Tutored

by Allison Whittenberg

  She got her blue wool coat from the hall closet, and they left.

  When they got outside, Wendy felt compelled to say, “I’m sorry my dad is like that.”

  “Do I look like the type that’s dying to meet the folks?”

  “I wanted him to meet you, Hakiam. I wanted him to give you a chance.”

  “Look, I just said I ain’t into parents no way. I’m not even bothered with my own father. Why should I get mixed up with yours?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I would like you to?”

  “Well, he don’t want to, so why don’t you let it drop.”

  Wendy took a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask, Hakiam, for you and him to spend five minutes face to face being civil to one another like two normal human beings.”

  “Ain’t it bad enough that I got to spend time with your white friends?”

  “Why do they have to be my white friends?”

  “Because that’s what color they are.”

  “They have names, you know,” Wendy said in a decidedly short tone.

  She could tell that her words had struck Hakiam like a lash. “Sorry,” he said after a pause.

  She walked ahead of him as they went to the car.

  “You look nice tonight,” he said.

  She glanced down at her V-neck cardigan, square-necked camisole, and blue jeans.

  “Thanks,” she told him over her shoulder.

  They arrived at the busy IHOP at eight o’clock sharp. Erin and Kyle had already secured a table, and Erin waved wildly at the sight of her friend. Both she and Kyle rose to greet Wendy and Hakiam.

  Kyle was medium height with well-scrubbed looks. He dressed like a jock, though he never played varsity ball.

  Though originally from Jersey, Erin suffered from that middle-America openness.

  Hakiam acknowledged them both with a nod, and they all sat down.

  They all flipped the menu over from the dinner portions to the breakfast selections and ordered various incarnations of pancakes.

  “How do you like it here in Philadelphia?” Erin asked, her head bobbing in her attempt to be friendly.

  Wendy cringed. She knew Hakiam would be immune to Erin’s sunny nature. He’d do just like John F. Kennedy had said and mistake her kindness for weakness.

  Hakiam shrugged. “It’s about the same. A city’s a city.”

  “Well, not every place has the Liberty Bell,” Erin said with a bright smile.

  “What’s Cincinnati like?” Kyle asked.

  “Isn’t the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there?” Erin asked.

  Hakiam gave Wendy an I’m-lost look.

  Wendy winked at him. “That’s Cleveland,” she said.

  “And the funny thing is, whenever there’s a new inductee into the Hall of Fame, they hold the ceremony in New York.”

  “Well, you can’t expect the Stones to go to Ohio,” Kyle said.

  Erin nodded. “This country consists of New York and LA. Everything else is flyover territory.”

  “Don’t say that. I just sent off my application to Notre Dame,” Kyle said

  “Where’s that?” Hakiam asked.

  “Indiana,” Erin said. She poured a touch of maple syrup on her silver-dollar banana pancakes.

  “Colleges don’t count,” Wendy said. “Most campuses are a world within themselves.”

  Kyle sliced up his blueberry pancakes. “I think it’s so cool that you’re getting your GED, Hakiam. Have you thought at all about college?”

  Hakiam forked a hunk of buttermilk pancakes into his mouth and said, “Nope.”

  “The program lasts another few weeks,” Wendy said.

  “What are your plans after it’s over?” Kyle asked.

  Hakiam shrugged. “I’ll see if I pass.”

  “Oh, you’ll pass,” Wendy said confidently. “I’ve never had a tutee fail yet.”

  “Wendy, you said you never had a tutee take the test,” Erin said.

  Wendy gently kicked her under the table. “That was supposed to be our secret.”

  Hakiam laughed and said, “I knew I was in good hands.”

  As they finished their meal, Kyle tossed out the following question: “I know a guy who’s throwing a party—you want to hit that?”

  “Sure,” Hakiam said, “let’s hit that.”

