I couldn’t get an appointment with the Legal Aid guy until Friday. “But this is urgent!” I protested.
“Honey, they’re all urgent,” said the woman on the other end of the phone. “Mr. Boyer can see you Friday at two o’clock. You want the appointment or not?”
Frustrated, I said yes and banged my office phone back onto its base. Friday was two days away! Yeah, Mabel had told me to get legal advice before I confronted Philip . . . but two days?!
Outside my office door, the dining room buzzed with women waiting to be called by the nurse. Everything from bunions caused by ill-fitting shoes to mysterious rashes to a variety of STDs needing medication. Maybe Delores Enriques, the pediatric nurse from the sprawling county hospital on Chicago’s near south side, had something that’d help the headache spreading over my skull like a cracked egg . . . or maybe I just needed to do something.
Like a steam-driven engine, I hauled the rest of my mom’s and my stuff two flights up to the bunk room we’d been assigned, put our necessities in the small dresser drawers provided for each resident, and stuffed the rest of the suitcases and boxes under our bunks. Not exactly the beautiful walnut bedroom set that had been a wedding gift from Philip’s parents—and definitely not the spacious walk-in closet in the penthouse. At the same time, the Lord & Taylor pantsuits I’d just stuffed under the bed would make me stand out here at the shelter like a gold front tooth.
It took five trips, but by the time I shut the door on the beehive going on around the makeshift nurse’s station in one corner and the knitting club in another, my broom-closet office seemed five times bigger. Even Dandy seemed happy with the new arrangement, coming out from under my desk and stretching along the wall next to the file cabinet.
For the next hour, I tried to get back up to speed with plans for the activities program here at Manna House—after packing it up on Monday, thinking I wouldn’t be back and someone else would have to take over as program director. I focused on the activities I’d already put in place:
An ESL class once a week . . . Tina, one of the residents, a big-boned Puerto Rican who was fluent in both Spanish and English, had agreed to try teaching English as a second language to Aida Menéndez, a young Latina who’d been bounced around in the foster system until she was eighteen and dropped out of school because of language problems. Tina was good for a few weeks anyway, until she lined up some resources for alternate housing or found a job, and then I’d need to find someone more permanent. Edesa and Josh Baxter had rustled up some ESL materials from Josh’s mom, a third-grade teacher on the north side. I’ll have to sit in on Tina’s weekly session, see how it’s going, I thought.
Typing . . . Josh’s mom, Jodi Baxter, had also agreed to teach a typing class on Saturday morning for residents who wanted to improve their job skills. The shelter had a schoolroom with two computers, but Jodi had said three people showed up for the first class a few weeks ago. I made a mental note: Ask the board for another computer.
And the knitting club . . . that had been easy. When I first took on the job, I’d noticed Estelle knitting something blue and bulky while managing the signup list to see the nurse. Now five or six women were knitting and purling away on Wednesday mornings, watching simple winter scarves grow longer, if not exactly symmetrical.
I chewed the end of a pencil as I studied the list of possibilities for more “life skills” for these women with precious few resources. Now that Estelle had been hired on a part-time basis, she was the obvious resource for basic classes in cooking and sewing. That proposal was already on Mabel’s desk. And Edesa’s husband, Josh, had casually suggested a sports clinic for the shelter kids on the weekend . . . Hmm. His dad was the athletic director at Rogers Park High School. Possible resource there.
I grinned to myself. Might as well get the whole Baxter clan involved here! They’d supported the Fun Night that Precious McGill and I had cooked up last month. Precious, a former resident and now a volunteer with the after-school kids—couldn’t exactly call it a “program” yet—had managed to get all the residents and most of the staff off their duffs that night, doing the Macarena . . .
Precious! I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen the livewire volunteer or her teenage daughter, Sabrina, since I got back from North Dakota with my mother almost two weeks ago. I doubted she knew I’d resigned on Monday, much less became a “resident” that same night. What was up with her?
I reached for the phone and my staff directory.
