Someone to Watch Over Me (11 page)

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Authors: Michelle Stimpson

BOOK: Someone to Watch Over Me
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“Why are you smiling?”
He lowered he head, trying to hide the smile.
“DeAndre, you are suspended. In what world is this a happy occasion?” I slammed my hand on the steering wheel with each syllable.
“He was messing with me,” DeAndre huffed, “but I bet he won't do it no more.”
“
Any
more. And what do you mean messing with you? How?”
DeAndre crossed his arms on his chest. “Calling me names.”
“Names like what?”
“DeAndre, DeAndre, got a prison madre.” He mimicked the classic playground jump-roping rhyme and rhythm. I had to give it to these kids. They'd come a long way—bilingual teasing.
In this case, however, there was some truth to the mockery. DeAndre's mother actually was incarcerated. If memory served well, usually these taunts could be answered with “Nu uh!” or “Stop lying!” DeAndre couldn't deny facts.
I wasn't crazy about DeAndre, by any means, but there's something about rooting for the underdog. “So what are you going to do the next time someone teases you about your mom?”
He swung a fist in the air. “Pop 'em in the nose, just like I hit Chase today.”
“You fought
Chase
?”
He nodded.
“But Chase is your friend.”
“He made me mad making fun of my momma.” DeAndre's brows furled up again.
I recognized his shut-down tactic and decided not to talk to him again until he calmed down. We rode in silence to the church parking lot so I could finally get a look at the urgent e-mail message.
Panic rushed through my veins. Preston's e-mail “requested” my presence at an impromptu team conference. “It would be best if you could make the meeting Friday.” Translation:
be here tomorrow afternoon.
Knots filled my stomach. Preston Haverty didn't marshal meetings without good reason.
Suddenly, Aunt Dottie's store's appeal and DeAndre's suspension got shoved into the backseat. Maybe even the trunk. I immediately called the office to let Preston know I'd be in attendance.
Chapter 12
N
ever in a million years would I have imagined I'd be trekking back to Houston with DeAndre by my side. But after a muffled blowup with Joenetta just outside Aunt Dottie's hospital room, I got stuck with him again. This time, I caved in at Aunt Dottie's written request: “Please take him with you.
”
Those smiley faces would be the death of me.
We put off the store's reopening until Monday, which also happened to be the projected date for Aunt Dottie's release from the hospital. I had a number of objectives to accomplish before her return, but Houston came first.
DeAndre and I packed our bags for the trip back to civility. For someone who'd just been suspended, he was in awfully high spirits. I heard him up rumbling most of the night before—getting water, going to the restroom, tossing and turning in his bed. All of this while I sat in bed reviewing client campaigns, getting all my ducks in a row before Preston's mysterious last-minute meeting.
DeAndre actually beat me getting up the next morning, like it was Christmas day or something.
“Cousin Tori, is it time?”
“Might as well be,” I gave in. We ate a few slices of toast and then rolled onto the highway a little before seven o'clock Friday morning.
He sat up in his seat, looking out the window as we passed cornfields and cow pastures. Nothing foreign until we hit a larger city graced with a shopping center. “Ooh! Look at all those stores!”
Okay.
“DeAndre, have you ever been shopping at a mall?”
He looked at me, shook his head.
“Have you been to . . . an amusement park, like Six Flags?”
Another head shake. “No, but I seen one on TV.”
“You
saw
one.” Let me just break this on down. “Have you ever been outside of Bayford, Texas?”
He sat back and thought for a moment, then proudly conveyed, “I went on a field trip one time. We went to the post office, the police station, and the fire station.”
“In Bayford, though, right?”
“Yep.” He hoisted himself back up on the edge of the seat and continued to absorb the massive billboards and household icons lining the side roads.
Never been out of Bayford. His obvious excitement plucked a heartstring in my chest. Bayford was a wonderful place full of great people, but the one thing it couldn't boast was exposure to opportunities. I mean, it's one thing to decide to live in a small town, another thing altogether if you never even knew there were other options.
