“No, he made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with me or my daughter.”
“So you never requested child support?”
“No,” I said, unable to stop my lip from trembling. “He said he didn’t want to be a paycheck dad. If he couldn’t be my husband, and a full-time father, he’d rather not be involved at all.”
“And of course Mr. Fisher never volunteered child support?” The judge scribbled something else down.
“The mother immediately married the man she was having an affair with, moved two thousand miles away to Los Angeles, and never once contacted Mr. Fisher. He wouldn’t have known where to send the money even if he wanted.”
I object.
“What did I tell you?” Judge Hawkins slammed her gavel down.
“My client has a right to full representation.”
“I asked you not to interrupt me and you did it anyway. Now if you can’t keep a lid on it, you’re out of here. So back to you, Mr. Fisher, and I do mean Mr. Fisher. Why didn’t you try to contact your child?”
“Financial circumstances made it difficult for me to establish a relationship while she lived in California. I’m ready to take full responsibility for my child, your honor, before any more time passes.”
“How sweet,” Judge Hawkins said without so much as a glance in Airic’s direction. “I’m in possession of a continuance filed on behalf of the mother. I will grant the continuance and we’ll meet back here after we have the results of the paternity test.” There was silence in the courtroom.
Another throat clearing from Trevelle along with uncomfortable chair squirming. Airic and his lawyer huddled quietly for a moment. “We have no problem with a continuance as long as my client can have weekend visitation during the waiting period.”
“You just don’t let up, do you?” For the first time, Judge Hawkins found my face and zeroed in on my eyes. “Do you have a problem with visitation?”
Mouth closed, cooperate. I shook my head no.
“Visitation set for two Sundays a month for no more than three hours per visit.”
“That’s a problem, your honor. My client lives in another state. He would need at least a full weekend visit.”
“At this point, Mr. Young, this child doesn’t know this man from Adam. Let’s take it one step at a time. Let’s get a paternity test on record before we start with overnight visits, shall we? Court adjourned. I’ll see you all back here on the twenty-first at eight A.M.” Judge Hawkins rushed off.
Shallow as the victory was, I somehow felt redeemed. I could hear Trevelle in a high-octane whisper switching between Airic and his lawyer, pissed and not caring who knew. Glints of perspiration rose past her well-matted foundation. The crisp polished cuffs on her white blouse waved around like flags as she made her point of sour disappointment. “This is ridiculous,” Trevelle exclaimed. “The woman was locked up for mental instability. Her husband is a known felon. What was so difficult?”
“Lower your voice,” Airic said, doing his best to shh his wife, while escorting her toward the doorway.
I watched and waited for Jake’s reaction. The muscles clenched under the smooth skin of his jaw. “Let’s go.”
“Wait until they’re gone, okay.” I pulled him back down, nervous, listening intently for the voice of Trevelle to sail away. Funny thing was, even when she was gone I could still hear her: Jake, a known felon, and me mentally unstable. She was right. What made it so difficult? If I were a judge, I may have made the decision right on the spot. From the outside looking in, Jake and I shouldn’t have stood a chance. Just the possibility made me fall apart.
“Don’t, babe. Please. We’re going to get through this. This is us,” Jake said, looking me straight in the eye. “This is you and me. Have faith.”
I leaned into the warmth of his neck and let him rock me back and forth.
9
Sins of the Mother
She pulled the wig off as soon as she closed the door to her chamber. “Fool,” she muttered to herself. How you gon let that woman make you act a fool?
The knock at the door wasn’t a surprise. She shoved the wig in the drawer and pulled her fingers through the rough patch. She needed a touch-up in the worst way. Penny, her hair stylist of well over two decades would shake her head and groan the entire time she sat in the salon chair, wondering why a high-paid public official couldn’t make time for something as crucial as a hair appointment.
“Come in.”
Hudson had his arms folded over his narrow chest. “What in the world is going on?”
Delma grabbed a couple of sheets of Kleenex out the box and dabbed the gloss off her lips. “Can’t a girl add some shine?”
“Not jazzy pink, no.” Hudson sat down, something he rarely ever did. “Are you going to tell me or do I have to hold you down and tickle you till you say uncle?”
“I wish you’d try.” Delma rolled her eyes up and down his lanky frame.
“Was it JP, Mr. Juicy Hips and Fat Lips himself? Wanted to give him something to remember you by?” Hudson chuckled, but his face was strained. “I didn’t know you liked rap music.”
Delma didn’t respond with a nod or a C’mon, I was just kidding smirk. In fact she was downright ashamed of the way she’d carried on in there. She knew nothing about JP what’s-his-name. She’d never heard of him except after she’d looked him up on her computer the night before.
Delma averted her eyes. The bulb went off over Hudson’s head and the wiry Afro that needed a trim. “Trevelle Doval? You’re trying to impress her?”
Delma knew Trevelle Doval wouldn’t have recognized her, wig or no wig. She wouldn’t have recognized the young woman from twenty-seven years and thirty pounds ago. Oh, who was she kidding, more like fifty pounds ago. Delma sat still, wondering how much she could tell Hudson without breaching a right to privacy. Hudson waited with baited breath.
