Tamara was quiet, allowing the man some time to soak in all the information she’d given him. After several meditative moments, finally he replied, “Okay, then, Miss Tamara Britton, I do remember Jannice . . . I remember her quite well, in fact. That Jannice was one pretty black gal . . . The girl was built like a brick house, and her eyes turned up on the sides—reminded me of those Japanese girls, you know?”
After breathing an imperceptible sigh of relief that the man had evidently decided to share his memories with her, Tamara listened intently as Maurice reminisced about days long past.
With a knowing look, Maurice added then, “Bad thang about Jannice was that she was more than a little bit on the fast side. We met at a bar I used to hang out at in the city, and that little girl chased me and chased me until she finally got my attention. Fine as she was, though, I didn’t jump in the sack with her right away, either . . . though I must admit, I have been known to do that in my time,” he added with a mischievous chuckle.
Maurice stroked his chin and shot her a deliberate glance. “Naw, but not with Jannice. We used to talk a lot, and lookin’ back at it now, I remember what I mostly liked about her was that she was so dang funny. We would laugh about the dumbest things, and I guess it got so, to tell the truth, I just wanted to be around her ’cause we had so much fun together.”
Tamara shook her jacket off and placed it over the back of the square-backed plastic chair. “I think it would be nice to have someone that you had lots of fun with,” she replied, and as she spoke, Isaiah Perry’s face briefly appeared in her mind.
Languidly Maurice agreed, “Yeah . . . it is nice. Really, everything was all good until we started going to bed together. Should’ve never done that. First of all, I didn’t know that she wasn’t no woman; she was just a girl, only a teenager really. We only went to bed together a couple times, and to tell the truth, it wasn’t all that much to it, and then she told me that she was pregnant.”
“That would be with her first daughter, right?”
“I guess. I did see the baby one time. She said the baby’s name was Mauricia. For a long time after that she disappeared from the scene . . . or maybe I did—my memory is a little hazy at that part,” he added, smiling wryly. He looked at her and added, “Jannice wasn’t the only woman I was seeing, you know? Truth is, I was considered to be a bit of a ladies’ man back then, you know?”
“Lillian did tell me that,” she replied with a small smile.
The man shot her a semi-sulky sideways glance. “That sister of mine is still tellin’ everything, I see.” Focusing on the past again, he continued, “Anyway, one night I was in the club having a drink, and one of my boys told me there was someone outside wanted to see me. When I got out there, Jannice jumps out of a car with a baby and said it was mine.”
“What did you do?” Tamara asked.
With an ironic snort he replied, “I did what any self-
professed playa would do. I denied it.” His smile slowly disappeared, and he repeated in a quieter voice, “I denied it . . . I can still see her face that day. She looked at me one time like she hated me and then just got in the car with the baby and left. I never bothered to see who drove her there or anything.”
“So then, how did you end up getting back together with her?”
He shook his head. “Believe me, I wish I knew. I heard that Jannice went back downstate, and then after several months I looked up one day and there she was—just like she’d never left. She never said a word about a baby this time, and before I knew it, we just ended up back in the bed again.”
“Did you see her after that?”
“Maybe ’bout a year later, and we ‘did the do’ and parted ways.”
“So, she never told you about the other child she had?”
“She had two babies?”
“Yes, Mr. Lewis. Jannice had two kids that she said were yours. Your name is on the birth certificate. They are both girls, and my friend Yvette is one of those girls.”
The man looked shocked. “Two? Are you sure?”
“Yes, two.”
Again he shook his head disbelievingly while chuckling to himself. “So, two babies with Jannice . . . Where is she, do you know?”
Tamara asked softly, “You mean Jannice?”
“Yes, where is she?”
Solemnly she replied, “Jannice is dead.”
His surprise was evident on his face, and he asked, “Dead? She’s a young girl . . . How can she be dead?”
“Jannice, OD’d five years ago.”
Shocked now, Maurice almost shouted, “OD’d! Don’t tell me that pretty black girl was a drug addict!”
“Yes, I’m sorry to tell you she was. In fact, Jannice had problems with all sorts of drugs, but her life finally ended with her heroin addiction.”
Maurice’s look was incredulous then. “Heroin? Whew! That’s ugly, ’cause ol’ her-on is one drug that don’t take no prisoners—it just kills. I had a coupla friends myself that got caught up with it, and that horse held them so tight they never could break free.”
“I think that is what happened to Jannice as well,” added Tamara. “She couldn’t break free—she just couldn’t.”
He shook his head. “Jannice, dead . . . Man, I’m sorry to hear that!” After a couple of minutes, he asked falteringly, “So, what happened to the children . . . my babies? You said something ’bout state care earlier . . .”
Tamara gazed at Maurice Lewis sadly. “That is what happened to the children, Mr. Lewis, state care for all of them. Unfortunately, Jannice’s drug addiction made her ill equipped to handle the responsibility of having children. She actually abandoned two of her babies shortly after their birth and neglected the others severely on several occasions, leaving them alone while she searched for drugs . . . The state actually took her last three kids into custody immediately after she had them. Two were addicted to drugs but still were adopted.”
