Wildflower Page 6

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, Mom.” Jaris’s mother was speaking like a pliant little girl seeing the world from her mother’s eyes.

  “If I had any faith whatsoever in this man’s business sense,” Grandma Jessie said. “I would forward you the money myself. I’m not as well fixed as I used to be. My broker has made some disastrous mistakes, but still—”

  “Oh Mom,” Monica Spain objected, “I would never take money from you.”

  “Well,” Grandma Jessie said, “I’m nearing seventy and one never knows what health problems, long range, lie ahead. I want to be prepared, and I certainly wouldn’t invest in a scheme devised by Lorenzo. So, Monica, just tell him that the loan from the bank is out of the question. Just tell him to keep working at the garage. If he’s laid off, he can find another job. Just tell him that he’s a good mechanic. There’s no disgrace in staying in that job for the rest of his working life. Tell him he has no right to risk his family’s security.”

  “I will,” Mom said compliantly.

  Jaris stood in the hallway growing sicker by the minute. Mom sounded like a seven-year-old getting instructions from her mommy on how to handle a school problem.

  “Lorenzo is not a boy anymore,” Grandma Jessie went on. “He is old enough to realize his little ego trips must be behind him. The possibility that he would be a great success in life has passed him by years ago. The dreams are over. He must do his duty by his family.”

  Jaris couldn’t hold himself back any longer. He threw caution to the winds. He came back into the living room and sat down in a chair opposite his mother and grandmother. He spoke quickly. “I’ve been listening to you, Grandma, and you’re like writing my father off. He’s too old for dreams. He’s over the hill. He doesn’t dare to do something new and exciting with his life. You have no faith in him. You don’t like him. Well, we’ve always known that. But, Grandma, forgive me, but it’s none of your freakin’ business to write my father off.”

  Grandma Jessie looked shocked, but she kept her composure. “But it is my business,” she insisted. “I love this family very much. Your father is toying with the financial security of my daughter, my only daughter, and my two grandchildren. And I am concerned.”

  “No, it’s not your business,” Jaris snapped. “Your daughter got married to Lorenzo Spain, and she and my pop should be making their own decisions. I hear you in here, Grandma, goin’, ‘Tell him this’ and ‘Tell him that.’ And Mom is like ‘Yes, Mom,’ like a little kid. It makes me so mad I could puke. My mom has a master’s degree in education. She’s been teaching for like thirteen years, and twice she was voted the best elementary teacher in the district. When her principal has a big problem to solve, he comes here to ask for her input. He depends on her. Mom is probably gonna be a principal herself someday. She’s a bright, educated, grown woman. What makes you think she doesn’t know how to talk to her own husband?”

  “Well,” Grandma gasped, “I know your mother is an excellent teacher but—”

  “But nothing!” Jaris cut in. “Grandma, I never asked you for a big favor. I mean, when I was five I asked you for a pony, and I understood why you didn’t get me one. But since then I’ve never asked. Now I’m asking you for a very big favor. Will you please butt out of my family’s business?” Grandma Jessie and Mom sat in stunned silence. Jaris just went on.

  “I love you and respect you, Grandma, but when my parents decide about buying or not buying the Jackson garage, let it be their decision, not yours. Give my family enough respect to leave us alone. Grandma, come and visit and bring cookies. Tell us stories about your childhood. Do what other grandmas do. Only please stop trying to control us.”

  Grandma Jessie put down her cup of green tea and stood up. She cast a scornful look at Jaris. She rolled her eyes at her daughter. Then she marched toward the door, letting herself out. In a few seconds the convertible was backing down the driveway with a speed uncharacteristic of Jessie Clymer.

  Mom looked at Jaris. He was expecting a lecture on the need to respect one’s elders, especially a grandmother. Jaris sat there, deciding to take it like a man, because he knew he was right. He did not regret a word he said.

  Finally Mom spoke. “Jaris, I’m sure Mom was very hurt by what you said. . . . But, as I listened to you, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, he’s a man. My little boy is a man.’”

