Speak 2 U Soon

by Van Thomas

Darius, Mama.” But really, I was. Only when he was drinking, though. That’s it. I wish Darius was one of those silly drunks, the ones that trip over things and laugh a lot. The ones you can tuck into bed when you get tired of dealing with them. But Darius has three stages of drunk: mean, meaner, and meanest. I’m sure he’d gone out for more booze and that meant only trouble for me and Mama.

  “I locked both the doors and put the kitchen table next to the front one,” Mama said pointing to our table, now against the wall in the living room instead of in the kitchen. I’d put C.J. in his crib with a bottle of milk. A friend of a friend of Mama’s had just brought the crib over one day, left it by our door, even had the screws and bolts taped up in a little baggie. “That sure was nice,” Mama said a whole bunch of times. Now that C.J. was crawling and into everything, that crib kept him safe. Especially at times like this when the safest place for him to be was in the backroom in a little cell in he couldn’t break out of.

  My heart about stopped when I heard Darius turn the front door knob. He kept at it ‘til he gave up getting in, or so me and Mama thought. Then, he went around to the back door. That was the door he had a key to, but Mama had dead bolted it from the inside. Even in his drunken state, Darius had the sense to know he’d never get past the latch. It got real quiet and I thought maybe he’d really given up; maybe he’d just mosey over to drink with his family and spend the night there. He was always threatening Mama that he was going to move out and leave us destitute.

  “You’re lucky I keep you up,” he tells Mama. “No one else would. No one will ever want to be with you now. You know that, don’t you? Sure, they might sleep with you, but they won’t stick around after that. You’re just some other guy’s leftovers.”

  He just says that so Mama won’t leave, so she’ll start believing what he says is true: that Darius is all she has in the world besides me and C.J.

  The sound of Darius breaking through the front door made me and Mama jump sky-high. The table went flying and landed upside down on the living room carpet. Mama and me, quick as lightening, ran to the backroom and locked the door. That door didn’t have any kind of real lock on it. Once, Mama had accidentally locked C.J. in there when he was real tiny. She used a hairpin and popped it open in no time.

  C.J. started screaming when Darius tried to get in the bedroom. Mama had sat down on the floor, her back against the bed and her legs locked straight, she put her feet against the door and used all the strength of her leg muscles to keep him out.

  One of our neighbors must have called the cops because as soon as those sirens started, Darius took off. Mama released the tension in her legs and drew her knees up close, wrapping her arms around her legs and putting her head down. “Never again, Raven, baby,” she said to me as I put C.J. on my hip and rocked him back and forth. “Never again.”

  22

  Sutures

  Mom told me I’d almost severed the tendons in my left wrist. That I was lucky I had such good doctors to sew me back together because otherwise, I might not have the use of my hand. I’d never thought about what might happen if I didn’t succeed. How I might hurt myself so badly that I’d be disabled. Those thoughts never crossed my mind. When you’re that depressed, your mind doesn’t think rationally. All I knew was that I had nothing to live for and everything to die for.

  I walked out of class when they laughed at me. But, I waited for Calli, hoping she’d come running up to ask me what was wrong, to offer her friendship, her funny take on the guy she liked in class, a chance to laugh at whatever antics she’d used in her wide arsenal to win his affections. Sometimes, friendship is overrated.

  “Julie, why did you do this?” Mommy asked crying. I sat on an examining table wearing a hospital gown, but I couldn’t piece together how I got there. Someone had given me a bucket to throw up in and my wrists were wrapped in gauze.

  “If you don’t die, Julie, I promise I’ll go back to church,” Grandma said, sitting next to Mom. “I made a deal with God on the way over, but you can’t die.”

  Mom started to cry again. “Julie? Why? Honey, I can’t go on without you. I can’t lose you, too.”

  23

  Consequences

  We had to ride home from the hospital in a cab. Pablo and Precious and Juanita had all left hours before, but the doctors had to take x-rays of my head to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. When Dad wheeled me out, a police officer met us in the hospital’s driveway.

  “Son, I don’t want to ever see your face again, do you understand me?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and I meant it.

