Tutored (12 page)

“I aged out,” Hakiam said.

“You’re talking about foster care, aren’t you?” Wendy asked Hakiam.

He nodded.

“Well, what in the hell were you doing there? Where was your mother and how could you age out? You’re still under eighteen!”

“I only had a year to go,” Hakiam said. “I didn’t want to wait till the last minute.”

“I just don’t understand your mom,” Wendy said. “Where was she during all this? Did she just walk away from all of you?”

“She put us in the system. You can do that—if you’re tired of raising kids, you can give them to the state.”

“That shouldn’t be allowed. If you’re a parent, that’s not like a part-time job. You can’t just walk anytime you want. That’s insane.”

Wendy noted now that Hakiam’s eyes showed no recognizable sign of feeling.

“So, what’s foster care like?” she asked.

“You’re the smart one, Wendy. What do you think foster care is like?”

Her eyebrows slid upward as she said, “That bad, huh?” She stood up and walked over to the water cooler. She brought back two cups and handed him one.

“You’ve really been through it,” Wendy said, then tossed her head back and drank her water in one swallow.

He did the same.

They sat facing each other and she took his hand, but after a while he removed her hand from on top of his.

Then he pulled out his American history textbook and began to read.

Not to be outdone, she opened up her psych book again, shutting him out from view but not from thought.

After twenty minutes of feigned concentration, he began to get restless and drummed his fingers on the table.

She reached out to still his hand. She cocked one eyebrow. “You free Saturday?”

He nodded.

“Ever been on a double date?”

He shook his head.

“We shouldn’t have to sneak around. You mind meeting my father before we go?”

He shrugged.

She held out her hand for him to shake. He brought her in for a kiss instead.

“H
akiam’s downstairs.”

“And?” her father asked, already in his pajamas and bathrobe at just past seven.

“Aren’t you coming down to meet him?”

“Why should I? I’m familiar with his type.”

“That’s rude.”

“I’m allowed to be rude, I’m your father. Pass me the
TV Guide
.”

“As if you don’t already know what’s on television every minute of every day,” she said, but handed him the magazine.

“Thank you,” he said, and paged through till he got to the right day and time.

“Oh, good,” he said. “Cary Grant is on. Now, he was someone with real class.”

Wendy rolled her eyes.

Her dad clicked on the television. “I have tried my whole life to escape people like Hakiam, and you have
the unmitigated gall to bring someone like that right into this house.” He took a sip of his tea and told her, “You cannot lift him up. He can only drag you down.”

Wendy turned to leave.

“I hope that you didn’t expect me to support this thug crush.”

“What I expected of you was that you try to understand me for once.”

“I always listen to you, Wendy. He seems to delight in giving SparkNote versions of how bad his life is.”

“No, you don’t, Dad. You don’t listen and you don’t even try to understand. You just sit in this room every night and watch old movies. Well, I want to relate to people, not a TV set.”

“Wendy, I have done my best to put you in a nice neighborhood, and what do you do?”

“Hakiam has never pulled me away from you. There is no one pulling me away from you besides
you
, Dad.” She paused. “You made it out of the slums—why don’t you have any faith that someone else can too? Why are you so anxious to slam the door behind you?”

“It’s because I slammed the door that I was able to make it out. But you can’t see that. Because comfort is all you’ve known.”

“There’s all different types of comfort, Dad.”

“Look, I’m not going to continue to go round and round. Respect these gray hairs on my head, young lady,” he said, pulling at his salt-and-pepper hair.

“You’re impossible, Dad.”

“That may be true,” he said, looking over the top of his glasses at her. “Erin’s meeting you there?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Well, be sure to come straight home afterward.”

“Yes, Dad.”

She went back downstairs. Hakiam was right where she’d left him, sitting in a big chair, staring at nothing in particular. She was expecting him to at least have a so-I-guess-he-ain’t-coming-down look on his face. Instead, he wore no expression whatsoever. Right by him on the breakfront was the family photo of her, her mom, and her dad when they were one small happy family. Hakiam didn’t even seem interested in that.

She got her blue wool coat from the hall closet, and they left.

