by Pat Cummings
Trace was no angel. He knew that. But he always tried to do the right thing. And he had tried especially hard not to cause problems for his aunt. Had he taken one shot at any of the guys at school who “accidentally” rammed his shoulder or drove an elbow into his ribs as they passed in the halls? No. Did he bust the girl in algebra who kept leaning across the aisle to copy his papers? No. He had held his tongue. Held his fists. He had allowed more than a few taunts to slam into the mask he wore and never said one word. Nasty comments had sizzled on the surface or even dug clean through that mask, but he had been cool. Auntie Lea probably felt she was already carrying extra weight with him around. And now this.
“Can I have my phone back?” Trace asked, as evenly and politely as he could. “Please,” he added.
Spitz snorted. But before he could answer, a tall black man in a denim shirt poked his head in the door. Glancing around, he came in, picked up the worst-looking chair in the room, and then set it outside the door. “Where’s that table with the cracked leg?” he asked Spitz. The guard pointed to a small table piled high with folders, coffee cups, bulging key rings, manuals, and one gray potted cactus. The man raised an eyebrow and looked at Spitz expectantly.
“C’mon. You see I’m doin’ an investigation here, Dallas,” Spitz drawled. “Can’tcha just pile that stuff on a shelf for me, for Chrissake?”
The man rolled his eyes slightly and Trace thought he saw the man give him the slightest wink. Shaking his head, the man began moving things off the table and wedging them into any space he could find on desktops or shelves. Spitz went into overdrive now that he had an audience.
“Now, allegedly, Mr. Theodore Carter, you claim you came upon an underage minor who you ascertained to be lost in the stacks.” Spitz leaned over him menacingly as he spoke.
“The stacks?” Trace asked.
“The stacks, downstairs where you were—the stacks,” Spitz said impatiently. “Thass what they’re called down there. All them stacks of old books. And you, mister”—Spitz pointed a meaty finger in his face—“you had no business down there at all.” With that, Spitz leaned back and stuck his thumbs up under his belly to hook them, with some effort, onto his belt. Maybe it was his too-tight uniform or the steam hissing from the vent by the desk, or possibly it was because his audience was ignoring his performance, but Lemuel T. Spitz’s face was growing pinker and moister by the second.
Trace didn’t have time for this. By now, Tiberius would be ready to boil him in oil. In as polite a tone as he could manage, he told Spitz his story one more time: He had taken a wrong turn and was trying to get back to the lobby when he heard crying. He saw a little black boy, maybe three or four years old tops, wearing raggedy clothes, his hair uncombed, busted-up shoes, big eyes. He told Spitz everything. Well, not everything.
“Hold it, will you?” asked the tall man. He was carrying the table with both hands and stood waiting by the door. It took both Trace and the guard a few beats to realize the man was talking about the door and not about the TV-cop-style questioning Spitz was conducting.
Lemuel T. Spitz yanked his thumbs free and, scowling as though he had been interrupted just on the brink of getting a confession, he opened the door. As the man maneuvered the table through the door, Trace could see his aunt in the vast hall beyond it, being pointed toward the security office. This was really bad.
Auntie Lea was getting dropped in the deep end of parenting and Trace knew that, at best, she must be struggling just to tread water. She had never been a parent. She hadn’t read the Mom Playbook or anything close to it. So bedtime had been mentioned when he first arrived, but she never noticed when or even if he had actually turned in. The first three days he had been in Brooklyn she had actually fixed him breakfast. But he saw that getting up before noon was torture for her, and neither one of them wanted to keep up the performance. He offered to just find something in the fridge. She offered ten bucks every morning so he could grab breakfast on his way to school. They managed. Trace found he was on his own with laundry, showers, homework, haircuts—all the stuff that had to be at critical mass before he would have gotten around to it before. Before. Auntie Lea just wasn’t wired to play mom. With no prep time at all, she was suddenly IT. Maybe this would be more than she could handle. Maybe this was too much? Definitely, Trace decided. Way too much.
