Plenty Good Room

by Cheri Paris Edwards

  Sienna slowly pulled her blouse on, and, after making sure to shoot Tamara one parting impertinent look, she jumped to the floor from Tamara’s high four-poster bed and walked out of the room, her small body held proudly erect.

  Tamara closed her bedroom door hard behind Sienna. She slipped her shoes off, sat on her bed, crossing her feet under her, and held her head in her hands. Tears began to slide from her eyes, and suddenly she felt totally overwhelmed by everything going on in her life.

  The very last thing she wanted was for something awful happen to the teen while she was living with her. Suddenly all sorts of what-ifs about Sienna were running through her mind. What if the girl got pregnant? What if somehow she allowed the girl to live out the same situation that she’d come from—to complete the circle of neglect or abuse again? She knew that she could never forgive herself if that were to happen.

  Mrs. Jackson’s admonishment that Satan was the master of what-ifs was far from Tamara’s mind then. Thinking again of the scene she’d just witnessed, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, blew her nose, and said aloud, “Sienna . . . what if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew? What if I’m not the person for you to live with after all?”

  44.

  Blowup

  “Excuse me,” said Sienna in a flat voice as she reached over her and opened the cabinet, “I’m just getting the popcorn, if you don’t mind—that is, if you don’t care if I eat some of your food.”

  Without turning to look at Sienna, Tamara replied in a crisp, even tone, “Of course you can eat, Sienna. Don’t be silly.”

  “Well,” responded the girl sarcastically, “I don’t know . . . it is your house, after all, Tamara, and you want me to do everything the way you want me to do it, right? For all I know, you might not want me to eat.”

  Tamara held her tongue, surprised that Sienna was even home tonight. Normally she would be at choir rehearsal on Tuesday night, but when Tamara had offered to take her to the church earlier, the teen had replied that she didn’t feel well and did not want to go. Tamara had said nothing. In the days since she had caught Sienna wrapped in the arms of that boy in her bedroom, they’d spoken little, and the tension was still thick between the two of them.

  In fact, as the days passed, Tamara realized with surprise that Sienna was holding some sort of grudge against her. Clearly, the teen believed she had a reason to be angry with her and not vice versa. Tamara was flabbergasted by Sienna’s faulty reasoning; after all, the girl had clearly been in the wrong the other night and consequently was totally unjustified in having an attitude of any sort with her!

  Inwardly Tamara was working hard to get past the unsavory episode, as her own feelings were still in an uproar about what she’d seen that night. Several times she had set out to talk about the incident anew with Sienna, but each time, a vision of Sienna and the boy lying on the bed together flashed into her mind, and her emotions began to rise so quickly that she backed away from the conversation entirely. The situation seemed to highlight Sienna’s disregard of household expectations, and now this subsequent disrespectful attitude was almost too much for Tamara to tolerate. In fact, the entire experience was making her former insecurities about the teen rise to the surface again. Ever since that day, Tamara felt overwhelmed more often than not about the extent of the responsibility she’d taken on.

  What made things most difficult was that Tamara was so unused to all these varied emotions bubbling inside at the same time that she was almost afraid of what she might say if her anger rose to the surface right now. Mindful of these complex emotions whirling inside, she replied pleadingly, “Sienna, please just get whatever you want to eat . . . Don’t try to pick a fight, okay?”

  Ignoring her request for peace, the teen replied loudly, “I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, Tamara! If I wanted to fight with you, I would, so don’t accuse me of stuff that I’m not even doing!”

  “Why are you talking so loudly, then?” asked Tamara quietly.

  “Because I can!” answered Sienna, even more loudly.

  “What kind of answer is that, Sienna? Please lower your voice,” repeated Tamara, but by now she was struggling to keep her own tone even and calm.

  “Please lower your voice,” said Sienna in a singsongy voice clearly intended to mock.

  “Sienna! You stop that, now!” Tamara said, her own voice becoming louder.

  The teen gave her a defiant glance, “That’s all you know, isn’t it, Tamara? ‘Stop it!’ ‘Don’t!’ ‘Quit!’ That’s the problem with you, Tamara Britton; you don’t know how to do nothin’, do you, Tamara? You just know how to stop everything and everybody from anything they want to do!”

