by Lisa Wingate
“Then I guess we’re ready,” I said.
The door opened beside us, and I heard someone come in, and the rustle of clothes passing by. The person stopped by the back corner of our table.
I looked up, and the dreadlocks lady was standing there, leaning against the wall.
Watching.
Chapter 22
Tam Lambert
The third day of reading class was taking on the same strange framework as the first and the second. Shasta was trying to work with Elsie, Elsie was being obstinate, and the homeless woman was back again. As usual, she’d come in the door after the lesson had started and was standing against the wall by Shasta’s table. In the same spot again today. When the lesson was over, Shasta would undoubtedly have a few choice words to say about tonight’s foray into literacy. So far, the class wasn’t what we’d expected.
My client, Demarla, was probably not even thirty, had four children ranging from fifteen to eight, and was in the literacy class because pursuing her GED was a condition of her probation. She wasn’t convinced she had to get the GED, apparently, just pursue it.
“This place nasty,” she complained, waving a hand vaguely toward the room, her brown eyes pale against a thick frame of iridescent blue eyeliner. “Let homeless people stand around in here, ’n’ ching chongs, ’n’ wetbacks, ’n’ all that. If they’re gonna keep doin’ that, I ain’t stayin’. Anyway, I can read. ‘The cat run under the tree.’ See? What I care ’bout all that for? That ain’t my cat. He come runnin’ up some tree in my neighborhood, he bes’ look out. Somebody gonna grab a po-lice special and pop his butt. Them stray cats carry rabies ’n’ all that mess, scream all night long outside the window. Sound like somebody gettin’ kilt out there. You probably don’t got no stray cat outside your window. Where you live, anyway?”
“Just down the street,” I answered, thinking, Maybe literacy mentoring isn’t for me. Putting your time into someone who didn’t want it was frustrating. Even though the tutor training materials had warned that adult students often had a difficult time adjusting to a classroom setting, it was difficult to remain upbeat and encouraging when you were faced with it in reality.
“Yeah, my butt, up the street. They brung you over here from the college, just like the resta’ these little rich kids, so you can go sit in yo’ big church on Sundey and say, ‘I done taught some dumb gal to read. Ain’t I good?’”
Whatever, I thought. I was tempted to grab my things and tell Demarla what she could do with the book and her GED, if she ever got it. If it hadn’t been for Shasta, and the fact that our visits to the Summer Kitchen and the night literacy class were a chance to get all the kids out of the house at once and give Aunt Lute some peace, I would have already whiffed on the reading class.
I smacked my pencil down on the table. “You know what? I live about a block from here. Do you want to do the lesson or not?” After days of taking care of the kids while Barbie slept and partied, and Aunt Lute wandered the house in her own little world, I was at the breaking point where patience was concerned. It was starting to look like I was going to end up raising my siblings, and I had no clue what to do next. I wanted to lash out at somebody, and Demarla was a convenient target.
Jerking back, she pulled her chin into her neck. “Well, listen at you. You ain’t such a sweet little thang after all.”
I felt anything but sweet at the moment. “Do you want to do the lesson or not?” All of a sudden, I felt myself tearing up. I absolutely refused to lose it in front of Demarla.
“What’za matta wit’ you?”
I closed my eyes, rubbed my forehead, opened my eyes again. “Nothing. I just have a headache.” Lately, life was one constant headache. This class was supposed to be a chance to get away from all that.
The homeless woman was watching me from her spot by the wall. Our gazes met, and she tipped her head to one side, her cataract-clouded eyes thoughtful; then she turned away again, focusing on Shasta and Elsie, who were attempting to read a recipe off a cake box.
“I gotta do the lesson.” Demarla sagged over the book, her elbows braced on the table. “I gotta work on my GED if I wanna keep my kids. That’s what the judge say.”
A lump formed in my chest. What if Barbie continued down the path she was on? What if I ended up in some court, trying to convince a judge to give me custody of the sibs? What if they ended up with no one but me?
I wasn’t ready for that. I had no way to make a living, no permanent place to stay. I wanted a life of my own. . . .
“I ain’t gonna let my kids end up in them foster homes again. Them people was mean to my babies,” Demarla muttered.
