Grace didn't like to pry, but there was that something again telling her that she should. “I didn't know that Skyler has an older brother.”
“Well, he did until he was almost fifteen. It's a shame that he lost his mother five years ago, and then Donnell passed two years after that. Gangs and drugs are gonna kill everythingI love before it's all over,” Miss Pearl added as an afterthought.Grace was horrified. Gangs and drugs, two deaths and she'd allowed her child to spend countless evenings there. When she noticed that Miss Pearl had traveled back to that faraway place in her mind again, Grace scanned the room for a box of tissues but the room was poorly lit. The only light emanated from rays of sun streaming in between partiallyparted drapes bordering the front window.
“I didn't mean to upset you,” Grace said, setting out to find a light switch.
“Don't pay me no nevermind, Gracie. I'm just an old woman trying to hold on to memories I ain't ready to let go of yet.” She saw what Grace was trying to do and stopped her. “Ain't no use in beating up the switch. Me and the electriccompany done had us a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” Grace asked, unable to hide her concern. “What misunderstanding?”
“They can't understand why I can't come up with the money to pay the bill. I missed too many payments, and they cut off the service.”
Grace suddenly remembered André mentioning somethingabout Miss Pearl's work hours having been scaled back because of her inability to climb stairs and keep up with her company's cleaning schedule, but she couldn't believe it had gotten this bad. “Miss Pearl, you've been sitting up here in the dark?” Grace asked finally.
“Only when the sun goes down,” she jested to ease her embarrassment.
“Miss Pearl,” Grace moaned. When the enormity of the woman's woes hit home, she made a slow return to her seat on the sofa. “And what about Skyler? How does he get his studying done?”
“As best he can,” the woman answered with unusual resolve.“He's so proud, that boy. I told him things would work out fine, but he got it in his thick head to go out and fix it hisself.Patience ain't wasted on the youth, that's for sure.”
Grace felt her heart rate quicken. How she could have allowedthis to happen to people she cared about added an extra helping of guilt to her disbelief. As Grace wrung her hands nervously, she asserted adamantly, “Okay, I'll take care of the misunderstanding between you and the electric company.” She stuck out her palm to ward off any oppositionfrom a woman determined to make it on her own. “And don't tell me I can't either,” Grace warned. “I'm not going to stand by and let this happen and do nothing about it.”
“Gracie, I don't accept charity from nobody! I know you have a good heart butâ” she started to say before meeting a firm roadblock.
“But nothing!” Grace stated, louder than she intended. “I'm not offering you anything you haven't already done for me and André. You've given my family the best you had, and now I'm going to do the same, with or without your blessing.”Her eyes widened as the old lady shook with laughter. “You think I'm going to let you stop me?”
“Heavens, naw, Gracie,” Ms. Pearl chuckled heartily. “I doubt that a team of wild horses could do that. Now, I see where that boy of yours gets his gumption. He had the bright idea that he was beholden to me and brought by two-hundred-seventy-fivedollars' worth of small bills and loose change. Said he broke into his piggy bank so's he could help out. That's your chile all right. He's as stiff and stern as you.”
Grace bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing too. “Dré did that?”
“Sho' he did. I didn't have the heart to turn his gift away, but I didn't have the will to spend it, neither. It's tucked in the back of the top draw' with my unmentionables. You should've seen his face all taut like yours was a minute ago. It was a sight to see him trying to do his best to be a man.” Unexplained tears escaped from her eyes before she could hold them back. “Sometimes it's hard to watch a man-chile face troubles bigger than he's ready to take on,” she said out of nowhere.
Grace didn't want to ask her next question, but she couldn't resist. “Miss Pearl, the troubles you mentioned, is that what led to Donnell's death?”
“Whooo. It was like yesterday, you know, times being hard like they was. Donnell quit school before I knew it, turned his back on college scholarships for basketball to pick up odd jobs. He joined up with some bad boys and took on a life of crime.” The old lady shook her head, finding it difficult to accept how it could have happened to her grandchild.“He was a good boy, Gracie, just like Skyler. Didn't mean no harm to nobody. Those policemen say they were in the right to kill him, though. Might've been the case, he was there to rob that liquor store when the law pulled up, but that still didn't make it all right with me.”