“She’s always preaching about the duty of a woman to be all that she can be, her constant message of modest beauty. I just wanted to look decent.”
“Do me a favor, leave the costume props to the drag queens over on Locust Street. You don’t need wigs or lip goo. You’re beautiful au naturel.”
“Hudson.” Delma felt her cheeks get warm. Was she blushing? “Thank you.”
He stood and stretched his lean frame. “Guess I better get back to work.”
“Do you ever eat, man?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Come on. We’re heading to M&M’s. They got a po’boy sandwich make you want to scream and holla.”
Sitting across from Hudson, Delma wondered why they hadn’t done something like this sooner. It wasn’t like a judge and her clerk couldn’t get out and have lunch together once in a while. She also wondered why she didn’t know more about him when he knew practically everything about her.
“We’ll have two number elevens,” Delma said to Mavis, the patient waitress who double-shifted as the cook and owner.
“Extra fries?” Mavis began scratching on her notepad before Delma could answer.
“No. Not this time.”
Mavis gave a perplexed look to Delma and her date. “What about the coleslaw?”
“Of course.”
“But do you want two? You usually get the one that comes with it and an extra on the side.”
Delma felt like saying, If you know what I usually get, why are you asking? Instead she meekly responded, “Yes, but today, the regular order will do. Two number eleven’s.” She held up two fingers.
“Something to drink for the gentleman?” Mavis understood and decided to play along.
“I’ll try your famous sweet tea.”
“Not as sweet as Delma here, but we’ll see.” Mavis winked before walking away.
Awkward silence followed. Delma watched the other guests chatting away. The restaurant sat smack-dab in the middle of a gentrifying neighborhood. Mavis and Marnie, sisters and excellent businesswomen, refused to move out of the way. Luckily they owned the building and couldn’t be
pushed or bribed. They’d refused the offers that kept coming in, occasionally showing Delma a threatening letter or two asking if the city could do this or that. Sometimes she felt like a mole. “No, they can’t do that. Ignore them,” she’d say. Or sometimes she’d just laugh at the pure silliness of the ultimatums. Eventually, she pointed them in the direction of a good lawyer that she knew so she’d never be accused of taking bribes of coleslaw and po’boy sandwiches.
Mavis set down two icy cold glasses dripping with condensation. “Your food will be up shortly.”
Delma knew what Mavis was thinking. This wasn’t a date. Midafternoon in broad daylight? She’d at least have the good sense not to bring a man around a public place. Judge Delma Hawkins did not date or besmirch her spotless reputation.
“I’ve never seen you so quiet.” Hudson sipped his iced tea to the last drop, leaving lonely ice cubes to keep each other company.
Delma hadn’t realized how long the food had been sitting in front of her. She’d been thinking about Trevelle Doval nonstop, wondering if she should remove herself from the custody case. Wondering what her life would’ve been like if she’d taken a different road, literally and figuratively, that night so long ago.
Enough, she told herself. Daydreaming was for sissies, people who didn’t have the guts to move with the ebb and flow of real life. The daily drudge was too offensive to deal with so they checked out in their fantasies to change the past or future.
The po’boy sat untouched on her plate. She stabbed at it with her fork then dipped inside for a fried shrimp, leaving the bun behind.
It didn’t feel right keeping this secret from Hudson, who knew both nothing about her and everything that mattered most. He knew she drank her coffee cold without sugar or cream, her way of facing the day’s contempt with one morning shot of bitter brew. He knew she was left-handed so he always put her pen where she could reach it. He knew she and her daughter Keisha were close, better than best friends. Her daughter, who was the air she breathed and the sun that shone across her face each morning, was truly her only reason for living.
“I have something to tell you, Hudson. I know I can trust you. This thing on my mind is wearing me down.”
He reached across the table slowly. Delma felt the eyes and ears of the M&M sisters and the rest of the people in the place pay full attention as their hands connected. She didn’t care.
“You know you can tell me anything and I’ll never repeat it,” Hudson said, and she knew he meant it.
10
Trevelle
Trevelle led the way into the hotel suite after Airic opened the door for her. She tossed her Gucci bag on the shiny marble-topped table at the entrance. She went straight to the ten-dollar bottle of Voss and poured a glass of the overpriced water.
“We’re going to have to get a new lawyer. That man is an imbecile.”
“He’s a good Christian lawyer,” Airic said, taking off his suit jacket.
“In this instance, those two traits may be a contradiction. We need someone who’s going to rip Venus and her husband apart. Someone without a moral bone in his body.”
Airic plopped on the sofa. “His hands were tied. A continuance was filed, it wasn’t like he could go into detail right then and there. And that judge, whoa. I thought he handled himself pretty well considering she was one tough bit—” He caught himself. “One tough woman.”
“He could’ve at least mentioned she was a danger to her child.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. Venus knows what she’s up against. She’ll come around to making the right decision.”
