Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga (3 page)

By now Jules’ voice was beginning to crack and Simone was looking down and fumbling with her small hands.  She didn’t look so tough now, Jeremy thought.  Which didn’t help.                

“How old are you?” he asked Jules.  “And tell me the truth.”

Jules wiped her tears with the back of her hand.  “I’m sixteen and Simone is fourteen.”

Jeremy shook his head.  Harboring minors, he thought.  Transporting minors across state lines, he thought.  What other crimes have he broken in this one day?  But what was the alternative?  Turn them over to the state so they could rot in foster homes?  Separated probably forever just like Jules had said?  Or take them into his world, into his single, unencumbered life where getting through med school was all that mattered to him? 

“What’s your game plan, Simone?” he asked her, to see for himself if she could actually be humbled.  She looked up at him.

“My game plan?”

He smiled.  She didn’t have a clue, just as he had thought.  He cranked back up his car.  “You guys can stay with me,” he said and Simone frowned.

“With you?”

“Oh,” he said, turning around.  “So you object, Simone?  What, you got a better offer?  Maybe a rich relative waiting here in Miami to take you in?  Or should we alert the authorities?”

“We’ll go with you,” Jules said quickly.  She trusted Simone, but knew right now that Simone couldn’t help them, either.

“It’ll only be for a few days until I can decide what in the world I’m going to do with two teenagers.  But if you don’t like the deal, Simone, say so now.”

Both Jeremy and Jules looked at Simone.  Simone didn’t like it, didn’t like it for all the normal reasons and for reasons she couldn’t even begin to express.  But what choice did they have?  Let him put them out in the middle of this urban jungle?  Besides, she knew that if something didn’t smell right, she wasn’t going to hesitate to grab Jules and go.

“For a few days, okay,” she said. 

Jules smiled, and Jeremy, already regretting his decision, drove away.

THREE

Two years later

Simone spread the table cloth over the small dining table, hurriedly put the candles in place, and then placed all of the food - her fried chicken, her collard greens and cornbread, her mac and cheese - onto that table.  She had been cleaning and cooking all day, while Jules, who had promised to help, spent most of the day eating and sleeping and, later, “prettying” herself for Jeremy.  Simone, in truth, would have loved to pretty herself for some man too. 

       But she didn’t have time.  Between vacuuming and dusting and cleaning up all of the clutter that signified their life since moving into Jeremy’s small, two-bedroom apartment, not to mention cooking the grandest meal she’d ever cooked, there was just no time.  That was why she didn’t focus on that.  Today was Jeremy’s twenty-fifth birthday, and for her own reasons she was determined to do everything she could to get on his good side.

       It had been two years since Jeremy picked them up at that truck stop café in Bainbridge and brought them to live with him in Miami.  Two long years.  Although Jules’ relationship with him flourished, Simone’s was significantly rockier, and she constantly tried to get him to understand her point of view.  But he never cared to understand it, finding her a pain at best, a pest at worse, and they often locked heads. 

       But Simone did not have a personality that knew how to retreat.  She questioned his authority at every turn, unable to go along to get along like Jules.  And even as Jules tried to urge her to pick her battles more carefully, she would find herself even more frustrated.  Mainly because her battles concerned Shay and her absolute belief that if Jeremy tried, he could get Shay out of Georgia’s foster care system. 

       But Jeremy wouldn’t even try.  For the longest time Simone couldn’t understand why not.  She would take full charge of Shay, he wouldn’t have to lift a finger to help her, but he still wouldn’t even attempt.  After a while, and Simone’s constant pleadings, it became like a sadistic game for Jeremy.  He learned how to push her buttons simply by bringing up Shay and how she’d never see her baby sister again if he had anything to say about it, and then he’d sit back and laugh as she overreacted the way he fully expected her to.

       Jules, on the other hand, could do no wrong in Jeremy’s eyes, as she never once asked him to do anything that she thought would stir up his ire.  Her sweetness and understanding often left him comparing the two sisters in such a way that did nothing to help Simone’s cause.  All Simone wanted from Jeremy was his help in getting Shay back, but nothing she tried ever worked, especially when everything she did well, Jules, in Jeremy’s eyes, did better.

