by Curtis Bunn
“Well, it may be hard to believe, but now you do,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY: WELCOME TO MY NEW WORLD
RODNEY
“Why are you so happy?” I asked Brenda when I saw her in Dr. Taylor’s lobby.
“I’m happy to see you. And look at you. Cut down that beard even more. Look nice. Distinguished.”
I had looked at it once in the mirror and kept it moving. But I felt better. My thoughts were more clear and my dreams were so nondescript that I hadn’t remembered any of them lately. I had been on the medication for a week and things were on an even keel.
“I’m ready for the next step,” I told Dr. Taylor. “I’m ready to look for a job, find a place to live. Maybe I will renew my license and drive Uber and find a room for rent.”
“I’m so happy to hear you say that,” Brenda said. “Didn’t even know you knew about Uber.”
“That’s great progress,” Dr. Taylor said. “This is a monumental day, Rodney. You’ve grown so much and it’s wonderful to see. But I want to talk to you about some things before we talk about a life-changing thing, OK?”
I nodded my head.
“Do you know what visual hallucinations are?”
“I know a hallucination is seeing something that’s not there. People who use acid have hallucinations.”
“That’s right. But you don’t use acid, do you?”
“No.”
“Right. But you have seen people chasing you, wearing black hats and coats. I think that’s what Darlene said you said.”
“That’s true.”
“If she’s seen you react to hallucinations in the past several months, others probably have, too. Agree?”
“Yes, but where is this going? I’m not hallucinating now. Am I? Are you really here?”
I laughed and the doctor and Brenda did, too.
“I asked you that because something significant, life-changing happened to you about two years ago, and I’m pretty certain you had a visual hallucination that led you to the streets.”
She had me confused. I had no idea where she was going, so I just kept quiet. But I noticed Brenda slid closer to me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Dr. Taylor took off her glasses and looked into my eyes. “Rodney, you seem quite in control of your emotions, so I feel comfortable telling you this.”
I was scared then. Was I sick? Did I have a brain tumor? That thought didn’t make any sense—I hadn’t had a CT scan. But that’s how jumbled my mind was.
“What? What is it?”
“Rodney,” she said, “you did not kill your family.”
I literally shook my head, as if to say, “Huh?”
I turned to Brenda, who put her arm around me. “It’s true. Your family is alive. You had a. . . ”
“Visual hallucination,” Dr. Taylor said. “There is a lot of clinical stuff I can and will explain later about it, but—”
“How do you know this, that they are not dead?”
Brenda pulled out her cell phone and handed it to me. It was a photo of her with Darlene, Diana and Joy. I stood up.
“We took that photo today, at your house,” Brenda said. I was crying. “I met your family. Everyone is fine and—”
“How did this happen? Where are they?”
I didn’t realize I had been crying until I tasted the salt of my tears.
“Short version,” Brenda said, “I met this man on Facebook who had seen a picture of you and me. Turned out, he was your cousin, Rick.”
“No way. Come on, this is crazy.”
“Rick lives in D.C. but he came down here and we went to dinner. He asked about the photo again and I told him your name. He said, ‘That’s my cousin.’ That’s how it started. Today, I went to your house in Guilford Forest in Southwest Atlanta.”
That was beyond anything I had imagined.
“So, are they mad at me? What do they think? They’re OK? How could this happen?”
I thought of the magnitude of what I was told. “Oh, my God.”
Brenda looked at Dr. Taylor, who nodded. “Hold on a second,” she said as she headed to the door to her waiting area. I looked down because Brenda grabbed my hand.
When I looked up, my daughters came practically running through the door. I believed I was dreaming. They were taller and had longer hair. But it was a beautiful sight to see them.
They practically tackled me in unison. They were crying. I hugged them like I had never hugged anything before, just in case it was a dream that I tried to clutch it and not let it go.
They were saying, “Daddy, Daddy” and other stuff that I could not make out. I sobbed uncontrollably. It was so remarkable that it felt like a fantasy . . . finally, a good dream. Standing a few feet away was Darlene, with her hands covering her mouth and tears streaming down onto her hands. Our eyes met and we were in love again, just like that.
She slowly, tentatively came over and the girls parted so we could embrace. “Rod. Oh, God, my Rodney. I never believed you were dead. I always believed we’d have this moment.”
“I wish I could say the same,” I said.
“I believed it enough for both of us,” Darlene said.
Dr. Taylor passed out a tissue box, but not before pulling out several sheets for herself. Darlene wiped my face, the way she used to when I had sweat covering me from cutting the grass.
Rick came over and we hugged. “You remember the last time we saw each other?” he said. “You visited me and told me to hang in there, that I could make it. Well, I’m saying that to you now, cousin.”
