Bebe Moore Campbell

by 72 Hour Hold

  A few hours later, just as we were closing up, we heard a tap at the window. Adriana had already left. When Frances unlocked the door, Orlando and his sons walked in.

  The last time Orlando, his boys, and I had been together, we had all gone to see a movie and had dinner at my house. Jabari, PJ, and Trina had played games in the family room while Orlando and I argued quietly in the kitchen. We hadn’t raised our voices or changed the expressions on our faces. But as he and his boys were leaving, PJ gave both of us a penetrating stare. “Why aren’t you kissing good-bye?” he asked.

  Orlando had rushed the boys out, but I could see sorrow in PJ’s eyes as he waved to me.

  Now I kissed PJ’s cheek first and then Jabari’s.

  “You look nice, Keri,” Jabari said.

  “You’re taller,” I said to Jabari. Then I turned to PJ. “What’s all this?” I asked, brushing my finger across his faint mustache. He tried not to smile, to hold onto his impassive too-cool-to-care expression, but below the new growth a shadow of a grin emerged.

  “Yeah, he thinks he’s a man now,” Orlando said, and he was grinning too. “I got two men, but nobody’s paying rent.”

  Orlando stepped in front of everyone and launched into a monologue about manhood from a play or a movie no one had seen. The boys shifted their feet and rolled their eyes and tried to endure the two minutes their dad was onstage. When he was finished, Orlando, who had stepped away from the rest of us, turned to his sons. “Remember that?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Jabari said. PJ only grunted.

  “That’s a very famous scene,” Orlando said. Then he shrugged. “Anyway.”

  “You guys want some apple juice? I have some in the back,” I said.

  “No, thank you,” Jabari said.

  “How’s Trina?” PJ asked.

  “Good-bye, everybody,” Frances said. She gave a little wave before she closed the door behind her.

  I glanced at Orlando’s face, wondering how much he’d told the boys. They had always liked Trina.

  “She’s not feeling well right now,” I said.

  “We just popped in to say hello,” Orlando said. “We’re on our way to the mall. Real men need new athletic shoes.” He put his arm through mine and guided me a few steps away. “How is Trina doing?”

  I shook my head.

  “Bad?”

  “Really bad.”

  He gave me a quick hug. I was grateful he didn’t say that everything would be all right. “The boys wanted to see you,” he whispered. “I told them we were back together.” He studied my face. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Get her back in the hospital long enough to make a difference.”

  He squeezed my hand.

  “So the sitcom audition went well?”

  He recounted every detail, then repeated the lines that he remembered. Told me how much the producers had loved him, how he had nailed it.

  I’d heard it all before, so I knew how to listen and not listen, how to make noises in my throat that passed for interest. In the years since we’d been together and not been together, I’d learned what Orlando hadn’t learned: not to get invested in an audition. There was no use in two of us getting bent out of shape because of a rejection we failed to see coming. Los Angeles was filled with hopefuls—and with the passed over. Sometimes I wondered how the city managed not to topple, not from earthquakes and mud slides but from the weight of all those hurt feelings, all the would-be stars who hadn’t gotten the part.

  “Dad,” Jabari said.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Orlando said. “I’ll call you tonight.”

  I nodded. “See you soon, guys,” I said to the boys. As they submitted to another hug apiece, I caught PJ’s eye and silently questioned him. He shook his head.

  “Tell Trina I said hello,” PJ said.

  I was walking them to the door when the ringing of the cell phone clipped to my waist startled me.

  “Keri, it’s Dora. There’s some folks at your house, people I don’t think you’d approve of.”

  “What?” Orlando asked.

  “I have to go. That was my neighbor. There’s some strange people at the house.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  There weren’t any cars parked outside when I drove into my driveway. That was a good sign. Even better, when I went inside, the house was in one piece. Trina was in her bed, under the covers. She answered me in short incoherent sentences.

  “I don’t know,” I said to Orlando, who was standing in my living room. The boys were in the car. “Everything seems okay.”

