Tutored (6 page)

He smirked again, only this time it was a looser expression, less self-conscious.

He took his book and rose from his seat. He was almost to the stairs when she stopped him. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, and pulled out a bright pink gift bag.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I thought this would be nice for that girl that hangs around you getting a contact high. Here.” She held out the bag.

He walked up to her and looked in. He pulled out the onesie with the strawberries and the ruffles and put it up to his chest. “It doesn’t fit,” he said.

She grinned. He averted his eyes.

He took the present and the next thing she heard was his footsteps as he walked down the stairs.

There was a PC in the corner. She went over to it and checked her e-mails. There was nothing all that important. Two were from Erin. Some e-coupons and newsletters. She heard footsteps again, so she shut down the computer and went back to her table.

Two tutees in one session? That’s a record
, she thought.

But as it turned out, she had rearranged herself for nothing. It was only Hakiam. “What do you want?” she asked him.

He gestured to the bag and said, “You’re all right.”

She chuckled a little. “You’re welcome.” She always thought it was funny when people had trouble saying simple words like “please” or “thank you.”

She expected him to depart again, but instead he just
stood there with his eyes drilling into her. Suddenly, her creep-alert flag went up.
Why isn’t he leaving? Why are he and his ill-fitting clothes still hanging around?

“Is there something else you want to say?” she asked.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again and said, “You want to go out for a cup of coffee?”

“You mean
coffee
coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“You and me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You are sure you mean
us
?”

He nodded.

“Well,” she began, “my time’s just about up here.”

She wrapped a scarf about her neck, grabbed her canvas bag, and stood up.

Then they descended the steep stairs and left the building.

H
e had a five on him. He scanned the menu list above the register. There was eggnog latte, peppermint patty hot chocolate, chocolate-covered-cherry cappuccino, and pecan pie coffee. He kept looking and looking for the plain stuff in the hopes that it would be cheaper. Plus, these specialties all came in foreign-language sizes. How little was a venti? How big was a grande? Why couldn’t they just say small, medium, and large?

“I’ll have a tall half caf, leave room for cream, please,” Wendy said.

The barista, who had an exaggerated flip to her hair and an easy smile, nodded, then looked at Hakiam for his order.

He thought fast and said, “Nothing.”

The barista’s sunny smile didn’t lapse. She went to make Wendy’s order.

“Don’t you want a water, at least?” Wendy asked Hakiam.

He shook his head without meeting her eyes.

There was a couple of dollars and change in the tip cup—talk about courting robbery. That was something you’d never see down the other end of Lancaster Avenue. Everything that could be stolen was kept under lock and key.

The girl with the flip to her hair came back with Wendy’s drink. They headed for seats.

Wendy wasn’t a tall girl, but she had a long, slender back, which Hakiam enjoyed watching as he walked behind her. Since there were no more tables available, they took seats on the sofa by the window.

Wendy set her cup on the end table. “Funny, when you asked me for coffee, I was sure you were going to have some too.”

Hakiam gave a half grin and put a dollar and change back in his pocket.

Wendy took a sip and asked him, “Don’t you like coffee?”

“I’ve never done this before,” he said.

“You’ve never done what before?”

He looked at her hard for a good moment or two, then said, “Skip it.”

She observed him for an equally long period of time and said, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be skipping.”

Silence.

More silence.

Wendy stirred her coffee.

More silence.

Hakiam looked outside. The coffee shop was on the corner of a busy intersection. The light had just changed and a mass of people trekked from one side of the street to the other. He peered back at Wendy with a blank, washed-out expression. This was an improvement, because he was doing his best to suppress the scowl that he customarily wore.

“So,” she said, “what’s your favorite movie?”

“Huh?”

“What’s—your—favorite—movie?” she said again, slowing down her words.

He still had no answer.

“Mine is
Twelve Angry Men
,” she said.

There was another pause. Then, she started carrying on a conversation with herself that went like this:

“
What’s that about, Wendy?

