Bebe Moore Campbell (16 page)

I went to bed, warning myself not to feel better. That would be like Sally Hemings sending out wedding invitations.

The next morning, when Trina woke up and came to me with a glass of water and swallowed her pill in front of me, I tried to kickbox the hope that surged through me. Get back! But what’s a foot against hope?

Trina swallowed medicine, and my day became full of smiles and sunshine. “Maybe it’s over,” I told Mattie. A few days, of course, wouldn’t banish mania. It would take weeks for the meds even to begin to be effective. Still, Trina’s intent was important.

Mattie’s own daughter was peaceful, compliant, and living at home. Gloria’s son was back at his board and care, once again attempting to be sober and medicated. My friends’ children were finally getting it. Why not Trina?

What followed were days when my shoulders steadily crept downward and my breaths became steady and even. I worked a full day here and there, instead of my recent split shifts. The headache that had taken residence above my left eyebrow began to recede. At night I slept.

One afternoon, I went to Orlando’s apartment. There was barely any conversation between us. We made love quickly and efficiently. For so long I’d forbidden myself to want Orlando, the smell of him, the weight of him, his voice when it was low and throaty, the taste of me on his tongue. But that day he was my drug of choice, my self-medication.

“You ain’t fooling nobody,” Frances whispered when I returned to the shop. “Look at you, just smiling all over your little self. Must have been good.”

“Mind your business,” I said.

Throughout the good times and the bad times, Clyde never called me, although I knew he spoke with Trina, if not regularly, at least often enough for him to be able to gauge her mood fluctuations. I’d heard her talking with him, jumping from one topic to the next, her mouth going a million miles an hour. Listening, I thought to myself: Do you get it now?

I CAME HOME ONE EVENING, AND BOY MAN WAS STANDing in my kitchen. Up close he looked like insufficient funds, a bounced check on weed. “Why are you here?” I asked.

Before he could answer, Trina came clickety-clacking down the stairs. High high heels, red red lips, bright cheeks, a dress the size of a Ritz cracker, eau de weed clinging to her. Here we go: takeoff.
Whoosh.

“Trina,” I began, placing myself between her and Boy Man.

She waved her hand, which was a warning that said, I can become a fist.

“I don’t want you to go out, Trina. You’re not well.”

“Bitch,
you’re
not well.”

“She’s not well,” I said to Boy Man, who stared back with interest. “If you leave here, you can’t come back,” I said to Trina, my voice shrill.

The door slammed and then again, against the inside wall as I yanked it open way too hard.

The car was in the driveway, the motor running.

“Trina! You come back here!”

I could hear her laughing; they were both laughing. I raced around them, got to the car before they did and stood in front of it, my arms stretched out wide. Jesus on the cross, right?

Trina had the nails.

Glancing back, I saw jazzy Mrs. Winslow watching from her window. Across the street, another neighbor’s shade was raised. Two car doors slammed. I didn’t move. Boy Man backed up, went around me.

“Girl, your momma crazy,” he said, as he took off.

Getting there.

My body was shaking as I walked back to my house. Something beneath the quivers broke through the band that held my mind in place when I saw Mrs. Winslow still peeking.

“What the hell are you looking at? She’s not some freak!”

She slammed her door. I slammed my door.

Trina returned the next day, disheveled, glassy-eyed, stoned, and manic. I was sipping coffee in the kitchen when she came in. The hot liquid sat on my tongue, unswallowed, as I watched her.

“I’m taking my meds,” she screamed, pulling out a bottle of the mood stabilizers from her purse. She poured herself a glass of water, then shook two pills into her hand and gulped them down. “See?”

I left for the store knowing she would sleep but not sure for how long. I canceled with Orlando. By the time I returned home, Trina was walking out the door again. Another night, another rendezvous.

The next day at work I called a list of board and care facilities and visited a few during my lunch hour. They were all horrible, straight out of
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
inhabited by unkempt women with missing front teeth, men who sat still as warthogs, looking for prey.

She can’t live here, not my baby!

I called Mattie that night. “Come to the meeting next week,” she said. “You’re under a lot of pressure.”

