Tutored (13 page)

“Hakiam, who’s there with you?”

“Plenty of people. It’s a party.”

“Ask if anyone knows first aid,” Wendy said.

“He needs to get the baby to a doctor,” Wendy’s dad said.

“Ain’t nobody here knows nothing,” Hakiam said when he got back on the line.

“Why hasn’t the ambulance come yet? Call them again,” Wendy told him.

She heard him step away, and then the faint sound of a siren. She breathed deeply, then asked when he came back to the phone, “Is the ambulance there?”

“No, that’s gone on down the street,” Hakiam said.

“You’re going to have to get her to a hospital.”

“What’s the nearest one?”

She shot a look at her father.

“What’s the nearest hospital to Fifty-first and Ruby?”

He paused a moment, then said, “Misericordia.”

“What is it on?”

He frowned. “It’s on Fifty-fourth Street.”

Wendy told Hakiam, “Keep her as still as you can, but get her to Misericordia on Fifty-fourth Street.”

H
akiam had never thought of himself as a runner, but he had been known to book it when the time called for it. And he did have some experience running with items in tow. Still, he never thought he’d have to tear down city streets with an infant tucked up tight in his arms.

He had stripped a sheet from the bed and thrown it around Malikia before bolting out the front door. His sneakered feet thumped against the cement and he pitched forward as his cousin trailed him with cries of, “Hakiam, this is your fault!”

His long legs and arms moved smoothly as he poured himself like liquid through the night.

When the hospital finally came into sight, he pushed harder. By the time he got there, his lungs were burning and his limbs spasming.

He set a still-limp and unresponsive Malikia on the ER check-in counter. He must have said something,
must have answered some questions, but it passed in a blur. In what seemed like mere seconds, Malikia was whisked away on a small gurney. Masked men and women took her off in a whirl of beeps and monitors, similar to the way she had come into the world.

Then Leesa came through the door, panting and crying. She followed the medical team into the curtained room where Malikia had been taken.

Hakiam was about to follow her when the lady behind the desk handed him a slew of papers, saying, “She’ll be well taken care of. We’ll do the best we can. Please fill these out.”

He made his way to the corner of the room.

Hakiam paged through the forms, unable to focus. His cell went off and he put it to his ear.

“I’m just past Lancaster Avenue. Are you still at the apartment?” Wendy asked.

“I’m at the hospital.”

“Did the ambulance ever come?”

He caught his breath. “No.”

“What part of the hospital are you in, pediatric intensive care or the emergency room?”

He told her and she clicked off.

He had a headache. His body was weary from the run. He closed his eyes, hoping to wake up from this bad dream.

With the music going so loud, he hadn’t heard the thump. But then again, he had only been there for a few moments. The blood was dry. She might have been lying there for hours before he found her.

Hakiam kept going through things in his head. How could this be? Malikia had never fallen before.

Leesa came back into the lobby area. Hakiam’s red eyes met hers.

“What’s going on?” Hakiam asked her.

“They kicked me out.”

“What are they doing?”

“Prepping for surgery.”

“Oh, shit,” Hakiam said, throwing down the paperwork.

Leesa pointed at him. “It was you. You’re the one who was supposed to be responsible for her.”

“I wasn’t even there.”

“Exactly, Hakiam. And you should have been.”

The rotating blue light flashed on an ambulance outside. Another emergency patient was wheeled in. Doctors, nurses, and aides flanked the gurney as it was hustled through the door and down the corridor. Behind all that bustle, Hakiam saw Wendy and her father come in.

Wendy ran right up to Hakiam and embraced him. As Hakiam held her, his eye caught the disgusted look of her father, who seemed to be saying,
I’m glad I didn’t come downstairs to greet you. You are
exactly
what I expected
.

Then Leesa started up. “Why did you call her?” she said. Her voice boomed against the white walls. “We don’t want your pity.”

Wendy turned to her. “I’m not offering any. I came here for Hakiam and Malikia—”

“I don’t want her here. Tell her to go home,” Leesa spoke over her.