“Well, I’m glad you asked me that, Hakiam.
Twelve Angry Men
is about a jury that believes it has an open-and-shut case. But one juror—Henry Fonda, he plays the architect—he thinks that the young person on trial for murder deserves at least some deliberation and votes not guilty.

“
Why is that your favorite movie, Wendy?

“Well, I’m glad you asked, Hakiam. It comes on American Movie Classics all the time. I like issue-oriented films, like that one and
The Ox-Bow Incident
and
Inherit the Wind
.”

At that point, she ran out of steam. She seemed weary of all the back-and-forth with herself.

He gave her another blank look.

She frowned. “You probably go for fast cars over character development.”

“No, I’m listening,” he assured her.

“I also liked
Boyz n the Hood
.”

“What are you doing watching that?”

“I told you, I like issue-oriented movies.”

“What was the issue in that?”

“Senseless street violence, poverty, the high homicide rate among young African American men …”

“You need a movie to tell you that? You ain’t know nobody who was murdered?”

“No. You do?”

“I know a couple.”

Wendy wanted to ask the who, what, where, and why. Instead, she just took another sip of her coffee.

Hakiam stared at the way Wendy’s beige-colored lipstick left a half kiss on the rim of her cup and sighed.

More silence. “You go to church?” he asked.

“Not since my mother died. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I was just asking things like you were asking things.”

“Do you go to church, Hakiam?”

“Hell, no.”

Wendy laughed until she realized she was laughing all alone and then said, “That was a joke, right?”

More silence, then he said, “Yeah.”

“When I did go, I went with my mom. She was Catholic, but my dad was raised Baptist.”

“Oh. Might have guessed that you came from a mixed marriage.”

She chuckled this time, not caring that she was alone. She waited a beat or two more before saying, “You ought to do stand-up.”

More silence. He glanced out the window again.

She looked at the clock. It was almost five.

She snapped her fingers as a thought occurred to her. “You know, that just might be the answer.”

“What?” he asked.

“Church. They would love someone like you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean there are people in this world who live to help out. When I was looking for a place to volunteer, I ran into a lot of places with a religious link.”

“My aunt is one of those people. She’s always saying things like ‘God is good.’ ”

“God is good,” Wendy repeated.

“ ‘All the time,’ she says.”

“Well,” Wendy said sarcastically. “Nobody’s perfect. Why don’t you stay with her instead of your present arrangement?”

“I don’t know. She’s really changed now that she found religion. Do you know how many rules them Bible people have? That’s why my cousin can’t live with her. I don’t want a bunch of rules.”

“I don’t see how it could be any worse.”

“I don’t see how it’s no better.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “What are you talking about? A curfew?”

He laughed. “That’s just the start.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do,” he told her.

“What’s your aunt’s name?”

“Josephine.”

“Aunt Josephine, eh?” Wendy mused aloud. “You don’t want to run the streets here. Philadelphia has some of the highest crime rates in the country. You don’t need the fast lane. Where does your aunt live?”

“She’s on Catharine Street.”

“That’s not far.”

“I know.”

“You should live with her instead of your cousin. She sounds much more stable.”

Hakiam shook his head. “It’s not for me. I ain’t looking for a mother. I’ll be eighteen soon.”

Wendy’s eyes held him in a steady gaze. “Hakiam, take it from me. Everyone needs a mother. Everyone in the whole world.”

Her cell rang. She put it to her ear and said, without even checking it, “Yes, Dad.… I’m in a coffee shop.… I’m drinking coffee.… Never mind that.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Okay.… I won’t forget.… You said Visine.… Write it down?”

She stepped up her voice.

“I don’t have to write it down! I’ll remember to pick it up.… I’ll be home soon.… When do you think
soon
is?… In an hour.… I will pick up your Murine—I mean, Visine. Goodbye.”

She slipped the phone back into her tote bag.

“I better go.” She held up the cup and said a half sentence before leaving: “Thanks for the …”

And then she was gone.

