Man Enough For Me

by Rhonda Bowen

“The usual,” he said wryly. “He came home—drunk—and started an argument with her. Then he hit her.”

  Jules gasped involuntarily, and looked down at Soroya. The girl’s sobs had subsided into quiet whimpers.

  “He’s done that before,” Germaine continued, deadpan. “But this time, I guess she argued back, and he really gave it to her. When the ambulance got there, they said she was barely breathing.”

  Germaine’s voice tightened, and he looked down at the ground as he spoke. She could hear the barely restrained anger in his voice.

  “Her jaw is … busted open. Her eyes are swollen. And the doctors say he broke one of her ribs.”

  “Oh, Germaine,” Jules said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  She reached up to place a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched, and she pulled back. His reaction hurt her more than she thought it would. She looked away, and blinked back the tears that sprang to her eyes.

  “Where is she now?” Jules asked quietly.

  “She’s in surgery. They’re making sure that there’s no internal bleeding, and that her broken rib doesn’t puncture her lung.”

  “I’m sorry, Germaine.”

  Jules felt stupid apologizing for something she didn’t do and had no control over. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Jules looked down at Soroya, who was lying still in her lap. The trauma of the evening’s events had clearly taken a toll on the young girl, and she had fallen dead asleep. Suddenly a thought occurred to her.

  “Did he …”

  “No,” Germaine said, reading her mind. “He didn’t lay a finger on ‘Roya. If he had …”

  Jules saw his jaw tighten and his hands ball into fists. She wondered what Germaine would do to the man if he ever got near him. A part of her did not want to know. From the anger that she saw brewing inside him, there was no telling what Germaine was capable of.

  Not caring whether or not he pulled away, she slipped her arm through his arm, and her hand into his, threading their fingers together. Instead of resisting, Germaine squeezed her hand tightly between both of his and looked away, but not before Jules saw his eyes moisten. She felt her own tears form as she watched his anger give way to pain and fear. If there was anything she could have done to take that away from him, she would have.

  He didn’t say anything, but only rested the back of her hand against his lips, as Jules laid her cheek against his shoulder. And there, in silence, the three of them waited, until the surgery was over.

  “Mr. Williams?”

  Germaine looked up at the doctor who had been operating on his mother. It had been two hours since they took his mother into surgery, and he had gotten no updates on how things were going.

  Jules saw the nervousness on Germaine’s face as he looked up at the doctor expectantly. She cringed as she felt his grip on her hand tighten painfully.

  “Babe, my hand.”

  Germaine looked up at Jules suddenly, and Jules instantly wished she could sink through the floor.

  He let go of her and stood up to talk to the doctor. Jules looked down at her hand, which now felt unusually cold, before burying it in her lap.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Germaine asked nervously.

  “We found some internal bleeding,” the doctor said soberly. “We want to keep her here for observation for a couple days, just to make sure everything is okay, but she should be fine.”

  Jules watched as Germaine’s features relaxed.

  “Can I see my momma now?” Soroya asked. She had woken up as soon as the doctor had started speaking.

  “Sure you can,” the doctor said, smiling. “She is awake, so you can talk to her. But she will need her rest, so you can’t stay too long.”

  Before the doctor was finished speaking, Soroya was up and halfway down the hall, with Germaine only a few steps behind her. She suddenly stopped and turned to look back at Jules, who was still sitting on the waiting room sofa, rubbing her hand.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Soroya asked innocently.

  Jules looked at the little girl and then up at Germaine, who was avoiding her eyes. She sighed. “No, you go ahead. I’ll be right here when you get back,” Jules said, offering a brief smile. Soroya glanced up at Germaine and gave him a nasty look before continuing down the hallway. A few moments later, the two of them disappeared into a doorway off to the side, leaving Jules sitting alone.

  Jules looked around the hospital waiting room. Posters on everything from hand washing to HIV testing hung in the waiting area. A small TV showing Nick at Nite was perched near the ceiling in the corner, but no one seemed to be paying attention.

