“Sitters cost money. All the money we have goes for diapers, bills and food. Besides, hanging out doesn’t do it for us anymore, especially if we have to be with Ross and Unique.”
Crys wasn’t sure what to make of this new Kiki.
“And truthfully, Unique’s not going to want you even looking at Ross, let alone accepting his invitations. Everybody knows how he is, and so does she.”
“I don’t want her man.”
“Doesn’t matter. In her world, everybody wants Ross, and it’s her job to play pit-bull. She’s going to take one look at you in your fine clothes and off the hook hair and want to fight.”
“But – “
“But nothing. And you don’t need to be hanging with Ross anyway. He’s trouble. Always has been.”
“Since when did you become so stiff?”
“Since I went through 28 hours of labor and decided I wanted more out of life than Hennessy and being out all night.”
“Wow.”
“I’ve grown up, Crys. It happens when life changes you, and I’m trying to be all over it.”
This was definitely not the old Kiki. Crystal had been expecting to hook up with her and pick up right where they’d left off.
Kiki asked, “So how long are you staying in Dallas?”
She shrugged. “Depends on whether I can find a job.”
Kiki looked confused. “Why do you need a job. Aren’t you just visiting?”
Crystal hesitated, then finally confessed, “No. I’m back here permanently.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I miss my life here.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?’
Crys’s lips tightened.
“You have someone footing the bill for what sounds like the perfect life, and you came back here! Did your mom say it was okay?”
When Crystal didn’t respond, Kiki eyes widened. “You ran away, didn’t you?” She now viewed Crystal as if she’d grown an extra head. “How could you throw all that away?”
“I can get it back on my own. I’m just tired of being cooped up in Nowhere Ville. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“You’re right. I got no clue how it feels to have somebody take me in, give me a big pretty room, fly my ass around on a jet and pay for me to go to college. I’d definitely prefer living on food stamps, with two babies, and no life.”
Crys was mad.
“I love you, Crys and I’m so glad to see you, but you’re not thinking here.”
Crys stood up. If Kiki didn’t understand, screw it. She’d find someplace else to go.
Kiki snapped, “What? You’re going to walk out now, and go where? Sit your dumb behind down.”
An angry Crystal sat. Alma the truck driver came off like Tamar. Kiki was doing a damned good imitation of Ms. Bernadine’s assistant Lily Fontaine July.
“I’ll let you stay here for three days, then you need to take yourself back home. There’s nothing for you here, Crys. Nothing but drama and trouble.”
“Three days should be plenty of time to find a job. I’m not going back. I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“And you’re not seeing how blessed you are, girl.”
Crystal’s sullen side continued to rule. Parts of her agreed with Kiki – she had left behind a blessed life, but the stubborn parts dug in its heels and wanted to tell Kiki to mind her own damn business. “I have some money. I can pay you for putting me up.”
“You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister. I’m not taking money from you.” Her tone then mellowed. “We were a good team back in the day though, weren’t we?”
Their old bonds surfaced and Crys nodded. “Remember the time your mom went to Georgia to visit your aunt and we had that house party?”
Kiki laughed. “And she came back a day early? I can still hear her screaming at us.”
For the next little while they watched the babies and reminisced.
“Whatever happened to Toni Greer?” Crys asked. “Is she still singing?” Toni had been a member of their crew and blessed with a voice that rivalled Mariah’s. Everyone knew she was destined for stardom.
“Two kids by two different guys. She and I share a worker so I see her every now and then. Last time I talked to her she was bragging about a new man. Hope she’ll make him wrap it up. She needs zero more babies.”
Crystal found that disappointing. “How about Tink?”
“Now, Tink has it going on. Joined the Air Force a year and a half ago.”
“You’re kidding?” Tink’s real name was Deirdre. In the fifth grade, she was dubbed Tink because everything she owned from her backpack to her socks sported Disney’s Tinker bell.
“She and I stay in touch. She’s in Japan right now, but she’s sent me postcards from Germany, Hawaii, Guam. She signed up right before I got pregnant. She tried to get me to go in with her, but ….” Kiki ‘s voice trailed off.
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I thought it was a stupid idea.” But the way she stared off at something only she could see Crystal wondered if she might be regretting the stance. “My life would certainly be different, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t give up my babies for anything in this world.” As she viewed her twins, love shone in her eyes.
“And Lisa?” Crys asked. “What’s she up to these days.”
Kiki’s face clouded. “Lisa’s dead. Boyfriend shot and killed her last summer. The funeral was so sad. Her mother was a wreck, so was I. He’s on Death Row.”
Crystal sighed. She thought back on how tight the five of them had been four years ago, and how only she and Tink seemed to have come to the present unscathed. It was sobering.
While Kiki put the twins down for their nap, Crystal sat on the black faux leather sofa that would double as her bed and took out her phone. Thoughts of Lisa haunted her. In the years Crystal spent living in Dallas, she’d known several people whose lives were cut short by violence, but never anyone close to her heart. All the messages and texts from her mom stared up at her accusingly. Among them were other numbers she recognized as belonging to Eli, Preston, and Amari. She wanted to continue ignoring them, but couldn’t, so she replied to her mom: I’m ok. Don’t worry.
