Solemn (32 page)

The orientation continued long enough to get back to her office one could easily pass, a display of Margaret Burroughs prints and African sculpture and books.

“Please, sit down.” She motioned to them and sat herself down in a grand armchair. “Four days a week I'm here and one day on the weekend. We keep at least eight people in here all the time: secretary at front, three people in the kitchen, some volunteers, formal staff. Janitor ain't part of it.”

Landon took one of two extra seats. Solemn took the other. Akila stood. Other than her art, Dr. Givens' office was uninviting. It was cramped, with file cabinets and bulletin boards with pinned letters and photos of the graduates who reached back with pictures, invitations and programs for their babies, weddings and graduations. Dr. Givens' certificates from her past degrees and accomplishments set in prominent frames behind her desk: Spelman for psychology, Emory MBA, Tennessee State Ph.D. in education. Most who came into her office did not know what the letters meant or where the schools were. The window faced a once hopeful but makeshift vegetable garden, intended to be a group-home project. Instead, it withered to playtime.

“What's done to get them an education?” was the first thing Landon asked.

“The best we can,” Dr. Givens answered. “For the most part, they carry on pretty independent till it's time to eat. Individual lockers. Shower and dress time always supervised. It's only one bathroom stay open after hours, on the first floor, by the front desk. Need a key. Nobody go outside without permission and watch, usually when we have enough volunteers. I been here thirteen years. Ain't never had one girl drop out on my watch. Now, we have had two jump out the windows. First a white gal. Died. Accident. Some muddy haints got to working her mind down. She couldn't keep up.”

She pulled out Solemn's files.

“The other one, little black gal, we knew she was trying to. But this was before we got the alarms and the stops on the windows. Matter fact, it's why we got 'em.”

Her orientation was rusty. Usually, the charges arrived alone or in a patrol car, the only talk being, “Sign here.”

“So, Solemn Redvine: breaking and entering, estate robbery, possession of stolen property…” Dr. Givens went on. “Well, young lady, you shole got some sticky fingers.”

“Solemn's been a good girl all her life,” Akila said. “This whole situation just a misunderstanding. Even Solemn don't seem to know what happened.”

Dr. Givens stared at Solemn with her glasses slid to the edge of her nose.

“That true? You don't know a thing about how you got here?”

“No,” Solemn told her. “I forgot all about it by now. It's been a long time.”

Dr. Givens thought this young girl was unaware of what a long time really was. According to her papers, Solemn Redvine was supposed to serve two, three years at Fanny O. Barnes (two if she was perfect), from Mississippi State's Department of Corrections' assessments, from Singer's homes origin, from Bledsoe stock. And, according to some other notes and letters and signs and calls and vague mentions she could recall, Solemn Redvine was to spend it as if she was a child who truly had others waiting for her. Or the type of child who could leave with a future or a vengeance. So, the meeting was short. It was formal, a courtesy really. It was much more than most received. Since, well, this girl, Solemn Redvine—with her Singer's address and Detective Justin Bolden's notes and private turned corporal in the Army brother, and two thousand dollars Akila left in her top desk drawer before Dr. Givens put it inside the neat inside pocket of her faux brown leather purse—did.

*   *   *

Sat in Sunday best, Solemn watched Akila and Landon walk out of Dr. Givens' door. She was about to lift herself up to start walking out right along with them. But Landon put his arms on one shoulder. He said some words she did not quite catch. Akila did the same. Solemn looked between the two. Dr. Givens stood behind her brother and sister-in-law. She took off her glasses to twirl them around her finger. She seemed totally different than she was at first. She spoke chatty-like now. She grinned. Landon and Akila lingered their eyes upon her near the door. Then, they turned to go suddenly and quickly in an about-face, away from her. The woman led them out. They did not look back.

