Slow Way Home (24 page)

We sat on dinette chairs covered with daisy-printed plastic. Miss Madelyn made the others say their names with mouths full of scrambled eggs and bacon. Charlie and Caleb were the twins, and Trudy was the little girl’s name. The fat boy mumbled his name in such a way that I would have never guessed it if I hadn’t already heard Miss Madelyn call him Pete. I glanced up as they chatted about a new cartoon that was coming on TV. Their eyes circled me like pestering houseflies that never land. I tried to ignore them right down to their names. The least I knew about them the better off I’d be. Besides, I had more to worry about than some new cartoon character. My grandparents sat in jail for a crime that I had caused them to commit. It was up to me to get them out.

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A week after the mind doctor stopped by again to assure me everything would be fine and that I would be back with my mama in no time flat, the real help came. She stood at the door that was outlined with wrought iron.

“Can I help you?” Miss Madelyn was wiping her hands on the dishrag. Even while watching from the kitchen, I could make out the tall turban through the screen door. The purple stack of material rose up over Miss Madelyn like the point of a new crayon.

“Yes, my name is Nairobi Touchton, with the Child Advocacy Network. Brandon Willard is my client. Social Services said they were going to notify you . . .”

“Oh, yeah. Well . . . come on in, I guess.”

Even though I knew she was my only chance, my last chance, my legs froze. The shame of what we had done settled on me.

“Bran-don,” Miss Madelyn yelled.

The steady sound from the coo-coo clock was all I heard.

“Bran-don. Let me see where he is.” Miss Madelyn hadn’t made it ten steps when she found me standing by the refrigerator. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? There’s some woman in there to see you. Now go on and talk with her.”

With a slight shove by Miss Madelyn, I was in Nairobi’s presence again. She stayed seated on the edge of the sofa. Her back was as rigid as her smile was warm.

“Long time, no see,” she said.

I turned to Miss Madelyn for guidance, but she had already made it back to the kitchen and was pulling canned goods from the shelves. All I could do was nod and look down at her buckled shoes.

“You’ve been missed.”

Her words were soft and hurt worse than if she would have screamed them at me. I put my hands in my pants pockets and pressed the edge of my shoe into the carpet.

“Everyone has been asking about you.”

“Who?”

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“Everyone at the Advocacy center for starters. And Senator Strickland. She asked about you just the other day. You remember her?”

“The woman with the bright yellow hair.”

She laughed right out loud. “Yes, hair the color of daisies.”

The coo-coo clock chimed three times. As soon as the bird had disappeared again, she spoke. “Brandon, we need to have a talk.”

When I looked up, her eyes were as inviting as blackberries warmed by the sun. For a second I wanted to run and hug her neck.

To break free and cry real hard. Then the sound from the TV made me come to my senses. Pete and the others would be in the room in no time flat if they heard me break down. And long after Nairobi was back behind her desk, the moment would forever seal my fate at Miss Madelyn’s house.

“I’m sorry, okay. We should’ve stayed but . . .”

“You don’t have to explain anything. I’m your friend.”

The sound of dishes being stacked rang out from the kitchen.

Moving closer, I could smell the sweetness of her skin. “What did they do with Nana and Poppy?”

“You know, I have a philosophy. Children are simply growing adults. So I won’t lie to you. They’re being held, and they’ll face a trial.”

“What about somebody buying them out like they do on TV?”

“That’s called a bond.”

“My Uncle Cecil can get them out. He can go down to the bank and . . .”

Nairobi put her finger to my lips. “I tried to contact your uncle.”

She looked down at the tiny ceramic dogs that lined the coffee table.

“Brandon . . . I don’t want you to worry when I tell you this, but your uncle was injured at work and now . . .”

“What happened?” I moved to the edge of the sofa, and the vision of us standing at the pay phone in Abbeville trying to reach Uncle Cecil swept over me.

“A bulldozer he was driving flipped and pinned . . . Look, it’s not
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good for you to dwell on this. The point is that I called and spoke with his wife.”

“I want to call him.” I jumped up from the sofa. “He can sell something. Write a check or something.”

