Nappily Faithful

by Trisha R. Thomas

  I flipped the ceramic pieces into the trash can. “It’s okay. We’ve got plenty of bowls.” But there was only one Mya. One child. A tingling sensation rose through my fingers and up my arms against my chest. Were these the first signs of a heart attack? The pain shuddered then moved to the top of my rib cage. Anger was mounting, waging a war, causing me to get light-headed. I had to sit back down.

  By this time Jake came into the kitchen. “Who was at the door?” He was prepared to go straight to the refrigerator until he took a second look in my direction.

  “Babe, you all right?” He leaned directly into my face, searching my eyes. The court summons drew his attention. The papers shook in his hands. “What’s this?”

  “They had this planned all along.” The top of the sheet said “Legitimization.” Airic was making his rightful claim as the father to Mya. The second page read like a ransom note with a list of demands, including joint physical custody.

  Jake was standing over me, the veins popping from his neck, his eyes squinting with rage. “He’s suing …. for custody?”

  Mya’s large eyes were fixed on the two of us. She was used to our strained communication. Mommy and Daddy seemed to only talk in hushed whispers of concern. Everything was a new fire to put out. This one was a full scale blaze. We’d need help.

  Jake had me by the elbow. I was up on my feet. Mya started to follow. “Can you sit here for a minute, Mya? Daddy needs to talk to Mommy. Okay? Just a few minutes.”

  “She hasn’t eaten. We can talk later,” I said out of pure delirium. I had no answers. I wasn’t in a hurry to be asked, how, why, or what. Who was to blame?

  Jake pulled out a box of too sweet cereal that he liked to eat in the middle of the night. He grabbed a bowl, then the milk from the refrigerator. He poured the cereal. Poured the milk. Got a spoon and handed it to Mya. “She can feed herself.”

  “She’s not eating this sweety fruity crap.” I snatched the bowl and dumped it down the sink.

  “Fine. Then she doesn’t eat.” Jake leaned into me. “Let’s go.”

  “What are you doing?” I moved out of his grasp. “Just calm down.” I was one to give advice. My heart flipped out of rhythm; standing there I didn’t know how much longer I could stay upright.

  “Hey sweetie, let’s all go upstairs. Can you play in your room for a little while I talk to Mommy? Then we’ll go out and have a big breakfast at Cocoa’s.”

  “Happy pancakes,” she said excitedly, slapping her small hands to her cheeks.

  “Yep. My favorite, too,” Jake said with a genuine smile. He scooped Mya up for a shoulder ride while I followed behind.

  Inside our bedroom, with the doors closed, Jake and I sat side by side on the edge of the bed holding the court summons in our hand.

  “Listen, this thing has got me thrown off. I’m sorry I just didn’t think he was serious. This is crazy. This man abandoned you and Mya. He walked and didn’t look back. Now all of a sudden he wants to be Bill Cosby? When you saw him, you said everything was going to be fine. Now this? The man actually wants joint custody?”

  “It’s his wife. She’s pushing him to do this. She’s behind his newfound need to be a loving daddy. Trevelle Doval wants her fairy-tale marriage to be complete with a child: Mya.”

  “Trevelle Doval, praise the Lord and dial 1-800-Cash-or-Credit-Card?” Jake’s head fell into his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I knew you’d be even more worried. I knew …. how serious it was, how much trouble we were in up against her and her holy name.” I reached out and rubbed his shoulder. Only seconds ago it was me on the brink of a collapse. I surmised Jake was the more fragile of the two of us. Only because I’d already been broken and had somehow learned to live with the pain. I feared Jake would fall apart like Humpty Dumpty, unable to put himself back together again.

  He took my hand. “You know, you and Mya mean everything to me.”

  “I know, baby. I wish—”

  “He spent ten minutes with her. Ten.” He shook his head. “We need to call Georgina.”