Grace thought the lump in her throat was going to choke her to death. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe. Too many things were going through her head at once. “Skyler, where's Skyler?” she asked with false calm like a woman defusing a time bomb. Lightning was not going to strike twice if she had anything to say about it.
“I believe he's down at the corner market stacking groceries,”was Miss Pearl's best guess. “He's been hanging around down there for a few days.”
After getting the exact location of the market and a handfulof overdue bills from Skyler's grandmother, Grace grabbed her purse and dashed out of the house as if it were on fire. Within five minutes, she'd found the market, but that's not all she found. Skyler was outside of it with a gang of other young men, all of which appeared destined for hell or jail, and more than likely both.
“Skyler Barnes!” Grace shouted from an open car window.“Get over here, now!” His surprise didn't go unnoticed by the other young men there. When uncertainty jammed him up in the middle of a tense situation, he sighed hard, tryingto save face with his sidewalk associates. Grace jumped out of the Volvo with the meanest face she could manufactureleading the way. “Don't make me come over there and shame you in front of your friends!” With those so-called friends watching closely while Skyler treaded water, he made one of the toughest decisions a young man his age had to: face a grown woman's wrath, and fallout from his peers after doing so. Time stood still on that sidewalk. No one moved until the apparent leader of the pack nudged him along.
“I'd go if I was you,” the head delinquent suggested with a raised brow. He wasn't sure who Grace was, but the look she'd tossed him spelled trouble in the worst way. “She's scaring me,” he added, glancing at her polished shoes, “and I don't even know her.”
“Me too,” another of them muttered under his breath. The lady who'd rolled up on the group of apparent delinquents meant business, that much they did know. Their assumptions were correct. Grace was willing to do whatever it took to save Skyler from meeting his older brother's fate. When he eased closer to her SUV, she pointed her finger at his face.
“Get your behind over here. Open your mouth so I can see your teeth. Wider! Had me driving around looking for you!” Skyler didn't want to comply, but there was no going back now. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Just as I thought,” Grace fussed, “a head full of holes.”
“Hey, Sky. Who is she, yo' denniss?” one of the young men joked.
“No, I'm his guidance counselor and his probation officer,”Grace lashed back. “Do you want me to call yours?”
“Oh, uh-uh,” the homeboy answered promptly. “I didn't mean no disrespect, ma'am. I was just leaving.” He had taken off in the other direction by the time Grace pulled away from the curb with Skyler sulking in the passenger seat.
They were sitting in the dental office filling out paperworkwhen Skyler mustered enough nerve to speak his mind. “Excuse me, Miss Hilliard, but you didn't have to handleme like that in front of my boys. I was just chilling in the cut.”
“I've made an agreement with Miss Pearl to handle things as I see fit until you graduate in the spring, you hear me?”
By the way Skyler popped up, you'd have thought he'd seen a ghost. “You talked to Grandma Pearl?”
“Sure did, and she told me about Donnell. We're putting an end to whatever you thought you were getting into. We clear on that?” Skyler didn't know what to say, so he remainedsilent until forced to give in. “I said, are we clear?” Grace hissed so as not to draw any more attention to themselvesthan she already had.
“Yes, ma'am,” was his barely audible response, although it was loud enough to seal the deal.
The dentist examined Skyler's mouth and discovered seven cavities. Grace wrote a check, commissioning for all of them to be filled at the same time. Three hours later, she helped him to the car, then dropped him off at home. He was sedated and sorry that he hadn't taken better care of his teeth. If Grace hadn't rescued him when she did, he'd have been staring at a world of new troubles to be sorry for. She read days later in the morning paper that three of his boys were arrested later that same evening after breaking into a warehouse six blocks from his home. Grace uncovered, by interrogating André, Skyler's intentions to go in on the heist with them. He'd planned on fencing his share of the stolen goods to get the lights turned back on.