  As usual the waiting room was fully occupied with a diverse mix of waiting patients and accompanying family members and visitors. Jules glanced over at a frail old man with cotton-white hair who kept nodding off. A few seats beside him, a girl who looked to be about Jules’s age held the hand of a younger guy with his right leg in a cast who appeared to be her boyfriend. The guy looked like he was in pain. Jules wondered how long they had been waiting. Across from them a teenage girl in tight yellow jeans and several gold bangles lay across several seats with her head in her friend’s lap. The friend snapped her gum loudly and glared at Jules when she caught her staring.

  Jules turned her eyes away, back to the hallway, where a constant stream of nurses, hospital staff, doctors, and patients moved back and forth. If it hadn’t been for the clock on the wall nearby, Jules would have thought it was the middle of the day, for how busy it was.

  Absently Jules wondered how long she should stay there. Maybe no one expected her to stay. But then, she had promised Soroya she would be here when she got back, so she couldn’t leave.

  She sighed heavily, wishing things were different between her and Germaine. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have to wonder so much about what she should do, or be so careful about what she said. She thought back to her earlier conversation with her mother and closed her eyes.

  Lord, I don’t have a clue what to do. Guide me in how to relate to Germaine, and to Soroya and this whole situation. And most important, please help Germaine’s mom to be okay. You know that it’s been hard for him since he lost his father, and that he feels alone sometimes. Please don’t let him lose his mom too. He needs her. All this I ask in Your name. Amen.

  When Jules opened her eyes, she found Germaine standing over her.

  “Falling asleep?”

  “Actually, I was praying,” Jules said, too tired to muster up anything other than the whole truth.

  “Oh, yeah?” Germaine asked, sitting down on the sofa. “For what?”

  “More like for who,” Jules corrected. “Your mom. Soroya. You.”

  “That was nice of you,” Germaine said.

  Jules shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to respond to that. She decided to be quiet and just wait for Germaine to speak. The less she said, the smaller the chance that she would slip up and say something awkward as she had before.

  “I was hoping you could do something for me,” Germaine said slowly.

  “Anything,” Jules answered before she could stop herself. She cringed at the desperation in her own voice.

  “I’m gonna stay here with my mom tonight, but I don’t want Soroya staying in the hospital overnight. I’m not even sure they’ll let her. Can you … can she stay with you for tonight? I know it would be an imposition, but we don’t really have any other family. Truuth will be back in a couple days so—”

  “It’s fine, Germaine. She can stay for as long as she wants,” Jules assured him.

  She wasn’t quite certain where in her one-bedroom apartment she was going to put Soroya, but at that point, she would have said yes if he had asked her to bring him water from the moon.

  “Thanks so much, Jules,” Germaine said, his beautiful hazel eyes staring at her gratefully. Jules drank it all in. She didn’t know when, if ever, he would look at her like that again.

  He got up and disappeared down the hall b
efore reappearing with a whining Soroya.

  “… but I want to stay here with you and Momma,” Soroya said in a singsong voice. Even as Soroya protested, Jules could see the little girl’s eyes were already half-shut. Jules knew that in no time at all Soroya would be asleep.

  “But you can’t,” Germaine said patiently. “So you go with Jules tonight, and tomorrow she’ll bring you back here, okay?”

  Soroya pouted her little girl lips, but let her brother help her into her fall jacket anyway. Jules watched in admiration as Germaine’s hands moved patiently, enduring Soroya’s twists and turns.

  “Thank you,” he said again, once he was finished.

  “No problem,” Jules said with a small smile, as she took Soroya’s hand and led her down the hallway toward the hospital exit.

  As they walked away she tried to resist the urge to look back at him. But halfway down the passage, she caved and snuck a glance behind her. She was pleasantly surprised to see him watching them make their exit. From the distance, it was hard to read the expression on his face. She suspected it would have been no easier even if she were standing right in front of him. She sighed as she led a sleepy Soroya toward the parking lot.

