“Connie! Where’s Keisha? Did she leave already?”
“Nope. She’s still here. Ready to go. Her parents haven’t gotten here yet.” Connie exchanges a look with the other night nurse.
“Where is she? In her room?”
“Um, honey, no.” Connie sounds apologetic. “Keisha was supposed to leave earlier tonight before bedtime and so they gave away her room. We had a new arrival tonight and we needed Keisha’s bed.”
“So where is she?” Isabel is still waking up but is alert enough to know that something is amiss.
“The kitchen.”
Isabel turns the corner into the tiny kitchen. There, with her nappy head resting on her crossed arms sits Keisha.
“Keisha? I’m so glad I didn’t miss you. I fell asleep….” Isabel realizes that Keisha, too, has been sleeping. “Oh, sorry.”
Keisha sits up and Isabel sees that she is back in her street wear: the Nike swoosh emblazoned on her hooded sweatshirt, the baggy Adidas sweatpants in a matching navy blue. Keisha’s packed suitcase sits alongside her, as if she is at a Greyhound bus terminal. “Izzy—” Keisha smiles groggily “—what time is it?”
“It’s eleven. Your parents call? They running late or something?”
Keisha looks upset and defensive and Isabel wonders if Keisha’s parents are going to turn up at all. She looks down.
“Want to watch TV with me? We could just hang out for a while until they get here.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
She stumbles as she stands up from the table, rights herself and follows Isabel into the living room. Sukanya is, of course, planted in the armchair that faces the television so Keisha and Isabel take the couch. Keisha curls up and resumes sleeping.
Isabel watches her and suppresses the urge to pet her, to pat her back, to reassure her that everything is going to be okay.
Keisha’s mother looks just like her but fat. She is hunched over a clipboard at the nurses’ station when Keisha and Isabel walk into the unit from breakfast.
“Mom? Mama?” Keisha runs up to her obese mother and gratefully throws her arms around her.
“Hi, baby.” Her mother seems weary and wary of her daughter. Isabel thinks she does not seem as happy to see Keisha as Keisha is to see her. “You ‘bout ready to go?”
Keisha is so elated her whole body looks like it is shaking. “Ready? I was
Isabel is standing off to the side of the nurses’ station and is taking in the scene. As soon as Keisha bounds off, Isabel approaches Keisha’s mother.
“Mrs. Jackson? Hi, I’m Isabel Murphy. I’m a friend of Keisha’s.” She smiles, extending her hand.
“Hi there, sugar, how’re you?”
“Fine. Keisha’s so excited to be going home. She’s been talking about it nonstop.”
Isabel pretends she has not seen Keisha brush past the two men without a greeting. “Are you guys friends of Keisha’s or something?”
No response.
Mrs. Jackson looks miserable.
The reporter in Isabel worries.
Finally, Keisha returns, dragging her bag and heading straight for the nurse on duty. “I almost forgot the sharps closet! I need to get my stuff from in there.” Because Keisha had been brought to Three Breezes involuntarily she does not have much in the way of belongings.
The two burly men move in to either side of Keisha. The nurse, on her way to check the sharps closet for Keisha, tries to whisper, “Can’t you wait until she’s in the parking lot?” but Isabel picks it up.
“Keisha? What’s going on? Who are these guys?” Isabel asks Keisha, who is still smiling.
“Them? Oh, I dunno. All I know is I’m goin’ home with my mama!”
“Oh, baby.” Her mother looks like she is about to cry. “Oh, my baby.”
“Why you cryin’, Mama? I’m comin’ home!”
“Keisha Jackson?” One of the two men steps forward; his patience has run out. “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”
As he is reading Keisha her rights in front of the nurses’ station, Mrs. Jackson begins to wail loudly and wave her hands in the air around Keisha’s head. Keisha is frantic.
“Mom? Mama, what’s happenin’?” she cries. “What’s goin’ on here? Why they arrestin’ me?”
Chaos erupts on the unit. The nurse who had, moments earlier, urged the police to wait to arrest Keisha, rushes over to comfort her. The police are loudly, as if on a dare, reading Keisha her Miranda rights while handcuffing her wrists behind her back. Mrs. Jackson is wailing and chanting “my baby” over and over again and a bewildered Keisha is asking everyone who catches her eye why this is happening. Ben has joined the fray and is peppering the police with excited questions about their guns.
“Is that a .45 or a .22? I always get them mixed up….45s and .22s. How much ammo you carry with you? You have some stored in your cruiser, right? Am I right?”
Melanie, returning from breakfast, skips up to Keisha and tries to hug her goodbye.
“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye at breakfast!” she squeaks.
“You guys always wear bulletproof vests, don’t you? Huh? You always have to wear ’em, right? Am I right?”
When the police lead Keisha out of the unit toward the awaiting squad car Isabel falls into step alongside Mrs. Jackson.
“Mrs. Jackson? Mrs. Jackson, please…please tell me what’s going on here. Maybe this is a misunderstanding.”
“Ain’t no misunderstanding, child.” She stops crying long enough to look over her shoulder at Isabel, who stands at the edge of the parking lot. “My Keisha killed her nephew. Killed him dead.”
Twenty-Seven
“So that’s why I’m asking you what your reaction is to Keisha’s being taken away.” Isabel focuses just in time to catch Dr. Seidler’s question. She has been squinting, trying to read, from across the room, the names of the universities that had bestowed degrees upon her well-trained psychiatrist.
“Isabel?”
“Huh?” She tears her eyes from the framed diplomas. “Yeah?”
“I was asking you what your thoughts were about your friend being arrested.”
“I think it’s weird.” She shrugs.
“Weird, in what way?”
“Just weird, that’s all.”
“I realize you’re probably reticent to talk about it, but I think it’s a good idea to discuss it while it’s fresh.”
“Keisha wasn’t here for that long, anyway…”
Silence.
