by Anne Schraff
Perry Manley was shouting. “It’s just that I’d like to think I still have a wife to come home to, that you’re not in that nursery fussing over the baby twenty-four-seven,”
“I can’t believe you’re jealous of your own son,” Olivia Manley cried. “Perry, I need to be a mother to our baby!”
“We need to get a nanny, Olivia,” Perry demanded. “You’re over the top with this baby deal. There’s no balance. We can’t even sit down to dinner together. I feel like I’m a single guy again, eating by myself.”
Sereeta closed her eyes for a moment. She seemed embarrassed. She turned and hurried toward the door. She paused there and waved to Jaris. Then she rushed inside.
Jaris headed home, even more worried about Sereeta. It sounded as if her mother’s new marriage had run into stormy waters already. And Sereeta had been through so much already. When she was in middle school her parents divorced, sending her into a deep depression. Then her mother remarried, and she and her new husband were so excited about the baby on the way that Sereeta seemed to cease to exist for them. Now there was even more trouble.
When Jaris got home, Chelsea was in the front yard waiting for him. “Hi Jare. Was she there where I said?” she asked.
“Yeah, chili pepper, I really appreciate that tip you gave me,” Jaris answered, jumping off his motorcycle and putting it into the garage. Then he came over and kissed Chelsea on the top of her head, in the middle of her reddish brown curls. “I owe you, little sister. I found Sereeta just sitting there in a daze. I took her home.”
“Were her parents glad to see her?” Chelsea asked.
“No, they were having a fight,” Jaris said.
“If we hung out late like that, Mom would be worried sick,” Chelsea commented. “Pop too.”
“Yeah. We got good parents, chili pepper. You know, I think Sereeta is in big trouble. She’s like a boat without a rudder, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Chelsea looked down at her jeans, rubbing at a spot on her knee. She seemed to be struggling with herself about something. Finally she looked up at Jaris and told him, “I promised her I’d never tell, but maybe I should.”
“Who did you promise not to tell?” Jaris asked.
“Sereeta,” the little sister responded. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell anybody, but . . .” Chelsea’s brow was furrowed. “But maybe somebody needs to know.”
Jaris took his sister’s hand and led her over to the little stone bench in the garden. They both sat down. “Chelsea,” Jaris said fervently, “you know I care about Sereeta probably more than anybody else in this world does. Her parents just seem so busy with their own stuff that they don’t care. I think Sereeta needs a friend now more than ever, so I need to know what’s going on with her, okay?”
Chelsea’s eyes widened. She grasped the seriousness in her brother’s voice. “Okay,” she began, “when me and Jacklyn were biking and we saw her in that field. We saw her before she saw us and . . . she was . . . hurting herself.”
Jaris turned cold. “What do you mean?”
“She had this knife . . . she cut her arm,” Chelsea explained. “She did it a couple of times. They weren’t big cuts, I mean like gashes or something, but her arm was bleeding. It was really gross. . . . And then she saw us and she quick pulled down her sweater sleeves.”
Jaris felt shaky inside, but he kept his voice calm so that Chelsea wouldn’t be scared into thinking she said too much. Jaris had heard about psychologically disturbed girls and young women who cut themselves on purpose. The hurt of the cuts seemed to ease the pain they felt in their minds. “Are you sure that’s what she was doing, Chelsea?” Jaris asked.
“Yeah, because you know Jacklyn,” Chelsea asserted. “She’s real bold, and she gets off her bike and goes up to Sereeta and says, ‘Hey, watcha doin’, girl? Don’t it hurt when you cut yourself like that?’”
“What did Sereeta say?” Jaris asked.
“She acted like she was scared we saw her doing that,” Chelsea said. “She looked at me and goes, ‘Don’t tell Jaris, okay? He wouldn’t understand. He’d get all freaked.’ I told her I wouldn’t tell. Jacklyn did too. Sereeta said she never did it before. She said she just wanted to see what it felt like. She said she saw on the Internet about people doing it and it helped them, and she thought maybe it’d help her too.”
“Thanks for telling me, Chelsea,” Jaris said. “You did the right thing.”
