Chapter 18

“Mommy,” Tyson yelled when he got off the bus and saw Deborah standing at his bus stop, waiting on him. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” He ran into her arms and gave her the biggest hug ever.

Deborah let out a chuckle as she waved at Charles, who was at the bus stop, waiting for CJ and Tyson to get off. She’d already thanked Charles for caring for Tyson last night.

Deborah looked at Tyson. “Of course I’m alive, silly boy.” She bent over and kissed him on the forehead.

He looked up at her and smiled. Deborah smiled back, but within seconds she noticed the wide, huge grin on her son’s face vanish, as if he’d seen a ghost.

“What is it, baby?” Deborah asked, his emotions rubbing off on her. “What’s wrong?”

“Where’s Daddy? Did he have to go to jail for hurting you?”

Deborah exhaled. “No, Tyson. Daddy didn’t go to jail, and Daddy didn’t hurt me.”

“Yes he did!” Tyson exclaimed. “He pushed you. You fell and bleeded. I saw it. Daddy tried to kill you!”

A couple of the children who rode the bus with Tyson and were heading to their own domiciles turned to look back at them and see what all the commotion was about. Deborah looked at the children, smiled, and nodded, hoping they took that as a sign that everything was okay and would move along.

“My mom said his dad beats them,” Deborah heard one of the older elementary kids say to another child as they walked away from her and Tyson. “Said the police were there last night and everything, and that the property value, or something like that, is going to go down if we have hoodlums for neighbors.”

If things were like they used to be when Deborah was coming up, she’d get that kid straight, take him to his doorstep by his ear, and get his mother straight too. But she’d already had the people called on her before when it came to her own son. And she’d already gone to jail for a quarrel with her own husband. They’d probably put her under the jail if she dealt with someone who wasn’t even kinfolk. So instead, she focused on calming Tyson down.

“Let’s take a walk to the park real quick, okay?” Deborah said to Tyson.

Even though she and Lynox had decided they would have a talk together with Tyson about everything that was going on, right now Tyson saw Lynox as the bad guy. Deborah could tell by the fear in his voice and the look in his eyes when he asked if Lynox was home. She never wanted Tyson to be afraid to walk into his own home. She felt that if she told him that Lynox was in fact at the house without first having a one-on-one with him, it might be harmful to him.

At the idea of a quick trip to the neighborhood park, Tyson’s eyes lit up. Just that fast he forgot all about his proverbial evil stepfather. “Ooh, yay! The park.” Tyson took off running.

“No, no. Wait up,” Deborah said. “We’re going to walk to the park.” Even though the path to the park was right up the next block, Deborah wanted to take advantage of all the time they spent getting to the park.

“Oh, Mom.” Tyson stopped, turned around, and frowned. “It’s right there.” He pointed. “You’ll see if a stranger gets me.”

“Boy, just get back here and walk with me.”

Tyson stomped the entire few steps back to Deborah with his shoulders slumped.

“You better straighten up, or there won’t be no park.” Deborah gave Tyson a stern look. The fact that she was mortified about what he’d been exposed to last night didn’t take away from the fact that he needed to act like he had some sense. Still, Deborah lightened the mood. “So how was school today?”

“Not good. I was sad a lot,” Tyson replied.

“Why?” Deborah asked, even though she could have bet the farm on her idea about why he’d been sad.

“Because you were bleeding and dying and stuff. And Daddy’s mean.”

“Yes, I was bleeding, but like I said before, I’m not dead. I wasn’t dying,” Deborah said. “And, honey, you have a very kind, loving father who would do anything in the world for you. He’s not mean.”

“Uh-uh. He is. He was mean that time in the basement, and he was mean last night. He makes you sad. I see your face, and it looks like mine when you made me sad.”

“When?” Deborah asked, wondering how the focus of this conversation had shifted to her.

“When you used to be mean too. Remember?”

Deborah remembered, all right. That was back when she had first realized that she needed some help when it came to her anger and her snapping off. Poor Tyson had had to bear the brunt of her mess. Now there was Lynox, and that had led to Deborah having to have this conversation in the first place. If only she’d kept up with her meds, the counseling, or something, all this could have been prevented. If only she had been a better Christian and had kept up with God. If she was stronger in the Lord, she bet she wouldn’t be dealing with this situation right now. Seemed like things had gotten worse. Once upon a time Deborah had considered herself a Sunday only Christian, now Sundays were even too much for her.

“Mommy does remember when she used to be mean to you,” Deborah admitted. “And lately, Mommy hasn’t been so nice.”

“Yes, you have. You let me eat ice cream for dinner the other day,” Tyson reminded her as they turned off the street they’d been walking on and headed up the trail to the park.

