A Matter of Trust

by Anne Schraff

  A wave of laughter rippled through the room as Mr. Keenan walked in. He glared at the students and said, “Levity is over and terror begins. A pop quiz. ” He whipped out a stack of papers from his tan briefcase. “Let’s see if we can match the quotations to the persons who spoke them in Macbeth. ” The multiple-choice tests were quickly passed down the rows as Mr. Keenan warned, “Don’t embarrass yourselves by copying from your neighbors, dear scholars, for there are different tests for each row. ”

  Darcy had read Macbeth more than once, so she had no problem with the quiz, but several students, including Roylin, seemed to have trouble with the questions.

  After class, Darcy and Hakeem walked out together. “Look, Darcy,” Hakeem said, “I know you want to help, but don’t stick up for me in class, okay? It just makes me look like even more of a fool than I already am. I mean, my mom used to do that. I’d be playing and I’d stutter, and the guys would diss me, and there’d be Mom yelling at them. I’d feel so bad I’d wish I was dead, and you know something? Sometimes I still do!”

  Darcy felt shocked and hurt, as if she had been slapped in the face. “Don’t talk like that!” Darcy cried. “It only makes things worse!”

  “Will you just let me handle this on my own,” Hakeem said, with an angry edge in his voice.

  Darcy took a step back. She did not mean to upset Hakeem. She only wanted to help him. But it did not seem like Hakeem wanted her around. Maybe he would rather go to Brisana for comfort, Darcy thought bitterly.

  “I’m sorry, Hakeem. ”

  “It’s okay. Forget it. Just forget it. ” Hakeem tried to smooth things over with a weak smile, but even his golden-brown eyes failed to warm. Darcy hurried to her next class and tried to concentrate on her astronomy project. She was writing a report on whether or not human beings would ever be able to colonize Mars. It seemed stupid to even think about it. Darcy forced herself to do her outline about a man-made plastic roof stretching over areas of the planet that would allow human beings to live. When tears ran down her cheeks, she dragged her sleeve across her face and went on working.

  After her last class, Darcy hurried past the Asian grocery store as a slender woman carefully laid out a tray of chicken. I know why she’s alone, Darcy thought bitterly to herself. She’s probably got a husband who left her to raise her children and pay the bills. As she watched the woman work, Darcy imagined the struggle her own mother faced when her father left. She fought each day to hold a job, a home, and a family together with no help. All the while, Darcy thought, her father was living with another woman in New York City. Darcy studied the Asian woman carefully. She did not know anything about her, of course. Maybe her husband was a loyal, hard-working man. Darcy did not know. But right now all Darcy could think of was that men, and boys, were heartless beings.

  Often when Darcy returned from school, she was the first one home. Then Mom would go racing off to her job as an emergency-room nurse. But today Eleanor Harris, a neighbor, was sitting with Grandma.

  “Grandma wasn’t any trouble, was she?” Darcy asked.

  “Oh, no trouble at all. She was a perfect little lamb,” Ms. Harris assured her. “As a matter of fact, she’s sleeping now. She had a nice fruit cocktail and some of her nutrition drink not too long ago. ”Picking up her handbag, Ms. Harris prepared to leave. “Well, I’m gonna run now. Tell your mom I’ll talk to her tomorrow. ”

  “Sure thing. And thanks, Ms. Harris,” Darcy said as she shut the door behind her kind neighbor.

  Soon after Ms. Harris left, Jamee burst in from school. Only a month ago, she was getting terrible grades and hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Dad reappeared, she seemed to change for the better. She still played rap music much too loud, and Mom had to stop her from wearing short skirts to school, but she was getting decent grades now. And she had gotten rid of Bobby Wallace, the boyfriend who once punched her in an argument. Now she was dating a kid named Tyrone Penn whose worst fault was wearing a ton of gold chains.

  “I got a B in math, Darcy,” Jamee announced.

  Darcy gave her sister a big hug. “That’s great, Jamee. I’m so proud of you!”

  Jamee wriggled free of the embrace. “And guess what! Tyrone is going with me to the school dance, and he called me his girl! And you know what else? I’m going out to dinner with Daddy and we’re eating at a fancy restaurant. ”

  Darcy felt a cold chill pass through her heart. She was not as willing to forgive and forget everything their father had done. He had neglected his family for five long years and was just barely back, and Jamee was already holding her arms open as if he was some returning hero. “When did you decide to go to dinner with Dad?” Darcy asked coldly.