  Warningly Tamara said once more, “Be quiet, Sienna!”

  Sienna ignored Tamara, though, speaking fast and furiously now. “You think just ’cause you don’t have no friends, ain’t nobody supposed have no friends, and you think just ’cause you don’t have no man. ain’t nobody supposed to have no man, either!”

  In a quieter voice Tamara said incredulously, “Man? Girl, you don’t know anything about a man. That was no man laid up in my bed with you that day. That was a boy, Sienna. That’s why he ran out of here so fast as soon as he saw me and knew there was trouble.”

  “He’s more of a man than you’ve ever had!” the girl retorted.

  “You don’t know who I’ve had!” said Tamara, even louder now. “In fact, Sienna, you don’t know anything about me!”

  Sienna responded sardonically, “And you know what? I don’t care if I don’t know nothin’ about you, either! You ain’t nobody, Tamara Britton . . . In fact, you just nothin’, Tamara Britton!”

  It was then that Tamara felt a part of herself separate from her body, and though she knew she was going to say some things that she should not, she had no control over what was happening. She could not stop herself from speaking.

  Looking Sienna straight in the eye, Tamara said in an icy, crisp voice, “You are ungrateful, Sienna. I am more than you will ever be . . . I open my house to you and give you a decent place to live, and clothe and feed you, and you treat me with disrespect all the time.”

  Surprised at the coolness in Tamara’s tone, Sienna uncertainly lowered her own voice a bit, replying, “I didn’t ask you to let me stay here, Tamara.”

  The timbre of Tamara’s voice did not change, though, as she continued to stare into the girl’s eyes unblinkingly. “I know that you didn’t. And you know what? I didn’t ask for you to stay with me, either. In fact, the truth is, I didn’t want you to stay with me in the first place. I just said okay because my boss caught me by surprise when she asked me, and I said yes when I really wanted to say no.”

  The girl looked stunned for a moment and then, recovering some of her feistiness, admonished, “Well, then, you should’ve said no, and then I wouldn’t have to be here living in your dumb ole’ house with you!”

  Tamara slammed the kitchen cabinet loudly then and turned to face the girl again. “You are right. I should’ve said no, because ever since you have been here, Sienna Larson, my entire life has been turned upside down. Before you came, I lived a quiet life, and you know what? I liked it like that, too. Then, all of sudden I feel pressured and let you move into my home, and nothing, nothing, has been the same!”

  “You should be glad your boring life got some excitement in it now!”

  “You know what? I liked my boring life just like it was, and I didn’t need you or anybody else to walk into it and try to change it!”

  The teen’s sauciness dissipated then. She was obviously thrown off balance by Tamara’s unexpected ire. “Tamara, I wasn’t trying to change your life. I can’t help it if you didn’t do nothin’ in the first place.”

  But now Tamara’s own long-suppressed anger was fully in control, and she continued to speak, her voice crackling with derision. “Oh, you can’t help it? You know what, Sienna? That’s what I wanted to believe, but I know better. You can help it; that helplessness is only
a little role you play so that you don’t have to take responsibility for your disrespectful behavior. The truth is, you came here only interested in yourself, Sienna Larson. You wanted me to do things that you thought were important, and you didn’t care what impact your desires had on my life.”

  Uncertainly Sienna replied, “I didn’t ask you to do nothin’ for me!”

  Tamara’s voice was louder than she could ever remember it being before. “You ask me to do everything for you Sienna! Nothing in my life is good enough for you! You don’t like the food I eat! You don’t like my work ethic! You don’t like the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend . . . I guess you’d be happy if there was some crazy man over here who was a child molester or something! Would that make you happy?”

  Sienna felt sick now. She wished she had never started this whole thing. She’d never seen Tamara angry like this before, and she didn’t know what to do to make her calm again.

  Contemptuously, Tamara asked, “Do you want to know something else, Sienna?”

  The teen stared at Tamara without answering.