  The doorbell rang. When I opened it, my next-door neighbor was standing there. She told me she’d seen several strangers coming out of my house, “homeless-looking” people. Mrs. Winslow was in her early seventies but still quite chic, a jazzy oldhead mama who worked out and did yoga and had told me time and time again to call her Dora. She and her husband, Calvin, liked to get dressed up and go out. They gave card parties and barbecues. On weekends, their grandchildren came over. I think I must have swayed a little, because suddenly her arms were around me and she was patting my back, murmuring, “All right. All right now.” She sounded her real age then, not the one she liked to project.

  Her fingers were soothing, a balm for my spirit. I wanted to breathe in the warmth of those pliant fingers, her take-charge thumbs. They hypnotized me a little, dulled my senses, muffled sounds.

  “What?” Her voice was just above a whisper, for my ears only.

  “I said, ‘You younger women had all those options. Walked out on your husbands because you wanted to be so much.’ I heard about your store. Might have worked out better if you’d stayed home and raised your kids.”

  She spoke evenly, never stopped rubbing my back, and gave me an odd, surprised look when I pulled away. Mrs. Winslow stood in my entryway for a while before she finally closed the door behind her.

  “What was that all about?” Orlando asked.

  “You need to go,” I said. “I’ll be all right. I’ll call you later.”

  “You go upstairs and talk to her. I’ll leave if everything is okay.”

  “Nobody’s been here,” Trina said, her eyes jumping up and down, her hands flailing out and slapping against her thighs. She stormed out of her bedroom and into her bathroom. I heard her stomping around, talking loudly. I knew she was lying.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Orlando minutes later. “You can go.”

  FRANCES ASSURED ME THAT SHE AND ADRIANA COULD MANage things, so I stayed at home for a few days, babysitting Trina. Guard duty would be more accurate. Watching, waiting, trying to come up with a strategy. I called around to price private-duty nurses and security guards. Too expensive. All the residential treatment programs required a face-to-face interview to determine “if the prospective client will be a good fit.”

  Thank you for your time.

  During the weeks when Trina was still living under my roof, I called SMART at least half a dozen times. Each time they arrived in a timely manner and were unfailingly polite. Somehow, Trina was able to pull herself together in front of them. “Ma’am,” they’d say, “your daughter doesn’t meet the criteria.”

  No slit wrists for her; no bullet wounds for me.

  OF COURSE, THERE WERE QUIET SPELLS, DAYS WHEN TRINA’S madness was too much even for her and she’d take a double dose of antipsychotic and sleep for twenty-four hours straight. She didn’t leave her room to eat; she didn’t bathe. I didn’t coax her to do either. Even days when her body odor filled her room, I kept silent. The lure of peace was too seductive.

  “I’m taking my meds again,” she announced one night, after two or three days of relative quiet. I’d just turned off the television in the family room and was about to go to sleep. Trina called to me from her room, which was at the top of the back stairs. Her door was partially opened, and she was lying across her bed. “Did you hear what I said, Mommy?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Come here, Mommy.”

&n
bsp; I went into her room. Trina had picked up all the clothes that she’d dumped on the floor. The top of her bureau was neatly arranged: comb and brush here, perfume there. The air smelled fresh, soapy. Trina had bathed and combed her hair. She was wearing jeans and an ironed shirt. When I sat down on the edge of her bed, she threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. “You’re a good mommee,” she said, resting her head against my chest.

  I went to bed, warning myself not to feel better. That would be like Sally Hemings sending out wedding invitations.

  The next morning, when Trina woke up and came to me with a glass of water and swallowed her pill in front of me, I tried to kickbox the hope that surged through me. Get back! But what’s a foot against hope?

  Trina swallowed medicine, and my day became full of smiles and sunshine. “Maybe it’s over,” I told Mattie. A few days, of course, wouldn’t banish mania. It would take weeks for the meds even to begin to be effective. Still, Trina’s intent was important.

  Mattie’s own daughter was peaceful, compliant, and living at home. Gloria’s son was back at his board and care, once again attempting to be sober and medicated. My friends’ children were finally getting it. Why not Trina?