“You won’t tell her that I told you, will you?” Chelsea pleaded. “I like Sereeta. When I was having trouble with math in fifth grade, she came and tutored me. Remember, Jare? She helped me a lot. I think I woulda flunked if she hadn’t helped me. I’d hate for her to know I didn’t keep my promise not to tell.”
“Some promises can’t be kept,” Jaris assured her. “I swear to you, though, that she’ll never know you told me. You did a brave thing telling me, chili pepper. When somebody you care about is in trouble, the people who love that person need to know the truth.” Chelsea went back to her room, but Jaris sat on the bench for a few minutes. Sereeta was in even deeper trouble than Jaris had feared. He wanted desperately to help her, but he didn’t know how. Jaris remembered a song he heard last year at a rap rock concert. It reminded him of Sereeta now.
Like a broken doll,
She came apart in my hands,
Until I couldn’t find the pieces
anymore,
In the pieces of my broken heart.
The next day, Tuesday, was very warm. At school, Jaris noticed that Sereeta had been wearing long-sleeved sweatshirts and hoodies, but the weather had been cloudy and cool. Now the clouds lifted and a hot sun beat down on the Tubman campus. And Sereeta was still wearing long sleeves.
Alonee ran into Sereeta before Jaris did. “Girl, what’s with the long sleeves?” she asked, laughing. “I’m cooking in a T-shirt!”
“Oh, the school rooms are airconditioned,” Sereeta explained, “and they can get cold.”
“But aren’t you too warm now?” Alonee insisted.
“I’m fine,” Sereeta said.
Jaris walked over to Sereeta. “How’s it going?” he asked her.
Sereeta shrugged. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that last night,” Sereeta apologized. “They’re arguing more and more. Mom always said that having the baby would bring them together, but it’s tearing them apart. Mom wants to dote on Jake all the time. Now she can’t go partying with my stepfather like he wants. I’m not sure where Mom is coming from. I heard her tell some friends on the phone that she doesn’t think she loves the baby as much as she should. She was wondering if there was something wrong with her. I think she’s spending so much time with the baby just to prove to herself that she loves him enough.”
“They’ll probably work it out,” Jaris assured her. Jaris couldn’t help staring at Sereeta’s long sleeves. The cuts probably had not healed yet. “Sereeta, I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure . . . if you ever want to just talk about something, I’d be glad to listen, you know. If it’d help . . .”
“Yeah, okay,” Sereeta said, then changed the subject. “Heard anything more about that missing money? She didn’t find it, did she? I was so hoping she’d find it under the bed or something.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Jaris said.
Midmorning, in Mr. Goodman’s math class, there was a major commotion before the teacher came in. Alonee, Sereeta, and Jasmine were already seated while other students were walking up to the teacher’s desk to drop off their math homework. Marko and Leticia Hicks had just finished adding their homework to the pile when a junior—Liza Ann Wallace—screamed, “Where’s my wallet?” She leaped to her feet. “I just turned in my homework and my wallet was in my purse right here! Now it’s gone!”
Jasmine glanced over at Sereeta who sat just behind Liza Ann. “Okay Sereeta,” Jasmine demanded, “give the girl back her wallet. This gig is getting old, girl.”
“Are you crazy?” Sereeta cried. “I didn�
��t touch her purse!”
“Look, Liza Ann,” Alonee said, “your wallet is lying there under your desk. It must have slipped from your purse when you got up.”
Liza Ann stooped and picked up the wallet. “Look! It’s empty! I had twenty-five dollars in that wallet this morning and now it’s gone.”
Leticia was sitting alongside Sereeta. All eyes turned to her. “Leticia,” Liza Ann asked, “did you see anybody at my purse?”
“I’m sorry,” Leticia answered, “I wasn’t looking. I was going over today’s assignment.”
Mr. Goodman came in then, becoming clearly upset by the uproar. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Mr. Goodman,” Liza Ann said in a shaky voice, “I was putting my homework on your desk and when I returned to my desk, somebody had taken twenty-five dollars from my wallet.”
