in the fridge, so she snatches it from its shelf and eases herself down at the kitchen table, propping her feet up in the chair, lighting a cigarette, and popping the tab from the can.
Her mind will wander to her mantels, but mostly to the wrong turn she took fourteen years ago that landed her here.
* * *
There is no love inside apartment 4G, 256 Stanley Avenue. Only silence and brooding since they’d left Detroit on the heels of their mother’s death in 1953.
There is no love in that place, and Luscious doesn’t invite any in, especially the love that walks on two legs and arrives with flowers, calling her beautiful and trying to convince her that she’s in need of a good man, leaning in close and whispering that they would be sweet together. Sweet.
Luscious just scoffs and laughs at them, not one of those wide-mouthed, tilt-your-head-back-on-your-neck types of laugh that would reveal the cotton-candy pink of her tongue and the rotting centers of her molars. If she’d laughed like that for them, they would see and know without her ever having to tell them that all the sweetness she’d had in her life came from the powdered coating of doughnuts and the sugary syrup of cola.
No love, just Luscious working double shifts at the factory, coming home dog-tired and evil, not sharing a word with Millie unless it was to scold her or warn her against the evil of men.
No love and no tenderness, and so Millie looks for those things from her aunts and uncles on Flatbush Avenue; she looks for it from her teachers and the crossing guard who smiles at her in the mornings when she’s on her way to school. When she’s older, she looks for it from boys who want to touch her beneath her skirt and stick their tongues in her mouth, and later, when Luscious finally loosens the reins she has on Millie, she looks for it from the men who whisper words that make her blush before they take her in their arms and lie to her about love.
Millie has had three heartbreaks by the time she finally notices Fred in the fall of ’64.
She sees him at the bus stop; he’s small, but stretches his five-foot-five frame a whole two inches taller when their eyes finally meet.
His ring finger absent of a ring, she smiles her brightest smile and asks God to please, please let him be the one.
They date for three months before she gives herself to him. His touch is sobering and does not spring the wild madness that her last lover’s touch did. Millie supposes that it’s a good thing, a safe thing.
She accepts him between her legs on a day she has marked off in red on her calendar, a day that is one of five that is possible for her to conceive on, because she’s studied Fred, his movements and philosophies on family, and what makes a man a man, and she’s confident that when she meets him for lunch a month later and whispers in his ear that she’s with child, he will do the right thing, the responsible thing.
The tuna fish and rye gets caught in his throat, and he looks over Millie’s shoulder and past the counter into the chrome of the industrial-size coffee machine; he catches sight of his freedom skipping off into the sunset before suggesting that they do the right thing, the responsible thing, and marry.
The wedding is small.
They wed in March at Our Lady of Grace, a tiny old church whose pews are splintered and whose stained-glass windows are patched with cardboard and masking tape, which does little to keep out the winter cold, so no one removes their coats and they curse themselves for leaving their gloves in their cars.
They take the vacant apartment below Luscious, and Millie busies herself with her new home, husband, and impending arrival. Campbell comes just six months later, and soon after that Fred begins to change.
There are late nights and the lingering scent of perfume clinging to his shirt collar. In his pockets there are bits of paper, some with numbers and others with just a name, a place, and a time.
Millie calls the numbers, shows up at the addresses, and sometimes questions the women who are there.
Campbell is always with her. A reminder for Fred and the belief in family he once held. Millie bundles up her child in the yellow snowsuit and sets her down in her carriage before stuffing a warm bottle in her purse and setting out to look for her husband. Her husband.
Most times she finds him, his head bad from drinking, his hand resting on an exposed thigh or head resting against a delicate shoulder. A shouting match follows, sometimes things are thrown, once blood is drawn.
Fred always ends up going home with her. Millie cussing all the way, reminding him that he is her husband. Her husband.
When Luscious sees Millie looking haggard, her mind occupied, she asks, “Things okay?”
“Just fine,” Millie lies.
Luscious knows otherwise. She hears the yelling, the screaming, accusations being thrown around like baseballs and then the slamming of doors, breaking of glasses, and sometimes the loud thuds on the walls when Fred has had enough and stops using his mouth and begins using his hands.
Luscious just shakes her head. She’d told her that she would regret the day and mourn the hour she ever got married, but a husband was a prize Millie thought she had to have, like a gorgeous pair of shoes or a proper purse.
“That’s good,” Luscious replies before popping a handful of jelly beans in her mouth.
Millie just forces a smile. She will make her marriage work and prove Luscious wrong about men and love and commitment.
She will, even if it kills her.
AGE FIFTEEN
The apartment was empty when they arrived. Trevor snatched a white piece of paper from the door that said Notice of Eviction across the top before grabbing her arm and tugging her over the threshold.
It was a small one-bedroom, like Luscious’s place, except the floors were covered in cranberry shag, and the walls were painted white instead of the standard housing-issued egg cream. There were framed pictures of Trevor’s father placed here and there on every wall. “What’s his name?” Campbell asked.
“Ray Vaughn,” Trevor replied, and pushed his chest out when he said it.
Ray Vaughn posing on one knee, bare chest, tight jeans, dark shades, making the peace sign with his fingers. Ray Vaughn posed somewhere in a park, green army fatigues, black beret, and dark shades, cradling an AK-47 in his arms.
Ray Vaughn with some other men in a tight space with bunk beds, magazine cutouts of naked women pasted on the wall behind them. This time he didn’t wear the dark shades, and there was something missing from his eyes, something lost years before the judge banged down his gavel and sentenced him to life.
The apartment was filled with the same scent that lingers in the stairwells when the housing patrol takes a night off and there is no one available to chase away the reefer-smoking hoodlums.
Trevor’s bed is a twin rollaway folded up neatly in the corner of the living room beside the black leather sofa. Trevor will pull that bed from its corner and ask Campbell if she might like to sit down.
Later, Campbell will focus on the flowered sheet that covers the mattress, that and the brown metal rail of the bed. She focuses on those things hard, and for as long as she can, until he pushes her legs apart and is able to get his fingers all the way down between her legs and then up inside her.
Her eyes let go, and her neck goes weak, and the only strength she has left in her body must be in her arms because she embraces him. He wants to put something else inside her. He needs to put something else inside her, he says.
“Please,” he coaxes. “C’mon,” he begs.
She can stay only an hour at a time; anything over that and Luscious will place a call back to the house to find out what time she left—any more than that and she can’t explain where the time has gone, and Millie will cut out the visits altogether.
She shakes