Solemn wondered where they were going and how long they would be. Maybe they were hungry. They had passed a roadside diner named Rosie's and a Shell gas station with a hamburger, taco, and hot dog counter inside. Maybe they needed to eat. Before they returned to finish the tour. This woman needed to show them the ways there and back. Okay. Solemn reclined back into her seat and put her head back. She gave very first notice to the room's drop-ceiling chandelier. It was the room's original, from 1966. It was wide, dark, dusty, intricate, and overwhelming. It bore down like a spider to deracinate her more than she already was, to graze its tentacles onto Solemn, then yank her up into the life of its web. And to fight the fear of the vision's returns and the malaise of secrets when her heart beat or not, Solemn knew she now had nowhere to go but to love. She just didn't know the way.

*   *   *

Fanny O. Barnes kept fifty disgorged and ragamuffin girls. Their offenses ranged from infant sexual assault to petty larceny to hooking to car theft to abandonment. To keep them in check were three day people, two custodians, a food services quartet (only the elder cook, Miss Ruth, exempt from taunts or ridicule), one secretary until 5:30 (Miss Bernadine), one freelance social-working nurse and nutritionist weekly, volunteer community college interns to fill in, and at least two regular people at night to look out for whichever one was sleeping at the time. No security guards. The entire staff split that job. Any workers were supposed to be certified in CPR and basic self-defense. It depended. Most of the dorm parts were stationed on the lower second floor for faster accessibility. The more volatile girls stuffed in a twenty-bed open-space dormitory. Petty offenders and better ones got third-floor quarter rooms and a few double rooms at the corners, doled out for good behavior or two thousand dollars tucked in top drawers.

Wilena. Lisa. Mona. Carrie Mae. Terina. Erika. Shante.

The Day Staff's degrees entitled them rights to look over kids who had a variety of issues their case notes never fully revealed. It took time to recognize which girls would attempt to have sex with the grown-men staff and which ones would attempt to fight the grown-women staff. No amount of psychology or sociology coursework could fully prepare them for the tsunami of venom poured from the wounds of not knowing a father, or knowing disdain by a mother, or being an ensured check to a foster parent, or losing a battle with siblings for a home. Still, they put B.A. or M.A. behind their official names on every incident report, release form, work order, and nutrition request. It mattered to them.

Unlike the day people, the Night Staff were day laborers; they got no benefits but hourly pay, punishment for wrong turns or no degrees. So, they blamed the girls for every issue and disaster of their lives. God forbid they started sneezing or glimpsed a gray hair or stuffed themselves into constipation. It was all somehow related to “them girls,” all them girls' fault. Some of them even occupied the position of near temps: they only got the call from Fanny's at the top of the night, if somebody called off or there was a disaster. They arrived and punished any problem, nightmare, or desire incompatible with the plans to sleep. That was pretty much anything.

Regina. Cora. Julie. Lolly. Margaret. Tyesha. Jamie. Marisa.

The moment Landon and Akila evaporated through the French doors of Fanny O. Barnes, a woman entered to take over Solemn now. She held her hands out to the newest girl, but the long red fingernails looked daggerish and pernicious.

“Hi … Solemn?” The woman looked at Dr. Givens.

“Yup, that's it,” Dr. Givens said. “Miss Solemn Redvine, from Bledsoe. Married parents. Brother in the Army. How the hell she wind up here, I
do not
know.” Dr. Givens rattled around in her desk for her cigarette case. There was nothing in the one she found.

“Oh my…” Dr. Givens said. “Jane, I'm gonna run out for a while. Or maybe you can run to the gas station for me. When your break?”

“I just got here, Miss Givens,” Jane said.

“What you mean you just got here? This late?”

“I got here soon as I could, once Miss Bernadine called me. Tamia called off.”

“Again?”

“I don't know…”

“You got any squares?”

“Naw, I don't. But I saw that one, uh … can't thank of that boy name now.”

“Which one?”

“You know, in the kitchen … got that lisp.”

“Oh, him. I can't thank of his name, either. Ain't here enough for me to know it.”

“Well, he here today. I saw him smoking out back when I parked. I can go—”

“No, no. Let him
work.
Don't disturb him, 'cause he just take that as excuse to sit down and never get up again. You know what, I'm just gonna run out. I gotta play my numbers today anyway. Take this young lady up to her room. We got a nice corner one open for her, right?”

