Plan C (14 page)

There was a moment of silence, and then Yvette responded very quietly, “That’s nice.” She offered little more, but it was a start, and I knew I’d opened her window just a crack.

As we walked off the elevator I noted Yvette’s pace had slowed to match mine, and now she was walking next to me, instead of ahead of me. I turned to her and said, “Someone summed it up once by saying ‘Men have a midlife crisis and women want a midlife purpose.’ I’d like
this
to be my purpose.”

“That’s exactly what I said a few years back,” said Yvette over her clipboard. “But these girls – where they come from – they can’t live their dreams, because they don’t even think they
have
a dream.”

We passed a row of small dormitory-style rooms in which women were gabbing, babies were crying, and young children were running and wandering the hallways. Then we came upon a small storage room with a child’s wooden desk, like something out of some old parochial school circa 1955. A mop and bucket leaned against the wall in a corner.

“Let’s go in here,” she said. “It’ll give us some privacy.”

She offered me a seat at the desk where she stood, which made her tower above me and seemed to give her twice the authority. She flipped through pages on her clipboard as she spoke. I nodded, and then she began her own spiel on how she’d worked in the system for ten years. All I could do was keep on smiling, and stare at her head, wondering how long it took to weave all those dreadlocks. Did she do them herself? Did somebody else do it?

“So let me aks you, Libby,” she said, “A young angry girl comes in. She’s eighteen and she hates the world. What you immediately gonna do about it?”

I swallowed hard and said the first thing that came to mind. “Well, um, I guess the first thing to do would be to check for signs of abuse. Was she beaten? Is she bleeding? Is she under the influence? Is she high? If she’s not on drugs, then I can assume she is coherent enough to understand what I’m saying, so then I’d begin the process, whatever the process is.” Yvette nodded approval. Score one point for Libby.

“Then what you gonna do with her?”

“Well, I’d talk to her the way I would my own daughter, I guess. I’d try to figure out why she’s mad at the world. What made her feel she’s been pushed against a wall? Why does she feel trapped?”

“Okay, but she may not want to talk. May not tell you,” said Yvette.

“I’m a journalist. If I can get a District Attorney to leak the results of a DNA sample, I can get a young woman to soften. You know, Yvette, they say what really works is human touch. Do you know why we tell our hairdressers everything? It’s because when they shampoo us, they touch our scalps. We instantly feel comfortable and begin blabbering on about our cheating husbands, our weight gain... So maybe I’d hug the girl. If she’d let me.”

“Okay,” she said, making a note in a file.

“ Could I offer her something to eat?” I asked. “Take her to a room? I realize it would depend what your protocol is – what my boundaries are.”

A woman pokes her head in the door. “You were looking for these?” The woman hands Yvette some papers. Yvette drops them to the desk. “The applesauce kid again?” The woman nods and is gone.

“Applesauce kid?” I ask.

“Yeah, young teen girl. Always has her papers covered in applesauce.”

“Better than chocolate sauce, I guess.”

Yvette tries not to crack a smile. “Libby, let me tell you it ain’t gonna be easy. We all want to be Florence Nightingale but most of us can’t handle it. You’ll leave here at night feeling guilty. No matter how much you do, it’s never enough. And no matter what, you can not get emotionally attached. You can’t take your work home with you. Never. Even when a young mom needs a new stroller and you want to take her and the baby home, you can’t. You have to keep reminding yourself that it’s only a job.”

“Okay…” I said.

“I grew up in Harlem. The quintessential story,” she said. “Could have you going through a box of Kleenex.”

“Oh dear.”

“Daddy was a drug dealer and ended up in prison by the time I was three. My mama had me and my brother, James, to raise on one income. She was a grocery clerk. Every so often when she couldn’t make ends meet she’d come home and say, ‘We gonna play a game. The train game.’ But I didn’t like the ‘train game’ much because it meant sleeping on the subway all the way up and down the E line all night long until some cop brought us to a shelter or somebody gave us some money to eat.”

“Oh, Yvette, that’s horrible. I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. It’s over now. I survived. And I managed to be a good student and eventually got noticed. I even got some state aid for my education. The welfare system somehow worked for me the way it was intended - helped me get on my feet. I moved in with my grandmother when I was in junior high and mama got sick. I even graduated from City College – first person in my family’s history – then became a grant writer for various foundations. When I was thirty my mother passed away from diabetes.”