“Brandon, please. Let’s just first talk about . . .”

“I want to call him. I’ll do it whether you let me or not. She’s got a phone right in that kitchen, and I can use it anytime I want to.”

Nairobi gazed down at the alphabetized blocks that one of the twins had left scattered on the floor. “Brandon, I truly want to help you.”

Her words were empty, and I pointed right at her chest. “Then make him help us. I know he can!”

Nairobi grabbed my arm. “Your uncle is paralyzed.”

The plastic was still warm when I leaned against it. The picture on the wall in Nana’s house was the only thing my mind would let me see. The one of Uncle Cecil dressed in a uniform, hunched above the ground with his fingertips touching the field and his football helmet at his feet. Ready to leap forward to protect and defend.

“Look, I did not intend to go into all of this. He is at home with your aunt. He’s resting. Simply resting in a deep sleep. Now, promise you will not take your uncle on as another worry.”

Worry. Nairobi’s words were just like all the others. A tag line that brushed against my skin, but never entered the pores of my soul. I stared once again at the beach painting, but all I saw were dabs of paint. “Did you tell Aunt Loraine about me being over here?”

Nairobi exhaled real loud and said the word “yes” at the same time.

“Can I go stay over there? Just until . . .”

“Well, you know she has a big commitment taking care of your uncle. A lawsuit has been filed. She said she doesn’t even have enough time for her own children right now.”

We sat in silence. I wondered if she was waiting for me to deliver the next line. But there was none to offer. While she kept her hands clutched on the lap of her purple dress, I used the tip of my 172

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shoe to knock over one of the alphabet blocks. The letter W stared back at me.

The next day the woman from Social Services came by. It was the same woman who had first tried to get me reacquainted with Mama before we took off to Abbeville. She reviewed the questions for me with one hand on the edge of her cat-eye glasses and the other positioned on the clipboard. Miss Madelyn sat on the chair shaped like a queen’s throne, the one piece of furniture not covered in plastic and forbidden to be touched.

“Your mother is so very pleased to have you back in town,” the government woman said and then grinned the way she did after completing all of her sentences.

“We’re sure gonna miss him, but we know how much he is looking forward to having his own mama back,” Miss Madelyn said and crossed her ankles. Wads of skin bunched up over the tops of her shoes.

“Now, young man, do you have any questions for me before I send in this report?”

Turning to the woman, I looked at the tiny pearl chain that clamped on to her glasses. “When I can see Nana and Poppy?”

The smile slowly sank into pursed lips, and she flipped through the pages on the clipboard. “Now, that is not healthy. Just not healthy in the least.”

Miss Madelyn shook her head. “No, not a bit.”

The woman cut her eyes at the throne-shapped chair, and Miss Madelyn stopped moving her head. “Now do you even know how many young people I deal with on a daily basis? Well, it would just boggle the mind. But you’re a smart one. I can tell. And a smart boy would look at this as a second chance. You and your mother have had some rough spots along the way, but that’s in the past. The only thing missing in her life is you. And I know you feel the same way whether you know it right now or not.”

Miss Madelyn cleared her throat. “You’re blessed, Brandon. Not all of the boys and girls who come through my door get to go back with their mamas.”

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Later that afternoon while Pete, Trudy, and the twins ran through the water sprinkler in the backyard, I sat on the iron chair on the flat piece of concrete that Miss Madelyn called a front porch. Clips from Miss Madelyn’s afternoon TV stories drifted from the open window.

The dog at the end of the street started barking just as the announcer on the TV inside declared that
Guiding Light
was coming on.

He was a stumpy mix breed that the man kept chained to a tree, a sight that caused Miss Madelyn to shake her head and mumble “white trash” each time we drove by.

With his front paws raised in the air, the dog kept barking towards the end of the street. Barking and circling the water pipe that secured his chain. The wide cedar at the corner of Miss Madelyn’s yard kept me from seeing what was causing him to act up worse than usual.

Walking past the cedar, I turned back to see Pete running wide open through a spray of water. Trudy and the twins lined up to follow him. I could see the back of Miss Madelyn’s head from the window.

