Breaking the Ties That Bind

by Gwynne Forster

  At ten minutes of twelve, she told her listeners, “Thank you for making my debut on WAMA so delightful. I’ve received far more e-mail requests than I could handle. Tell you what. They’ll all get answered, so listen in tomorrow evening between six and midnight. KT will be back then with the music you want. Till then, walk gracefully and strut your stuff.” She signed off with Buddy Guy’s “Feels Like Rain,” and decided that that would be her theme song.

  When she approached the guard’s desk at the building’s entrance, the man stood and gave her a large bunch of red and yellow roses. “Courtesy of Mr. Howell. He heard the first three hours of your program. He’s really pleased, Miss Richards.”

  “Thank you so much, Rocky, for telling me. I appreciate it.”

  “You did great, ma’am. I heard the whole show. I liked the music you played, too. There’s a car parked out front there. I’ll walk out with you.”

  At the door, she saw that it was her father’s car. “It’s okay, Rocky. This is my father’s car. He’s meeting me. Good night.”

  “Good. Some guy who likes your voice and knows what time you get off could cause problems. Good night.”

  She got in the Mercury Cougar, fastened her seat belt, and reached over and kissed her father’s cheek. “Thanks for meeting me, Papa. It never occurred to me that I’d be tired.”

  “I heard your whole program.”

  “What did you think?” she asked him, and held her breath for one of his tart replies.

  But he turned fully to face her, shaking his head as if bemused. “I couldn’t believe I was listening to my little girl. It was smooth as a baby’s bottom from start to finish. You were made for that kind of work. I’m proud of you.”

  She showed him the flowers. “Mr. Howell sent them to me tonight. The guard said Mr. Howell heard the show and that he said he was really pleased. Papa, I’m so happy.”

  “You’re a good daughter and a fine woman. God takes care of those kinds of people.”

  She walked into her apartment at twelve-eighteen and, by one o’clock, was in bed. If she could maintain that schedule, she’d make it with ease.

  An eight o’clock phone call the next morning sent her heart into a fast trot. Reluctant to answer for fear that it might be Ginny, she lifted the receiver only once she saw her uncle’s caller ID.

  “Good morning, Uncle Ed. How are you?” She hated the awkwardness of having to ask him if he’d bailed her mother out of jail, especially when she suspected that he hadn’t done that. After all, he had not promised to do it; he had only said he’d take care of the situation.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “What was it like to be back in school after all these years of dreaming about it?”

  “When I walked into John H. Johnson Hall, I felt like a little pig finally getting into hog heaven. I felt different, but not out of place. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

  “When are you planning to study?”

  “Mornings, at school when I’m not in class, and on the job while the music’s playing. Of course, I have to talk sometimes. Daddy’s driving me home nights, so I get here quickly.”

  “Bert’s a good man. Dot and I want you to have dinner with us Saturday night. I can pick you up at seven. I promised you a champagne toast. Would you like me to ask Bert to join us?”

  “That will be wonderful. Uh . . . Dot’s got a guy she wants you to meet.”

  “Tomorrow night? Good grief, Uncle Ed, I haven’t been to the hairdresser in a week.”

  “Women! She didn’t say tomorrow night. If she had, I wouldn’t have said bring Bert along. She’ll tell you when she can arrange it. I’m proud of you, Kendra. Just as proud of you as I can be.”

  She thanked him and hung up. The man she really wanted to meet was the guy who ate lunch at La Belle Époque every Wednesday.

  Chapter Four

  During the dinner, Kendra’s father and her uncle and his wife expressed admiration for the woman she had become in spite of trying adversity. But Kendra nonetheless felt a need for a catharsis in regard to her mother.

  Lolling on the lawn near Rankin Chapel the following Monday, she found herself idly writing questions to Ginny, who remained in jail. She was about to shred the paper when she realized the significance of her questions and decided to phrase them impersonally in the form of a letter to an editor of general interest news at the Washington Post.