  Later, when it was time for Pop to come home from the garage, Mom’s brow furrowed with worry. “I hope all this arguing hasn’t put your father back into his old habits,” she said, pretty much to herself. But Jaris and Chelsea could hear her.

  Jaris and Chelsea remembered all too well when Pop would come home late from work. If he’d had a bad day, he would stop at a bar on the way home and have a few drinks with his friends. Then he would come home in a terrible mood, and everybody would scramble to get out of his way. That all ended when he went down to Pastor Bromley’s church and took the pledge against drinking any more.

  So far, Pop had kept his promise. He came home from work dirty, grumpy, and not smelling too good after a long day. But there was no alcohol on his breath. Jaris worried that he would break the promise today.

  “He wants to buy that garage so much,” Mom said, again within earshot of her children. “And I’m terrified of putting a bigger mortgage on the house. It’s like we’re between a rock and a hard place. We went back and forth so long last night that maybe he . . . ”

  Every time a car turned down the street, all three of them looked out the window and waited for the familiar sound of Pop’s truck grinding down the driveway. You couldn’t mistake his arrival from anyone else’s.

  “Several people we knew had their homes foreclosed,” Mom said, finally speaking directly to Jaris and Chelsea. “It’s such a terrible feeling to be deep in debt.”

  Then they all froze when the sound of Pop’s pickup hit the driveway. The truck door slammed.

  “Hey everybody!” Pop greeted them. He was walking tall. “Old Jackson spent some time today showing me the books. He don’t put anything on the computer. The man is living in the Stone Age. I’m computerizing all the stuff. He runs the place like it’s a covered wagon way station. A friend of mine, Cy Bentley, he’s a CPA. I’ve got an appointment with the dude. He’s smart. He’s coming over to the garage and look at all the books, get things up to speed.” Pop looked at Mom then, and he put up his hand as if to deflect any objections.

  “Not that we’ve decided if we’re going to buy the place yet. We’re still in the talking stage. But if it’s a go, I want to be ready.” He smiled and said, “Gotta shower now and make something good for dinner. No pulling dinner from the freezer tonight.” He headed for the bathroom whistling.

  When Jaris was in his room working on his computer, Chelsea looked in. “You really messed me up today,” she told him.

  “Did I? How so?” Jaris asked, although he knew.

  “Athena won’t even talk to me,” Chelsea said.

  “That can’t be all bad,” Jaris kidded her.

  “You don’t understand!” Chelsea complained. “She thinks I ratted her out and told you about Brandon.”

  “Didn’t you tell her Inessa spilled the beans by mistake, chili pepper?” Jaris asked.

  “She didn’t even give me the chance. She turned her back on me,” Chelsea said.

  Jaris looked at his sister and posed the question he wanted to ask. “Is Athena really hanging out big time with Brandon Yates?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “A little bit.”

  “Well,” Jaris confessed, “I’m sorry to tell you, chili pepper. I told the creep to lay off the little girls from Anderson or I’ll give him a new face, one he won’t like as much as the one he’s used to.”

  “Jaris, who do you think you are?” Chelsea cried. “The boss of everybody?”

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Jaris insisted. Chelsea turned and stomped out of the room and into her bedroom, slamming the door after her.

  Late in the nig
ht, again Jaris heard his parents talking about Jackson’s garage. He heard snatches of conversation because his bedroom was next to theirs.

  “But, Lorenzo, you have no business experience,” Mom was saying.

  “When Jackson goes on vacation, I pay all the bills,” Pop told her.

  “But to have all that responsibility on your back . . . ”

  “All my life I’ve wanted something better than what I got,” Pop said. “Every day I go to work, get dirty, get yelled at, I look up at that sign over the big doors: Jackson’s Auto Repair. It could say Spain’s Auto Care. I could be the boss.”

  “Lorenzo, you’ve been a success in so many other ways already.”

