by Nikki Woods
I sighed with frustration. Frustration worked up into a third wave of rage until I stepped onto the landing and looked into the face of sweetness and innocence, and a burst of maternal warmth surged inside of me. No way could I leave Teeka behind to face life on her own, to feel alone and unloved. Sharneesha was free to screw up her own life, God bless her, but I wouldn’t let her screw up Teeka’s.
Picking her up, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around me, I said, “Well, I talked to your mommy and she’s not going on the trip with us after all.”
“Why not, ‘ingston?” Teeka wailed. “I want my Mommy to go, too!” Her legs kicking in protest as I carried her upstairs.
“I know you do.” I gathered her close to me, bony knees angled against my rib cage. “But she’s got this great new job and can’t leave right away. But she’ll join us as soon as she can.” The lies came too easily, but I refused to feel bad; at least they were for a good cause.
“But who’s going to take care of me? That’s what mommies do.” Teeka’s eyes brightened with tears and her mouth quivered.
I kissed her on the forehead as she laid her cheek on my shoulder. All I wanted to do was reassure her that she would be safe.
I tilted her head until she was looking at me, her eyes deep pools of confused sorrow. “ I’m gonna take care of you. Sometimes mommies need a little bit of help. That’s all.” I grabbed an extra blanket from the closet, covering her with the thick fleece, pushing the edges underneath. “Tuck, tuck, night, night, everything’s going to be all right,” I sang the same way my mother did for me and she smiled before rolling over and facing the wall.
“’Ingston?”
“Yes?”
Brushing a hand across her burrowed forehead, tweaking an ear on the worn bunny she held in her death grip. She looked at me again, her eyes still blurry with confusion. “Where Mommy go?”
I avoided her eyes, didn’t want to face the pain and disappointment that were surely reflected in them. So with no answer to give, I simply kissed her on the cheek and turned off the light. Wishes of sweet dreams caught in my throat, knowing that neither one of us would have any of those tonight.
* * *
When I checked on Teeka for the fifth time, she was humming softly from her nose and sucking a finger contentedly, as if there wasn’t a care in the world. But for me, her words, “ Where Mommy go?” still hung in the air and sleep was not coming easily.
“I’m going to take care of you,” I reaffirmed in the darkness, but my words sounded dull and far away as if they belonged to someone else. The blackness caused my fears to scurry around like rats before light hits them.
Who was I fooling? I didn’t know squat about taking care of a four-year-old and my certainty about not letting anything happen to her was wavering. Hell, I wasn’t even doing that great of a job of not letting anything happen to me.
Padding to the bathroom, I turned on the light, leaving the door cracked so if she needed to, Teeka would be able to find the bathroom. When I returned to my room, I sank to the floor beside my bed, dropped my head into my hands and cried until I was too tired to care anymore. I cried for Mama Grace, I cried for Essence, but mostly I cried for myself, feeling weak and powerless to fight against the sense of betrayal seeping into my bones.
As much as I had tried to stave off the pain I felt at what Essence had done, it now swept me up like a level five hurricane, then tossed me back to the ground, just an empty shell. In its wake, I was faced with a startling realization: maybe it was so hard for me to forgive Damon because I had never forgiven my father for doing the same thing. The feelings of being ugly and unwanted had been worn like a pair of broken in shoes for most of my life.
So I cried for myself, but I wept for Teeka. It took a long time for sleep to claim me. When it did, it was restless and washed black, the color of pain.
Chapter 31
“Bring your suitcase back here, Teeka,” I said, leading the little girl to the same room that I slept in when I was her age. “This is going to be your bedroom,” I whispered, choking back tears as a hesitant smile lit across her face. My own luggage waited down the hall in Mama Grace’s room. As weird as it felt, my grandmother’s room was now mine.
“And my mommy can sleep here, too, when she comes.” With an earnest look on her face, Teeka touched the bed, pushing at the squares on the patchwork quilt almost as if she didn’t believe it was real.
