Divas of Damascus Road Read online

  Divas of Damascus Road

  A Novel by Michelle Stimpson

  Description:

  After being blamed for her baby sister's death, Dianne Rucker swore she'd never come back to Dentonville, Texas. But her Aunt Gloria, who took her in after the accident, is getting remarried. Going back home means Dianne must face her own demons as well as a drug-addicted mother who is now falling even further into schizophrenia.

  But Dianne isn't the only one struggling. Her two cousins, Yolanda and Regina must come to terms with their own issues after having grown up in this dysfunctional family of women. Yolanda's a control-freak who's on the verge of shutting down the best relationship she never had. And Regina has nearly outdone herself trying to lose weight despite the fact that her husband (and everyone else with eyes) thinks she looks perfectly fine.

  Joyce Ann's mental state is no laughing matter. She needs help--but how do you help somebody who won't stay put long enough to see a program through?

  Nobody's got more skeletons than Gloria May, the woman who raised all of the girls. But the matriarch of the family (Aunt Toe) is determined to make sure her sister's offspring shake the generational shackles loose and turn back to a faith in God that will never disappoint.

  Like Saul on the road to Damascus, these women will endure an experience that will change everything.

  Copyright 2006, 2013 by Michelle Stimpson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the author.

  The characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.

  Prologue

  Dianne woke from ten minutes of sleep and felt her sister’s forehead. Still felt as hot as the surface of mama‘s heating pad on “high.” Dianne dangled her feet the edge of the bed and steadied herself for the drop. She studied her toes for a moment—there were only splotches of red left at the center of each nail. She smiled at these ten tiny remnants of last weekend’s sleepover at Aunt Gloria’s house. The sooner she got through the week, the sooner she could get back to the haven of Aunt Gloria’s motherly love.

  Dianne’s feet hit the wooden floor—a cool awakening. She made yet another trip past the empty living room, kicking empty plastic bags and carefully sidestepping discarded syringes. The house still smelled like the ‘funny” smoke that always made everyone laugh. She took a deep breath as she passed the living room. Try as she might, the smoke never made her laugh. Certainly didn’t make her laugh at the moment, not with her little sister in the other room sleeping like a doll and burning like fire.

  She couldn’t have known.

  She turned on the bathroom light, stepped up on the stool, then placed one knee on the countertop. She wobbled a bit but caught herself by grabbing hold of the faucet. This was no time to be falling. She had to get the red medicine from the cabinet and give Shannon some more of it. Dianne was a big girl. Her momma had said so. She could take care of Shannon while her momma was gone.

  “Sugarbee, “Momma had authorized her, “you take care of things while me and Otis go out, okay?”

  “When will you be back, Momma?” Dianne had asked. It wasn’t the first time they’d left her to fend for herself and her little sister, Shannon. But each time they left, it seemed they were gone longer than before, and Dianne had to do things that she wasn’t quite sure about. The last time they were left alone, Dianne went to the bathroom to run bathwater, and when she pulled back the shower curtain, a black, shiny rat looked up at her and bared his two front teeth in a high-pitched gnarl. Dianne and Shannon stayed in the fortress of their bedroom forever, it seemed. Shannon’s diaper stank, but she was the lucky one. Dianne had to relieve herself in the purple pail—her Easter basket.

  “We won’t be gone long this time, “Joyce Ann lied currently.

  Dianne was used to the lies now. They came with the territory, but Dianne didn’t care. She would never judge her mother. “Okay, Momma. But what if a rat comes out?”

  “Otis killed that rat, I told you, “Joyce Ann assured Dianne with all the frenzy of an addict craving a hit.

  “But if another one comes out, do you want me to call Aunt Gloria?” Dianne asked, hoping that she could secure this one lifeline.

  “No!” Joyce Ann stopped tying her shoes, grabbed Dianne’s shoulders, and pulled her nose-to-nose. “You listen to me, Sugarbee. Don’t call your Aunt Gloria for nothin’! NOTHIN’! You hear? And if she calls here, you tell her I’m ‘sleep. Don’t you dare tell her that I left you here alone with Shannon. You do and I’ll get Otis to tear you up! You hear?”