When they got outside, Wendy felt compelled to say, “I’m sorry my dad is like that.”

“Do I look like the type that’s dying to meet the folks?”

“I wanted him to meet you, Hakiam. I wanted him to give you a chance.”

“Look, I just said I ain’t into parents no way. I’m not even bothered with my own father. Why should I get mixed up with yours?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I would like you to?”

“Well, he don’t want to, so why don’t you let it drop.”

Wendy took a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask, Hakiam, for you and him to spend five minutes face to face being civil to one another like two normal human beings.”

“Ain’t it bad enough that I got to spend time with your white friends?”

“Why do they have to be my
white
friends?”

“Because that’s what color they are.”

“They have names, you know,” Wendy said in a decidedly short tone.

She could tell that her words had struck Hakiam like a lash. “Sorry,” he said after a pause.

She walked ahead of him as they went to the car.

“You look nice tonight,” he said.

She glanced down at her V-neck cardigan, square-necked camisole, and blue jeans.

“Thanks,” she told him over her shoulder.

They arrived at the busy IHOP at eight o’clock sharp. Erin and Kyle had already secured a table, and Erin waved wildly at the sight of her friend. Both she and Kyle rose to greet Wendy and Hakiam.

Kyle was medium height with well-scrubbed looks. He dressed like a jock, though he never played varsity ball.

Though originally from Jersey, Erin suffered from that middle-America openness.

Hakiam acknowledged them both with a nod, and they all sat down.

They all flipped the menu over from the dinner portions to the breakfast selections and ordered various incarnations of pancakes.

“How do you like it here in Philadelphia?” Erin asked, her head bobbing in her attempt to be friendly.

Wendy cringed. She knew Hakiam would be immune to Erin’s sunny nature. He’d do just like John F. Kennedy had said and mistake her kindness for weakness.

Hakiam shrugged. “It’s about the same. A city’s a city.”

“Well, not every place has the Liberty Bell,” Erin said with a bright smile.

“What’s Cincinnati like?” Kyle asked.

“Isn’t the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there?” Erin asked.

Hakiam gave Wendy an I’m-lost look.

Wendy winked at him. “That’s Cleveland,” she said.

“And the funny thing is, whenever there’s a new inductee into the Hall of Fame, they hold the ceremony in New York.”

“Well, you can’t expect the Stones to go to Ohio,” Kyle said.

Erin nodded. “This country consists of New York and LA. Everything else is flyover territory.”

“Don’t say that. I just sent off my application to Notre Dame,” Kyle said

“Where’s that?” Hakiam asked.

“Indiana,” Erin said. She poured a touch of maple syrup on her silver-dollar banana pancakes.

“Colleges don’t count,” Wendy said. “Most campuses are a world within themselves.”

Kyle sliced up his blueberry pancakes. “I think it’s so cool that you’re getting your GED, Hakiam. Have you thought at all about college?”

Hakiam forked a hunk of buttermilk pancakes into his mouth and said, “Nope.”

“The program lasts another few weeks,” Wendy said.

“What are your plans after it’s over?” Kyle asked.

Hakiam shrugged. “I’ll see if I pass.”

“Oh, you’ll pass,” Wendy said confidently. “I’ve never had a tutee fail yet.”

“Wendy, you said you never had a tutee take the test,” Erin said.

Wendy gently kicked her under the table. “That was supposed to be our secret.”

Hakiam laughed and said, “I knew I was in good hands.”

As they finished their meal, Kyle tossed out the following question: “I know a guy who’s throwing a party—you want to hit that?”

“Sure,” Hakiam said, “let’s hit that.”

When they entered the party, Wendy fiddled with the buttons on her jacket. She was reluctant to take it off. Wendy was missing the teen gene: she hated parties and already missed the good time they’d been having simply sitting around talking and eating carbs. Parties were loud and crowded and featured flat beer that came in red plastic cups. The air reeked of drugs, and there was no room to move or think.

At the gathering, there were a few kids she knew from school. They were grinding on the makeshift dance floor or lounging on the lumpy brown couch.

“Hey, that’s Jay-Z playing,” Hakiam said.

