Chapter 4: Monique

4

Someone was pounding on his head. Huge hammer blows. Staccato quick and resonate, echoing painfully round and round inside his head.

Struggling to open his eyes to identify his attacker, bright red and silver splinters of light lacerate the back of his brain.

Not hammers. A fist. Pounding impatiently upon the door to the bedroom that Bealz shared with four others; two snotty nosed temporary placement kids, a nine year old bed wetter and a cruel thirteen year old with a penchant for booger tipped wet willies.

Sitting up and looking around confusedly, Bealz can see that he is alone in the room. A most unusual occurrence as it is, but there was also bright light streaming in through the bed-sheet covered window. Ms. Penny didn't allow any of the kids to come back to the apartment until the end of the day. Bealz hardly ever came back before nightfall. How did he get here?

He struggles to remember the morning's course of events, drawing a blank soon after ducking out of Ali's Market with a Little Debbie's Iced Honeybun on the way to the El. He'd somehow lost a whole lot of time and had ended up back in his room.

Someone was yelling. The screaming began to clarify, he began to make sense of what he was hearing. The screamer was screaming at the fist pounder.

Jesus, was that Ms. Penny yelling? And if so, who the hell was pounding on his door? Bealz considered escaping out the window.

Sitting here doing or saying nothing as an alternative, he knew, would just make everything worse.  So, swinging his feet onto the floor, head still swimming, he pushes himself to the door, unlocks and opens it.

His mother, Monique Felani Kokua-Binti, is standing there, fist cocked back, ready to crash down upon the door once more. There is a wild look verging on panic in her eyes.

“Bealz!” she says with a start.

Bealz is confused. He's felt confused quite a bit lately.

“Mama,” he asks? “What's the matter?”

Ms. Penny, standing with her hands on her hips just over his mother's shoulder, erupts, “What's the matter? Little nigga, what you doin locked up in that room in the middle of the damned day? And why in the hell is yo crackhead ass mama runnin roun my house poundin on doors like she done lost her damn mind?”

“Bealz, baby, we gotta go!”  His mom, eyes wide with fright, clutches at him, her hands kneading his tee into a crumpled rag.

“Mama, stop!” Bealz says, his eyes grown wide. He'd never seen his mother quite like this and it scared him.

“Baby, we gotta go!” his mother continues.

“Monie,” Ms. Penny says. “Girl, you know damn well you ain't takin that boy nowhere!”

Bealz's mom pushes him back into the room, ignoring Ms. Penny altogether. “You need to get your stuff. We ain't got much time.”

“Mom,” Bealz says. “What's going on? Where are we going?”

Stopping suddenly, the disheveled dementia seemingly suspended, Bealz's mother looks at him quizzically. “He told you. He told me that he told you. Didn't he tell you?”

“What?”

“You just saw him. You know what we have to do.”

Barging into the room behind them, Ms. Penny is visibly in a rage, “Monie, you need to get yo black ass outta here now!” she roars.

Snatching at Bealz's mother, Ms. Penny attempts to spin her back towards the door.

“Mom,” Bealz says, his panic rising as his mother suddenly and drastically changes before him. She is no longer the confused, crazy lady they all know her to be. She'd become a storm.

Bealz can see it, a storm erupt within her form. She raises her hand with slow certainty and lightly touches Ms. Penny with the outstretched palm.

A bloom of light cracks open and Ms. Penny, all 380lbs of her, flies back off her feet. Her head raps the upper doorjamb as she is hurled backwards out of the room and her neck snaps loudly. Her body slams into the far wall at the end of the long hallway leading to the front of the apartment, a discarded sack of broken flesh.

Bealz can't breath. The air is sucked from his body. He can only stand rigidly, looking at the bloody smear atop his doorway.

“Bealz,” his mother says, snapping him back to her. “We must go.”

She is still wrapped in storm. He doesn't know her. He is literally scared stiff.

“Bealz! We must go now.”

Moving slowly, as if in a fog, Bealz looks around the tiny room. There is nothing to take. He checks his pockets for his old ass iPod. He has nothing else, nothing of value, no sentimental attachments.

He lived in a glorified closet. There was no room here for casual materialism. No shelf space for personal belongings. Hell, he was forced to share shoes with a thirteen year old bully.

“I'm ready, mama...”

“Then we gotta go.”

Raising her arms, Bealz's mother closes her eyes and begins to chant quietly. Bealz recognizes the nonsensical words. She would often mutter and mumble similarly to herself, making her out to be the neighborhood nut job.

Now, Bealz can see something else. His mother pulses with power and the room grows hot as a small, fiery hole begins to form between them.

It grows, shooting out tendrils of energy. Bealz jumps back and yelps in shock as a rift splits open the air. As it clears, a cloudy, smoky haze receding into clarity, he can see through to somewhere else. He can see straight through to his dreams.

“Is that...?” he asks, tearing his eyes away to look at his mom.

“Yes,” she says, taking his hand and leading him through. “It is.”