Deborah smiled. She’d let Tyson eat ice cream for dinner that evening because she’d felt so awful for shooing him away all day. There was a manuscript that she had been editing, and she had told herself that she would get at least twenty-five pages done a day until it was complete. She had been on the cusp of meeting her goal for the day when Tyson started coming down to her home office what seemed like every five minutes.

“Mommy?” he’d said the first time.

“Yes, Tyson?” Deborah had replied, not taking her eyes off the computer screen.

“Can I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Just a second, Tyson. Go on upstairs, and I’ll be up.”

When she told him she’d be just a second, he took it literally, as less than a minute later the little tyke was right back down at her desk again.

“Mommy, I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and don’t tell me to wait a minute. I’m hungry. And some water with it too.” Tyson wasn’t a milk drinker. If he couldn’t get juice or a soda, he’d take water over milk any day.

“Hold on, Tyson. I’ll be up. Mommy has work she has to get done, so you have to be patient.”

He sighed, creating a huge gust of wind, slumped his shoulders, and walked away with his head down.

“And lift that big head up so you can see where you’re going.”

He sucked his teeth and stomped hard up the steps.

“Boys don’t suck their teeth, and stop stomping,” Deborah told him.

The door slammed closed as she got to her final few words. If she hadn’t been so entrenched in her work, she probably would have jumped up from her seat and yoked him up. She’d contemplated it as her blood boiled over this sign of disrespect, which, she knew, needed to be nipped in the bud. Instead, she continued editing away.

She had two more paragraphs to go, and her creativity was at its peak. Her adrenaline was pumping, and then the door opened again. She didn’t hear Tyson stomping down the steps. She figured that maybe he’d just opened the door to feel her out, and she thought that he was waiting up there for the moment when she did decide to get up. Whatever it was that was keeping him at the top of the steps instead of at the foot, she took as a blessing.

Right when Deborah reached her last paragraph, she realized that some things were too good to be true. At that moment Tyson, who had tiptoed down the steps without her hearing him, popped up beside her desk.

“Mom?”

“What?” Deborah yelled. His little voice had set her off. Why was he being so hardheaded? All he had to do was sit upstairs in the television room and watch cartoons. She had turned on his favorite show and had even left him her iPad to play with. When she had asked him if he wanted something to eat before she retreated back down to her work space, where she’d been all day—except when she had to feed the baby and tend to him—why hadn’t he said something then and let her fix him something? Why? Why? Why?

She’d been up and down those stairs all day, shifting from working on her laptop to working on her PC. When she had to be in the same room with the baby, she was on her laptop. When he was in his swing, she worked on her laptop. But once he dozed off, she’d go do work that she preferred doing on her PC. She kept a play gym down in the home office area, so sometimes she would even work with the baby right next to her there.

This day in particular had been so overwhelming. It seemed like whenever Deborah had a deadline, all these mini projects would pop up and take time away from the main one she wanted to focus on. So even though at one point in the week she might find herself a day ahead of schedule, sure enough issues and distractions would pop up, and she would fall her two days behind.

One time recently her mother had needed her to accompany her to the repair shop to drop her car off. Another time Lynox had asked her to read over real quick something he was working on. A couple of times it had been a field trip or a class party she’d volunteered for a long time ago, and those obligations had crept up on her during the busiest workweeks possible. But today it was Tyson wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The sound of his voice, which was usually a melody to her ears, as he sang the anthem of precious motherhood, was like nails down a chalkboard today.

“What, Tyson?” she yelled at the top of her lungs again. “Don’t you see me working? Didn’t I tell you that I would come up when I was finished?”

“Yes, but I just wanted—” Tyson continuously tried to get a word in edgewise during Deborah’s rant, but he couldn’t. She’d popped her hood, and all kinds of smoke was coming out of the engine.

“You have to learn to be patient,” Deborah continued. “When somebody tells you to wait a minute, you have to go sit your butt down somewhere and wait a minute. You understand me? Now, get on upstairs and wait, like I told you to do in the first place.”

A broken Tyson walked away, beat down and shattered. Deborah immediately felt so bad. She wanted to drop everything and go after him, but what was one more paragraph? To make up for it, she later told Tyson he could have whatever he wanted for dinner. She then apologized to him over dinner, which was a bowl of ice cream. After Deborah apologized, they talked and laughed while he finished up.

That event was like a double-edged sword. Tyson remembered the experience of having dessert for dinner. But, unfortunately, he also remembered the reason why he’d been given the special treat—because Mommy was being mean. She wondered which side of the sword he’d recall when telling his own kids tales about his childhood with their grandma. Deborah cringed at the possibility of it being the latter.