  “Well, you know he’s been asking both of us. You know that. I mean, don’t get all bent out of shape or nothing. He’s asked both of us like a hundred times,” Jamee said, dropping onto the sofa.

  “He hasn’t been home long enough to do anything a hundred times,” Darcy replied sharply. “I mean, he just blew in from New York, right?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Darcy?” Jamee groaned. “Are you jealous or something? Are you mad that I’m getting a little time with Dad?” Jamee demanded, her eyes flashing.

  “It’s just that you don’t seem to care what he did to Mom, or us. All of a sudden he’s some hero,” Darcy said, her voice trembling.

  “So what do you want, Darcy?” Jamee almost screamed. “Maybe Dad should be thrown in prison. I mean, you’re always talking about love and forgiveness and all that stuff, and now you want us to hate Dad forever and ever!”

  Darcy began to cry. “Jamee, I’m sorry. It’s just that he hurt us all so bad—”

  “I don’t care,” Jamee said defiantly. “I just want my father back. I’m going to dinner with him, and if you don’t like it, too bad. Mom says it’s okay, and I’m going! That’s all there is to it!” Jamee got up and stomped off to her room. A second later, Darcy heard her sister’s bedroom door slam. The yelling and fighting reminded Darcy of how things were just before Jamee ran away from home. Though it had been over a month since that night, Darcy remembered it as if it was yesterday. And now, with Jamee’s sudden outburst, it seemed as if that painful time had not even passed. Loud rap music throbbed through the walls of Jamee’s room.

  What’s goin’ down, what’s comin’

  down,

  The bad you done is comin’ back

  aroun’.

  You can try to hide,

  You can say you tried,

  Word on the street,

  Somebody died.

  Darcy went to her grandmother’s room and sat down beside her bed. Grandma was sleeping fitfully. Her Bible was on the nightstand at her side. Grandma could not see well enough to read it, and she no longer understood much of what was read to her, but she still liked hearing the familiar words. Darcy picked up the old Bible. It had originally belonged to Darcy’s great-grandparents.

  “To our beloved daughter, Annie Louella Duncan,” read the beautifully written inscription on the first page, “on her wedding day. ” Then, in Grandma’s careful handwriting, were recorded the births of her four children, the births of grandchildren, the death of Emmit Duncan, her husband, and the death of her firstborn son on a foreign battlefield in some war she had now forgotten.

  Grandma stirred, her eyes sliding open. “Mama?” she called out in a puzzled, plaintive voice.

  “I’m here, Grandma. It’s Darcy,” Darcy said, taking Grandma’s hand.

  “My Mama was here,” Grandma said, smiling. “She was just here. She read me some nice stories from the Bible. You should have been here. She read me about Joseph’s coat of many colors. ”

  “I’m glad,” Darcy said. Grandma, in her confusion, was probably mistaking Ms. Harris, their neighbor, for her own mother.

  “Mama sang to me—she sang ‘Deep River,’ you know, that hymn I like so much. ”

  “Yes, Grandma,” Darcy said. “It’s a lovely song. ”

  Grand
ma drifted off to sleep then, and Darcy gently put the frail woman’s hand down on the blanket. Darcy went to her room and began looking through her music collection. She had to practice for the audition she had foolishly committed to, just to help Hakeem. Darcy did not want to make a complete fool of herself. She came across a song she had not heard in years and began to sing softly.

  Dream on baby,

  You will be his lady,

  In his eyes you’ll see his smile,

  At least for a little while.

  Dream on baby,

  And hope the night is long,

  And pray that you’ll be strong,

  When he’s gone.

  Just then, the phone rang. Darcy picked it up.

  “Darcy, I’m sorry I’ve been acting like a jerk,” Hakeem said.

  “Oh, hello, Hakeem. ”

  “There’s been so much stuff going on. I’m in a track meet on Saturday. I really need to make a good showing for my Dad. He just finished chemo, and he needs something to cheer him up, like me sprinting first over the finish line on Saturday. So could you come? And then we could—”

  “I didn’t know your dad was having chemotherapy. ”

  “Yeah, well, he’s okay about it. But he needs a distraction, you know. He’s a real sports nut. S-s-so, you think you could come, Darcy?” Hakeem sounded nervous.

