Charlotte glanced back at her daughter, hesitated before she spoke again. It was clear she wasn’t sure what to do next. “Do you want to come in?”
“Thank, you, thank you,” Sylvia said as she stepped into the house. She smoothed her long shirt down over her skirt. She felt large and ungainly next to Charlotte, like she was taking up too much room the way she did around small women. “She must be your baby. I have a daughter too. Of course she’d old now, almost forty, but I remember those doll days. The number of baby dolls we had in the house back then.” Sylvia chuckled politely, tried to fill up the dead air in the room.
The little girl avoided Sylvia’s face and looked directly at her mother for cues. “Hello, honey. How are you?” Sylvia said to the child.
The girl was bewildered by small talk, as children are. “I brought this for your daughter,” Sylvia said as she handed the bag to Charlotte. She was talking too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. “It’s not much. I just thought she might like crayons and I see that Dora everywhere I look.”
Charlotte took the bag and glanced quickly inside, then handed the bag with crayons and a coloring book to her child. The girl had not been prompted to thank Sylvia. She felt her hand shake. Why she couldn’t calm down, she had no idea. “Did I say that I’m Sylvia?”
“I’m Charlotte, but it seems like you know that. How do you know Marcus?” Charlotte had on a pair of the tiny shorts young girls wear now like panties in public, shorts they keep digging at to keep from bunching into uncomfortable places. Sylvia was hardly ever that undressed in her bedroom, she thought.
“He’s been calling me from the jail,” Sylvia whispered. Just in case the child had not been told about her daddy or was fortunate enough not to know anything about prison. She hoped she didn’t look as ridiculous to Charlotte as she felt. What did she look like to this woman? A rival? Surely not. But certainly a meddler in another grown woman’s business.
“Is she your daughter?”
“She’s mine. With Marcus. Her name is Dena, but you probably already know that too.”
“She looks like you.”
“I used to look like her.”
Sylvia looked closely at Charlotte again. She was all of twenty-five or -six at the oldest. The little girl would be lucky to wear her mother’s face in a few years.
“Are you Marcus’s aunt or something?”
“No. I don’t know him, except over the phone.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Marcus was hoping you were okay. Both of you,” Sylvia said and glanced at the little girl.
“We’re fine.” Charlotte turned and spoke to her daughter. “Stay in here, baby, Mama’s going outside to talk to this lady.”
Dena looked up from her crayons for a second and seeing nothing interesting kept coloring. “Okay, Mama.”
Sylvia followed Charlotte outside. Years ago she had wanted to come into some of these houses, just to look around. A few times Don convinced her to bring the children trick-or-treating in this neighborhood where the factory line bosses and supervisors gave out chocolate bars and not just peppermints from the Christmas before or homemade cookies or worst of all, apples. Charlotte flopped against her front door and sighed hard.
“You want water? That’s all we’ve got other than juice boxes.”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“So let me get this straight. You know Marcus from the telephone? Is that right? You’re not even kin to him?”
“That’s right. We’ve been talking a little while. He’s a sweet boy.”
“That is the craziest thing I ever heard. Don’t you think so? You must be a nice lady,” Charlotte said, but it was clear from her face that she was thinking Sylvia was at best a strange lady. “But let me go ahead and tell you. I’m done with Marcus. I warned him. I told him that anything that looks too easy is a trap. I told him that he was going to regret hanging around with those ignorant friends he loved so much. See where that got him.”
“Charlotte, people can do better.”
“I promised him when he started running drugs. Slinging. That’s what they called it. Like he’s in the wild west. I told him.”
“I know this is not my business. But if I was locked up I’d want somebody to help me,” Sylvia said with as much gentleness as she could.
“I did try to help him. More than anybody knows. A whole lot more than I should have. You don’t know anything about me. I’m not mean. None of this is easy for me.”
“Charlotte, you can’t always have a choice to lose somebody. You understand what I mean? Think about that child in there. She will want her daddy.”
“Oh she will, you think so?” Charlotte mocked. Sylvia was surprised at her defiance. How the conversation had gotten away from her she couldn’t say.
“She’ll always want him either way, Sylvia.”
“I’ll tell him you’ll wait for him. I’ll do that. It’s not going to hurt anything.”
“Tell him what you want. I can’t stop you.”
“You don’t throw people away, Charlotte. You keep on trying.”
“Who got thrown away? You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I know he’s got some good points. I know that better than anybody. But he’s done with us. I’m done with him.”
“He can go to court. He can see his child. You can’t stop that.”
“Who are you anyway? Don’t come here threatening me.”
“I didn’t mean to threaten you, honey. I’m sorry. I’m not myself these days.”
“You know what? Let him go to court. I’d love to see that. Because, that will be the most contact we’ll ever have with him. And let me tell you another thing, he’ll never get to that courthouse if he lives to be two hundred. He’ll still be talking about it when our baby is grown and gone. I know him.”
“I know you do.”
Charlotte poked her finger into her own chest. “So don’t tell me. I know. I live with all this.”
“People can change, honey.”
“Look, maybe you’re a nice woman. I don’t know. But I need you to stay away from here. Just please don’t come back. This is not doing either one of us any good and I really don’t feel like cussing you out. You probably don’t mean any harm. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, okay?”
“I’ve been talking to him. He knows what he did.”
“I really don’t want to hurt you, but I’ve got to tell you that if you come back I’m not going to be nice.”
“You can be wrong. I’ve been wrong. Maybe you are this time. Could you go to see him one Sunday? Could you do that?”
“You might not believe this but I am hoping he gets out and has a wonderful life. I really am. There’s not a thing in the world that I would want more, except for my child.”