CHAPTER 23
Rebecca
On Wednesday, Rebecca sat in a quiet corner of the James Watkins cafeteria with ten-year-old Tamika, willing herself to be patient, to listen. The girl gazed out the window at the other kids playing. The look on her face said she’d rather be anywhere but here.
Rebecca gave the girl an encouraging smile, pen poised over the reporter’s notebook.
“Tamika, how long have you been going to James Watkins?”
The girl shrugged.
“Since you started school?”
She shrugged again. Rebecca frowned.
“What grade are you in?”
Tamika’s voice was so quiet Rebecca could barely hear her, leaned closer.
“Say again?”
“Going into fifth.” The girl looked completely miserable, her arms crossed tight against the electric-blue tank top.
She was pretty, that much Rebecca could tell, with chocolate-brown skin and the darkest, most vivid brown eyes Rebecca had ever seen, but her looks were overshadowed by something—discomfort?
fear?—that made her look far older than her years.
Rebecca infused as much warmth into her smile as she could, reached out to touch the girl’s hand. Tamika flinched.
“Tamika, listen. I’m not going to ask you anything bad or scary, and you don’t even have to answer my questions.” Rebecca spoke quietly. “You don’t even have to talk to me at all. You can go right out there to recess with your friends, if that’s easier.”
Tamika looked surprised.
Rebecca held her gaze. “I mean it.”
The girl appeared to mull over the words, then shrugged again. “They said it might help someone else.” Her voice was still soft, but at least this time Rebecca could hear her.
“It might,” Rebecca said. “Well, let’s start with the easy stuff. Where do you live?”
“Right out there.” The girl motioned vaguely out the window, toward the rows of houses beyond the playground.
“That neighborhood?”
“Those cars,” Tamika said clearly, her gaze matching Rebecca’s. “My brother and Mama and me, we been sleepin’ in our car the last three nights.”
“Oh.” Rebecca’s voice went small.
“Mama said the landlord kicked us out on account a’ her not paying the rent on time, but it’s all right. Tonight we’re s’posed to bunk at Aunt Cici’s. That’s Mama’s best friend. Said we can stay in her guest room a little while, till her man comes home from his trip. At least I can take a shower.”
For once in her life, Rebecca had no words. She could only listen, and write.
“Mama says the shelter down in Aberville won’t take us, ’cause it’s summer and there’s no major need.
If it were winter we could at least use their showers, or stay in the crisis rooms or whatever they call ’em, but if we go lookin’ for a room now, they’ll have to send me and Ronny to the kids’ home and Mama to some women’s place for getting your life on track.
Anyway, Mama doesn’t want to split us up, and Ronny’s a crybaby anyway, and I figure the car’s fine a few days, and who knows?
Maybe Aunt Cici’ll keep us awhile, till Mama figures out something.
Mama’s got an interview this morning, so who knows. ”
A thousand words threatened: How can you live in a car? Is it safe? How old is your brother? Does the social welfare office know? A verse came from somewhere, maybe Millie, or Granny’s walls—be quick to listen, slow to speak. Rebecca bit her tongue, nodded for Tamika to go on.
She’d heard about people living in their cars, heard about kids, too.
When she lived in New York, she’d encountered plenty of people on the streets, even knew a few of the guys on her block and one lady by name.
Char, the woman’s name had been, and Rebecca recalled her stringy hair, toothy grin, and saucy, wildly inappropriate jokes.
Rebecca would give them a dollar here or there.
Once, she’d even given Char a bunch of her old bras and other hand-me-down clothes.
Char had made some wisecrack about the bras being good for business, and Rebecca had fooled herself into thinking Char didn’t mind being on the streets. Much.
But this was the first time she’d actually talked with a homeless kid.
For the first time, Rebecca caught a glimpse of what it might be like to live that way.
In a car. With no place to shower.
And despite how Char had always come off, Rebecca knew it was no joke. Char had just been dealing with it the best way she knew how.
How would this kid end up? How would Tamika deal with it down the line? Humor? Drugs? Depression? Would she be a fighter, or would all this wear her down, kill her spirit?
◆◆◆
After work, she swung by Smathers Grocery, “Where We Have It All,” as the sign proclaimed. Granny needed beans and rice for a big pot of chili she was cooking that night.