“So then you became a hero to others…”

“Well,” she said sheepishly, “not a hero, but I did end up here in Human Resources.” Yvette’s beeper went off, startling us both. She grabbed me by the elbow and said, “C’mon. You can join me at the crisis center. Let you see the real deal.”

“Okay, then,” I said, eager to be taken seriously.

One broken elevator, three flights of stairs, several long hallways, and numerous security guards later, I had absorbed a volume’s worth of statistics. Yvette told me that there are 40,000 homeless kids in New York. “Each one is treated as they are. Meaning, no judgment or questions of their circumstances – raped, battered, doing drugs, whatever. Just get them in here. We’re open twenty-four hours a day. There’s somebody here at three a.m. if need be.”

And then we rounded a corner. And there
he
was.

“Been looking for you,” he told Yvette. He held out his left arm. “On this side we got K through third grade – they want the hokey pokey and the magician for the party. On this side,” he held out his right hand, “six through twelfth graders. They want the D J and the dance party. Is there enough in the budget for two separate parties?”

“Put the big kids with the big kids, and little ones with the young ones? I think so,” said Yvette.

Now his gazed turned to me. He raised his eyebrow. Interested.

“Libby this is Jerome,” said Yvette, and suddenly I had that flushed high school feeling except this wasn’t high school. My hair was flat-ironed straight and I wasn’t wearing a retainer. Jerome had a perfect creamy-mocha complexion and liquid crystal eyes. It occurred to me that maybe I’d seen him in that movie “
Hustle and Flow
.” But then that would mean he was the actor, Terrence Howard, and I didn’t think that Terrence Howard would be working at a shelter… Or would he? Maybe if he were researching a role?

“Hi Libby; I’m Jerome,” he said, extending a hand. “I’ll be showing you the ropes.”

“Great,” I squeaked, hoping the ropes would include the one he’d use to tie me to the nearest bedpost.

But wait a second… he was way younger than me. Was my previously unknown inner cougar coming unleashed? I always go for older men.

And then our hands met - his nice and cool, mine sweating like crazy.

“She’s in here,” Jerome said to Yvette, motioning to a young mother staring into the distance. I realized there was no Garden of Eden, and we weren’t about to play Adam and Eve. The apple of temptation would just have to wait.

Yvette paused in the doorway and then gave me a secretive look as though we were plotting a sting operation. “I’m gonna leave you for about twenty minutes. You want to try and talk to her on your own, Libby?”

I nodded.

“She’s a young mother – seventeen – hasn’t seen her baby in two months,” explained Yvette. “Baby was in foster care. I’m going to go downstairs and sign her out. You want to maybe keep her company while I do the paperwork – help Jerome bring her up to the mother and children unit?”

“Are you kidding?” I said, “I’d be thrilled to help!”

“Just remember,” said Yvette. “These girls know how to play you. And they know how to game the system.”

I nodded.

“Jerome, have her meet Shashona and her baby,” said Yvette, before disappearing through a doorway.

Jerome smiled at me again - that big movie star grin – and I wanted to ask him what it was like working with Jodie Foster in
“The Brave One
.” But by that time Jerome had led me to the young woman, Shashona. She was bent over blocking the site of something in front of her. All I could see was Shashona’s ass, her too-tight jeans exposing the top of her red thong panty and the red dragon tattoo peeking out.

As I moved around her, I saw that she was blocking a toddler dressed in an adorable pink terry jogging suit, with little matching barrettes clipped in various spots on her pig-tailed head. The child appeared clean and healthy, well-cared for by the foster parents. But Shashona’s perception was different from mine. She was holding onto her toddler and moaning like a mother who’s just been informed that her daughter has been rescued from some sexual perpetrator.

“Oh baby, you safe now, you safe now, you safe now,” chanted Shashona. “You got so skinny with them.” The toddler, not recognizing her mother, struggled to worm her way out of Shashona’s arms. “You so tiny.” The baby grabbed at fistfuls of her mother’s orange highlighted hair. “Did them foster parents feed you none?” All I can see is the red and white tips of Shashona’s long acrylic nails swirling around the toddler’s face. “Oh, baby, are you cold?”

