The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series) (23 page)

“No, I’m ‘bout to make my roux soon as I finish my tea. It’s a one-person job, but boring as shit.”

“You stir awhile and then I will.”

“No, I don’t trust nobody to get it right but me.” She smiled to show she meant no harm. Torian was starting to warm up to her in a big way.

She felt a tinge of excitement as she realized,
I’ve never met anyone like this.

“How’d you learn to make gumbo?” she asked. “I don’t know how.”

Why didn’t Lise teach me? What are mothers for?

“My ontee teach me. Way a long time ago—before I start school.”

“Your ontee?”

Faylice nodded. “Auntie Shaunna.” Torian finally got it. “My mama’s baby sister. Ain’t it funny she be the one?”

“Your mom doesn’t cook? Mine doesn’t either.”

Faylice was stirring the roux now, her back to the table, so that Torian couldn’t see her face. “Nooooo, my mama don’t cook. My mama too busy with her rock and her men frien’s. My mama sho’ don’ cook.”

Torian was dying to know everything about this girl who was younger than she was and even more alone in the world—except perhaps for a nice aunt. “What about your dad?”

“Ain’t got no dad. Ain’t got no brothers, ain’t got no sisters. I did have a baby brother, but he die.”

Torian looked at Paulette, needing some kind of grounding. She nodded. “Tha’s right. Faylice has had it real hard. And no matter what happens, she always makes straight A’s. Idn’t that right, Faylice?”

“Well, I try. I shore do try.” Something in her voice— so unsure of herself, so unaware of what a miracle she was—devastated Torian.

Paulette said, “What’sa matter, chile?”

Humiliated, Torian picked up her paper napkin and swiped at the tears that had run down her cheeks. “I don’t know. I… nothing, I guess.”

Paulette patted her wrist. “It’s gonna be all right. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Torian said, “Faylice. I have two baby sisters.” That was funny—Joy certainly wasn’t her sister. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them.”

“I had a real hard time when Demas died. We woke up one mornin’ and he was dead in his bed. Jus’ like that. No reason for it.”

“I’ve heard of that. Sudden infant death.”

“That’s what they call it. Sometime, I think it jus’ be the Lord lookin’ after him.”

Is she saying what I think she’s saying?

Torian waited for her to go on, but Faylice just kept stirring the roux. She said, “You mean you think he’s better off dead?”

“Sometime I do. Sometime I don’ know how he would have made it. My mama didn’t have no milk to nurse him. She had to give him a bottle and sometimes she forget; most times she forget. And I was just a little bitty girl—eight years old then—and they make me go to school. How’m I gon’ take care of him when I’m at school?”

“Your aunt—um—”

“Oh, Auntie move away just as soon as she get married. And when she move, she say, ‘Faylice, honey, I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t right now. I gotta go, I’m real sorry, but you promise me one thing. You promise you’ll always make all A’s, and then I know you gon’ get a good job and I rest easy.’ ”

Faylice turned to face her. “See, we live in St. Thomas.” One of the city’s worst slums. “She want me to get out. She couldn’t take me, but she want to let me know I can do it myself. So I say to myself, ‘Okay, I will. Faylice ain’ gon’ be no crack whore. Faylice gon’ get a job and go to a office and wear nice clothes.’ Auntie Shaunna, she be a insurance adjuster. Maybe tha’s what I be one day.”

“That’s what my mom is.”

Faylice turned around again, face animated. “Oh, yeah? She like her job?”

Torian stared at the floor. Lise called it “a piddlin’ little job a twelve-year-old could do.” “I don’t think so,” she said. “My mom doesn’t like much of anything.”

“Mmmph. Maybe she on drugs.”

“Alcohol.”

Faylice nodded. “Tha’s no good. Mmmm, mmm. Tha’s no good.”

Torian realized Faylice talked like a much older person. She said, “Faylice, how old are you?”

“Thirteen and a half. You?”

“Fifteen. But I don’t think I know as much as you.”

Paulette snorted. “Honey, you don’ want to.”

Faylice said. “No, you don’t. ‘Specially as much as I learn last couple days.”

Torian was dying to know what had happened, what had finally pushed her over the edge and made her leave home, but she didn’t feel she could ask. Maybe it was too painful, or too private.