I pictured the sibs in foster care with strangers who might be mean to them. No matter what, I couldn’t let that happen.
My mind went into a tailspin, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on anything. Demarla’s voice seemed far away. “We gonna do the lesson thang? Hey? We gonna do this?”
I tried to shake off the cacophony of thought, to get focused. I was vaguely aware of Demarla leaning over, fishing something from her purse, and setting it on the table. “That bookstore lady send this book home with my kids yes’aday. I wanna know what it say. I tell them the wrong word, they gonna end up dumb as their mama.” She turned to me, and for an instant, I felt a connection. “We read this book?”
Clearing my throat, I opened the reading folder. “Let’s do the lesson on word decoding first. It’ll help.”
Demarla’s lips twisted into a smirk-smile that, for once, wasn’t unfriendly. “We gonna read my kids’ book after?”
“Sure,” I said.
“It’s Jonah and the whale. I can figure that much.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, let’s decode that crap about the cat run up the tree, then, if that’s what we gotta do. Dumb cat.” Demarla crossed her arms, and I chuckled. “Your headache get better?”
“Some,” I said, and we started on the lesson. By the time class was over, we’d gone through Jonah and the Whale enough times that Demarla could read it with her kids.
As soon as the room began clearing out, Shasta found her way to my table. Her face was lined with concern, and she was chewing a fingernail. “The voodoo lady was here again. Did you see her? You saw her, right? She just stands there holding her stupid backpack, watching. I’m telling you, it’s spooky. And then, as soon as we finish the lesson and close the book, she walks out the door. Not a word to anybody. Tell me you saw her, because otherwise I’ll think I’m going nuts. It’s just . . . weird. She’s so weird.”
“I saw her. I don’t think she means any harm.” Right now, even Shasta’s upset couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I’d arrived thinking that either Demarla or I would finally give it up and walk out today, but instead, we’d read Jonah and the Whale.
“Nobody says a word to her; have you noticed that? Not Mrs. Kaye, or the teacher, or Pastor Al. It’s like she isn’t even here.” Shasta’s gaze darted around the room, where students and other tutors were filing out. The college kids were in the usual hurry to get back to their own neighborhood, and the clients in a rush to gather kids from the nursery and walk home or catch the bus.
“They need to, like, tell her to move on or something, you know?” Shasta complained. “How’re we supposed to do anything with some creepy lady hanging over our shoulders all the time? She makes me so nervous I can’t even think about the lesson.”
For once, I wasn’t ready for Shasta’s level of drama. I wanted to enjoy the leftover feelings of success instead of dealing with yet another problem. “Maybe she’s just a little . . . I don’t know, off or something. Maybe Pastor Al figures that if she watches for a while, she’ll get interested in joining a class. Maybe that’s her spot.” I shrugged vaguely in the direction of the door. “When my grandfather was in the nursing home, there was a patient with dementia who sat in the same chair for hours every day. He’d get up and walk to the door, then go sit back down, then walk to the door, then sit back down
. Always in the same chair. If somebody else sat in the chair, it really set him off.”
Shasta’s eyes widened as we went out the door. “Well, that’s comforting. Thanks a lot.”
I hip-butted her as we started down the sidewalk to the children’s building. “You’re welcome. Hey, just think, you’re such a good tutor, they’re standing in line.”
“Pppfff!” Shasta rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“You are good at it. It suits you. I think you’re a natural-born teacher. You ought to look into it—you know, take some college classes toward a degree. You’d be great.”
Shasta’s lips twisted contemplatively, and her dark eyes glittered in the glow of a streetlamp beside the memory garden. “Yeah, right.” She slid her hand over her stomach, and the smile faded.
As we gathered up the kids and headed home, I considered the mess Shasta was in. I’d thought Barbie’s serial pregnancies were crazy, but at the time, Barbie had all the resources in the world to support the sibs financially and help raise them. Shasta had almost nothing—no one but herself and Cody, who was working at least fourteen hours a day to pay the bills. I wasn’t much on finances myself—I’d never had to be—but my father had impressed upon me that life steps needed to be taken in the right order. Education. Job. Marriage. Savings plan. House.
