Of Things Unseen Read online

  Closets-to-Order had what I needed, and after measuring the square footage and designing the layout on their website, the company shipped almost 800 pieces to our home and Tony spent two weeks tearing out the wire racks and installing the shelving. He did an excellent job and the only task left was for me to transfer the clothes.

  That was two years ago.

  Every time I set out to get it done, it felt like I was standing at the base of K2 and staring up at its peak. It was stupid and embarrassing, being intimidated by something so straightforward. I suppose I could have done it in small chunks but I couldn’t bring myself to fail on purpose. And poor Tony hadn’t complained, yet, about having to use the other closet. He had the patience of a saint.

  I stared at my clean white shelves and willed myself to get moving. One shirt would do. Anything was better than nothing. But I couldn’t move. Why couldn’t I move? It wasn’t my aching body, which, truthfully, wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been the day before. I just couldn’t do it.

  But what else was I going to do? It was only 11:39 and everyone else who was worth anything was at work or taking care of their kids or volunteering or at the very least, not sitting in their empty closet paralyzed by the irrational fear of failing to put clothes away.

  I picked up a hanger and slammed it on the floor. My first day as a housewife was not going well.

  I’M NOT SURE HOW I ended up in the office. Tony’s office, which smelled like him and made me miss him. And I’m not sure how I ended up on a forum for missing black women in East Atlanta. But sitting there staring at the pictures of those poor girls briefly distracted me from my closet crisis, and before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked the first thread and took a deep breath.

  “Renee Angelique Washington, also known as Angel, was 18 years old when she disappeared. Her family and friends described her in various ways. Funny, silly, driven, fearless. But the first word everyone used to describe her was tiny. At 5’ tall and 103 pounds soaking wet, Renee was small in stature, but what she lacked in size she made up for in bravado. All who knew her said she was fiercely loyal and she loved hard. That applied to friends, her family, her boyfriend, and her child.

  Renee met Cedric Broward in high school. He was a star athlete, on track to be recruited by some of the nation’s top college teams, but his future was derailed when Renee announced she was pregnant.

  The teen seemed to be following in her mother’s footsteps; Ms. Washington had given birth to Renee when she was just 16 years old. Renee’s father was never in the picture, and it is likely that her experience, or lack thereof, with her own father drove Renee to insist that she and the baby follow Cedric anywhere he went.

  Although Cedric and his mother were against it, Cedric’s father was adamant that Cedric step up and take responsibility for the baby, which included getting a job. By the time Renee was six months pregnant, football was on hold and the couple was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Glenhaven, just east of Atlanta.

  It was a fairly nice neighborhood, well-lit with well-traveled sidewalks. That it was on the MARTA bus-line was a plus for Cedric and Renee, neither of whom had a vehicle. Cedric took a job working security at a downtown hotel. The schedule usually put him at home by 3 pm, leaving him plenty of time to spend with Renee.

  By all accounts, the two were very much in love, and that love only grew stronger when Jayda Shantell Broward was born. According to Cedric, Renee was an excellent mother, very loving and gentle. He was certain he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and unbeknownst to Renee, he had begun looking at engagement rings.

  When Jayda was three months old, Renee got a job to ease the financial burden that rested solely on Cedric’s shoulders. She secured a position as a health aide in an assisted living facility for seniors, and according to Cedric, it was there that she discovered her love for taking care of people and where she ultimately decided she wanted to become a nurse.

  Unfortunately for the couple, Renee’s new schedule had her leaving the apartment just an hour after Cedric got home. The change in routine put a strain on the once loving and happy relationship. Like many teenagers before him, Cedric was prone to jealousy, and with Renee gone on most nights and him left alone with a baby, he began to wonder if Renee was seeing someone else.

  It wasn’t just her schedule that made Cedric question whether something was going on. He told police that in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Renee seemed distant with him. Family and friends didn’t notice any difference in Renee’s moods, but then they did not live with her. Something seemed to be weighing on the young woman.

  On the day of her disappearance, Cedric left work and returned to the apartment at approximately 2:50 pm. Renee seemed happy to see him, and Cedric didn’t notice anything unusual about her demeanor. She was buzzing around the apartment as she always did, putting on her makeup, giving him instructions for the baby, and letting him know his dinner plate was done and in the refrigerator. She kissed Jayda goodbye, kissed Cedric goodbye, and then she was gone.

  As she always did, Renee walked to the bus stop across the street from the complex in order to catch the number 74 bus. Renee and Cedric’s building, number 13, was approximately 100 yards from the bus stop. In order to get to the bus stop, Renee had to pass building 14, cross the parking lot, then cross the street. On the way home, Renee would cross the street, cross the parking lot, then pass building 14.

  Cedric wasn’t happy about Renee having to walk by herself at night. The parking lot was well-lit, but it still made him uneasy. Every night, Cedric opened the living room window of their second-floor apartment so that he could hear number 74 pull up. As soon as he heard the bus, he would pull the blinds all the way up so he could see Renee.

