Guardian of Eden (2 page)

"She's visiting her mother in North Carolina this weekend." I wrote my mother’s cell phone number on his clipboard.

“Eden's in exam room 3,” he called over his shoulder as he stormed off to the nurse’s station and picked up the phone. Before dialing he added, “If you upset her in anyway, I’m banning you from her room.”

Eden started crying and held her arms out to me when I entered her room.

“What’s wrong with me, Gary? Am I
dying
? It hurts so
bad
.” I crawled into bed next to her and held her just like I did when she was little. Cramming ourselves into a small bed didn’t bother either one of us. We had slept in worse conditions.

“
Shhh
. Don’t
cry
. You’re not dying. I would never let that happen. The doctors here are going to fix you up and you’re
gonna
be just fine.” I stroked her dark blonde hair and stared into her brown-green eyes.

“You promise?”

“I promise. I would never let anything bad happen to you.” Eden cried harder. She cried herself into exhaustion and fell asleep in my arms.

***

“I brought you some coffee,”
Maddie
whispered as she entered the room. I hadn’t even noticed she left.

“You don’t have to whisper. She’s sound asleep. Eden could sleep through a tornado.” I slid out of the hospital bed then took the cup of coffee she held out to me.

“Is she okay?”

I nodded as I took a sip. It tasted wretched. I put the lid back on and placed it on the table.
Maddie
hugged herself and stared down at my little sister. She was worried about her. Over the past few months, she’d grown quite attached to Eden. I stepped behind her, put my hands on her shoulders and kissed the top of her platinum blonde head.

“You called me your boyfriend. You’ve never called me your boyfriend before.”
Maddie
turned around and stared up at me with her blue-lake eyes. Eyes so wide and blue and soft I wanted to drown in them. She stood up straight and wrapped her arms around my neck. She almost couldn’t reach even on her tiptoes. At sixteen years old,
Maddie
was two inches shorter than my twelve-year-old sister. But then again Eden was taller than most twelve-year-olds, a great asset in her modeling career.

Maddie
ran her fingers through my long black hair and as tears welled in her eyes she said, “I love you, Garrett.”

“I love you, too,” I said before pressing my lips to hers. It should have the happiest moment in my life. Madison
McPhee
loved me. But I couldn’t fully enjoy it knowing my sister was suffering just feet away.

“What about your father? What about the election?” I asked after kissing her breathless.

“I don’t care what he says. I need you, I want you, and I can’t exist without you.” We both smiled as she repeated the exact same words I’d told her just two weeks ago.

“Now you’re just picking on me,” I said.

“Well, you have to admit, it’s a pretty corny line.”

“It wasn’t a line. It’s the truth.” I kissed her again. Our kiss deepened as I pulled her closer to me. I don’t know what would have happened if we weren’t interrupted by a soft tapping on the door.

“May we speak to you in the hall?” the doctor asked me after poking his head in. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself properly,” he said once we left the room. “I’m Dr. Shepherd and this is Rowena Smith from Child Services.”

I shook both their hands and said, “I don’t understand why Child Services is here?” while eyeing them suspiciously. I’d seen enough of Child Services for five lifetimes.

“We spoke to your mother,” Dr. Shepherd said ignoring my question. “She faxed over a letter giving you power of attorney over Eden. She trusts you to make all the decisions concerning her welfare.” That letter was worthless in my book. I’d already been doing that for the past twelve years.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong with my sister, please?” Dr. Shepherd and Rowena Smith exchanged a look, a look of foreboding that instantly made my heart race.

“You might want to sit down, son,” the overweight black lady said as she put her hand on my shoulder.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want to know what’s wrong with her.”

Dr. Shepherd sighed and said, “Your sister had a miscarriage.” I stared at him blankly as the words swirled around my mind. Everything logical in me told me it was impossible.

“I’m sorry. You must be looking at the wrong chart. My sister is only twelve.”

“It’s not a mistake, Garrett. We’ve already performed the D&C. The fetus was about 6 weeks old.” My knees gave out. I collapsed in a chair. My heart tightened in my chest. My stomach revolted. I thought I might vomit. The doctor kept talking, but I really couldn’t hear anything else.

“Who did this? Who could do that to a child?” I asked, interrupting the doctor’s details.

“We need your help to figure that out,” Rowena said. “Does she have a boyfriend? Is there any chance this was consensual?”

I glared at her. How could she even suggest something like that?

“A detective is on the way,” she said once she noticed my fierce expression. “Do you know anything that may help with the investigation?”

I shook my head. I knew nothing. What kind of brother was I to let something like this happen? I should have been paying more attention to her. This was my fault and I was going to fix it.

 ***

Eden began to stir around five o’clock in the morning. I asked
Maddie
to leave the room for a few minutes. Eden cried for me and I took her hand.

“Eden, I know something bad happened to you,” I said as I tucked her hair behind her ear. “I know I let you down.”

