Paradise for a Sinner

by Lynn Shurr

  “I never had a nickname or brothers and sisters. I guess it’s a good name if I can’t be a princess anymore.” The newly dubbed Stacy held out her pup to Annie. “Here, you can hold her.”

  “Make sure she doesn’t peepee on you, sis,” Dean remarked.

  Teddy reddened again. Joe pointed a finger at his eldest son and said, “Very close to a foul, son. Don’t get yourself thrown out of the game.” Aside to Nell, he remarked, “We should wear whistles, I tell you me.”

  Xochi with her thick, tangled black curls cascading down her back and her big, chocolate-brown eyes that had seen things early in life no child should ever see, offered, “We can still play at being princesses though we are getting a little old for that. We have to include Lorena even if she is still a baby.”

  “Not!” Lorena cried.

  “I think I might like having sisters,” Stacy said, showing some shyness for the first time. “I’m not so sure about brothers.”

  She gave Dean a sidelong glance. At least Tommy, who had snickered with the rest of them, had the grace to hang his head, but not his older brother. Dean opened his mouth again. Everyone in the room held their breath waiting for his words that came out sullen and accusatory.

  “Okay, we have another sister, and we have to be nice to her. I get that. Her parents died and all. But, what about the kid in the wheelchair? He says he is your son, Dad, your real son.”

  “About that…” Joe began.

  Teddy gave his wheelchair a mighty shove over the edge of the area rug and straight to the coffee table where his mother’s letter lay, now dried and wrinkled but still legible. “This is what my mama said, and I’m gonna read it to y’all. Dear Teddy Bear.”

  Little Trinity held up a hand. “Is that really your name?”

  “Yes, Teddy Bear Wilkes because I was cute as a teddy bear when I was born. You shouldn’t laugh at people’s names, my mama said—not Stacy’s, not mine.” He stared at Dean who had clapped a hand over his mouth to hold in a comment sure to get him grounded. Teddy started again.

  Dear Teddy Bear,

  I am so sorry I have to leave you, but it is time you knowed your real daddy is Joe Dean Billodeaux. He is rich and famous and has lots of kids. He will take great care of you and keep you safe. You be a good son to him. I love you and will pray for you every night, but I cannot keep you no more. I don’t have enough money and Newt don’t have enough patience. I will never forget you.

  Your Loving Mama,

  Maydell Wilkes

  P.S. Show this letter to Miss Nell and she will take you to your new home.

  None of the children said a word. They waited while Dean glared at their father. Joe gathered his wits. He did not want to crush Teddy. Yet, he needed to tell his family, especially his eldest son, the result of an affair with a woman other than Nell, the truth.

  Finally, small Lorena ventured, “Maybe Daddy gave his man seeds to Teddy’s mother so she could have babies like Aunt Emily gave Mommy her eggs so she could have some of us.”

  Thanks to Nell’s belief in total honesty, his children knew far too much about in vitro fertilization and plenty about adoption. Joe cleared his throat and balancing on the balls of his feet, crouched down to Teddy’s level, but he answered Lorena first.

  “No, cher heart, I did not give Teddy’s mother my seeds. I never met Maydell Wilkes. I am not his real daddy. I think his mommy wants him to have a good life that maybe she can’t provide. Your mom and me think she will change her mind and come back for Teddy. Until that time comes, he will have a home here and be safe with us. We want all of you to treat him as a brother.” Joe looked Teddy in the eye now and saw a heartbreak there worse than losing the Super Bowl.

  “My mom is not a liar! You don’t really know I’m not your son.”

  Nell put her hand on Teddy’s arm. “Do you remember how Dr. Bullock asked you to scrub the inside of your cheek with that swab earlier today?”

  The boy nodded. “That brush has your DNA on it—the stuff that can tell us if you are Joe’s son. No matter what the results, you will stay with us until your mother returns. The social worker who had your mother’s case came and visited. This is all settled. She will have the special bus come here to pick you up tomorrow for school. I understand you are mainstreamed with the other students and get good grades, especially in reading. Everything is going to be fine.” Nell stroked his fair hair.

  Joe clapped his hands. “Everyone, go do your homework until Corazon calls dinner. Let’s go! Let’s go!” His younger children scattered.