And I thought I had problems.
The first time I tried the number I had for Precious, I got her voice mail. “Can’t talk now, but leave a number an’ I’ll call ya back—if Jesus don’t come back first, and if He do, it ain’t gonna matter!” I was a little taken aback, but managed to leave my name and a brief “Call me at Manna House when you’ve got a minute.”
When Estelle banged on a pan for lunch, I went out and asked if she’d seen Precious lately. She shook her head. “It’s goin’ down tough for her an’ Sabrina lately. Not sure she’s in town.” The big woman flounced behind the counter. “Line up, ladies! Who wants to ask God to bless this food?”
Going down tough? What did that mean? I decided I’d try calling again later.
Thankfully, the knitting club was putting away their projects in a corner of the dining room, so I didn’t have to look far for my mother. But when I went to get her, I noticed her pale eyes were wet. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“I c-can’t do it anymore, Celeste.” Her lip trembled.
Uh-oh. Calling me by my sister’s name was always a red flag. I gently took her knitting needles and the lump of pale green knitting attached. Dropped stitches and erratic knots were hopelessly tangled. “Oh, Mom.”
One of the other knitters, a heavy-chested black woman named Sheila, shrugged sympathetically. “Last week, Gramma Shep was helpin’ alla us. Today . . . dunno.”
“It’s all right, Mom. Let’s put it away for now. We’ll fix it later.” As in, ask Estelle to knit a few rows with the green yarn and let Mom start over when she wasn’t feeling confused. Steering my mother into the lunch line, I helped fill her plate with the fixings for tacos and was getting her settled at a table when I noticed Tanya’s eight-year-old son sitting by himself at the end of our table, poking at his food. His usual shelter playmates—Trina and Rufino, seven- and six-year- old siblings—were throwing food at one of the other tables.
“Your mom not back yet, Sammy?”
Poke, poke. “Nah. Diane s’posed ta be watchin’ me.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of a dark-skinned woman with a big, loose Afro, like a throwback to the sixties. “But she say she gotta go out after lunch, even if my mama not back.”
That was strange. Tanya had said she had an appointment at nine o’clock and she’d be back before lunch. The pole-thin young woman with the flawless caramel skin barely looked old enough to have a kid Sammy’s age, but she’d always seemed to keep an eye on him. “Well, I’m sure your mom will be back soon. Come on and eat with Gramma Shep and me.”
Sammy moved down a few chairs and grinned. “Yeah. Can’t wait till she get back. Mama say we gettin’ our own place now.”
But Tanya wasn’t back by the time the dishwashers started cleanup—and Tanya had traded her breakfast chore for Lucy’s lunch assignment. “Hey, come on, Sammy, help me wipe these tables, okay? You start there while I get Gramma Shep settled for a nap.” I winked at him. “Babies and grammas need their naps, you know,” I stage-whispered. He giggled.
I didn’t dare take my mom up to the bunk room, in case she woke up and tried to come down the stairs by herself, so I helped her stretch out on a sofa in the multipurpose room before I went back to the dining area. She’d be fine. My mom could sleep with a party going on, and it was better if there were people around anyway.
Still no Tanya. “Do you like to draw, Sammy?” I asked as we dried the last table. A smile lit up his face. So I found some scratch paper and a bunch of markers left over from the ad hoc “after-school program” Precious had supervised and let him color on the floor of my once-again-crowded office. At first he was a little timid to have Dandy curled up on the floor, too, but the next time I looked, dog and boy were nose to nose as if consulting how best to paint the Sistine Chapel.
My throat caught. What were my boys doing today? Should I try calling them now? No, more likely to catch them around suppertime. I tried Precious again—and this time she answered.
“Hey. Whassup, Gabby.” Her voice was flat, tired. Didn’t sound like the Precious I knew, ready to jabber about whatever trivia had caught her fancy in the paper that day, or—even more likely—never missing an opportunity to rib die-hard football fans that her Carolina Panthers had “whupped” the Chicago Bears in the divisional play-offs last season.
