Young Wives

“I don’t know, babe. But I’ll find out. Bruzeman is connected. He’s expensive but he’s worth it.” Michelle didn’t want to tell him how she felt about Bruzeman. “Maybe it was because of that shopping center deal,” Frank mused. “I don’t know. But they didn’t destroy us. They didn’t touch you, did they? Nobody at the police station touched you?”

She shook her head. “But look at what they did to you, Frank. And the children. They—”

Frank’s hand tightened on her back. “Fuck those corrupt bastards.”

“They’ve ruined the furniture, Frank. My chairs. The sofa. They wrecked the carpet and … Pookie’s gone. He doesn’t come when I call him. And the neighbors …”

“He’ll come back, don’t you worry. And tomorrow you go out and buy new furniture,” Frank told her. “You hear me? Get what you want, what they can deliver immediately. Furniture doesn’t make a family. And keep that list, Mich. Write down everything that’s been spoiled. We’ll get it all back. We all stick together, nothing can hurt us.” He moved his hand to her cheek and cupped it gently. “You know I would never do anything like drug dealing, Michelle. You know that, don’t you?”

Michelle looked at his bruised face and nodded. “We stick together and nobody can hurt us,” Frank repeated. He leaned forward and kissed her. Then he put her head against his shoulder and gingerly leaned his cheek against her hair, as if its cool glow could comfort his throbbing cheek.

Michelle rested there, against his strength, until his breaths deepened and evened out. Then, much comforted, she went back downstairs to again deal with the wreckage.

“Oh my God!” Jada felt like bursting into tears, but looking at Mich’s face she knew she had to keep it light. “Have you been decorating again?” She asked and shook her head. “Um, um, um. Martha Stewart doesn’t live here, Cindy. How could they have done this to a white girl’s house?” Jada looked around the room. “Sweet Jesus, help us.”

Michelle was tugging out yet another bag of garbage. “If Jesus decides to help, tell him to bring more trash bags,” she said.

Jada shook her head at the irreverence and put down one of the dining room chairs she had carried in. “I’ll go get the others,” she said.

“Have you seen Pookie around your house?” Michelle asked, though she didn’t have much hope.

“He’s gone? I saw him running up the street the night the police were here.” Jada touched Michelle’s arm. “God, I’m sorry. The kids must be …” She shook her head. “Man, this does look like an accident scene.”

“Well, you know what I always say …” Michelle began to make a joke, but she couldn’t finish. She was moved that her girlfriend had crossed that horrible line of tattered yellow police tape and was here beside her, that she understood her. Michelle wasn’t stupid, even if she didn’t have a college education. She knew that on their quiet, deserted-looking block there were eyes from every house surveying hers. Everyone was constantly assessing and reassessing property values. Would the pocket park refurbishment upgrade the value of their lot? Would the rise in school tax lower the selling price of their house? What, she wondered, did a drug bust next door do? Probably it depressed house values almost as much as it depressed her.

Michelle didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stand in her yard again, waving at Mr. Shriber when he slowly jogged by or saluting passing neighbors’ cars. And for Jada, a woman who had worked so hard to find acceptance for her family here, to ignore all those invisible but watching eyes and step over the line, well … Michelle felt herself choke up. It was more than what she should expect, but she didn’t want to collapse and show Jada just how bad she felt, how bad it was. She supposed she didn’t have to. Jada’s eyes, open wide, showed that she knew.

“I’m so sorry to drag you into this,” Michelle began. “I know you have your own problems.”

“There’s sure enough to go around,” Jada agreed, beginning to pick up debris.

Michelle felt suddenly guilty. She hadn’t even asked Jada what was going on with Clinton. God. There were enough troubles to go around.

“Did you finally talk to Clinton?”

Jada nodded as she began to pick up torn paper. “I told him he had to make his mind up by the end of the week or I was going to get an attorney.”

“Oh, Jada. I can’t get over it. How could he?” Michelle tied a twist wire around her trash and shook her head. “He’s gone crazy on you.”

“Crazy? Forget Clinton! You should see Tonya. She thinks Clinton’s a catch! Is she going to support him? The ridiculous way she likes to dress up, she can’t support herself. She’s a fool from Martinique, who gets herself confused with the Empress Josephine.” Jada opened the last trash bag and began to throw stuff into it, including the box it had come in. Garbage made garbage. Kind of like Tonya having children.

“You mean she’s the one I met at your church pageant?” Michelle asked in disbelief. “The one with the hat, and the awful hennaed hair? No!”

“Uh huh.” Jada snorted again, bent over, and threw some sofa stuffing into her trash bag. “I want you to believe me when I tell you I’m not jealous. I don’t want to sleep with him. But he’s my husband and he is committed to the family or he’s out the door. I just can’t get over his bad taste. You’d think fifteen years with a man would improve that. I weaned him off Colt 45 and got him drinking Budweiser. I threw out that Peach Glow hair dressing and taught him Paul Mitchell gels. But the man’s heading right back to funky Yonkers.”

“Forget him. How did the kids seem to you?” Michelle asked.

“A little shaken up,” Jada admitted. “But who wouldn’t be? This wasn’t a search, it was a vendetta.” She surveyed the visible damage as she swiveled her head around.

“It was worse,” Michelle said. “You should have seen it before I picked up the first eleven bags of garbage.”

Jada shook her head. “These men were out to find something,” she said. “And you mean to tell me they didn’t? Hell, you tear my house apart like this, you’re gonna find a marijuana seed left over from the sixties.” She shook her head again and bit her lips. “Um-um,” she said. “I didn’t know police ever did a job like this on white people.”

“Frank says they were out to get him.”

“Looks like they did get him, from the picture,” Jada said.

“What picture?” Michelle asked.