  Anger was written on Tamara’s face as she replied, “I was fine without any of these changes in my life. I was happy just like I was. Nobody but me! No phone calls at my job about someone acting up at school! No one here bringing strange people in and out of my home! No worrying about someone who might get pregnant by a boy ’cause she doesn’t listen! I was just fine with no church, no Isaiah Perry . . . no Sienna Larson!”

  Sienna’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. Tamara, breathing heavily from the heated exchange, turned her back to the girl and busily began to clean the dishes as if to indicate that she was finished speaking and the conversation was over.

  Sienna stood there for a moment longer, watching Tamara’s stiff back, and then, with her head down, she walked from the room.

  As if finally remembering the girl, Tamara turned toward Sienna again, only to realize the teen had left the kitchen. Feeling shaky and out of sorts, she exhaled several times deeply, fighting to regain her shattered self-control. Never could she recall being this upset with anyone, and never had she ever been quite so angry.

  It was as if she were in a fog, speaking from a distant place inside herself. Though she could hear herself speaking, she was shocked by the callousness of the words coming from her own mouth. Now Tamara was replaying the out-of-control scene in her mind, and in her more rational state, she wished she could take her words back—but it was too late for that.

  Contritely Tamara whispered a small prayer with a catch in her voice. “Lord, I’m so sorry for what I just said. I was too angry, and it was not my intention to hurt her.”

  Wiping away a guilty tear, she sighed and turned to finish cleaning the kitchen. Mustering a small amount of optimism, Tamara could only hope that the bass rhythm she heard pulsating from the girl’s bedroom was Sienna’s way of sending her a signal that everything was going to be just fine between the two of them very soon.

  45.

  End of the Road

  Tamara was trying unsuccessfully to curtail her excitement as she clicked noisily down the long linoleum hallway of the nursing home. She hadn’t uncovered any information about Maurice’s short stint in the Army, so she’d been surprised when Lillian Lewis told her that her brother was in a veterans’ hospital in Sunnyside, California. But Tamara, eager to escape the simmering tension permeating her house, decided on the spur of the moment that it was the perfect time for her to meet Maurice Lewis the III. She quickly had arranged plans for the trip to the West Coast.

  Early this morning, Tamara dropped a still oddly silent Sienna at Denise Jackson’s home for a long weekend before catching a flight out of Bloomington, Illinois. She was privately hoping that her time away would prove healing for the two of them.

  “Can you please tell me where Maurice Lewis’s room is?” she asked the red-haired nurse stationed at the reception desk.

  The woman gave Tamara a searching stare and then smiled and replied, “Sure . . . Mr. Lewis is in Room two fifty-six. That’s almost at the end of the next hallway to your right.”

  As she quickly walked down his hallway, she was acutely aware of the loudness of her boots in the quiet corridor. Two doors from the end of the hallway she found room 256. Stepping through the door, she immediately recognized Maurice Lewis III, in all his splendor, calmly lying there in the bed, watching television.

  He shot her a look of feigned almost paternal admonishment and then asked with a snort of a laugh, “Was that you making all that noise coming down the hallway?” Then he gave her a thorough, dark-eyed once over before adding, “Naaaw, don’t tell me a little ol’ thing like you was makin’ all that noise. Gal, don’t you know when you come up in here to see us sick folks you need to wear some quiet shoes?”

  Tamara’s face immediately warmed with the man’s teasing. “Sorry,” she murmured sheepishly. “Let me introduce myself . . . I’m Tamara Britton. L-Lillian Lewis . . . your sister . . . told me about you, and I came out to talk to you,” she added falteringly.

  Disbelievingly he asked, “Are you from way out in the Midwest, too?”

  Tamara nodded.

  “And you came all the way out from Illinois to see me?” the man said, with an incredulous look on his face. Obviously suspicious about her motives now, he asked warily, “Girl, exactly what is it that you want from me that you gonna come this far to find?”

  Tamara was dumbstruck by his question and stared at him for several moments. Maurice Lewis III looked like the picture of health, joking and laughing in the bed. In fact, he did not look sick at all. His sister had told Tamara that the man’s health was failing badly, though, and she knew he suffered from severe hypertension, heart trouble, and diabetes as well as from borderline emphysema from many years of smoking. But according to Miss Lillian, the ailment that had him lying in this hospital bed, often writhing in pain, was his debilitating arthritis.

