Billy
Grace sniffled in Rayleen’s arms, nested with her on Billy’s couch. Billy handed her tissues.
“At least I got her to give us another month,” Rayleen said to Grace, sounding falsely upbeat, yet sounding at the same time as if her heart was breaking. And just when she needed to sound strong, Billy thought.
“But that’s not enough time!” Grace wailed. “My dance for school is in more than a month! So if they come take me away in a month, then I’ll miss the dance at school, and then even if it’s OK in the long run, and you get to turn into a foster mom and come back and get me it’ll still be too late for my big dance!”
Billy reached over and wiped tears off her face, accidentally streaking the tissue with traces of blood from his bitten nail beds.
“But at least that’s another month for your mom to get clean,” he said, “and if she does, then there’s no problem. So we have to work on that. We have to think what we can do to help her get clean.”
“We have to get Yolanda,” Grace said, seeming to calm down somewhat.
“We could try to—”
“No,” Grace said. “We can’t try to do anything. It has to be Yolanda. Because Mom won’t talk to you guys because she’s so mad at you, and I can’t be going down there again, because we said she can’t see me till she gets clean.”
“Again?”
“At all. At all, I meant.”
“This might be worth an exception,” Rayleen said.
Her voice sounded flat and deadly calm to Billy, like the glassy surface of the ocean when the wind suddenly stops blowing. Like the sailing ships that lie stranded until it blows again. She also sounded as though her throat had begun to close up.
“No,” Grace said. “It was a promise, and a promise is a promise. Besides. We all tried, and it didn’t get us anywhere. It has to be Yolanda. Yolanda is scary. Not always, but she can be when she needs to be. She’s one of those scary sponsors.”
The dead calm struck again, and none of their ships moved. Not a flapping sail among them.
“I have to get out of here,” Rayleen said. “Or I won’t be able to breathe. Grace, run home…I mean, run over to my apartment and call Yolanda while I talk to Billy. You still have her number, right?”
“I don’t know where I put it,” Grace said, wiggling down off Rayleen’s lap, “but I think I can remember it by heart.”
She ran out the door and disappeared.
Rayleen looked up at Billy, utter defeat and panic somehow coexisting in her eyes. Billy would never have guessed that the two could occupy the same moment, not to mention the same eyes.
“Just when everything was going so well,” she said.
“Yeah, watch out for that. Sometimes I think that’s God waiting to drop the other shoe.”
“God doesn’t wear shoes,” she said, and Billy had no idea if she was serious or not. He couldn’t imagine her joking at a time like this. “I have to get out of Cat Land here. My throat is closing up. Come over to…no, Grace is over there. I need to talk to you alone. Walk to the end of the hall with me.”
Billy followed her out of his door and down the dingy hall, his heart drumming. At the back end of the hall was one depressingly small window. Billy wondered if he had even known it was there. It was crusted over with dirt, but through it Billy could vaguely see the dead branches of a once-flowering tree scrape lightly in the wind.
Rayleen lost her balance — or so it seemed — and pitched forward on to the hardwood. Billy grabbed to catch her, but missed. Only when she stayed down, curled up with her back against the water-stained wall, did Billy understand that her knees might just have gone out from under her.
Shades of me, he thought. Did other people react so violently to the overwhelm of their emotion? News to him. He’d lived his life quite sure he was the only one.
Billy sat close to her and pressed his back against the wall in a pathetic grab for emotional stability. It didn’t help, of course.
“I didn’t lie to Grace,” Rayleen said, her voice sounding unnatural and unfamiliar. “I told her everything Katz said. No, that’s not true. I didn’t. Everything I told her that Katz said was true. I didn’t lie about what Katz said. I just left some stuff out. There were a few things I couldn’t bring myself to tell Grace.”
“Just say it,” Billy said. “The faster the better. This is scaring me.”
“It should.”
“Just say it.”
“Grace thinks I can go out and apply to be a foster mom and get her right back again. But probably not.”
The news hit a blankness in Billy, as though it had landed nowhere, hitting nothing. He did not reply.
“I talked to Katz a lot about it. I can go through the paperwork. But it takes a long time. Meanwhile, if there are plenty of foster placements open, Grace’ll already have been assigned to one. Or, if they’re short on homes when my paperwork goes through, I’ll probably be matched with a black girl who’s been waiting a lot longer than Grace. There’s a very small chance it could work. But it doesn’t look good. Once she gets into the system we’ve probably lost her. We have no legally recognized relationship. It’s not like we’re blood relatives. We have no standing to get her back. Not even to inquire about her welfare.”
Billy tried his mouth to see if it would work. It did — surprisingly well — but seemingly detached and independent of the rest of him.
“You would think the bond she has with us would…”
But then he realized he wasn’t sure what he thought it would do. Or why. After all, this was the county of Los Angeles, not a single wise and caring decision-maker.
“Yeah, you’d think the bond with a parent would be pretty unbreakable, too, but they break those all the time. Katz said there’s some consideration for a familiar environment. But it doesn’t hold up well against time waited and ‘other suitability factors.’ Her term. I think it’s racial, but I didn’t ask.”
They sat in silence for a time. How long a time, Billy wasn’t sure. Could have been a minute. Could have been fifteen.
“Maybe I’ll just take her,” Rayleen said. “Just take her and go-”
Billy glanced over at her, but Rayleen would not return his glance.
“You’re not serious, right?”
“I might be.”
“They’ll catch you. And they’ll put Grace in foster care and you in jail, and then the chances of your getting her back go from slim to none.”
Rayleen chewed on the inside of her lip for a moment in silence. Billy had no way of gauging what was going on inside her head.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
Billy breathed for what felt like the first time in a long time.
“But maybe we just won’t get caught,” Rayleen said.
