Bebe Moore Campbell (9 page)

Trina hung up the phone after a few minutes. As I moved closer, she sidled away from me and then rose. Moments later, I heard her going up the stairs. Good, I thought, checking my watch. She’ll be in bed by eleven. I slid over to where she’d been. The cushion was still warm. Orlando’s face came to my mind, his laughter filled my head. Or maybe it was PJ’s laughter. I was still hearing the sound of it when I opened the side door to the yard, unlatched the gate, and dragged the two garbage cans down the driveway to my sidewalk. I wondered how long he and Pretty Young Thing had been dating and what PJ thought of her.

I was almost at the door when my nostrils began to tingle. Faint, so faint. Barely perceptible. Easily misidentified. It could have been perfume, or incense. Or marijuana. Beyond my yard, I heard a squeal of brakes, the laughter of young people. But the odor didn’t disappear with them; it followed me back to my house and hovered just below Trina’s window before drifting away.

I stood absolutely still, didn’t move until I was breathing again. Once inside, I counted the pills in the bottles on my breakfast room table, the mood stabilizers and the antipsychotics, and counted them again. The television was playing in Trina’s room. I knocked on her door and opened it before she responded. Watch your mouth, I told myself. Don’t accuse her of anything.

She was sitting on the floor, cramming potato chips into her mouth from a bag beside her. Strewn across the rug were a few open magazines, but she wasn’t really reading them or watching television. “I thought you’d be asleep,” I said, putting my hand on the back of her neck. She was hot. Beneath the skin, her blood was racing. It wasn’t fever, what I felt. Something else.

“I’ll go to bed soon.”

I sat down on the floor beside her, trying to get close enough to smell her breath, her hair, her clothes. “Give me a hug,” I said, reaching for her.

She shifted her body away without looking me in the eye.

“I’m thinking about something,” she said, her voice a harsh whine. I heard her muttering, the words unintelligible but not the disrespect. She stood up, went into her adjoining bathroom, and slammed the door shut.

That night I waited for her to creep into my bed, but she never came. The first time I checked her room was around midnight. Trina was in the bathroom, singing loudly. An hour later, when I peeked in her room, she was dancing, flailing her body from side to side, kicking her legs high, spinning around and around and around. I used to love to watch Trina dance, but now the sight of her frenzied movements frightened me.

Calm down.
Anybody can have a sleepless night, I thought, creeping back to my room. It doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t actually smell marijuana on her, just in the air around her, near her. The voice in my head grew louder, defensive.
She’s been taking her medication, going to the
program. Don’t jump to conclusions. Have a little faith. Even people with
normal brains can have an off day.

The memories came back to me so suddenly, so viciously, that I realized they’d been lurking in my mind all along. I closed my eyes and saw Trina, her face garish with makeup, her tight see-through clothes a public invitation, rushing through the house on a manic tear. If she got out of control again, how long would it take to get her back on track? If she stopped taking her meds, what would make her become compliant again? How many times would I have to call the police? How long would I have to wait until she met the criteria for a seventy-two-hour hold?

God, I can’t go through this again.

I dozed for about an hour. When I woke up, I went straight to Trina’s room. She wasn’t there. I ran through the house, calling her name, but she didn’t answer. When I looked in the garage, my car was still there, which meant she’d either walked somewhere or called someone to pick her up. Outside, the street was dark, empty. There was just the sliver of a moon and barely any stars. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it wasn’t quite three. She could be anywhere, doing anything. Perspiration began dripping down my back. I got dressed and taped a note to the front door:
I’ll be right back.
Then I got in my car and drove through the streets in the early dawn: around the corners, up and down the hills. I didn’t see anyone. Few cars drove by.

There was more action on Crenshaw: The sanitation workers were going about their work, all-night greasy spoons flashed their welcoming light, and people, mostly young men, milled about, striking quick clandestine deals in the shadows. But I didn’t see my child.

I headed south, grateful that there was so little traffic; I could drive slowly, stopping at every bit of movement I saw along the way. The vendors’ area was deserted. No T-shirts hung on the chain-link fence. No tapes or CDs were available from the rear of vans. Then I saw Crazy Man, his head thrown back, his mouth open wide. When I rolled down the windows, I could hear his bellow of a laugh. Standing next to him was Trina.

