You’d been back to sleep for fifteen minutes or so when a knock came at the front door. It was too soon for it to be her. Thinking maybe it was Trent, I hurried over and opened it. The rush of cold air that met me was nothing compared to the chill I felt looking into the eyes of the police officer standing there with his hand resting on the handle of a holstered pistol.
“Can I help you?” I rubbed my arms, wishing I’d looked before opening.
“Mrs. Taylor?” His face was still round from youth.
My eyes moved from the metal badge pinned above one pocket of his blue shirt to the name tag pinned above the other. It read: J. E. Harrison. “Yes.”
“Mrs. Trent Taylor?” White puffed from his mouth as he spoke.
I nodded.
“May we come in, ma’am? We have a few questions we need to ask you.”
“We?” I scanned the porch and yard looking for someone else.
He turned around and waved in another officer sitting in the patrol car—a woman. At his prompting, she stepped out, closed the door, and tramped up the sidewalk. She was barely five feet tall, but there was a hardness about her that made me think she could probably put a whooping on most men.
I was thinking they’d finally heard about Trent’s relationship with Norma. Hanging my head, I backed away from the entrance and let them in. The man’s gaze scanned the living room, then the hallway, while the woman’s was set on sizing me up.
“You mind if we have a seat?” she asked.
I tucked my hair behind my ear and motioned toward the couch. “I have a sleeping baby in the next room, so we’ll need to keep it down.”
“I understand,” the man said, taking a seat in the wingback chair, diagonal from the sectional. “Congratulations, by the way. We tried to give you a few days. Wish we could give you more, but—”
The woman sat on the opposite end of the couch from me. “But we have an assault to investigate.”
Assault, not murder. I breathed a sigh of relief. This had to be about Fatimah, not Norma.
Both officers removed their hats and rested them on their thighs at the same time, as though they’d been taught the move in police academy. The woman’s dark hair lay plastered against her head in a severe bun. “Did you witness the assault by your husband of Fatimah Wek and her infant daughter?”
I straightened a stack of Ladies’ Home Journals resting on the end table. “I don’t know that I’d call it an assault.”
They continued to stare.
“I was in labor, and we were in a rush to get to the hospital. I think he meant to nudge me to hurry, but I tripped and fell into Fatimah, knocking her down the stairs.”
If I’d have blinked, I would have missed the look that passed between them. “What’s your relationship to the alleged victim?” the man asked.
“She’s my friend.” Was my friend. She’d never forgive me for this, but even so, I couldn’t let Trent rot in jail when he hadn’t really meant to hurt her.
The woman spoke next. “Are you and the suspect married or separated?”
The question gave me pause. “Married. I’m just staying here until he comes home.” So that was it. The words entered the universe, telling me what I guess I already knew. I wasn’t leaving him after all, as if there was really any question.
The woman put her foot out, revealing a black dress sock with tiny balls of pink lint stuck to one side. “Let me be blunt, ma’am. Mrs. Wek was hysterical when she spoke to us. Very, um . . .” she looked to the male officer to help her finish the sentence.
“Emotional,” he offered. “With the heavy accent it was difficult to understand her, but from what we could make out, Mr. Taylor allegedly pushed her down a flight of stairs with a baby in her arms. Does that sound about right?”
I’d already told them it was an accident. Maybe they were trying to force me to repeat my story, hoping to catch me in a lie. They were always doing that in those police shows Trent liked to watch. “It was an accident, like I said. And it wasn’t a flight of stairs; it was four or five. She might have thought he meant it, but he didn’t. She just misinterpreted the situation. My husband had a little too much to drink, and with me in labor, it was just hectic.”
The man ran a tongue over his teeth, making a bulge move under his closed mouth. “We have prior complaints. From you, I believe. Two domestic violence calls over the last five years, in fact.”
My cheeks caught fire when I realized they had me. “I didn’t press charges.”
The woman leaned forward. “Why not, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I did mind her asking, but didn’t think it would go over too well if I said so. I looked back at the hallway, hoping I’d heard you stir. “We fight crazy sometimes, you know? He’s very passionate, and I guess so am I. We just fuss now and then. He breaks a few things, you know, to let off steam, but then it’s over.”
The man pointed to my wrist. “You want to tell me about that bruise?”
Instinctively, my other hand wrapped around my wrist to hide it. “I fell off my bike.” Why did I say bike? How clichéd could I get? I didn’t even own a bike. I prayed he wouldn’t ask to see it.
Suspicion glinted in his eyes. “You were riding a bike nine months pregnant?”
I looked at the floor, chiding myself for being so stupid. “That’s right.”
“So your official statement is that what happened the other night was not assault but an accident? I just want to make absolutely sure that’s really your story.”
I swallowed and nodded.
He shook his head at the woman cop as if he had seen it a million times.
She squinted at me. “So your friend is lying?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Not lying. Just mistaken.”
The man pinched the bridge of his nose. “What do you think, Lisa?”
“You know what I think.”