  “She’s a criminal lawyer.” The last person I wanted to see on our doorstep was Georgina Michaels. Not that she wasn’t a wonderful person, an upstanding human being and all who’d fixed our legal woes with one fell swoop of her manicured nails. She was soft spoken and unassuming in her tailored suits that showed off a lean Pilates body. She never said more than what was necessary, believing someone speaking too long will eventually speak wrong. Polite. Trustworthy at the right price. But she still scared me.

  “She’s a California lawyer. She’s probably not certified to practice law here.”

  Jake gave me a look that begged the question: what choice did we have? Who else would understand our dilemma? She already knew what we’d been through, my hospitalization combined with Jake’s murder charges. We were not likely to make model clients in anybody’s law books.

  “I’m calling her,” Jake said. “We don’t have a choice.”

  7

  In the Interest of the Child

  Sitting on Delma Hawkins’s desk were stacks of petitions, complaints, and responses that nine times out of ten involved children. Hudson separated them by ease. The ones requiring only a signature—final divorce papers, child support orders, liens, and wage garnishments—sat directly in front of her chair with her favorite pen on top. The next stack to the left were visitation orders, mandated counseling, and parenting classes. The largest stack was on the floor next to her desk, secured in a lock box where private lives were exposed and bared through hatred, all to prove who was the better parent.

  There was no science to it. The decision-making process that Delma went through rested on one very important factor: the best interest of the child. Who would provide a stable, loving, and caring environment? Which of the parents had the best interest of the child and not just the best interest for themselves. Delma’s bullshit meter easily picked up on the one who used the child as nothing more than a way to seek revenge on the other parent.

  Most of her peers based their decisions strictly on the law. Fairness played little if any role in their decisions. Unlike her, most of her peers could care less about right and wrong, good versus bad. That’s what the laws were for. Precedents were set to make life easier. Thinking beyond the written law could make one lose sleep, get an ulcer, or take up drinking. Or in Delma’s case, take up with a pint of double fudge Breyers in one sitting, all to make the voices go away.

  “Time to go,” Hudson spoke gently, so as not to startle her. “Ten o ’clock, lady. Let’s move it out.” He came behind Delma’s chair and placed his hands on her stiff shoulders, giving them a powerful squeeze.

  Delma moaned. “Yes. One more time, right there.” She pointed to a higher spot where the tension in her neck and shoulders rose into one thick clump of muscle.

  “These late hours are wearing me out,” Hudson had the nerve to say. “I’m getting too old for this. What do you say we run off to a deserted island and make babies?”

  Delma twisted her mouth with a smirk. “That would require one or both of us to get naked and I’m trying to keep what’s left of my eyesight as long as possible.” She breathed out the tension as he worked her shoulders. “Did you notice the McKinley case got restraining orders filed on each other? So how are they supposed to be able to agree on any kind of visitation for that child? Lord, I wish these people would get some sense.”

  “Right now I wish you’d go home and get some rest.” Hudson rolled Delma’s chair back with her in it. “All this can wait. Up,” he demanded, snapping off her desk light.

  Delma was on her feet and packing her leather attaché. It was their ritual every evening. She pretended she didn’t want to go and Hudson did his part to make her. She peered over her reading glasses to see him making sure the windows were locked before closing the wood blinds.

  Their cars were parked side by side in the spaces with reserved signs posted. They were supposed to be for judges only, but De
lma made sure Hudson had the green sticker so they could be in the same area. Nine times out of ten they were side by side.

  They walked in the night air that was as thick as the day. There was awkward silence between them while they listened to crickets and the sound of the fluorescent parking lot lighting going on and off overhead. “Straight to bed, you hear. You have a big day tomorrow,” Hudson said as he held the car door open for her.

  “You’re talking about the Trevelle Doval case.” Delma shook her head. “That woman ….” She tried to not let on that even the sound of her name made her bristle with fear.

  “Don’t let her bully you. Just because she’s famous doesn’t mean she gets special treatment.” He gently closed her door.

  Delma was quick to stick in the ignition key and roll down her window. “Since when have you ever seen me bullied, by anyone?”