Grace thanked God for sending her there, and then she thanked Him for giving her child's best friend back to him. The last seventy-two hours reminded her of what she'd been studying from the Book of James regarding a Christian's responsibilityto care for widows and orphans. Although Skyler didn't actually qualify, he came pretty darn close. Sister Kolislaw's words rang true about God working with Grace while working on her. Now, if He would hurry up and work on her behalf in the husband department, that would have been icing on the cake, a wedding cake.
16
What's a Woman to Do?
W
hen Marcia buzzed Grace's phone, she was working out the details for a high-priority special circumstances meeting with Ted, the senior partner. Grace hadn't been able to sleep soundly since learning of Miss Pearl's dire straits and diminishing health, although the “misunderstanding” with the electric company had been settled with a personal check to cover past-due bills and an additional surplus of one thousand dollars for any future and subsequent misunderstandings.Grace couldn't help thinking what might have happened to Skyler's promising basketball career and formal education if something hadn't persuaded her to drop in on the hood for a quick inspection. What she found there may have saved a young man from a life of crime, and his grandmother from blaming herself over the same atrocity a second time.
“Miss Hilliard, there's a Wallace Peters holding for you,” Marcia announced through the speaker phone. Grace didn't answer immediately, so Marcia waited before starting in again. “Excuse me, Missâ”
“Yes, I'm here,” Grace interrupted. “Sorry, Marcia. My mind was on another call. I'll speak with Mr. Peters.” She read over important documents while Wallace introduced himself because she had little time to spare. André was performingabove average in Wallace's class, Skyler had returnedto school without missing a beat, and there was a plan in the works to help Ms. Pearl along without having to fight her tooth and nail in order to pull it off. Grace's world had evolved into a catch-all community center, with too much on the table to be distracted by a younger man she didn't know well enough to let herself get worked up over. She was too busy, she'd decided, for niceties that wouldn't directly benefit her or the necessary journey she embarked upon to protect her newly adopted family. If Grace hadn't been so preoccupied,she would have been able to see what was staring her in the face: a good man who seemed interested in the same thing she'd been looking for, a relationship worth investigating.
“Miss Hilliard, don't you agree?” Wallace repeated when his initial question went unanswered.
“Uh, I'm sorry. I wasn't really listening. Where were we?” Grace asked nonchalantly. The papers on her desk ruffled without regard to what impression it might have given Wallace.If a person didn't know better, it would have seemed that she was going out of her way to be blasé toward him.
“I was saying how important it was that André put in extra time helping Skyler comprehend reading passages when he was experiencing enormous difficulty beforehand. It has worked out considerably well. Skyler's natural predilection for secondary math helped André to make major strides in his calculus course, don't you agree?” Wallace was perplexed when Grace appeared detached from the conversation. He had assumedshe'd facilitated the home-study collaboration betweentwo of his favorite students.
“Yes, I guess that would make sense,” she said flatly. Suddenly,Grace began replaying Wallace's report in her mind. She laid the documents on the desk and leaned back in her leather chair. “Did you say that André is assisting Skyler with his English coursework, and that Skyler is a math whiz who's been tutoring Dré in applied calculus?”
“Well, yes. I thought you'd arranged it, or at least knew about it,” Wallace answered. Grace closed her eyes, uncomfortablewith the idea that so much had gone on under her nose. Thank God, it was all positive.
“No, I'm ashamed to say that I had no idea. Perhaps we should meet. I'd like to get your spin on another issue that's just come across my plate. Can you do lunch today?” A long pause lingered while Grace waited.
“Yes, I should be able to move around a few things to make that happen. Oh, and Miss Hilliard, thank you for being concerned enough to step in regarding Skyler's absenteeism,”Wallace continued. “I heard about his afternoon at the dentist.” Grace wondered what else he'd heard about, and if the boys were sharing other important events with him that they probably wouldn't with her.