After several minutes of touching and feeling each other to make sure the most remarkable and improbable reunion was real, Dr. Taylor settled us down.
“OK, we should spend these last thirty minutes or so as a family session,” she said. “We have to talk about how you all will move forward as a family. This is first of many sessions, I’m sure.”
Brenda backed toward the door, wiping her eyes, saying, “OK, I’m going to go. I can honestly say this is one of the happiest days of my life. To see you all so excited to be back together as a family is a blessing. It’s amazing. Thank God.”
She reached for the doorknob.
“Brenda,” I said. “We’re about to have a family session.”
“I know,” she said.
“So why are you leaving?”
She had a confused expression on her face.
Darlene got up and went to her. “What he’s saying—what we’re all saying—is that you’re family now, girl. You ain’t getting away that easy. You stuck with us now.”
Brenda’s eyes seeped tears.
Rick pulled up a chair for her and they embraced. Before she took a seat, I went over and hugged Brenda for a long time.
“Thank you,” I said. It was the best I could do. But it was as heartfelt as I could muster. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Brenda responded. She turned to everyone.
“There was a time in my life I had lost pretty much everything, when I thought the world owed me something. But this man helped me realize that I owed myself everything. He helped me find whatever I had lost. I guess I helped Rodney. But I know he changed my world by welcoming me into his.”
“And here we all are now,” I said. “One big happy family.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Curtis Bunn is the former Essence No. 1 best-selling author of ten novels, including The Secret Lives of Cheating Wives, Seize the Day, The Old Man in the Club and Baggage Check, among others. The Washington, D.C. native also is founder of the National Book Club Conference. Find Curtis on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn as @curtisbunn or at www.curtisbunn.com.
THE CRAFT
My wife and I live in the heart of Atlanta, between downtown and Midtown. During my semi-regular, two-mile evening walks, I have seen homelessness up close and personal. It is quite disturbing.
Disturbing because it exists. Disturbing because not enough is being done to get 565,
000 people shelter. Disturbing because it does not have to be this way.
As an author—and this is my tenth novel—I am keenly aware of my surroundings. I go about my life observing people and places, reactions and behaviors, all with the idea that what I see can spark an idea for a book or add layers to characters or storylines.
Witnessing homelessness in Atlanta, New York, Chicago and my hometown of Washington, D.C., among other cities in the past year—and being troubled by it—charged me to tackle it in a way that, hopefully, provides insight and significant concern that impacts us all. And maybe we will work together to impact change.
Welcome To My World is no one’s story. I made it up, but made it as authentic as possible through research and more research. I spoke with homeless people, mostly men, who shared some of their story of how and why they ended up on the streets. I fed the homeless with my Alpha Phi Alpha chapter, Omicron Phi Lambda of metro Atlanta. The stories were heart-breaking . . . and an indictment on the United States. I left each conversation feeling it should not be like it is.
Ultimately, this is a story of humanity, which surely is lacking in how the government and the public treat the homeless. Many of us are afraid of the homeless, embarrassed by them or are disinterested in having any contact with them.
It was not comfortable for me to address these men, to delve into their troubles. But it was hardly what I expected. They were, overall, welcoming because I cared enough to want to hear from them. They were angry and scared and compassionate and hopeful and disenchanted and troubled.
Drug and alcohol abuse could be easily detected. Mental illness was rampant, derived from an inherent condition or from the stress of having endured war and seeing unfathomable pain and death.
On the other side, depression among African-American women is more common than most might think. Depression comes in many levels, and often it is taken on not by therapy, but my eating. And eating causes weight gain. And that causes one to fall into the doldrums.
Pitting a mentally challenged homeless man opposite a depressed woman who eats to feel comforted felt like a juicy starting point to not only tackle two national concerns, but to show the potential for good that can come when we stretch ourselves and welcome new people into our world.
Of course, we cannot just invite anyone in. But it might be OK to at least give consideration to being more welcoming. That is the underlying theme to this story: You never know how your words or actions can change someone’s life.
— CURTIS BUNN
ALSO BY CURTIS BUNN
The Secret Lives of Cheating Wives
Seize the Day
The Truth Is in the Wine
The Old Man in the Club
Homecoming Weekend
A Cold Piece of Work
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Strebor Books
P.O. Box 55471
Atlanta, GA 30308
www.simonandschuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
© 2017 by Curtis Bunn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address Strebor Books, P.O. Box 55471,
Atlanta, GA 30308.
ISBN 978-1-59309-688-5
ISBN 978-1-50111-971-2 (ebook)
LCCN 2017941827
First Strebor Books trade paperback edition October 2017
Cover design: www.mariondesigns.com
Cover photograph: © Keith Saunders/Keith Saunders Photos
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