  Hudson took in a long deep breath even though the humid heat made it difficult. “Right, what was I thinking?” He tapped the hood of her car. “Buckle up. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Bully me,” Delma Hawkins whispered while she pulled out of the parking lot. Please. She wasn’t afraid. She had no reason to be afraid. Trevelle Doval would never recognize her. Delma only knew who she was by chance. One night as she lay in bed flipping channels knowing nothing was on but late-night preachers and Girls Gone Wild commercials, it struck her like a brass band blowing in her ear. The voice she’d remember for the rest of her life belonged to Velle Wilks. The deep throaty lilt of her words. The way she sang the last bits of her sentence, even back then when she was nothing more than a teen prostitute, drug fiend, and petty thief standing before the juvenile judge pleading her innocence.

  Twenty-seven years was a long time. She sincerely would never have recognized Trevelle Doval if not for hearing her voice say the closing words, Peace be unto you for God grace has no bounds. God’s grace definitely has bounds. Delma was sure of that. Thou shall not kill, and if Delma had seen it, then surely God had witnessed the whole thing, too. The woman preached nightly about coming clean to Jesus yet there was no confession of having killed a man.

  Delma pulled into her garage and pressed the remote to let the door slowly fall. She sat in her car for a few moments, wondering how far she should take it. The smartest thing to do would be a recusal, take herself off the case. Impartiality was a requisite. Lord knows she was only human. All of her peers had some sort of prejudice lurking in their psyches, though they’d practiced denying it so avidly they even believed their own lies.

  This was far more than prejudicial. Delma would need every compassionate bone in her body to make a fair and just decision. She’d need something close to a hypnotic state to not see the young prostitute Trevelle was thirty years ago sitting in that courtroom instead of the holy evangelist Trevelle Doval had become today. She’d also need a guarantee that she hadn’t come back to Atlanta for the one thing she’d left behind. Because if she had, she’d be sorry. Not even that woman’s faith and holy high horse would be able to save her. When it came to what was best for her child, Delma didn’t mess around. There was only one answer, get rid of her and her husband, in and out, as quick as possible.

  She’d read the case. The biological mother, Venus Johnston, had been accused of child neglect and endangerment. She was married to Jake Parson, arrested, but never tried, for manslaughter. The biological father had not seen his daughter in three and a half years, claiming the mother had moved without him knowing. Normally, it would’ve been a clear and easy decision. She would’ve given the father exactly what he’d wanted. But Delma couldn’t see past the ugliness she knew of Trevelle, Velle, whatever she was calling herself these days. She couldn’t stop being reminded of that night all those years ago. Seeing the way she’d violently beat a man over the head, and watched while he bled to death.

  Normally, there wouldn’t be a question of who got custody. She didn’t tolerate unstable mothers, and attempted suicide shouted instability. There was no other form of selfishness greater than a mother trying to end her own life. What if the child had found her? What if the child herself was hurt from being left alone while the mother toiled into her oblivion? Delma didn’t understand it and had no sympathy for a mother who didn’t put her child first.

  In any other case, there’d be no question of what to do. But now she was faced with the dilemma of choosing the lesser ills. She’d need two pints of Breyers chocolate on this night. Lord knows she had her work cut out for her.

  8

  Venus

  A court of law brings out the fear and vulnerability in a person. The bland walls and dark heavy pews are like being in church, only there was no forgiveness. Words could not be taken back. Lies could not be recanted. Sins could not be prayed away. I wasn’t in a forgiving mood anyway. I would never forgive Airic. It was the first day of the officially declared war. He was seated in between his lawyer, a narrow-shouldered man with weeping eyes, and his wife, dressed in a cream knit suit in a quest to look angelic. Jake and I arrived without representation with express orders from Georgina to keep our mouths closed tight, hand the judge the request for an extension, and offer nothing in the way of confidence. Not having a lawyer there would make us look like the underdogs and underdogs usually won in these types of situations.

