Who Do I Talk To? (21 page)

Angela waggled her hand. “Like, how much?”

I was glad someone else asked. Mabel shrugged. “Right now, about two thousand dollars. But my guess is there'll be more. The reason I'm telling you now is twofold. First, we are
not
‘using' what happened to generate contributions—an accusation you may hear from some people. All contributions have been spontaneous. Second, the board will need to decide whether this goes into our general operating fund—God knows we operate on a tight budget as it is—or whether it should be deposited in a special fund for a particular project or outreach.”

“We need a van.” That popped out before I even thought of it.

Mabel allowed a wry smile. “Well, two thousand dollars won't go very far for a van, but Gabby preempted my next point. I'm sure the board would be willing to entertain ideas for what to do with this money—but
please
, submit them in writing.” She stood up. “Okay, that's it.”

“Well, hallelujah!” Estelle jumped up and was practically out the door. “I still gotta do lunch, an' I'm half an hour behind already.”

Stephanie Cooper was right on her heels. “Yeah, and I need to squeeze in two case management meetings
before
lunch.”

“Stephanie! Wait up!” I needed to tell the case manager about the job interview for Hannah and get a CTA pass for her.

But Mabel caught me as I started to follow. “Gabby, just a minute. Speaking of contributions, don't forget there's an awful lot of dog food and dog stuff piled up in the rec room. I'm going to let you decide what to do with it—but I want it out of here by the end of the week.
Capisce
?” She strode out the door.

Good grief. Now Mabel was beginning to sound like Sarge.

chapter 21

I went online to get directions to Adele's Hair and Nails on Clark Street, and it didn't seem too complicated. Take the Red Line north to Howard Street—the border between Chicago and Evanston—walk a couple of blocks to Clark, turn south. Easy.

Stephanie Cooper, Hannah's case manager, had worried that it might be a wasted trip since the girl didn't have her state ID yet, but she gave her a CTA one-day pass since I was going with her. “Can't hurt to try,” she agreed, pushing her long bangs out of her eyes. “Let me know how it goes. And hey, why don't we set up a time on Thursday to talk about you? You and your mom are still on the bed list, right?”

I hoped. Our stay at the Baxters' was temporary at best. Made me feel funny to be treated like the other residents, but I had to admit, Stephanie had a right as case manager to talk about our “case” since we were, in fact, homeless.

When Hannah and I got off the train at Howard Street, the newish shopping center between the El station and Clark Street looked awfully familiar. “Hey, Hannah. That's the church where Edesa and Estelle go. See? In the shopping center.”

She squinted and frowned. “I don't see no church. Whatchu talkin' about?”

I laughed. “That large storefront over there. See on the awning? ‘Souled Out Community Church.'”

“Humph. Weird. How many more blocks we gotta walk?

These shoes hurt my feet.”

“Not sure. Shouldn't be far.”

Wrong. How had I misjudged so badly? At ten blocks—a healthy city mile—Hannah was talking mutiny. “I ain't gonna walk this far to work ever' day! Why I let you talk me into this, I don' know. I'm so beat, I'm 'bout ready to fall over. You got any money? Can we get somethin' to drink?”

We'd passed a fruit market a ways back, but now most of the shop windows displayed a jumble of ethnic languages. Spanish. Korean. Arabic . . . I looked at my watch. We still had ten minutes, and the store numbers were getting closer. But I wasn't about to drag a disgruntled Hannah into the beauty shop. Adele Skuggs didn't seem the type of person who put up with any nonsense.

I ducked into a corner “pantry” and bought two cans of cold Pepsi. Okay, I was hot and tired, too, not to mention mad at myself for not getting better directions. But I'd gone out on a limb asking for this interview, so it was my reputation on the line too. I dangled the sweating can in front of Hannah. “I'm sure there's a closer El stop, Hannah, and if you get this job, we'll figure out a better way to get here. But if you go in there whining like a spoiled brat, you can forget going on the activity list at the shelter, too, you understand?” I handed her the can. “Now, pull yourself together. We're almost there.”

A bell tinkled when we finally pushed open the door of Adele's Hair and Nails.

I glared a warning at Hannah, and she muttered, “Okay, okay.”

Three beauty shop chairs lined the mirrored wall to the left just beyond a tidy waiting area. Adele Skuggs, her own hair a short salt-and-pepper 'fro, was taking pink spongy curlers out of a woman's hair in the middle chair. The shop owner gave us a brief glance. “Be with you in a minute.”

A beige corduroy couch against the window and a matching love seat against the wall made an inviting waiting area. Magazines—
O
and
Essence
and
Jet
and
Newsweek
—littered a coffee table. A coffeepot and a platter of sweet rolls sat on a corner table. “Ooo, my fave,” Hannah said, helping herself to a frosted twist and a napkin. Oh great, sticky fingers for her interview. But too late now.

Posters of beautiful black women with sculptured and braided hairstyles decorated the shop walls. Three “beehive” hair dryers sat across from the chairs, hidden behind the front desk counter. I didn't see anything that looked like a nail salon.

“All right, Miss Lilly. This what you wanted?” Adele gave a hand mirror to the middle-aged African-American woman in the chair. I stared. I'd expected Adele to do a comb-out or style the hair somehow, but she'd left the springy curls just as they came off the curlers, looking like fat sausages all over the woman's head. “Miss Lilly” nodded and smiled at her reflection front, side, and back as Adele took off the plastic cape.

Adele glanced our way as if sizing up Hannah, who was licking crumbs off her fingers—good grief!—but she kept talking to her client. “You in a hurry, Miss Lilly? How would you like a free manicure and pedicure while you're here?” Adele grinned, exposing a small gap between her front teeth. “I've got a new nail girl I'm trying out, and I need a victim.”