  What followed were days when my shoulders steadily crept downward and my breaths became steady and even. I worked a full day here and there, instead of my recent split shifts. The headache that had taken residence above my left eyebrow began to recede. At night I slept.

  One afternoon, I went to Orlando’s apartment. There was barely any conversation between us. We made love quickly and efficiently. For so long I’d forbidden myself to want Orlando, the smell of him, the weight of him, his voice when it was low and throaty, the taste of me on his tongue. But that day he was my drug of choice, my self-medication.

  “You ain’t fooling nobody,” Frances whispered when I returned to the shop. “Look at you, just smiling all over your little self. Must have been good.”

  “Mind your business,” I said.

  Throughout the good times and the bad times, Clyde never called me, although I knew he spoke with Trina, if not regularly, at least often enough for him to be able to gauge her mood fluctuations. I’d heard her talking with him, jumping from one topic to the next, her mouth going a million miles an hour. Listening, I thought to myself: Do you get it now?

  I CAME HOME ONE EVENING, AND BOY MAN WAS STANDing in my kitchen. Up close he looked like insufficient funds, a bounced check on weed. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, Trina came clickety-clacking down the stairs. High high heels, red red lips, bright cheeks, a dress the size of a Ritz cracker, eau de weed clinging to her. Here we go: takeoff. Whoosh.

  “Trina,” I began, placing myself between her and Boy Man.

  She waved her hand, which was a warning that said, I can become a fist.

  “I don’t want you to go out, Trina. You’re not well.”

  “Bitch, you’re not well.”

  “She’s not well,” I said to Boy Man, who stared back with interest. “If you leave here, you can’t come back,” I said to Trina, my voice shrill.

  The door slammed and then again, against the inside wall as I yanked it open way too hard.

  The car was in the driveway, the motor running.

  “Trina! You come back here!”

  I could hear her laughing; they were both laughing. I raced around them, got to the car before they did and stood in front of it, my arms stretched out wide. Jesus on the cross, right?

  Trina had the nails.

  Glancing back, I saw jazzy Mrs. Winslow watching from her window. Across the street, another neighbor’s shade was raised. Two car doors slammed. I didn’t move. Boy Man backed up, went around me.

  “Girl, your momma crazy,” he said, as he took off.

  Getting there.

  My body was shaking as I walked back to my house. Something beneath the quivers broke through the band that held my mind in place when I saw Mrs. Winslow still peeking.

  “What the hell are you looking at? She’s not some freak!”

  She slammed her door. I slammed my door.

  Trina returned the next day, disheveled, glassy-eyed, stoned, and manic. I was sipping coffee in the kitchen when she came in. The hot liquid sat on my tongue, unswallowed, as I watched her.

  “I’m taking my meds,” she screamed, pulling out a bottle of the mood stabilizers from her purse. She poured herself a glass of water, then shook two pills into her hand and gulped them down. “See?”

  I left for the store knowing she would sleep but not sure for how long. I canceled with Orlando. By the time I returned home, Trina was walking out the door again. Another night, another rendezvous.

  The next day at work I called a list of board and care facilities and visited a few during my lunch hour. They were all horrible, straight out of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, inhabited by unkempt women with missing front teeth, men who sat still as warthogs, looking for prey.

  She can’t live here, not my baby!

  I called Mattie that night. “Come to the meeting next week,” she said. “You’re under a lot of pressure.”

  No. I was underwater.

  Melody’s mother, with her grandchildren yelling in the background, listened to me.

  “Do you think that maybe Melody could talk to her, try to get her back on track?”

  “Well,” Celestine began, then excused herself as something crashed behind her. She was gone for a while. When she got back on the phone, she sounded like someone who’d just pulled a double factory shift. “The thing of it is, Melody’s doing good. Yeah. And I don’t want her around nobody who ain’t. You talking about Melody influence your daughter, suppose your child influence mine? And me with these grand-babies, too.”

  “You have a point. Didn’t mean to—”

  “All that wildness. I’m not going down that road no more. Melody know that too. If you don’t take your meds, better find you another home. Yeah. Maybe that’s what you need to tell your girl.”

  Right.

