Grace, a former teacher herself, took a group of children for three hours after school, and focused primarily on the basics: reading and mathematics. She insisted that the parents get involved.
Now, instead of watching a lot of television at night, Jimmy and I read a book together. And I was teaching him household math—how to budget money, how to price-shop for everything from clothes to groceries, and even complicated things, like how to double-check the accuracy of a phone bill.
He seemed to love all of this. Jimmy was one of the smartest kids I knew, which was how he attracted my attention back in Memphis. I didn’t want that brain to go to waste.
“What’s wrong with the Defender?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Franklin said. “Except that it’s been running more articles than the other papers combined about the anniversary of the assassination. A lot of them have been from people like Mrs. King and Ralph Abernathy, saying that they believe there was a conspiracy, and James Earl Ray was only a part of it.”
I heard laughter down the hallway. If we weren’t careful, we’d start running late.
“When the judge in the Ray case died last week,” Franklin said. “Jimmy became convinced it was part of the conspiracy.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “The judge had a heart attack.”
Franklin shrugged. “Jimmy’s eleven. A death of someone powerful who was dealing with Ray, whom a lot of people are saying is only part of the problem. Jimmy believes—and it’s an unshakeable belief—that eventually all the good guys on this case—his words—will get murdered. That includes you.”
I sighed, and leaned the back of my head against the door. “He and I have had this discussion before. He knows I’m safe.”
“You say you’re safe, but your actions prove otherwise, Smokey.” Franklin spoke softly, as if he were afraid of offending me. “You have a scar on your face because you nearly died in December.”
“Which has nothing to do with the King assassination.”
“But it does in Jimmy’s mind. It’s all connected, and he’s terrified.”
I let out a sigh of frustration. “We’ve been through this, Franklin. Nine times out of ten, the cases are routine, and I’m in no danger at all. Every once in a while things happen. But things happen no matter what to black men in this country. I’m in just as much danger going to the wrong part of Chicago.”
“I know,” Franklin said.
“I’m safer now than I’ve been for a long time. The work I do for Laura is easy, and the claims investigation I’ve been doing for Southside involve little more than photographs and paperwork. The personal cases—”
“Smokey, I understand,” Franklin said. “It’s Jimmy who doesn’t, and logic isn’t going to work with him.”
I closed my eyes. I knew that. I was defensive because I knew that Jimmy wasn’t coping well, that part of the problem was my work. But I was at a loss as how to make things better. It wasn’t as if Jimmy’s problems were the kind people dealt with every day.
“I was wondering if I could tell Althea what’s going on,” Franklin said.
I opened my eyes. He hadn’t moved. He had the same concerned expression on his face.
“She’s better with the kids than I am. She deals with them all the time. And she might have some good ideas.”
I shook my head.
“He needs something, Smokey.”
“I know,” I said. “I love Althea. She’s been marvelous with him. But the more people who know, the easier it is for word to get out.”
“She wouldn’t say anything.”
“Maybe not intentionally,” I said, “but I don’t think we should risk it.”
“Not even for Jimmy?”
“This is for Jimmy,” I said.
Franklin studied me. “He’s terrified, Smokey. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I had, but I didn’t say anything. I had been Jimmy’s age when my parents were lynched. I went to live with the people who became my adoptive parents, people whom I barely knew at the time. I had been that terrified for years, and I knew that the only way to get through it—the only way to get past it—was to let time go by.
“Maybe,” Franklin said softly, “maybe you might consider having him stay with us. There are a lot of people here, and there’s a lot of distraction. Althea’s home all day.”
I understood the argument. A stable family, a normal life. Jimmy could use that. But he also got a lot more attention from me than he would get here.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about him all the time,” Franklin said.
“I’d still worry,” I said.
“Will you consider it?” Franklin asked.
“No,” I said. “I promised him we’d stay together. I’m not going to break that promise.”
“Not even if it’s better for him?”
“I’m not sure it would be better for him,” I said. “I don’t mean to offend you, Franklin, but I don’t know if anyone else could understand him as well as I do.”
Franklin crossed his arms and sighed. “Well, you’re going to have to do more than you have been. He’s getting worse, Smokey.”
“I know,” I said, feeling the old worry come back. “Believe me, I know.”
SEVEN
I THOUGHT about Franklin’s offer as I drove the kids to school. I listened to them chatter about the holiday—the sunrise service that even Jimmy admitted that he liked, the Easter Egg hunt, the ham dinner with all the trimmings. Norene was still excited about her bunny even though Althea made her leave it at home, and Keith liked the delicate work of blowing eggs for an Easter Egg tree that they had put together out back.
Jimmy sat up front with me and remained quiet. Occasionally, he would touch his watch as if he couldn’t believe he had it. Jimmy didn’t look at the beautiful spring sunshine out the window, and he didn’t say good-bye to Jonathon when we dropped him off at the nearby junior high school.