Billy felt an odd tingling along his scalp.
“Look,” he said. “I hate to say this, and please don’t take it the wrong way, but you won’t be able to blend in. Black woman, white kid. People won’t just assume she’s yours when they see you. I’m sorry, but…”
“No. You’re right. Don’t be sorry. I was talking crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking there. It was a crazy thought.”
Grace’s huge voice suddenly broke through. “Hey!” she called from Rayleen’s doorway. “Good news! Yolanda says she’ll come kick some addict butt!”
Rayleen looked into Billy’s eyes as if they’d been friends all their lives.
“Can you make an addict not be an addict by kicking her butt?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Billy whispered back. “But let’s hope so. Because right now it’s looking like our only shot.”
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After an entirely sleepless night, Billy’s morning coffee looked and smelled and sounded even better than usual. He made just enough for one full mug, to help assure that he wouldn’t run out toward the end of the month.
While it was percolating, and while Billy was watching it drip, he heard a rough pounding on the door of the basement apartment downstairs.
A brief silence.
Then, “Open up, Sleeping Beauty, it’s your damn sponsor.”
A moment later he heard the creak of the door swinging open. It clarified something at the back of his mind, something he hadn’t entirely known was there. Some part of him had always wondered if Grace’s mom really could hear them when they knocked on the door. And now he knew.
He stood chewing at his nails nervously, then slapped his own hand away. The way Grace would, if she were there with him, instead of at Rayleen’s. Only more gently.
He took the coffee into the living room and drank it, slumped on the couch, watching, through the thin veil of his curtains, as cars rolled by on the street out front.
It would be time to walk Grace to school again in less than half an hour.
Billy sat up straight and made a sudden decision.
He marched into the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee, a full pot. While it was brewing he checked his cream supply. He shook, and frowned at, the carton for a long time. Until he realized he was letting too much cold out of the refrigerator. But when he closed the fridge door, the carton of cream was still there in his hand, feeling cold and precious, even though there was no arguing that his supply was barely adequate to last until the next delivery.
Some things you just have to do. So you do them.
Billy tied on his robe.
Pot of coffee in one hand, cream tucked in the crook of his arm, he made his way out of his apartment and down the basement stairs.
He knocked.
The door flew open roughly and there stood Yolanda. Billy remembered her well from one of Grace’s meetings. In fact, he would never forget her.
“Yeah?” she asked.
Billy resisted the urge to run away.
“I’m one of Grace’s neighbors.”
“Right. I remember you. The nervous one. What smells so good? Oh. It’s you. You’re holding coffee.”
“It’s early, and I thought you might want some.”
“Well, aren’t you a doll. Come in.”
Billy stepped cautiously into the apartment for the first time ever, heart hammering, glancing nervously about to see where Grace’s mom might be. He found her sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette and glaring at him. When their eyes met briefly, she flew to her feet and marched into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
“She hates me,” he said, setting the coffee and cream down on the revoltingly dirty kitchen counter.
“Yeah,” Yolanda said. “She does. You think you’re exaggerating to be funny, but not so much. Let me get a clean mug. You’re a lifesaver with this. It’s early and she doesn’t have shit. No coffee, no milk, no food. Amazing she hasn’t starved to death. I think she stumbles down to a fast food place every couple days. Oh, here’s a…no, I was looking for a clean mug. OK. I’ll just wash one myself. Anyway, you’re a doll. Should I wash two mugs? Are you joining me?”
“I’ve had mine,” he said.
Yolanda yelled suddenly, causing Billy to jump.
“Eileen? You want coffee?”
No sound.
Yolanda marched over to the bedroom door, opened it and stuck her head in. Then she pulled back and closed Eileen in the bedroom by herself again.
“Two mugs. She’ll have some.”
Time for the ultimate sacrifice, Billy thought.
“Cream?”
He held up the precious carton.
“No thanks, hon. I take mine black. I think Eileen goes black but with sugar. And I think I saw some sugar somewheres…” She swung open a cabinet door. Inside was a box of sugar, a bottle of syrup, and nothing else. “Yup. Know why she still has sugar? Because she has nothing to put sugar in. Or on. So is that really the whole reason why you came by here, just to make my morning a little nicer with a pot of coffee?”
Billy pulled the cream back, holding it protectively in the crook of his arm.
“I guess I wanted to make the point that we appreciate your being here. We’re all very concerned about what’s going to happen to Grace. And I guess maybe part of me was wondering how it’s going so far.”
Yolanda laughed a braying, spitting laugh.
“Honey, I been here like ten minutes. I haven’t completely changed her life yet, if that’s what you mean.”
Billy felt his face flush hot. He backed toward the door.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll just leave you alone to…do…what you do.”
“Look, didn’t mean to be harsh there, but shit takes time, you know?”
“Right, of course, I’m sorry.”
Billy opened the door and scooted through it, out into the hall. He tried to pull the door closed behind him, but it stopped suddenly. Next thing he knew, Yolanda was standing in the hall beside him.
“Look, Ace, it’s like this. First thing I gotta do is toss every inch of her apartment and flush everything she’s got. Then I gotta go to work. Then I gotta come back here and see if that stopped her, or if she figured out how to get more. On the plus side, she hasn’t got a dime. On the minus side, addicts have ways of getting what they need. So we’ll see. So how ’bout I come by your place later, bring you back your coffee pot, and let you know how we’re going so far? I see that you’re concerned, which is nice. You live on the first floor?”
“Yes, right across the hall from Rayleen.”
“OK, then. Just give this thing time to run its course.”
Billy scooted back up the stairs to his own apartment, put the cream away in the fridge, and sat on the couch, consciously breathing, until his heart rate returned to normal.
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