7
M
alisha Chambers didn’t know a damn thing about baseball until the doctor pulled her into his office and told her that her man was about to die real young.
For months nobody could figure out what the hell was wrong with her husband, Jamel. He had been shaking and bumping into walls and falling down left and right, but nobody could ever tell Malisha why.
“It’s called Lou Gehrig’s disease,” a specialist finally told her. “Jamel has a disease that’s named after a famous baseball player. There’s no cure for it, and it’s gonna kill him fast.”
But like the old folks always said, doctors weren’t God and they didn’t know every damn thing. And as it turned out, baseball wasn’t what took Jamel out after all.
Malisha did.
It had been raining, and she’d been rushing Jamel and their young son home from a birthday party when she ran a red light and wrapped her BMW around a telephone pole. Jamel had been killed instantly. Their son, Trey, had been critically injured, and Malisha?
Oh, Malisha had walked away without a scratch.
In a matter of moments every single dream Malisha had shared with her man had been shattered. The cute little house they’d bought in Queens, the white picket fence, the brand new luxury whip ... none of that shit meant a damn thing without Jamel by her side.
All Malisha had ever wanted was a family, and her husband had been everything she could have asked for in a man. Jamel had been a dependable provider, a dedicated father, and a delicious lover. But when she buried him on that cloudy morning in June, she had put her life right in that hole along with him. Everybody kept telling her that Jamel probably would have died from his disease soon anyway, but Malisha knew it was her act of stupidity, not no damn baseball disease, that had sent her husband to an early grave.
So it was their boy Trey who Malisha lived for now. Her smart, active baby had suffered brain damage in the crash, and was now just a whisper of the kid he should have been. Trey had been discharged from a rehabilitative facility a year earlier, and he required around the clock care. Malisha wanted to stay home and take care of all his needs, but unfortunately, she had to work and earn a living to support the two of them.
The home health aids that were paid for by the city had been trifling as hell, and Malisha had to stay on them to make sure they did the simplest shit right, like cleaning his breathing tube and changing his position in the bed every few hours.
Trey’s doctors had urged Malisha to put the boy into a long-term care facility, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t give a damn what they said about Trey’s brain damage being too severe for him to know who she was. Her son knew her! And despite the accident being her fault, he loved her too. Why the doctors couldn’t see this, Malisha didn’t know. All she knew was that when she looked into her boy’s eyes she saw all the love he had for her shining back at her.
It was true that Trey didn’t talk, play, or dress himself like other kids his age did, but one thing her baby did was smile. That boy
smiled
! Malisha lived for that smile. And the only thing that was guaranteed to penetrate the fog in her son’s brain and put a big smile on his face was music. Classical music. But not just listening to it. Playing it.
So, three days a week Malisha and Trey made the drive uptown to a very expensive school of music therapy, where trained instructors propped him up on a stool and guided his small, stiff hands through endless renditions of classical piano pieces.
At first Malisha couldn’t believe her baby was actually pressing the keys and playing the notes, but the smile on his face and the beautiful melody coming from the piano was enough to make a believer out of her.
Malisha was convinced that she had found the key that could permanently unlock the gates of Trey’s mind, but unfortunately, the state only paid for a limited number of therapeutic lessons each year. When Trey’s benefits ran out, the boy retreated back into his shell, and Malisha could see his smile—and the light in his eyes—dimming more and more each day.
So like any good mother, Malisha had made a decision. If she couldn’t get the state to pay for Trey’s lessons, she would scrape the money together any way she could. It didn’t matter if she had to rob, beg, borrow, or steal, her son was gonna get outta that bed and get his three music lessons every week, come hell or high water.
In the beginning, Malisha had felt ashamed each time she dipped into her cash box at work. She’d been working at Omega Bank since way before the accident, and the people she worked with had been damn good to her over the years. She convinced herself that she wasn’t stealing from the employers she respected and cared about. All she was doing was pinching off the profits of a large corporation full of greedy shareholders and a corrupt board of directors.
Hell, Malisha rationalized as she slid a hundred-dollar bill from the stack of money she had just counted down and slipped it under her skirt. Tellers didn’t get paid no kinda real wages anyway. They were responsible for hundreds of thousands of the bank’s dollars every day, yet most only made about ten bucks an hour for their duties.
Malisha had never been one to come up with a light drawer. Almost all the other tellers came up short every now and then, but Malisha was careful. She double- and triple-counted every penny she gave out, and she never gave out a dime more than she was supposed to.
So, the first time her tally sheet failed to equal out, she was met with astonishment from her supervisors, but not a hint of suspicion. After all, Malisha was human, just like everybody else. It was easy to miss a crisp new hundred-dollar bill when you were counting out thousands all day. Those new bills stuck together like crazy, and it wasn’t unusual for even a seasoned teller to be short at the end of the day.
Malisha knew she had to be careful about when and how she took money, because Trey’s lessons had to be paid for in advance. She cut corners and tried to make ends meet from her paycheck as much as possible. She stopped eating lunch with her coworkers, and took leftovers from home instead. Personal grooming and appearance was very high on Malisha’s list of priorities. It was something the bank really stressed too, but Malisha gave up her bimonthly trips to the hairdresser and the Korean nail salon. She permed her own hair, and pried off her acrylic tips and polished her own nails when they chipped.
But no matter how carefully Malisha tried to balance what she had and what she needed, she just wasn’t a thief at heart, and when she slipped up, she slipped up big time.
The bank had recently conducted an annual internal audit, and some sharp-ass white girl had smelled a big fat rat while examining Malisha’s old tally sheets.