  “Sure,” Darcy said.

  “Great,” Hakeem said before he hung up. “I’ll save you a seat. ”

  The brief conversation with Hakeem was enough to lift Darcy’s spirits. After she rehearsed the song a few more times, she went to the kitchen and put a pair of frozen dinners in the microwave.

  “Yum, yum, just like Grandma used to make,” Jamee said, sitting at the kitchen table and scribbling on a page of her history notebook.

  “Okay, so homemade is better, but I’d rather have this stuff than nothing,” Darcy said, glancing at Jamee stabbing the notebook paper with the point of a freshly sharpened pencil. “You’ve got a report due on Andrew Jackson, don’t you? You better get started. ”

  Jamee made a face. “Like it matters to me what this guy did two hundred years ago. Hey, know what, Darcy? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get to a real good place in your life and then just stop? I mean not to go on to the next bad thing. Tyrone is being so nice to me I can’t believe it. I wish we could stay like we are right now, just having fun. ”

  Darcy checked on the dinners in the microwave. “Just don’t let him start making you do what you don’t want to do. ”

  “Does Hakeem push you to do stuff you don’t want to do?” Jamee asked.

  “No,” Darcy said.

  “I think Hakeem’s cool,” Jamee said. “But Amberlynn says he’s retarded. ”

  “Retarded?” Darcy snapped. “That’s the most stupid thing I ever heard of. What does some eighth grader know about Hakeem anyway?”

  “Amberlynn’s brother, Roylin Bailey, goes to Bluford, and he’s in classes with Hakeem. Roylin told Amberlynn that Hakeem stutters like somebody who’s retarded, and everybody laughs at him,” Jamee said.

  “Roylin Bailey is a fool. You ever see the way he drools at girls? That boy needs to wipe his chin or wear a bib or something!” Darcy fumed.

  Jamee burst into a fit of laughter, knocking her notebook off the small table.

  But Darcy felt wounded. People teased Hakeem because of his stuttering problem. Yet everybody in this neighborhood had so many problems, Darcy thought, so why try to drag Hakeem down for his speech problem? He was a good student and a pretty good athlete. He could sing better than anyone else she knew. And he had a heart of gold. No one, she thought, had any right to make fun of him for anything. No one.

  Chapter 3

  “Darcy,” Jamee said, picking at her dinner, “how do you know if a person is. . . you know . . . being honest?”

  “You kinda don’t for a long time, I guess, and then maybe—” Darcy said.

  “You think Dad’s gonna hurt us again, don’t you?” Jamee interrupted, looking right at Darcy.

  “I really don’t know, Jamee, but be real. He did run out on us. ”

  “I know he left us,” Jamee said, her eyes suddenly narrowing, “but I feel good when I’m with him. He says I’m pretty and special and stuff. Mom’s always nagging at me, and I know she loves me and all that, but it’s like she’s always reminding me of everything I do wrong. It’s like Dad thinks I’m perfect, you know?”

  Darcy was sitting on the sofa reading when her mother came home near midnight. “You still up, sweetie? Tomorrow’s a school day, you know. ”

  “I took a nap, Mom. Boy, do you look tired. ”

  “I am exhausted! ” Mom said, collapsing into her recliner. “Baby, it was pure hell in the ER tonight. Man came in with full cardiac arrest, and we couldn’t get ahold of his regular doctor, and this other doctor did the wrong procedure, and now we’re all in hot water. This doctor comes in yelling and cussing and saying somebody is going to be fired. Then we get a little girl with a real bad asthma attack and a boy with a knife in his back, and in the middle of all that, this same doctor is losing it. I’m telling you, I had to talk tough to that doctor, and he looked like he was going to have a heart attack right there in the ER! He was thinking to himself, ‘Who is this nurse talking to me like this? Who does she think she is, speaking to a doctor this way?’ It took him a while, but he finally calmed down. It must’ve been the first time a nurse ever addressed him like that. ”

  “Oh, Mom, I wish you didn’t have such a hard job,” Darcy said.

  “Well, your father is helping me with money now. He’s doing real well at that men’s clothing store. You know how charming he can be when he wants to be. He’s selling five-hundred-dollar suits like ice cream in July. ”

  “So maybe you could quit working so hard,” Darcy suggested.