Jane frowned. “Well, we was just gonna leave that one child up there by herself. You know, 'cause of…”

“Oh yeah, I know.” Dr. Givens rose up from her seat and smoothed down her skirt. “Well, she can't get privileges to hog up a whole room for acting the way she do.”

“I think it was supposed to be a privilege for everybody else. It's some beds free in the dormitory.”

“Jane, I ain't letting a bed in a good corner room go to waste no more. I got more girls coming and they're cutting my budget again.”

Jane shook her head and she sighed.

“Miss Solemn, I'll be seeing you later. Jane, anybody ask where I'm at tell 'em I went to a meeting. Oh, and Miss Solemn, here's your orientation book.”

Dr. Givens fussed around on her desk and grabbed a thin stack of stapled papers. When she rushed into Solemn, Solemn smelled fruity perfume under the gleaming gold chain around her neck. Dr. Givens smiled at her. She set the papers in Solemn's lap, with the words “RULES” and “PROCEDURES” printed big on front.

“Leave your things,” Dr. Givens said. “Inspection. You'll get them back.”

The only original item Solemn came in that now remained from her old world abruptly cut off was a golden cross Landon placed around her neck.

Solemn followed Jane. Up the stairs and down a hall with no pictures on the walls, Solemn bypassed the dorm other new girls were thrown to. It was empty, with racks of barely made beds spread out less than a few feet apart. Solemn went straight to a corner of the upper floor. Jane knocked once. She knocked again. Finally, she barged in on
Majority Simmons
—as a crayoned sign on the door announced. The room's occupant was naked and extended across a narrow bed, on top of a Strawberry Shortcake comforter. A sketchbook blotted out her face. Her arm shook back and forth. She did not bother to stop scribbling or move the sketchbook when she spoke.

“Okay, I don't know who in my room right now, but I ain't answer and tell nobody they could come in.” She was a white girl.

Jane answered, “No closed doors, Majority. You know that.”

The sketchbook whirled across the room. The spine's edge hit Solemn in the cheek.

“I didn't close the fucking door! The wind shut the door!” the girl shouted. “It's hot in this son of a bitch. You bringing bitches in my room while I'm naked?”

The girl's lips were dark, claylike. She shook her head, tried to catch up to where she was, remembered how why.

“What're you doing naked Majority? It's five o'clock.”

“So? Heatstroke ain't got no schedule. It's hot. Shit.”

“If you was so hot you could've gone to the study room with air-conditioning.”

“That bitch told me I couldn't go to the study room no more 'cause she said I wasn't studying.”

“What bitch?”

“I don't know her name. The new one. Don't know what the fuck she doin'.”

“What were you doing, Majority?”

“I was drawing. Y'all said I could draw down there when I finished my lessons. I been finished with that easy shit. I learned all that shit—algebra, Constitution, all of it—in third grade. Y'all slow down here. So don't blame me 'cause I get done early and I got talent. That's why I'm in here burning the fuck up.”

“Put some clothes on, Majority.”

“Get out my room and I will.”

“Do it now.”

“I ain't 'bout to turn around and bend down and walk around with you standing there looking at my ass. Shit. You probably homo. And I ain't never seen her before.”

“This is your new roommate, Solemn Redvine, from—”

“I ain't ask for no fuckin' roommate! Only reason I agreed to stay up here in this hot-ass room 'cause Miss Bernadine told me the roommate was leaving. All y'all do up in here is lie. It's too fuckin' hot in here for two bitches…”

“Majority, you keep this up and you won't have no room. You will get a violation and be carried back to Lincoln so fast you'll think you got on your first plane ride.”

“So!” the girl howled.

She plopped a pillow over her chest down to her private parts, shook her head.

“It's too much damn confusion around here … One person say go to the study room. Next person say go. One person say I ain't got no roommate. Now here she come.”

A radio the size of a deck of cards rested on the desk at the top of the room between the two beds. The antenna was stretched to its limit, with foil on the ends.

“Majority, you have my word. Now, I don't know who told you you couldn't—”

“It was that new bitch. That fat-ass one. It was her.”