Hometown Favorite: A Novel (22 page)

Within forty-eight hours of their return from Houston, Rosella hired a lawyer to advise her on the first endorsement
deals offered Dewayne. This was no Monopoly game or college assignment. Jobe Enterprises, Inc., was established with
Rosella as president so any and all who requested Dewayne's
commercial talent would deal with a professional company.
In everything Dewayne did he wanted to establish a reliable
reputation in this nascent stage of his career, and he did not
mind manipulating the commercial world of advertising to
make up for what was universally considered a salary deficit
when it came to his football contract. His gravy train had left
the station and was building a full head of steam.

Dewayne settled his account with the SportsPlex the moment
the Stars' check cleared the bank. On the same day, he paid
the organization its fees and each personal trainer a thousanddollar bonus and shot his first photo session for SportsPlex print
materials, which would recruit prospective college athletes
destined for the NFL, touting the excellent facilities and personal attention. For a business barely in operation, the success
was marvelous.

Cherie's second visit to Los Angeles was for another celebration. She sat between Sabrina and Bruce with Joella and Franklin behind them in the bleacher section for the families of
all the graduates. When the names of Rosella and Dewayne Jobe
were announced one after the other, Cherie ignored any embarrassment she might cause by her jubilant display of shouting,
waving flags from USC and the Houston Stars, and hopping
in the stands like her shoes had hot coals in them.

Bruce had embraced every aspect of his new life. Sabrina
rebuffed every kindness. It had been an odd and painful adjustment for Franklin and Joella since the kids had moved in with
them. To begin with, they did not know each other. Sabrina
reminded her grandparents of Bonita. They felt her rejection
from the beginning, as though Sabrina had picked up where
Bonita left off. Sabrina seemed to carry the wounded memories of her mother's rages against her family; her mother had
spoken in the vilest of terms about her upbringing and how
her parents treated her and never understood her, and how,
by God, she was never going to raise her kids that way. But
Sabrina also held the tender but hazy memories of a grandmother who made rare visits to street corners to deposit sacks
of food, clothing, and cash for Sabrina, her brother, and her
mother. It was like a visit from a fairy godmother who drove
up in a fine carriage, delivered her gifts, and then disappeared
until the next surprise visit.

Her rusted parenting skills in need of retooling, Joella tried
to stay out of Sabrina's way. Much like the days when she left a
cache of goods on the street corner, Joella would leave purchases
and gifts with personal notes in Sabrina's room or on the table
in the foyer. It was as if Joella was trying to coax a wild animal
to trust her with enticing treats, but Sabrina's hardened exterior
was tough to crack.

Bruce was polite and ate the scheduled meals with them
while Sabrina usually ate alone in her room or outside. He loved his own room, although the technical gadgets that came
with it beset him. Exposure to such things had been limited,
and his skills at activating a computer, a TiVo, and an iPod
were untried. When Franklin took the time to show him how
to operate the equipment, it was as if Bruce had entered a new
world. Within a short time, he was a master engineer, even
showing Franklin tricks with remotes he never knew existed.
These shared times created a male bond sorely needed in their
lives. Franklin needed a way to connect with the lost life of his
daughter, and Bruce was the way to get in. Bruce needed male
relationships free of danger that allowed him the opportunity
to find out what it might be like to be an innocent little boy.

For Sabrina and Bruce, having Cherie in the Caldwell house
for the days around graduation added an extra dimension of
stability. Each night she and Joella joined forces in the kitchen,
and the infectious mirth and contentment shared between
the two as they went about preparing food were like the main
attraction on the entertainment bill. Bruce would sit on a bar
stool and watch them organize and assemble each dish, listen
to their stories of exotic travels or the simplicity of small town
life, and accept their knowledge and counsel when they were
dispensed as if he were hearing words from great sages.

Sabrina was a harder nut to crack even by this charming,
female duo. She usually shut herself in her room when she
came home from school each day, but gradually she ventured
into the kitchen for the last half of dinner preparations. When
Joella asked if she would be willing to set the dinner table, Sabrina inquired about where she kept her dishes. Joella offered
a muted prayer of thanks for this fissure in Sabrina's durable
exterior.

So this was their introduction to normalcy. This was their
view of how a family could function without chaos, uncertainty, bloodshed, and violence. This was what a full stomach felt like.
This was what love had to offer. The first great question Bruce
and Sabrina had to ask themselves was, how had their mother
walked away from all this?

Dewayne and Rosella made every effort to be a part of their
lives, and they decided a new start for everyone in Houston was
the best thing. When asked if they were ready to take on the
parental responsibility of a seventeen- and thirteen-year-old
when both were in their early twenties, Dewayne and Rosella
said it felt more like big brother and big sister stepping in.
Rosella added that it would be good practice for when their
own kids became teenagers. Franklin and Joella would make
frequent visits for Stars home games, but would remain in Los
Angeles to stay involved in Bonita's progress. Perhaps if everything went well, they could all have Christmas together.

At the prospect of a real Christmas, even Sabrina brightened.
Both children had had very little experience with the holiday,
but since their mother's trial, their new life already felt like
Christmas.

Departures were tearful. Cherie first, and she did not mind
hugging a little boy because it might embarrass him or a teenage girl because she exuded a "don't touch me" attitude. None
of that mattered. They were near blood and would be treated
as such, and having these children a part of their lives was
God's will, she told her son as he drove her to the airport in
his new vehicle-a Denali loaded with the bells and whistles
and a bench front seat to accommodate his size and growing
family.