“You mean like a couple of pity visits a month. No. There’s only one outcome I want and that’s full custody. That woman is unfit. Who comes to a courtroom with hair spiraling all out of control? An Afro? Did you see her? Look like one of those mother earth women. Girl never heard of a hot comb, or any comb for that matter?”
“I don’t know,” Airic said. “I don’t know if this is the right thing. Yes, I want visitation, but the whole full custody thing seems a bit much.”
She stood over him with her arms crossed then leaned close. “‘For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him,’ Genesis eighteen. What I’m talking about here is a thing called responsibility as a man of God.
“Do you know how many fathers are running around this world not taking care of the children from their loins? All of them are going to burn in hell, you can believe that. The husband is the head of the household and his first and only responsibility is to teach his children the way of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” She strutted toward the table and picked up her white leather-bound Bible.
“First Timothy, five:eight. Listen to this, ‘But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’” Her voice rose, “That child, will not see the inside of a church living with those people. Unholy, that woman. No respect for herself or that child. She’s unstable. How is she going to take care of a daughter and teach her to respect herself in the ways of Christ?”
Trevelle sat, exhausted. Court had been a drain on her spirit. Airic scooted close to her. One could see Airic was a good man. While she had prayed over his lack of spiritual backbone, she’d also been grateful for his sensitivity and complete openness to change. Being raised by a single mother who barely had time to put a potpie in the oven while holding down two jobs, let alone get her son to church for a Bible study lesson, was not his fault. But the makings of a God-fearing heart were there and ready to be molded. He’d graciously waited until they were married before being allowed to enter her celibate garden. Six months was a lifetime for any man to wait and he did so without complaint. Difficult for Trevelle as well, spending so much time around his charismatic scent, his words of comfort and sincerity. He’d still be a lowly professor if she hadn’t entered his life, and been proud of it. His days of worshiping the all-mighty dollar were long behind him. He merely wanted to live and let live. His honesty and humbleness had been refreshing, but now it was simply getting on her nerves.
“How many times do we have to go over this?” She leaned on his shoulder, careful not to smudge his suit with her makeup. Her hand grazed his tie before loosening the knot and pulling the fabric away.
Trevelle knew a thing or two about men. One thing she knew for sure, a satisfied and happy man was far more pliable than a callous one full of contempt and spite. Her fingers trailed the buttons of his shirt, undoing them as she went along. She leaned into the smooth blank canvas of his chest and used her tongue to begin a work of art. The full thickness of his arousal called out to her. She worked his belt and zipper with one steady hand, the same as she’d been taught so many years ago. Old habits died hard. She couldn’t wait to feel his hardness against her tongue.
“A woman’s duty,” she whispered before taking him in her mouth. Just a taste, she chastised herself and yet couldn’t force herself to stop. Old habits never really died at all, only hid in the dark waiting for a chance to be free.
Airic certainly didn’t mind. She held the way to his heart and mind in her throbbing mouth. A few moments later he was a withering mess.
In the bathroom, where Trevelle washed the foulness out of her mouth, she prayed for forgiveness. Such a filthy depraved need …. hers. After all these years no matter how much she prayed the desire away, the want never left her mind. Cain had taught her how to suck and control every movement with her tongue. She learned there was nothing a man wouldn’t do for a quick and efficient blow job. The thrill of victory, maybe, the triumph of reducing a man to pure jelly after completion, she wasn’t sure why she received as much pleasure as she gave from such a one-sided act. “The flesh is weak. The soul is strong. Thank you, thank you,” she whispered. Grateful to God for sending her a husband, one man who
understood her need and did not cast her out or judge her for the depravity.
She went back out and tossed a towel to Airic, startling him. “Clean yourself up. We have more to talk about.”
11
Venus
Before the garage door was all the way up I could see my mother’s pants legs in the open doorway. She bounced lightly with impatience. Pauletta had flown out the day before, determined to do some butt-kicking. My father had wanted to come, too, but she made him stay put. Henry Johnston was a levelheaded softy, always the voice of reason. If things got ugly and needed to be taken to another level with, say, eye-gouging, character-slaying, or knife threats Pauletta didn’t want lucid Henry to get in the way with rationality and calm.
No one messed with her babies and got away with it. In school I swiftly got a reputation for having the mother who used her visitor’s pass regularly. Nine times out of ten she was there to observe the teacher, not me. Any treatment she deemed unfair was quickly resolved with her ability to question you to death.
She moved to my side of the car. Her stylish brown jogging suit was a safe bet for our pleasantly cool house. “So, how’d it go?” she asked.
“Went fine,” Jake answered for me. He was next to my mother giving me a hand to help me out of the car.
I needed them both to move back if I was ever going to get out.
“What’d the judge say?” my mother asked impatiently.
“Pauletta, let’s go inside.” Jake gently eased her out of the way for clearance.
Inside the house I’d noticed things were a bit more organized. Boxes that were once in the middle of the floor were shoved against the wall. The couch was clear of stacked dishes and pots from me looking for a single spatula. The first thing my mother said when she arrived was “You haven’t even unpacked. How are you living?”
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