  Dear Editor,

  I’d like to know what you and your other readers think a child owes a parent. I have in mind particularly a mother who tells the child that she bore it only because she was forced to, who refused to take care of the child until it was eleven and she no longer had anyone to whom she could shift her responsibilities, and who deliberately hampers the child’s every effort toward a commendable goal.

  On the other hand, the child gives the mother material aid each time she requests it, and each time she receives such aid, the mother throws it away frivolously, wining and dining her girlfriends, buying expensive clothes and Jimmy Choo shoes, not caring that she took something her child needed. Is that woman sane? If so, what does the child owe her. Is she insane? If so, should she be institutionalized or forced into treatment? Is she a menace to her child? I look forward to your reply and to the views of your readers.

  Sincerely yours,

  K. Richards

  She knew that she risked being identified as KT Richards, the disc jockey, and as Kendra Richards, the student at Howard University, but she needed the opinion of disinterested people; her father and uncle were biased in her favor.

  The third day after she mailed the letter, she saw it unedited in the paper. The following day, she received a telephone call as she was leaving home for school.

  “Could you call back later?” she asked without saying hello. “I’m about to be late for class.”

  “Sure. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Luke Unger, producer of Families in Crisis on WWLL radio.”

  “Oh.” She gave him the number. “Please do not give it to anyone. You may call me at five after twelve.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Richards. I will. Good-bye.”

  What did he want with . . . ? Oh. Oh. He saw her letter. All right. She’d go on the show, but only if he paid her. “I’d better ask Mr. Howell,” she said to herself. As soon as she was seated on the bus, she telephoned Howell’s office.

  “Hi, June. This is Kendra. It’s urgent that I speak with Mr. Howell. I need his permission for something.”

  “Hold on. You’re in luck. He’s got a conference in five minutes.”

  “I only need a minute.”

  “Hello, Kendra. What’s the problem?” Clifton Howell asked, as he came on the line.

  She told him about her letter to the Post and Luke Unger’s phone call. “If he asks me to go on the show, is it all right?”

  “I see Unger’s on the ball. That was a good letter. Sure it’s all right. And use every opportunity to promote yourself. How much did he offer?”

  “He hasn’t asked me yet.”

  “After he offers to give you peanuts, tell him I said he should pay you at least twelve hundred and that if he says no, I’ll put you on one of my TV shows.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  After her eleven o’clock class, Kendra sat beneath a tree in back of Douglas Hall with her books, a thermos of coffee, two homemade ham sandwiches, an apple, and a candy bar beside her, waiting for Unger’s call. Her cell phone rang precisely five minutes after twelve.

  She propped up her knees and pulled her flared skirt down as far as it would go. Pants were more convenient for school and work, but she only had two pair, and both were at the cleaners.

  “Kendra Richards speaking.”

  “Miss Richards, this is Luke Unger. I’d like you to be a guest on the radio show, ‘Families in Crisis.’ There will be two panelists, a psychologist, and a family counselor. Will you come?”

  “I’m not an expert on anything, Mr. Unger. I’m stud
ying communications.”

  “And you’re a sophisticated radio jock. I catch your show regularly when I’m driving. Anybody who read your letter to the Post could see that you were either writing about yourself or you are very intimately familiar with the situation. I won’t identify you beyond the way you signed your letter to the editor. And I assure you that whoever that child is, he or she should listen to the program. May I count on you?”

  “When is the taping or airing, and what remuneration are you offering?”

  “Interesting. Most guests don’t ask that.”

  “I doubt that most of your guests are college students who’re working their way through school. I’m not wealthy enough and don’t have the leisure to do charity, Mr. Unger.”

  “Touché. Eight hundred.”

  “My boss said you should pay me twelve hundred, and that if you won’t, he’ll put me on a program on his TV station. He knows, because I had to get his permission to appear on your program.”