His face was sad now. “How many children did she have?”
Tamara replied matter-of-factly, “She had seven, Mr. Lewis. Jannice was the mother of seven girls.”
Obviously surprised by her news, he asked, “So, you are saying that I have a couple of daughters out there that I’ve never met, and they don’t have any idea that I’m their daddy?”
“Yes, I would say that’s probably the case. You have to understand that unless they have the inclination and the ability to search on their own to find you, there’s no way that they could know who or where you are.”
“What about your friend—Yvette?”
“She was one of the babies who was abandoned shortly after her birth by Jannice . . . left alone in an apartment and found by neighbors there, who called in the authorities.”
“Oh, my God,” said Maurice Lewis. “She was left alone to fend for herself when she was just a baby, huh? That poor girl . . . living somewhere on her own without knowing who or where she came from.”
Before Tamara could respond, the red-haired nurse turned the corner into the room and, after giving the two of them a quizzical glance, said, “Mr. Lewis, it’s time for your medicine.” She looked over her shoulder at Tamara and said, “Don’t be surprised if he gets a little drowsy—it’s the medication.”
“Do I have to?” he whined playfully to the nurse with a flash of his teasing smile.
The nurse smiled back and apprised him saucily. “Oh, Mr. Lewis, you’ve been here long enough that you know the answer to that one. Besides, if you don’t take it, you will be quite uncomfortable later—and we don’t want that, do we?”
“No, we don’t, do we?” he teased again impishly.
“He’s not such a charmer when he’s in pain,” the nurse commented knowingly to Tamara. “So we try to keep him feeling comfortable.”
“Okay, Mr. Lewis, you’ll feel a stick now,” she said as she jabbed the needle into his arm. “Now, a burn.”
“Ouch!” said Maurice Lewis as he made a face toward Tamara. “Even though I’m a grown ma
n, I still hate shots!”
The nurse dabbed the man’s arm with alcohol and covered the small puncture with cotton and a Band-Aid before saying perkily, “All done, Mr. Lewis . . . I’m off now. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Maurice gave the nurse a flirty wink. “You have a good night, sweetheart. Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do!” he added jokingly.
The woman laughed as she tossed back, “If that’s the case, I’d be doing all sorts of things that I don’t normally do, huh? ’Cause we both know you’re a humdinger, Mr. Lewis!”
The man laughed for a moment and then asked, “Now, where were we?” turning his attention back to Tamara.
Tamara smiled and replied, “We were talking about your daughters, Mr. Lewis.”
Maurice began to slur his words a little. “Yeah, that’s right . . . It’s just hard for me to believe I have two more girls and I didn’t even know about them.” He laughed ironically. “And now there are three, just like my old nickname . . . Three.”
“Three?”
“Yes,” said Maurice and he covered his mouth as he yawned widely.
“Lillian did say she thought you had two or three kids.”
“Actually, I have four,” he said as he began to nod a bit. The medication was taking effect very quickly, and he was obviously growing drowsy fast.
“Four?”
“I’ve been married since I’ve been out here and I have a son who lives with his mama since we been separated . . . Maurice Lewis the Fourth,” he said proudly.
“That’s still only three, Mr. Lewis,” Tamara replied, wondering if the medication was causing Maurice to lose touch with reality as he became drowsy.
“Naw, Miss Lady, that’s three girls I have . . . one boy. My other daughter came from a little ‘meet-up’ I had when I was visiting Lillian one time and I slid up to the Windy City that weekend. Only one little rendezvous with a petite little blue-eyed blonde—but once was all it took.”
Realizing now that Maurice had another daughter she did not know about, Tamara asked, “The mother was white?”
The medicine was taking effect quickly now, and Maurice laughed drowsily, “Yeah, Miss Lady, she was white, not a blonde sistah like you see nowadays.”
Curious now, Tamara asked, “Did you ever see the baby?”
“Naw, never did. Just heard about her . . . They said she was a pretty little thing.” Maurice laid his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes. He mumbled sleepily, “I ’spect she’s probably about fourteen or so now . . . The mama named her Larson after her . . . Sienna is her name . . . Sienna Larson.”
46.
Fallout
Glancing around, Tamara was grateful to be traveling home in an almost empty plane, with few people to distract her from her swirling thoughts. Since leaving the Veterans’ Administration hospital that morning, her mind had been in an uproar over the information Maurice Lewis III shared with her. Deep in thought, she did not even notice as the plane taxied down the runway and slowly made its ascent into the clouds—her normal fearfulness during takeoff overshadowed by her preoccupation with the shocking news she’d received.
Again Tamara wondered, how could Sienna be Maurice Lewis III’s daughter? How could that be? It made no sense. After all, she was looking for Yvette’s family, not Sienna’s. In fact, Sienna had nothing to do with this—the process of searching for the man had begun well before she even knew Sienna.
Breaking into her thoughts, the dark-haired flight attendant smiled brightly and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, I will have a lemon-lime water, please,” she answered, returning the woman’s smile.
