by La Jill Hunt
Malik gave us a full tour of his huge home. I made notes of each room and exactly what would be needed. It was going to be a huge job and cost him a pretty penny, but what he was getting would be way cheaper than everything he had just lost. We ended the tour in the great room of the house, where Malik and I were discussing how long I would need to finish the job. My best friend’s attention was drawn to two women who happened to be sitting on the sofa, drinking wine and watching TV.
Dell wasted no time speaking. “How y’all doing?”
“We’re fine.” One of the women smiled back a little too eagerly.
“I’m Dell.”
The eager girl introduced herself. “I’m Kareema, and this is Tey. You want a drink?”
“Naw, we’re good. We just had wine with our lasagna. Right, Dell?” I gave him the side-eye and shook my head, hoping it would remind him of the fiancée he had waiting for him back at home.
“Oh, yeah.” Dell gave me a disappointed look.
“That’s a damn shame the police ain’t go look for that girl when they called. Now look at what happened,” Tey commented.
“I know. Seeing her mama cry like that made me wanna cry,” Kareema said.
“I know that dude that’s with her from somewhere.” Tey pointed to the television. “Ain’t that Tiesha baby daddy?”
“Oh, shit! B, look,” Dell said.
I looked over at the television, and there was Uncle Patrick, standing beside a familiar woman, who was screaming about her missing daughter being found by the police.
“Yeah, he said something about being a spokesperson for some family,” I mumbled. I tried to pinpoint why the woman was familiar to me. The camera panned out and zoomed in on the face of a teenage girl standing beside them that I instantly recognized. It was Kendra’s little sister, one of the twins that I met when I picked her up for our date. The other woman had to be her mother, who I’d seen coming home just before I left.
Reading the headline running across the bottom of the screen, I turned to Malik and said, “I gotta dip. I’ll come through tomorrow and we can finalize everything.”
Dell gave me a strange look. “Man, what’s wrong?”
“That’s Kendra’s mom and sister.”
Diane
“Brighter Home Health Care, this is Adrienne.”
I stepped outside the hospital to have some privacy as I dialed the number to my job. I made sure to call after they were closed so that I would speak to the after-hours receptionist, who I was cool with, to let them know I wasn’t coming in for a couple of days. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else, especially with everything that was going on now. Plus, I’d dodged their calls all day, because I damn sure wasn’t going in to cover anyone’s shift. Ironically, I now had to call in to make sure someone covered mine.
“Hey, girl, it’s Diane. I ain’t gonna be able to come in for the next few days, so someone’s gonna need to cover for me.”
“Hey, chick. What’s going on with ya? You avoiding this place like everyone else?” Adrienne laughed. “They were blowing everyone up today to come in and take these piss tests. I’m glad I ain’t smoked in a minute.”
I was glad she couldn’t see the horrified look on my face through the phone. It was a good thing I hadn’t answered when my job called. There was no way I could pass a drug test, not today or any day soon.
“Oh, I didn’t even know that’s why they were calling. My daughter was in an accident, and she’s in ICU at Granby West, girl. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to come back.”
Adrienne gasped. “What? Oh my goodness, Diane! I’m so sorry. Do you need anything? That’s horrible.”
“I know. I will be there to pick up my check on Friday, though.” I looked up and saw someone walking toward me and said, “I have to go.”
“I’ll let the scheduling nurse know. And keep us updated on your daughter, Di.”
“I will,” I told her and ended the call.
“A’ight, so this is what I’m gonna need you to do. You and Avery have to come be at church Sunday,” Patrick stated when we were standing face to face.
“Church? Oh, hell no,” I said. “I don’t do church.”
We had been giving statements and interviews for the past hour and already had a few scheduled for the next morning. Things had gone from zero to one hundred in a matter of minutes, and I needed time to think.
“Well, you better start,” Patrick warned. “You want this thing to work, then you gotta follow my lead.”
Following Patrick Hurston’s lead was going to be easier said than done. Once upon a time, we ran in the same circles, before he supposedly found the Lord, and if there was one thing I knew about him, it was that I trusted him about as much as I trusted the 45th President of the US. Even the way he popped up to be my family representative was shady. I had been standing outside the hospital, trying to convince Darnell to go to the liquor store for me when Patrick walked up.
“What the hell are you doing here?” was the first thing I asked when I saw him.
“Damn, Diane, it’s like that? I thought we were cool. But to answer your question, Nikki called and told me about what happened to your daughter. I’m here to support the family in its time of need.” Patrick smiled, then looked at Darnell. “Darnell, I see you’re here holding her up too, huh? That’s nice of you.”
Darnell looked Patrick up and down then said, “Man, shut up. I’m going back upstairs, Di. You coming?”
“Yeah.” I went to follow behind him, but Patrick stopped me.
“Diane, one sec. Lemme holla at you for a minute before you go.”
“Go ahead,” I told Darnell, then said, “What the hell do you want?”