He could barely look up as Auntie Lea knocked, then opened the door wide. Her eyes were dark under a knit cap pulled low on her forehead and Trace could almost see heat waves trembling the air around her. She stood stock-still in the doorway, one hand clenched on the doorknob. Auntie Lea took in the dingy little office, then turned to study the sweating, bubblegum-pink-faced guard in the too-tight uniform hunched over Trace. Lemuel T. Spitz never knew what hit him.
7
Somewhere, sometime, Trace had heard that the scent of vanilla had a calming effect on the nervous system. Steam was rising from the pot of hot chocolate that Auntie Lea was stirring on the stove. She had laced it with cinnamon, nutmeg, and, yes, vanilla. But the whole calming thing was not working.
Trace chewed on the inside of his lip. Auntie Lea had blown into the kitchen, whipped off her jacket, scrubbed her hands furiously at the kitchen sink, and slammed a pot onto the stove. She had been muttering all the time, shaking her head, in conversation with someone. Trace had never seen her like this. So he was trying to be there, ready for what was coming, and, at the same time, not be there.
Auntie Lea had barely spoken since they left the library, although she had had quite a bit to say to Lemuel T. Spitz. It seemed that criminology was one of her lesser-known -ologies, because the string of legalese that she had unleashed almost made Trace feel sorry for the guard. She had gone total CSI on Spitz: words like unlawful detention and underage minor and coercion had bounced off the walls of the dreary little office. A spoon banged loudly against the stovetop as Auntie Lea stepped up her stirring . . . and muttering. His turn was coming.
Trace studied the single gray, stick-thin tree in the backyard outside the tall kitchen window. A squirrel spiraled his way down the trunk, looked around nervously, and darted off into the bushes. Good move, Trace thought. You don’t want to stick around for this. But he hadn’t done anything. Auntie Lea had not even asked him his version of what had happened. She had let Spitz sputter on and on about trespassing and suspicious behavior and all the man-hours lost looking into a false report. Steam coated the kitchen window and everything beyond it looked hazy now. Where would he go if Auntie Lea had had it with him? Trace scratched a fingernail along a seam in the wooden tabletop, trying to pry up a splinter.
His mom had said once, no, had said many times that he needed to try extra hard to see things from other people’s points of view. Being an only child could make you selfish. It could make you think that you were the center of the universe. It could make you inconsiderate of what other people needed, she said. He didn’t feel inconsiderate. He had tried to stay out of Auntie Lea’s way. Tried to keep his bed neat, if not completely made up. His desk wasn’t that messy and he usually washed any dishes he used. He had thought about Auntie Lea a lot. A lot. He never asked for money, or for new clothes, or to go to the movies. He didn’t talk her head off or complain about things at school. He never brought any friends, well, Tiberius, home with him. Nothing. He just should have found Tiberius and the girls and never said a word to that guard.
The yard looked even colder now that Trace was thinking he might be leaving. Auntie Lea grew quiet as she began pouring cocoa into two huge, mismatched mugs she had made in a pottery class, then dusted a bit more cinnamon over each. Everything about the kitchen suddenly seemed warm: the amber light that fell across the table, the oleander tree in the corner, hung with pink blossoms that seemed to ignore the calendar, the chocolate-vanilla air that should have been soothing . . . but wasn’t.
“Okay,” Auntie Lea said slowly. She set a steaming mug in front of Trace and sat down opposite him, resting her elbows on the table and leaning fo
rward to slowly inhale the aroma rising from her own cup. Trace bit hard on the inside of his lip. Could he guarantee her that this would never happen again? That she would not have to leave a job to come bail him out or clean up some stupid mess that he never saw coming? Looking at things from her side, playing mom was too much work.
“What exactly happened?” she asked.
Trace studied his hands. They looked detached and clumsy, wrapped around the mug. The cup was too hot, but he left his hands there and focused on the burn. Appreciated it, even. Because if he looked into Auntie Lea’s eyes, those eyes that were his mother’s eyes, it would hurt more. Where exactly was left to go? Trace saw it now: this whole time had been a test, a trial period, and he should have done better. He was extra food and piles of paperwork. He was school meetings and doctor visits. Auntie Lea had no privacy. Could she go out of town? Or hang out with friends? Not with a kid around. Trace looked up at his aunt. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But he should have tried harder to do something right.