“Don’t you people realize what a common thing it is to have thefts around here?” Mr. Goodman snapped. “You’re not little children. You ought to know never to leave a purse or a wallet unattended even for a moment. It’s like leaving your sandwich out where the dog can get at it. I’m sorry, young lady, that you lost your money, but let it be a valuable lesson to you. Keep your valuables with you at all times.”
“Yeah,” Quincy Pierce chimed in, “my mom was shopping in the supermarket when we first moved here. She left her purse in the cart to go get some milk from the dairy section. Then when she got back, her purse was gone. She lost her credit cards, driver’s license, money . . .”
“Exactly,” Mr. Goodman affirmed. He looked around at the other students. “If any of you saw any suspicious activity around this girl’s purse, by all means report what you saw to the office. Otherwise, there’s nothing we can do. The police department has better things to do than track down thieving students.”
“My handbag is on my shoulder every minute,” Leticia said, directing a dirty look at Sereeta. “Nobody better try to rip me off.”
Sereeta was a good math student, but today she didn’t participate. She stared down at her textbook, lost in her own thoughts.
As they walked from the room after class, Quincy said to Sereeta, “That was really ugly for that girl to tell you to fork over the wallet—like you’d taken it. That made me mad.”
“Thanks,” Sereeta responded. “That’s the second time this week I’ve been nearby when somebody was robbed.”
“Yeah, me too,” Quincy commented. “I guess we’re unlucky. I’m super careful about the money I carry. My folks are really up against it. I couldn’t afford to lose five dollars.” Quincy looked sympathetically at Sereeta, “But I could afford to buy you an orange juice. They got really good orange juice in the machines. We have fifteen minutes before the next class. Want to get some juice?”
“Why not?” Sereeta agreed. She walked with Quincy to the beverage machine. He bought their juices and went outside, where it was hot in the sun. It was hot even under the trees, with the sun shining through the eucalyptus leaves. Quincy wore a T-shirt.
“Aren’t you too warm in that sweatshirt, Sereeta?” Quincy asked.
“No,” Sereeta replied, drinking the ice-cold orange juice. “Mmm, just hit the spot. Thanks, Quincy.” Quincy smiled and nodded a “you’re-welcome” to her, as he took off for his class. Sereeta’s next class wouldn’t start for almost ten minutes. So she walked on and found a quiet spot under the trees. She glanced around and then pulled off her sweatshirt, feeling cooler right away in the tank top she wore underneath. She ran her palm gently across the top of her arm. Then she took a deep breath, folded the sweatshirt, and put it over her arm. After sitting a couple of minutes, she walked on to American History I.
Sereeta sat down next to Jaris in class. She laughed and said, “Isn’t it awful what a bunch of thorny rosebushes will do to you when you try to prune them?”
Jaris looked at Sereeta’s arm, at the healing cuts clearly made with a sharp, thin blade.
“What’s the matter, Jaris?” Sereeta asked. “You’re looking at me funny. Don’t look at me like that. Everybody’s treating me so strange. Don’t you start too. My mother is treating me like a stranger, and my stepfather is treating me like an enemy. Some of the kids here at school are treating me like a thief. Don’t you be looking at me funny too . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Jaris apologized. “I was just thinking about something else. You know what, Sereeta? You should come over and have dinner at my house some night. That’d be fun. You could get away from your house while all that stuff is going on. My folks would love to have you over.
My pop, he’s really something else. He got a cookbook that’s got soul food recipes in it, and he’s been going to town. He’s making a special friend chicken, grits, sweet potato pie, everything down home. Mom doesn’t cook much, you know. She’s so busy with her teaching that she doesn’t have time. We eat a lot of frozen dinners, you know. But with Pop hitting the kitchen, wow. He’ll come home from the garage, wash up, put on that big hat and apron. He’s in his glory. He’s singing ‘Ol’ Man River,’ and the pots and pans are banging. You oughta come over, Sereeta. He loves to show off to company.”
Sereeta smiled. “That sounds awfully tempting. I’d love to be around some crazy, happy people for a change.”
“How about tonight?” Jaris asked excitedly.
“I guess so,” Sereeta agreed. “I don’t exactly have a crowded social calendar. If I’m not home tonight, nobody will even miss me probably.”