  When they entered the party, Wendy fiddled with the buttons on her jacket. She was reluctant to take it off. Wendy was missing the teen gene: she hated parties and already missed the good time they’d been having simply sitting around talking and eating carbs. Parties were loud and crowded and featured flat beer that came in red plastic cups. The air reeked of drugs, and there was no room to move or think.

  At the gathering, there were a few kids she knew from school. They were grinding on the makeshift dance floor or lounging on the lumpy brown couch.

  “Hey, that’s Jay-Z playing,” Hakiam said.

  Wendy turned to Hakiam and asked, “What were you expecting, a hoedown?”

  He pointed to two girls at the center of things making out with each other.

  “I see some hos.”

  Kyle laughed so hard that he spit out his drink.

  Erin giggled too and elbowed Wendy. “Come on, that was funny. You know they’re just going at each other to attract guys’ attention.”

  Wendy sighed and played Hakiam’s comment over again in her head. A grin crept over her face.

  As the party went on, Wendy felt her mind and body becoming connected with the silly atmosphere. She knew her dad was going to ream her no matter what time she came back, so she figured she might as well go for broke and break her curfew.

  She took the banana clip from her hair and started dancing, working all angles. She threw her hands in the air and spun around with Hakiam, then Kyle, then Erin, then went back to Hakiam again. They mingled and mixed it up with the rest of the crowd and stayed till the party was broken up around one (thanks to an angry neighbor who claimed he had to get up early the next morning).

  As they left, Hakiam told Wendy, “Hey, white people are all right!”

  “You know,” Kyle said, “that would make a good bumper sticker.”

  32

  It was past one, and every inch of the apartment was filled with bodies. Leesa’s friends were sitting on folding chairs, kitchen chairs, dining room chairs, stools, and the plastic-covered sofa. One friend, Rashana, kept circulating with a plate of this or a pitcher of that.

  And that music. The wild beat kept going and going till the room seemed to swirl with absolute chaos. New people were still entering the apartment, closing in on Hakiam.

  “What happened on your hot date tonight? Did that stuck-up girl finally give you some?” Leesa asked at first sight of him.

  “Never mind all that,” Hakiam told her. “It looks like you got half of Philly up in here.”

  She raised her glass. “That’s right and we’re gonna get a high high.”

  Hakiam pushed past his cousin and threaded through the crowd. He was stopped by an older woman. She appeared to be in her thirties or maybe forties and was dressed like a walking Lava Lamp, in a yellow dress and gold wig.

  “What’s your sign?” she asked Hakiam, throwing an arm around him.

  “Closed,” he said, tossing her arm back.

  A touch of the goodwill from his outing with Wendy and her friends still remained, but after a few minutes at his cousin’s, he felt the usual tension returning. His neck joints felt tight. There were bottles and cans everywhere, but he didn’t want to drink to make himself feel loose. He wanted to sleep.

  He went to the bedroom in the hope of lying down. Instead, he got the shock of his life. There was Malikia, all nineteen inches of her.

  She had rolled off the bed onto the floor and was out cold.

  And she was lying in a drying pool of blood.

  33

  In the thin predawn night, Wendy walked up to her front door. Her dad opened it as she was fumbling with the keys. />
  He stood above her like a prison warden.

  Then he let her in, not saying a word, and Wendy made her way upstairs.

  In her room, she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and got into bed. She was still wound up from the night, so she tried to burn off some energy by squaring her nails with a file.

  Her cell buzzed: Hakiam. It had only been fifty minutes since she’d dropped him off at his front door.

  When she answered, he didn’t waste any time. “Malikia fell off the bed. She’s not moving,” he told her.

  Wendy threw off the covers. “Call nine-one-one,” she said.

  “I did that.”

  Just then, her father came in, saying, “Get off the phone. Call that person back tomorrow.”

  Wendy waved at him to go away.

  “Wendy, who is that?” her father asked. “Is that that boy? You just spent the evening with him. Hang up.”

  “Call nine-one-one again,” Wendy told Hakiam. “Tell them it’s a baby. Tell them it’s an infant. Then call me back.”