I wondered if Jimmy had overheard the conversation I had with Franklin. We’d been quiet, but the bathroom was nearby and even though the walls muffled sound, they didn’t always block it.
But Jimmy didn’t seem any different with me than he had been when I got to the house. I was just feeling guilty for even listening to Franklin’s offer.
Although I had turned it down, I would have been foolish not to pay attention to Franklin’s concerns. He got paid to see patterns and give people advice. Mostly he worked for the black politicians on the South Side. His positions always had different names—advisor, assistant, manager—but they resulted in the same thing, people paying him for what he saw. He was trying to use that skill for himself. By going to law school at night, he hoped eventually to become one of the people who got advice.
Jimmy’s crying jag had shocked Franklin, and the boy’s silence was bothering me. But I knew that changing his living conditions yet again was not the solution.
I pulled into the school parking lot and shut off the car. The lot was full of other parents, dropping off their kids. The school itself, a dingy brick building covered in graffiti, didn’t inspire confidence. Neither did the gang members crowding the playground.
We had developed a routine during the winter, and the kids were used to it now. We walked to the door together. The schoolyard had become a hang-out for the younger members of the Blackstone Rangers, and they tried to recruit from there, often using lies and intimidation.
Last winter, the gang had tried to recruit Jimmy and Keith, and ultimately failed. But I was sure the group would try again. And I meant to make sure that neither of them—or any other child under my protection—got involved with that group.
There were Stones on the playground as we got out of the car. They were easy to identify; they all wore their red tams, which they called “suns,” and hung out in a cluster. Most of Stones were older than the children who were filtering into the dirty brick building.
My charges gathered around me—even Lacey, who tried to pretend she was
n’t related to the other children. Norene took my right hand, as she did every time I drove the kids to school, and Mikie took my left.
Lacey led the way down the sidewalk, with Jimmy and Keith behind her. The girls and I followed, as if we were in a small parade.
A teacher held the metal door open, shepherding students inside. She smiled when she saw me. She wasn’t Jimmy’s teacher, but I recognized her because she usually had door duty. I smiled back, waited until Jimmy and the Grimshaw children disappeared inside, and then walked back to the car.
I didn’t want to give this up. Not the walks to the school, not the fierce protectiveness I felt whenever I saw Jimmy, not even the sullen silence with which he was treating me that morning. He and I had a tough lot, but he had become my family, and I was his.
If I took him to the Grimshaws’, had him live there permanently, I would be abandoning him, just like his own father had long before he was born, like his mother had a year ago Christmas, and like his brother had last spring.
I couldn’t do that to Jimmy, any more than I could do it to myself.
I got into the car, and checked my mirrors before backing out of the parking lot. Every once in a while, the Gang Intelligence Unit parked a white van outside the school—ostensibly to keep an eye on the Stones. I could never figure out why the Unit was there, though, and I had feeling it had more to do with something else, something I didn’t completely understand.
They weren’t there that morning, and I felt an odd relief. I didn’t like that group any more than I liked the gang they were monitoring.
When I pulled up in front of the apartment building, Laura’s Mercedes was gone. That must have been an unpleasant drive home for her in the filthy car. I had given her one of my shirts and a pair of pants that were too small for me, and I hoped she had worn them. At least then she wouldn’t have had to put on the same blood-covered clothes from the night before.
I wished now that I had taken care of the blood in the backseat last night. It would have made at least part of this morning more pleasant for her.
I parked in the spot she had left open, got out, and went inside. Marvella’s door was closed and her morning newspaper still rested against it. I wondered if she had ever gotten home last night. If so, I wasn’t going to disturb her. I would find out later how Valentina was doing.
I went inside my apartment to find that Laura had straightened it. She had done the dishes, and she had also taken my suit coat with her, probably to have it cleaned. I would have to protest. She didn’t need to spend money on things like that.
She had put my newspaper on the table inside the apartment. A large photograph of an elderly woman holding a black pom-pom in one hand and a poster of Martin Luther King in the other covered the bottom half of the front page. Apparently the elderly woman had been at the parade. If the parade had focused on Martin instead of Easter itself, then no wonder Jimmy was disturbed this morning. He couldn’t avoid the memories of last year no matter what he did.
I left the paper on the table, poured myself a cup of lukewarm coffee, and took it into my office in the back of the apartment. My office was in the darkest room in the apartment. The window overlooked the building next door, and let in very little light.
I made up for it by having lamps all over the room—on the wooden filing cabinets and desk I had bought at a yard sale, and a standing lamp on the floor itself.
I sat down in the green office chair behind the desk. I had some paperwork to do before I headed back out again. In addition to the work I did for Laura, I also got steady jobs from Chicagoland Southside Insurance, a company that sold policies to blacks.
The two reports I had to file with the company were both auto claims. Southside was worried that the claims had been falsified. With a little investigation, I determined that neither had. That surprised me as well. I had run across a startling number of false claims since I started this work.
