Fools Rush In

She tried again, less confident now. “Darling, don’t you remember Juju?”

“Juju?” Tonya pulled herself upright and lifted her arms to Justine. “Juju.” A smile claimed her little face, and Justine leaned over to take Tonya into her embrace.

“Honey, you must be a magician.”

Startled, Justine turned so quickly that she hit her head against the side of the bed bars, but Mattie shook her head in wonder and didn’t notice.

“What kind of sandwich? Chicken? Low sodium, low fat cheese? Lean, low sodium ham?”

For a moment, she wondered whether Duncan’s housekeeper was operating a health farm. Her glance lingered on Mattie until her eyes widened. It had to be the light. No, that hair really was fire-engine red. Good Lord, was the woman driving on four wheels?

“I decided this isn’t my yellow day,” Mattie explained after noticing Justine’s prolonged stare. “I learned long ago that hair does things to a person’s mood. Now take you. You ought to make yours a light blond or something. Anything but this dreadful neither black nor gray nor anything else these black women walk around with. Make it pretty so the men will notice you, honey.”

Justine laughed. Mattie seemed to have a prescription for everything. “Let Tonya and me get to know each other. We’ll be down soon.”

“Looks to me like she been knowing you all her life, the way she’s acting. Content as a little bee buzzing roses. Never seen the beat of it. That child never did like strangers. ’Course, you do have a nice way about ya.”

Justine breathed deeply as the door closed behind Mattie and prayed she wouldn’t be caught out. She picked up the baby and walked over to the rocker, and Tonya’s little arms curled around her birth mother’s neck. When the baby kissed her cheek, as Justine had seen her do to Duncan, a bottomless well of emotion sprang up in her, and love such as she had never felt for another human being gushed out of her. She stumbled to the rocker and slumped into it, barely avoiding sitting on the floor.

Was this what she had missed as a child? Was this feeling that she would gladly give her life for the baby in her arms what mothers had projected to the confident and self-possessed schoolmates of her early youth? Not once had she felt such love. Not from Kenneth, nor her Godfather, and certainly not from her father or his sisters to whose care he had entrusted her. Tonya cooed and wiggled, demanding her freedom. She couldn’t release her. Not yet. Softly, she began tossing, but tears choked her, and she closed her eyes and rocked.

A nearly unbearable sense of wholeness enveloped her. She’d come alive. The lifeless feeling that had engulfed her and crippled her emotions for a year lifted from her like a blanket of soot dissipating at the behest of a strong wind. Yes. Oh, yes. Her limbs no longer seemed deadweight, dangling from her torso like iron bars, dragging her down. But now, fear curled around her heart. Fear that Duncan would discover her deception and send her away.

Duncan answered his cell phone as he walked out of the Library of Congress and into the unlikely September heat. “Banks.”

“Wayne.”

“What’s up, Wayne?”

“I’m not the only editor onto that case of municipal bribery, man. Can you get free to cover it? Can’t you leave that new nanny with Tonya for a quick spin? Man, if this thing breaks, and I don’t have it, I’ll lose readers.”

“All right. Have somebody type me out a briefing. I’ll get over there around three-thirty or four.”

Duncan opened his front door to the aroma of frying chicken and buttermilk biscuits. If Mattie ever paid attention to his preferences for food, she’d be driven to it by a warning from St. Peter. He dashed up the stairs to change clothes.

“Patty cake, patty cake, loo, loo in the oven…”

“Baddy yake, baddy yake, ooh, ooh, wuwu,” Tonya repeated after Justine.

His eyes widened at the sight of his daughter sitting astride Justine’s lap, slapping hands with her and giggling, her little face glistening with joy. Pleased at that confirmation of his choice as the right one, he walked quickly to his room, closed the door and got into his daytime makeover: gray T-shirt, black cotton bomber jacket, crepe-bottom black loafers—in case he had to run—and dark gray Dockers. He wore that particular jacket because it had a place in which to hide his small, but powerful, recorder.

Duncan stopped in the kitchen for what he knew would be a tongue-lashing from Mattie. “Could you give me some biscuits and a couple of short thighs? I’ve gotta get over to Baltimore in a hurry. If you need me, call Roundtree at the paper.”

“Now, Mr. B, these biscuits won’t taste like a thing once they get cold. I puts my whole self into these biscuits, seeing that you’re so crazy about them, and now you wants to go and eat ’em out of a paper bag whilst you’re driving. And my chicken. Mr. B, if you try to eat my chicken and drive same time, you’ll have an accident. Mark my word. Nobody can concentrate on my chicken and try to do something else same time.” She patted her yellow hair and looked up at him. “Nobody, but my Moe, that is. ’Course, ain’t many men equal to my Moe.”