Raising a family was difficult under the best of circumstances. . . .
Then again, the best of circumstances hadn’t kept my parents together, or prevented my father and Barbie from making a mess of everything. The problems on this side of town weren’t so different from problems on the other side; it just didn’t make news when a family collapsed around here.
Shasta looked solemn as we pulled into her driveway. She sagged forward in the passenger seat after having been abnormally silent on the way home. In the back, the kids were yawning in their seats, but Shasta lingered for a moment before pulling the door handle and sliding wearily to her feet. Her purse spilled into the floorboard, and while she gathered the contents, I exited the car and helped Benjamin and Tyler climb out the back. Tyler wrapped himself around me, and I carried him to the carport door instead of handing him over to his mom. Shasta let the boys in and kicked her shoes off inside the door, then walked to the edge of the carport with me in her stocking feet.
“You haven’t told Cody about the baby yet, huh?” I asked, guessing at the reason for her sudden change of mood. I was probably sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. Our friendship was still fragile, like a new bloom, filled with potential yet delicate.
She pushed her hands into her jeans pockets and kicked a pebble off the cement, keeping her voice hushed, as if she were afraid the boys could hear through the wall. “He’s just so tired when he comes home every night, and between the truck and the new house and the credit cards, we’ve got so many bills . . . well . . . it’s just that . . . Cody got it in his head that he didn’t want another baby, you know, so it’s a touchy subject. As soon as he can take a couple days off, he wants to go get a vasectomy—like, no matter what I say about it, or how I feel, and I just . . . panicked. I know it was stupid. It wasn’t a good time, but I kept thinking, I want my baby girl. I always pictured that I’d have a daughter, and we’d be close and share secrets, and talk about hair and makeup and stuff. When Cody got so determined, I thought, If this is my only chance, I’m taking it, and so I got pregnant. I guess I told myself that wasn’t any worse than him deciding we weren’t gonna have any more kids, no matter what I said.”
“It is different.” I couldn’t help thinking about my dad and Barbie, and the last two in vitros, which she had arranged largely on her own. He didn’t want more kids. He didn’t even really want the twins. It was all about what Barbie decided she needed, what she wanted. It wasn’t about the children and what was best for them. “Kids deserve to have two parents who want them.”
Shasta’s eyes met mine, looked deep inside, and I knew she understood. “I think about that.” Her voice was hoarse, ragged. “I’m afraid if Cody doesn’t want this baby . . . if he blames the baby for what I did . . . I’d never want that for my kids, you know?”
I did know. I understood.
Something collided with the inside of the car windshield, then slid down and landed on the dash. A McDonald’s toy. The Four wouldn’t last much longer before mass destruction set in. They were tired. They needed baths, a story, and bedtime before things got out of hand. Across the street, the house was dark, except for the television flickering in the living room. Aunt Lute was probably already in bed, sound asleep with her earplugs in, as usual. For whatever reason, she always turned off the lights but left the TV playing a DVD.
Shasta reached out and hugged me. We clung to each other in the dim carport light until finally something heavier hit the car window. “You better go,” she whispered. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. No lunch at the Summer Kitchen. Want to take the kids down to the bookstore?”
“Sure. See you in the morning.”
We parted ways, and I backed the Escalade across the street and into our driveway. The sibs were surprisingly docile getting out of the car and entering the house through the garage door. They followed me through the kitchen, no pushing or shoving as we threaded our way around fallen toys and stacks of boxes. On the other side of the wall, a DVD was playing on the TV, the sound blaring so loudly it was hard to believe Aunt Lute could be asleep, even in the back bedroom with earplugs in. As we rounded the corner into the dining room, the boys put their hands over their ears and Jewel twisted in my arms, trying to locate the source of the noise.
Through the doorway, I could see Barbie on the sofa—home early, for a change. Actually sitting up, rather than splayed across the sofa cushions, sleeping off her latest trip to the clubs on Lower Greenville with Fawn. She was wearing a slinky black minidress, skin-tight, but in an upscale way. Her shoes and purse lay scattered on the floor beside her, as if she’d dropped them in a hurry.