Miss Lilly laughed. “Oh, why not?” She hefted herself out of the chair and shuffled toward the back of the shop, disappearing around a corner. Hannah swallowed her last bite and hastily dabbed her full lips with the napkin, her eyes wide like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

Adele grabbed a broom and swept up hair from around the second chair. “Take that first chair, Gabby Fairbanks. Be with you in a minute. Come here, girl—Hannah, is it? Mrs. Fairbanks says you've got experience. Come on back with me . . . Wash your hands in that sink there . . . What can you do? Full sets? French tips?” Her voice faded as they disappeared around the corner.

By the time we left Adele's Hair and Nails at four o'clock, Hannah had been offered a provisional job two days a week, a four-day week if she proved responsible . . . and my wild curls had been clipped, tamed, and freshened. “You color your hair?” Adele had asked, blow-drying my wet tendrils.

“No. My natural color.” I'd tried to keep the pride out of my voice. “Used to be redder, but it has darkened quite a bit.

Chestnut, I guess.”

“Mm. Just wondered. You don't have the freckles and green eyes of most redheads.” Adele finger-curled a few misbehaving strands. “Hazel eyes are nice, though.”

She'd charged me twenty bucks, which was certainly reasonable, though it was hard to hand over my debit card and see that much disappear from my account. When I asked directions to the closest El stop and Adele found out we'd walked all the way from Howard Street, her shoulders shook with silent laughter as she gave simple directions to the Loyola El station. “Six or seven blocks at most,” she'd promised.

Hannah, pumped at the chance to show her stuff in a real salon, generously offered to get herself back to the shelter so I could walk to the Baxters' house from there instead of going all the way into the city and back so late in the afternoon.

By the time I dragged myself up the front porch steps of Jodi and Denny's two-flat, I was pooped. I rang the doorbell, eager to hide out in Josh's old bedroom and call my sons. And my aunt Mercy too. I needed to give her my new cell phone number and let her know where we were staying this week.

I rang the doorbell again. As I waited, it occurred to me that I hadn't talked to either one of my sisters since North Dakota, when I told them I was taking Mom back to Chicago with me “for a visit.” I groaned, leaning against the doorpost. Celeste and Honor certainly had no idea Philip had kicked me out and that Mom and I were “guests” in a homeless shelter. But I needed to talk to them about the power of attorney forms the lawyer had given me for Mom.
One
of us had to do it.

Well, better late than never. I'd call tonight, maybe around nine. That would be seven o'clock in California and six in Alaska.

I frowned at the front door, still closed in my face. Strange. Finding my way around back, I found Dandy stretched out in a patch of sun in the tiny backyard. “Hey, boy. You home alone?” Mom's yellow dog jerked his head up, his mouth open in a doggy smile, pumped his tail, and struggled to get up. I squatted beside him instead. “Good boy. Easy, now . . . you doing okay? Where is everybody?”

I even climbed up the back stairs to the second-floor apartment to see if I could use the bathroom, but neither Estelle nor Stu was home either.

At about the time my bladder was threatening to burst, the Baxters' minivan pulled into the garage, and Jodi and my mother came into the yard, hauling groceries. I had to make a beeline for the bathroom the moment Jodi unlocked the back door. “Sorry!” she called after me. “I didn't know you'd be home so early!”

Back in the kitchen, much relieved, I offered to peel potatoes and carrots for the stew Jodi was making while she put groceries away. “How'd it go with my mom and Dandy today?”

“Fine. No problem . . . except your mom complained of a headache this morning. I gave her something for it and she slept, oh, a good three or four hours. That's why we ended up doing our errands late this afternoon—oh! Your hair!” Jodi reached out and pulled a curl, letting it spring back. “It looks nice, Gabby. Adele did a great job.” She winked at me. “Okay, you gotta tell me about your first visit to Adele's Hair and Nails. And then I'll tell you about
my
first visit . . . when MaDear was still alive. Hoo boy, Adele's mother definitely kept things interesting!”

We had lots of time for “girl talk” that evening because Denny went to some guy meeting at Peter Douglass's house. Jodi's stories about MaDear left me bug-eyed—especially the time Adele's senile mother mistook Jodi's husband for the white man who'd lynched her older brother way back in the thirties, screaming at Denny to “Get out!” when he came to the beauty shop to pick up Jodi. I could hardly believe Jodi's husband actually asked forgiveness for the horrible deed someone else had committed just so the poor confused woman could experience some peace.

We talked so long it was ten o'clock before I remembered to make my calls, but I didn't get either sister, so I left my new cell phone number on their voice mail and told them to call me ASAP.

I was still thinking about Denny's amazing response as I was getting dressed for work the next morning. Jodi said the situation had put a real strain on their relationship with Adele, and Denny had gotten really depressed at being falsely accused. “MaDear had some kind of dementia. There was no way to make the old woman understand he didn't do it,” Jodi had said. “But Denny kept reading the Bible and one day had a revelation—that Jesus had taken the death penalty for
our
sins so we could be free! That's what gave him the idea.”

I grabbed my hairbrush to work on the snarls in my hair without the benefit of a mirror—didn't guys have mirrors in their bedrooms?—still chewing on what Jodi had said.
Good grief.
It was hard enough having to say I was sorry for something I
did
do wrong. Couldn't imagine asking forgiveness for something I
hadn't
done. Was sure I wasn't spiritual enough to—

I stopped brushing. A little voice niggled in my ear.
Yeah, but Gabby, aren't you always saying you're sorry for stuff Philip thinks you've done wrong when you haven't really done anything, just to keep the peace?

chapter 22