“Oh, come on, Leesa. Will you quit it already?” Hakiam said.

Leesa pointed at Wendy. “She don’t need to be here.”

“My daughter came here out of concern for your child’s well-being, young lady,” Mr. Anderson said, stepping forward. “Let’s stop the arguments. That’s not what we came here for.”

Hakiam watched as Leesa clamped her mouth shut. And then they waited.

Minutes passed, but they seemed more like hours.

Leesa stared at the wall and wrung her hands, then went to the snack machine.

Wendy kept telling Hakiam that everything would be all right.

A man rushed in cradling his seven- or eight-year-old son in his arms. The boy had his foot wrapped up in a white towel that had all but turned red.

Hakiam heard a moan from down the hall.

Leesa went down the hall to the bathroom, then came back.

Hakiam looked over at Wendy’s father. He was trying to busy himself by going through his day planner and checking off items on his lists.

“I have news about Mal-i-kia,” a bearded man in scrubs awkwardly sounded out as he walked into the dispute.

“I’m Malikia’s mom. It’s pronounced
Ma-leek-i-a
,” Leesa corrected him.

“Never mind that,” Wendy said, “how is she?”

“She’s suffered a pretty good clunk to the head.”

“We know that. Will she be all right?” Leesa said.

Hakiam’s heart pounded anew. The image of Malikia facedown in all the blood flooded his mind.

The man removed his glasses and said, “It looks like it. We’re almost out of the woods, but she’s gonna have to stay here tonight and into tomorrow for treatment and evaluation.”

A
few moments later, Wendy and her father walked quickly back to her car.

She put the key in the ignition. Her eyelashes glistened as tears flowed down her cheeks.

Wendy drove home, I-76. The silence intensified.

When they reached the house, her dad complained about the late hour and said at least it wasn’t a school night. Then he went upstairs to the washroom to prepare himself for bed.

Wendy went to her room but stopped outside her door. Then she turned and entered the bathroom.

Her dad’s face was wet.

Without acknowledging her, he walked past his daughter into his bedroom and shut the door.

He didn’t usually ignore her like that. Wendy wondered if this was truly the end. Maybe she and her dad had grown too far apart. Maybe the politics of the world, the very black and white and gray, had intruded too
deeply into their lives and now they had nothing to say to each other.

Wendy went back down the hallway and got into her bed. She thought about Malikia. Nothing was more out of order than a baby in a hospital. Wendy wondered how many Malikias there were in Misericordia Hospital. She wondered how many there were in Philadelphia. She wondered how many died and how many got better.

B
efore they left the hospital, Hakiam and Leesa were questioned for the better part of an hour.

“You were having a party.”

Leesa shook her head violently. “It wasn’t no party. Some people were just over.”

“Who was watching the little girl?”

“Wasn’t nobody watching her. She was sound asleep.”

The woman in the pantsuit who had been taking notes exchanged a glance with Hakiam. He wondered what all this was leading to. What did this lady want and who at the hospital had called her?

His eyes moved to the bare walls, painted a glossy white to ward off stains. He heard another pair of footsteps coming down the hallway.

Before long, another lady came in. This one was in a blouse and skirt. She said she was from the Department
of Human Services and started off by claiming she was “here to help.”

The next thing Hakiam knew, other people were coming in with more questions. Men with suits and shiny shoes.

“How did she fall?”

Leesa’s mouth twisted before she said, “She don’t fall, she rolled.”

“Haven’t you heard of guardrails?”

“That costs money, which I don’t have,” Leesa said. “Is this the time for a lecture?”

“Certain things are
normal
in a child’s life, Miss Powell. The common cold, ear infections … but falling off a bed in one room while you carry on at a party in the next room is not.”

“It was an accident!” Leesa said, pounding her fist on the table.

“Either way. X-rays are dangerous on someone that young,” the woman said.

Leesa turned away.

“What do
you
have to say?” one of the social workers asked Hakiam.

