, cream colored heels with hair lengthened by a yaki weave.

  Missy rang the bell. “We forgot about the liquor,” she whispered to Leslie.

  “Fuck them. We got our high-on.” Besides, she didn’t need her stomach pumped again. April opened the door with a broad smile on her face. It fell away when she saw Leslie. Her eyes quickly scanned the Mohawk before she laughed out loud.

  “Oh my fucking god!” April screamed.

  Missy grabbed Leslie’s sleeve before she retreated and dragged her into the apartment. A few other people laughed, though several gave her admiring looks. Leslie shrugged inwardly. She wasn’t doing it to impress them or anyone. She shoved her hands into her jacket pocket and concentrated on the feel of the pill she’d taken.

  It was just beginning to numb her senses enough for her to be able to disregard the laughter. She headed to the table where the liquor and plastic cups were located. There was also a cooler of beers on the floor. She stooped to get one and felt someone behind her. It scared her enough to almost cause her to drop the can. She swung around only to meet the eyes of Derek.

  “Oh…” She hesitated. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He said. He was holding a plastic cup half filled with some liquid. Derek was very cute dressed in Levis, a blue thermal shirt and Timberland boots. His short afro was shaped to his head and cut out perfectly.