There was an immediate response. Worried. Please call so we can talk. I love you!!!
Crystal closed the phone.
CHAPTER FOUR
After the twins’ nap, it was time for Kiki and the babies to pick Bobby up from work. “Do you want to go with us or hang here?” Kiki asked.
“I’ll go.”
With Crystal carrying Tiara and Kiki carrying Little Bobby, they walked to an old beat up grey van parked a few feet away. Crystal watched and waited while Kiki went through the elaborate ritual of putting the children in their matching car seats.
With the kids secured, Crys rode shotgun while Kiki steered the noisy clunker out of the complex and onto the city streets. As they drove Crystal checked out the neighborhood. Four years ago, she’d know the area so well she could’ve found her way through the streets blindfolded and in the dark. Now? “Lots of things have changed,” she said, noting a former gas station that was now a no name dollar store.
“The landmarks yes, but not the crime. Estelle got robbed so many times she closed the shop.”
Crystal had never like Estelle but was sorry to hear she’d had to close her beauty shop. Kiki had just began working there after school and weekends when Crystal left Dallas.
The drive took them past their old elementary school. The kids were getting out for the day and Crystal noted their young innocent faces. “Did we look like them, back in the day,” she asked as the van waited at a red light so the children could cross the street.
“I guess so. They look like babies, don’t they?”
Crystal wondered what their dreams were and if they’d be cut short by violence, early pregnancies or homelessness. She also wondered how many of them would opt to find life elsewhere like Tink. And what of her own dreams, she asked herse
lf. For the past few years she’d had her heart set on becoming a world class artist. Would that be possible now that she was on her own? She thought about her unfinished triptych and the contest. Would Ms. Bernadine finally get fed up with her not returning home and toss the canvases in the garbage? Unable to answer the questions, she stared unseeing out her window.
The van pulled away from the light and after a few minutes Kiki turned down a side street.
“Hey stop!” Crystal called out urgently. The familiar house on the corner brought back another round of memories. “Does she still live here?”
“Far as I know,” Kiki answered quietly.
“Do you mind if I run in for a minute?”
“No, but try and make it quick, okay. I don’t want to be late.”
Uneasy about how this might go and even more uncertain about what she might say, Crystal climbed the steps and rang the bell.
When the door opened Mrs. Verna Wagner peered out. “May I help you, honey?”
“Hi, Ms. Verna. It’s me, Crystal.”
Like everyone else Crystal had encountered that day, the elderly woman puzzled over that pronouncement, then, finally asked, “My Crystal?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, my lord!” The door opened and Crystal was pulled into a tight hug that brought tears. “Oh, my goodness,” Mrs. Wagner gasped. “So good to see you. So good.” Aided by her cane, she stepped back on legs swollen from diabetes and viewed Crystal again. “Look at you,” she said emotionally. “Come in.”
Mrs. Wagner wiped at her tears while Crystal did the same. “I can’t stay but a minute.”
“That’s okay.”
Inside Crys was immediately assaulted by the combined scents of liniment and mothballs. During the five years she’d lived there, she’d hated the smell because it permeated her bedding and clothing thus making her the target of ridicule and snickering at school. The furniture in the pink walled living room hadn’t changed. The big green sofa and matching chairs were still pristine beneath the thick sheets of transparent plastic.
“Sit, sit,” Ms. Wagner indicated encouragingly.
On the mantle above the fireplace stood framed pictures of her two adopted sons, Marlon and Keith. “How are the boys?” Crystal asked. She really hoped they’d hadn’t met tragic ends.
“Doing just fine. Marlon is an EMT down in Houston and Keith is on the police force here. Married nice young women and gave me five good looking grandkids.”
Silence crept between them and Crystal mentally searched for words to explain her actions of four years ago. “I just wanted to stop by and apologize for running off the way I did.”
“You worried me. I thought maybe you’d been killed or something. I went to the police but they couldn’t help.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” And she was. The retired nurse had taken her in as a nine-year-old foster child and given her a home; the nicest one she’d lived in up until that point, however, she never appreciated it because it felt like just another stop in a long line of places where she never belonged.
“What’s it been now, four, five years since I saw you last?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You look well, so life must be treating you okay.”
When Crystal didn’t respond, Verna peered at her face and asked knowingly, “Still restless, are you?”
Crystal thought that a good word to describe her feelings. “I think so, yes.”
“You always were. Even when you were little you could never sit still. Not even at the dinner table. I’d come home after working the night shift and find you sitting in the living room watching the TV. I don’t ever remember you sleeping all night. It was like something was keeping you from settling in.”
Crystal nodded at the memory.
“We all have to settle in sometime somewhere, honey,” she said and her eyes radiated such profound sadness Crystal had to look elsewhere.
“Did you run because of something I did, or said?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Was it the boys?”
Crystal shook her head. “It was just me being restless like you said, I guess.”
