Crimson Footprints by Shewanda Pugh Page B

to
St. Louis.
    They were touring the city,
architecture and art museums, sights and tourist traps, when they
decided to stop at the Gateway Arch for pictures. A massive and
gleaming structure of stainless steel, it was the tallest monument
in the country.
    Deena brought a hand to that
iconic image, the identity of St. Louis, made not by others, but by
what it envisioned itself to be. It was then that her phone
rang.
    A sort of resigned
indifference passed over her at the sight of her grandmother’s name
on the caller I.D. Deena answered with a sigh.
    She was calling to complain,
to do nothing but bitch. Lizzie had been suspended again, this time
for fighting. When Deena breathed a sigh of relief, she nearly
laughed. How desperate did she have to be to be relieved that her
sister had only been fighting? But as far as Deena was concerned,
fighting was a damned sight better than nickel and dime blowjobs on
the bathroom floor.
    “ They talking about putting
her out of school, for good, cause she so much trouble,” Grandma
Emma said. “And when they do, you gonna be the one to pay for
private schooling.”
    Deena chuckled. She loved
the way her grandmother thought that a college degree came standard
with an inflated bank account. If she only knew, her granddaughter
could barely afford the vacation she was on.
    In the end, she promised to
speak to Lizzie when she returned to town and hung up before the
old woman could protest.
     
    “ Everything okay?” Tak
said, eyes on her expectantly.
    Deena nodded. “Everything’s
fine. Lizzie’s suspended. Same as usual.”
    She offered him a bright and
false smile. “Now what were we doing? Pictures, right?”
    “ Right,” Tak
said.
    Deena pulled the zipper up
on the white parka she wore and gave him a grin. “Well, what’s the
hold up, buddy?”
    Tak responded with a
smile.
    They ventured a good
distance from the arch, they waved down a passerby for pictures. It
was a sweet-faced old lady that stopped, took Tak’s digital camera,
and waited for the pose.
    They stood arm and arm,
lucky enough to have a pond and good deal of the arch in the shot.
In the instant when the old lady went to snap their picture, Tak
stole a kiss, a single kiss, on Deena’s freckled cheek. She
squealed and blushed scarlet as the old lady gushed, insisting they
were as sweet as Tupelo honey. When she returned the digital camera
with the image of Tak’s stolen kiss still emblazoned on it, Deena
stood there, her cheeks still flushed. She stared at that frozen
screen in silence, the image of Tak’s kiss burning into her mind.
Behind her, he peered over her shoulder with his four-inch
advantage and smiled down at the camera.
    “ Perfect,” he said.
“Absolutely perfect.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
    Lizzie was glad her sister
was gone. Unlike her grandmother, who acted like she needed Deena
to come and flip the oxygen on each morning, Lizzie could do
without the old maid. She spent her days at a desk and her nights
in a book, barely existing, if at all. She lived on the beach yet
never went there, was pretty and never took advantage of it, and at
nearly twenty-five was a jaw-dropping virgin. Had she not known
Deena, she wouldn’t have believed such a person existed.
    Lizzie lost her virginity
three days before her twelfth birthday and never once did she look
back. A whole world opened up to her that day, a world where
clothes and jewelry, money and drugs could come with a few quick
thrusts and a moan here or there. It was easy really, once you got
past those first painful moments, easy and sometimes enjoyable. She
had a pretty face and an impressive body, an inheritance from a
mother she never knew, and a curse according to the family she
hated.
    Everyone thought that the
first time she’d had sex was in school or a crack house, or
somewhere equally unforgiving. But it wasn’t. The first time Lizzie
had sex was at home, with a guy they all knew.
    Lizzie and Keisha were
arguing