Jada shook her head and held up both her hands. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. She got real close to Michelle and took her by the shoulders. “I know you’re not a church-goer, Michelle, but this is a time when everybody needs to fall back on God, because it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I fell back on Frank,” Michelle said. “And it can’t get worse than this,” she added, looking at the ransacked rooms.

Jada sighed. “Please God, I hope so. But people can be really, really cruel. And the courts can be worse than the cops. Believe me, I know plenty of people in White Plains who’ve been through it. Innocent people. And some guilty ones who still didn’t deserve to be treated like dog shit.” She let go of Michelle’s shoulders but patted her gently on the back for a moment. “Okay, honey, that was my version of a pep talk. Now let’s clean this place up the best we can before the kids have to get in here.”

Michelle looked at her friend. “Should I keep them home from school tomorrow?” she asked. “Let them recover for a day, or would it be worse to do that?”

Jada thought of Anne at the bank and her morbid curiosity, even pleasure, at Michelle’s bad luck. “Kids can be cruel,” Jada said. “Real mean. But you figure, if they have to face it, they might as well face it on Monday.”

14 (#ulink_3ad7a014-e5be-5798-a8fc-cfd91af20919)

In which Jada clears up and goes home to find Clinton’s cleared out

When Jada got back to her own house it was well past three A.M. She was dead beat. She and Michelle had filled more than twenty bags of trash, vacuumed the entire downstairs, put away the still-operational appliances, pots, and pans, thrown out all the broken china and other smashed bits from the kitchen, then swept and washed its floor. The house hadn’t looked really good, but it had lost some of its nightmare quality.

Jada, home at last, took her shoes off and put them on the mat by the door. The little area there was supposed to be a mud room, but Clinton had not finished the job. The floor was plywood and the slate for it lay where the bench and cabinet to hold boots and shoes should be. Jada, way too exhausted to be annoyed, took her coat off and put it across the back of a kitchen chair. Although she yelled at Clinton and the kids for doing the same thing, she was too tired to hang it up now. All she wanted was some sleep.

Cleaning up the wreckage next door had not only been physically exhausting but also emotionally draining. And it had frightened Jada. Somehow, despite her own massive problems, it had seemed that most other people’s lives were more secure. Ha! She knew that everything was in God’s hands, but to see Michelle’s home destroyed, her husband beaten, and her children paralyzed with fear frightened Jada, too.

She thought of Anne and the other girls at the bank. Two of them were single mothers and she knew that, like her, they lived from paycheck to paycheck She looked around her unfinished mud room and plywood kitchen floor. At one time she’d been proud of Clinton. She’d seen him as a builder, as a man who took action and made people and things come together. But now he was tearing them down and apart. Well, she had to try and be grateful. She said a short thanksgiving prayer. Things could always be so much worse.

She walked up the stairs as quietly as she could and passed the door of the baby’s room. That was one job Clinton had finished. He’d painted the room and built a changing table for Sherrilee. He’d even put her name on the door. Now Jada pushed it open and poked her head into the room for just a minute, only to check. But Sherrilee wasn’t there. She hoped that Clinton hadn’t let Jenna and Shavonne sleep with her. Walking more quickly to Shavonne’s door, she looked in. Jenna lay curled on one side of Shavonne’s double bed, but neither Shavonne nor Sherrilee was there.

That was strange, Jada thought, but perhaps they’d both crawled into bed with their daddy, though Shavonne didn’t do that much anymore. Of course, Shavonne could have had one of her frequent fights with Jenna and wanted to get away. Jada walked down the hall. Somehow this didn’t feel right. Not at all. But, she told herself, she was probably just spooked by the problems next door. Still, she couldn’t stop herself using unusual force.

She got to the door of their bedroom and threw it open. Nothing’s wrong, she told herself, but something was. No baby, no Shavonne, no Clinton. Only a note, lying in the middle of the unmade bed. Frightened, Jada strode over to it and snatched it up.

Jada,

I have made my decision. I have taken the children and I am leaving you. Your work schedule, your attitudes, and now your friendship with undesirables has led me to believe that you are not only a bad wife but also a bad mother. You will hear from my attorney, George Creskin and Associates. My children told me they didn’t want to stay with those drug kids.

Clinton

Jada’s eyes ran over the page a second time. Then a third. Clinton didn’t write like this. What was this? Was he insane? Her heart began to beat so fast that it felt like a thumping on the outside of her chest. She didn’t care. She didn’t matter. She ran to Kevon’s room and pulled the door ajar, but only Frankie was sleeping on the bottom bunk. She turned and ran back out into the hallway. She threw open the door of the linen closet where they kept their suitcases and backpacks. All the bags were gone. Like some kind of mad thing, she ran back into Shavonne’s room and slid open the closet door. Many empty hangers greeted her. She turned and pulled open the drawers of Shavonne’s bureau: underwear, socks, and T-shirts were gone. Gone. And her children gone, too.

Now, crazy with fear, she ran back down the hall to her own room. All of Clinton’s shoes were missing, along with his two good suits and his leather jacket. He was a madman! A madman! He had taken her children. Did he think that she would stand for this? Did he think that she had scrambled and worked the way she had so that he could take their family and walk out of the house? And what the hell would he do with them, with her children, now that he had them? He didn’t even take care of them here. Clinton had nowhere to go. How would he pay for a hotel, a baby-sitter? He had no job, no money, no help. He wasn’t even on good terms with his mother—hadn’t been since they married.

She began to run down the bedroom hall, but at the top of the stairs it all hit her. She stopped and stood statue-still. A fear deeper than any she had ever known hit Jada in the chest so hard that she had to sit down on the top step, one long leg tucked under her. Who should she call? What should she do? She put a hand up to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream out loud. There were two children still sleeping in the house, though they weren’t hers.