I decided against unloading my melodrama up front. “That’s why I’m calling you, Precious. Haven’t seen you around since I got back from North Dakota.” I knew I’d told her I was taking my boys to see their grandmother—though she probably didn’t know I’d brought my increasingly confused mother back to Chicago with me. “Are you okay?”
A pause. “I ain’t gonna be frontin’ ya, Gabby. I’m all tore up.”
“Precious, what’s wrong?”
I heard a long sigh in my ear. “Sabrina got all mad ’cause I wouldn’t let her go to the prom with some baggy-pants gang banger. That girl up and went anyway—an’ I got so amped, I showed up at the hotel and dragged her out.” She snorted. “Wasn’t a good scene, know what I’m sayin’?”
My eyes were so bugged out, all I could do was make a strangled noise I hoped sounded like “uh-huh.”
“Anyway, she up an’ ran off, jus’ disappeared . . . Didn’t nobody there tell you this, Gabby? Estelle and Edesa and they Yada Yada Prayer Group cooked up an all-night prayer meetin’ a week or so ago, prayin’ God to protect my girl! You wasn’t there?”
I gulped. “Sorry, Precious. I must’ve still been out of town.” I didn’t say that when I got back a week and a half ago, things got “all tore up” at the Fairbanks household too. If someone at Manna House told me that Sabrina had run away, it definitely didn’t penetrate the fog in my brain.
“Yeah, well. Girl, I was goin’ outta my mind! Then I get a call from the state cops—they picked up Sabrina hitchhikin’ with some no-good hustler ’bout a hundred miles outside a’ Greenville. Still got a slew o’ cousins here. Jesus, help me! Don’ know what Sabrina was thinkin’—”
“Did you say ‘here’? Where are you, Precious?”
“Greenville. South Carolina. Where I grew up, girl! Now Sabrina sayin’ she don’ wanna come home with me, wants to stay with the cousins. So I gotta stay here awhile till we get things worked out. But . . .” Her voice trailed off.
I waited a beat or two. “But what, Precious?”
Another long sigh. “That ain’t the worst of it. She’s pregnant.”
I sat at my desk with my head in my hands for a long time. My heart ached for Precious. She was only thirty—which meant she had gotten pregnant at fourteen. I knew she wanted a different life for Sabrina. Look how far she’d come! Before the fire that had taken down the old Manna House building, Precious had been a resident here. Now look at her! She had a job waitressing—or did. No telling how long a restaurant would hold her job for a family emergency. She’d gotten her own apartment with a Section 8, worked the lunchroom at Sabrina’s high school, and volunteered here at Manna House. And she was so smart! No telling how far she could go given half a chance.
Now this.
I felt a tug on my arm. “Miz Gabby? Is my mama back yet? I gotta go real bad.”
“Oh, Sammy.” I’d almost forgotten about the little boy. “Come on, I’ll take you.”
I stood outside the bathroom until he was finished, then sent him back in to wash his hands while I picked out a copy of Curious George from the bookcase in the rec room, which was usually noisy this time of day—or had been before school was out. The other four shelter kids must be out with their moms. “Come on, kiddo.” We climbed the stairs to the multipurpose room on the main level. Good, my mother was awake, just sitting patiently on the couch, hands in her lap, watching people come and go.
“Mom, would you mind reading to Sammy? He’s waiting for his mother.”
She seemed delighted. But she crooked a finger at me. “Where’s Dandy?” she whispered. “Does he need to go out?”
Oh brother. The dog had been shut in my office all day. How long had it been since he’d been out? The headache threatened to send tentacles snaking over my head again. But I assured Mom I’d take care of Dandy, then hurried into the foyer and knocked on Mabel’s office door.
“Come in.”
I poked my head in. “Um, we’ve got a situation. Tanya never came back from her nine o’clock housing appointment. My mom’s reading to Sammy at the moment. But it’s already two thirty. Should we be worried?”