“I was supposed to meet Ty and the girls in my study group,” he began. “But I went downstairs to the washroom first.” Trace blew on his cocoa. He wanted to be honest. So he told her about arriving early at the library, taking a wrong turn, seeing the boy. But some things he left out, like cutting out on therapy, being in an off-limits area, seeing a boy down there that he could swear he had seen the day before. Trace took a deep breath. And seeing right through him. Even he didn’t believe that part. An invisible kid. How many more therapists would it take to explain that one?
“I thought I should tell the guards, but the kid must’ve left,” he finished. Trace felt drained. His aunt was angry, Ty was probably angry, and Kali now had proof that he was a screw-up. He blew across his cocoa again then sipped it, feeling warm and calmer somehow as he drank. Auntie Lea was watching him.
“I was furious,” she said quietly. “I know I lost my temper with that man, and I’m sorry you had to see that. But I am sick of the way some of these overbearing, insecure, hide-behind-a-uniform, wannabe petty tyrants try to intimidate young black males at every opportunity.” Auntie Lea’s eyebrows knit together as she slowly stirred what was left of her cocoa. “He had no right to detain you. No right to take your cell phone.” She looked out of the kitchen window and began stirring more vigorously.
“I should call a lawyer is what I should do,” she said, almost to herself. “The nerve of that guy! Here you are trying to help them out. Shoot! They leave doors unlocked so kids can wander off and get lost. And they never even found the child, did they? What is wrong with those people? Security, my butt!” Auntie Lea was shaking her head now, not really talking to him anymore. She banged her spoon around inside her mug. “Suspicious? They called you suspicious? I got your suspicious! I oughta—”
“Auntie Lea,” Trace interrupted. “I . . . I’m really sorry you had to come to the library like that. I know you were on that job today. . . .” To his surprise, his aunt’s mood shifted immediately. Putting her spoon down, she turned and smiled at him as though he had just arrived.
“Nothing,” she said, leaning toward him, “and I mean nothing, is more important to me than you, Theo.” She studied his face thoughtfully. “You and I are family, okay? Family looks out for family.” She reached out and held her hand gently against his face.
“I thought . . . ,” Trace said. But what he had been thinking he did not want to hear himself say out loud.
“Finish your cocoa, mister,” Auntie Lea said brightly, pushing away from the table. “I’ll be right back.” With that, his aunt hurried out of the kitchen, stirring up the scent of cinnamon in the air as she left.
Trace looked again at the yard. The squirrel was back, perched on a branch of the thin gray tree and looking right at him. It’s his tree, Trace thought, shaking his head. Even squirrels live somewhere. Dipping his spoon into the cocoa, he scooped up the warm chocolate that had settled at the bottom and licked it clean. It was funny, but he could still feel the warmth of his aunt’s hand on his face. Something like the wave had come with her touch. But this one was a gentle wave, Trace thought, and not bad at all.
“Look at all this stuff,” Auntie Lea said. She was out of breath and threads of cobwebs clung to her hair. She held an overstuffed straw basket in her arms that looked like it was ready to fall apart. With a huff, she landed it on the table in front of him. “Ready?” she asked.
Trace had no idea what to say, so he just nodded.
“Okay, it’s time. I haven’t been through all this stuff, but we should do it together,” Auntie Lea said. “Need more cocoa?” She looked at him expectantly.
“I’m good,” Trace said. “What is all this?”
“I had this stuff in the basement. I brought it all back from Aunt Frenchy’s funeral.” Auntie Lea began pulling out photo albums, small cloth bags, handfuls of jewelry, several framed pictures, chipped, rusty, and dusty things he could not identify, and arranged everything neatly on the kitchen table. His aunt was watching him as though she suspected he might detonate at any moment. They had not talked about his great-aunt’s funeral. They had not talked about anything that might even remind him of that time. And now Auntie Lea was talking way too cheerily and way too fast.