No. I was underwater.

Melody’s mother, with her grandchildren yelling in the background, listened to me.

“Do you think that maybe Melody could talk to her, try to get her back on track?”

“Well,” Celestine began, then excused herself as something crashed behind her. She was gone for a while. When she got back on the phone, she sounded like someone who’d just pulled a double factory shift. “The thing of it is, Melody’s doing good. Yeah. And I don’t want her around nobody who ain’t. You talking about Melody influence your daughter, suppose your child influence mine? And me with these grand-babies, too.”

“You have a point. Didn’t mean to—”

“All that wildness. I’m not going down that road no more. Melody know that too. If you don’t take your meds, better find you another home. Yeah. Maybe that’s what you need to tell your girl.”

Right.

“You living the good life up there in the hills. You probably got the money and the insurance to go along with every little crazy thing your child do. Me, I ain’t got it like that. I can’t be bailing nobody out time after time after time. Uh-unh. No. I told Melody: You don’t stay on your program, you on your own, and all Mama want to know is do you want to be cremated or buried. I’m serious. When somebody black get to acting a fool out in these here streets, the cops gonna shoot ’em and go on about they business. Just like they killed that man over on Crenshaw.”

“What man?”

“Some man on Crenshaw yesterday, near where those guys be selling stuff. He was trying to fight people, acting all crazy. Somebody called the cops, and they shot him. Yeah. They say the man used to walk up and down Crenshaw Boulevard all day long.”

I could taste fear in my mouth as I drove toward home. Maybe I began to grieve in my car, shedding tears for Crazy Man, crying hard, as if I knew him. Or maybe I was crying because I didn’t want to know him.

Several scattered bouquets marked the spot where Crazy Man had been killed. There was dried blood on ground so close to where I lived, it might as well have been right at my front door.

“He was going off,” Mr. Bean Pie said. “Started screaming and hollering, talking about the CIA was after him, that we was all working for the CIA.”

“Then he started tearing down the street, pulling off his clothes,” CD Man said.

“By the time the cops came, he was near butt naked.” This last contribution from one of the Incense People, who added, “But they ain’t have no right to shoot the man, even if he was crazy. I got me a cousin act just like him.”

Don’t we all.

It could have been Trina, I thought. Those words bombarded me for the rest of the day. My child could have been the one being buried. She could have walked out of my house, bent on mayhem and destruction. There wasn’t anything I could do to protect her. But Clyde could. He was bigger, stronger. He was a man. He could push Trina out of the way, bar the door with his body if she threatened to leave. Maybe Frances was right.

I called him in the morning. He came to get her that evening. Stood stiffly in my entryway. Clyde had never been inside. For six years, Trina had run out to him. His head moved jerkily as he looked from wall to wall, from room to room.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “You always were a great decorator.”

“Thank you.” The compliment gave me a feeling of satisfaction, which I didn’t expect and didn’t want to understand. “Clyde, she needs supervision. Someone has to give her the medication. She has to go to bed early. She needs to eat well and no caffeine. She really should be in a facility.”

“Let me handle this, Keri.”

Trina was packed and ready. Excited. She raced down the steps. Her anticipation made me feel lonely, but I talked myself out of it. Had a great big smile on my face and waved hard as they drove off. Waved and wiped tears. Wiped tears and powdered my face, put on lipstick, sighed in the mirror.

I called her every day for five days. After the second day, Trina refused to speak with me. On the second day I spoke with Clyde, who said everything was fine. Yes, she was taking the medication. No, he wasn’t giving it to her; Trina was taking it on her own.

“Is she sleeping at night?” I asked.

“Of course she is,” he said.

THE CIRCLE OF CHAIRS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE ALL Souls Presbyterian Church was wide, and every seat was filled. There was no speaker scheduled. People were free to share what was on their minds, and when I walked in late, a man was standing in the center of the circle. “And now, we’re going back and forth with Social Security. My son worked for at least eight years before he got ill. He paid into the system, but they’re giving us the runaround. As many of you know, he won’t get medical benefits until he’s been on disability for two years. Right now, the residential treatment center is charging an arm and a leg.”