The departure for Houston brought emotional trauma for
mother and daughter due to the affecting upheavals of pregnancy and because Joella was now losing the one daughter she
had been close to her whole life.

Sabrina volunteered a squeeze to Franklin and then to Joella, but did not linger with either of them. Bruce gave Franklin a manly handshake, but could not pull that off with his
grandmother. She trapped him, soaking his head with another
round of tears, until he could break free and take shotgun in
Dewayne's Denali.

The foursome took only what the two cars would hold. They
would buy new furniture for a new house. It would be a fresh
start. Rosetta had already established business and personal
bank accounts in Houston and made an appointment with
a Realtor. As soon as her feet hit the ground in Houston, she
would start seeing the houses they had selected from the virtual
tours they had taken on the computer. They packed the trunks
with the goods Bruce and Sabrina received in the short time of
living with their grandparents. They had not brought so much
as a toothbrush from their former dwelling; they sought to
create all things new for these dear children. What trepidation
they felt as they pulled out of the Caldwell driveway, heading
east, was minimal compared to the expectancy they had for
their future.

They built some extra time into their journey before they
had to get to Houston for Dewayne to start camp. Dewayne
wanted his family to see places like the Grand Canyon and
to go to an Indian reservation. This adventure began to build
a unit, began to create a team and establish lines of communication and trust. Sabrina's face began to carry more smiles
than scowls; her demeanor became more compliant and calm.
Everything excited Bruce. The world kept getting larger and
larger so that his thirteen years of inner-city life began to feel
like a dream, its hold on him beginning to fray.

When the city of Houston came into sight, Dewayne took
the interstate that went by the stadium so the kids could see where they would be spending their Sunday afternoons for
the Stars home games.

They rented a couple of suites at a hotel near the Sports Park
where the Stars Training Center was located, and each day
while Dewayne was at minicamp, Rosella and the kids looked at
potential houses, checked out school districts, visited churches,
and familiarized themselves with Houston's metropolis.

Since the trial, all references to Bonita diminished. Early on,
Sabrina had sworn she would leave and go find her mother,
but those threats soon ended. Although Bruce never mentioned her, it was obvious to those who observed him when
he was pensive, staring off into space, that he was thinking
about Bonita.

Without them knowing it, Rosella made a copy of a picture
of their mother when she was a teenager still living at home and
wearing her all-girls' prep school wardrobe, her face pinched
in a goofy expression, her hands scrunched up on the sides of
her head like deformed ears, a scarce moment of glee Joella had
caught on film, and she presented it to them in a cherry wood
frame as they stood in the kitchen of the empty six-bedroom
house they had decided to call home.

With each house they had toured, Rosella realized the kids
were thinking perhaps Bonita would be coming to live with
them and they would need a room for her. Rosella did not
want to spoil any illusion they might have, and she played
along with the fantasy.

To keep faith with Bruce and Sabrina and to strengthen their
growing bond, Rosella and Dewayne encouraged Sabrina and
Bruce to think well of their mother, imagine her as that young,
full-of-crazy-life teenager in their picture, pray for her, and start
writing letters of encouragement to her at the rehab center in
Los Angeles. In time, they would all know what to do.

The money Dewayne had already made from his endorsement deals financed the purchase of the house. The private
and business accounts with a prominent Houston bank would
enable Rosella and Dewayne to keep track of all their funds
and move portions around for investment purposes. After
purchasing the house, the next expenditures went toward furnishings for fifty-seven hundred square feet and computers,
supplies, a communication system, and accessories for the
offices of Jobe Enterprises, Inc., set up in an expansive room
just off the kitchen.

Rosella offered summer jobs to both kids. The thought of
making money was beyond their comprehension. Sabrina
would be Rosella's assistant, gradually taking more responsibility as she learned the business. Since Bruce was becoming quite
the computer wizard, Rosella put him in charge of designing a
program to keep Dewayne abreast of all the football statistics
he would want and updating his weekly itinerary. Dewayne
thought at first that it might be stretching the kids' abilities, but
Rosella countered with, "These kids are bright and have never
been challenged. If you always give them something easy to do,
they'll never learn to trust themselves to reach for something
difficult." He trusted her judgment and knew she would be a
hands-on manager, and he was curious to see if her experiment
with giving Bruce and Sabrina so much responsibility would
work. Besides, she wanted her house and the business to be up
and running smoothly by the time the baby arrived.

Dewayne had a short window of time before training camp,
and he wanted to take the family to Springdale to see Cherie
and show the kids where he grew up. He would be shooting a
credit card commercial in New York with Sly two days before
training camp and it would be the last opportunity for them to travel as a family before the start of school and the arrival
of the baby.

Cherie acted as silly about Bruce and Sabrina as if they were
royalty but without all the hands-off formality. It was as if she
was a kid herself-always in grandmotherly physical contact
with both of them, a pinched cheek, ruffled hair, a gentle pat,
or a vigorous hug-and Dewayne was surprised not only by
her behavior but also by the sting to his heart.

"You never treated me this way when I was a kid;' Dewayne
said after he had witnessed more doting than he could stand-a
"yes" to every request, never a "no" to anything the kids wanted
or wanted to do. "You're gonna spoil them."

"Stop acting like an old coot;" Cherie said, throwing an elbow
into his ribs for emphasis. Then she added for everyone to
hear, "That's because you were more trouble than these kids
ever thought about being."