  “Okay. The program will be live Sunday at five and rebroadcast Sunday at nine. It’s a one-hour show. Please be here at four o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there, and please have my check ready at the end of the program.”

  “Of course. You drive a hard bargain.”

  “I’ve learned some hard lessons. Thank you for inviting me. See you Sunday.”

  “At least it’s on radio and I don’t have to buy anything to wear,” she said to herself. She loved red, but didn’t wear it often. Knowing that she’d be more at ease and more selfconfident if she looked her best, she decided to wear her old standby, a light-weight silk dusty rose suit that flattered every inch of her. She loved to wear it.

  She spent the next forty minutes eating her lunch and memorizing “Thanatopsis,” a poem by William Cullen Bryant, which she had to recite in her four o’clock public speaking class.

  Later, as she left the campus after what she considered a perfect school day, she stopped by the bookstore on Georgia Avenue and bought a four-by-six notepad to put in her pocketbook for use while on the panel. So far, none of the students seemed to associate her with the letter in the Post, if indeed they had read it. She had already learned that her ten years out of school had not been wasted; in some important respects, life’s classroom had put her ahead of her classmates. But they had important advantages, too. Because of their youth and the years still ahead of them, they had time to sit in the coffee shops, exercising their minds by shooting the bull on both serious and frivolous topics. They had time to be young; she didn’t.

  After nearly a month in the local jail, Ginny received a call to the warden’s office. “You’re free to go, but you have to report for trial October seventeenth.”

  Ginny rolled her eyes and pulled air through her teeth. “Who paid the bail?”

  The warden looked down at the paper in front of her. “Edward Parks. Here are your papers.” She showed Ginny an envelope containing her release papers. “And you’d better do something about your attitude, or you’ll be spending a lot more time in here.”

  “He could have gotten me out of here right away. I don’t thank him a damned bit.”

  “If you’d like to stay longer, I’ll be glad to accommodate you. Get your clothes on.” Ginny reached for the envelope, but the warden covered it with her hand. “You’ll get it when you leave. And you can stop looking down your nose at the other inmates; you’re a jailbird just like they are.”

  Ginny headed back to her cell. After dressing, she pinned her stringy hair up as well as she could, put on some makeup, and waited for the guard, who escorted her to the warden’s desk.

  The warden handed Ginny the envelope. “If you ever come back while I’m here, I’ll see that you catch hell. Your brother bailed you out.” She looked down at the paper in front of her. “Or at least it says here that he’s your brother. Thank him for his kindness. If you come back, I hope he lets you dry up in here. Take her out, Greta.”

  Ginny stood at Nineteenth and E Street, Southeast, looking for a way to get home. The battery of her cell phone had long since died, and she couldn’t telephone anyone. She didn’t see a taxi, so after nearly forty-five minutes of shivering in the late October chill, she flagged down a red convertible Mercedes.

  The driver stopped, backed up, and opened the front passenger door. “What’s the problem?” the man said. “You look as if you just lost your best friend.”

  “I feel like I have. My cell phone’s dead, there’re no taxis around here, and I couldn’t call anyone. I was about to die in this weather.”

  “Where’re you headed?”

  “I’d like to go home, but that’s all the way to Kalorama Road.”

  “You’re in luck. I’m headed that way.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, “but I sure appreciate your wanting to put me at ease.”

  “Who’s waiting for you there?”

  “I have no idea, except that no man will be there.”

  “What kind of an answer is that?” he asked, as he turned into North Carolina Avenue and headed for Massachusetts Avenue.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I guess I don’t. What’s your name?” he asked. She told him. “I spent two years in that hellhole for sniffing coke. It was my first time, and I got caught. It was also my last time, but it ruined my life. You can’t practice law with that kind of record. What were you in for?”

  “How do you know I was in jail?”

  “That’s why I stopped. You were half a block from the jail. Only a desperate woman would have flagged down a strange man this time of morning. You didn’t look like a streetwalker. What were you in for?”