       Except cooking and cleaning.  Simone could cook and clean circles around Jules, and she was determined to use her gifts to her advantage.  She needed Jeremy’s help, and she was determined to get it, even if it meant swallowing her pride and cow-towing to him precisely the way Jules often did.

       “He just drove up, Simone!”  Jules yelled and Simone looked over her decked out table one last time and then hurried nervously into the livingroom.  Jules was standing at the door, ready to open it the way she did most days for Jeremy, and Simone stood beside her.  She thought it was ridiculous the way they were cow-towing to Jeremy, but she couldn’t tell Jules a thing. 

       And Jules looked so elegant, Simone thought, in her form-fitting black dress, a dress that made Simone’s looser, longer blue-and-white dress look drab and almost costume-like, as if she was the distraction and Jules was the main event.  And when Jeremy entered the apartment, smiling at Jules and then looking at Simone with something akin to contempt, Simone knew that her hard work, all of that cooking and cleaning and cow-towing, was probably going to be futile anyway.

       And it was.  Jeremy wasn’t two minutes in the apartment before he was complaining about the mess Simone’s cooking had made and how he wanted her to clean up his kitchen by the time he got back from dinner.

       “Dinner?” Jules asked him.

       He smiled, looking at her with fondness.  “That’s right, babe.  I’m taking you out with a few friends of mine.  All doctors.”

       Jules smiled, excited, as Jeremy had never taken either of them around his friends, but then she looked at Simone.  Jeremy looked at her, too.  “But Simone cooked dinner,” she said reluctantly.

       Jeremy looked at Simone.  “So?” he said.  “She can eat it.  But you and I are going out.  So stop all of this lollygagging and get you a sweater.”

       Jules did as she was told and Simone, defeated, looked at Jeremy.  Jeremy grinned.  “You’re pathetic, you know that?  Why would I eat some junk you burned on my birthday?”

       “Who asked you?” Simone replied with equal contempt, although her heart was breaking. She went to her bedroom just as Jules was hurrying out and slammed the door.  And when she was certain that the two of them had left the apartment, she walked slowly back into the dining room, took her chicken, her greens and cornbread, her mac and cheese, and tossed it all into the garbage.  Then she went into her bedroom again, a bedroom she shared with Jules, and cried.

Three months later and nothing had changed.  Jeremy was still in med school and they were all still cramped into his small, two bedroom apartment near the campus.  The only thing different it seemed to Simone, was Jeremy.  He was getting worse and she didn’t like it.

“Getting worse?” Jules asked as she washed the dinner dishes and listened to Whitney Houston on the radio.  Simone sat on top of the drain board watching her sister work.

“Yeah, he’s getting worse.  He used to be at least tolerable.  Now he’s a downright brute.”

“He’s just trying to be like a big brother to us, Simone, that’s all.  You just need to stay cool and stop battling him over everything.”

“I’m not thinking about him!  He just wants to control us, Jules, and you know it.  From what we wear, to what boy we talk to, to what time we get up on a Saturday morning!  He’s an out of control control freak and I’m not taking it anymore!”

Jules laughed and pinched Simone’s cheek.  Simone was sixteen now and would be a very pretty girl, Jules felt, with those beautiful green eyes of hers and that long, thick, wavy hair.  But she was always so serious, so mouthy, that she often came across as more mean than cute.  Which, Jules also felt, was why she and Jeremy clashed so much.  “Why don’t you just chill, Simone?” she asked her, and then began singing along with Whitney’s
Saving All My Love for You
.

“Jules!”

“What?”

“Stop singing and listen to me.  You know how he doesn’t like us to talk.  He’ll be coming in here any second.”

“Child, please.  Why would Jeremy care if you’re talking to me?”

“Oh, he cares.  Trust that.  With his racist self.”