Smathers reminded her of the small grocery/convenience shops in New York, only this place really did seem to have mostly everything. If they didn’t have it, rumor had it you could ask Old Man Smathers and he’d have it for you in two days.
It was a good place, if you could get past the dingy lighting and cracking linoleum, the old-fashioned posters for cereal that didn’t even exist anymore, featuring red-cheeked children with their mouths in perfect Os, saying things like “gee-whiz” and “mmm.” She’d joked to Granny that Smathers Grocery was a time warp. Granny had laughed and agreed.
Rebecca walked the aisles in a daze, spent far too long trying to decide between white rice, brown rice, and jasmine.
Finally she grabbed one at random, moved to the beans aisle.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Tamika, about how unfair life could be.
In New York, there was so much wealth. The real estate prices alone boggled her mind.
Some of the people she knew were absolutely rolling in dough, and yet they were some of the biggest jerks she’d ever met.
And here was Tamika, ten years old, who didn’t do a thing in the world to deserve a life like this.
She passed a bunch of trial-sized toiletries, and the Friday giveaway came to mind.
That was the one thing that made her feel weird about that whole night—the kids.
She wasn’t stupid, knew there were plenty of children living at or far below poverty level, but knowing and seeing were two different things.
Twice, she saw a couple of the guests come in with kids.
Really young kids, their hands clutched in their mothers’, who filed in, filled a bag with necessities, ate a plate of food, and left as quickly.
And now there was Tamika. Tamika, whose story she’d put in the paper next week, whose tale would hopefully become a wakeup call for Dahlia, open some eyes about the way the “other half” lived.
It’s just that Dahlia wasn’t that kind of place, or at least, she’d never thought of it that way. It was white picket fences and gardens and people who took care of each other.
Then again, maybe this was the real Dahlia at last, not the ghost of a town from her childhood.
Maybe the real Dahlia did have picket fences, but they were cracked and peeling, hung slightly ajar, and contained a homeless ministry behind them and not some cookie-cutter nuclear home with the perfect mom, dad, dog, and two-point-five kids.
She’d reached the beans aisle when her ears pricked at the words “Dahlia Weekly” and “that editor.” She edged closer. They were on the next aisle, but between the cackles and high-pitched cadence she’d come to associate with Dahlia’s women, she could hear much of what was said.
“No, she didn’t!” one lady said, her voice sounding familiar.
“She did indeed,” came the second lady. “And she even kept the preseason football photos to a two-page spread. Why, Ron Stone, bless his soul, ran that spread four full pages, and nobody, I mean nobody, dared to change a thing. Until now, and that woman.”
“She’s got to learn,” the first woman said, and Rebecca thought she heard a tsk-tsk. A thread of rage began to snake through her.
“She does,” agreed the second. “She’s not gonna last two more minutes in this town if she keeps that nonsense up. Why, Maline and Jo Lynn have already canceled their subscriptions. I have a mind to, myself.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Diane,” the first woman said, to Rebecca’s surprise.
“It’s a good paper. Haven’t you been reading those stories of all them poor kids down in that mess of a school?
Or what she’s been doing with the new town growth?
Don’t get me wrong, she does have to learn, but we shouldn’t go canceling our subscriptions or we’re gonna find ourselves with no paper at all. Give the girl a chance.”
Woman Number One didn’t know how right she was, Rebecca thought: four-and-a-half more months till PC-Day. Paper Close Day.
“Oh, Lib, you’re no fun,” the second woman said, and Rebecca’s jaw dropped. There was only one Lib she’d heard of in this town. Lib Pauling was suddenly her great defender?
Someone cleared his throat next to her, and she startled, realizing she was clutching a can of kidney beans awkwardly to her chest.
“Need a cart, ma’am?” a kid in a green Smathers apron said, all hooded eyes and shaggy brown hair that shook a little as he spoke.
“No, no, I’m good. Just a few items.” Rebecca gripped the can tighter and reached on the shelf for another. She gave a little smile, for the first time the ma’am making her feel more like a bona fide grownup than an over-the-hill, washed-up has-been. “Thanks.”
He gave her a sleepy grin and sauntered off, and Rebecca rounded the corner and gave a quick little wave to the gossiping women, whom she saw do a double-take while she grabbed a loaf of French bread.