THE YARD

Chapter 33

Keisha stepped out of her Uber with a bag full of cleaning supplies. She tucked her wallet into her purse, which she had taken out to pay the Uber driver.

She'd brought her own cleaning supplies because her damned brother couldn't be bothered to buy any. What did his money go on? Booze, gambling and his thousand dollar light bill for watching TV all day.

At least he has a job, she admitted grudgingly. Stepping up to his property, all of Keisha's resentful thoughts about Robert came flooding right back in.

I can't hold that against him. But his lazy ass is 38 years old, he should be able to clean his own house!

Keisha wished she wasn't a nice person. But, since she was, she always came over each year or two for deep cleaning her brother's house. Fall would soon be upon them, and she wanted to do it well before winter settled in. Robert was much worse with his drinking in the wintertime.

She trudged over the sidewalk and up to the door, knocking four times rapidly before entering.

Keisha already knew her brother was home. She'd seen his truck in the tiny gravel driveway just a moment ago. She flipped her smooth black hair over her shoulder and stepped in.

And she already knew what he was doing. So it was no surprise when she opened the door to find him sitting there, on the couch watching football.

His old ass stank of alcohol, and it sprang up her nostrils the second she walked in. Closing the door behind her, Keisha looked critically at Robert.

"I'm here to help your sorry ass clean. Get up and start doing something, this ain't even my house and you know it Robert." Keisha scoffed. He had cigarette butts shoved into his wooden floors, right below his feet. She scoffed at the laziness of it all.

"How long since I ain't been here?"

Robert muttered something in a drunken slur, and Keisha blinked imploringly. 

"Jesus Fuck, you're completely wasted aren't you?" She spat consescendingly, striding over to the sink.

I don't know why I bother with his ass, Keisha huffed as she scrubbed away at the dishes. Twenty minutes in, she was sweating. Thirty minutes in, she broke an acrylic nail. Forty-five minutes in, she was fuming at how disgusting each piece of food stuck on a plate was.

Keisha slammed the last dish into the dish rack aggressively and grabbed the rag again for counter-wiping.

At her own house, she used disinfectant wipes. But today she was so mad at Robert ignoring her appearance that she would use an old dirty dishrag.  I'm not wasting my cleaning products on a nasty bastard!

Eventually, Keisha calmed down. She finished wiping every counter, sink and tabletop. She then moved to the restroom and did that sink and mirror as well. I won't touch his revolting toilet this time. God, Mom would be sickened by this. Rest her soul.

Keisha walked out of the half-cleaned restroom with her mind on her daily-life, such as her long-time husband, child and career. She was the manager of a cleaning company, and had been in the business for the past 25 years of her life.

Since 16, Keisha had worked so hard to get where she was. Her daughter had every toy, every clothing item, every electronic device she could ever want and more. Keisha had given her daughter it all, and kept her away from environments just like this one.

Her and Robert had been raised by an abusive alcoholic mother. She kept that part of her life in a dark corner in her mind. She didn't try to pull it out now, and instead thought of memories of her daughter. She was vacuuming the living room rug as she wondered what they would do together tomorrow.

It was a weekend, still Sunday. Perhaps she would take her daughter to the skating rink. She'd want to go with friends, though, of course. Who would she invite? Hopefully Hannah, she's the most reserved one.

Keisha moved on to sweeping and mopping the kitchen's grout-tiled floors, which had cracks that collected grit in them.

Can't be helped, Keisha thought. I'm not deep-cleaning this place top to bottom for free. He's lucky his floors are cleaned at all! Her attitude started to creep up again, and she noticed Robert slumped over his cigarette on the couch now.

Kesiah had the impulse to walk over there and smack him, but instead she turned on her heel and deposited the mop were it belonged. Then, she grabbed her bag of scraps out of her cleaning bucket.

The dogs would have week-old T-bones from her last cookout tonight. There was something of ten to twelve bones in the ziploc baggie, and Keisha had saved them just for Robert's dogs.

I hope I won't have to patch one of them up again. Robert's goddamn side hustles are hurting innocent animals.

She headed for the back-door as her thoughts were flung all over the poor dogs who occupied Robert's backyard.

Keisha had never agreed with it, but since the first dog she had noticed the tooth-marks in each one's body. Old, dried blood and ripped ears had frightened Keisha at first... but now she was used to them. They were all friendly dogs, but Robert had gotten each one with a plan to use it for money time and time again.

She pushed her way into the backyards foggy wreath of mist. Keisha stepped off the back porch and crossed The Yard, noticing less dogs than last time.

"That's odd. Wasn't there a big one of you that was white and wrinkly? And a grey one..." Robert had called the white one Old Man, and the grey one Prince.

Keisha looked over the backs of the dogs by the fence, then turned towards the dog-houses.

A white dog was laying in the grass before a dog-house, and a black one standing by the one opposite it. Both dogs were muddy, filthy and had fleas leaping off of them as usual.

The black dog peered at her with sharp, intelligent eyes. But the white one didn't lift it's head. Keisha saw that the white one's water bowl was overturned, so picked it up in one hand.

Keisha bent towards the sleeping dog with her ziploc bag of T-bones. She began opening it, but there was still no reaction.

Then Keisha saw the dead whites of the dog's paled milky eyes, and screamed. With a panicked reach she jerked around.

Her fists were clenched tightly as she booked it across the porch, through the cleaned kitchen and up to Robert.

"Old Man is dead! Your white dog isn't moving!"

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Flare