Why is it that this teller started coming up short so regularly six months ago? Her shortages have totaled exactly five hundred dollars every month. Is there something going on in her life? Why hasn’t this been annotated on the branch’s monthly infraction report?
Malisha knew she was in hot water when the branch manager called her into his office. He was a portly middle-aged white man who had always been nice to her. But as Malisha sat down across from his desk, she could tell right off that he was not about the bullshit.
“We’ll make this quick, Malisha,” he said, peering at a printed report on his desk. “You’ve been coming up short. Regularly. And in a way that makes it obvious that you’re not making simple mistakes in your counting.” He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair. “What you’re doing is, you’re stealing.”
Malisha’s mouth had shot open and a string of protests and denials fell out. Hot shame crept up her neck and she was actually fuckin’ offended that this fat bastard was sitting there calling her a liar and a thief!
“Save it,” he said, deading all that indignation tumbling from her lips. “I’ve been in this business long enough to recognize a case of sticky fingers when I see one. So tell me,” he continued calmly, “which one of your bills are you having trouble paying? Whatever it is, it’s costing you about five hundred dollars a month. So what gives?”
Malisha sniffed back tears of guilt and shame as she opened up to the bank manager and begged him for mercy. She thanked him for being so understanding after the accident, and for all the books and stuffed animals he’d bought for Trey over the years. She told him how big Trey’s smile was when he played classical music on the piano. She told him how desperate she was to keep that smile on her baby’s face.
“Honestly, Mr. Wortman,” Malisha pleaded. “I’ve been working here a long time. You know me. I’m not a thief,” she sniffed. “I’m trying to be a good mother. Trey wouldn’t be in his situation if it wasn’t for the mistakes I made that night. I’m sorry I stole from y’all. I just didn’t have anywhere else to turn.”
“Well, turning to your cash drawer is certainly not an option,” he said. And then his eyes got softer as a kindly look crossed his face.
“Look, Malisha. You are a good worker. One of our top employees. And I like you. I really do. It was a tragedy, what happened to your family, and everybody here feels bad about it. We really do. But let’s face it. We’re running a business here, and you’ve broken the law. There’s no way the bank can foot your son’s tuition at his music school. I don’t think I have to tell you this, but you can’t just go in your cash drawer and take whatever you need, no matter what you need it for. Like I said, every employee at this branch feels awful about your situation, but your personal expenses are
your
personal responsibility.”
Malisha could only nod wordlessly as he spoke, because she knew the white man was speaking the truth.
“So here’s the deal,” Mr. Wortman said, his voice growing cold and businesslike again. “You’ve got two choices. Either you pay the bank a restitution of all the money you’ve stolen, or you get fired. If I have to fire you, then you’ll never get an employment recommendation from us, and there’s a possibility that you could be prosecuted. The only thing I can offer you is a little extra time to repay the bank, Malisha. But that’s it.
You have got to pay.
”
Malisha spent the next few weeks in a state of constant worry. After making the first two restitution payments to the bank there was barely enough money left in her account to buy Trey’s food, let alone pay for his music lessons.
But Trey had to have those lessons!
As his mother, this was the least Malisha could do for him. She had to give her son a reason to smile. She just had to. The sight of him laying in bed limp and listless was enough to make her want to put a bullet in her head.
If you could gather up all the guilt in the universe, it wouldn’t have come close to what Malisha was feeling as she left work for the day. The dude she was dating had offered to bring dinner over for her and Trey, and even though she had played it off like she had to think about it, deep inside she was grateful they wouldn’t have to finish off the can of Spa-ghettios she had leftover from the night before.
Malisha thought about the man she was allowing to get deeper and deeper into her and Trey’s life. This guy named Noble Browne. They’d developed a real tight relationship over the past few months. Noble had said he wanted to find him a wife, and even though he’d admitted from the gate that he was seeing other women, Malisha was trying damn hard to make him forget those other bitches and concentrate his attention strictly on her.
See, Noble was just the type of guy she needed right about now. He was honest and he was dependable. He put it on her in the sheets, and he was loving and gentle with her son. True, he had a fake leg that kinda freaked her out, but Malisha tried hard to ignore the sight of it when he was on top of her and it was propped up against the damn bed. The first time she’d seen it, she’d almost screamed. He shouldn’t have snuck it on her like that! They had been kissing and touching and all that, and when Malisha had run her hand innocently down his thigh it had felt like she was touching a tree. And the stump. Oh, that stumpy part that was left of his leg. Malisha couldn’t even look too close at that. It straight messed her up.
The good thing was, you couldn’t even tell Noble was an amputee unless he took off his pants. He walked and did everything else just fine. He had told her about how he had convinced them to let him stay on the force when they had wanted to retire him. He was still a cop, just assigned to work traffic control, and he got a big plus in her book for that.
But there
was
something else that had Malisha wide open on him too.
Noble was gwapped up.
Paid.
Richer than a mothafucka!
Luckily, he was the type of dude who didn’t mind spending money on her and Trey. Whenever Noble was around, he paid for everything. Malisha had never once had to dig in her purse in his presence. And even though they had to lug around Trey’s wheelchair everywhere they went, Noble liked taking them out. To dinner, to the movies, to the park. Wherever.
The problem was, Noble gave her
things,
and not cash
money,
which is what Malisha needed to pay her bills. It wasn’t like he was stingy with his doe, it was more like he was careful. He’d buy her jewelry and gifts, and he had even used his credit card to get her air conditioner fixed, but he had never offered to pay her car note or her rent.