“Yes, she can,” I lied, running my hand over her rainbow colored barrettes. She gazed around with wide eyes, twirling a braid with her finger. Everything to her was new and magical—from the plane ride to her new home in this tropical paradise. She was curious about it all; the strange accent, the odd smells, and the interesting people.
But the most fabulous thing of all was her new Auntie Bianca. I had called ahead and warned my cousin that I wouldn’t be arriving alone. With nothing more to go on than that, Bianca’s jaw dropped when I showed up with my motley crew of two—a four-legged animal and a four-year-old girl.
She recovered nicely though, hugging first me, then Teeka, patting Cocoa on the head. On the way home, Bianca bought Teeka an ice cream cone and promised her a manicure complete with pink polish. That was all it took. Teeka was a fan for life.
When I flopped onto the couch in the front room, Bianca crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Seems like things have been jumping in your life.” Tossing her head toward the window—where Teeka was outside playing with Cocoa and Toy—her corkscrewed curls of hair dancing around her shoulders.
Between the barks and peels of laughter, I wasn’t concerned about Teeka overhearing me, but I lowered my voice anyway. “Teeka’s mother was my next door neighbor. She was having some problems, lost her job, was about to be evicted, really going through a rough time. To help her out, I suggested that she come with me and she agreed; but then last night, she just dropped Teeka off on my doorstep and disappeared. I couldn’t just leave her.”
Bianca glanced through the window again. “Of course, you couldn’t. You’re not that kind of person. How well did you know Teeka’s mother?”
“Please,” I said, snorting. “I didn’t know her at all. We lived next door to each other for almost a year, but never talked. It was just hi-and-bye until a few days ago.” I crossed my arms, the corners of my mouth drawn down into a sneer. “It blows my mind that a woman could carry a baby for nine months, feel life moving inside of her body, and then leave her with a virtual stranger.”
At that, Bianca sat up, her face screwed up with intensity. “I don’t understand that either, but I guess some women are just not fit to be mothers. Teeka’s mother proves that.” She relaxed against the covers with a disgusted humph. “Have you figured out what you’re gonna do?”
“Keep her,” I said with more certainty than I had felt about anything in a long time. “I can’t bear the thought of her alone in the world. There are too many abandoned babies already. I mean, look at her, who wouldn’t want to have her as a daughter?”
Teeka’s face was lit up with joy, while playing tag with the dogs, peeking from behind one tree before running and hiding behind the next one.
“She’s definitely a cutie. It’s going to be a lot of work, though. Being a mother isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“Like you would know.” Laughing, I flicked a piece of lint off my leg. “Trust me, we’re going to have our challenges. She’s already told me at least ten times that I’m not her real mother so she doesn’t have to listen to me, and I thought we were going to have to restrain her when it was time to board the plane. She didn’t want to leave without her mother and who can blame her? I’d feel the same way.” Shaking my head, I watched her through the window. “She can throw quite the little attitude when she wants to, but I figure I can outlast her,” I said, then smiled. “Thanks for being so nice to her. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable at all, and you put her at ease right away.”
Never one to accept a compliment well, Bianca waved pl
um-pink colored fingernails in the air. “It’s nothing."
“Well, it means everything to me. Family means everything to me. Are you planning on hanging out here for awhile?”
“Yeah, I’ll stick around for a few days. Help you get situated. When do you meet with the lawyer?”
“I haven’t called him yet, but I want to get things underway as soon as possible. If I’m here to do good, then I want to get to it before I change my mind. Plus, I want him to look into how I can legally protect us from Teeka’s wishy-washy mother. I’m not sure how things work now that we’re in Jamaica. But I found out that Teeka’s father signed away all his legal rights when she was born.”
“Are you thinking about adoption?”
I nodded hard. “Definitely. I think that’s the only way to ensure that Teeka is going to have some stability in her life. But I’m doing it for myself, too. I’m already bonding with her and I definitely don’t want to set myself up for heartbreak.”
