This child was a little bitch-ass detective.
Darlene thinking ’bout telling the truth, but I said, Hell no, you not telling this child the truth! She told him, Nothing is going to happen to you or your parents, Jedidiah. She said that shit instead of Your parents fucked a whole lot of niggers over and they might could go to jail for a whole long time, so get ready. You got to protect a child, I said, and the best way I know to protect a child is to lie your motherfucking head off. She tried to tell me some shit ’bout Eddie when he round the same age, and how she feel bad for lying to him about his father, but I was like, Please. She pulled the blanket back over her head.
While she still under the blanket, she saying, Don’t worry, Jed. Jed kept worrying and asking questions but eventually he took her advice when she went, Okay, you can worry, but go worry somewhere else.
She blown out a sigh when the li’l boy finally disappeared. Even so, Jed had set her to thinking ’bout Eddie more and she decide for herself that it wasn’t no way she gon let Eddie talk to Jarvis or TT ’bout nothing that had went down. What they done had exposed her ass and made them weird voices come out the phone and out the boy, and she called Eddie up, ’bout to chew his ass out. For the first seven or eight times the number wasn’t the number and some angry fool started getting mean with her, like, Go away, bitch, go away, but she kept calling until the real number gone through.
She got Eddie on the phone and screamed like a train brake at him even though she ain’t want to. I thought it would get through to him and make him stop investigating with that guy on account a Darlene had everything under control and she could take care of the farm and them people who running the farm without nobody else getting involved or telling the world all what had happened there with the folks who running the company.
Eddie tryna tell her to stay calm and that she ain’t sound stable, like that she had hung out with me too much. He said some hurtful-ass shit to her, like that she too tight with me, and he asked point-blank if she had stopped hanging out with me, and even with me there, she said yes, ’cause I often told her that whenever any motherfucker accuse you of shit you ain’t want em to be right about, you can’t just admit that they accusation be true, you gotta fight the fuck back.
I am not an addict or a crackhead, Darlene said. I can’t smoke as much because of the way I have to operate the place, so now I smoke mainly at night if I smoke at all. Sometimes I don’t smoke for a full two days. And why is this any of your business?
Eddie laughed behind that one. I can’t say I blame his stupid ass.
Then Darlene told him that he think he too good to come back to Delicious and to her so what did Scotty have to do with anything? She told him she gonna figure out a way to get back at him if he cooperate with the investigation. He insulted her again, apologized, then he start pleading with her to quit me until Darlene could hear his wimpy ass start to break down and cry on the phone. Seriously. Darlene done pulled the blanket up off her head and sat up and leaned forward. We thinking we had the advantage at last.
Both of em start screaming into the phone, and then Eddie hung up on her, so Darlene called back a few times and the angry man she called before on accident said some stupid shit ’bout a restraining order. Once Darlene got the number right, Eddie bitched me out and told his mother that she had stayed at Delicious on account of drugs and Sextus, and said some other shit ’bout what he thought she thought ’bout Sextus body, specifically his skin and the whiteness of it. There’s a lot in here that Darlene don’t remember, including a whole bunch of beefs that she howled and that Eddie screamed back at her, and then more voices on the phone, whatever.
Couple days later, Elmunda seen a picture of Darlene on the TV and she called Darlene in the room and they heard Jim Pommeroy talking ’bout what Darlene had said, her own words going onto the screen and a scratchy recording of Darlene voice over the phone going, Nobody did anything wrong, and How dare you, and The truth will eventually come out, like it always does.
I said to Darlene, Your own motherfucking son done recorded your ass behind your back. That’s fucked up. She froze; her jaw clamped. She couldn’t even comprehend that shit.
Then we had to make all them strange people voices and the questions from Jed, and Eddie, and the angry-ass man stop coming through phones and televisions and faces and mouths around us, so me and Darlene just start booking down that smoky hallway I made for her fast as we could and slammed the door behind us. Darlene sat on the couch and then swung her legs up onto it, laid down lengthwise, and curled up into a ball. She wrapped the ends of the blanket round her feet like she a sapling ’bout to get planted. When she seen the phone still in the room, she sat up again and kicked the phone table so it toppled over and made a big thump sound on the floor. The phone be clattering and ringing at the same time when it hit the floor. Darlene yanked that blanket over her head again and I put my smoke arms around her, and me and her laid there till we couldn’t hear no noise no more.
27.
Trials