Stealing Candy (8 page)

Inside the visitor’s room of the youth detention center, Saleema sat across from Portia. With her face scrubbed clean… no lip gloss or eyeliner, Portia hardly resembled the hot-headed, tough teen who routinely fought and intimidated her peers. She looked ten or eleven years old.

“I like your new look. Cute.”

Portia
tsked
in disagreement. “These lame asses…” Portia caught herself. “I mean these dang renta-cops who work here. Those jokers made me take my weave out.” Frowning, she tugged on her short ponytail.

Despite her continual bad behavior, Portia was one of Saleema’s favorites. Portia reminded Saleema of herself at that age. Saleema understood her anger at the world, her short fuse. Like the old Saleema, Portia was always looking for a reason to lash out. Hurting people before they got a chance to hurt her.

Saleema reached across the table, rested her hands on top of Portia’s balled fists, massaging until the young teen’s fists unfurled. “Getting to see you wasn’t easy. I had to meet with the detention supervisor and practically beg him to authorize this visit. Only family members are allowed visitation, but I was able to persuade him to bend the rules a little.”

“Thanks for taking the time to come see me, Miss Saleema. I don’t know what got into me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Portia said in a pained voice. “When I seen you go down, I thought you was hurt real bad. Or dead. I got scared. That’s why I ran.”

“As you can see, I’m fine. Had the wind knocked out me when I hit the floor, but I’m okay. But, you…” Saleema squeezed both Portia’s hands. “I’ve warned you about that temper of yours.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Portia frowned. “Man, I ain’t even seen the judge yet.”

“Why not? You’ve been here for two days.”

“My mom was supposed to come down here for my detention hearing, but ain’t nobody seen her.”

“Have you spoken to your aunt or any other relatives?” Saleema asked, but she knew that girls like Portia didn’t have much family support.

“Yeah, I talked to my aunt LaRue. I told her what time my hearing was, but I already know she ain’t gon’ show up.

“You brought this on yourself, Portia. You have to accept accountability. You’re not a first-time offender. You knew there would be consequences.”

“I know!” Portia snapped, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m wrong, but I ain’t ever gon’ get out of the system if my mom don’t speak to the judge. I could wind up on lockdown ’til I’m eighteen years old.”

Portia’s mother was an addict who spent days, sometimes weeks, away from the home. “What about your aunt? Can’t she stand in as your guardian?”

“My guardian!” Portia made a disdainful sound. “She ain’t gon’ do nothing that involves signing her name on a piece of paper.”

Saleema arched a brow, waiting for Portia to elaborate.

“Aunt LaRue is too fat to work a job, so she gets a disability check. She don’t leave the house, except late at night to prowl the supermarket aisles at the all-night Pathmark. Oh, yeah, and she be making her sneaky food runs to take-out spots after dark. My aunt LaRue is as bad as my mom, but her addiction is food.”

“Maybe I could convince her.”

Portia rolled her eyes. “She just gon’ tell you she can’t get involved cuz it’ll mess up her disability check.”

“How would making a court appearance—”

“That’s her excuse for everything.” Portia made a snorting sound. “In order for her to come down here and stand in as my guardian, she’d have to go file some emergency custody papers and she ain’t about to get involved with all that.”

Saleema tried to process the information. Portia knew a lot about the system. Probably most of the kids in here knew all the ins and outs of what was necessary to obtain their freedom. If they’d spent half as much of their brain power on their studies and making better decisions, they wouldn’t have gotten incarcerated in the first place.

“So you need a custodial parent present at your hearing,” Saleema said, thinking out loud.

“Right. I need my mother to act like she know and get her butt down here,” Portia said angrily.

“You can’t blame your mother for this particular incident, Portia.” Saleema had met Portia’s mother when she’d registered Portia at Head Up. The woman she’d met had seemed to be a concerned parent.
“My mom got game; she know how to represent when she need to,”
Portia had claimed when Saleema had expressed shock to learn that Portia’s mother was battling a ten-year addiction and was apt to go missing whenever she got good and ready, leaving Portia at the mercy of a food addict who’d sooner allow Portia to starve before sharing one crumb from her copious food stash.

According to Portia, her aunt kept padlocks on her bedroom door, several cabinets in the kitchen were secured, and even a bathroom closet was padlocked…all this to keep Portia and her negligent mother from having access to the food she bought and
her personal belongings. No, the aunt wasn’t likely to get involved in Portia’s dilemma. So where did that leave Portia?

Saleema sighed in frustration. “You were already on probation; you realized another infraction would result in spending some time in a detention facility.”

“Yeah, I knew I could wind up doing two to three months. But if my mom don’t make it to my next hearing, these people gonna get Children and Youth involved. If don’t nobody come see about me…” She paused and then spoke shakily, “I could wind up getting sent upstate until I’m eighteen.”

“I doubt that,” Saleema said, summoning up as much optimism as possible under the circumstances.

“If my mom is too busy getting her high to worry about me now, what makes you think she gon’ travel all the way to the boonies to see about me? I ain’t did nothing that bad that I deserve to get lost in this system for the next three years.” Portia’s bottom lip poked out into a pout.

Portia was right. She didn’t deserve to be incarcerated for the next three years. Spending that kind of time in an institution would turn her into a hardened criminal before she reached adulthood.

Saleema patted Portia’s hand. “I agree. You shouldn’t be institutionalized. You need counseling to work on your issues. And some anger control classes would be a great benefit. You can’t go through the rest of your life swinging on everybody who says or does something that you don’t agree with.”

“I know, but Amirah be getting on my nerves. I ain’t mean to go that hard on her, though.”

“You didn’t go hard on Amirah. You took your anger out on me.”

“Aw, why you reminding me of that? You know I wouldn’t never deliberately hurt you, Miss Saleema.”

