Seven #2
“Mr. Parker!” Mr. Michaels yelled—terrified, I could tell—as he came hurrying down the hall to us.
“No! This is bullshit! I—”
“Step back,” I told him, my voice cold and hard. “I’m feeling threatened, Mr. Parker, and I don’t like it. I don’t want you within a hundred feet of either of my kids. So, step … back.”
His eyes locked on mine.
He glared, but really, compared to others I’d known, the man was not scary at all. A few days ago, a man had pointed a gun at me; a man without one was not about to inspire any terror.
After a minute, he took a step back. I whirled around, grabbed Kola’s right hand and Hannah’s left, and walked toward the front of the school.
Mrs. Petrovich tried to stop me to talk, but I was too upset and walked straight to my minivan and put them in.
As I was driving out of the parking lot, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw all three of them—the teacher, the principal, and the parent—on the front steps.
At the hospital, I went to the emergency room, and within minutes, we were in a room.
An adult could wait for hours, but not little kids.
Hannah sat on the bed beside her brother, playing LocoRoco 2 on her PSP.
She loved it—she sang along to songs that I didn’t think were actually in any real language—and it was mindless.
Her brother watched her, doing his damnedest not to get sucked into what he called a baby game, but was really not.
I was not pleased that Dr. Varma thought his finger was broken, not just sprained.
“But we’ll take an X-ray to be certain.” He smiled at Kola, holding his good hand in his. “So, you’ll be here for just a little bit, buddy, okay?”
Kola nodded.
“Okay.” He looked up at me. “How did this happen?”
Once I told him, he said that the police would have to be notified.
“I’ll call them,” I told him.
He nodded and said that he would give a statement. While we waited for Kola to go down for an X-ray, I called Pat.
Hannah and I went with Kola when they came to take him because my kids didn’t go places without me.
I didn’t take my eyes off them. I had been called a nervous parent many a time, but it didn’t matter.
It was why they didn’t spend the night over at the houses of people I didn’t know, or walk to the park without me, or talk to strangers.
And it was funny how many times Kola or Hannah came up to me after school with some kid I’d never met in my life and said that so-and-so’s mother said it was fine if he or she came over to our house.
The parents had never even met me, and we had never spoken, but they were sure, since our kids went to the same school together, that it was safe to send them home with me.
It was mind-boggling. I had to know people before I trusted them with my kids.
One time, Kola had called me from his friend Owen’s house because Owen’s mother, Georgette, had left and Owen’s uncle was there, watching them.
The uncle, Georgette’s little brother, was seventeen.
He had taken Owen and Kola to the store, where they went to pick up cigarettes and beer and some beef jerky.
Owen lived downtown, which meant my little boy, without close adult supervision, had walked through not the greatest neighborhood to wherever the drugstore was. I thought I was going to pass out.
I called Sam, completely unglued, because his office was closer, and in traffic, it would have taken me more than an hour to reach our son.
He left work and went right over and collected Kola.
In the process of picking him up, Sam apparently scared the holy crap out of the brother after confiscating both the beer and the cigarettes.
Georgette called me later that night to apologize, and I invited her for coffee after school the following day. She was surprised when I brought her back home with me, sat her down in my breakfast nook while the kids played upstairs, and made her a latte with my espresso machine.
“I love your house,” she had told me, and I appreciated that, even though it was messy. “It’s just me and Owen at my house, and … this is nice.”
Working mothers—I understood they needed help.
I offered to take Owen on holidays, like the Fourth of July or the day after Thanksgiving, when she had to work her retail job.
Owen was on scholarship at the school; she didn’t have the money to just send him there.
She was alone; her ex-husband had walked out on her and her son and never looked back.
Currently, she was in the midst of suing him for child support.
When Sam came home and the kids flew through the house to greet him, even Owen shuffling forward to say hi, I watched her eyes fill and her bottom lip tremble.
The way Owen looked up at Sam Kage with greedy eyes as Sam tousled the little boy’s hair was hard for her to see.
And it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Sam; it had just been the illustration of the family in front of her.
I was still amazed sometimes that all the things I had thought I would never have were now all mine.
So, because of that, because I took nothing for granted, letting my son go down to X-ray alone was not an option. He had to know that I was right there and that I would always be.
When we got back, Chaz and Pat were waiting in the room for me.
The kids were happy to see them, and I noted, as I always did, the differences in the two men—Chaz in his suit and tie, Pat in the long-sleeve T-shirt under the leather jacket, with jeans and work boots.
They could not have looked like more of an odd couple.
Chaz was smooth and sophisticated, and Pat was the one who would hold you off your feet against the wall while the good cop asked you questions.
They had been partners forever, and neither had any desire to change it.
Sam had told me that either one of them could take the sergeant exam and move up, but neither of them ever would.
Bureaucracy and politics you could keep; they would just do what they did best and solve crime.
“Hey, J,” Chaz greeted me. “Long time no see.”
Since it had just been Sunday night, I got the joke.
“Hey, Steph wants you and Sammy and the kids over at our place as soon as he gets back, okay?” He tipped his head at Pat. “She said she already told E.”
“I’m sure she did.” Pat smiled back at Chaz because their wives, Stephanie Diaz and Ersi Cantwell, were more likes sisters than friends.
When your husbands were as close as Chaz and Pat were, you prayed you got along. Ersi always said that, in Stephanie, she had been blessed with a soulmate. What was nice for me was that they had both taken to me as well. I was so very thankful.
“As soon as Sam gets home, we’d love to,” I answered him.
Chaz nodded.
“Okay, so,” Pat said, moving over beside Kola, “what happened, Kage?”
Kola loved it when Pat called him Kage. It made him feel big and strong because it reminded him that he was Sam’s son, and that was always good. I was sure during the teenage years, it would be a problem, but at nearly six, it was still a source of pride.
“Mr. Parker bent my fingers way back when he took the hammer away from me, and one of them hurts real bad.”
Pat’s eyes flicked to mine, and the look in them was scary.
“Oh.” Chaz shook his head. “You realize that whoever this guy is, he’s the luckiest guy on the planet right now ’cause Sam’s not actually here at the moment.”
“I am aware,” I told him.
“Can you show me how he did it?” Pat asked Kola. “I’ll be you, and you be Mr. Parker.”
“Okay.” Kola nodded.