But right now the conversation she had to have with her son wasn’t about her being mean, but about trying to convince him that Lynox was not. It was safe to say, though, that in these past few months, Deborah had been pushing Lynox emotionally. Ironically, it was Lynox pushing her physically that she had to explain to Tyson.

“Baby, let’s go to the swings. I’ll push you,” Deborah said once she got a good look at all the playground equipment at the park. This time when Tyson ran off, she didn’t stop him, since his final destination was clearly in view.

“I want to go high, until my stomach laughs,” Tyson said, hopping on a vacant swing. Actually, all the swings were vacant. Since the kids had just gotten out of school, most of them were home, eating after-school snacks and doing homework.

“High, it is,” Deborah said as she stepped behind Tyson and began pushing him. After four pushes, he was already screaming that this was high enough. Deborah giggled and then went and sat on the swing next to him. “Tyson, you know your father loves you, right?” she asked him.

“Yes, but he’s still been acting mean,” he said as he pumped his feet to make himself go higher on his own. He had yet to figure out the rhythm needed to do so, so he wasn’t going any higher.

“He’s not mean. He’s never yelled at you. He’s never hit you or anything like that, right?”

“No,” Tyson said. “But he was mean to you. He made you bleed and stuff. I was scared. I was crying. When you hurt other people, you are mean.”

“That can be true,” Deborah said, “if you hurt them on purpose.”

Tyson looked over at his mother. “Did Daddy hurt you on purpose?”

“No. That’s the thing I’m trying to explain,” Deborah said. “Your father loves me. He loves all of us. He would never do anything to hurt us on purpose. Actually, it was Mommy who was doing some mean things to Daddy. I was really, really, really upset. Daddy was trying to calm me down, and he accidentally pushed me while he was doing it.”

“But the police had him, not you. Police get the bad guy.”

Deborah sighed. “Son, the police did get me. They let me go get my head fixed first, though.”

“Oh,” Tyson said as his swinging slowed down.

Deborah could tell he was a little confused. If the police took her, then why was she sitting there with him? Even though Deborah could see all the questions swirling around in her son’s little head, she decided she’d answer them later. The day would come when she’d have to tell her son she’d been in jail. She didn’t want to dump it all on him at once. One thing at a time, and right now she had to get his father back on his good side. After all, if anything was ever to happen to her, Lynox was all he’d have besides her mother. But even she was getting up there in age. And with that court date still pending, something really could happen to Deborah, something that could make it so that it was just Tyson, Lynox, and Tatum.

“Mommy isn’t mad at Daddy for the accident, and you shouldn’t be, either,” Deborah said.

“So you’re not going to be mad and fight him?” Tyson said. He stopped the swing himself with his feet.

“No, I’m not going to fight Daddy,” Deborah said, shocked he’d even ask her something like that. He’d never witnessed her getting physical with Lynox.

“Well, you were fighting him last night. I heard you fighting him.”

Deborah was horrified. Her heart just about stopped beating. There was no way Tyson could have seen her swinging at Lynox. Hadn’t the door been closed? Deborah couldn’t remember. She had to figure out how to ask Tyson what all he’d seen without leading him with her line of questioning.

“Are you sure you saw us fighting?” Deborah said.

“Yep.” Tyson hopped off the swing. “I’m going to go get on the slide now.” He ran over to the slide, leaving Deborah with a sick feeling in her stomach.

Deborah gathered her bearings after being knocked out by Tyson’s words and then went over to the sliding board.

“Weee,” Tyson said as he came breezing down the slide. “That was fun, Mommy. Can I do it again?” He jumped up and down.

“Sure, baby.” Deborah watched as Tyson went to climb up the steps again. “So, Tyson, tell Mommy what you saw as far as the fight goes.”

“I heard it. I heard you yelling at Daddy. You guys were fighting with your words.”

Deborah felt some relief as Tyson reached the top of the slide and came floating back down again. Thank God he hadn’t seen her wind milling Lynox, not that it was much better that he’d heard her viciously attacking him verbally.

“Yes, Mommy was fighting Daddy with her words,” Deborah confirmed.

“And that’s why I thought he hurt you with his hands, because you hurt him with your mouth.”

Deborah shook her head. “No, that’s not what happened, but just so you know, even if someone does hurt you with their words, it’s never, ever okay to hurt them with your hands. Do you understand?”

“Yep.” He nodded. “One more time on the slide.” He ran to go down the slide again before Deborah even gave him the okay.

“This is the last time, Ty. Then we have to go home.”

“Okay,” he agreed, without putting up a fight. He knew better.