  “Oh no, sweetie. I won’t ever quit my job. With all the downsizing going on, maybe there won’t be any choice. Maybe one day something like tonight will happen, and they’ll write me up and fire me. But as long as I can keep that job, I will. I can’t depend on your father. I can’t put our lives in the hands of a man who walked out once before. ”

  “You don’t think he’s changed, Mom?” Darcy asked.

  “Oh my Lord, I don’t know,” Mom sighed. “Maybe he has. Maybe he hasn’t. I just don’t trust him. Maybe I ought to, but I just don’t. If he ran off once, what’s to stop him from doing it again?” Mom got up slowly from the recliner, rubbing the small of her back with her hand. “Trust, honey. Such an itty-bitty word, five little letters strung together. I trusted my Daddy. My Mama, she trusted Daddy. If he were here today, he’d be standing by your Grandma. Now that was a man who was a straight arrow. Trust, oh baby, there’s a world of pain when it’s gone. ”

  Darcy ran into Tarah on her way to school the next day. Tarah was entering some sketches in the art section of the talent show. “Tarah, I can’t believe I ever agreed to audition for the talent show. I’m scared just thinking about it,” Darcy said.

  “Girl, you got guts,” Tarah laughed. “Not that you ain’t got a nice little voice, but standing up there in front of everybody’d give me the hives!”

  “It gives me the hives too. But Hakeem needed a push to audition. He’s so good, Tarah. You know that. Maybe if he wins, he’ll feel good about himself. ”

  “Darcy, I can hate myself and love myself different times every day! I look in the mirror and I say, ‘Hey, is that the biggest, roundest chocolate pie I ever saw, or is that my fat face?’ Then I get to laughin’ over something my little brother did, and I catch my smile in the lookin’ glass, and I’m saying ‘Whoa, girl, you got a smile that’s gonna light up the world, least your little part of it,’ and then I’m fine. ”

  Darcy laughed. “I tried to sing last night, and I sounded like a squeaking door,” she said.

  Chuckling, Tarah said, “I told you, girl, just play the music real loud, and you’ll be fine. ”

  On Saturday, Darc
y went to the track meet with Tarah and Cooper. On the ride over, all Darcy could think about was Brisana. Would she show up too? That would spoil everything. “I can just see her dancing around Hakeem,” Darcy grumbled. “Just rubbing it in my face. ”

  “Just be cool, girl,” Tarah said. “If Hakeem falls for that game, then he’s a loser, and you ought to blow him off. ”

  “Man, how come he rates?” Cooper said enviously. “That boy’s got two girls fightin’ over him. I sure wouldn’t mind two honeys fightin’ over me, I’ll tell you that. ”

  “Don’t even go there, Cooper,” Tarah warned. “After I got through with her, I’d come after you!”

  Friends and supporters of both track teams filled the bleachers under a brilliant sun. Darcy and her friends headed for the Bluford High cheering section. Hakeem spotted Darcy and introduced her to his parents.

  “Nice to meet you, Darcy,” Hakeem’s father said with a warm smile. He was wearing a baseball cap to cover the hair loss from the chemotherapy, but he looked good.

  As the track meet got underway, Hakeem’s father told Darcy, “I used to compete in field events in high school. I wasn’t as good as my boy, though. He’s a born athlete. ”

  Darcy began to relax. It looked as if Brisana was not coming, and that was a big relief. Darcy was eager to hang out with Hakeem alone after the meet.

  The boys were at the starting blocks for the 400-meter dash. Darcy kept her eyes fixed on Hakeem as he sprang into motion. It soon became a duel between Hakeem and a lanky boy from Lincoln High School. He was taller than Hakeem and had the raw power Darcy had seen in famous sprinters on TV.

  “Come on, boy, you can do it,” Mr. Randall was shouting, his face animated with excitement. Darcy could see that it was so important for Hakeem to win this race for his dad. As the runners turned the final corner and headed for the straightaway, Hakeem had a narrow lead. Mr. Randall was on his feet, clapping and cheering. But the boy from Lincoln started edging ahead. He passed Hakeem and flew across the finish line. Mr. Randall looked sad for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “Hey, it was a great race, and he almost won, didn’t he?”