But Faylice said, still stirring the roux, “My mama boyfrien’ rape me and beat me up day before yesterday.” She turned around and raised her T-shirt, showing a bandage on her midriff. “He try to cut me too, only I got the knife. I jus’ get a scratch. But then he knock the knife out of my hand, and he so mad he pull off my clothes and stick his thing in me.”

Torian gasped. “Where was your mom?”

“Oh, she went out to the store. They smokin’ rock together, then she go out to get cigarettes, and he start tearin’ the house apart, lookin’ for money. I come home from school ‘bout that time, and he start beatin’ me and…the rest of it.”

She had been matter-of-fact up to that point, but Torian noticed her voice getting lower on the last phrase, as if she were deeply ashamed. “My mama come home and start beatin’ on him with her hands, her fists, some ol’ ashtray she pick up, anything she can, and I run away. I jus’ run away without a stitch on. Neighbor lady let me in, and I call my auntie. She say her church take care of me, and tha’s how I got here.”

She had added her vegetables to the roux—all but her tomatoes and okra—and there was a great sizzling and smoking.

Torian said, “Faylice? Could you teach me to make gumbo?”

“Sho’, girl. You didn’t have no auntie?”

Torian shook her head, feeling inadequate, unable to speak. Finally she said, “I’ve got a stepmother.”

“See, your vegetables have to wilt. You like her better’n your mama?”

Torian stared into the pot, as if the green peppers and onions would give up the secrets of the universe along with their fragrance.

“Well?” said Faylice. “You don’t like her either?”

“Sure I like her. I like Carol.”

“Okay, now the tomatoes.”

“What?”

Faylice nodded at the kitchen counter. “The tomatoes. And that pile of sausage.”

Finally comprehending, Torian began tossing the piles into the pot. For the first time it occurred to her that she really didn’t like Carol.

She’s better than Lise. At least she doesn’t hit me.

But I don’t think she loves me, I really don’t.

Nobody does.

Noel did, she was pretty sure, and her dad and Joy and Marly to the extent that they were capable, but at the moment she doubted them all.

Sheila! Sheila loves me.

Well, at least she likes me a lot. She’s a true friend, she’d do anything for me.

She wasn’t entirely sure of that, it hadn’t been tested, but she needed to think it right now.

I’d do anything for her. She knows that, doesn’t she?

“Now we gon’ put in the water. And the okra and some of the shrimp; and we gon’ season it.”

Once again, Torian dumped in the piles Faylice had readied. She watched as the other girl ground bay leaves, measured thyme and pepper, counted little balls she said were allspice.

“Hey, y’all. What’s for dinner?” A new girl had arrived, probably the owner of the suitcase and underwear Torian had seen in the other bedroom.

Paulette said, “Where’ve you been, young lady?”

“Went for a bike ride. Saw your bike and went for a spin. Rides pretty good.”

Faylice turned around. “How you know how to ride a bike?” She sounded furious.

“Everybody know how to ride a bike. You tellin’ me you don’t?” The girl started to laugh.

Faylice looked as if she could fall through the floor; Torian thought she would have turned bright red if she’d been white.

The new girl was the color that black people call red, and she had a few freckles on her nose. She looked much younger even than Faylice, only eleven or twelve, and she was skinny, with legs that went on and on like stilts. Like Faylice, she was wearing white shorts, but hers were very short, and her little buttoned sleeveless top, though made of T-shirt knit, fit snugly and was clearly meant to be sexy. Since the girl hadn’t yet grown breasts, it wasn’t quite that, but Torian gave her points for intent.

Her hair, which had apparently been straightened, was held back with a yellow print cotton scarf tied on the side. She was young, but she had a lot of fashion sense. When she smiled, as she was doing now, you could see a gap between her front teeth, which gave her a perennially delighted look. She looked like a kid without a care in the world.

“Who you?” she said.

“I’m Torian. Who you?” Something about the girl made her laugh.

“Adonis.”

“Adonis?”

“Somethin’ wrong with that?” Adonis was suddenly a little package of muscle and gristle.

“No, it’s a beautiful name.”

“Faylice say it be a boy’s name.”

Torian kept quiet. She desperately wanted Faylice’s respect—and friendship if she could have it—but she couldn’t see lining up with her on this one. Something about Adonis, cheerful, freckled little biker that she was, was a tiny bit threatening.

Adonis opened the refrigerator and came out with a handful of carrot sticks. “Y’all want some?”

