Of Blood and Sorrow (13 page)

“No, he’s not okay! The goddamn cops could pick him up. Whoever killed Lilah Love and Turk could be looking for Jamal! How could you let this happen?” I was shaking so badly I could scarcely hold the phone, so I put it down for a minute. I didn’t want to hear anything DeWayne had to say. But I heard him anyway.

“Listen to me! What did he say when you spoke to him? What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to come home,” I finally said, as calmly as I could. It didn’t do any good to keep yelling at him. He was as scared as me.

“I didn’t give him much money and he can’t get a bus from here, so he ain’t coming home,” DeWayne said. “Look, I saw him this morning, and he seemed okay. He answered your call, that’s the important thing. Call him again, and I’ll keep calling, too. Okay? And maybe you should try to find out who did this shit and got him in this mess in the first place. Maybe you should try to do that so he can come back home with you where he belongs. And I wasn’t with no woman,” he added before he hung up.

Woman, slut—I didn’t give a good goddamn. All I knew was my son was in danger, and I didn’t know where he was. DeWayne Curtis was right about one thing, though. I had to find out who did this shit and get Jamal out of this mess as soon as I could. DeWayne Curtis had been damned right about that.

Thelma Lee had to be the key to this whole thing. She was the one who had taken the child and brought this hell down on everybody. I needed to talk to her again, ask direct questions about both murders, get more details about her relationship with her older sister and with Turk. I had real facts about the killing now, and I’d be able to grill her and get some answers. She thought I was acting like a cop at my house; she hadn’t seen nothing yet. I knew I’d be able to tell if she was lying, and if she wasn’t, I’d help her remember something she may have forgotten.

I don’t want nobody hurting you or your son.

Had she been talking about herself? I needed to go back to Jersey City and get a sense of where things were. I could talk to Sweet Thing then, too, and find out if she had the baby like Thelma had said.

It was rush hour, so it was six before I pulled up in front of Sweet Thing’s house. Before I could ring the bell, Jimson Weed came running out of the house and onto the sagging porch. I thought about the way he’d spit on my floor and got disgusted all over again, but if I was hoping for some kind of an apology, I was a bigger fool than he.

“You can stop right there. Don’t you come nowhere near this house. Nowhere near it. We don’t need your help.”

“So Thelma Lee is home?” I peeked over his shoulder and spotted Sweet Thing peeking from behind a shade in the living room.

“We got all we need. We a family. We got each other, and that’s all you need to know.”

“So I take it Thelma Lee is here?”

“Just go on back where you come from.”

“I know you have Lilah’s baby. Thelma Lee told me that.”

“Thelma Lee didn’t tell you nothing!”

“If Thelma Lee is here, I want to talk to her.” I paused for a moment, wondering whether I should go on, then said, “You must know by now that Lilah, the girl you call Lily, is dead.”

He stopped short and glanced at the window, then looked back at me. “I know.”

“Would you tell Sweet Thing that I’m sorry for her loss?”

“I’ll tell her.”

“But I want to talk to Thelma Lee, and I need to know that Lilah’s baby is okay.”

“All we want to do is be a family, live like a family in peace and quiet like, but you folks just won’t let us alone, will you? I got to look out for my woman like she’s always looked out for me. I can’t have no one making her upset, do you understand me?” His eyes pleaded with me as strong as his words, and I finally began to understand.

“Here, please take this,” I said, giving him Thelma Lee’s bracelet. “Will you please give this back to Thelma Lee? It’s very precious to her and she left it at my house. It has a picture of her mother in it.”

“I know what it’s got in it,” he said as he carefully folded it into his handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she gets it.” He said it with a kindly nod and slight smile that struck me as surprisingly caring, and I liked him better for it. “Good evening, Ms. Hayle.” He went back inside, spoke to Sweet Thing, and pulled down the shade where Sweet Thing had been standing, and for the first time, I felt compassion, which surprised the hell out of me.