  “No, I been a loser, babe,” Pop insisted. “Ever since I didn’t get that chance to go to college and be somebody, I been a loser. But this would make a difference. I could be proud of something, Monie. I could own a business. I could join the Chamber of Commerce and drink coffee and mingle with the big muckety-mucks . . . ”

  After a while, there was silence. Jaris lay there, staring at the ceiling. He knew there was a chance Mom and Pop’d take out a mortgage to buy the business, Pop would fail, and he’d lose the garage. There was always a chance of something like that happening. But still he wanted Pop to have the chance. If he didn’t get it, then pretty soon it would dawn on him that his last chance went by and nothing would ever be any different for him, except that he was getting older. He’d be an aging loser with more gray hair, a slump to his shoulders, and a job working for other, more successful men.

  Jaris wanted his father to buy the garage as much as his father wanted to. Lorenzo Spain had been living in a kind of darkness, a belief that life was basically unfair and that the cards were stacked against some people. If you were a loser, you stayed a loser, and life beat you down until there was nothing left but bitterness. Sometimes Jaris bought into this idea, and he wondered if the darkness would envelop him too. Jaris was trying to outrun the darkness. If his Pop could, then maybe he could too.

  At school the next day, Sereeta told Jaris, “Yeah, Brandon belongs to the Yates family on our street. They have older kids who live in Los Angeles. A couple of them have been busted for drugs. Grandma thinks the place is a drug house sometimes. The guys come from LA in really big cars. Real flashy. Everybody keeps waiting for a big police raid or something.”

  “Oh brother!” Jaris groaned. “It sure wouldn’t do much good to talk to the parents about straightening Brandon out.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a plan,” Sereeta agreed.

  “Well, thanks for the information,” Jaris said. “I’ve just gotta keep leaning on that dude to quit goin’ over to the middle school.”

  “Speaking of parents,” Sereeta mentioned, “my mom has texted me like every day this week. She feels really bad that she didn’t come to the birthday party we girls planned for her. She told me she was wasted, but she swears she’s trying to quit that stuff. She wants to make amends, Jaris. Am I . . . uh . . . an idiot to have some hope here?”

  “No Sereeta, you have to follow your heart,” Jaris told her softly.

  “She’s wanting to spend Sunday with me,” Sereeta continued, “you know, time for us. There’s a little voice inside my head that says, ‘Don’t go there.’ I’m afraid I’ll just get hurt all over again. Still, she’s my mom. I can’t completely get over that. There’s this thing in me that wants a mom, even a little bit of a mom. I mean, anything she can give me. I feel sometimes like a stray dog running after its former owner, begging for a little pat on the head. It’s like depression and I hate that feeling. What do you really think, Jaris?”

  Sereeta’s beautiful eyes were filled with hope as Jaris had seen so many times before. And he had seen the hope dashed, again and again. Sereeta looked at him now, silently pleading for him to urge her to try one more time.

  Jaris took Sereeta in his arms, holding her tightly. He brushed a kiss over the top of her curly hair. “Babe,” he assured her, “taking a risk is okay. It’s better to take a risk even if you lose. It’s better than not to try at all and maybe lose something much more precious.”

  “You think I should tell her yes,” Sereeta asked in a shaky voice, “that we can go somewhere this Sunday? She didn’t say where we’d go. But she said she wanted to make it up to me for all the times she’d disappointed me. I sorta feel like that kid in the Peanuts cartoon. You know he keeps trying to kick the ball, and he hopes Lucy won’t whisk it away and make him stumble and fall again.”

  “Go for it, babe,” Jaris told her.

  Sereeta smiled at him. “I love you so much,” she gushed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next day, all during Mr. Pippin’s English class, Jaris thought about Sereeta. Her parents divorced when she was in middle school, and the divorce devastated her. Both her parents remarried. She had little to do with her father and his new wife. Her mother and stepfather had had a new baby, and Sereeta felt excluded from their lives. Sereeta’s stepfather tried to send her away to a boarding school where she would have lost all her friends at Tubman High. But Sereeta’s grandmother took her in, and now Sereeta was almost happy. But she still longed for the closeness with her mother that she had lost. Every time Sereeta reached out to her mother, she was rebuffed. Now her mother was reaching out, and Jaris hoped it wouldn’t be another bitter disappointment.

  When Jaris got home from school, Chelsea was sitting on the curb in front of the house with Heston Crawford. Chelsea was wearing short-shorts and a skimpy halter top. “Hey,” Jaris hailed as he passed the pair.

