Chapter 4 Green Lipstick (Avarice James)

Devastated, she quietly sat in her vehicle, hot tears falling down her lightly made-up face. With the exception of the light pink rogue, her choice of green lipstick did nothing for her mood. Sibilating noise rampaging through her warped mind, she was slowly losing her grip on reality.

Why shouldn't she lose her mind? She lost some of the most valuable, priceless things in her life. She could never get them back. She wanted one of those things back, mind you. She needed it. She convinced herself she couldn't live without it.

Now I am forced to live without it. But I have a plan and I hope it works because it's premeditated and I actually took down notes in little composition notebooks. And I drew it out and I made little dialogue boxes. I mapped everything out like a script. I will follow it to the tooth and nail. I will never deviate from my purpose.

The death of her husband has gotten the best of her.

She didn't want to go on.

He was a man she loved; a man she looked up to and valued. He was a sweet, caring man who taught her things she would carry in her heart for the rest of her life. He taught her how to love and how to honor; he taught her how to truly respect herself and those around her.

He once told her that she couldn't wrap her entire life around one person. She had to do her own thing, sometimes go out with her own friends and have her own life.

Build a career, read a book and help someone in need.

But she didn't listen. Oh, no she didn't. The dick was too good and he was hitting spots she could only imagine.

The more he told her to find her purpose and to execute her plan the more she cut her own existence and made her husband the axis that spun her earth. Now she had the darkness to keep her company.

When she put her husband before her child, God decided to call her home. Her daughter was the sole reason she kept moving and striving for her husband.

She learned, while in the delivery room, that she had to live for her child first and herself second. She would never forget the delivery room...the room she experienced the brut of her pain...a delivery room in the Pennsylvania Hospital back in the late 70's...

Oh, God! Now my daughter is gone! Mama misses you. Mama misses you so much!

Mourning the death of her daughter, she was filled with rage and misunderstanding. She felt like God played a trick on her.

Lord, why would you give her a child just to snap Holy fingers and take her away? Were you that jealous, Lord? Was ailing her daughter's heart and transfixing you own spiritual time stamp your way of showing her who's boss?

Didn't she eat healthy foods and be there for her child's father the way she should? She was barefooted and pregnant and still kept a clean house.

The questions spewed forward in her head like a bad song she didn't know the lyrics to. She seemed a bit out of it as the traffic came and went outside of the crowded parking lot of the shopping mall in Kendall, Florida.

Lighting her tenth cigarette, she hungrily pulled on it for dear life, her hands shaking.

I need nicotine! I need these cancer sticks! The marijuana is doing nothing for my mind. I still feel the same way I felt when my child died. Drugs were supposed to make you feel like Superman and take you up, up and away from your misery. I'm looking around, God. I'm still sitting in this vehicle. No, Lord.

I NEED TO KNOW WHY YOU TOOK MY DAUGHTER!

"You have to pay," she mumbled, looking over photographs of her daughter's funeral. She closed her eyes so tightly she felt her pulse. "And you will pay! The very people responsible for my child's demise..."

She pressed "play" on the corroding tape deck. The sudden sounds filled her ears like a wishing well. A penny for your thoughts, Lord! Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the composer flowing through her ears.

Laughing sinisterly, she tapped the dashboard like it was a drum set...nodding her head like birds swooping through the air during the spring...

She inhaled deeply, the cool air filling her lungs with hate. "...Ah, Mozart. Born on the 27th of January, 1756

and died on the 5th of December 1791. Was this a form of Alpha and Omega? Was this the beginning and the end of life?

January and December symbolized that. Even teachings of the Bible graced the front pages of Earthly publications, yet I don't remember when my daughter was born because I was so wrapped up in my child's father. I lost sleep wondering why he was late coming home...

I always wondered why he never called when he stayed away for days on end. What kind of mother knows more about a Classical era composer than she knows about her own child? What kind of man left his woman home pregnant, making her fend for herself? Could this be why you took her, Lord?"

Tears fell from her itchy eyes and dropped like rain on the pictures...her sweaty, shaking thumbs were smearing the color, staining her fingertips like a brandished sunset over Paris...

The pinks danced on the silkiness of huge puffy clouds as if Van Gogh and Di Vinci battled canvas to canvas...brush stroke to brush stroke and Van Gogh unceremoniously pulled Di Vinci's ear and tried to vindicate thee and his hand slipped and he lost footing and cut his right ear and the pinks and the beiges and the purples and the blood spilt all over the earth...yes, that's how the photographs were colored to the Perahia piano concertos of Mozart!

"I should have never trusted you, Kayak Burke!"

The words were filled with deadly venom as she eyed the shiny pistol on her lap. She should end it all! She should pick up the weapon and end her misery.

Her daughter meant everything to her. I don't deserve to live, to honor or to have a meal. I don't deserve to enjoy the pleasures of life. I couldn't even protect my own son, I meant daughter!

Her child couldn't have come at a better time. Back then she had no sense of direction, no dictation.

Her life was an endless journey underlining the U-turns and one way streets that always brought her full circle back to the start. It was like continuously running in a circle, a dog aggressively chasing his tail.

She cracked open, taking a small hand towel from the passenger seat and wiping the make-up from her face. She felt as if she failed as a parent.

She couldn't protect her child from death. The photos fell to the floor. There was no need for them. To look at them and to hope and to dream of your child and to be one with your heart and nding beats unparalleled with reality was a beast without the beauty of love.

Every last one of the photographs was cleverly sheered blank pieces of construction paper.

Without images, pictures or memories.