  “Driving an unregistered car with a suspended license. I couldn’t make bail, and my brother decided I needed to learn a lesson and left me in that dump for almost a month. I have to wait till mid-November for the trial.”

  “I was about to say I hope you learned a lesson, but something tells me you didn’t.” They rode in silence until he reached the building in which she lived. “Here you are, Ginny. Have a good life.”

  She got out, looked him in the eye, and said, “Sure you don’t want to come in?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “My days of tomcatting are over, Ginny. I’m a man of the cloth. So long.”

  She stood there, dumbfounded, as he drove off. A preacher, for heaven’s sake! Twenty minutes after she walked into her apartment, her doorbell rang. Maybe the preacher had changed his mind. She patted the loose strands of her hair and hastened to the door.

  “Ed! What are you doing here?”

  He walked in, headed straight for the living room, and sat down, giving her no choice but to join him. “Would you sign this, please?”

  “I ain’t signing nothing.”

  “Oh, but you will. If you don’t sign it, I will have your bail revoked tomorrow morning.”

  She read the document:

  I, Virginia Hunter, will have no contact of any kind with my daughter, Kendra Richards, for the next twenty months, or until she finishes Howard. If I break this signed agreement, I must pay Edward Parks eight thousand dollars (bail money) on demand or face a judge. I understand that if I am arrested again, Edward Parks will not give me any kind of assistance.

  Virginia Hunter

  She read it twice, signed it, and handed it back to him.

  “One of these days, I’m going to shake the dust of this town off my feet and head west. Then, all of you can go to hell.”

  Ed stood and gazed down at her the way one looks down at the dead, pained and sorrowful. “What a pity. I’d give anything if I had a sister. When I was little, I wanted a sister to protect, to adore, to play with, and to show off to my buddies. But by the time you were four or five, you were so full of yourself that you didn’t even want Mama to kiss you. At twelve, you were a monster, flirting and trying to seduce every man you met. You’re still passable looking, but I can’t wait for the day when your looks are gone, and you’ll finally understan
d what it means to need people for themselves. Be seeing you.”

  She threw her keys at his departing back, crossed the room to pick them up, and decided that what she needed was a bubble bath. Then she’d call Phil and tell him she wanted to work full time the following week. She didn’t need Ed or anybody else.

  Looking her best, with her hair around her shoulders and her face reflecting the dusty-rose silk that she wore, Kendra stepped off the elevator and tapped on Luke Unger’s office door.

  “Come in.”

  What a voice! The man sounded as if he were angry. She opened the door gently and walked toward his desk as he rose and extended his hand. “Mr. Unger? I’m Kendra Richards.”

  “I’m glad to meet you. You’re a surprise. On the radio, you sound like a jeans-clad teenager.”

  “Good Lord! I hope not. I’ll correct that at once. But you shouldn’t worry. I’m usually wearing jeans or something of that order when you hear me.”

  “That’s not the point. In person, you look like the type who’d be emceeing an opera at the Met in New York.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. What are the other panelists like? Should I expect dialogue, argument, attempts at put-down, or what?”

  “I expect this will be more academic. At least, I plan to guide it in that direction. It’s a very serious topic, to which I believe many people have needed an answer. And it’s also a problem that people do not share readily, if at all.” He answered another tap on his door, and a tall woman who appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties walked in.

  “It’s good to see you again, Luke,” the woman said.

  “Thanks so much for inviting me. What an exciting topic! I read the letter in the Post, and when I received your call, I was planning to write a reply.”

  “Thanks for coming, Edwina. Dr. Prill, this is Kendra Richards. Ms. Richards, this is Edwina Prill.”

  The two women shook hands, and Kendra was relieved to note that the woman gave no evidence of competitiveness. They exchanged pleasantries, and it surprised Kendra that Edwina Prill made no reference to the topic they were to discuss during the show. A solid knock announced the arrival of the last panelist.