  “You living the good life up there in the hills. You probably got the money and the insurance to go along with every little crazy thing your child do. Me, I ain’t got it like that. I can’t be bailing nobody out time after time after time. Uh-unh. No. I told Melody: You don’t stay on your program, you on your own, and all Mama want to know is do you want to be cremated or buried. I’m serious. When somebody black get to acting a fool out in these here streets, the cops gonna shoot ’em and go on about they business. Just like they killed that man over on Crenshaw.”

  “What man?”

  “Some man on Crenshaw yesterday, near where those guys be selling stuff. He was trying to fight people, acting all crazy. Somebody called the cops, and they shot him. Yeah. They say the man used to walk up and down Crenshaw Boulevard all day long.”

  I could taste fear in my mouth as I drove toward home. Maybe I began to grieve in my car, shedding tears for Crazy Man, crying hard, as if I knew him. Or maybe I was crying because I didn’t want to know him.

  Several scattered bouquets marked the spot where Crazy Man had been killed. There was dried blood on ground so close to where I lived, it might as well have been right at my front door.

  “He was going off,” Mr. Bean Pie said. “Started screaming and hollering, talking about the CIA was after him, that we was all working for the CIA.”

  “Then he started tearing down the street, pulling off his clothes,” CD Man said.

  “By the time the cops came, he was near butt naked.” This last contribution from one of the Incense People, who added, “But they ain’t have no right to shoot the man, even if he was crazy. I got me a cousin act just like him.”

  Don’t we all.

  It could have been Trina, I thought. Those words bombarded me for the rest of the day. My child could have been the one being buried. She could have walked out of my house, bent on mayhem and destruction. There wasn’t anything I could do to protect her. But Clyde co
uld. He was bigger, stronger. He was a man. He could push Trina out of the way, bar the door with his body if she threatened to leave. Maybe Frances was right.

  I called him in the morning. He came to get her that evening. Stood stiffly in my entryway. Clyde had never been inside. For six years, Trina had run out to him. His head moved jerkily as he looked from wall to wall, from room to room.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “You always were a great decorator.”

  “Thank you.” The compliment gave me a feeling of satisfaction, which I didn’t expect and didn’t want to understand. “Clyde, she needs supervision. Someone has to give her the medication. She has to go to bed early. She needs to eat well and no caffeine. She really should be in a facility.”

  “Let me handle this, Keri.”

  Trina was packed and ready. Excited. She raced down the steps. Her anticipation made me feel lonely, but I talked myself out of it. Had a great big smile on my face and waved hard as they drove off. Waved and wiped tears. Wiped tears and powdered my face, put on lipstick, sighed in the mirror.

  I called her every day for five days. After the second day, Trina refused to speak with me. On the second day I spoke with Clyde, who said everything was fine. Yes, she was taking the medication. No, he wasn’t giving it to her; Trina was taking it on her own.

  “Is she sleeping at night?” I asked.

  “Of course she is,” he said.

  THE CIRCLE OF CHAIRS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE ALL Souls Presbyterian Church was wide, and every seat was filled. There was no speaker scheduled. People were free to share what was on their minds, and when I walked in late, a man was standing in the center of the circle. “And now, we’re going back and forth with Social Security. My son worked for at least eight years before he got ill. He paid into the system, but they’re giving us the runaround. As many of you know, he won’t get medical benefits until he’s been on disability for two years. Right now, the residential treatment center is charging an arm and a leg.”

  There were groans of recognition.

  “We’re being eaten alive. But except for the money, things are better.”

  The man sat down. A woman raised her hand. Straight black hair, Asian eyes. “I’m Soon. My son is thirty-five and has schizophrenia. Right now he’s not taking his medication and is completely out of control. He was put out of his sober living home because the manager discovered some crystal meth in his drawer. So then he was on the streets for about two weeks until I could find another place for him, which I did. The new place?” She shook her head. “I tell you, it’s so interesting to me, this whole concept of sober living. Sometimes I think they ought to call it whatever living, because so few of the managers really care about sobriety. Anyway, keep the prayers coming. Thank you for listening.”