“Nothing’s foolproof,” Bianca pointed out.
“I know, but I don’t want to be a straight-up fool either.”
“I hear ya’.” Bianca fussed with a curl before looking at me slyly. “By the way, did you get a surprise visitor?”
I threw her a suspicious look, then rolled my eyes. “Did you have something to do with that? You gave Damon my address in Chicago without telling me, didn’t you?”
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
“Thanks,” I snapped, then took a deep breath and let it go. No use in getting upset. Raising Teeka and running both Mama Grace’s estate and MMG’s urban division were the most important things and I had to stay focused. I didn’t have time to run up after some man, especially Damon.
I walked over to the window to check on Teeka. She had moved Pa-pa’s chess table to the middle of the verandah and had set it with pale blue plastic dishes that Queenie had given her. Any minute I expected to see the dogs with teacups in their paws sitting daintily at Teeka’s tea party. I parted the curtain. “How about some fruit punch, Teeka?”
She said something to the dogs before skipping inside. I wiped the dirt from her knees and headed to the kitchen.
“Bianca, are you thirsty, too?” I called.
“I’d sell one of my breasts for a glass of Queenie’s fruit punch.” In anticipation of her day off tomorrow, Queenie had stocked the pantry and the refrigerator with enough food to last a month.
“We wouldn’t want you to go to extremes,” I replied, pouring three glasses of the frothy concoction, adding a plate of cookies to the middle of the table.
Bianca took a long swig, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Don’t I get some cookies, too?”
I almost choked on a mouthful of punch. After clearing my throat, I asked, “Anything interesting going on with family? I know there’s gotta be some juicy rumor ready to be spread around.”
Bianca giggled. “Uncle Winston’s still so mad about this whole estate thing, he’s practically peeing in his pants. Aunt Bea said he was thinking about suing the estate.”
“What the hell is wrong with him?” I shoved my fists into my hips. “He’s always starting some sh. . .” Teeka blinked at me, mouth barely able to contain the three cookies she had crammed in it. “Some stuff. Doesn’t he realize that all of this mess takes away from Mama Grace’s memory?”
“I think there’s still some confusion about where all the money’s going. They, Uncle Winston mainly, think because you’re running the estate that Mama Grace’s fortune,” exaggerated quotes made in the air when she said fortune as if a million dollars were no big deal at all, “is being deposited directly into your pockets. He’s not going to make too much noise, though. Aunt Bea said once he found out how much the lawyer’s fees were going to run him, he abandoned that idea. Plus, Auntie Dawn said she’ll divorce him if he proceeded with the case.”
My mouth popped open. “What? She actually took a stand?”
“Gave him an ultimatum and everything. Aunt Bea said the bastard backed down so fast. I’d have paid good money to have seen that one.”
“Good, I’m too tired for a fight.”
“Well, I hope you’re not too tired for a party, ‘cause that’s what we’re going to have.” Bianca held up a finger when I started to protest. “Wait, just hear me out. I’ve thought this whole thing through. We can have food, music, and games for the kids. It’ll be great.” Bianca waved her hands enthusiastically, a determined look in her eyes. “Can you think of a better way to introduce Mama Grace’s estate to the community than to hold a carnival or how do you say it in the states? A block party?”
“Who’s going to pay for it?”
“It’ll be exciting to write your first official check from Mama Grace’s estate fund, doncha’ think?”
“Bianca . . .”
“Don’t worry, just leave it to me.” She nodded before wrinkling her nose and smiling at me. “I’m gonna take care of everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”
* * *
Uncle Winston crossed one leg over the other, pulling long and hard on a Kool cigarette. The sun had long since risen and now bounced off the layer of Soft Sheen that covered his grayed head.
It was one week later and Queenie had polished the verandah the day before as a part of the pre-carnival cleanup.