Faylice and Torian shook their heads, all but turning up their noses. Adonis sat down hard on one of the kitchen chairs. “So what chew doin’ here, little white ghost? Tha’s what the Chinese call y’all—you know that?”

“I needed to be away awhile.”

“Why?” Adonis put a foot on the table, but removed it at a look from Paulette.

“I don’t want—I don’t think I can talk about it yet.” She hoped that didn’t sound too lame. The truth was, she was embarrassed to talk about it in front of Faylice, whose life seemed so much harsher, whose courage so much stronger. “What about you?” she asked.

Adonis stood up again, looked in the gumbo pot, grabbed a spoon, and tasted. “Bleeaghh.”

“You don’ have to eat it, Miss Smartie,” huffed Faylice.

Adonis spun around to face Torian. “Ain’ nobody home where I live.”

“You can say that again. Ain’ nobody home in ya haid,” Faylice cut in.

Torian said, “I don’t see what you mean.”

“I come home from school one day; they all gone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My mama, her man friend, my two little brothers. They all gone.” For a moment she looked like the forlorn child she was. Then she turned back to the gumbo and began shaking pepper into it. Faylice got up and wrestled the shaker from her hand, not speaking, just doing what had to be done.

“What do you mean? Was—um—was there a fire or something?” Torian’s imagination was going wild. A fire was the least of the possibilities that occurred to her.

Something like a bark came out of Adonis, something that was probably supposed to pass for a laugh. “No. There wadn’t no fire. Jus’ wadn’t nothin’. Nobody home. No furniture. Oh, yeah, there was some piles of dirt and cardboard. And a broom. Case I wanted to neaten things up.”

Torian was still trying to wrap her mind around this one. “What happened. Where were they?”

Adonis shrugged. “Don’ know. Lady nex’ door say she saw ‘em loadin’ up and leavin’. I ran all the way back to school. Thought maybe they meant to pick me up there, but I was already gone.” She shrugged again. “They wadn’t there.”

Torian looked beseechingly at Paulette. Could she be hearing right?

Paulette said, “The two boys are the boyfriend’s children; Adonis isn’t.”

“He like me! I know he like me. Too much, my mama say.”

Paulette raised an eyebrow and bit her lip, as if to keep from saying the wrong thing.

Torian had been horrified by Faylice’s story, but this was the one that haunted her as she tried to go to sleep that night. She tried to imagine arriving home to find your family had left you, leaving not so much as a note or a message with a neighbor.

Just split. Gone.

If that doesn’t make you feel like a piece of shit, what does?

She wondered how Adonis could keep smiling, could do anything at all except lie down and feel sorry for herself. She hadn’t found out how she came to be at Paulette’s and couldn’t imagine what would become of her.

Maybe Paulette’ll adopt her.

But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Paulette had probably seen a dozen kids like Adonis. She didn’t keep her strays. She just fed them and patched them up.

I can’t
st
ay here. I’m ridiculous.

At breakfast the next morning, she stared into her coffee cup—Paulette was letting her drink regular coffee; Lise made her dilute it. “I think I better go home.”

She had deliberately gotten up before her two companions.

“Why?” said Paulette. “You think anything’s better today?”

“I think
I’ve
got to be better.”

“You’re the child. The folks around you are s’posed to be the grown-ups.”

“I’m not like Faylice and Adonis.”

“Oh? You too good for ‘em?”

“No! They’re—they’ve got real problems. I’m just some spoiled white kid.”

Paulette was standing at the stove. She looked over her shoulder. “Is that what ya mama says? Ya daddy, too, maybe? Listen, dawlin’, ya lucky ya don’ have problems like those girls got problems, but ya got ya own problems. Don’ feel like ya haven’t.” She turned around. “You want some toast?”

Torian didn’t, especially, but she nodded. What she wanted was Paulette’s continued attention, this unexpected mother kind of thing. Paulette didn’t speak while she made the toast, but when she had two perfect golden pieces, she put each of them on a plate, gave one to Torian and sat down across from her.

Lise never makes me toast. And certainly never has breakfast with me. Thank God for that part.

“Ya came here, now ya know ya aren’t the only one with problems. But ya do have problems, baby. I’m not sayin’ ya don’t. Me, I used to be a drug addict.”

“You? But you look so healthy.”