“Gary, don’t cry. It’s not your fault.” She reached up and wiped a tear from my face.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me who hurt you.”

***

“Give me your keys,” I said to
Maddie
twenty minutes later.

“Why? Where are you going?” I didn’t respond. “Garrett, what’s wrong? Is it about Eden?” Her eyes were filled with fear as I towered over her.
Maddie
handed me her keys and I left the hospital without saying another word.

***

I remember picking up the gun and loading it. I even remember pointing it at his head. I remember thinking that I was ruining my life and probably
Maddie’s
as well. I remember the overwhelming need to rid Eden of this evil in her life. What I don’t remember is pulling the trigger and pulling it six times.

The first time I met my mother, she was eight months pregnant with Eden. I was five and living with my foster mother.

“So how do you feel about meeting your mother?” Mrs. Brooks asked the day of the visit.

“Exuberant,” I said as she combed my long jet-black hair.

 “That’s a big word for a five-year-old. Do you even know what that word means, Garrett?” Mrs. Brooks said.

“Exuberant – adjective.
Abounding in vitality; extremely joyful and vigorous.”
Then I said the word in Spanish and again in French. My foster mother stopped combing my hair and stared at me in shock. She couldn’t believe a five year old could have such a vocabulary. Even though I had lived with her for three months, I never spoke much.

I knew a lot of words at that age. Exuberant wasn’t even the longest. When I lived with my Grandma Jean, I had to learn a new word every day. She always said that just because we were poor didn’t mean we couldn’t ‘be somebody.’ And to her, ‘being somebody’ started with knowing how to read.

Every morning Grandma Jean took out her old dictionary with the missing pages and picked out a word she thought looked ‘pretty.’ Then we’d go down to the corner store and she’d ask me to read it to Mr. Jeffries along with the definition. Grandma Jean couldn’t read so she wouldn’t have known if I pronounced it correctly. I wanted to teach her how to read, but she always said she was too old to learn.

After I used it in a sentence three times with Mr. Jeffries, Grandma and I crossed the street to Mr. Garcia and he’d tell me the word in Spanish. Next, Ms. Claudette at the African hair shop would tell me the word in French.

I could spell and define about a thousand words in three different languages by that age, but I still didn’t understand the true meaning of the word “death.” It was Mr. Jeffries who knew something was wrong when I showed up at his store one morning without the two most precious things in my life: my grandmother and my dictionary. I lost them both that day. I sat in a squad car for hours while the police and social services searched our apartment for any information about my family. When they couldn’t find anything, they sent me to live with Ms. Brooks.

Ms. Brooks thought I wouldn’t be there for too long. She just knew my other family wouldn’t forget about me. She called me a prodigy and said that she was sure my family was proud of me and would want me back as soon as possible. She was wrong. My other grandmother, my mother’s mother, didn’t want me because she was white and I was black. My father was incarcerated, so that just left my mother, Holly Jane Whitman and it took her three months to come get me.

“Hi, Garrett.
I’m your mommy,” Holly said as she knelt in front of me and held her arms out to me. I thought she was beautiful. I finally knew where my green eyes came from.

***

 “What the hell is this?” a bald, white man with tattoos said. I assumed he was my mother’s boyfriend and the father of the baby she currently carried.

“I told you I was bringing my son today,” Holly said. She held my hand tighter as we entered the motel room she called home.

“That’s your son?” He chugged the rest of his beer then said, “I think them foster people made a mistake. That kid is black.” He crushed the can on his head then threw it at my mother nearly hitting her in the face. My mother ignored him and showed me to my corner of the room. She had made a pallet of pillows and blankets on the floor. She sat me down and took my Sponge Bob Square Pants backpack off.

I sat on the blankets and stared at an outlet as a roach crawled out of it. I immediately missed Ms. Brooks’ house.

I also didn’t like the stench of the motel room. Grandma Jean’s house always smelled like biscuits and Ms. Brooks house always smelled like finger
paints
. I didn’t know what this place smelled like, but I didn’t like it.

“
What the hell is the matter with him?
Don’t
he talk?” He got off the bed and came over to me. He looked me over as if I was a dog with fleas that he didn’t want in his home.

“Of course, he can talk, Joel. Social Services told me he’s really smart. He’s reading at a fourth grade level even though he’s only in kindergarten,” my mother said, stepping in front of the man and blocking his view of me.

“
That don’t
mean
nothin
’.”

“Yes, it does. It means he’s a genius.” Joel waved his hands in the air and swatted my mother away as if she were some sort of annoying bug. Then he went back to the bed and lit a cigarette. “He’s a genius, just like his father,” my mother said quietly before turning her attention back to me. “Do you want to lie down for a while, Garrett?” she asked, sitting next to me on the floor. That wasn’t easy for her because her stomach was so big. I nodded. “When you wake up we can go to the store and I’ll buy you anything you want. Would you like that?” I nodded. “What do you want to buy?”