“Racist?” Jules said, astounded.  “Stop talking nonsense.  How could he be a racist with two black girls living with him?”

“I see what I see and he can’t stand black people.  He just happens to be in love with you.”

“That is so not true, Simone, and you know it.  You’d better not let anybody hear you saying something like that.  Jeremy’s no racist and he looks out for both of us.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Simone said, ignoring Jules’ last statement and Jules began drying the dishes, not at all interested in hearing yet another one of Simone’s great PLANS.

“Jules, you heard me?”

“Yes, I heard you.  You’ve got a plan, just like you always have a plan.  I heard.”

“You turn eighteen in a week, right?”  Jules still didn’t respond.  “Jules?”

“Simone?”

“Listen to me!”

Jules tossed the dry cloth on the drain board, folded her arms, and gave her sister her undivided attention.  “All right, what is it?”

“You turn eighteen in a week, right?”

“Yes, Simone, you know I do.”

“That’s our answer.”

“Our answer?  Well will you please clue me in because I don’t know what the question is.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that Jeremy won’t get Shay to come live with us?”

Jules rolled her eyes.  “She’s still in Foster Care, Simone.  He’ll have to get custody of her.”

“So what?  They gave him custody of us.”

“They gave him legal guardianship of us, and that was only so he could enroll us in school and be able to make medical decisions for us if we got sick or something.  There’s a big difference between being granted guardianship over two almost-grown teenagers already living with you and going to Georgia asking the state to remove a kid already in state custody.”

“Ain’t no difference,” Simone said with certainty.  “That’s just Jeremy trying to play with our minds.  He doesn’t want Shay here that’s why she’s not here.”

“Come on.”

“Come on nothing!  Just the other day when I asked him—”   

“For the thousandth time.”

“And you heard what he said.  ‘What I need with a nine-year-old around here?  You’re too much as it is.’  That’s what he said.  He didn’t say a word about why he couldn’t do it.  He said he didn’t want to do it.  He doesn’t want Shay here, and me, either, if truth be told.”

“Oh, Simone, stop being ridiculous.  Why wouldn’t he want you here?  He’s fed you, clothe you, taken care of you for two years now.”

“Because of you, not because of any great love he has for me.”

Jules just shook her head and got back to work.

“You’re Miss Perfect in his eyes,” Simone continued.  “You make all A’s in school, you iron his shirts for him, you cook for him, you jump like a grasshopper on fire every time he calls your name.  But me?  I’m barely passing school, wouldn’t iron a shirt for him if he wrapped it around my head, wouldn’t cook for him if cooking could save my own life, and barely bulge when he calls my name.  Yeah, trust me on this big sister.  Jeremy Druce would love to get rid of me.  That’s why I can’t wait for next week to get here.”

“What does my birthday have to do with this?”

“I told you I’ve got a plan.”

“What plan, Simone?”

Simone nodded and smiled.  “You’ll see.  You won’t do it if I tell you now.”

“Won’t do what?”

“You’ll see.”

“Oh, please,” Jules said.  “Aren’t you late for work or something, because you are really beginning to get on my nerves?”

“I miss Shay, Jules.”

Jules stopped drying a bowl and stared at the dish water.  She missed her too.  Desperately.  Often she thought about that day, that horrible day, and how selfish their decision now seemed.  She looked at Simone.  Simone was suffering most of all, because she was the one who pulled Jules back when Jules tried to run to Shay.  They could have kicked the social worker and grabbed Shay, or distracted the social worker and took Shay, something.  But all they did was run.  And Simone walked around with that great guilt every day of her life.  “Me too,” Jules said, and got back to work.

Simone wanted to talk more about Shay and how she might be faring in Foster Care, but Jeremy came into the kitchen, with his now-familiar ponytail and bags under his eyes from too much studying.  And even though Simone couldn’t half stand him, she still had to admit he was a very attractive man. 

“Get off of my drain board,” he ordered as he entered the kitchen, but Simone didn’t budge.  When he moved toward her, however, she quickly jumped down.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he asked her.

“I’m off today.”