After canceling all of her afternoon appointments, Grace trekked to the Java Hut, a trendy coffee bar on the outskirts of the neighborhood. Wallace was already there, sitting at a booth near the back. He watched Grace's entrance, like the other men who were glad they had stopped by the Hut at the perfect time to enjoy the view. “Miss Hilliard, thanks again for making the time,” Wallace greeted her, standing to offer a cordial handshake. “I hope you didn't mind coming so far, but I do have another class in an hour.”
“No, my afternoon opened up after a few appointments canceled,” she lied. “This is very important to me.” CorporateGrace worked hard at looking past Wallace's striking features, broad shoulders, tailored brown suit, and starched white button-down shirt, but she couldn't overlook how stylishlyhe dressed on a teacher's salary. In the three times she'd seen him, his wardrobe and taste in clothing were impeccable.Then scenes from the steamy reoccurring dreams she'd been having flashed before her eyes. Intimate encounters with a dark stranger that she couldn't explain vexed her. Grace had previously preferred pretty boys with lighter complexions that varied distinctly from her own, but recently she found herself straddled with visions of a virile, strong backed warriorwith dark skin writhing against hers. Short of breath, she checked herself and turned her eyes away. “I'll have hot tea,” she told the waiter, who'd appeared out of nowhere. “Earl Grey, if you have it. Yes, sugar as well. Thank you.”
Simultaneously, Wallace had been sizing up Grace as well. The way she'd breezed through the door on a mission, it seemed, although elegantly at the same time, had him sweating beneath the collar. Her coral-hued designer skirt suit was Kasper. He recognized that clothing line by the slimmingcut of the jacket. Paying attention to women, everything about them, was an old habit that assisted him in analyzing potential candidates for marriage. He couldn't help it, runningacross his perfect match had plagued him for years, but no one came close to meeting his highly specific expectations.However, the way Grace sashayed into his life at the basketball game, stole glances at him while he conducted his class, and undoubtedly rescheduled her afternoon to share a booth in a faraway café all worked together for one smashingintroduction.
Wallace sipped coffee from his cup and cast a subtle leer across the table at Grace. “Tea is good for the soul, they say,” he commented to break the ice.
“Then I'll order a second cup,” she groaned wearily, placingher sunshades inside a small rectangular case. “God knows I could use it.”
“I'm sure He does. God, I mean.”
Grace wasn't exactly certain how to take Wallace's reply, so she changed the subject altogether. “Uh, Mr. Peters, the boys,” she said, trying desperately to clear her head, “it would appear that they confide in you, or is it common knowledge about them tutoring one another?”
“No, it's quite the contrary, actually. Skyler was falling behind last term, so his counselor suggested that he take time out to catch up on his reading. Then it was discovered that his inability to retain the assignments was directly linked to his poor reading skills.”
“Skyler couldn't read?” Grace asked apprehensively, as if he were her own son.
“It wasn't that severe, but he was a very slow reader. Once André noticed it was taking Skyler twice as long to read the same newspaper articles from the sports page that he had, he came to me. We had a closed-door Read Aloud.”
“What's that, this Read Aloud?” Grace asked. Wallace saw that she was locked in on this conversation, unlike the one that took place over the phone.
“That's a mechanism I've found extremely beneficial in rating how well students read and comprehend. Of course, those who don't do well, hate it, and the students who've mastered the written word make the best of it. It's my hope that before the semester ends, each of my students gets a chance to see what that feels like, a chance to shine among their peers.”
Grace was taken aback. First she'd learned that André had offered his savings to help Miss Pearl, and now this. “Well, I'll be. André brought Skyler's reading deficiency to you.”
“Yes, he's a serious young man for his age, but I wouldn't categorize Skyler's problem as a deficiency. He, like so many inner-city kids, received social promotions without being prepared to move ahead. Typically, my students are as intelligent as you'd find on the other side of the tracks, but they've logged far more hours with a TV, DVD, VCR, iPod or video idiot box than with an open book. In that regard, André certainly stands out.”