  Hakiam said he would and clicked off.

  “It’s late at night. What do you think you’re doing?” her dad said.

  “There is an emergency!”

  “What kind of emergency? What are you talking about?”

  Wendy stepped into her jeans and pulled a sweatshirt over her head.

  “Wendy, you are not leaving this house. I forbid you. There is always an emergency with those people. They will have you running from crisis to crisis.”

  “Come on, Dad. For God’s sake, why do you have to start up with this shit now?”

  “And I would trust that you know to speak to me better in this house!”

  “A baby is unconscious, Dad. She could die!”

  The cell went off again. She grabbed it and answered, and Hakiam shouted over the music pounding heavy in the background.

  “Hakiam, who’s there with you?”

  “Plenty of people. It’s a party.”

  “Ask if anyone knows first aid,” Wendy said.

  “He needs to get the baby to a doctor,” Wendy’s dad said.

  “Ain’t nobody here knows nothing,” Hakiam said when he got back on the line.

  “Why hasn’t the ambulance come yet? Call them again,” Wendy told him.

  She heard him step away, and then the faint sound of a siren. She breathed deeply, then asked when he came back to the phone, “Is the ambulance there?”

  “No, that’s gone on down the street,” Hakiam said.

  “You’re going to have to get her to a hospital.”

  “What’s the nearest one?”

  She shot a look at her father.

  “What’s the nearest hospital to Fifty-first and Ruby?”

  He paused a moment, then said, “Misericordia.”

  “What is it on?”

  He frowned. “It’s on Fifty-fourth Street.”

  Wendy told Hakiam, “Keep her as still as you can, but get her to Misericordia on Fifty-fourth Street.”

  34

  Hakiam had never thought of himself as a runner, but he had been known to book it when the time called for it. And he did have some experience running with items in tow. Still, he never thought he’d have to tear down city streets with an infant tucked up tight in his arms.

  He had stripped a sheet from the bed and thrown it around Malikia before bolting out the front door. His sneakered feet thumped against the cement and he pitched forward as his cousin trailed him with cries of, “Hakiam, this is your fault!”

  His long legs and arms moved smoothly as he poured himself like liquid through the night.

  When the hospital finally came into sight, he pushed harder. By the time he got there, his lungs were burning and his limbs spasming.

  He set a still-limp and unresponsive Malikia on the ER check-in counter. He must have said something, must have answered some questions, but it passed in a blur. In what seemed like mere seconds, Malikia was whisked away on a small gurney. Masked men and women took her off in a whirl of beeps and monitors, similar to the way she had come into the world.

  Then Leesa came through the door, panting and crying. She followed the medical team into the curtained room where Malikia had been taken.

  Hakiam was about to follow her when the lady behind the desk handed him a slew of papers, saying, “She’ll be well taken care of. We’ll do the best we can. Please fill these out.”

  He made his way to the corner of the room.

  Hakiam paged through the forms, unable to focus. His cell went off and he put it to his ear.

  “I’m just past Lancaster Avenue. Are you still at the apartment?” Wendy asked.

  “I’m at the hospital.”

  “Did the ambulance ever come?”

  He caught his breath. “No.”

  “What part of the hospital are you in, pediatric intensive care or the emergency room?”

  He told her and she clicked off.

  He had a headache. His body was weary from the run. He closed his eyes, hoping to wake up from this bad dream.

  With the music going so loud, he hadn’t heard the thump. But then again, he had only been there for a few moments. The blood was dry. She might have been lying there for hours before he found her.

  Hakiam kept going through things in his head. How could this be? Malikia had never fallen before.

  Leesa came back into the lobby area. Hakiam’s red eyes met hers.

  “What’s going on?” Hakiam asked her.

  “They kicked me out.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Prepping for surgery.”

  “Oh, shit,” Hakiam said, throwing down the paperwork.

  Leesa pointed at him. “It was you. You’re the one who was supposed to be responsible for her.”