“So, while I was over here, I got a call from one of the ministers from the church. He heard about what happened, and he was extremely concerned about the lackadaisical response from the local police department. He wanted me to let you know that they are just as disappointed as you are, and if you need anything, the church is there for you, as well as the community,” he said.
“Uh, thanks?” I said blankly, making it more like a question than a statement.
“I’m sure, as a single mother whose child is laying in the hospital, you are going to need to rely on others to help your family get through this rough time, especially when it could have been prevented had it not been for the possible negligence of the police.” He sighed.
“Listen, Patrick, I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at, but I got real shit to deal with right now. My kid is upstairs in ICU, and I just found out my job is about to give me a piss test that I ain’t gonna pass, which means I’m probably gonna be fired too,” I said. My mind was all over the place. I needed a drink, and Patrick was making me even more agitated. Darnell clearly wasn’t going to the store like I asked, so I was going to have to sneak away and go myself or call Ronda and see if she would bring me something to calm my nerves.
“If you play your cards right, you won’t even need to worry about that job.” Patrick stared at me. “At least not for a while, anyway.”
That statement made me stop and pay attention. I frowned and said, “What do you mean?”
Seeing my interest, he pulled me closer to him and said, “Come on, Di. You know you can spin this shit into a goldmine, right? With the right person by your side guiding you, of course.”
“Lemme guess. You’re the right person, huh?” I folded my arms and waited for his answer.
“I’m just saying, I got a homeboy who works security at the news station. They’re always telling him to keep his ear to the streets so they can be the first on the scene for the good hood stories. Nikki already told me the police ain’t start looking for your daughter when they were first called, and when they did find her, it was because someone spotted her laying in the ditch. Now, come on. You know folks will eat that shit up. Not only that, but they’ll come out of their pockets. You remember when that little boy on the west end saved his sister and brother f
rom that fire a couple months ago? You know how much they raised for his family? Forty-seven thousand dollars.”
“What?” My eyes widened in surprise. Hell, I had even given a couple of dollars at the convenience store for that family one morning while I was buying my lottery tickets and cigarettes.
“Hell yeah. And the kicker is that his little ass was the one that started the fire,” Patrick said smugly.
“Damn, I ain’t know about that part,” I said.
“Exactly, because they ain’t let that little piece of info get out, and by the time it did, the money had already been raised. So, all I’m saying is I can make a phone call to my boy at the TV station and get the media down here. We can talk to them, and the next thing you know, the dollars will be coming in.”
I knew Patrick well. What he was saying made a lot of damn sense, but he was and always would be a hustler. He wasn’t willingly going to help; that was for sure. There would be some kind of catch.
“And what the fuck do you want out of all of this? Twenty percent?”
His eyes softened enough for me to almost believe the fake sincerity he was giving me, and he said, “Listen, I’m not an attorney or anything, Di. I’m just a friend offering assistance.”
“Oh, so you gonna assist for free?”
“I ain’t say that. And I don’t want more than you would give the Lord. I only want a fifteen percent cut of whatever funds we raise for the cause.” He smiled.
“Fifteen percent? That’s more than the Lord. He only asks for ten percent. I may not do church, but I do know that much.” I rolled my eyes.
“A tenth is the tithe. You still give him an offering. So, I figured that would be the extra five. But that’s nothing considering we’re gonna bring in at least fifty grand.” He shrugged.
“There’s no way we can bring in that much.” I shook my head.
“Oh, but there is. We’re not only gonna have the media on our side, but also the community and the church. I mean, we can do this, Di.”
I thought about the possibility of having fifty thousand dollars—well, thirty-five after Patrick got his cut, which I was going to try my best to use my powers of persuasion to get him to lower. Either way, it was more money than I could ever imagine, and Lord knows I needed it. Hell, five hundred dollars would help me out tremendously.
“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to seem too eager to accept his offer. “What makes you think I can’t do this by myself and get just as much money?”
“You can’t. Believe me, you need me. Because one, you need to focus on being the concerned mother and won’t have time to deal with the calls, emails, and planning that will need to be made. Two, I’m a well-respected deacon of one of the largest churches in the city. Folks listen to me. Third, I’m still Pat from up the block, and niggas respect me. You may raise a few coins, but you won’t be able to bring in the dollars I can. Now, what do you want me to do?”
I paused before finally saying, “Make the call. And take me to get a drink right quick, because I’m gonna need one.”
He laughed and said, “No worries. I got a bottle in the car. Come on. Let’s take a walk.”
He made the call as we walked to his car. We had finished off the half bottle of Patrón he had hidden in his trunk, went back into the hospital, and ran into Kendra and Ashley. The reporter chick arrived, and we quickly gave our first press conference. The drink certainly had helped, but hearing that he wanted me to come to church was a whole other beast within itself.
“Hold on. Nikki is calling me,” he said, answering his phone. “Hey, baby. Yeah, that was me. Naw, I was on my way up there to be with you when I ran into Diane, and then the news people were harassing her, so I did the Christian thing and stepped in. What? That’s great news. We’re on our way up there now. I just finished praying with her. See how quickly God works?”
“What? What happened?” Ashley asked.