We stopped about an hour into the trip and got another round of breakfast. Though DeAndre was somewhat familiar with the concept of convenience restaurants, he was enamored by the number of options on the food strip. McDonald's, IHOP, Burger King, Jack in the Box, and Wendy's alone lined one side of the street. “Ummm,” he vacillated, “what's Chick-fil-A?”
“It's a chicken place. They have breakfast burritos.”
He quizzed me, “They got pancakes?”
“I don't think so.”
He turned his attention back to the strip. “Okay, McDonald's. I want pancakes and sausage.”
Child-rearing lesson number one: do not let children eat pancakes in a moving car! Maybe if DeAndre had been an infant, I would have known to stay away from sticky foods. Who knew eight-year-olds could still be so messy? DeAndre accidentally drizzled syrup on his shirt, my seats, and the inside door panel. We had to make a second stop for hand sanitizer and wipes to clean his tracks.
DeAndre must have seen the horror written on my face as he put the final dabs on his hands. “I'm sorry, Cousin Tori, for messing up your car.”
I wanted to hold a grudge, but I figured the whole thing was as much my fault as his. “It's all right. We'll know better next time.”
“No more syrup for me,” he chanted.
His willingness to sacrifice this sweet treat seemed a bit drastic. “You can have syrup, just not in this car.”
That settled, I popped in an old-school R & B CD and merged with northbound traffic. DeAndre grew restless. He fidgeted with the buttons on his door's panel, which I quickly disabled from the driver's side. He tapped out a tune on the window with his fingertips. He counted the number of people in cars we passed and checked the statehood of each license plate.
I'm really not sure which of us was more frazzled by his impatience.
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
“Are we getting close?”
“No.”
Thirty minutes later. “How about now?”
“Nope.”
He exhaled noisily, slumping deeper into the seat. “I've gotta use the restroom.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I had a large orange juice, remember?”
At this rate, we'd never make it back to Houston. Another stop, another ten minutes lost. Thank God, he finally fell asleep the last half of the trip. His soft snoring brought about a question that, honestly, hadn't entered my mind a second sooner: what was I going to do with this kid while I was in my meeting at work?
Oh my gosh!
How could I have been so silly? This was equivalent to teenage thinking—or, rather,
not
thinking—making dire decisions without considering the ramifications. I didn't have anyone in Houston whom I could ask to watch DeAndre. I mean, some of Kevin's friends might sit with a dog or a kitten, but a child? No way. I know I wouldn't if the shoe were on the other foot.
The stupidest idea ever entered my mind: leave him in the car. Just the very fact that my brain formed this absurd thought was proof I didn't have any business taking care of anyone's kid. This whole scenario was way out of my league.
Kevin wouldn't be back for several days—not that he would have even agreed to keep DeAndre anyway. Maybe there was a recreation center or some kind of children's . . . gated facility I could take him to.
I used my phone's voice-operating system to call a day care I vaguely remembered passing daily on my way in to NetMarketing.
“Hello,” I gasped desperately as I explained my situation to the first person who answered the phone. My speech ended with, “Whatever your fee, I'm willing to pay.”
The woman on the other end listened patiently, then bombarded me with questions. Did I have his birth certificate? Shot records? Proof that he was actually enrolled in school? Had his parents given me legal guardianship?
“Ma'am, I just need to bring him in for a few hours,” I begged.
“I'm sorry, but we can't accept him without documentation. I mean, we have no way of knowing if he's been kidnapped, if he's allergic to the foods we serve, or if he has some kind of emotional problem that would put the other children in danger.”
“But I just need—”
“And we'd have to make some special provisions for him because he's a school-age child. We don't normally keep schoolers during school hours. Do you have documentation showing he's been suspended? I mean, if a state inspector comes and sees we're keeping a child who, by law, should be in school, we have to be able to show them why he's in day care, not school.”