  “I wasn’t even there.”

  “Exactly, Hakiam. And you should have been.”

  The rotating blue light flashed on an ambulance outside. Another emergency patient was wheeled in. Doctors, nurses, and aides flanked the gurney as it was hustled through the door and down the corridor. Behind all that bustle, Hakiam saw Wendy and her father come in.

  Wendy ran right up to Hakiam and embraced him. As Hakiam held her, his eye caught the disgusted look of her father, who seemed to be saying, I’m glad I didn’t come downstairs to greet you. You are exactly what I expected.

  Then Leesa started up. “Why did you call her?” she said. Her voice boomed against the white walls. “We don’t want your pity.”

  Wendy turned to her. “I’m not offering any. I came here for Hakiam and Malikia—”

  “I don’t want her here. Tell her to go home,” Leesa spoke over her.

  “Oh, come on, Leesa. Will you quit it already?” Hakiam said.

  Leesa pointed at Wendy. “She don’t need to be here.”

  “My daughter came here out of concern for your child’s well-being, young lady,” Mr. Anderson said, stepping forward. “Let’s stop the arguments. That’s not what we came here for.”

  Hakiam watched as Leesa clamped her mouth shut. And then they waited.

  Minutes passed, but they seemed more like hours.

  Leesa stared at the wall and wrung her hands, then went to the snack machine.

  Wendy kept telling Hakiam that everything would be all right.

  A man rushed in cradling his seven- or eight-year-old son in his arms. The boy had his foot wrapped up in a white towel that had all but turned red.

  Hakiam heard a moan from down the hall.

  Leesa went down the hall to the bathroom, then came back.

  Hakiam looked over at Wendy’s father. He was trying to busy himself by going through his day planner and checking off items on his lists.

  “I have news about Mal-i-kia,” a bearded man in scrubs awkwardly sounded out as he walked into the dispute.

  “I’m Malikia’s mom. It’s pronounced Ma-leek-i-a,” Leesa corrected him.

  “Never mind that,” Wendy said, “how is she?”

/>   “She’s suffered a pretty good clunk to the head.”

  “We know that. Will she be all right?” Leesa said.

  Hakiam’s heart pounded anew. The image of Malikia facedown in all the blood flooded his mind.

  The man removed his glasses and said, “It looks like it. We’re almost out of the woods, but she’s gonna have to stay here tonight and into tomorrow for treatment and evaluation.”

  35

  A few moments later, Wendy and her father walked quickly back to her car.

  She put the key in the ignition. Her eyelashes glistened as tears flowed down her cheeks.

  Wendy drove home, I-76. The silence intensified.

  When they reached the house, her dad complained about the late hour and said at least it wasn’t a school night. Then he went upstairs to the washroom to prepare himself for bed.

  Wendy went to her room but stopped outside her door. Then she turned and entered the bathroom.

  Her dad’s face was wet.

  Without acknowledging her, he walked past his daughter into his bedroom and shut the door.

  He didn’t usually ignore her like that. Wendy wondered if this was truly the end. Maybe she and her dad had grown too far apart. Maybe the politics of the world, the very black and white and gray, had intruded too deeply into their lives and now they had nothing to say to each other.

  Wendy went back down the hallway and got into her bed. She thought about Malikia. Nothing was more out of order than a baby in a hospital. Wendy wondered how many Malikias there were in Misericordia Hospital. She wondered how many there were in Philadelphia. She wondered how many died and how many got better.

  36

  Before they left the hospital, Hakiam and Leesa were questioned for the better part of an hour.

  “You were having a party.”

  Leesa shook her head violently. “It wasn’t no party. Some people were just over.”

  “Who was watching the little girl?”

  “Wasn’t nobody watching her. She was sound asleep.”

  The woman in the pantsuit who had been taking notes exchanged a glance with Hakiam. He wondered what all this was leading to. What did this lady want and who at the hospital had called her?