They both stood and put their hats back on. The woman pulled a card out of her front pocket and handed it to me. “This is my number, just in case you decide it wasn’t an accident after all.” She reached into her other pocket and pulled out another card, looked down at it, then tried to hand that one to me too. “And this is a number for the women’s shelter. They take babies, too.”
I made no move for it.
She hesitated, then set it on the windowsill.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” the man said.
The woman cop stopped to look at the tiny blue blanket draped over the arm of the chair. “Take care of that baby.” There was a warning implied in her tone. “Your husband will be out soon. If he puts another hand on you, call us.”
I huffed. “He didn’t—”
She put her hand up as if to say, “Save it.”
THIRTY-THREE
THE SMELL of fried chicken and biscuits filled the air, but food was the last thing on my mind.
Callie Mae slipped off the glasses she seldom wore and let them hang from a thin chain around her neck as she watched me. “I heard nursing mothers were ravenous. So why aren’t you?”
I pulled a piece of breaded skin off and set it on my napkin. “I’m just not.”
She scooped up a forkful of coleslaw. “What’s the matter?”
Leaning my elbow on the table, I laid my head in my hand and continued picking at the chicken. “I don’t know.”
She held her painted fingertips in front of her lips to hide her full mouth. “You’re probably just exhausted. One of the things I want to ask God when I get to heaven is why parents get the least amount of sleep when they need it the most. And what’s up with breast milk not coming in for a week, anyway?”
Although I knew she was trying to cheer me up, I couldn’t muster anything but a halfhearted shrug. The guilt of talking to the police was weighing on me heavily. “I’ve got a few questions for him myself.”
She took a bite of biscuit, licking a crumb from her lip. “Are you remembering to sleep when the baby does? Exhaustion will get you every—”
“Sleep isn’t the problem,” I said.
“No?” She eyed me a moment. “Oh, I’ll bet you have those baby blues. That’s normal. I had a terrible case of those with Sara.” A shadow passed over her and she shook her head as if to throw off the memory.
I wondered then if she ever blamed herself for her daughter’s death. If she had done this or that, if maybe Sara would have made different choices. My own mother probably wondered the same thing about me. I wished I could tell Callie Mae it wasn’t her fault. No one can make a grown person’s choices for them. But I guess that’s easy for me to say with you all tucked away safe in your bed, isn’t it, Manny? I’ll probably change my tune if you ever find yourself on the ugly end of a bully’s fist. God save that child from me if you do.
My being with Trent had nothing to do with Mama, though. Or did it? She had rolled her eyes when Daddy would rant and rave, but she never called him out on it. If she had, would that have made a difference? I didn’t think so. I’d just picked a guy with problems, that was all. She rolled the dice and got Daddy. Fatimah rolled the dice and got Edgard. And I rolled them and got snake eyes. I’d been too young to be gambling to begin with.
“I’m not depressed,” I finally said.
“What then? Did Trent call?”
I tore off a piece of biscuit I had no intention of eating. “No, but he will.”
She took another bite of slaw. “You’re probably right, but hopefully not for a while. He could wind up serving a few months, you know.”
I laid my napkin on top of my barely touched food and pushed the plate away. “He’ll be out tonight.”
She choked down her mouthful. “How do you know that?”
Tucking in my lips, I looked everywhere but at her.
She gave me a hard look. “Penny? What do you know?”
“They were here,” I whispered.
“Who were here?”
“The police.” Shame filled me. She wasn’t going to forgive me any more than Fatimah would. I lost my job; now I was going to lose my friends. My life was going to go back to the same miserable existence it had been before I’d met them. Except I wasn’t just going to have Trent to worry about. I had you to look after now.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have told the police the whole truth—that Trent hadn’t intended to hurt Fatimah, but he had intended on hurting me. Then what? I’d keep my friends but lose my husband and force you to grow up without a father? Why should you have to pay for my bad choices? You shouldn’t, I told myself. “They asked if I saw what happened the other night.”
She closed her eyes like she knew what was coming. “And?”
“And I told them he didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Her eyes flashed open. “You didn’t.”
“It’s the truth,” I said, swallowing back the tears that wanted to form.
“It’s not the whole truth, though, is it?” Her eyes bored holes through me.
“What do you mean?” It was a stupid question. We both knew what she meant.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“He didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Did you tell them that? Did you tell them that he had actually meant to hurt you?”
I remained silent, watching the bubbles rising in my glass of Sprite and wishing I could float away with them.
“No, of course you didn’t. So they’re releasing him, and you’re going right back home, aren’t you?”
“No,” I surprised myself by saying. “No, I’d like to stay with you awhile and let him think about things. If you’ll have me, that is.” What I really was thinking is that it would do him good to stew for a night or two. Maybe that would make him miss me enough to start treating me a little better. It’s funny how I understood that Callie Mae wouldn’t have been able to control her daughter’s life, and Mama couldn’t have stopped me from marrying Trent, but somehow I didn’t get that I couldn’t manipulate your father into changing. That dangling carrot would always be out of reach, but that didn’t stop me from running after it.
Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Can I?”
“Really?” she repeated.
I nodded. “I need to think things through, and so does he.”
She picked up her knife and sliced a pat off the butter. “Of course you can stay here. I wouldn’t have extended the invitation if I didn’t mean it. Have you told him?”
I shook my head.
She spread the butter over half the biscuit, then looked at me. “He’s going to get angry. They always get angry.”
I gave a half nod as something that felt an awful lot like cement dropped into the pit of my stomach. “I imagine he will.”
“You can get a restraining order.”
“Only if he tries to hurt me agai—” I stopped myself just in time, but she knew very well what I was about to say. The only one I seemed to be fooling those days was myself. “They won’t give it to me without proof.”
She turned to look out the kitchen window. “Crazy justice system.”
I leaned my head against the back of the chair. “I just don’t know what’s best. I can’t think straight.”
She squeezed my hand. “I know how that feels. You’ve got so much on your plate right now. Maybe that’s why we came into each other’s lives when we did. Sometimes we need to borrow a brain when ours gets all jumbled. When Sara died, I felt like someone had replaced my brain with spaghetti. I couldn’t make a single decision for myself. Poor Fatimah. I leaned on her so much. It must have gotten wearisome. I was like a child in so many ways.”
Knowing what I did of Callie Mae, I couldn’t imagine a time when she didn’t have all the answers. I’d never met anyone who had her stuff together as well as she did. Where did that kind of strength come from, I wondered. Were certain people just born with it? Maybe the adage of what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger was true after all. Maybe at the end of all this, I’d find some of that strength. But I didn’t see how.
I’d never been on my own. I went right from my daddy’s arms to Trent’s. Some people just weren’t meant to stand on their own, or so I thought. I believed back then I was one of those people. I could lean on Callie Mae for a while, but sooner or later she’d get sick of me like Trent did. And unlike him, she was under no obligation to take care of me. At least in his own dysfunctional way, Trent needed me. Callie Mae needed no one.
She sighed. “But slowly that feeling passed, and one by one my brain cells started functioning again, and I found my feet. You’ll find your feet too, Penny. You’ll see. Things are going to come into focus if you give yourself a little time and distance from him. Life’s going to be okay again. I promise.”
I sipped my soda, wishing I could tell her she was wrong. Nothing would ever be right again if I left Trent. “Callie?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Fatimah’s going to be mad at me, isn’t she?”
Her eyes filled with sympathy. “Yes.”
“Are you?” I hated feeling so vulnerable, but there was no hiding it.
“Disappointed. Not mad.”
I nodded. “He really didn’t mean to hurt her.”
She turned to stare out the kitchen window. She probably couldn’t stand to look at me anymore. “I know what he meant to do. The police ought to too.”
They do, I thought. They know.
THIRTY-FOUR
I FIGURED Trent would come calling that night, and I was right. Callie Mae answered through the chain lock, so we could see only an inch or two of his face. I sat in a chair, with my back to the door, trying to get you to nurse. You were crying so hard, frustrated by my lack of milk, I suppose. You just wouldn’t calm down enough to latch on.
“She’s my wife,” he said. “I have a right to see her.”
My stomach flip-flopped. Would he kick the door down to get to me?
The louder his voice grew, the softer Callie Mae’s became. “Your wife or not, she has a right to
tell you she doesn’t want to see you.”
It wasn’t true, though, Manny. I did want to see him. I missed him so badly it made my heart ache, but I didn’t have the courage to tell Callie Mae that to her face.
“What about my son? I haven’t even met my own son. I should at least be able to see him.”
“You should have thought about that before shoving—”
“It was an accident,” he pleaded. “Penny! Penny, are you in there? Tell her it was an accident. Let me see my son. Please, baby!”
“He’s fine,” I called. “You’ll see him soon. I promise.”
Callie Mae turned around and shot me a frigid look, then turned back toward the cracked door. “We’ll arrange visitations in a few days, after you’ve calmed down.”
“One Cent, please. Let me meet my son, for crying out loud. He’s my son. I’m sorry about all of this. You know I didn’t mean to hurt your friend. You don’t know how worried I’ve been about you. I love you, Penny. She don’t know how it is for us. Let me just see him, please?”
Teardrops rolled down my cheeks onto the top your head. I wanted to run to him. To show him you had his nose. That you were beautiful and perfect . . . and that I forgave him.
“Your wife almost died,” Callie Mae said coldly. “She almost bled to death while you were stumbling around drunk. You don’t need to see them right now, and they don’t need to see you. What everyone needs is for you to get help.”
“You don’t own her,” he hissed. “She’s my wife, not yours, you old bat.”
Callie Mae’s voice dropped an octave, and she spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear her just a few feet away. “I don’t own her, Trent. But believe it or not, neither do you. Being a husband isn’t the same thing as being a slave owner.”
“Unlatch this door and say that to my face.”
“This conversation’s over.” With that, she slammed the door.