Against the glow of the TV, the orange curlers on her head seemed to come to life in a spray of fire. When I passed the cedar tree that separated Miss Madelyn’s house from her neighbor’s, I began to feel that I was breaking out of prison and that any minute a man with a rifle would come hunt me down.

The dog reared up as I passed by the car that his owner kept on blocks. His focus was fixed on the green taxi just the other side of an open lot. When I moved closer, the taxi driver turned to look towards the backseat, and then the passenger door opened. Standing dead center in the middle of the street, I stared at the person waving her hand.

It wasn’t until she pulled her hat off that my heart skipped a beat.

A grease-stained grocery bag was clutched to Sister Delores’s chest.

She waved bigger as I pinched myself just to make sure it was real.

“Come over here, baby, and give me a hug. How you doing?”

The fried smell of Nap’s Corner clung to her blouse, and I only pulled away when she grabbed my shoulders.

“Now, I told you, I’m gonna see after my flock. Didn’t I say so? It took me a few weeks to get the money together, but I’m here now.

Sister Delores keeps her word, baby.”

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My own words clung to the back of my throat, and I thought if I forced them to come out tears would follow.

“Baby, you look good. They been feeding you all right?”

I managed to only nod.

“We all been praying for you. Had a special prayer meeting the night y’all got hauled off. You feeling our prayers, baby?”

I choked on words and tasted the tears that slipped down to my lips.

She pulled me closer and rubbed my back. “Oh, I know it. Now don’t you forget that the Good Lord knows about all this here. He sure does. He knows right where you are. He ain’t forgot you, baby.

That’s how come He sent me here. Sure did. Sent me right on that Greyhound.”

A utility truck drove past, and we both turned as if a crime was being committed.

“That lawyer told me where you been staying. Said she wasn’t supposed to, but you know I got it outta her. The night they hauled y’all off we didn’t just pray, but we collected too. Even that man that owns the marina put in some money. I done took it up to that lawyer to help cover some of the bill.”

“You saw Nana and Poppy?”

“Seen them this morning. Brought them both a pound cake that Bonita made. They’re doing good, now don’t you worry. ’Cause if you start worrying, then they gonna start worrying.” She shook the wrinkled grocery bag. “Brought some of your things. They been giving you clean underwear?”

Each time I nodded, she would stare off towards Miss Madelyn’s house. “You believe you can get this bag inside without them knowing who brought it? We don’t need them all in our business.”

“So what? I don’t care if they know.”

“Now don’t start acting like that friend of yours, that little man.

This ain’t no time for that kinda attitude.”

As we walked towards the cedar tree, the dog barked and his chain rattled. The chain stretched and jerked the same way I pictured my nerves behaving. Words that had been locked in a clamp of fear suddenly broke free. “Sister Delores, I know who burned the church.”

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She stopped and looked as if I had just scratched a scab off a wound that hadn’t yet healed.

“When you said little man, that made me think of the whole thing again. It was Beau’s uncle, Alvin. The one that lives over in Hagan’s Hell. We saw a cross in his shed. The same kinda cross that was burned. I wanted to tell, but Beau . . . I just should’ve that’s all.

I’m sorry. I feel real bad and now with all this happening to Nana and Poppy.”

Her eyes narrowed and the sight made me want to pull away. Just then she brushed the hair from my eyes. “Baby, don’t you think about that no more. And don’t start thinking God’s punishing you for not telling me. Besides, it don’t make no difference. The law wouldn’t do nothing about it anyway. It’s always the same ones. We just gotta pray for them is all.”

The dog stopped barking when its owner came out of the house wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and camouflage pants. He stared at us for a second and then began dragging the water hose to the dog’s bowl.

She leaned down and looked so deep into my eyes that I thought for a minute my soul might be pulled out of me. “You’re hurting. I know it because I love you. And that grandmama and granddaddy loves you too. You got a whole bunch of people loving on you. Listen to me, now. Through all that love, that’s how you know God’s still here. Baby, no matter what the lawyer or the judge or anybody might do to you, God’s not gonna leave you and He sure won’t forsake you.