Beyond Summer (37 page)

When we left, Barbie was in a good mood, and if the fifty-dollar donation bothered her at all, she hid it well. She offered to buy Happy Meals all the way around, and we ended up driving down to McDonald’s in the Escalade and Elsie’s car. While we ate and talked, the kids played on the playscape, and then we headed home and spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to hook the television to the TV antenna on our roof, so the kids could watch PBS. By the time we were finished, we’d been down to Walmart three times and over to Elsie’s twice to look at her television attachment, and then finally concluded that we needed a digital converter box. After it was all said and done, the group of us ended up in our living room, cheering as
Antiques Roadshow
came on the screen. It seemed as if someone were missing from the gathering, and as I glanced out the window, it occurred to me that I was looking for Sesay.

By Monday night, we still hadn’t seen her. Shasta and I dropped Shasta’s boys at the children’s building early and walked to reading class with a sense of anticipation.

“What if something happened to her?” Shasta asked, as we entered from the back.

“It’s early still,” I whispered, motioning to the room, which was empty except for Elsie and an elderly Hispanic man. “There’s hardly anybody here yet.”

“Where do you think she was yesterday?”

“No idea, I . . .” I let the sentence trail off as the side entrance creaked open, the gap empty at first, then filled as Sesay shuffled silently through and took her place against the wall.

“She’s here early,” Shasta whispered, and then cracked a sideways smile.

In her seat up front, Elsie straightened. “If you’re gonna be here, you oughta sit down like a normal person,” she barked, without looking at Sesay. Reaching under the table, Elsie pushed a chair outward. “There’s empty seats here.” It wasn’t a soft, friendly invitation, but it was an invitation—as close as Elsie was likely to come to repaying Sesay for saving her life.

Sesay moved toward the chair, her gaze darting around the room, her backpack clutched in front of her as if she were sheltering it, or it was sheltering her.

“You got as much right here as anybody. You can set that bag down.” Elsie motioned to the floor, the gesture more of a command than a request. Tapping the table with a stiff finger, she added, “Let me see what you got in that drawin’ pad of yours today. I might know some of them words. I been workin’ with my book. If it kills me and if it don’t, I’m gonna get where I can read my Bible for my own self before I meet the author.”

The rest of the class and finally our instructor filed in while Sesay and Elsie were studying the notepad. I sat watching, thinking that two days ago I would never have believed they would be huddled together, sounding out words. But you couldn’t tell what was possible on the inside just by looking at the outside. These past weeks with Barbie had taught me that much. I’d never imagined she would descend into madness with Fawn, or come out again and take on the Four. But she was trying. We’d sat up talking after the TV fiasco, and I was coming to understand who Barbie really was. She knew what it was like to be a kid bounced in and out of her parents’ homes, and farmed out to relatives, and when it came right down to it, she was willing to do whatever it took to keep history from repeating itself. Tonight, she and Aunt Lute were home alone with the Four. “Baby steps,” she’d said when I was getting ready to go. “I’m trying.”

“I know.” I felt a seed of tenderness toward Barbie, which in itself was a minor miracle, considering where we’d started. It occurred to me that if my father could see it, he’d be amazed. I banished the thought as quickly as it came. He wasn’t here. He’d left both of us behind, and perhaps Barbie’s finally facing that fact was what had created the newfound bond between us.

We were both angry with him. We were both hurt. We were both alone. All we had left was each other and a too-small house that wasn’t even ours.

I had no idea where we should go from here. I turned over the problem in my mind as the instructional part of the class proceeded. When we partnered with our clients for tutorials, Demarla had another children’s book with her. “They keep givin’ my kids these things in the stinkin’ children’s building here while I’m sittin’ in class,” she complained. “Soon’s I get where I can read one, the kids’ve got another. I don’ know where them people get off, tryin’ to make me look dumb in front’a my kids. Like I got time for all this. That judge oughta have his kid bring . . .”

As usual, I waited while Demarla ranted on. Eventually, she gave me a dirty look, smacked the book down on the table, and grumbled, “You gonna help me read this thang, or not, Hannah Montana? That’s who you look like, you know? Daggum Hannah Montana.”