She was sullen on the way home. Her closed mouth was half pout, half snarl-about-to-happen. I had spoiled her great adventure. I knew better than to offer a commentary.

Trina ran upstairs to her room as soon as she got inside the house. The door slammed, cracking the shell of silence that had enveloped the place. I crept up the stairs with aching limbs, feeling as though I’d run for miles. Trina’s room was silent. I sat on the top stair, the one closest to her bedroom door. I sat there and I waited, like some ancient, scarred slave who’d run away too many times not to know the bloodhounds already had her scent.

4

I FELT SOME TREPIDATION AS I KNOCKED ON TRINA’S BED room door later that morning, but she emerged dressed and ready to go to the partial program. She seemed surprisingly calm. Her eyes, though, were unfocused. Behind her, the room was in complete disarray, ripped apart by unseen gales, invisible hurricanes. The natural disaster appeared to be purposeful, as though Trina had set out to see how much disorder she could create. She didn’t do much talking and refused to eat the scrambled eggs and toast that I prepared for her. While I ate, she went outside in the backyard and smoked a cigarette. Only a few weeks earlier, she’d been talking about giving up the habit. That would be a conversation for another day. I was frightened. On top of everything else, one sleepless night had the power to upset an emotional system that would always be fragile. Trina’s sanity was maintained by her regimen of proper diet, enough rest, psychotherapy, and pills. And so was mine.

Please be okay, baby.

Trina was silent as we drove past the hucksters on Crenshaw Boulevard. In the bright morning light, Crazy Man was like a silhouette posed against a white sheet. The block was awhirl with the motion of haphazard commerce. Only he stood still, his eyes cast down, his jaw slack, his expression vacant and sad, giving no hint that he comprehended the scene in front of him. People walked around him, deliberately not getting too close. Had he ever been diagnosed? Had he ever taken his medication? I wondered if his mother lived in perpetual mourning for him, a woman who couldn’t detach or give up, whose birth pains were still coming.

When I parked in front of the Weitz Center, Trina got out without saying good-bye. She ran up the steps leading to her program two at a time, and the big glass doors closed behind her. Ten minutes later, my eyes were still riveted to that spot. After twenty minutes, I drove off.

“You’re looking sharp, boss,” Frances said when she saw me. She held a portable steamer in her hand and walked slowly from rack to rack, zapping wrinkles. From time to time she ran her fingers through the dark hair that trailed down her back.

“Thank you, darling.” I was wearing a light blue pantsuit, businesslike with the jacket, casual without. I was prepared for anything.
I will
not think about last night.
If Ex-boyfriend dropped in and wanted to take me to lunch, well. . . . I looked like a Pretty Young Thing my damn self.

“Did the Old Man say he could get the stain out of the jacket?” Frances asked.

“It’s still in my car. I’ll take it in today.” I looked around. “Where’s Adriana?”

“I don’t know. She had a date last night.”

“Same guy?”

Frances nodded.

“Did she tell him?”

Frances shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Once inside my office, I made myself a cup of peppermint tea and called Trina’s psychiatrist. Dr. Bellows had been monitoring her medication ever since she’d become compliant, interpreting her monthly blood tests, making sure that the psychotropic drugs she ingested didn’t wreak havoc on her liver. He titrated the dosage up or down as her moods escalated or subsided. It was just a little after nine and naturally he wasn’t in his office, so I left him a lengthy message describing Trina’s behavior, asking him to call me as soon as possible.

Trina’s therapist, whose job it was to unravel the complicated skein of emotions Trina’s brain was constantly knitting, wasn’t in either, and I left her the same message. I repeated it again for Elaine, the program director at the Weitz Center, adding an urgent postscript.

“Please keep an eye on Trina today. She was up all night, and I’m afraid that . . . that . . . I’m afraid. . . .”

I closed my eyes. Saw Trina, her mouth gaping and twisted, screaming curses. Saw Trina with her weapon of choice, the telephone, calling, calling, calling, way into the night. Felt Trina’s fist crashing into my skull. Heard her screeching laugh.

“Just—call me.”

Customers began drifting in at ten. A client I’d been expecting came in with a Vera Wang gown while I helped a woman choose between two dresses. Frances was busy. Adriana still hadn’t shown up or called. I excused myself from the customer, ushered the client into my office, and returned to the floor, banishing the annoyance that was sitting between my shoulder blades.