  The one thing that could not be denied was how handsome he still was. Maurice’s glowing skin was as mahogany as the furniture in his sister’s house, and though his face was creased and lined with the years, the aging of time only served to make his handsome features more striking. Running his fingers through his thick silver-streaked wavy hair, he gazed at her mirthfully with dark eyes framed by thick, long lashes. Yes, Tamara thought as she stared at him silently, Maurice Lewis III was quite a good-looking man, and his playful nature made him even more attractive. Yes, she could understand now why so many ladies found him irresistible.

  “Excuse me, Miss Lady, why are you here?” he asked with a suddenly indignant look on his handsome face.

  His annoyed look snapped Tamara back into reality, and she replied, “Mr. Lewis, I came all the way out here because what I need to find out from you is quite important. I’m tracking down information for a friend of mine. Her name is Yvette,” she added purposefully, hoping he would recollect the girl’s name.

  The man frowned and said, “Yvette? Sorry, Miss, I don’t recall any Yvette.”

  “How about Jannice, then?” she asked hopefully.

  The light of recognition glowed in his eyes this time. He admitted quietly, “Yeah, I remember Jannice. Girl, come over here and sit down . . . Tell me what do you know about Jannice.”

  Tamara sat by his bed, and to her chagrin as she sank down deeply into the too-soft turquoise vinyl-cushioned chair, it expelled a loud whoosh of air. She giggled inappropriately, a nervous reaction.

  The man ignored her out-of-place laughter. Squinting as if trying to see her better, he stared at her more closely now. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Tamara,” she answered, now suppressing a curious urge to smile during this serious moment. She knew that the laughter moments earlier, and now this impulse to smile, were just an inappropriate response to her deep anxiety about this long-awaited meeting. “Tamara Britton,” she repeated, louder this time, thankful to feel herself calming down as she spoke.

  “And exactly who a
re you to Jannice?”

  Having regained her composure, Tamara replied earnestly, “Jannice is the mother of a friend of mine . . . Yvette is her name.”

  Again his look was skeptical when he asked, “A friend of yours, huh? Miss Lady, I wasn’t born yesterday. What kind of friend of yours would make you want to travel all the way out here?”

  Tamara forced herself to keep her gaze steady as she replied, “I don’t have a lot of friends, Mr. Lewis, and Yvette is someone I met back in grade school and knew for several years after that. She was in state care—‘foster care,’ so to speak—the entire time, until without warning she was moved to a home in another city, and I’ve not seen her since.”

  “Foster care . . . you mean she was an orphan? Well, that stinks!”

  “Yes, Mr. Lewis, she was an orphan, though truthfully, that word is not used much these days. I work in child welfare now with young people in the system, and, more importantly, I work with parents to try to stabilize their home environments so that they can keep their children with them, because I agree, Mr. Lewis, that far too often what happens to kids caught up in ‘the system’ . . . for want of a better word . . . stinks!”

  He gave her a long, hard look before replying, “What you’re doing . . . well, that’s commendable of you, young lady.”

  “Thank you.”

  Maurice continued to stare at her unblinkingly. “But why would you be looking for me, if you don’t even know where this Yvette is right now?”

  While Tamara was uncomfortable under the man’s probing gaze, her own gaze did not waver from his as she answered confidently, “I’m planning on finding Yvette again, once I get all of the information compiled. I want to surprise her.”

  Disbelieving again, he commented, “I want to believe you, Miss Lady, but frankly . . . that sounds almost too good to be true. You know, I haven’t met too many folks in my lifetime who do something for somebody without getting something out of it themselves.”

  She held up her chin proudly and directly returned his stare through her almond-shaped eyes. “Mr. Lewis, I am getting something in return . . . peace of mind. It is because of Yvette that I was motivated to go to college and obtain a job in child welfare, and I’ve done nothing but think of her since she was unceremoniously taken away. I am certain she will remain in my thoughts. I must find out about her past so that if we ever meet again I can share this information with her.”