“Somebody told me that once,” I muttered. “Let’s do the lesson first, and then we’ll read the book.”

“We ain’t got time for all that.”

“We’ll make it.”

“It’s fifteen after already.”

“If we’d started right in, instead of you complaining about the judge, we’d have more time.”

“Ffff!” Demarla rolled her eyes, and we proceeded with the lesson. When we were done, the college tutors were gone, and the classroom had emptied except for Elsie, Shasta, and Sesay in the front. Demarla beelined through the back door as I gathered my things and moved to the corner of Shasta’s table, listening as they finished the lesson. Sesay looked ahead at tomorrow’s lesson, while Elsie and Shasta leaned close together, engaged in a conversation I couldn’t quite hear. I scooted closer to Sesay to help her with some of the words.

“You’re doing really well,” I said, when she finally closed the book.

Her eyes lifted from the page, slowly met mine, and she smiled at the compliment. One of her front teeth was rotted or cracked halfway off, and the rest were brown around the edges. She seemed to realize that I’d noticed, and quickly hid her smile behind a wrinkled hand, the knuckles knobby and calloused from some sort of repetitive labor. Obviously, she hadn’t always been homeless. “I have known these words before, some of them. My mother teaches me when I am very young, I think.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re doing so well,” I suggested. “Maybe you’re remembering.”

Sesay considered the idea, her eyes cloudy behind a haze of cataracts. “My mother, she is dead when I am very young. I do not know the way she looked, but she is a good mother, I think.”

I slid from the table into a chair, trying to imagine not knowing what your mother looked like, not knowing your family. “Where did you come from before you were here, Sesay?”

She studied me intently, as if deciding whether or not she should answer. “This is not good to speak.”

Elsie abruptly tuned in to our conversation and scooted away from Shasta. “Why? It a secret?”

Checking the room, Sesay leaned closer, her hand slipping under the table, settling on her backpack. “If
he
finds you,
he
tells the police to bring you back again.”

Apprehension tingled under my skin, like gooseflesh rising. Maybe she was running from an abusive husband. Maybe Shasta and I were inadvertently involving ourselves in something that could become dangerous. “Who does?” Around us, the old building creaked and settled, making the conversation seem more ominous.

“
Him
. He brings you back to work if he finds you.”

My mind grasped for possibilities—sweatshop employee, prostitute, shill in some kind of illegal drug trade. . . .

“Can’t nobody force you to work. It’s a free country.” Elsie jumped into the discussion again. Beside her, Shasta had turned away, her head in her hand, as if she wasn’t feeling well.

Sesay’s gaze darted back and forth between Elsie and me. “You must pay for your bed and the food you have eaten,” she whispered. “Or the police will take you away and lock you in a room, or send you over the water in a boat.”

Elsie snorted, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Where’s this?”

“In Mmm-eye-amm-eee.”

Scoffing, Elsie hammered a stubby fist against the tabletop, causing a pencil to hop sideways. “Listen here. I don’t know what kind of hogwash you been told, but I do know that Miami’s in the United States of America, and I sure as heck got far enough in school to learn the dadgum Declaration of Independence in the fifth grade. ‘We hold them truths to be self-evident, that all men been created equal, and their creator give them the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit a’ happiness.’ This ain’t the Soviet States of the Union. There ain’t no king here. Nobody can
make
you work for them, nor drag you off to jail if you don’t. Nobody can get throwed in jail unless they done somethin’ illegal. It ain’t illegal not to work—just look at all them folks sittin’ around collectin’ welfare, and livin’ on the street down by the mission. There ain’t
a man
throwin’ them in jail.” She punctuated the sentence by pushing her chair back, sending an ear-piercing squeal through the room. Shasta didn’t even notice. She was staring at the floor, scrubbing her forehead with her fingertips, her face pale.

“Are you all right?” I tossed a pencil down the table to get her attention. As interested as she’d been in Sesay, it was hard to believe she wasn’t tuning in to the conversation.