“I can believe that. Would you hurry, please? It’ll all be hot when it reaches my stomach. Trust me.”

She handed him the bag and patted his arm. “Y’all be careful now, Mr. B.”

“Thanks.” Mattie’s southern notions and mannerism gave him old-shoe comfort. Dizzy as a drunken chicken, but he liked her. At the front door, he looked up to see Justine strolling down the stairs with Tonya in her arms.

“I’m glad you two are getting on. I’ll be back sometime tonight. If you need me, call my cell phone number. It’s on the side of the refrigerator, on Tonya’s bed post, and on the side of my computer. See ya.”

An hour and a half later, Duncan parked on Reisterstown Road just off Rodgers Avenue in West Baltimore, walked a couple of blocks, and knocked on the apartment door of an ex-girlfriend, the notes that Wayne’s assistant had prepared tucked into his jacket pocket.

“Hi, Grace. Long time, no see.”

“Believe me, that’s not my fault. Come on in. you don’t have to tell me this isn’t a personal visit, though I’m more than willing to apply for the job of unrequited, unfulfilled wife just like the ten thousand other sistahs in this town.”

He let a grin crawl over his features. “On target, as usual. Where do you think I’ll find Buddy Kilgore?”

“Probably at the joint, but not before six or so. What are you doing ’til then?”

He wrote down “CafeAhNay” on a small pad, tucked it in his inside pocket, and prepared to make his excuses and leave. Not for anything he could think of would he get involved with Grace again. She’d been his girl in college, but she’d realized her dream of singing in jazz clubs and, somehow, had gotten into the dark side of life. That wasn’t for him. She’d put that behind her, but he saw her only as a friend.

“Grace, this is serious business, and you know I’m not for fooling around where my work is concerned. You and I are friends. Isn’t that enough?”

Her shrug said he couldn’t blame her for trying. “When I make a mistake, I lay ostrich eggs. It’s not enough, Duncan, but I have to accept it. We’re friends.”

He let go the breath he’d been holding. He needed her cooperation, because she had useful contacts that served him well from time to time. “Does Buddy have a manager for that cleaning service or does he look after it himself?”

“Duncan, honey, Buddy’s got a cover for every one of his businesses; he owns ’em, but somebody else takes the heat.”

Just as he’d thought. He leaned against the door and appraised her. She’d always been as transparent to him as pure water in a clean glass. “You going to tell him I asked about him?”

Her head jerked upward, and she glared at him, obviously affronted. “Of course not. That’s all you think of me? That I’m a stool pigeon? Dunc, honey, you know I wouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t think so, Grace, but in this business, I can’t take chances.”

“No, I don’t suppose you can. Lots of people are pushing up daisies for trusting the wrong guy.”

“Tell me about it. I owe you one.”

She flashed a smile, but it didn’t ring true. Grace was suffering from a bad case of if, of what might have been. “Don’t mention it,” she said, grasping for her self-respect. “Just let me know what kind of payment you want to make and when you plan to pay.”

Heaven forbid that Tonya should let herself slip into the clutches of degradation as Grace had. She’d pulled herself out of it, he’d give her credit for that much, because most people who flirted with the drug culture and got mired into it weren’t so fortunate. Grace had been raised by a father who’d spoiled her, and she was one reason why he’d go to any respectable length to find a woman who’d be a good female role model for Tonya. A picture of her bouncing happily in Justine’s arms as he left the house earlier flashed through his mind. She hadn’t even cried when she saw him walk out of the door, and she usually kicked up such a storm that he’d taken to slipping out when she couldn’t see him.

He wished he could figure out why the ease with which Tonya had accepted Justine didn’t alleviate his concerns about the child’s well being. Well, hell. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be jealous of his daughter’s seeming fondness for Justine.

He stopped by The Maryland Journal editorial office, got some blank press passes, and headed for Darby Elementary School. He looked around for a parking spot and glimpsed Buddy Kilgore leaving the school. He grabbed his camera out of the glove compartment and snapped the man’s picture as his feet touched the bottom step, and stayed in the car until Kilgore turned into Dolphin Street and was out of sight. Sure that his hunch had been right, he barged into the principal’s office unannounced just as the man began to cram papers into the shredder. He wished he’d brought his camera. With his recorder running in his jacket pocket, he walked over to the shredder, stopped it, retrieved the papers, and looked at the top page.

“What do you have to say?”

“Me? Nothing, Mr. Banks. I’m just getting my desk straightened out like I do every day before I leave.”

Duncan released a half laugh. “So you know who I am? Who tipped you off? Kilgore?”

“I’ve seen you around, mostly over on Liberty Street in CafeAhNay. Nobody told me anything. Mr. Kilgore came by to ask me to vote for him for the City Council.”