Jerome looked down at Shashona and said, “Be happy, girl. You got your baby back, is all that matters.” Shashona seemed happy to me, but in a desperate sort of way.

Shashona ignored Jerome, dropping down to sit on the stained rug, and pulling her daughter in tightly. The toddler moaned and kicked to be released, stretching her arms toward a stuffed beanie baby sitting in a nearby empty stroller. I reached over, grabbed the toy and handed it to the toddler, who snatched it from my grip. It was then that I realized what was going on: Shashona felt guilty for not being there for her child. She was picking on everything she could think of about foster care, but did she ever realize the baby might have been better off there?

I stooped to her side and began gently rubbing Shashona’s back with one hand. I rested my other hand on the toddler’s head. The baby quieted instantly and looked at me in fascination, while Shashona kept repeating, “I ain’t never gonna lose my baby ‘gain. I ain’t never gonna leave her.”

Then Shashona met my eyes for the first time. Two women, mother to mother. I could imagine her pain. “Don’t beat yourself up,” I said. “I know you’re a good mom and you’re going to do the best you can. Focus on the positive.”

Shashona narrowed her eyes at me. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes,” I said gently.

“And just who the
fuck
are you?!” she snapped.

Okay, nobody said
this
job was going to be easy.

The wall sconces lend Kitty at Amaranth lend Kitty and me a pink glow. Ben and Clive sit across from us as we linger over a bottle of wine. Ben finishes the punch line of a joke, everyone laughs, and Clive says, “Just nipping to the loo. Won’t be a moment.”

As he goes, Kitty pulls my arm. “Quick, reach into his jacket,” she says. “See if his iPhone is in there.”

“What the hell for?” I say.

“Because if he took it with him in the bathroom then I know he’s downloading some bimbo in a chat room. He was
way
too happy to be taking a leak.”

“You’re incorrigible!” says Ben.

“Oh, please,” says Kitty. “I haven’t seen him this excited since the Girl Scouts delivered cookies to his office.”

Ben twirls his glass, examining the “legs” of his wine. “Kitty,” he says, “do you know what cheating is? Cheating is when a man has a relationship with another woman behind your back. Titty bars, porn, strip clubs, lap dances, girls jumping out of cakes at bachelor parties….anyone who thinks those things are cheating is being naïve about the nature of men.”

“That’s nice, Ben,” says Kitty, “but I refuse to compete with his bimbos. I’m not going to sit around in come-hither-fuck-me boots and play games like Vicky Quickie while he ties me up.”

You’re delusional,” I say.

“Men don’t marry peep shows,” says Ben. “They’re an escape, like a movie or a concert that happens to engage a certain part of the male anatomy.”

“Yeah, Kitty, despite Ben knowing a little too much about this…” I shoot Ben a look, “Ben’s right. Those women aren’t seeking a man’s paycheck or his love.”

“You’re wrong about the paycheck,” says Kitty.

“A man projects his fantasies on these women,” says Ben, squeezing my hand. “He doesn’t want to watch TV or do the gardening with them.”

“I don’t garden,” says Kitty. “Soil gives me a rash.”

“Look, we have fantasies from the moment we hit puberty,” says Ben. “I mean, we were all twelve once, hiding girly magazines under our beds.”

“And Girl Scouts in the closet!” says Kitty, craning her neck to make sure Clive isn’t returning yet. “What the hell is taking him so long? He’s probably jerking-off with some John.”

“Now Clive’s gay?” I ask.

“Maybe,” says Kitty. “He wears those long grey scarves, sips apple martinis and loves listening to Bread.”

“The 60s band?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “‘Sweet Surrender,’ ‘Guitar Man’ – all that sappy shit.”

“He’s British,” says Ben. “which means he’s a little bent. It goes back to those all-male boarding schools.”

“What about Rupert?” asks Kitty. “He’s always hanging with some best friend from ‘Univeristy!’ she says, imitating Clive’s accent.

“Kitty, you’re awful,” I say. “You catch a guy at a strip club and you practically castrate him. You spy constantly. I mean, you’ve got me checking his pockets for his phone numbers, and you’re checking his collar after business meetings. Come to think of it, you check his credit card statements, his phone bills, mark the mileage on his car…”

“How do you know all this, Libby?” asks Kitty.