The “block party” had turned into an extravaganza of enormous proportions, starting before noon and lasting until the wee hours of the morning. Bianca had strewn paper lanterns, steamers, and balloons across the entire block. The entire community turned out in their Sunday best and devoured an abundance of food and drinks and the festivities had endured despite the persistent swarm of mosquitoes and smoldering heat. Games were the same as we used to play in the states, but with far more interesting names like: Brown Girl in the Ring, Dandy Shandy, and Stucky Ketchy.
We were all sluggish. Cocoa was curled up on the step next to me, snoozing off and on, both of us content to watch the human tug of war between my uncle and the lawyer. Even Bianca was awake, hovering nearby while picking gold tinsel from an overgrown bush. Teeka was the only one granted a reprieve. Under the pretense of taking a nap, she was jumping on the small wire framed bed, squeaks and squeals meshing together.
Mr. Bartlett had scheduled the meeting with me. I had no idea how Uncle Winston found out about it, but the frown deepening the lines on the weathered face of Mama Grace’s attorney showed he was less than pleased.
And he almost said as much when Uncle Winston met him at the gate, then cornered him on the verandah. Uncle Winston wasn’t all that happy either; he slumped back in the wicker chair with a groan of resignation as Mr. Bartlett once again reviewed the finer points of Mama Grace’s will. His one hundred dollars-an-hour attorney fees had whisked through the five hundred dollars retainer and still hadn’t been able to find a loophole that would make Uncle Winston the rich man he thought he deserved to be.
So, after fielding endless questions, Mr. Bartlett was prepared to cut a check just so Uncle Winston would go away. But of course, he couldn’t do that without my approval.
That was a delicious thought. I savored it, allowing a few minutes of silence to pass. Just when I thought Uncle Winston was good and ready to burst, I gave the official nod.
Mr. Bartlett yanked his glasses from his long nose and wiped them with his pinstriped tie, amidst a promise that the check would be in the mail first thing in the morning. Finally, in a finely tuned impervious tone, he asked, “If we’re done, sir?”
Uncle Winston stubbed his cigarette with two fingers, ashes falling carelessly to the ground. Queenie would not be happy. After pulling his baseball cap low on his forehead, and giving Mr. Bartlett a final once over, he hopped in his pick-up truck and drove away.
“I don’t envy you,” Bianca whispered as I followed Mr. Bartlett inside. Luckily, our business was dispensed in less than an hour and he was on his way, a neat stack of paper requiring
my review and signature left on the dining room table.
I pushed them to the side and powered up my laptop. Just as I had suspected, there were at least five e-mails from Jonetta that needed my attention, one from Keela. I opened that one first. I was halfway through Keela’s long list of pregnancy complaints when Bianca strolled into the dining room with Teeka. They both looked like sunflowers, Teeka in a gathered yellow sundress and Bianca in yellow shorts and matching halter-top.
“Wanna walk to the market with us?” she asked, adjusting the band of her top so it covered more of her belly.
“If you have to keep pulling on it, then it’s probably too small,” I muttered, opening up an e-mail attachment that contained the budget projections that Jonetta had inserted into a spreadsheet.
Bianca rolled her eyes, making Teeka laugh.
The invitation was tempting, but someone had to be responsible. I had someone else to worry about besides myself.
“Don’t be a sourpuss,” Bianca said.
“I’ve got work to do.” I didn’t even spare her a glance, instead I skimmed through the numbers; pleased with what I saw. Everything seemed to be on target for an early spring album release. I couldn’t wait to tell Scooby.
I grinned at Teeka. “Next time,” I said, patting her cheek. “Just bring me back some candy, a chocolate bar or something. I’ve been craving something sweet all day.”
“The need for chocolate has been directly linked to the lack of S-E-X,” Bianca spelled for Teeka’s benefit.
“Be good, sweetie.” Ignoring my cousin, I pulled Teeka in for a hug, not at all discouraged by her body’s sudden stiffness. “You’re in charge of picking out a candy bar for me, okay?” I pulled twenty Jamaican dollars from my pocket and pressed them into her hand.