  Oh, Germaine, what I wouldn’t give to know what you’re thinking.

  Chapter 23

  The next morning when Jules opened her eyes she found a pair of large hazel ones staring back at her.

  “Thank God. I thought you were gonna sleep forever,” Soroya said, one hand cocked on her hip precociously.

  Jules raised one eyebrow at the girl who was standing over her.

  “I know you know better than to use the Lord’s name like that,” Jules said.

  Soroya looked instantly repentant, and Jules felt her heart soften toward the girl.

  “Have you said your prayers yet?”

  “No,” Soroya said. “I was waiting on you to get up.”

  “Well, I’m up now,” Jules said, sitting up in the sofa bed she had pulled out in the middle of the living room. As she looked around at the disarray of her apartment, she began to remember in full the events of the evening before.

  She had gotten back to her apartment with Soroya at about 2 a.m. By that time, the poor girl had been so drained that Jules had barely managed to change her out of her street clothes into one of Jules’s T-shirts and put her to sleep.

  Jules had given Soroya her queen-sized bed, and then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to pull out and set up the sofa bed she had bought in case Davis, or Maxine, or some other friend needed to stay over night. By the time she had finished getting sheets and blankets, she was so tired that she fell asleep the instant her head hit the pillow. However, even though that was almost six hours ago, Jules felt like she had barely slept a wink.

  Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Soroya watching her expectantly.

  “All right, let’s have it,” Jules said, kneeling down with the girl to say morning prayers.

  When they were through, Jules stood up and began to fold the bed sheets. Soroya watched her curiously for a moment, before grabbing the fitted sheet and doing the same with it.

  Jules watched the girl’s small dextrous hands quickly fold the sheet on her own with practiced ease. She had glanced into the bedroom a moment earlier and noticed that the bed Soroya had slept in was already made as well. It was clear that this little woman was very self-sufficient.

  However, Jules wasn’t fooled by Soroya’s show of maturity. She knew that underneath it all she was still a tired little girl who wanted desperately to be just that—a little girl. Moments like last night in the hospital, when she had curled up in Jules’s lap, were a reminder of that fact.

  “Okay, that’s done,” Soroya said, looking up at Jules as if to say what next.

  “I’m gonna make us some breakfast quick, so we can get you back to the hospital to see your mom,” Jules said, heading toward the kitchen. “I left a washcloth and toothbrush on the bathroom sink for you last night, so you can go wash up.”

  Jules could hear the girl moving around in the bathroom, as she cut up potatoes and beat eggs for omelettes. Something was bothering her, but she didn’t know how to ask Soroya without seeming nosy or upsetting her. She decided to take a roundabout approach.

  “Hey, Soroya, did you guys call anybody else when you got to the hospital, just to let them know where you were?”

  Jules heard the faucet stop running for a moment.

  “No.”

  Then the swishing from the faucet started again.

  “I’m sure there are people who would be concerned about your mom’s being in the hospital.”

  The faucet went off again. And Jules heard silence.

  “You mean how come there was no one else for me to stay with,” Soroya said knowingly from the kitchen entranceway.

  Jules stopped slicing and looked around at the girl. She should have guessed that Soroya would be smart enough to figure out what she was really asking.

  “My momma doesn’t want anyone to know my dad beats her,” Soroya said in answer to Jules’s unasked question. “They probably wouldn’t believe her anyway.”

  Soroya turned and left the kitchen, and after a few moments Jules heard the water running again. She sighed and turned back to the breakfast, understanding completely why Soroya acted like she was twenty instead of ten.

  After eating quickly, Jules and Soroya left for the hospital. All the maturity Soroya had displayed that morning seemed to disappear the closer they got to Toronto Grace. By the time they got to the hospital she had morphed into the anxious little girl from the night before.