Grace blushed over the compliment, eased out of CorporateGrace mode, and downshifted into Mama Grace. “How do you mean?” she prodded shamelessly, fishing for additionalpraise.
“My hat's off to you,” Wallace obliged. He recognized where she was taking him, and he didn't mind the ride. “Miss Hilliardâ” he continued before being cut off again.
“Grace,” she insisted. “Please call me Grace. I think we've moved past the parent-teacher formalities.”
“I agree, Grace.” When Wallace smiled for the first time since she'd arrived, his perfectly aligned teeth, set between two adorable dimples, had Grace seeing double. As she returnedhis smile with a reasonable facsimile, he began searching for words that wouldn't come easily. “Oh, uh, yes, I was saying that it's obvious to me that André has parents who've shown they care a great deal about his academics.”
If there was a good time for Grace to solidify her availablestatus, this was it. She pondered awhile.
What the heck
, she figured. Wallace was nice, charming, and well heeled, but younger she thought, and a teacher to boot. Maybe he could introduce some of his older, more accomplished friends to her. There was an outside chance to get a Grade A hookup by referral. “I've always made sure that my son made appropriatetime to study, and I've stayed on top of his schoolwork.He'll be a black man some day; you know better than anyone that his work has to be exceedingly good in order to get in the door. Corporations looking for the best and the brightest generally don't hold it open for our men unless they see a can't-miss rainmaker who'll increase their stock options.”When Grace realized that her grandiose explanation of corporate scouting might have slighted Wallace's decision to choose teaching as a profession, she cringed. “Sorry, Wallace,I didn't mean to make light of your trade. I think it's an honorable profession.”
Chuckling, Wallace flashed another grin across the table. “No offense taken. Teaching allows me to give back to the community while molding young minds in the process. I've done it for two years, and I must say the rewards have been numerous. Also, I needed to take a break from the hustle and bustle of a nine to five.”
“I see,” was all that Grace could say. She wondered if Wallace was truly happy molding those young minds, as he aptly put it. Not that it wasn't a noble vocation, it just appearedthat there was more to him than he allowed her to see.
“Just think, if I weren't on staff at André's school, I wouldn't have met you or have had the honor of sharing a worthwhile conversation over warm beverages.” Wallace's attempt to lighten the mood failed miserably, although it wasn't due to a lack of trying.
“Wallace, can I be candid?” Grace asked hurriedly. “Oh My Goodness Fine” aside, she felt it necessary to keep things in proper perspective, mostly for his sake. “Look, I'm very thankful that you're working to shape your students' futuresbecause our children can use as much of that as possible.They should be thankful for what you bring to the table, and according to the long line of young mothers outside your door on parent-teacher night, their parents are too. I can't speak for you, but I think you're getting close to speakingout of turn and sending this conversation down a very uncomfortable path.”
“May I be allowed to try my hand at that being-candid thing, as well?” Wallace asked. Grace raised her brow and nodded in a deliberate, guarded manner. “I'd like to stay on the same page, if at all possible. And, while I appreciate your assessment of my interest in you, I'll remind you that the greatest fall one can take is the short trip over one's ego.” Wallace continued staring at Grace and her wide-eyed you-didn't-just-read-mesneer. “You can quote me on that,” he told her with a sly wink.
“Okay, you ... you took it there. This is where I get off,” Grace smacked, after feeling that Wallace had sufficiently tugged at her super cape.
“Before you do get off,” he stated, “please keep in mind that I haven't asked you for a single thing, yet.”
Grace collected her things and placed the sunshades back on her face. “And I strongly suggest that you don't get any ideas to do so. However, I'll check with some of my eligible, slightly junior girlfriends and inquire about their availability for a young educated man such as yourself. Good day, Mr. Peters.”
Grace presumed that Wallace was quite a bit younger than she was but he was merely a few months younger than her. At the time it didn't much matter, so he decided not to take issue at the risk of stifling her steam. Besides, he thought that her feisty disposition was sexy as all get-out.