  Otis pulled his head up from the pillow just long enough to give Dianne a glance. All he needed was the go-ahead from Joyce Ann and he would finally get the chance to beat that little whiny, skinny child of Joyce’s to a pulp. Every once in a while he got the chance to pop her, but for some reason Joyce Ann never would let him whip her like she needed. Between Joyce Ann and her sister, Gloria, Otis never had enough time to have his way with the girl.

  “And you better take good care of Shannon, too,” he warned. “Don’t let nothing happen to my baby.” Not that he cared about his daughter. Just that he needed to lay claim on something. Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure Shannon was his.

  Dianne didn’t need Otis’s warning. She’d never let anything happen to Shannon. Shannon was the last twinkle of light in Dianne’s life. Well, Shannon and Aunt Gloria. For the time being, she only had Shannon.

  That last conversation with her mother took place two days ago.

  The phone startled Dianne, and she fell to the floor despite herself. It had to be Aunt Gloria. Nobody else would call. Her momma’s friends never called; they just came by.

  Dianne left the bathroom and ran down the remainder of the hallway to the kitchen, where she jumped up and grabbed the phone from the receiver, all in one motion. She put on her best smile and answered, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Sugarbee. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Gloria. How are you?” Dianne used her most proper words.

  “Well, things aren’t so hot over here. Your cousin Regina got a real bad virus, the doctor says, so I’ve got to keep an eye on her. Otherwise, you know I would have been over to see my Sugarbee!”

  A giggle escaped from somewhere deep down within Dianne. She always did like the way Aunt Gloria sang her nickname. She wished she could go to Aunt Gloria’s house. Aunt Gloria would know what to do about Shannon sleeping all day and the fever that wouldn’t go away. She would know how much of the red medicine to give Shannon. She could even go and get more, because the bottle that was full yesterday was now almost empty.

  “Is Joyce Ann there?”

  Dianne crossed her fingers behind the nightgown she had been wearing since her mother left. “Yes, but she’s sleeping right now.”

  “How long she been ‘sleep?”

  “Not long.”

  “Hmm. Is Otis there?” Aunt Gloria clicked her cheek like his name had left a bad taste in her mouth.

  Dianne uncrossed her fingers. “No, he’s gone.”

  “Well…”

  Dianne could tell Aunt Gloria was thinking. She held her breath and hoped that Aunt Gloria would keep thinking, come on over, and discover them here alone. It wouldn’t be her fault if Aunt Gloria used her key to come in and check on them. But that didn’t happen. Probably because she had just told a lie, Dianne figured.

  “I’ve got a good mind to come over there... let me see... Tell your momma that if Regina gets to feeling better, I’ll be over first thing in the morning. If I have to take Regina in to the doctor, I’ll be by later on tomorrow afternoon. Either way, I will be there to
morrow. Okay, Sugarbee?”

  Dianne exhaled. “Okay. I’ll tell her. Bye.”

  “Bye, honey.”

  After a few attempts, Dianne finally managed to get the phone back on the hook. Though saddened by the fact that Aunt Gloria wouldn’t be by today, Dianne took heart in the promise of tomorrow. Tomorrow somebody would come by and save her. Save Shannon. So if they ran out of medicine tonight, that would be okay.

  Dianne knew how to open the childproof bottle. She had watched her mother closely, in the way that children who are left to look after themselves often observe their part-time caregivers, knowing that sooner rather than later they’ll have to perform those same actions alone. Dianne applied pressure with her palm and turned the cap to the left. It came off easily, now that she had done it so many times in the past two days. She tried to make sense of the letters on the bottle, sounding out the few words she could.

  If she were in the other reading group, she probably could have read those words. But Mrs. Coleman, her kindergarten teacher, had put Dianne with the rainbows instead of the butterflies. Everybody knew that the butterflies were smarter than the rainbows.