Jimson Weed wasn’t really a puzzle to me; I’d known men like him all my life. My father’s friends, mostly, who had fought in Vietnam like he had and come home to deal with their wounds and American racism. It was too much for some of them to endure; souls scar easily, and they became lost men, drinking or drugging and so caught up in their own misery they couldn’t see you when you looked straight at them. Jimson Weed had been one of those men until Sweet Thing became his salvation. She had rescued him from his grief, and he had dedicated himself to her well-being. He was lucky to have an anchor in his life. Larry Walton was one of my anchors, and I was lucky to have him, too.

TWELVE

I
WAS DOWN ROUTE
1-9 when I finally got Jamal on my cell phone, and I pulled into a gas station so we could talk. I didn’t want to make things worse than they were, so I played the calm, understanding mom.

“Hey, Jamal, where you been?” I said, casual as could be.

“You’re mad, huh?” He knew me too well.

“Where were you?” I snapped, all pretense gone.

“I’m okay.”

“I didn’t ask
how
you were. I asked
where
you were.”

“I’m home now. Not home, but here with Dad,” he corrected himself. “I just needed to get out, spend some time by myself. You want to talk to him? He’s watching the game.”

“No.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah, Son.”

“I can’t see why I can’t come home now.”

“You know as well as I do. I told you to stay where you are.”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Do you want to talk to Dad?”

“No, I told you that. I’m just really worried about you, Son.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mom; I’m fine.” He chuckled then, and the sound of his laughter made me smile. “That’s what you always say to me, isn’t it? ‘I’m fine, Son; don’t worry.’ Don’t
you
worry. Everything’s going to work out okay.”

“You think so?” That was what he always asked me.

“I know so.” He tossed back what I always said back.

“You’re really okay, then?”

“I’m fine. Fine!” His voice was strong and assured, and I realized how quickly he was becoming a man. Too quickly. “Hey, Mom. Take a deep breath. Relax. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and did what he suggested. He did sound fine, and he was safe. At least for now. Worrying didn’t solve a damn thing.

As I got back on the road, I thought about Larry Walton and everything he meant to me—and everything he didn’t.

I wondered about the “important” thing he wanted to ask me. In the past few months, he’d been hinting about getting married, or, as he put it, “formalizing our relationship.” I wasn’t sure if I was ready for marriage, but he was the kind of man who would want an answer quickly if he asked. I knew I had to be prepared to give him one or I would lose him.

Good men were hard to come by, especially the older I got, and Larry Walton was a good man. I could see myself settling down with him and living very well. I could make a nice piece of change off of my house (not Jersey City prices, but more than I had now) and move into his charming West Orange house. He had mentioned sending Jamal to a boarding school, which I didn’t agree with, but we would compromise on that. As his wife, life would be sweet and easy. And what would I be giving up?

Sweet Thing came to mind and the way Jimson Weed had yanked that window shade down in front of her face. I remembered the way he’d stood ramrod-stiff in front of her like a soldier protecting her from an enemy. What had she given up for the protection he offered?

I picked up some food for dinner—steaks, salad, baking potatoes. Larry was a man of simple tastes. And I stopped by Whole Foods for a chocolate mousse cake and a good liquor store for some expensive red wine. When I got home, I cleaned up the place, burned some incense, lit candles in strategic nooks, and after a luxurious bubble bath, slipped into the sexiest thing I owned and waited, willing and eager for my man to walk through the door.

It was going on ten o’clock when he finally showed up. “Willing and eager” had disappeared at eight forty-five.

“You’re late,” I said the obvious, as he handed me a dozen wilted pink roses he’d probably picked up at the A&P.

“Tamara, I’m so sorry about this. Something important came up, and I had to stop by the club. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” He obviously felt bad about it, so I smelled the roses, gave him a kiss, and let it go. He gave me one of his winning grins.

Larry Walton was a man who people trusted the moment he grinned. I certainly had when I ran into him after high school, more years ago than I care to admit, and when he sold me my latest car. He was a kind man, too, always had been, and that was what had drawn me to him. Like my ex-husband, he took clothes very seriously—shoes, jewelry, anything that whispered success—although his success, unlike DeWayne Curtis’s, was real. He was well built and well kept, as Wyvetta had observed once, spotting him from afar, and he had a cute dimple that always won me over. He was, as my friend Annie said, the three “Ss” that a good husband must be: steady, sturdy, settled.