I had done the same kind of work in Memphis for a number of insurance companies, and never encountered as much fraud as I had here. But Southside had recently been bought by black owners. Before it had been owned by whites. And Stewart Blakely, the new owner and the man who had hired me, believed—and I agreed—that incidents of fraud would decrease as the clients realized they were now dealing with people from their community, people who would treat them fairly instead of trying to bilk them for every last dollar.
I had just finished the first report when someone knocked at my front door. I tucked the report into a drawer, closed the other file, and went up front to answer it, glad that Laura had cleaned up for me.
Because I conducted business out of the apartment, I tried to keep the place neat. Jimmy’s bedroom door remained closed—we had decided early on that his bedroom was his private place, and his private place was usually messy. But the rest of the apartment could have guests at any moment, and we tried to accommodate that.
We didn’t always do very well.
But the apartment looked good this morning. It smelled of fresh coffee, and the only thing on any surface was the Defender I had left on the table.
I went to the door, looked through the spyhole, and started unlocking deadbolts the moment I recognized Marvella.
She didn’t look well. Her eyes were so sunken from lack of sleep that not even the makeup she had slathered all over could cover the circles. Her face seemed haggard and thinner than it had just a few hours ago.
She wore a dark blue dress that accented the sallowness of her skin. The dress was the most conservative thing I’d ever seen her in—it almost looked like something Laura would wear to the office—and Marvella had made it more conservative by putting a string of pearls around her neck. They didn’t look fake to me.
Somehow she had straightened her hair, and pulled it down around her ears. She hadn’t worn her hair straight since the fall, when she used to iron it. Now she had used some kind of straightening oil, and the choice made her look older and less exotic.
I wondered if she had done that on purpose. I had a hunch she was going to talk to the hospital administration today or do other business in the white world, and she didn’t want to look threatening.
I held the door open and she came in.
“How is Valentina?” I asked as I closed the door.
“She made it through the night, but they’re making no promises.” Marvella sat at the table and put the Defender on the chair next to her. “I called just a few minutes ago. She’s not conscious yet. They don’t even want visitors”
That wasn’t a good sign. I went into the half-kitchen, emptied the coffee pot, and put new water in the base.
“Have you had breakfast?” I asked as I put some coffee grounds in the filter. I put the lid back on, set the pot on the stove, and turned on the burner.
“I don’t need anything,” she said.
I grabbed some bread and put it in the toaster.
“Do you have a minute, Smokey?” she asked.
That caught my attention. It sounded businesslike. “Yeah,” I said. “I have a little time.”
I was supposed to be checking a building for Laura that day, but I set my own schedule.
“First,” she said, looking down at her well-manicured hands, “I want to apologize for yelling at you last night. I wasn’t thinking, I guess.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“No, it’s not.” She gave me a weak smile. “I didn’t want to admit to myself that I might have killed Val by leaving her alone.”
“You didn’t make the choice to get rid of that baby.”
“Now you sound like that damn doctor,” Marvella snapped. “As if he understands what the hell she was going through—”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “All I meant was that she was ill when she came to you.”
Marvella took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry. I’m still shaky.”
The toast popped up. I put it on a plate, grabbed the butter dish off the counter, and brought them to t
he table. Then I opened the silverware drawer, grabbed a knife and spoon, and set them in front of her.
“Eat something,” I said. Apparently it was my day to feed the women in my life.
She looked at me.
“You’re going to go do battle with the hospital, aren’t you? I think you should eat before you go.”
“It’s that obvious?” she asked, her fingers going to the pearls.
“I’ve never seen you looking like a demure housewife before,” I said.
She laughed. “Sometimes you have to put on a disguise to get what you want.”
“And what do you want?” I asked.
“I want to make sure they don’t press charges against Val. I also want them to let me take care of her bills.”
“I thought Laura was going to do that,” I said.
Marvella picked up the knife, and ran it through the soft butter. “She was great, your friend. I never expected that.”
It was a sideways apology for all the ways she had verbally abused Laura.
“She’s got a good heart,” I said.
“I should’ve expected nothing less.” Marvella shook her head. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours for me. Everything I thought I understood is wrong.”
I opened the refrigerator and took out strawberry jam. The jar was sticky and left gunk on the metal rack. I wiped the jar with a cloth, then set it on the table.
“What do you mean?”
Marvella shook her head. “Val, your friend, even me. I thought I was good in an emergency.”
“You are,” I said. “You’ve helped me with Jimmy a lot. You’ve been real steady.”
Until she got angry at my involvement with Laura. Then Marvella hadn’t been steady at all.
“I can take care of things,” Marvella said. “But this was an actual emergency, and I handled it wrong. Val would be better now if I had taken her to the hospital right away.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “They might have arrested both of you right then and there.”
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