There were groans of recognition.

“We’re being eaten alive. But except for the money, things are better.”

The man sat down. A woman raised her hand. Straight black hair, Asian eyes. “I’m Soon. My son is thirty-five and has schizophrenia. Right now he’s not taking his medication and is completely out of control. He was put out of his sober living home because the manager discovered some crystal meth in his drawer. So then he was on the streets for about two weeks until I could find another place for him, which I did. The new place?” She shook her head. “I tell you, it’s so interesting to me, this whole concept of sober living. Sometimes I think they ought to call it
whatever
living, because so few of the managers really care about sobriety. Anyway, keep the prayers coming. Thank you for listening.”

When Mattie whispered for me to share, I pointed to my wristwatch. Mouthing, “I’ll call you,” I fled up the aisle and out the door.

The telephone began ringing as soon as I got in the house. I thought it would be Orlando. He’d been staying over the last few nights. But the call was collect.

“Mommy,” Trina said, her voice amped up with excitement, with manic pleasure. “I’m in jail, and I need for you to come get me right now.”

“What happened, Trina? What jail? Where’s your father?”

“I didn’t do anything, anything, anything. Get me out of here. Right now!”

“Where’s your father? Why are you in jail? What did you do?”

“They said I stole something from Saks. You get me out of here!” she bellowed.

Shoplifting. I could barely breathe. “Does your father know where you are?”

“No. He went out, and Aurelia wasn’t there. He left me with the housekeeper.”

I tried to ignore my rage and concentrate on my leverage. “I will not bail you out unless you agree to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to any damn hospital.”

“Then stay in jail,” I said. Dial tone.

Will you accept the charges? Part two.

“You are going to the hospital, Trina. If you leave, I’ll revoke the bail, and you’ll be arrested again. And you’ll stay in jail. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mommee.”

The jail was on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The bail bondsman didn’t arrive for more than an hour, even though his office was right down the street. As soon as he came in, shaking the building with his slow, heavy steps, he disappeared downstairs to take care of the bail and didn’t come back up for another hour. Sitting in the waiting area, I tried to make my mind go blank, to pretend that waiting for my kid at the police station was as normal as tap water. He returned with bad news: He did not accept personal checks, and he didn’t take credit cards.

“My bank is closed. I can’t get more than three hundred dollars out of the ATM machine. I don’t want her sitting in jail overnight.”

“Sometimes that’s the best thing for them.” When he looked at me, there wasn’t a trace of kindness in his face. “Is there somebody you can call? Is the father in the picture?”

“Yes. No. Jesus.” Just hearing the word
father,
I could feel anger exploding in every part of me.

Orlando wasn’t at home; his cell phone went right to message center. I didn’t leave a message. Neither Mattie nor Gloria answered. Frances had just bought a house, and I knew she didn’t have any money to spare. Adriana. The name lingered in my mind. I didn’t want to put her in jeopardy.

Bethany answered on the third ring.

“I’ll be right there,” she said, after I explained what had happened.

She handed me an envelope as soon as she walked in the door. “What’s she in for?”

“Shoplifting.”

“Poor baby.” She was quiet for a moment. “We found Angelica,” she said.

“Where was she?”

“On the street.”

“Where is she now?”

“At my house. I’ve got friends staying with me on rotating shifts. So what’s your plan?” Bethany asked.

I sighed. “I’m going to take her to the hospital. She said she’d go.”

“I’ll go with you.”

The bail bondsman disappeared downstairs again, and when he came back up, he told me that Trina would be released after she signed the paperwork. “Nice doing business with you,” he said, pressing one of his cards in my hand.

Another hour passed before Trina emerged. From across the room, all I could see were her lips, bright orange and shiny. The closer she got, the more colors I saw. Blue eyelids. Rust-colored cheeks. Black eyebrows. Trina was giggling at some private joke.

“We’re going to the hospital,” I said, taking her arm. “This is my friend Bethany. She loaned me your bail money.” Bethany took her other arm.