“Pop is picking me up from school this afternoon,” Jaris told her. “He can pick you up too, and you can come home with us. I’ll call him on my cell phone and tell him you’re coming for dinner tonight.”
“You can just do that?” Sereeta asked in amazement. “You can invite somebody to dinner at your house. And then just tell them company is coming and they should set another plate?”
“Sure,” Jaris said, calling his father at Jackson’s Auto Repair.
“Yeah,” Pop answered. “If this is Mrs. Davis, your lemon of a Toyota isn’t fixed yet, but I’m working on it. When you got a million miles on one of these old beaters, you gotta expect complicated repair jobs.” Then Pop recognized Jaris’s voice, and he said, “Oh, hey boy, how’s it going? What’s going down, boy?”
“Pop, Sereeta is coming for dinner tonight, okay?” Jaris asked. “She’s really looking forward to it.”
“Your friends are always welcome, boy, and when they’re as pretty as Sereeta, va-vavoom. I’ll tell Monie she needn’t bother to put flowers on the table with Sereeta sitting there and prettying up the place.”
Jaris and Pop ended their conversation. Jaris told Sereeta what his father had said. She smiled. “Can I have your father, Jaris? If you give him to me, I’ll never ask you for anything else. I loved that beautiful gift of gold earrings you gave me for my birthday, but I’ll even give them back if I can have your dad.”
“Oh Pop has his faults,” Jaris protested. “He gets these dark moods and he starts thinking his life is a big failure because he never went to college. He wanted to do something important in science. When he thinks he’s probably going to be an auto mechanic for the rest of his life, he can get down. But all in all, Sereeta, I wouldn’t trade him for anybody else’s pop, that’s for sure. He means the world to me.”
“I hardly ever get to see my real father,” Sereeta remarked. “Oh, he sends me birthday cards and Christmas gifts, and he says the usual fatherly things to me in his emails. But he’s really happy with his new wife and his two stepsons. The boys are in Little League. They travel around to games, and it’s like their life. Sometimes I forget what he looks like. I have to go look at his photograph, and even then he doesn’t look familiar anymore.”
“One of these days he’ll probably come around to visit,” Jaris assured her. But Jaris knew those were just words. A lot of men who remarry lose touch with their first families. Little by little they bond with the new family. And if the old family lives in a different town, the memories fade until the first
children are practically strangers.
“I guess it’s time for Ms. McDowell to come in and talk to us about President Bill Clinton,” Sereeta noted, looking at the clock.
All the students were in the classroom now. They knew better than to be late for American history.
Jaris tried not to notice how some of the kids looked at Sereeta. Suspicion had been sown. Marko Lane walked in and said loud enough for everybody to hear, “Attention children, hang onto wallets, purses, and all other valuables. You hear what I’m saying? We are in dangerous territory.”
Jasmine giggled, her gaze on Sereeta.
Ryann Kern said in a wounded voice, “I feel so terrible—a hundred dollars! My parents were so angry!”
Ms. McDowell came in then. All talking stopped. Discipline was a problem in some other classes, but not here. Never here.
CHAPTER THREE
When Jaris’s father pulled up to Tubman High School that afternoon, Jaris and Sereeta were waiting. “Hop in, you guys,” Pop told them. “I might not smell too good, but that’s what comes of fixin’ up old junkers all day. Every beater in town came through today, I figure. Old Jackson made enough to retire on just today.”
“Thanks for inviting me to dinner,” Sereeta said.
“Hey, I’m just getting into this cooking gig,” Pop told her with a big grin. “I got me some high-class cookbooks. I’m watching some of these dudes on TV. I’m experimenting with everything. I never knew about stuff like thyme and oregano. But it makes the food taste great. You’re never too old to learn. Who knows? Maybe when I get too old to monkey with cars I can be a chef. You know, like those guys on TV who make zillions for standing around marinating meat. You can sample some of my creations, tonight.”
“No dinner out of the freezer tonight!” Jaris exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Pop said. “My lady—Monie—she’s a great girl, but she’s a big shot teacher. She can’t bother with cooking.” He chuckled to himself.