  As they approached the sliding hospital doors, she slipped her hand into Jules’s and stayed close to her while they walked down the corridors toward her mother’s room.

  They were just in time to see Soroya’s mother begin to stir awake.

  “Momma!” Soroya exclaimed, forgetting about Jules and rushing to her mother’s side.

  She climbed gingerly onto the side of the bed as her mother wrapped her arms around her. Feeling as if she was intruding on a private moment, Jules looked away. Her eyes fell on Germaine, who was watching her from a chair pulled up to the other side of his mother’s bed.

  His eyes were bloodshot, and his clothes rumpled from sleeping in the chair. There was slight stubble on his jaw from not having shaved in a few days, and somehow his low cut hair managed to look unkempt. She could tell that he was tired. He tried to sit up, but even that seemed to require a huge amount of effort for him. The truth was he looked horrible. Jules couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  He seemed to be having a similar problem.

  They were so lost in each other that neither Jules nor Germaine noticed Germaine’s mother looking back and forth between the two of them curiously.

  “Well, Germaine, are you gonna sit there eyeballin’ this girl all morning, or are you gonna introduce her to your momma?”

  Germaine looked across at his mother as if suddenly remembering she was there. From the look that she gave him in return, Jules knew that any introduction would be merely a formality.

  “Oh, uh, Mom, this is Jules; Jules, this is my mother, Joan Bailey,” he said distractedly. Jules noticed that his eyes never seemed to leave her for more than a few seconds. Feeling very self-conscious, she turned to his mother.

  “Hi, Mrs. Bailey,” she said nervously.

  She had always wanted to meet the mother of the man who seemed to have embedded himself in her heart. She would have preferred, however, that it had been under different circumstances.

  Joan Bailey narrowed her eyes at Jules. “You the one that’s been looking after my daughter all night?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that would be me,” Jules said quietly.

  Joan stared at Jules a moment longer before her gaze softened.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “My daughter doesn’t really take to people too quickly, so you must be okay if she let you take care of her.”

  Jules let out a breath she
didn’t know she had been holding. For some reason the approval of Germaine’s mother had meant a lot to her. She didn’t know why, since she was no longer with him, and probably never would be again.

  “She’s Truuth’s friend,” Soroya said, from her spot tucked away in her mother’s arm. “She’s all right.”

  Seeing her mother awake and strong seemed to boost Soroya’s energy, and she was soon chatting away, until both she and her mother seemed to forget anyone else was in the room. Jules smiled and shook her head. Watching Soroya bounce between moods was enough to make anyone’s head spin.

  She felt Germaine’s eyes on her again, and sure enough when she looked up she found him watching her from across the room. Jules shivered when she noticed that he wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was staring.

  “Did she give you any trouble?” he asked after a moment.

  Jules shook her head. “Not at all. She was a dream.”

  Germaine raised an eyebrow skeptically, and Jules couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “I’m serious,” Jules said. “She slept all night, and helped me out a bit this morning.”

  He looked relieved. Jules ached to put her arms around him and make everything else he was worrying about go away. Instead she offered him the small bag she had carried with her from the car.

  “What’s this?” he asked, taking peeking inside at the small glass container.

  “It’s breakfast,” Jules said.

  All of a sudden she felt nervous.

  “I figured that you maybe hadn’t eaten yet, and so when I made breakfast for Soroya and me, I thought I would bring you some. You don’t have to have it if you don’t want to. If you already ate it’s okay, I just thought I would …”

  Jules noticed the small smile playing at the corners of Germaine’s lips, and she forced herself to stop babbling.

  “There’s a fork in the bag too,” she said, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves.

  Come on, Jules, it’s just Germaine. Get a grip.

  “Thanks, Jules, but I gotta make sure my mom gets something first,” Germaine said.

  “Boy, I ate breakfast this morning while you were over there sleeping,” Joan said dismissively. “Quit hovering over me, and go eat something. Get some air, both of you, and let me spend some time alone with my daughter.”