“I know. But do you see the severe consequences of not having control over your emotions?”

Contrite, Portia nodded. “You gon’ try to help me, Miss Saleema? They all got attitudes in here. The people who work here act like they on some kind of power trip.”

Bully or not, Portia was still a child and she didn’t deserve to be mistreated. She needed counseling and therapy sessions. Saleema thought about her own adolescence…how it mirrored Portia’s. Other than her best friend, Terelle, no one had ever been there for Saleema either. With all her past anger issues and bad behavior, it was a miracle that Saleema had escaped the juvenile justice system and the adult penile system, as well.

“Of course, I’m going to try and help you. After I leave, I’ll stop by your house and see if your mother is back. If I get a hold of her, I’ll personally bring her to your next hearing. Okay?”

“Suppose you can’t find her…you know, in time for my hearing?”

“We’ll cross that bridge later.” Saleema shifted her gaze away from Portia’s desperate eyes. The girl was relying on Saleema to make her mother materialize and assume parental responsibilities. It was quite a feat to accomplish.

“If my mom don’t come and get me out here, I’m gon’ bust out of this place. I’m dead up, Miss Saleema. I’m not staying in here.” Portia cut an eye at Saleema, gauging the effect of her threat.

Saleema shook her head, refusing to even indulge the empty threat. “I brought you some magazines and books and some toiletries,” Saleema said, changing the subject. “I had to leave them at the front desk so they could label the items.”

“Thank you.” In an instant, Portia had simmered down. “I’m real sorry about Head Up. I been doing a lot of thinking and I know why I acted up like that.”

Saleema gazed at Portia curiously.

“I was mad about you closing Head Up. I loved being there.”

Saleema swallowed down a big knot of guilt. “I’m a fighter, Portia. I haven’t given up on Head Up. And I’m not giving up on you.”

Saleema kissed Portia on the cheek. Shockingly, bad-ass Portia wailed and wrapped her arms around Saleema, refusing to let go.

With gleaming eyes, an overzealous guard rushed over and roughly unclenched Portia’s grip. It pained Saleema to watch the young girl being hauled out of the visitor’s room and screaming her name.

After that heart-wrenching scene, Saleema felt like she had no choice but to comb every inch of the city until she found Portia’s deadbeat mom.

Before exiting the detention center, Saleema stopped to jot down the time next to her name on the visitor’s sheet. She looked up at the round-faced clock mounted on the wall. One hand was pointing to number twelve and the other had fallen off, resting at the bottom of the ancient institutional clock. If a hand fell off a clock right in the lobby, what sorts of disrepair and misdeeds were taking place behind the scenes?

Overloaded with stress from her financial straights and feeling powerless to help Portia with her predicament, she barely had the strength to search her overloaded shoulder bag for her always elusive cell phone. Sighing, she groped around, searching for her cell phone to determine the time.

“It’s twelve twenty-six,” a male voice offered.

She pivoted around to see who the voice belonged to. The man behind her was a brown-skinned brother who had closely cropped hair. He was tall with a lean frame. He wore glasses and that gave him a studious appearance.

Who asked you?
she thought, but muttered, “Thanks,” and then turned back to the visitor’s sheet. She wrote the digits and placed the chained pen on the clipboard.

“Obama’s in Philly today,” he said, starting up a conversation. “Center City traffic is going to be at a standstill.”

She faced the talkative guy, giving him a quick once-over. Wearing a crisp pair of khakis and a neatly tucked button-down shirt, his look was entirely preppy without even a hint of an urban twist. A social worker, she surmised.

“I’m going in the opposite direction,” she replied coldly, intending to discourage further comments. She zipped her shoulder bag and took a few steps toward the door.

The preppy dude scrawled the time on the visitor’s sheet and caught up with Saleema as she headed toward the exit sign.

“I would say, lucky you, but I heard traffic is snarled throughout the city.”

He was too Joe-familiar for her taste. And he seemed to be a bit of a know-it-all, the annoying type who, during his school days, had probably waved his hand enthusiastically, trying to blurt out the answer to every question the teacher asked. Saleema used to pick fights with kids who were too smart for their own good.

She fixed an irritated gaze on him. “The president is speaking at Independence Hall. Why would traffic be jammed up all over Philly?”

Seemingly oblivious to her dirty look, he continued, “He’s speaking to forty governors and other lawmakers. Those top officials are in town with motorcades…criss-crossing the city, causing major chaos. For security purposes, many streets have been completely shut down.”

Saleema groaned. It was ninety-eight degrees outside. She loved Obama and in her mind, the president could do no wrong. But she sure wished he’d chosen a cooler day to shut down the city. Feeling cranky, she gave the preppy the evil eye for being the harbinger of bad news. “Thanks for the newsflash.”

He held up an iPhone. On the screen was a view of clogged
traffic. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said and aimed a smile at her. Then he removed his glasses and rubbed the side of his nose. A gesture from habit? Or was he showing off what he was really working with because without his glasses, he looked like a different man. He had wonderful features. Strong jawline, sparkly, alert eyes, luscious lips…really handsome.

Seeing him in a totally different light, and feeling a little thrill of excitement, Saleema’s fingers smoothed back a stray loc. Murmuring a sound of approval, she smiled back, and unconsciously lowered her eyes.

Saleema hadn’t been flirtatious in a very long time. In the past, the only time she’d bothered to entice was when money was on her mind. It was a minor jolt to her system to find herself attracted to a man for his looks instead of his financial status.

“My name is Khalil,” he said, replacing the glasses and extending his hand.

With his glasses on, he went back to looking like a bookworm, which was a relief. She grasped his hand and shook it courteously.

“Saleema,” she told him. She gave him only a fraction of a smile, but her lips were twitching to extend into a mega grin.

 
 CHAPTER 9