  “Sweetie, if you can make it to school a little more often, maybe you can move up to the butterflies.” How many times had Dianne gotten herself up, gotten dressed, and walked into her mother’s room only to find Joyce Ann sprawled out on the bed, looking like the capital letter “X”?

  And then she’d look over and see Shannon right next to her mother. Who would care for Shannon when she crawled out of bed looking for something to eat? What if she stuck her finger in an outlet? What if she was wearing that same diaper when Dianne got home from school? What if she cried until her eyes were red and puffy? Dianne couldn’t go to school on those “X” days. She just couldn’t. Maybe next year, in first grade, she would get to go to school more often.

  Dianne rushed back to Shannon’s side now, propped up Shannon’s head in the crook of her elbow, and poured the last of the medicine down her sister’s throat. “Swallow it, Shannon,” Dianne whispered desperately. “It will make you all better.”

  Shannon’s eyes fluttered. Instinctively Dianne lifted one of her sister’s eyelids, expecting Shannon to fight the movement and awaken with a cry. Instead, Shannon’s eyeballs slowly roll backward.

  Dianne dropped the empty bottle of cold medicine and shook her sister. “Shannon! Shannon! Wake up! Stop doing your eyes like that! Wake up!”

  But Shannon wouldn’t wake up. The color in Shannon’s body was all gone except for a pinkish rash on her cheeks and arms. Dianne rushed to the counter and squeezed lotion into her hands to soothe the rash.

  That’s what her mother probably would have done.

  Dianne convinced herself to sleep that night, clutching to the hope that everything would be all right tomorrow, when Aunt Gloria came by. She prayed for her cousin Regina to get better.

  The next morning, without even opening her eyes, Dianne placed her hand on Shannon’s forehead. Cold. Clammy. Felt like plastic. Dianne, in her innocence, was relieved to know that her sister didn’t have a fever anymore. And then she heard the front door open. Finally, relief.

  Dianne jumped out of bed and ran to the front door, only it wasn’t Aunt Gloria. It was her mother and Otis. What an odd homecoming, with everyone wearing exactly what they’d been wearing the last time they saw one another.

  “Momma, Shannon is sick, “Dianne spoke first.

  “Did you give her medicine?” Joyce Ann asked.

  “Yeah, I gave her the red medicine in the cabinet.”

  “That ain’t for kids!” Otis shouted as he pushed Dianne aside and rushed toward the girls’ bedroom.

  Dianne’s stomach churned as she waited for a word from Otis. He would tell her what an awful job she’d done, how Shannon needed to get a shot or how they needed to run out and get more medicine right away.

  But instead, Otis cried out, “She’s dead! Joyce Ann, she’s dead! Come here!”

  Joyce Ann screamed a horrid, long shriek as she ran past Dianne. Sounded like someone had stabbed her in the heart.

  Dianne’s own heart tore, right down the center. The pain was almost tangible, a throbbing, drowning feeling. The next thing Dianne knew, she was latched onto Shannon’s body, her arms and legs wrapped around the corpse, screaming unintelligible words, writhing in emotional anguish. She wanted to say, “I’m sorry! Come back!” but the words got all twisted on the way up the path from her heart to her mouth.

  Having grown up near a slaughterhouse, Otis thought Dianne’s fumbled words sounded like the torrential, wild squeal of pigs. That cry, forever etched in his mind, was the realization of final pain, of knowing this was the end, that the end would be painful, and that there was not one single thing you could do to stop it.

  The end was nearing for Otis, too. His grief was tempered only by the fact that this whole thing looked like a crime scene to him. He would have to suspend his pain—assuming that Shannon was his child—while he figured out what to do.

  “Get her off!” he screamed to Joyce Ann, who was really in no better position than Dianne.

  Her baby was dead.

  “Get off! Crazy! You’re gonna put bruises on her! Help me pull her off Joyce Ann! Do you want to go to jail?” His train of thought registered with Joyce Ann immediately. As much as it pained her, she would have to stop and think. Think.

  “Sugarbee, baby, let her go, “Joyce Ann wailed. “Let her go, baby.”