“That’s my fault, I reckon,” Elsie said bluntly, while fishing under the table for her purse. “She’s been askin’ me about her house, and I didn’t figure it was my place to serve up bad news, but somethin’ like that’ll eat away at you, so I just now told her the truth. I ain’t trying to be an unfriendly neighbor, keepin’ to myself, but the fact is that folks don’t stay long in them yellow houses. Ever. They move in, they’re there for a little while; then they’re out, and the house goes up for sale, and the whole thing happens again. I been watching them places for a couple years now. After a while, when Householders gets the whole street, they’ll kick everybody out, doze it all under, and put in more of them dadgum condominiums. You don’t believe me, you just drive up Blue Sky Hill a few blocks. You’ll see.” With a disgusted snort, she tossed her head, then yanked her purse off the floor and set it in her lap.

Behind her, Shasta was ashen. I’d never seen an expression like that on her face.

Oblivious, Elsie went on, “There’s a lot of places where all the old houses are gone and there’s nothin’ but condos with nice cars parked out front and high fences all around. They’re workin’ their way toward Red Bird, you mark my words, but I ain’t sellin’. That’s been my house most of my life, and they can have it over my dead body.” Wrapping her purse over her elbow, she stood up, taking out her keys and gripping them as if she were fending off an attacker. “I may be a hateful old woman, but I got salt, and nobody pushes me around.” Pointing the fistful of metal at me, she narrowed one eye. “You and yer stepmom better watch out, too. They was on the way to paintin’ your house yellow before you moved into it. If you put your money in that place, you better look out. It’s a Householders home, sure as a toad’s got warts.” The chair squealed as she scooted it out of the way, started to leave, but then stopped without turning around. “I ain’t tryin’ to be hateful. I thank y’all for what you done for me the other day.” She exited without another word. Shasta and I sat shell-shocked in her wake, listening as her bulky black shoes clacked away down the sidewalk.

“Do you think she’s right?” I asked finally, but I was afraid of the answer. My father was the face of Householders. Superman on their commercials. . . .

Shasta’s lips pressed together, her jaw tightening as she swallowed. “I don’t know. First of all, Cody found these weird fees tacked onto our first statement, and then every time he calls the office, they give him the runaround. We told them we wanted a copy of our contract, and so far, it hasn’t shown up in the mail. Cody thinks they’re doing all this on purpose, like it’s some kind of scam or something, but I told him, why would a company sell houses to people just to have to take them back? My nana had some rental houses, and geez, every time she had to kick people out, it cost her a fortune. Why would a company want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, but the truth was undeniable. Ross Burten was under indictment for criminal misdealings in one company, why not two? Why not all of them?

Did my father know? Was he involved, too?

Uncle Boone . . . Uncle Boone refitted homes for Householders. He profited from their construction contracts to refurbish old neighborhoods and provide low-income housing. Would he knowingly get involved in something so cruel and unethical? Would he and my father intentionally cheat families who could never afford to recover?

Had we been living on profits gained from broken lives, from the destruction of families like Shasta’s?

I felt a catch in my chest, a cramp that hurt with every breath. “We’d better go get your boys,” I muttered. “The children’s building is probably empty by now.”

Shasta blinked, confused. No doubt she was wondering why I wasn’t as passionate about the houses as she was. “Did y’all buy your house from Householders?”

The muscles tightened in my throat. My mouth turned cottony. “We’re just living there . . . for a while. Renting.” The lie slipped out easily, so much simpler than the truth.

“From Householders?” Shasta pressed.

“I don’t know. My uncle set it up.” One lie, now two. How would Shasta feel if she found out who we were?

She gave me a sympathetic look, unaware that we were hardly in the same boat. “You know, if your place
isn’t
a Householders property, then maybe Elsie’s all wet about this, or about some of it, anyway. Maybe she’s just sitting around her place dreaming up issues to get hostile about.”

“I don’t know, Shasta! Why would I know?” The words bit the air sharply. Sesay drew back, a surprised look beneath the tangles of hair, and Shasta blinked and craned away from me, shocked by the outburst.

I stood up from my chair, feeling disoriented and dizzy, as if I’d just stepped off a ride at Six Flags and couldn’t quite find the ground. I had to get out of the room, away from her, away from the musty smell of Sesay’s backpack, to someplace where I could breathe fresh air. “I’ll go grab the boys and meet you out front, whenever you and Sesay are done.”