We sipped some wine, ate some dinner, nibbled at the cake, drank more wine, finally snuggled close to each other on the living room couch. I curled up next to him and laid my head on his shoulder. He kissed my forehead, then my lips.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, remembering the platinum certificate from Wyvetta’s shop. “I think you’ll enjoy this!” I had put it upstairs in the drawer of my night table, not sure whether I wanted to present it to him before or after we made love. This seemed the right moment, considering that our evening had gotten off to a rocky start. I ran upstairs, two steps at a time like Jamal, pulled it out of my drawer, and dashed back down. I handed it to him grinning, as bashful as a kid. The moment he glanced at it, I knew I’d made a mistake.

Wyvetta had overdone it with the gold box and silver bow, topped by a fake white carnation. I’d been so involved worrying about meeting Treyman Barnes, I hadn’t thought twice about the flower until I handed it to him. He took it, smiled graciously, but examined it critically.

“Looks like something from Wyvetta Green’s shop,” he said. He must have noticed how my face fell because he quickly added as he placed it on the table, “Nice. Thanks, baby. This was thoughtful.”

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Sure,” he said, but I could tell it was an afterthought. He slowly opened the box, then read the card aloud. In her haste to make a sale, Wyvetta, never much of a speller, had misspelled certain key words.

This entitles one gentleman to an afternoon of delite at the Beauty Biscuit compliment of Wyvetta Green and Company. Included-—head message with special oils, hair cut, pedicure, etc. etc.

“Message? What kind of message is she offering?”

“She meant to write
massage.
”

“So what’s the ‘etc. etc.,’ or dare I ask?”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back,” I snapped.

“No, no. I like it, I like it. Who in his right mind wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon in the Beauty Biscuit surrounded by all that pink and purple with Wyvetta Green and company rubbing oil onto his head?”

I pulled away from him. “I hate it when you’re like this,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Nasty and judgmental.”

“Hey, don’t be that way, baby!” He tried to kiss me. “I’m really sorry. It’s a great gift, but it’s really not my style.” I pulled away from him again. I’d known Wyvetta a long time, and I didn’t like anyone making fun of her, not even in jest.

“
Now
what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just don’t like you putting down my friend.”

He was the one to pull away now. “To be real honest, I’ve never understood your friendship with Wyvetta Green anyway. You’re a very classy woman, Tamara. You’re smart, independent, lovely, with a good business head. Those are some of the reasons I’ve fallen in love with you. I could take you anywhere in this world with me, anywhere, and you’d know how to behave, what to wear, how to act, for crying out loud. We’re a good team, the two of us. We can reach all of our goals. But Wyvetta Green? I have nothing in common with her or Eric. I haven’t seen a gold tooth like that in a man’s mouth since my uncle Horace died.”

“Earl. His name is Earl,” I said.

“Your choice of friends reflects who you are. They’re like the clothes you wear or the car you drive. I could no more take people like them to a function at the Businessmen’s Club than I could—”

“Are you telling me that my friends aren’t good enough for you?” I didn’t like where this was going.

“No, of course not, baby. Your friend Annie, and that guy she’s married to, the Nigerian guy, they’re the kind of people…well, that can bring good things into our lives. I could see us going out to dinner together, traveling, but Wyvetta and Earl? Well, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“No, I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

Larry took my hand and gently touched it with his lips. “What I’m saying is that I really want to take our relationship, well, to a different level. That will mean that we’ll both have to let parts of us go to get there. That’s what marriage is about, sacrificing bits of yourself for the greater good.”

“And Wyvetta Green and Earl are the parts of me that you want to sacrifice?”

Larry kissed my hand again, then let it drop. He picked up the wine and gulped it down. “Look, I’m not asking you to cut her off, just…well, just don’t have her in your life as much. What does she really offer you besides a free perm every now and then in that tacky little beauty shop over on—”

“That ‘tacky little beauty shop’ is right under my tacky little office,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it like that. All I’m saying is sometimes in life, you have to let people go—not all at once, but bit by bit. You go on to better things, and sometimes…well, old friends don’t fit into the world you’re entering.”