  Their apartment was at the end of the building, on the side closest to the parking lot. It was a straight shot from the bus stop to building 13, and Cedric could see Renee every step of the way. The only time she was out of his sight was when she reached the stairwell of building 13, which ran underneath the apartment. Once she reached the stairwell, Cedric would go to the apartment door and open it. Cedric estimated that she was out of his sight for 20 seconds, at most. Police would later retrace Renee’s steps and were able to corroborate Cedric’s claim.

  On the night Renee disappeared, Cedric claimed he heard the bus pull up at approximately 11:56 pm. The bus driver later backed up his claim when questioned by police. Per usual, he lifted the blinds and saw his tiny girlfriend walking toward the building.

  Once she was in the stairwell, Cedric walked over the front door and listened for her footsteps. He never heard them.

  He initially thought she might have been playing a trick on him, so he leaned over the railing to try and spot her. He didn’t see anything, so he called her name. When she didn’t answer, he got frustrated because she knew he couldn’t leave the apartment with Jayda asleep inside.

  Angry, Cedric called Renee’s name again. No answer. At that point, he yelled her name while leaning over the railing, and that’s when the neighbor across the hall, Kelly Ashby, opened her door. She asked him if everything was okay and he told her he didn’t know. He asked Kelly to sit in his apartment with the baby and she obliged.

  Cedric ran down the stairs and looked around the stairwell. Later on, police asked him if he noticed anything unusual and he reported an intensely eerie feeling. When pressed, he remembered that the stairwell had been completely dark. This was unusual because there was a sconce on the building wall that lit the entire stairwell. In the 10 months the couple had lived there, Cedric had never seen that particular light out.

  Cedric left the stairwell and walked around the parking lot, looking under cars and behind bushes, trying not to panic. He scanned left, right, straight in front and behind him.

  She was gone.

  He ran back to his apartment and called the police, who immediately canvassed the entire complex.

  Next, they interrogated Cedric, keeping him at the station fo
r a grueling 5 hours. The detectives were almost certain he had nothing to do with Renee’s disappearance, but as with all such cases, the person closest to the victim must be eliminated first. Renee’s mother told police that she believed Cedric harbored some resentment toward Renee for the direction his life had taken, and the police hammered him on this point. He repeatedly denied it. Back at the apartment, one of the officers on-scene questioned Kelly, and when she corroborated the timeline of events, the detectives at the station let Cedric go.

  Certain elements of the case were baffling to detectives. How does a girl disappear in 20 seconds? How is it possible that nobody heard or saw anything? There were no screams, no screeching tires from a car hastily driving away from the scene, and no evidence was left behind. Additionally, police questioned the superintendent and the owner of the complex, and both stated that all of the building lights had been in working condition the night before.

  Police surmised that whoever took Renee had to have entered the stairwell from the opposite side of the building. Renee would have had to walk toward the opposite side and enter the staircase there, giving her abductor about 10 seconds to work with. With the stairwell bathed in darkness, she wouldn’t have been able to see her abductor until he was right in front of her. Had the person damaged the light fixture himself, or was the timing of the outage simply fortuitous? Everyone she knew was adamant that the small but fierce young woman would never be taken anywhere against her will without a fight.

  A patrol officer found a small spray bottle of Victoria’s Secret body spray by the staircase, which Cedric later confirmed was Renee’s. According to him, she would spray it on before she came upstairs so that she smelled good when he hugged her. She had several bottles but he was certain the one found belonged to her.

  The case eventually went cold, as the police had no suspects and no leads. Without a body, they couldn’t even say for sure that Renee had met harm. None of it made any sense and there was frustration all around.

  Renee’s family quickly printed up missing person flyers, and the complex was heavily papered with them. Every utility pole and store bulletin board in the city had a flyer on it, but the flyers failed to generate any tips.

  At present, Renee Washington’s case is considered a cold case.

  A copy of the missing person’s flyer is located at the end of this document.”

  INVISIBLE FINGERS DANCED up my spine as I finished reading the post. That poor girl. Gone in 20 seconds, and right under her boyfriend’s nose. The thought was terrifying.

  She was said to be 18 but in her picture, she looked a few years younger. Her smile was sweet and innocent, like most girls her age who hadn’t yet been hardened by the realities of life. She was pretty, with blemish-free brown skin and a lovely halo of thick natural hair.

  I sat back in Tony’s chair, a plush behemoth upholstered in tufted mahogany leather and trimmed with gold nail heads. It wasn’t something we could have afforded but we lucked up in that regard; the bank got rid of several pieces of office furniture last year and I claimed the chair for Tony. I had to grip the armrests to anchor myself as my head swam.

  Leah.

  The little girl’s tear-stained face flashed behind my eyes and I shook my head to clear it. The walls seemed to squeeze closer to each other with no regard for my presence between them.

  We chose to use this room as the office because it was the smallest of the bedrooms, but it was made smaller still by the numerous piles of my stuff.

  My stuff. Arranged into small shrines to my indecision. To my left were the skincare products from my brief stint as a BeYOUtiful consultant. I had been so sure I would become the most successful consultant there ever was. That’s what they tell you. In the corner opposite the desk was the stack of t-shirts with cute sayings on them that I was positive was going to become a runaway success and make me rich. I was told women, especially black women, love witty t-shirts that reaffirm our beauty and awesomeness. And over there under the chair in the corner were several crocheted blankets with love and frustration weaved into every irregular stitch. The plan was to sell them online as part of the handmade in America craze.