“Look at all this stuff,” Auntie Lea said. “Aunt Frenchy was too much! You know her real name was Françoise, right? I think she could count to ten in French and maybe ask where a bathroom was, but that was it. What a character. My aunt, your great-aunt Françoise. I don’t think anyone ever called her anything but Frenchy, though.” Auntie Lea laughed just a little and coughed. “Good grief, this stuff is dusty! We should clean it all up though, you know? No telling what’s in here, but Mom wanted me and Savannah to have this.” She looked up at Trace.
Savannah. So there it was. Trace had not heard his mother’s name spoken since his parents’ funeral. They were going back there. They were going to have to talk about it. It took Trace only seconds to understand that this was what the trouble at the library was going to cost him. Auntie Lea wanted in, she wanted in. She was no longer just a caretaker. He would no longer be just a guest in need of a place to stay. Family looks out for family. Auntie Lea wanted to be close. Close like he had been with his mom and dad. He might want that too. But there was really no way to tell her everything.
Trace could smell the mustiness rising from the basket and its contents, which spread across the table. The photo albums had water stains and frayed edges and corners of yellowed papers crumbling between faded black pages. No telling what was in the cloth bags. But a rust-colored dust had settled on the table around everything. That mustiness began filling the room. He recognized the sickly sweet, foul green scent of the river bottom. And under it was the faint milky aroma of chocolate that lingered . . . was it coming from his mug? Was it coating his lips? It made his head swim.
“Theo?” his aunt said gently. “You okay?”
The doorbell buzzed loudly and Trace jumped. “I-I’ll get it,” he stammered, escaping to the front door before his aunt could say a word. A worn lace curtain covered the small window in the front door and through it he could see the back of a girl’s head. She looked too small to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Girl Scout cookies? The wrong doorbell? Trace swung the door open and a rush of cool air hit him, clearing his head as the girl turned around.
“Presley?” Trace blinked. How did she even know where he lived? Swinging a backpack off her shoulders, the girl cheerfully pushed past him into the hallway.
“Ty totally fulminated,” she said. “You got snacks?”
8
Lured by the fragrance of chocolate, Presley had made her way to the kitchen before Trace could say another word. Fulminated was rattling around in his brain as he watched the girl make herself at home at the table.
“I’m Presley Jackson,” she was explaining to Auntie Lea. “Trace picked me to be in his study posse at school.” Not entirely accurate, and very oddly put, Trace thought, but his aunt looked so deli
ghted—and so distracted from the piles on the table—that he did not correct her.
“I’m Leatrice Cumberbatch, Theo’s . . . um . . . Trace’s aunt. Could I interest you in some hot chocolate?” Auntie Lea asked, giving Trace a wink as though she approved of this pipsqueak who must be his secret crush.
“I was interested in chocolate before I was born,” Presley chirped. Auntie Lea shot a questioning glance at Trace, but he could only shrug.
“So what do you mean, ‘fulminated,’ Presley? What’s up with Ty?”
“He’s exacerbated, chafed, totally incensed—you know, he fulminated,” she answered. “I mean he was really, really steamed when you didn’t show up and I said, ‘Hey, give the guy a break, things happen,’ but Ty was all, like, ‘I can’t believe he blew off this meeting,’ and I said, ‘Well, just text him and see what’s going on,’ and he said, ‘I did,’ all hostile, so I said, ‘Fine!’ and he said ‘Fine!’ and I figured I’d email you and tell you what we did.” Presley took a breath. “But then when I asked for your address . . . as in, duh, email address . . . he told me where you actually lived lived, and I live, like, two blocks over, unreal, right? And Ty was all churlish about even talking to me since I was on your side and he acted like he was doing me a big favor, so thank you very much, I don’t think so, Mr. Bellicose.” Presley rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Okay,” said Trace slowly. There were sides to take now? He had planned to call Ty when he got home. He felt sure it would be easy to straighten out what had happened, but Presley showing up like this was entirely too weird.