  I hoped she was right. The same way she was right in Los Angeles when she told me not to worry. “Jake will be home before Jay Leno finishes his monologue. Relax,” she’d told me. I should have listened. Worrying had unleashed a cataclysmic war inside my head and body. Jake came home as Georgina had promised, tucked safely in bed by midnight. At four-forty that morning I was being wheeled on a stretcher into an emergency room. One shot and the premature labor was stopped in its tracks. We were out of the woods. I went back home prepared to spend the next three months off my feet as the doctor had ordered. Two days later I was back in the hospital. Our baby son came into the world and never took a single breath. Who was to blame?

  “Please rise.”

  Jake was helping me stand since I obviously hadn’t heard the request. The judge, a black woman with robust color on her lips and cheeks faced the courtroom. Her obvious wig tilted slightly to the right. The bailiff and clerk gave her a double take as if this was the first they’d seen of her new look.

  “Good morning.” She swept her eyes across her audience. “Matter of Johnston vs. Fisher on this date July 25, 2005.”

  “Yes, your honor. I’m Anthony Young representing Mr. Fisher.” The lawyer slid a paper toward the bailiff.

  Jake took notice and did the same. “Yes, your honor.” He slid a request for continuance to the edge of the desk then took his seat, putting his head down.

  “You’re the representation for Venus Johnston-Parson? I don’t have your name here.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m her husband, Jake Parson.”

  The sound of a throat clearing in the hollow room made everyone look in the direction where Trevelle Doval sat innocently.

  The judge asked, “Do you need some water?”

  “No, thank you, I’m fine.” Trevelle gave a dismissive wave.

  “So you’re Mr. Jake Parson. Very nice to meet you, sir. My daughter was a big fan of yours not so long ago. And I won’t lie, I bounced a few times to the beat.”

  Jake visibly flinched, surprised by her earnest approach. “Thank you ….”

  “Judge Hawkins,” she finished for him. “Let’s see what we have there.” She read the papers the bailiff put before her. “What to do, what to do,” she whispered too close to the microphone sitting on her podium. “Mr. Fisher, you are the birth father of Mya Parson and are requesting joint physical custody. I understand you hadn’t made contact with your daughter for two years, is that correct?”

  “Three,” I said, before feeling Jake’s hand grab mine under the desk, giving it a polite squeeze.

  His lawyer stood while adjusting his long thin tie. “Mr. Fisher wasn’t sure the child was his, your honor.”

  �
�Really?”

  “Ms. Johnston had a relationship with another man while she and Mr. Fisher were engaged to be married.”

  Mouth closed, mouth closed. What happened to the continuance request?

  “What gives Mr. Fisher the impression that she is his child now?”

  A conscience. A new wife who prefers a husband with a spine.

  “First thing’s first. I’m requesting a DNA test,” the judge continued.

  “Mr. Fisher is sure of his paternity. There’s no need for a test.”

  “If he is so confident he is the father, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Subjecting my client to needles and unreliable tests isn’t necessary.”

  “Mr. Young, welcome to the twenty-first century. All we need is a small swab of the cheek, a strand of hair, perhaps that won’t be too painful …. for your client. And the tests are extremely reliable.” She shook her head, miffed by the fact that the lawyer didn’t know this. “Ms. Johnston, do you have a problem with a DNA test?”

  “No. No problem.”

  “My clerk will give you the information on where to take your daughter for the lab test. Okay, let’s all go enjoy the rest of our day, shall we?”

  “Judge Hawkins,” Mr. Young spoke weakly into the microphone.

  The judge shot him a look.

  He only backed down slightly. “Mr. Fisher would like visitation with his child. He is legally the child’s father as stated on the birth certificate and he has a right to visitation.”

  “Really?” Judge Hawkins said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “He has a right?”

  “Mr. Fisher never gave up his parental rights, your honor, regardless of how long he’s stayed away.”

  “In some states that may well be the case, Mr. Young. But as you know, in this peach of a land, we have something called—”

  “Legitimization, your honor. We filed the necessary paperwork.”

  “Interrupt me again and see where it gets you,” the judge threatened before turning her questions to me. “Did you make contact with Mr. Fisher?”