  “Do you have your textbooks, Teddy?” Nell asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I found them in the bottom of my duffel. I need someone to give me my spelling words.”

  Almost forgotten in the ruckus, Stacy said, “I’ll help you. You want to go upstairs?”

  “Sure.” Dejection showing in his curved shoulders, Teddy wheeled from the room.

  Dean got up slowly, insolently. “I know about illegitimate children because I am one, Dad. You weren’t married to Mom when I was born, but this kid is only around eight.”

  “Football players are often a target for this sort of scam. Have some faith in me, son. I did not cheat on your mother. She believes me. Right, Nell?”

  Nell nodded. “It’s been a tough day for everyone. Go get your homework done.”

  Dean brushed by Adam and Winnie coming into the room without so much as an “excuse me.” Nell sighed.

  Winnie held up Teddy’s file. “We should go over this. You need to know what you are getting into with the boy.”

  Joe raked his black hair with his fingers. “Come in. Sit down. Let’s get this over with now.”

  To his surprise, Adam took a seat next to the nurse. He smiled broadly. “The Rev and Mintay had to go home, but they said they would pray for you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Adam, you don’t need to stay for this,” Joe suggested to the big Samoan whose thick arm had come to rest on the back of the sofa in the general vicinity of Winnie’s delicate shoulders. He’d perfected that move in middle school but, hell, they were both adults despite the Rev’s concern. Let them do as they wanted.

  “I’m good,” Adam said, stretching out his legs and making himself more at home.

  Winnie on the other hand sat erectly and proceeded to give a very professional report. “My sister and I went over Teddy’s records and gave him a quick checkup when she came to do the DNA test. The boy had two surgeries right after birth, one to close the opening in the spine where his cord protruded and another to put in a shunt.”

  “Why a shunt?” Joe asked.

  “To drain the fluids off his brain. It had to be replaced due to an infection at seven months. At four, he had major surgery on his brain stem to improve his breathing, at six a bowel and bladder redirection to get him out of diapers. He can use the catheter himself, and a shot of fluid through an opening in the navel brings on his bowel movements.”

  “Jesus, he’s had more surgeries than me.” Joe suspected beneath his Cajun tan he’d gone a little pale.

  Knowing her husband’s aversion to illness, Nell squeezed his arm. “You okay?”

  “Fine. I’ve come a long way since we started Camp Love Letter. Go on, Winnie.”

  “The real problem is he will need another surgery to crack the scar tissue on his back allowing him to grow more in the near future. We also found that the braces and boots supporting his lower legs need replacement soon as well as his body brace because he has gotten too big for them. Along with all that, he is getting too large for his current wheelchair. These devices will run into the thousands of dollars and might be why his mother chose to turn him over to you at this point.”

  At the mention of cracking open scar tissue on a child’s back, Joe felt a trifle woozy, but he manned up. “Money’s no problem for us. He’ll get what he needs.”

  “Unfortunately, there is more. We found plenty of bruises on his body. Teddy says he falls down a lot, but we suspect abuse, mos
t likely the boyfriend.”

  Nell nodded. “The social worker already had a file on Teddy. Some elderly neighbors at the trailer court where his family lived called in to report they thought Maydell’s boyfriend hit the boy when she went off to work. Unfortunately, both the mother and child claimed everything was dandy, but they were keeping an eye on the situation. I could never convince Maydell her problems went deeper than coping with a handicapped child. The caseworker is glad we are going to foster Teddy.”

  Because Adam sat there like a huge stone moa statue from Easter Island, Joe felt compelled to bring him into the conversation. “What do you think, Adam?”

  “If the mother went away in Samoa, someone else would give the boy food and shelter, maybe many people. The matai, the chief of the village, would find a way to get the boy what he needed. As for Anastasia, she would be taught not to speak back to her elders.”

  “It takes a village to raise a child,” Nell said.

  “Yes. That could be said of Samoa.”

  “I think it might do the rest of our children good to have Teddy here. Maybe Trinity will stop complaining about being smaller than the rest of them and having to wear his glasses all the time. Winnie, thanks for bringing us up to date. Are you settled in your room?” Nell asked.