“You ever find your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did it work out like you imagined?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Life is that way sometimes – really most of the time.”
Crystal was starting to see that. The debacle with Diego July came to mind. That hadn’t worked out as she’d hoped either.
“You want some advice from an old lady way past her prime?”
Crystal smiled a little. “Yes.”
“Stop running. Plant your feet in whatever soil will make you grow, and let the sun shine on your face so you can bloom the way the Good Lord intended you to.”
Crystal thought about Henry Adams and Ms. Bernadine.
“Or you can spend the rest of your life chasing after something that will always be just beyond your fingertips.”
A car horn sounded. Kiki. “That’s my ride,” she said quietly. “I have to go.”
“I understand.”
Crystal stood. “It was nice seeing you.”
“Same here.”
Mrs. Wagner struggled up and slowly walked her back to the front door. “Take care of yourself, Crystal.”
“I will. Tell the boys I said, hey.”
“Will do.”
“How’d it go?” Kiki asked as she pulled away from the curb.
Crystal shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Kiki watched her for a moment, then nodded understandingly. “Okay, then let’s go get Bobby.”
On the ride there, Crystal was lost in thought. Ms. Verna had probably gone out of her mind with worry the night Crystal hadn’t come home, and she wondered how long it had taken her to resign herself to the reality that her foster child was gone for good. And now, she was on that same path, but with Ms. Bernadine left to wonder and worry. Crystal left Henry Adams last night with a clear plan on what she wanted and how to obtain it, but once again things weren’t going as expected. Mrs. Wagner had given a name to what Crystal had been feeling inside for the past few weeks. Restlessness. Or you can spend the rest of your life chasing after something that will always be just beyond your fingertips. So, what am I chasing, she asked herself. Initially it had centered on the freedom to come and go as she chose. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Kiki pulled into the lot of a small used car dealership. Upon seeing all the shiny vehicles Crystal found herself thinking about the car she’d been promised upon graduation. “What exactly does Bobby do here?” she asked to distract herself from yet another blessing she’d turned her back on.
“He cleans the cars, vacuums the interior and washes and waxes the exterior. Sometimes he sweeps the floors. Mows the grass. Whatever he’s asked to do basically. He’s hoping to find a connect to learn detailing. You know that show – Pimp My Ride?”
Crystal did. Amari watched it all the time.
“He wants to own a shop like that. He’s hoping once he gets his GED, someone will take him on. You know like an apprentice.” She found a place to park the van and cut the ignition. “Time for you to get in the back with the kids. He’ll be coming out in a minute.”
Crystal got out and opened the back door. The twins who’d been babbling away during the ride, suddenly quieted and eyed her.
Kiki turned around in the seat. “Make room for Auntie Crystal back there you two.”
When Bobby walked up, Kiki got out and gave him a kiss. “Hey baby. How was your day?”
He shrugged. “Same grind. Different day. How was yours?” He was dressed in a blue, short sleeved, buttoned downed shirt with the logo of the dealership on the front pocket. His extensive tats curled up his arms and peeked out above the neck of his shirt.
“Twins didn’t run me too ragged, and we have a visitor.”
&nbs
p; “Who?”
“She’s in the back with the kids.”
He stuck his head inside the van’s open door and the kids babbled with excitement. “Hey you two. You been good?” He placed a kiss on each small forehead and upon seeing Crystal, paused.
“Hi Bobby. Been a minute.”
He cocked his head, stared at her for a moment then looked back at the smiling Kiki.
‘Don’t recognize her, do you?” she asked. “At first, neither did I.”
He studied Cry’s face again. “Sorry for not knowing who you are.”
“I’m Crystal. Fathead.”
His eyes widened. “Crystal? Goldilocks?” He checked her out again. “The three bears steal your hair?” He ran around to her side of the van and hugged her. “Wow, look at you looking all prosperous, as my grandma used to say. How you been? Where you been?”
“Semi long story. Been in Kansas, but now I’m back.” Crys ignored Kiki’s silent show of disapproval.
“How’d you end up there?”
Kiki interrupted. “Let’s get home before the babies start fussing. You know they can only stand those seats for so long.”
“Okay. You’re right.” He slid beneath the wheel and turned the key. The van fired up with much rattling and noise from its aged muffler. Bobby nodded a goodbye to one of the other employees and drove off the lot for home. “So, Crys, you here visiting or what?”
“Might be back permanently, if I can find a job.”
“How’d you end up in Kansas?”
She began her tale with the night she’d been hitchhiking in the rain and was picked up by a woman who turned out to be a social worker. “She got in touch with Ms. Bernadine who came down to get me.”
“In a jet,” Kiki tossed in.
“A jet?”
“Tell him how good this lady has been to you Crystal, and that you’ve been all over the world.”
Bobby was studying her via the rear-view mirror and he looked very confused. “You and the lady have a falling out?”
Kiki didn’t wait for Crystal to explain. “Nope. She just up and left. Said she felt boxed in.”
That seemed to confuse him even more.
Kiki kept going. “Ms. Brown was even going to pay for her college.”
Crystal Clear Page 3