I exited the dank apartment, thanked God for the clean air and the escape. My mother was being mean. Horribly mean. She hadn't sang that nickname in years. New shoes and a new car in the same day. Too much new for her to deal with. She'd always been jealous.
I looked up and saw that the guys who'd been hawking my car earlier had been joined by a fifth person, but this was someone I knew, and he was coming toward me.
“What up, Sammie?” Wang Johnson took a step off the curb and made his way to my car. Wang Wang, as we called him because in the third grade he unzipped his pants and waved himself around at his teacher, had grown up. He was wearing a camouflage Roca Wear hoodie with matching jeans, white Air Force 1's, and some bad ice in his ears. Wang was a small time rapper whose homemade CDs were floating underground all over the south and selling pretty well from what I'd heard. Wang was also my exboyfriend, Mekhi's, younger brother and a kid who was about as near and dear to my heart as anyone could get.
I hadn't seen Mekhi in a long time, almost a year, but I had to admit it felt like I was looking at him right now. To look like Mekhi was a good thing because he was as fine as the good Lord made 'em. Tall, brown like a chocolate bar with teeth so white, I swear he had to put a little bleach on them every night.
Wang Wang smiled and the dimples the Johnson boys were blessed with filled his face.
“You being good?” I asked, looking around to make sure Wang Wang wasn't setting me up to get robbed out here. One never knew 'bout busters in the projects.
“Ain't got to be good if you careful.” He shoved his hands deep in his pocket. “Ya' moms tight?”
I nodded.
“I know you tightened her up.” He poked his lips out and cocked his head in the direction of my mother's door. “Look, while you slumming, you should go holler at ya boy.”
I let my hand fall from my hip and took a deep breath. I wasn't trying to see Mekhi.
“He missing you, Sammie. Talk about you all the time. I think that Negro even wrote a song 'bout cha, or something like that.”
I nodded. “I gotta go, Wang, this ain't for me no more, and you know how I feel about Mekhi's business.”
Wang's face took on a serious look. “For one, you don't know'bout Mekhi's business. And two, even if you did and it was dirty, ain't no point in being a hypocrite. Everybody know you supplying June, so what that make you?”
I swallowed hard and felt the hairs raising on the back of my neck. My stupid cousin was running his mouth. I pushed the key fob and unlocked my car. “It makes me family.” I snatched my door open. “Speaking of which, tell your mother I said hello.” I climbed in.
He strolled closer to the driver's side of my car and tapped the window. I let it down. “No message for my brother?”
I shook my head and started the engine. “Let it go, Wang.” I felt the veins in my neck getting tight with my breathing. I forced a smile. “You be cool and stay careful.”
He shook his head. I pulled away from the curb and watched as he stood in the street staring at my emissions pipe leave a fine film in the air. He looked sad. Hurt. Had Mekhi talked about me so much that his little brother was out here lobbying for him?
Mekhi. Tall, dark, handsome, andâthe worst doggone thing that ever happened to me. I looked to the right as I passed his building. His late model, copper, Lexus sat in front. It shined like a new penny. Mekhi was writing songs about me. What a joke. What he needed to be doing was writing songs about how he'd dissed me. He needed to be trying to rewrite history.
I pulled back through the rusty front gate of White Gardens. Glad to have that drug infested, crackhead haven behind me. My mama, though I loved her ... Mekhiâwait, why was he coming to my mind? I hated him. Anyway, they could stay right here in White Gardens until they knocked it down. That was the life they wanted. My world was on the other side of Atlanta, where Dr. Gregory Preston would be walking through my door in less than two hours to help me remember that I was more than my past. And even better, that my future was bright.
Chapter 8
Angelina dropped the phone on its base and said a silent curse under her breath. Another dead end. She'd been making calls for almost two hours and couldn't find a foster home.
The door to the conference room where she was working opened and Katrice peeked her heart shaped face in. Eyeballs like huge marbles swept the room and the tiny little girl entered. Angelina's heart filled with joy and sadness at the same time. She was sad for the little girl's loss, but her sweetness and innocence was a joy because it made her want to forget every ugly thing that was going on in her own world.
“Hi, baby,” Angelina said. “Come on in.”
Katrice waved and walked directly to her favorite toy in the back of the roomâthe dollhouse. She picked up a doll and began speaking to her in three-year-old language as she moved her around inside the house.
Angelina picked up the phone and made a call to another home on her list. More rejection. This time the “no” was because Katrice had asthma. That was the excuse most of the foster parents were giving her for not wanting the placement, but Angelina knew better. The child was a hot potato that the
Atlanta Herald
was following around and the truth was, nobody wanted to deal with that.
Angelina wasn't sure how many minutes she'd been sitting there thinking, trying to come up with an idea for what to do with the child, when Katrice bumped her small torso against her thigh. She grabbed Angelina's forearm, climbed onto her lap, took a strand of Angelina hair and began twirling it with her finger. Angelina studied her for a moment. Took a whiff of the baby lotion scent that lingered on the child and smiled even though the tug on her hair was a little too much.