“The world inhabited by members of the Businessmen’s Club of which you’ve just been elected vice president and that wouldn’t have me as a member!”

“I’m going to do something about that,” he said, not looking me in the eye.

“But would never accept Wyvetta with her tacky little shop or Earl with his gold tooth,” I continued.

“You know that’s the truth as well as I do,” he said.

We sat there for the next ten minutes, close to each other but not touching. I thought about Wyvetta and all the things we’d been through together and about Larry and how good he made me feel, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to make things right, so we sat there, finishing off the bottle of wine in silence. He opened another one and poured me a glass.

“Larry,” I said after a few minutes, “when we spoke earlier, you said you had something to discuss with me.” My words sounded heavy and formal, as if I were speaking to a business associate. “What exactly was it?”

“Do you really want to know?” His eyes told me he felt as bad as I did about the way things were unfolding.

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m almost afraid to say it now,” he said with a half grin, and for a moment, I fell in love with him again.

“Tell me.” I returned his smile. There might be hope for this evening yet.

“Well, I ran into Treyman Barnes at the—”

“Treyman Barnes!”

“Yeah, and I know you’ve had some dealings with him, and I—”

“W-who told you I had dealings with him?” I stammered out.

“Well, I don’t want to go into it, but I want to remind you that he’s not like some of those lowlifes you run into in your business. He’s a gentleman, a class act, and an important contributor to the community.”

Then you working for the Devil.

“Not everybody feels that way, that Treyman Barnes is such a class act, such an upstanding citizen, believe me,” I said.

“Well, the important people do, and ultimately, they’re the ones who count, right?” He said it with a playful wink, meant to soften the words, but it didn’t.

“So now you’re trying to tell me how to run my business.”

“You know I would never do that.” He looked genuinely hurt, and that made me feel bad. “Hey, baby, I can’t say nothing right tonight, can I?”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“So when is my favorite guy coming back?” he said after a moment, trying to change the subject. He knew that the mere mention of my son always made me smile. But it didn’t this time, and he studied my face and then shook his head. “Look, don’t worry about Jamal. He is having big fun down there with his dad, and maybe we can have some fun of our own without prying teenage eyes.”

“My son’s eyes don’t pry, and I miss him,” I said as evenly as I could.

“Well, why don’t you tell him to come home?”

“It’s not time yet.”

He nodded and smiled. “Maybe it’s for the best, Tamara. I know you don’t think much of the man, but sometimes a father is the only one who can give a boy like Jamal the guidance he needs.”

“A boy like Jamal?”

“Well, you know what I mean. He’s been dealing with a lot of bad stuff recently. The death of that kid he knew, your block going bad. He talks back a lot, too; I’ve been noticing that. It’s only a matter of time before he starts hanging with the wrong kids, getting into trouble with the cops, and then it’s over, forget it. Ain’t nothing you can do once the cops get hold of him. You know how it goes for black men. Once they arrest you, for anything, your life ain’t worth shit. A firm hand for a couple of months, maybe even a year or two, will do that boy a world of good.”

“And you actually believe that DeWayne Curtis, my trifling ex-husband, is the firm hand my son needs?”

“Well, the firm hand’s not mine, Jamal has made that pretty clear, and he’s got to have a man in his life, sooner rather than later, I’d say.”

Was Larry right? I wondered, beginning to doubt myself. Jamal had, after all, gotten into that car with that crazy bitch in the first place. I didn’t say anything for a while, and then said as gently as I could, “I need to be by myself tonight, baby. I need to think some things through.”

Puzzled, he studied my face. “By yourself? Didn’t you invite me over?”

“I know. I’m sorry, but there’s a lot going on in my life now, and I need to sort things out.”

“It’s that damn job, isn’t it? It’s dangerous and it’s unseemly. I can’t sleep at night worrying what kind of hoodlum is going to drop into your office and what he’s going to do you. It’s not what I want a woman I love to do for a living.

“I want to protect you, Tamara, from everything and everyone that can hurt you, but you seem bent on living your life on the edge. We’ve talked about this before, and I need an answer. When are you going to find another way to make a living?”

“I’m not,” I said.