  “Hey yourself,” Chelsea responded.

  “Pop’s coming home early, chili pepper. Jackson is giving him half the day off so he’s got more time to figure out a deal to buy the garage,” Jaris told her.

  “So?” Chelsea said in a snippy voice.

  “Just letting you know,” Jaris said, continuing on into the house. In a few minutes Pop’s pickup turned the corner. He slowed down and pulled into the driveway. Jaris heard his voice, “Hey, little girl, did you forget to put on your clothes?”

  Jaris winced.

  “Pop,” Chelsea cried, “it’s almost summer! I didn’t wear these clothes to school. They’re too casual.”

  Pop got out of the cab of the truck. “So you put on the itty bitty clothes so’s you can play with the little punk here?” he demanded. Pop turned his angry glare to Heston, “Who’re you anyway?”

  “Heston Crawford,” the boy said in a startled voice.

  “So, you go to Anderson Middle School too?” Pop went on. “You’re pretty tall. You sure you’re not one of those ninth-grade bums from Tubman preying on the little girls at Anderson?” Pop was standing there, towering over the two teenagers on the curb. Pop was covered with grease and grime and perspiration, making his rugged features look even more menacing.

  “No sir, I’m an eighth grader from Anderson,” Heston replied.

  “Little girl,” Pop commanded, “go inside the house and put some clothes on. The whole neighborhood is out looking at you. See the guy across the street? He was watering his lawn, now his eyes are popping out of his head. See him ogling you over here?”

  “Pop, I’m not a little girl,” Chelsea cried. “And nobody is looking at me!” Her voice rose to almost a scream, “It’s almost summer—”

  “Yeah, you said that already,” Pop yelled back. “Lord help us when summer really comes. You gonna skip dressing altogether and romp around in your birthday suit, little girl? Look at this little punk here sitting with you. He can’t keep his eyes off you. He can’t even get enough of you. He’s droolin’. See how he’s droolin’ there?”

  Heston looked terrified. He’d never met anyone quite like Chelsea’s father. “I-I was just looking at that cat that just went up the tree, sir,” he stammered. “I really like cats.”

  “Don’t be changing the subject,” Pop growled. “This little girl here has suddenly gone wild. She don’t like putting real clothes on. She wants the whole
neighborhood to have a show looking at her. Some of the window shades flippin’ now. Folks wanting a look.”

  “Hey,” Heston commented, looking at the watch on his skinny wrist. “It’s getting late. Ma said to be home early. Got chores. Taking out the trash and stuff . . . takes some time. Lotta trash. Uh . . . Chel, see you in science. Uh, nice meeting up with you, Mr. Spain, real nice.” Heston jumped up and took off, sprinting away. He never looked back.

  Chelsea glared at her father. “Pop, why are you deliberately humiliating me in front of my friends from school?” she demanded to know.

  “Hey little girl—” Pop began.

  “I’m not a little girl anymore,” Chelsea yelled. “Stop calling me that.”

  “Hey, don’t remind me,” Pop said. “Just a while ago you were a skinny little thing. Looked like a boy. Now you’re spreading out in all directions, getting those curves. Only you don’t want to cover them up. And that Heston character, boy, his eyes were popping right out of his head. I know that kind, Chelsea. I was once one of them.”

  Mom came out then. “What’s all the fuss about?” she asked.

  “Oh, this little girl here,” Pop explained, “she’s sitting on the curb with some punk, says he’s an eighth grader. I’m not so sure. He’s eatin’ her up with his big eyes ’cause look how she’s dressed. Itty bitty pants, skimpy little straps there—don’t’ cover much. ’Course that’s the whole idea.”

  Chelsea ran into the house and to her bedroom, slamming the door so hard the house seemed to shake. Jaris said from the hallway, “Chili pepper, didn’t I warn you he was coming? I warned you and you gave me a snippy ‘so.’ ”

  Chelsea opened the door to complain. “Jaris, how long is he gonna be this way? He’s driving me crazy. It just dawned on my pop that I’m growing up and he’s freaking!”