Hakiam kept his chin up and looked past them to a place on the white wall on the other side of the room. “It was an accident. She just fell.”

After more note-taking on their part, they left.

Leesa punched Hakiam on the arm. “You didn’t sound very convincing.”

“I told them it wasn’t on purpose. What else do you want me to say?”

“Just don’t say anything. Keep your mouth shut!”

Hakiam absorbed her anger and thought,
This is nothing. Malikia is the one really going through it
. He imagined how it must have felt crashing to the floor.

T
he next day was Sunday, which meant a fatter newspaper for Mr. Anderson, and he could take his time with breakfast. He usually had granola cereal with dates. Wendy knew his movements inside and out, and despite all the strife of the previous night, nothing had changed.

He spent the rest of the morning fiddling with white eyelet curtains. The fact that they were summer sheer, and here it was late November, was the reason he had finally found them at a price he was willing to pay, Wendy guessed.

She stood behind him for a long time without him turning around. It was like a comedy routine watching him try to hang them all by himself. The bay windows in the living room gave him quite a time.

“Well, are you going to stand there all day or are you going to help your father out?”

Wendy shifted positions and told him, “I’ll just stand here.”

He had his back to her, which made it easier to say that, but of course it was a joke. Or rather a dig. She grabbed a rod and inched the fabric onto it. He took the other end, and together they finished the front side of the house.

As they went to work on the south entrance, carrying the stepladder and the rest of the curtains, Wendy sighed and told him, “Thanks for coming with me to the hospital last night.”

He didn’t say anything. They began working side by side, and her dad suddenly spoke as if he were reading from a fortune cookie: “Sons aren’t forever, but daughters are supposed to be.”

“I’ll always be your daughter, Dad,” Wendy said, climbing up the ladder. Then she added under her breath, “Unfortunately.”

As they finished up, her dad made a big deal about how Wendy had left an empty bag on the floor and what was the use of redecorating with an eyesore like that lying around.

At that point, Wendy thought,
So much for turning over a new leaf with all this impromptu father-daughter bonding
.

“See you later, Dad,” she said, and headed for the stairs.

“Wendy,” he called to her.

Now what?
she wondered.

He spoke in a quiet voice, but it was his voice all the same. “When you get a status update about the baby, let me know.”

T
he bedspread was twisted around Leesa, who was in a deep sleep. It was one hour past noon. She had pressed the back of her hand over her eyes to block out the sun.

Hakiam couldn’t sleep. They had just gotten back from the hospital and he couldn’t even sit still. He had to walk. He had to pace and pace. And when he did sit down, Leesa’s cell was next to his wrist on the table.

Two people from the party last night had come back over: the girl in a tube top who had been passing food, and another girl who had been in a halter top. They looked beat, but it was probably more from the partying than the worry. They weren’t just pretending to look at TV; they were watching it.

Around three in the afternoon, Leesa emerged from her bedroom. She didn’t look particularly lost or found; she just joined them on the couch.

Hakiam looked at his cousin with disappointment,
then disgust. Since last night, something had shifted in him. He finally got it.

He went out into the hall to make more worry rounds.

When he came back in, his belongings were piled by the door in a paper shopping bag.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Leesa said.

“Your daughter could have died last night.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t. She’s fine. The doctor just called while you were out.”

“She’s fine? She’s conscious and everything?”

Leesa let out an exasperated sigh. “She’s conscious and everything.”

“Well, ain’t you gonna go pick her up?”

“My mom’s gonna. She’s taking her in.”

“So she’s not even gonna live here?
That’s
why I’m getting the shove out the door. You are a goddamn bitch, you know that?”

The girl in the tube top said, “Hey, man, we’re trying to watch the show.”

“Shut up, you, and mind your business.”

He turned back to his cousin and looked her dead in the eye.

“You gonna just do me like this? I was nice to your daughter. I never meant you any harm.”

Leesa didn’t blink once as she told him, “Tell the truth for five seconds—you came here for a free lunch. You wanted it all to go your way. You wanted it all to be easy.”