“Come on. They’re letting the family back to see Avery. I need for you to be ready, because now that everyone has seen us, this story is gonna spread like wildfire,” Patrick told us.
“We gotta talk to more TV people?” Ashley whined. “I don’t want to.”
I snatched her by the collar and said, “You gonna talk to whoever I tell you to. Not only are we about to talk to more TV people, but we ’bout to share this with the whole damn world. We ’bout to get paid, and you are not gonna mess this up for me. Now, come on so we can go check on your sister.”
Celia
Darnell stared at me, not saying anything. His silence gave me all the answers I needed. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I had suspected that his ass was cheating, but never in a million years would I have thought he was sleeping with Diane. This was low, even for her skank ass. Tears of hurt and anger began stinging my eyes, and I tried to blink them away.
“Celia.” Darnell had the nerve to look defeated, even though he was the one that caused the crippling damage in my heart. I turned and walked away, determined to get as far away from him as possible. I hadn’t made it very far when I walked into Detective Donaldson, literally.
“Oh, sorry,” I told him.
“No, it’s my fault. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I nodded.
He reached into his pocket and handed me a handkerchief. I politely thanked him and dabbed at my eyes, embarrassed by my tears.
“Listen, I know it’s a little overwhelming, but the doctors are very optimistic about Avery, and so am I. From what they say, she’s a real fighter,” he said.
I realized he thought my tears were due to my niece and not my trifling husband and slut of a sister.
“She is,” I told him.
“Celia.” Darnell’s voice came from behind me.
I took a deep breath and said, “No, I’ll check on her later. Thank you for all of your help, though.”
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Detective Donaldson asked with a look of concern on his face.
“Yes, I’m sure.” I nodded and walked away.
“Celia, wait,” Darnell yelled, and I sped toward the elevator, which was a few feet away.
“Sir, can I speak with you for a moment?” I heard Detective Donaldson say.
“Naw, I need to catch my wife before she gets on that elevator,” Darnell said.
“I don’t think she wants to speak with you right now, sir,” Detective Donaldson told him.
I pushed the elevator button several times, praying that the doors would open soon. I needed some air and to clear my head.
“Man, can you please move so I can talk to her?” Darnell asked.
I pushed the button again, and finally, the doors opened. I looked back once more before stepping on and seeing the tall police officer blocking Darnell. Had I not been so pissed, I would’ve been amused by the sight of them.
“Celia don’t—”
The elevator doors closed before Darnell could finish his sentence. I leaned my head against the back of the elevator as it descended. My husband and my sister. My sister and my husband. The thought was nauseating. All I’d done for both of them was bust my ass. I busted my ass so that Darnell and I could live in a nice house and drive nice cars and go nice places. I busted my ass so that I could help take care of her fucking kids, the ones that she barely saw during the week because when she wasn’t so-called working, she was either getting drunk with her friends or screwing some random-ass man—one of which happened to be my husband. Darnell was sleeping with Diane.
As soon as the elevator stopped, I ran off and rushed to the nearest bathroom, where I threw up and finally released the tears that I’d been holding in. Once I was all cried out, I washed my face and hands. I was about to walk out of the bathroom when Nikki called.
“Where are you? The doctors are looking for you. They’re letting family members back to see Avery.”
“Is she awake?”
“Well, no, but they’re saying two people can go back two at a time for a few mi
nutes.”
“Nikki, I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Where the hell are you going? You can’t leave. Is this because of Diane and Patrick?”
I shook my head in confusion. “What? Diane and Patrick? What the hell are you talking about?”
“They were just on TV, and she went off about the police not looking for Avery in time. Poor Ashley was standing there beside her, looking like a deer in headlights. You didn’t see them?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Then why are you leaving? Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t leave now. At least not until Avery wakes up. Where are you, Celia?”
“I’ll call you later,” I told her. “Do me a favor, Nik.”
“Anything, girl. What is it?”
“I need you to stay here with the girls. Tell Kendra I’m not feeling well and I had to go.”
“That’s not a problem. But, Celia, please tell me what’s going on.”
“I just gotta go.” I knew Nikki would have my back and make sure my nieces were good, even if she wasn’t sure about what was going on. As much as I wanted to be at the hospital for Kendra, Ashley, and Avery, I couldn’t. There was no telling what I would do when I came face to face with Diane, and it wasn’t the time nor the place for me to issue the ass-whooping she had coming.
I walked out of the bathroom and out the front door of the hospital, where several news crews were setting up. My phone rang again, and Darnell’s name came across the screen. I immediately ignored it and put him on Do Not Disturb.
“Celia, Celia!”
I turned around and was surprised to see Champ walking toward me.
“What’s up, Champ? What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Well, Kendra called me earlier and told me Avery was missing. And then next thing I know, I see Diane on the news. I came to see what was going on,” he said. “Is she all right?”
“I don’t even know. Right not she’s in a coma and in ICU,” I told him.
“Are you serious? Damn, I don’t believe this.” He shook his head. “Where’s Kendra?”