Okay, I was getting nowhere with this woman. “Never mind.”
I called two more day care centers and the YMCA. I even called a church—they take everyone, right? Same long list of questions I couldn't answer, claims I couldn't prove. What has the world come to when kids can't be ditched, no questions asked? What happened to the whole “village” concept?
I blame the parents. The government. Somebody.
As we approached the city, I fought the urge to wake DeAndre so he could marvel at the lofty buildings and steep highway overpasses. He would have enjoyed the sights, I'm sure, but I enjoyed the sight of his little brown, quiet head propped up against the window even more.
When we finally arrived at my place, I shook DeAndre out of his sleep and announced, “We're here.”
He swiped the spittle from his mouth and stretched while taking in the immediate surroundings. My apartment building's garage was pretty uneventful. Gray, dark, nothing but rows of cars.
Nonetheless, DeAndre took one look at the stairwell and gasped, “Ooh! You got a two-story house!”
“Not quite.” I laughed under my breath. “This is an apartment.”
He crumpled his face. “I thought you was rich?”
“Who told you I was rich?”
“My granny.”
Figures. “I'm not rich, but I'm not poor, either.”
“Then how come you live in an apartment instead of a house?” he quizzed me sharply. “My momma said rich people live in houses, mostly brick houses with stairs in 'em.”
His momma was wrong, of course, but I couldn't call her out like that. “I
choose
to live in an apartment. People have choices, you know? And sometimes an apartment costs more than a house. Just depends on where you live. The city is different from the country.”
By the confusion scribbled across his face, I'd given him enough food for thought to last a week.
We had a few hours to kill in the apartment. DeAndre checked out my place and pronounced it officially “cool” on account of the Dyson desktop fan in the living room, which didn't have blades but seemed to blow air from an invisible source. This little wonder wasn't actually a necessity. When Kevin was home, he lowered the thermostat to an un-environmentally-friendly freezing temperature that kept me covered in blankets. This fan he'd purchased was nothing more than a hyperengineered conversation piece.
Once DeAndre had had his fill of the fan, I sat him down in front of the television with a Lean Pocket and apple juice, then hustled onto the Internet to sync my client files in real-time.
I hopped in the shower, changed into business attire, and tore DeAndre from the couch and cartoons. “Where are we going?”
It took nearly all the commuting time from my apartment to the office to explain where we were going and exactly how I expected him to behave. The fact that he was suspended hadn't escaped me, though it didn't seem to phase DeAndre anymore. I wondered how many times he'd been suspended, but the foyer entrance to NetMarketing didn't seem quite the place to inquire about his previous offenses.
“This office is big,” DeAndre commented as the building receptionist, Alma, buzzed us past the front desk.
“Your son?” she wanted to know. I swear, I'd all but walked past this woman tens of thousand times, but never once had she been so interested in my business.
“Cousin,” I replied, pulling DeAndre out of her sight. I led him straight to my abandoned cubicle, hoping this home-away-from-home had not been ransacked by fellow employees needing pens, Post-it Notes, or legal pads. Since we arrived during the lunch hour, the office was pretty empty. Bad enough I was telecommuting, now I'd brought a kid into the office. Now, more than ever, I wished I'd had an actual work space with a door so I could hide DeAndre.
I pointed, he parked himself in my seat. “Sit here until I get back from my meeting.”
His eyes traversed the countertops in my space, then he questioned, “What am I supposed to
do
while you're in the meeting?”
Do?
Who says kids always have to be
doing
something? “You'll sit here and wait.”
“You want me to just do nothin'?” DeAndre looked at me like I had lost my marbles.
I opened my desk drawers and pulled out an issue of
Essence
magazine. “Here. Read this.”
“Ewww. This is for girls,” he whined. He eyed my computer. “You got any video games?”
“Umm . . . maybe there are a few on the Internet. You have a favorite Web site?”

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