Wendy turned to Hakiam and asked, “What were you expecting, a hoedown?”

He pointed to two girls at the center of things making out with each other.

“I see some hos.”

Kyle laughed so hard that he spit out his drink.

Erin giggled too and elbowed Wendy. “Come on, that was funny. You know they’re just going at each other to attract guys’ attention.”

Wendy sighed and played Hakiam’s comment over again in her head. A grin crept over her face.

As the party went on, Wendy felt her mind and body becoming connected with the silly atmosphere. She knew her dad was going to ream her no matter what time she came back, so she figured she might as well go for broke and break her curfew.

She took the banana clip from her hair and started dancing, working all angles. She threw her hands in the air and spun around with Hakiam, then Kyle, then Erin, then went back to Hakiam again. They mingled and mixed it up with the rest of the crowd and stayed till the party was broken up around one (thanks to an angry neighbor who claimed he had to get up early the next morning).

As they left, Hakiam told Wendy, “Hey, white people are all right!”

“You know,” Kyle said, “that would make a good bumper sticker.”

I
t was past one, and every inch of the apartment was filled with bodies. Leesa’s friends were sitting on folding chairs, kitchen chairs, dining room chairs, stools, and the plastic-covered sofa. One friend, Rashana, kept circulating with a plate of this or a pitcher of that.

And that
music
. The wild beat kept going and going till the room seemed to swirl with absolute chaos. New people were still entering the apartment, closing in on Hakiam.

“What happened on your hot date tonight? Did that stuck-up girl finally give you some?” Leesa asked at first sight of him.

“Never mind all that,” Hakiam told her. “It looks like you got half of Philly up in here.”

She raised her glass. “That’s right and we’re gonna get a high high.”

Hakiam pushed past his cousin and threaded through the crowd. He was stopped by an older woman. She
appeared to be in her thirties or maybe forties and was dressed like a walking Lava Lamp, in a yellow dress and gold wig.

“What’s your sign?” she asked Hakiam, throwing an arm around him.

“Closed,” he said, tossing her arm back.

A touch of the goodwill from his outing with Wendy and her friends still remained, but after a few minutes at his cousin’s, he felt the usual tension returning. His neck joints felt tight. There were bottles and cans everywhere, but he didn’t want to drink to make himself feel loose. He wanted to sleep.

He went to the bedroom in the hope of lying down. Instead, he got the shock of his life. There was Malikia, all nineteen inches of her.

She had rolled off the bed onto the floor and was out cold.

And she was lying in a drying pool of blood.

I
n the thin predawn night, Wendy walked up to her front door. Her dad opened it as she was fumbling with the keys.

He stood above her like a prison warden.

Then he let her in, not saying a word, and Wendy made her way upstairs.

In her room, she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and got into bed. She was still wound up from the night, so she tried to burn off some energy by squaring her nails with a file.

Her cell buzzed: Hakiam. It had only been fifty minutes since she’d dropped him off at his front door.

When she answered, he didn’t waste any time. “Malikia fell off the bed. She’s not moving,” he told her.

Wendy threw off the covers. “Call nine-one-one,” she said.

“I did that.”

Just then, her father came in, saying, “Get off the phone. Call that person back tomorrow.”

Wendy waved at him to go away.

“Wendy, who is that?” her father asked. “Is that that boy? You just spent the evening with him. Hang up.”

“Call nine-one-one again,” Wendy told Hakiam. “Tell them it’s a baby. Tell them it’s an infant. Then call me back.”

Hakiam said he would and clicked off.

“It’s late at night. What do you think you’re doing?” her dad said.

“There is an emergency!”

“What kind of emergency? What are you talking about?”

Wendy stepped into her jeans and pulled a sweatshirt over her head.

“Wendy, you are not leaving this house. I forbid you. There is always an emergency with those people. They will have you running from crisis to crisis.”

“Come on, Dad. For God’s sake, why do you have to start up with this shit now?”

“And I would trust that you know to speak to me better in this house!”

“A baby is unconscious, Dad. She could die!”

The cell went off again. She grabbed it and answered, and Hakiam shouted over the music pounding heavy in the background.