As the two girls walked back to the heart of Kensington, Maggie turned to Juju with a burning question. “Seth said Thelma has to take needles. Is she a drug addict?”
“Yeah, the bitch is a major junky. She’ll shoot anything into her arms that she can melt down. I avoid her as much as possible when I’m in the house. She’s as crazy as they come,” Juju explained.
“Oh God, Juju. How am I ever going to help Seth? I can’t even get myself out of my own mess,” she said, defeated.
“Hey, what’s with all the self-pity? Pull yourself together, or you’ll never be able to help Seth. I don’t know what the answer is right now, but I’ll look out for him when I’m over Rock’s house, and we’ll see him every morning on his way to school. For now, that’s what you got. It’s better than what you had before, right?” Juju asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Maggie responded.
“You guess? Well, you need to do better than that. This is something. It’s a start. We’ll figure it out together,” Juju said and put her arm over Maggie’s shoulder.
Maggie was grateful that Juju had found her on that bitterly cold night. She didn’t feel alone any longer, and now, Juju was helping her with Seth. She clung to the words Juju had just spoken: We’ll figure it out together. Maggie realized that her friend was right…things were getting better.
As the months passed and summer drew nearer, Maggie began to worry more about Seth. Once school let out, she wouldn’t have a way to see him. Thelma neglected and abused the poor little soul. He had told Maggie about all of the nights that he went to bed without dinner as he gobbled down jelly doughnuts like a savage on the mornings she met him. He also cried about the slaps and punches Thelma rained upon him when she couldn’t find “any of that white stuff for her needles.”
Juju was Maggie’s eyes inside Rock and Thelma’s house. Maggie had come to learn that Seth was never allowed to go outside to play, so he had no friends. His easiest times were when Thelma was so high that she forgot he existed. On those nights, he could sneak into the kitchen after Rock left and make himself a mustard sandwich or fill a napkin with dry cereal. His worst times were when Thelma was waiting for more dope to be delivered. On those days, she would scream at him as soon as he got home from school. Seth’s silence during her tirades infuriated her more, but when he found his voice to answer her irrational questions, he’d be batted around and told he was disrespectful. Over time, he’d learned that neither silence nor speaking saved him from her cruelty.
As the warmer weather approached and the days got longer, more undesirable people filled the streets of Kensington. This meant that Juju went to Rock’s house more often to pick up drugs. One warm day in mid-June, two days after school let out, Juju was at Rock’s house. As she moved through the house, she noticed that Seth wasn’t anywhere in sight. She wondered if he was upstairs in one of the bedrooms and tried to find a reason to go up, but she didn’t want to make Rock suspicious.
Juju’s anxiety grew as the time drew closer for her to leave the house; she lingered, waiting for Seth to show up. As she walked down the front steps, she heard a commotion coming from the back of the house. Kids were screaming and laughing, but their laughter made the little hairs on her arms stand up. She slowly made her way to the back of the house like a ninja. Then she saw that five rowdy children had gathered. They were teasing and taunting someone, and as Juju turned the corner, there was Seth with a chain fastened around his ankle, just like a family pet.
Juju turned to the pack of kids, her teeth exposed like a rabid dog’s. She seethed with anger. “If I ever catch you little motherfuckers teasing him again, I will rip your hearts out with my bare hands. Now, get the fuck outta here before I kill all of you!”
Juju got on her hands and knees and crawled over to Seth. “What happened?”
“Thelma said she wanted me to be outside since the weather is warm. But then when I got out here, she put this on my ankle. All the kids were watching, and then they started to laugh. Thelma told them they could look at me, but they can’t play with me ’cause I’m an animal that doesn’t have no manners,” he said, sobbing.
“Well, Thelma’s a no-good motherfucker who deserves—” Juju stopped herself in midsentence, remembering that she was talking to a very damaged seven-year-old boy. “Thelma is wrong, and she doesn’t know anything about you. You are a sweet person, and she’s just stupid. Nothing she says matters. You have to remember that. Maggie and me, we need you to be strong. Remember, all for one and one for all, buddy,” she said, trying to give him hope.
Seth sat on the grass, his shoulders slouched, and his arms folded over his chest. He nodded without any enthusiasm. Juju looked into his lifeless eyes, and then she took in the dirty face and the hair so long and greasy that the kids said he looked like a girl. His clothes were a size too small, and his fingernails had dirt packed under them. He was a pathetic sight. Seth’s tears ran through the grime on his face, leaving streaks of pink skin. Juju reached out and gave him a tight squeeze. “I have to run. Hang in there,” she told him.
As Juju walked back to town, she was blazing with anger and fought the instinct to go into a violent rage on whomever she laid eyes. She wondered what it would take for Rock to give the boy up. She’d known Rock for a long time, and he wasn’t one to do anything that would upset his beloved, belligerent, obnoxious beast of a wife, Thelma.
Seth’s dull, flat, blue eyes were stuck in her mind, and the rumble of his belly rang in her ears. She walked faster as her desire to help him overpowered any discipline she had acquired over her anger. There has to be a way to help him, she thought.
A few blocks later, Juju saw Maggie leaning into a man’s car. She waited on the sidewalk until Maggie approached. “I just saw Seth,” she said, her eyes narrowing and her hands balled into tight fists.
Maggie’s lungs froze in mid-breath, terror mounting about what Juju was going to tell her. “What’s happened? Is he OK?”
“He is for now, but he ain’t gonna be forever. We need to think of something soon. That crazy-ass, drug-sucking dunce, Thelma, is gonna fuck him up for the rest of his life,” Juju said, her anger finally boiling over. She picked up an empty beer bottle and threw it against a building. The bottle shattered into a million pieces, making a loud noise that drew the attention of everyone within hearing distance.
“Bitch!” Armando screamed, pointing at Maggie. “Get your ass back to work!”
The two girls looked in his direction. “I gotta go,” Maggie said. “I won’t be any good to Seth if I get on Armando’s bad side. I’ll swing by your apartment in the morning.”
“Yeah, in the morning,” Juju mumbled, as she walked away.
Maggie turned back to Armando. “Sorry,” she yelled and strutted toward a gray-haired man who was eyeing her with lust.
“Hey, baby,” Maggie purred, “you need a date?”