Page 71 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
“I find you in this house again, you little Mexican slut, you’ll be spreadin’ your legs for both the Maxwell men.”
Parker shoots to his feet. In a red-faced fury, he lunges at his father, but too late. The older man, a former quarterback, broad in the shoulders and strong as a bull, throws a punch to Parker’s solar plexus that knocks him right off his feet.
I scream as Parker collides with the wall. All the windows shake with the force of the impact. He slides to the floor, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath.
Before his father leaves the room, he looks at me cowering on the bed, at his son gulping air on the floor. He adjusts his tie, smooths a hand over his hair. He’s not even sweating.
“No son of mine is gonna fraternize with the help. You gotta decision to make, boy. Keep your whore or keep your inheritance. You choose her, you’re cut off without a cent, you hear?” He looks at me, hatred shining in his eyes, and adds in a vicious hiss, “Don’t throw your whole life away on a worthless piece of brown pussy.”
When he leaves, I crawl from the bed and fly to Parker’s side. I curl into a ball beside him, hiding, sobbing, listening to Parker wheeze and gasp, wishing with all my might that I was a different girl, good enough for someone like him, good enough for his parents and his future and all the things he was destined to do,
In other words, wishing I were white.
* * *
The private jet touches down on the runway, and I awaken with a jolt.
My heart pounds painfully fast. The back of my neck is drenched in sweat. I fumble in my handbag for my medicine, wash a pill down with a swig from the Evian bottle on the small table in front of me. Then I sit still for a moment, allowing my breathing to slow, letting the awful images and feelings from the dream begin to dissipate.
Nightmares and self-hatred and old, bitter memories. This is always how it is when I come home. Which is why I so rarely do.
I’m met on the tarmac by the private car Tabby has arranged for me. I’ve packed lightly—I’m not staying long—and quickly the silent driver and I are on the way to my mother’s house. He keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror. I’m glad I’ve got my sunglasses on and have wound a scarf over my hair; the last thing I want is to be recognized. Here, of all places.
Another reason I so rarely come home.
The drive to the ranch isn’t long, but by the time I’m finally standing on my mother’s porch with my Louis Vuitton overnight bag in hand, I feel smaller than I have in years.
I feel reduced.
I look around at the plain yard, the chicken coop my mother refused to take down even after she could afford to buy her own eggs, the expanse of cultivated fields on one side of the road beyond the white clapboard house, and the wild acres of scrub and mesquite on the other.
God, I hate this place.
I ring the bell. My mother opens the door. We look at each other for a moment without speaking. She’s older. Thinner. There’s far more gray threaded through her jet-black hair.
“Hola, mama,” I say softly.
She looks at the duffel bag in my hand but doesn’t ask how long I’ll be staying. Her dark eyes flash up to mine. She examines my face for a moment, and then says in Spanish, “I just made pozole. Come on in. It’s still warm.”
We go inside. The moment I cross the threshold, I’m assaulted with goblin memories, sour old ghosts that have long been waiting in cold graves for me to return.
I’d forgotten how small this house is. Everything is exactly the same as it was the day I left for New York as a teenager, right down to the macramé hangers filled with dead ferns hanging from the corners of the popcorn ceiling, and the dusty stacks of National Geographic magazines crowding the two bookcases that flank the plain brick hearth.
Inhaling a breath, I drop my bag on the sofa in the living room. The last time I was here it was fall, during the harvest, the air redolent with the rich sc
ent of upturned soil. Now it’s spring, cool and crisp, and the air reeks of fertilizer.
That smell always depresses me.
My mother sets a steaming bowl of pozole on the kitchen table. I step out of my heels, take off my glasses and scarf, pull out a chair at the round wooden table where I ate all my childhood meals, and sit.
She sits across from me and watches as I begin to eat. She glances at the diamond-studded timepiece on my left wrist, the black pearl necklace around my throat, the matching pair of pearls in my ears. Her gaze has a weight to it, a palpable warmth, like the touch of a hand.
“Five years. You look well, mija. Too thin, though.”
I slurp the soup. It’s delicious, the one dish she makes perfectly. I’ve missed it, this hearty peasant soup. And, though I’m surprised to realize it, I’ve missed her, too.
I care deeply for my mother, but being in her presence is akin to having a scab ripped off before the wound has had a chance to heal. Over and over again.