“You pretty.” Katrice laid her head on Angelina's chest. When the girl's head touched her skin, she'd also climbed into her heart. Three years old. Danielle, her own daughter, would be almost the same age. Angelina blinked against tears.
“Katrice, come here.” The voice startled Angelina, and the tired social worker who was assigned to Katrice's case rushed into the conference room and stood at the end of the long table with her hands on her hips. Debbie something-or-other, Angelina couldn't remember, had been missing this child for far too long to just be finding her now. Katrice didn't raise her head. Angelina could tell the child had been listening to her heart beat in a rhythm that lulled her into that state of peace. Peace had to be eluding Katrice with all the juggling back and forth that had been occurring since her sister's death.
Angelina looked down at her. She hadn't had a baby on her chest since she'd nursed her own. She cleared her throat. A frog of pain had lodged itself there, and she was trying to release it. “She's fine,” she whispered, pulling Katrice's bottom farther on her lap to make sure the girl was secure. Then she looked up into Debbie's nervous eyes. “Really. It's okay.”
Debbie continued to stand there like she didn't know whether to leave or stay. No doubt she was nervous that she'd let Katrice wander off for almost ten minutes, and then come to find her sitting in the lap of one of the board members. One who had been a county director. One who could have her job as easily as they'd had Katrice's last case manager's job.
Angelina decided conversation would put the woman out of her misery. “Anything on your end?”
Debbie looked relieved. “A family in Valdosta, but they've always had roaches. Even if we paid to have the house sprayed, they'd come back again. They're nice people, but not particularly clean, and it's a very old house.”
Angelina rolled her eyes. A dirty, roach infested house was all they had to offer as a long term placement for an asthmatic child. Roaches were a trigger for asthma. “Not an option.”
“I wasn't saying it was a good one. It's the only âyes' I have,” Debbie added. “We could monitor the bugs.”
Angelina knew better than that. The caseloads were huge. What case manager would have time to stop by and inspect for roaches every week? They weren't trained to do that. The thought gave her the willies. She shuddered just thinking about it. Her sudden movement jolted Katrice's head from her chest. She looked into the child's sleepy eyes. “Not an option,” she croaked through tight lips.
Sufficiently chastised, Debbie nodded and left the room.
Angelina made a few more calls, got a few more “no's' before Debbie reappeared in her door with her handbag and Katrice's jacket. Angelina noted it was ten after five. Quitting and dinner time had come at once.
“Come on, Katrice, let's go,” Debbie said.
“I wanna see Bobin,” Katrice cried, and slipped from Angelina's lap. The two women's eyes connected, mirroring sympathy for the little girl who had lost her only friend. Her only family really, especially since her mother was dead to her for all intents and purposes.
Debbie leaned down and put Katrice's arms in the lightweight jacket. “You know I told you Bobin got hurt, honey. She's not with you anymore.”
The words seemed so cold; so harsh. They were words only a grownup should have to hear. Foster children couldn't be told the lies moms and dads would tell their childrenâthat the dead had gone to sleep or they'd become an angel, or even the truth of one's faith, that they were with Jesus. Foster children had to have the clinical, empirical answer that came with no buffer and no sympathy; even for a three-year-old. It was one of the many disadvantages of a child being in the custody of an institution like family services. Human-ness was often not in the policies or practices.
“I want Bobin.” Katrice continued to sob.
Angelina could hear her cries all the way down the hall. Her heart broke in her chest. She couldn't believe the grenade that had exploded in the little girl's life. She trembled in the silence; struggled to pull herself together enough to stand and leave the room, the building, and drive home. She felt paralyzed by the events of the day. Pain was all around her, like the very oxygen she had to breathe to survive. She was tired of it.
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Angelina pulled into the garage, turned off the ignition, and pressed her head back into the leather of the headrest. What were they going to do with Katrice? Nobody would take her. Angelina closed her eyes and Katrice's face danced through her memory like flashes of light from an old pop bulb camera. She made a fist around the steering wheel. She could still feel the child's baby soft hand on her own, hear her sweet voice when it said, “You pretty.” How people could treat their children like disposable paper cups when others would give anythingâdo anythingâput up with anythingâto have their own was beyond comprehension to her.
She looked at the time on the digital clock. It was already after seven. Greg said he would be late, and she wondered,
late doing what?
Certainly not any operating that he was supposed to be doing. She let out a sad sigh and reached across the seat for the Chinese take-out she'd picked up after a brief stop by her office and climbed out of the vehicle.