As promised, Deborah let Tyson do the slide one last time before they headed out of the park.

“That was fun,” Tyson said. “Can we do it again tomorrow?”

“We’ll see,” Deborah said.

They were exiting the park when Deborah decided, for good measure, to make sure that her conversation with Tyson had cleared up things. There was already a wedge in her and Lynox’s relationship. She didn’t want there to be one between Tyson and Lynox.

“So, I want to tell you again that Daddy isn’t mean. He didn’t hurt Mommy, so you don’t have to be afraid or worried. Everything was an accident, and we’re going to be careful so that it never happens again, okay?”

“Okay,” Tyson said. “I’ll tell my teacher, ‘Never mind,’ tomorrow, when I go to school.”

Deborah stopped in her tracks. She had to; her legs had just about given out on her. She balanced herself with the little bit of strength she had. Her mouth dried up. It was a toss between whether she had sand in her mouth or peanut butter. Or both. No saliva to swallow, to lubricate her throat, to keep her from choking on her words if she dared to speak. It was as if something had her mouth jammed shut, and she couldn’t speak if she wanted to.

Why in the world would Tyson have to tell his teacher, “Never mind”? Never mind about what? Lord, what had he told her that he would have to recant?

“Ty . . . Tyson.” Deborah forced out the words, at the same time forcing her feet to step one in front of the other. It was a very hard and slow process. “Just what do you have to tell your teacher, ‘Never mind,’ about?” Deborah held her breath.

“About you and Daddy fighting and him hurting you, the police, and everything.”

A gasp erupted out of Deborah’s mouth. It was so loud that Tyson turned to look at his mother.

“You okay, Mommy? Did the swing hurt your belly?” Tyson walked back and put his hand on his mother’s abdomen. “You look like you are going to throw up, like CJ did that day Mr. Charles made him eat spinach. Mr. Charles told him he would like the creamy spinach, but CJ still threw up. Mr. Charles said he wished he’d listened when he had to clean it up.”

Usually, Deborah liked Tyson’s cute little stories, but now every word he said went over her head. It was his earlier words that had landed smack-dab in her face. “Tyson, you told your teacher about last night? Why?” Deborah was oblivious to the fact that she’d raised her voice, enough to make Tyson draw back.

“I was sad. She asked what was wrong.” Tyson began backpedaling toward their home.

“But you shouldn’t have told her that. It was family business. You don’t discuss what goes on in our house with other people.”

“I’m sorry,” Tyson said. “But I didn’t want to lie. At first, I was going to tell her nothing was wrong, but something was wrong, so that would have been a lie.”

Noticing how afraid Tyson was starting to look, she changed her demeanor. She didn’t want to scare him. She wanted to get to the bottom of what he’d told his teacher and then figure out how to undo it.

“You’re right, Tyson. You shouldn’t lie, but it’s okay to tell people you don’t want to talk about things, especially things that go on in our home.”

“I didn’t know,” Tyson said sadly. “You and Daddy said I could always tell you anything. You said I can talk to Pastor and tell adults when something is wrong. I thought my teacher was a grown-up.” He put his head down, turned, and began walking home as if he’d just witnessed his dog get run over by a car.

“Tyson, honey, wait a minute.” Tyson stopped, and Deborah caught up with him. “Mommy didn’t mean to make you sad or make you feel like you did something wrong, okay?”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“I do want you to be able to tell Daddy and me and adults anything,” Deborah said, really wanting to add the word almost in front of the word anything. But now was not the time to be a hypocrite. Either she wanted Tyson to have open lines of communication or she didn’t. She never wanted him to feel as though his voice didn’t matter and couldn’t be heard. She wished his teacher hadn’t heard his voice on this particular matter. “So it’s okay that you talked to your teacher, and you don’t have to tell her, ‘Never mind.’”

The last thing Deborah wanted was for him to try to correct the story he’d told the teacher. She could hear him now. My mommy said . . . The teacher would for sure think Deborah had put him up to recanting the story in order to cover up the truth, not knowing that the truth wasn’t exactly what Tyson had relayed.

“Okay,” Tyson said, his spirits lifting somewhat.

“Got any homework?”

“I have words to learn and sounds to make in a minute, Mrs. Riker said.”

“Okay. I’ll help you.”

“Yeah. Because you’re good at words,” Tyson said. “You and Daddy, right?”

“Yep, me and Daddy.”

Deborah watched as Tyson went into the house before her. She grabbed the screen door real quick before it slammed in her face. She made a mental note that she’d have to talk to Lynox about teaching him to hold the door open for a lady. For now, though, they had bigger fish to fry, and she was none the wiser that it was the cook who was about to get burned by the hot grease.