Half an hour later, Adriana rushed through the door. I gave her a look, and she got pink in the face. “Oh, Keri, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Traffic.”

“Mulholland Drive has been waiting for fifteen minutes in my office.”

“Oh.”

What in her voice, in her face, made me look past her, out the picture window, to see him walking away? Just a man on a street, going somewhere or nowhere. What made me think that he’d been with her? What was in his walk, his carriage, his profile that made me think—no, made me know—that he was dangerous? I watched him until I couldn’t see him, and then I began to watch her.

Most employees who’d pissed off the boss would steer clear. Not Adriana. For the rest of the morning she was bringing me tea and scones, trying to make me laugh and being so solicitous that eventually she wore me down.

“You can quit sucking up now,” I said when she offered to buy me lunch whenever I was ready. I was sitting in my office, pricing half a dozen new items. Adriana hated to upset me, mostly because she felt she owed me so much, which she really didn’t.

SHE’D WALKED INTO THE STORE THREE YEARS EARLIER, applying for the job of sales assistant in a soft baby voice. I’d had to ask her to repeat herself. She was only twenty-three at the time, a pretty girl who wouldn’t look me in the eye. The résumé she presented showed a gap of several years between the last job she’d held and the present. When I questioned her about it, she told me that she’d been at home in Minnesota helping her aging parents. Her excuse made me wonder. I didn’t hire her.

Adriana returned several days later, with two more rejections under her belt. She waited until I finished ringing up a customer and then tapped me on my back. We went into my office; I closed the door. She must have thought I’d be the most understanding.

“I want to tell you the truth,” she said.

I figured she’d admit to a string of firings and that, after prodding, she’d confess to inefficiency.

Surprise, surprise!

“I’ve been working as a call girl,” she said in her soft voice.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

It was the same old sad story: Stepdaddy liked to play touchy-feely and Mama liked to play blind. By seventeen she’d left home with dirty handprints on her body and mind. She told me her tale with no tears, no gulping for air. But her face wasn’t hard either, which impressed me.

Nobody ever sets out to become a prostitute. It’s the place they end up, like Denny’s at midnight. Given my own Former Fast Girl credentials, I had no desire to judge someone for getting paid for what had once been my favorite hobby. Yeah, that was twelfth-grade me, with my bare feet sticking out the back window of somebody’s daddy’s fogged-up gyrating Ford. That was college me, downing way too much Jack and waking up smooshed against some frat boy I barely knew. And that was old-enough-to-know-better me, sneaking into the motel with Sally Sue’s husband. Or was it Ruby Begonia’s old man? Me again, looking in the mirror, seeing nothing but ugly. For quite a while, that was me. Clyde had helped me to heal. Things shifted inside me after Trina was born, kind of like my own personal tectonic plates. I had fresh joy to push away the memories of bad times. Trying to make life better for Trina, I outgrew my own pain. Until the baby died.

Clyde, Jr., was our second and came four years after Trina was born. He was fat and round and sweet, a pleasant, cooing baby. One night his cooing stopped. Crib death is a quick death. The slow death came later.

“Look,” Adriana had told me, “I’ve made a lot of bad choices in my life, but I’m trying to get straight now.”

“Are you on drugs?” I asked.

“No.”

“No?” I waited.

“I’ve been clean and sober for about a year.”

“Are you in a program?”

“Narcotics Anonymous.”

“So you want to work here with me?”

She nodded.

“And then what? After you outgrow an entry-level position that doesn’t pay all that much, what then? Suppose some guy comes in here. How do I know you won’t proposition him?”

“I’m supposed to take things one day at a time,” she said.

“I’m not. You’re young. You seem intelligent. Think about school. I’ll let you know about the job.”

“I will work so hard for you,” she said.

Hiring Adriana proved to be a good move for both of us. She really was ready for a change. I kept mentioning school, and after the first year she enrolled in college at night. She brought me her grades: all A’s and B’s, and when I praised her she seemed to float. And, except for the occasional tardiness, she was a hard worker, always trying to please me. Maybe too much. But now I wondered if a man with an evil profile was lurking in her life.

In some ways Adriana was like a second daughter, one who had chosen me for a mother. Maybe it was because, after all her other potential employers had turned her down, she had come back to me with the truth. I worried about her. She always seemed so lonely. Adriana never mentioned hanging out with the girls. She seemed not to have a life apart from the store. From time to time she spoke of going out with a man, but it never went any further than two dates. It was on the second date that she always revealed her past.