She entered the house, put the food on the kitchen island, and made her way to the stairway that led from the kitchen to the master bedroom. She'd thought it a silly upgrade when the realtor had first raved about it, but now she loved the convenience of two sets of stairs. And this one was so perfect for days like today, when she was spiritually spent from her personal life and work. She began to peel her clothes off before she entered the walk-in closet. She slipped out of her suit and into a pair of shorts, tank top, socks and sneakers. She'd get on her elliptical machine when she finished eating.
She noted her hamper was full and figured Greg's probably was as well. She'd been so busy with her work that home was starting to slip. The one thing she hated was when laundry piled up. Angelina pulled an empty laundry basket from the back of the closet and dumped the contents of her hamper into the basket. Then she went into Greg's closet. She began transferring his clothes into the basket when she spotted a flash of red against a white dress shirt. She pulled it from the pile for closer inspection. Lipstickâhigh on the collar, and not her shade. She'd discovered the same thing a few weeks ago.
Shirt still in hand, she walked out of the closet and collapsed on the bed. She didn't know what made her angrierâthe fact that he was cheating, or the fact that he was so careless about it. Angelina rolled over on her stomach and pressed her face into the comforter.
God, what is happening to my marriage? What happened to the happily ever after this man promised me when I married him?
She had done everything that she'd known to do. She was a good wife, they had a lovely home, she took care of herself physically, and she was a good cook. She made love to him whenever he wanted, even if her desire was consumed in the drudgery of a day at work. She'd prayed, fasted, and waited for things to turn themselves around since Danielle's death, but they hadn't. And on top of it, he had the nerve to be messing around on her.
Rage filled her belly. She hadn't been this angry since she was a teenager. Not since she had come to a complete understanding of the fact that her father had left not only her mother, but her.
Benjamin Harris had come into her bedroom a couple of days before he left to talk to her. Angelina's six-year-old mind was expecting a bedtime story. The one her father always made up about the African princess who saved the slaves. But the look on his face quickly told her that her father wasn't spinning a tale that night. She hadn't understood much, didn't recall the minute details of it all, but she did remember her mother whispering to her father, “You have to tell her tonight,” which meant the decision was not a sudden one.
Her birthday was two weeks away, and she wanted a party at the Dynamo Play Room. Were they going to tell her she couldn't have it there? That's what she'd thought the “tell her” was. Never in her worst nightmare could she have imagined her father would say, “Angel, I'm going to California for a little while.”
Angelina hadn't known what California was or even where it was. Her best friend, Zaria, had teased her and filled her sleep with nightmares of earthquakes swallowing her dad like a giant alligator. New Jersey didn't have earthquakes, and it was then that she understood California was far away and not a good place to be.
“I can't find a job, Angel baby.” Pain etched her father's face. Angelina knew that if he was sad, she should be sad, so she tried to convince him to change his mind.
“But Mommy has a job.”
“Mom needs help paying the bills and buying food and clothes.”
“Daddy, my birthday party can be in the yard.” She wrapped her arms around her father's neck. “I won't cost any money. I won't be a bill.”
Her father removed her arms and laid her down on the mattress. “Angel, this is about more than a birthday party. I need you to be a big girl. There are some things you're too young to understand.”
There were some things a child shouldn't have to understand. Angelina shook her head. She tried to shake the memory, but she couldn't. She remembered his eyes. They were the color of caramel and not as bright that night as they had been before. But they held sincerity and remorse over his leaving. Those eyes had haunted her for years. Those eyes that had lied to her and told her to “trust me, believe in me, I love you, Angel.” The eyes of the first man who'd broken her heart. Eyes the color of Greg's.
Angelina dragged herself off the bed and went into the bathroom, opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. She cut the shirt to shreds, taking care to leave the lipstick stained collar untouched. Then she exited the bathroom and laid the shirt on his side of the bed. Greg had some explaining to do, and the explaining was going to begin tonight.
The telephone rang. “If that's him with some excuse for being even later ...” She hissed as she made her way to her side of the bed. The caller ID let her know immediately that it wasn't him. It was, however, the last person on the earth she wanted to talk to right now. Her mother. Angelina dropped her head back and picked up the phone. “Hi, Mom.” She tried her best to keep the tension she felt from filling her tone.
“Hey, baby.” Her mother sounded almost cheerful, which was a rare happening for someone who was never, ever filled with cheer. “Hadn't heard from you in a few days.”
“I know. We have this situation with DFYS that's been keeping me running.”
“You always have a situation with that job that takes up all your time. I don't know how you keep working with those messed up people.” Cheer evaporated with each word. “I didn't pay all that money for you to go to Spelman to come out and do that kind of work.”
Angelina rolled her eyes upward. Here we go with that again. “Mom, you asked me why you hadn't heard from me, and I'm telling you why is all.”
“Well, never mind about that. I'm not interrupting your dinner? I know you eat late.”
“No, I just got in. I'm about to eat.”
“Well, don't let me keep you. I'm sure Greg is hungry as a bear by now.”