  I closed my eyes. This was getting sad. Thinking about how pointless those endeavors were only succeeded in making me feel pointless, and I hated that feeling. It always led to nihilism, a hole that took weeks for me to climb out of.

  5:48. It was time to start dinner. Tony was teaching but he’d be home in time for dinner. I made my way to the kitchen on shaky legs, Renee Washington’s story fresh in my mind and Leah not far behind.

  Leah. Little dead Leah.

  I walked down the staircase and turned left to go into the kitchen, passing by the little door under the stairs. I always sped up when I passed it because I was terrified of that little door. Tony used it for storage, so it was full of boxes, but I swore I would look at it one day and see legs climbing out. Or I would walk too close to it and a hand would reach out and snatch me in.

  It was stupid and irrational. Nobody knew about it, not even Tony, because—and this is stupid, too—black girls don’t get scared. At least not about something that silly. And if we do, we don’t talk about it. That’s why black girls aren’t in scary movies, at least not as the stars. Sidekicks, yes, and we sure are good at helping scared white women, but nobody ever casts us as leads.

  Maybe our regular lives are so scary that we’re impervious to the silly, haunted funhouse fears other women get to fret about. Maybe we’ve seen far too many bogeymen in our 400 years in this country to be afraid of a ghost story or a figment of Hollywood’s imagination. Or maybe we really are afraid, of everything, all the time, to the point where we don’t even know what normal is anymore.

  I filled a saucepan with water and turned the burner on. Spaghetti Carbonara was on the menu for tonight. Tony loved it, but then Tony would eat hot cardboard if it had enough sauce on it. The man’s palette was non-existent.

  When we’d first married, I took my time planning menus for the week. I wanted to expose him to culinary diversity and the sensory experience of eating a delicious meal on nice china coupled with a nice wine and music. We’d had that when they were dating, and Tony had been skilled at picking nice restaurants to take me to, but I quickly discovered that he had never had it at home.

  The execution of my plan was met with lukewarm approval. The truth was, he didn’t care. He loved my cooking but he had absolutely no preference whatsoever. Salisbury steak with rosemary mashed potatoes? Great! Sloppy Joes and fries? Delicious! Frozen pizza? Perfect! So over time I just started cooking whatever I was in the mood for. Besides, I couldn’t be on my feet for too long anymore so I started cooking meals that don’t have to be watched over.

  I sat at the counter and contemplated pouring some wine to calm my nerves. I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom.

  Being on edge like this was uncomfortable but I only had myself to blame. I was the reason I couldn’t get rid of the terrible memories of that summer, and Leah, and everything else. The tide came in but I could still see the faint outline of the words.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I poured a glass of Zin and set about clearing my mind, or at least clouding it over. Pain be damned. Besides, I would be seeing my family on Sunday and that would induce a completely different type of agony.

  Chapter 4

  WE GOT OFF THE EXIT and headed south toward Willowbrooke, my mother’s neighborhood, the place where I grew up, the illustrious fourth richest black county in the nation (at one time), nestled about 15 minutes from the interstate. It had been important to my mother to buy a home away from major highways because, according to her, ne’er-do-wells hit those houses first and use expressways as easy exits.

  Every time I visited, which wasn’t often, I felt increasingly negative about what I saw. The old shopping plazas, once full of businesses eager to feed, clothe, entertain, and insure the populace, are now half-full of establishments that only deign to serve the community and sipho
n off as much money as they can without giving anything in return.

  Here’s the thing about Atlanta. There’s Atlanta proper, and then there’s metro Atlanta. About two-thirds of metro Atlanta is enclosed in a perimeter created by Interstate 285, then very crudely quadrisected by Interstates 20 (which moves east to west) and 75/85 and 400 (north to south).

  The north side is mostly wealthy whites and black folks who like nice things and don’t mind living around white people in order to have them. The west side is mostly black folks and is home to the Atlanta University Center and other historically significant African American landmarks. On the south side, black old money meets the busiest airport in the country, and the east side is mostly black new money and black folks who trade off nice things for the peace of mind of living among other black folks.

  When I was growing up, living inside the perimeter was considered lowbrow, although that was mostly the opinion of white Atlantans who already considered any predominately black space lowbrow. But times have changed. Capitalism and those who benefit most from it have pushed the lowbrow outside of the perimeter, while the seeds of gentrification, planted back in ‘96 when we hosted the Olympics, have taken root and sprouted in formerly undesirable areas. ITP is trendy now and OTP is the domain of those who can’t afford it.

  I suppose Tony and I would be classified as folks who traded off nice things to live around our people. He grew up in southwest Atlanta, a true Grady baby, but I came of age on the east side, outside the perimeter, after white flight but before the decline began. We now live further south and east than my mother, following a growing subset of middle-class black folks migrating further out to get away from falling property values and the people they attract. That sounds terrible to say, especially about my own people, but it’s the truth.