Daniel’s foot caught one of the dining chairs, producing a loud scraping noise, audible even over the TV. Barbie’s head snapped toward us, and before we’d crossed the threshold, she was through the living room, yanking Jewel out of my arms. Her eyes were wide, circled with black, her cheeks stained with tinted tears.
Fear shot through me, whipping the relaxed weariness of the evening into an ominous rush of adrenaline. “Barbara, what’s the matter?”
Eyes flaring, she grabbed the boys with clumsy, aggressive movements, pulling them by their arms or their shirts, dragging them, stumbling, into the living room and backing them against the sofa. “You can’t just take them,” she growled, her voice low, guttural, unfocused, so that it was hard to tell whether she was talking to me, or just babbling incoherently. I could smell alcohol from across the room. “You can’t just go.”
“Barbara, what are you talking about? What’s the matter? Is Aunt Lute all right?” Sidestepping, I checked the hall. The bedroom door was closed, the light turned off. Had Aunt Lute locked herself in her room to get away from Barbie?
On the sofa, the sibs sat wide-eyed, unmoving, their faces pinched, slowly turning pale. Landon’s eyes welled, small blue pools reflecting the colored light of the TV.
“You guys go on back to your bedroom.” I took a step toward Barbie, and she moved in front of me, spinning around so fast that Jewel’s torso whipped outward, then back in, colliding with Barbie’s breast. The baby’s lips puckered and trembled. She turned a frightened expression toward me.
“Barbara, you’re scaring her.” I reached for Jewel, but Barbie yanked her away, twisting so that her shoulder was between the baby and me. “Stop it!” I yelled. “What’s wrong with you?”
Jewel whimpered, and Barbie faced me with her teeth clenched and her eyes narrow slits under strings of hair that had lost their curl during another evening out. “You can’t just take off with my kids!” she screamed. “You can’t just take off with them!”
I stepped back, blindsided. “Wha . . . take off . . . what are you
talking about? We went down to the church on the corner.”
Barbie’s fist shot toward me, the index finger pointed, stabbing my purse. “I called. I called over and over and over. No one answered. No one picked up.” Her voice rose to a shriek, eclipsing the TV, piercing the air with sharp arrows of sound. On the sofa, the boys scooted backward, wedged themselves against the cushions. Landon pushed closer to Mark, and Mark wrapped slim arms around his brothers, a colored paper fish from craft time still clutched in his hand.
I blinked, trying to find a reality in which Barbie made sense. For weeks now, she’d been walking through the house in a fog, acting as if the kids didn’t exist, as if they were anyone’s responsibility but hers. Now she was accusing me of taking them without permission? Anger rose in me, boiled, spewed over, hot and bitter.
Daniel slid off the sofa and ran past Barbie, collided with me and held on, his arms locked around my waist. Barbie snatched at his T-shirt, and I moved him away. “Stop it, Barbie. Leave him alone!”
“They’re mine. They’re my kids!” She lunged at Daniel again, and my arm came up out of reflex, knocking her off balance so that she stumbled backward and collided with the coffee table. For a brief, horrifying moment, she was spinning sideways, falling, the baby’s arms flailing in the air, her head snapping backward, then hitting Barbie’s chest. Barbie gasped, caught herself on the sofa arm, stopped her fall, and clung to Jewel.
The baby wailed.
My heart hitched in my chest. “Stop it! Cut it out!” The words bounced around the room, crashing against objects like a bird trapped indoors, madly seeking escape. Everything, all the feelings I’d been tucking in silent corners, rushed to the surface. I wanted to hurt someone, anyone—Barbie, my father, my mother. “You’re right, Barbie. They are your kids. You’re their mother. Why don’t you try taking care of them for a change? Why don’t you get out of bed and stop feeling sorry for yourself and stop running off with Fawn and guzzling mixed drinks? Why don’t you stop waiting for my dad to come back and fix things? Maybe he isn’t coming—did you ever think of that?” Even as I said the words, part of me rebelled against them. Of course he would return. He had to. “Maybe you need to stop waiting and start figuring out how to take care of yourself . . . and them. You’re their mom. Act like it.”