Gone. It seemed like they had just come in. Hakiam had hardly had the chance to say or do what he really wanted. He was going to brush his knee against hers—if he’d had a few more moments. He was going to lean close and whisper in her ear, perhaps. He was going to do
something
. He was. If only he had had a little more time.

W
hen Wendy told Erin she had gone out with someone from the tutoring center that afternoon, Erin summed up things with: “How Bill Clinton of you!”

“What do you mean by that?” Wendy asked.

“Well, he got it on with his intern,” Erin said.

“Erin,
I’m
the intern.”

“Okay then, how Monica Lewinsky.”

A mental picture popped into Wendy’s mind and she said, “Oh, God. That’s not what’s happening. This was a G-rated get-together.”

“Well, even if it wasn’t. It’s not like you’re a teacher. If you were a teacher and he were your student and you two had feelings for each other, now, that would be icky.”

“Who said anything about feelings? We just went for coffee, and he didn’t even have that.”

“What did he order?”

“Nothing. He just sat there. He barely said a word, Erin.”

“Oh, so he’s the strong, silent type.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“He was probably nervous, you know, first date and all.”

“First date?”

“Yes, first of many, Wendy. Didn’t I tell you this would happen? I mean, you kept talking and talking and
talking
about him.”

“Nothing happened, Erin.”

“Will you quit it already?”

“Okay, I guess I like the way he challenges. We spar and joust with each other. I guess sooner or later that’s bound to get to you.”

“Yeah, either you fall in love or kill each other.”

“This isn’t love. I just like his kind of humor.”

“He’s dry?”

“Yeah, he’s real dry.”

“So he’s funny. I love funny guys. Especially when they’re cute, but that almost never happens—Hold on, Wendy, my call-waiting just beeped.”

Erin clicked over to the other line, and Wendy paced the kitchen, which was ridiculously well-ordered. No Cheerios strewn on the counter, no dirty plates or saucers brimming from the sink. There was a place for everything, and, thanks to her father, everything knew its place. Even the top of the fridge was dust-free. She walked to the other end of the kitchen and glanced in
the trash, and it was there that she saw a large envelope addressed to her, unopened. She retrieved it and her eye shot to the upper left-hand corner:
Howard University
.

Wendy felt her face heat up.

Erin came back on the line, saying, “We ought to double-date. Me, you, Hakiam, and Kyle.”

Wendy couldn’t focus on something so innocent as double-dating. Her father had done it again! Once again, he’d violated her trust.

“Erin, I’ll have to call you back,” she said, and flipped her cell closed.

Wendy went straight upstairs to her father’s room only to find it empty. The TV was on, though, playing an ad for a luxury car pitched by a thirtysomething woman in a tight satin dress.

Wendy left the bedroom and spotted her dad in the bathroom, standing in front of the sink. He dabbed his face with a washcloth, then dotted both his eyes with Visine.

He blinked.

She scowled.

He turned to her. “I want to thank you for picking up the right brand, Wendy.”

Now she was really boiling. He was too much! To the world he looked like a standard-issue “harmless” dad—fortyish, bespectacled, and balding, doing what most widowed dads would do at eight at night: watching TV and grooming himself during commercials. But Wendy knew he was anything but ordinary and innocent. He went through her library books, once calling a text by W.E.B. Du Bois “militant and revolutionary.” He had
returned
The Souls of Black Folk
for her long before it was due. Wendy remembered thinking that there should be a law against things like that. Ironically, she knew the Patriot Act had introduced a rule to the opposite effect: librarians were supposed to report “questionable” books that the public took out. Say, if someone had a stack of how-to-build-a-bomb books, librarians were supposed to comply and submit that patron’s name to the authorities. Luckily, Patriot Act be damned, some librarians would rather go to jail than betray their patrons’ right to read whatever book they wanted.

Yet her dad was at it again, the self-appointed secretary of Homeland Security. Now he’d taken to seizing her mail.