“Why do you have to tell them anything?” Frances asked when Adriana informed us of her policy. “It’s not like you’re going to marry them.”

“Suppose we’re out somewhere and some john comes up to me?”

“Just say, ‘You must have me confused with somebody else,’ ” Frances said.

Adriana shook her head. “I don’t want to live a lie.”

“That ain’t a lie; that’s your business,” Frances said.

Frances and I kept rooting for the Third Date Man, but so far he hadn’t materialized.

Adriana wasn’t the only redeemed soul working with me. Right before I hired her, Frances had lived in a shelter for battered women. She’d landed there after she fled from her first husband’s fists and finally his weapon. Her social worker was one of my customers. She’d told me about Frances’s situation and convinced me to hire her. I never thought about why the three of us came together, but people come into each other’s lives for a reason. If it’s not clear in the beginning, all you have to do is keep on living.

I WAS STILL PRICING GARMENTS, MY HEAD BENT OVER A beaded silk purse, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, Frances was smiling at me. “Somebody’s here to see you,” she said.

“Orlando?”

I smiled to myself, feeling smug.

She shook her head. “It’s your ex.”

As in husband, not boyfriend. My heart pumped a little bit harder. I put my jacket back on and pressed my lips together quickly to maximize their color.

When Clyde saw me, his eyes widened just enough to let me know he thought I was looking good. Which made me smile.

“Sorry I didn’t call. I was in your area and, uh—I just—”

“Is something wrong?” He rarely came by, and never without calling.

“No, I just—have you had lunch?”

The restaurant was in a strip mall off Wilshire in the heart of Koreatown. The owners, former guest workers in Japan, had learned the art of making sushi from the masters and brought their skills to the west. The place was located down the street from spa row, where new immigrants had opened luxury massage parlors that catered to an arriviste clientele as well as anyone looking for the cheapest body scrub in town. Koreatown had risen like the phoenix from the fires of 1992. That year rioters enraged by the verdicts that had exonerated the LA police, whose video-taped beating of Rodney King had been seen around the world, unleashed their fury on a group they viewed as exploiting them in their own neighborhoods. Although their gripe was with those Koreans who’d established mom-and-pop stores in black and Latino communities, charged high prices for goods, and never hired any of the people who lived in the area, rioters and looters traveled to Koreatown to exact their revenge. Businesses were destroyed, and so were dreams. But now the area seemed to be surging with an abundance of shops and malls, offering everything from clothes to electronics to karaoke-infused happy hours and barbecue à la Seoul. The Koreans had survived the fires of 1992, and in the process they’d internalized an American mantra: A setback is just a setup for a comeback.

It was a lesson few of the looters had learned.

As we sat down, Clyde appraised the restaurant and the waiters bustling back and forth. “Now see,” he said, leaning across the table toward me, “I’ll bet you anything that everybody here is a family member. That’s why Koreans are so successful. If black people would just—”

“Clyde.” I wasn’t in the mood for one of his “Up, up, ye mighty race, you can accomplish what ye will” speeches, but he ignored me.

“—stop complaining and learn from these immigrants, they’d be better off.”

“They?”

Clyde sighed. “The secret of Korean success is hard work and unity.” He sat back in his chair and gave me a self-satisfied smile. “Do you still like eel?” he asked.

“Love it.”

“Okay, we’ll get the elephant roll,” he said, marking off a tiny square. “How about yellowtail?”

I nodded, glad his diatribe had ended, watching his fingers as he held the pencil; he clenched it. When he looked at me, he seemed awkward, as though he’d spoken out of turn and regretted it. The waitress appeared; he ordered, didn’t say a word, and began eating as soon as the food came. I didn’t feel uncomfortable with the silence. Even when we were married, Clyde wasn’t much of a talker. He was too busy hanging out in his own head to let me in.

“Do you want to know how Trina’s doing?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.” He looked sheepish, as though I’d caught him in a lie.

If I tell him the truth, we’ll just argue, I thought. “She’s fine; she’s just fine.” He nodded absentmindedly; he hadn’t been listening. “What’s on your mind? Why did you invite me to lunch?” When he looked at me, his face was troubled. “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”