  Joyce Ann put her hand on Dianne’s arm, and, like a desperate animal, Dianne bit into her mother’s rough, ashen skin.

  “Ow!” Joyce Ann jerked back her hand.

  “Aaaah!” Dianne screamed and kicked when both adults, working in unison, managed to pry her from Shannon’s body.

  “You let go of her!” Otis wrestled Dianne away from the bed altogether, pinned her onto the floor, and screamed into her wet face, “This is all your fault anyway! If it weren’t for you, she wouldn’t be dead!”

  Those words went straight from Otis’s mouth to Dianne’s, where she inhaled them deeply. The language began to ricochet within. My fault? Still, Dianne held the air, those words, in her lungs.

  In an instant, Dianne looked over Otis’s shoulder to Joyce Ann. Dianne’s eyes pleaded for exoneration, permission to release the words Otis had spoken into her soul. A simple “No, it ain’t her fault” or “Don’t say that” would have done. But Joyce Ann simply lowered her eyes.

  It must be true, then. It is my fault, Dianne thought. Then she swallowed Otis’s words.

  That is how the guilt came to live deep within her tiny spirit.

  When Otis finally let her go, Dianne did what any guilty child would do: She found a hiding place while the chaos around her escalated.

  There was quick, frantic talk amid yelling. “Hush up, Joyce Ann!” she heard. “Wait! Let me pull up the covers first,” whispered.

  Then she heard her mother on the phone. “We need an ambulance! My baby’s…she’s not breathing!”

  Dianne knew she was in trouble when the ambulance came roaring down the street. Its flashing lights in the middle of a summer morning brought about misplaced memories of Christmas.

  “Dianne, open up!” Joyce Ann bammed on the bathroom door. “Open this door now!”

  Slowly Dianne unfurled from her foxhole between the toilet seat and the dirty-clothes hamper. With the slightest turn of the lock, Joyce Ann whisked through the door and knelt down to Dianne’s level, grabbed her shoulders, and shook the child with every word. “Dianne, you keep your mouth shut, you hear? If they ask, you tell them that you got up in the middle of the night and gave your sister some medicine. Say you slept in the bed with her while me and Otis slept in our bed, and when we all got up, she was dead. You hear, Dianne? You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Okay, okay, Momma.”

  When the police came, Dianne told them exactly what Joyce Ann ordered her to say. And she didn’t even try to cross her fingers or her legs or her tongue th
is time. What was the harm in telling a lie after you’d already killed someone?

  The invitation to Aunt Gloria’s wedding had come in the mail three weeks ago, and since that time Dianne’s emotions traveled up and down like an equally weighted seesaw. Her first thought was to do what she always did: send a gift and a note with a skittish explanation for why she couldn’t be there. A big deadline at work; she was just getting over the flu; she had to work double shifts because someone at work had fallen ill.

  But this time, Aunt Gloria had followed the invitation with call. “Hey, Sugarbee! How you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m fine, Aunt Gloria. I got your invitation, but I won’t be able to make it,” Dianne’s voice descended. “I’ll be sure and send you a gift.”

  “I’d rather have you than a gift.” Gloria stood her ground, looping her index finger through the phone cord. Her wedding day wouldn’t be complete without Dianne.

  “Well, it’s just that... I have a huge project I’m working on at my job and—”

  “Dianne, have I ever asked you for anything?” Gloria interrupted.

  Dianne’s jaw dropped, her stomach tightened, and her mind went blank. She didn’t have an answer prepared for that one.

  “Have I?” Gloria repeated.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m asking you to do this one thing for me, Sugarbee. Please come to my wedding. It means the world to me.”

  Dianne squeezed her eyes shut. She was a vacuum, taking in all the fear that constantly surrounded her. Fear, concentrated fear. In all the years she’d been living in Darson, no one had ever questioned her about the decision to move from Dentonville. Everyone understood that she needed to draw a line in the sand between the present and the past. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I do know what I’m asking. I’m asking you to come and be a part of this family again.”

  “I can’t be a part of this family again.”