  “Not yet. I think Rev left my suitcase on the doorstep before they went home. They foisted me off on you so fast I didn’t even have time to unpack there.”

  “Not foisted. You will be a great help to us.”

  “Yes, keep the pathetic newly divorced woman busy.”

  “Not pathetic either,” Adam interjected. “I’ll get that bag for you.”

  He stretched as if he’d been in one place far too long. The exercise showed off the wall of his chest muscles, the flatness of his belly, the bulge of his biceps and calf muscles. Both Winnie and Nell watched with rapt interest.

  Finished with his stretches, Adam said, “So how many are you having over for Super Bowl Sunday in a couple of weeks?”

  “My family, and that’s a lot of people, the old guard—Connor, the Rev, Calvin Armitage, Asa Dobbs and their kids, Howdy and Cassie and theirs. Why?”

  “Two whole roasted pigs should do it. I want to build an umu oven for you.”

  “And he cooks, too,” Winnie murmured.

  “I’ll just bet he does,” Nell agreed.

  Joe frowned. “You can use my Cajun microwave. It will do a small pig.”

  “No, this will be better, a real Samoan feast. Can we get taro root or breadfruit here to bake with the pig? Coconuts, plantains?”

  “The last two, yes. Maybe we could wrap yams and baking potatoes in foil to take the place of the first two.” Nell jumped in with both feet. “Everyone brings a side dish and a dessert. We won’t lack for food.”

  “Sounds like Cajuns and Samoans have much in common. We will need banana leaves, too, lots of them, and lava rocks.”

  “Hey, I usually grill.” Joe interrupted the island feast plans.

  “And so you shall, dear. The children will still want hotdogs and hamburgers. Won’t this be fun, Winnie?”

  “It sounds spectacular!”

  “Let’s get your suitcase, and I will tell you how I make my oven.” Adam and Winnie left wrapped in plans if not each other’s arms.

  “Now that’s an original pickup line. He’s showing off for Winnie, and you did not have to enjoy the display so much, Tink.” Joe wrapped a possessive arm around his wife.

  “As you often say, I’m married, not dead.”

  By the coy way Nell smiled, Joe knew she reveled in his mild jealousy. “While the kids do their homework, why don’t we go upstairs? I’ll show you how I like to cook.”

  Chapter Nine

  Winnie lay awake on the queen-sized bed under a comforter patterned in lilac blossoms. The feminine, lavender bedroom with the lacy border was intended for Lorena when she could be parted from her brothers. Nell figured that day would come quickly now that her youngest daughter had begun school. Soon, she would start seeing herself as a girl rather than a triplet and want her own space, not a single bed across from her brothers’ bunks.

  In the meantime, Winnie could enjoy the luxurious space so different from the cramped bedroom entirely filled by a king-sized mattress because the newly minted Douglas Hopper, M.D., dermatology, insisted he needed one. By the time she figured out Doug cheated on her, she came to appreciate that big space in the middle of the bed that neither crossed for months before either called it quits.

  He’d said she was tired, bony, no fun anymore. She’d retaliated with adjectives describing him as unappreciative, self-centered, and disloyal. Maybe they were both right. Doug found his relief with a buxom, bubbly blonde. She quit working the double shifts that put him through medical training and noticed her energy return, her gauntness transform into slimness again. Taking after her thin mother and grandmother, Winnie doubted she’d ever put on much weight. Most women envied her because her quick metabolism ate up the calories in every brownie or slice of cheesecake. Cheesecake. Beefcake.

  Her thoughts turned to Adam Malala who had been relegated to the cottage next to Corazon and Knox Polk, but not before he’d helped her prepare Teddy for bed. She’d stripped off the boy’s blue knit school shirt and wide-legged khakis altered to fit over his braces with Teddy helpfully raising himself up off the seat of the wheelchair to make the job easier. Then, she peeled him out of his supportive gear like removing a raw lobster from its shell. Both she and Adam noticed the bruises on the boy’s pale arms, the imprints of the fingers of a large man who’d gripped too hard. His pallid body bloomed with yellow-edged, purple blotches.