Tamara had been searching for information about Yvette for a long time now. She’d begun only months after she started working at the Care Agency a little over six years ago. The hunt had been tedious from the start since she had no real information other than Yvette’s first, last, and middle name. But ironically, in the end it was those same three names that proved to be enough to put together Yvette’s missing family again.
“Here you go, ma’am,” said the flight attendant as she placed the drink and a plastic cup filled with crushed ice on the small tray in front of her.
“Thank you,” said Tamara. Twisting the top off the bottle of flavored water, she poured the fizzing liquid into the squat cup absentmindedly.
Actually, I can’t even take the credit for finding them, she thought. When the antiquated computer system finally had been updated last year and she had entered the three names on it, just like magic the girl’s birth information had appeared on the screen. Sipping the water slowly, she thought with a wry smile that it was just like the system to enable you to locate a missing person’s information years after the fact.
Tamara had not realized how thirsty she was until the cool carbonated drink slid welcomely down her dry throat. Since leaving the hospital this morning, she’d been in a sort of daze, and she realized with amazement that the water was the first liquid she’d put into her body since then.
Tamara would check the records when she got back into town, but she already knew what she would find out. Sienna Larson was Maurice Lewis III’s daughter; she just knew it. “I simply can’t get over it,” she whispered.
Tamara poured more of the bottled water into the cup and, sipping it again, stared out the small window. Suddenly, the entire moment seemed strangely surreal, and as she gazed into the fluffy white clouds, it seemed as if they were not moving at all, as if the plane were caught somewhere in time and were standing still, even though she knew they were traveling forward at a rapid speed.
Yet, they were moving, and swiftly, just as everything had moved quickly once she typed those three names into the up-to-date computer system. In fact, after that it all had come together at a remarkable speed. But little had turned out the way she thought it would, and nothing had ended in the way that it began. Her first impression of Sissie Bailey was that the woman was simply tough, hard, and unfeeling; however, her eyes misted thinking about the transformation she’d witnessed on her last visit. She saw the woman’s hard-lined face soften with the hope that she might have a granddaughter who might come to love her if she met her in the future.
“You just never know, do you?” she asked in a small voice, as if someone were there to answer her question. Like seeing only the jutting tip of an iceberg, Tamara realized she’d been looking solely at what was on the surface in this situation. As time passed, it became clear that the visible point where she’d first focused had given her no indication of all the intricacies and complexities that she would encounter once she looked a little deeper.
Through Sissie Bailey she had met Samyra, her daughter. Again fooled by the superficial, she had misinterpreted the woman’s rugged countenance. With a finger Tamara wiped away the wetness from under her eyes as she turned toward the window again. Samyra Bailey’s case was so very sad to her. Was it the prison environment that made this vibrant woman’s own femaleness seem alien to her now? And even though Tamara knew that Samyra had no right to criminalize another, still she deeply empathized with the woman’s anger and pain once she heard the story of her difficult upbringing.
“Is there anything else you would like?” asked the flight attendant, startling her as she was once again deeply enmeshed in her thoughts.
“No, no, I’m just fine, thank you very much,” she replied.
Tamara set the empty plastic cup on the tray in front of her, leaned back on the headrest, and closed her eyes. Sleep eluded her, though, and instead in her mind she saw the weathered face of Benzo Taylor, standing outside in the cold of Chicago, selling his wares to the public on the mean streets. Hoarse from years of smoking, he’d told her warningly, “Girl, don’t let anyone tell you hustlin’s an easy way to make a livin’.” With a croak of a laugh, he’d added, “Hustlin’ might be easy to get into, but it’s a hard way to live, and many a hustler’s died tryin’ to make a livin’. You remember that, you hear?”
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br /> Where did I get the courage even to go there? she wondered as her face warmed again, thinking of the men in the barbershop laughing at her feeble attempts to be strong and in control of the situation, when it was obvious she was not. Then unwittingly she conjured up a vision of a young Maurice Lewis III walking those same cold city streets, warm with youth and anticipation of a night of fun and laughter in his favorite nightclub. She struggled to picture Jannice, whom she had never seen, imagining the woman’s face deep brown and beautiful and full of life, visualizing her as she waited excitedly for Maurice to arrive, with no thought or forewarning about the early death that she would encounter.
“It’s all so sad, so very sad,” she murmured to herself.
Even though much of the family was separated, literally torn apart, it was difficult to blame anyone, because the bad decisions and lack of responsibility that resulted in so much pain and disappointment seemed to be equally distributed among all of them. Tamara supposed that of the group, Maurice Lewis III was the most culpable, though. After all, he was the product of a middle-class home with strong values, and he had a mother and father there to help raise him.
She could smell the lemony-lavender scent of Lillian Lewis’s well-ordered, beautiful home. Clearly, had this eloquent woman’s handsome brother not decided to leave home for the bright lights of the big city, none of this would have come to pass.
But would that be a good thing? she wondered. If Maurice Lewis III had not met Jannice, there would be no Yvette, and none of her sisters would be living, either. Without Maurice there would be no Sienna.
Without a second thought, she said aloud, “That would be a loss . . . a real loss.”
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