  “You not only risked your life, you risked the lives of your friends and the lives of innocent people out on the road last night.”

  I nodded and looked down ashamedly.

  “It would be bad, yes, if you had died, but imagine how you’d feel if you killed someone? That would be even worse, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

  I kept my head down.

  “And you stole your dad’s truck? A vehicle is a tool, not a toy. I’m issuing you a criminal citation for this offense. I’m charging you with driving without a license, speeding, and theft.”

  The realization of what I’d done was just beginning to sink in. I’d stolen my family’s only means of transportation and driven it into a tree.

  “Jorge, watch out! I think there’s a cop behind us,” Juanita had yelled over the music and the wind blowing through the cab with both windows down.

  “Man, it’s the Po Po,” Pablo reached over the girls and hit my shoulder. “Wake up, man. Drive faster! You gotta ditch him.”

  I pushed the accelerator down as far as it would go and gunned it.

  “Turn there!” Juanita screamed. “There, Jorge! You gotta lose him!”

  I remember leaning into Juanita to make the sharp right and then turning my head back all the way to the left to see if I’d lost him. The girls started screaming. I whipped my head back around, but it was too late. The truck was headed straight into a tree and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  24

  Mr. Vala

  Four police officers had walked through our tiny apartment that night. Mama explained the fight was over Darius throwing out our dinner, that he’d been drinking, and he’d told Mama he was ‘going to teacher her a lesson.” They asked Mama if she wanted to press charges and she said no. She told them she was going to ask Darius to leave and she’d never let him back, not after tonight.

  One officer talked to me, too. He asked me if I’d been scared and I told him yes. Then, he asked me to show him around the apartment. He took notes the whole time I talked. I could see the other two police officers looking in the kitchen cupboards, checking in our fridge, walking around me while I was explaining our sleeping arrangement, looking in our bedroom closet, C.J.’s crib, and the one bed me and Mama shared if Darius wasn’t around. Otherwise, I slept on the couch.

  “If you have any more problems tonight, Ms. Wilson, please call us back. That’s what we’re here for, to help.”

  “Keisha?” I heard someone calling from our front door the next morning. “Keisha? Are you up? Raven? Honey, it’s Ms. Stevens from next door. I got something that belongs to you.”

  Mama came back into the bedroom with a slip of paper and a worried expression.

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “They sent out social workers last night to see us, only they came to the wrong door.”

  I held my hand out and Mama gave me the paper.

  Dear Ms. Wilson,

  I made a visit on the night of 09/23/09 per request of the police.

  I would like to make a home visit on Monday, Sept. 26, 2009, at 11 a.m. to talk/meet you and your child(ren).

  If the above date and time is not convenient for you, please call me at (714) 452-0631, or toll free at 1-888-98
2-1042, ext. 13260 as soon as possible so we can schedule another date and time. If I am not at my desk, please leave me a message on my voice mail.

  Please call me to confirm receipt of this letter. Please report any address or phone number changes immediately.

  Sincerely,

  Oscar M. Vala Social Worker III

  Do your mother and Darius ever argue in front of you and the baby?” Mr. Vala asked me on Monday when he showed up. Mama said we had better go along with the meeting, otherwise there’d be more trouble for us.

  “Sometimes,” I admitted. I knew I couldn’t say no because the whole reason Mr. Vala was here was because of the fight between Darius and Mama.

  “Has Mr. Jones, Darius, ever hit your mother?”

  “No, he hasn’t.” That I did lie about. One time when Darius was drunk, he got mad at Mama over something or other and pushed her as hard as he could. She went flying backwards and landed on the couch, just inches away from where C.J. was sleeping.

  “Does your Mother ever hit you?”

  “No, she doesn’t.” I looked behind me into the living room to see if Mama had come back, but she was still in the backroom. Mr. Vala had told her he had to talk to interview me alone, that it was “state procedure” to do so.

  “Do you and your brother ever take a bath together?” he asked.

  “No, he’s a baby. I give him baths sometimes to help Mama when she’s cooking dinner.”

  “Do you have enough food to eat? Do you ever go hungry?”

  “We