  A little shy in front of a woman he barely knew and clad only in his tighty-whiteys, Teddy asked if Adam could take him into the prepared bath. The big cornerback hefted him with gentleness and ease and completed the process of getting the boy into the tub. Leaving the bathroom door cracked just a bit in case Teddy needed him, Adam took a chair and talked to Winnie of their upcoming Samoan feast, what foods he would prepare. The only things Doug Hopper ever brought to a meal were a knife and a fork and a complaint if the dinner was not to his liking.

  When Teddy called to get out, Adam took the pajamas laid on the bed, helped the boy to dry and dress. He didn’t flinch when Winnie administered the shot through the navel to activate the boy’s bowels, just simply carried him back into the bathroom to wait for the results. But then, Adam Malala never flinched. Despite his size, he could cross a football field with amazing speed, send his body flying into a receiver, and pop the ball out of his opponent’s grasp almost as an afterthought.

  They had the boy settled in bed when a knock sounded on the door. Stacy in a ruffled and beribboned muslin nightgown fit for royalty entered and asked if she could say goodnight to Teddy. Such a nice gesture coming from her astonished the adults, but not so much the words she had to say.

  “Look, Teddy. We’re the outsiders here. We have to stick together no matter what.”

  “They have to keep you. You’re family. They don’t have to let me stay if it turns out Mr. Joe is not my daddy. The guys hardly talked to me at dinner. I make a step, or maybe a wheel, in the wrong direction, and I’m outta here. I have to be on my best behavior.” The boy’s eyes blinked heavily as if this day had run over him with a pair of cleats and left him exhausted.

  “Well, the girls only like me for my dog and my clothes. I just wanted to say I’ve got your back if you have mine. Deal?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  She fingered his ratty paperback copy of a Harry Potter novel on the nightstand. “Can I borrow this? Of course, I had a whole set of the hardcovers at the palazzo, but I never read them and couldn’t bring them with me on the plane. Can you believe I don’t have a television set in my room? Yours neither, I see.”

  “Just bring it back in the morning.”

  “Goodnight, then.” Stacy marched across the hall to her own room, probably intending to plague Brinsley with her demands unt
il she felt sleepy.

  “Nervy brat,” Adam said. “Don’t let her get you in trouble, Teddy.”

  “I’ll try to be good. I think I should say my prayers now.”

  Adam dropped to his knees at the bedside and folded his hands. Caught off guard, Winnie simply bowed her head. Sure, Mintay had embraced the Rev’s AME church, but her parents could only be described as secular humanists. Neither approach bothered Teddy. He closed his eyes and made a steeple with his hands over his stomach.

  “Dear God, thank you for bringing me to this pretty house with a big gate and alarm buttons. I feel safe here. Bless my new family and especially Stacy who really needs it. Also Nurse Winnie and Mr. Adam who are taking good care of me and my mom wherever she is, okay? Please, let me be Mr. Joe’s real son so’s I can stay here. Amen.”

  Without whining for a glass of water or a story or a few more minutes before lights out, Teddy worked himself over on his side, tucked his hands under his pillow, and said, “Night.”

  Winnie turned out his light. “Teddy, I’ll be in the next room with the doors to the bathroom open. Call if you need me.”

  The boy appeared to be asleep already. She walked Adam to the elevator. From Stacy’s room they heard Brinsley reading aloud from the Harry Potter book in his wonderfully appropriate British accent. Down the hall, Nell slipped from the triplets’ room and began making her rounds to issue goodnights and lights out warnings to the older children.

  Winnie leaned against the wall as they waited for the lift to arrive. “That Tebowing you did by Teddy’s bed caught me off balance. I’ve seen you do your really intimidating war dance before a game, but never a prayer. Somehow, I thought Samoans were all about rough sports and well, love under the palm trees.”

  “We are all of those things. The London Missionary Society really did a job on us. I hear a ‘let us pray,’ and I’m on my knees. If you are out in a village at six p.m. and the church bell rings, you’d better head somewhere for Bible reading and prayers and get off the street. The natives are friendly but don’t take sacrilege lightly. Church on Sunday, sometimes twice, no other activities on the day of rest. But, we do manage to offset that with an enormous Sunday dinner. It’s the Samoan way. I’d like to take you to the islands someday.”