“Louis…”
“From the projects.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, Louis.”
“Well, Mr. Fenney, Pajamae, she ain’t come back yet, and I be getting kinda worried…She still with you?”
“Oh, Louis, I’m sorry, I should’ve had my secretary call you. Pajamae’s going to stay with us until the trial’s over.”
“Us who?”
“Me. My family.”
“You taking Pajamae in?”
“Well, yeah, you know, until this is over. We were down at the courthouse with Shawanda this morning and I didn’t want to drive-” Scott decided not to mention that he didn’t want to return to Louis’s part of town-“and, well, I’ve got a daughter her age, and we’ve got four bedrooms sitting empty, and I just thought it might be better that way. Shawanda thought so, too.”
“What about her stuff, clothes and all?”
“Oh, she can wear my daughter’s clothes. They’re about the same size and, hell, my daughter never wears half the clothes my wife buys her anyway.”
“You want, I can bring her stuff to you.”
“To Highland Park?”
The phone was silent. Scott thought again he might have angered Louis. But he was wrong again.
“Louis?”
“Projects ain’t no place for a little girl living alone, Mr. Fenney. Tell her I said hey. And if you need any help down my way, you let me know.”
“Okay, thanks, Louis.”
“Oh, and Mr. Fenney…”
“Yeah?”
“I guess I wouldn’t expect something like that from a white man. You a good man, Mr. Fenney.”
Scott disconnected and wondered if Louis was right.
Boo bounced down the stairs to the kitchen and over to the table, followed by Pajamae. Mother took one look at Boo, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Young lady, what have you done to your hair?”
Boo’s long red hair was now braided tight to her scalp with long braids hanging to her shoulders.
“Cornrows. Pajamae did it. Pretty cool, huh?”
Mother turned to A. Scott and said, “Well, Scott?”
He shrugged and said, “She looks like Bo Derek.”
“Bo Derek?”
“Yeah, from that movie.”
Mother threw her hands up. “Barbara Boo Fenney, Highland Park debutantes don’t wear their hair in cornrows!”
“Then it’s not a problem, Mother, because I’m not gonna be a deb.”
Mother sighed heavily, restraining her anger, and said, “Pajamae, I hope you don’t have any tattoos.”
Pajamae laughed, but she didn’t know Mother wasn’t being funny. Consuela held up the salt and pepper shakers and said from the stove, “Is twins, like these.” She pointed at Boo-“Is salt”-and then at Pajamae-“is pepper.” Consuela chuckled and her body shook like Jell-O. “Salt and pepper.”
Mother was shaking her head and her lips were a tight line across her face, normally not a good sign.
“Finish the enchiladas, Consuela.”
“Y’all expecting company?” Pajamae asked.
Boo turned to Pajamae, who was standing at the table.
“What?”
“All this food, are you having a party?”
The table was crowded with tacos and enchiladas and guacamole and refried beans and flour tortillas and hot sauce. Mexican food night.
“No.”
“This is all just for us?”
Boo shrugged. “Yeah.”
Pajamae smiled and said, “Where- as.”
Butch and Barbara Fenney had always discussed family matters at the dinner table, in front of their young son: good things and bad things, successes and failures, possibilities and problems. They figured he would learn by listening. Scott recalled one such conversation, not too long before his father died, when Butch said a contractor wanted him to cut some corners on a job to reduce costs and increase the contractor’s profits. The owner would never know. Butch was faced with either complying with the contractor’s demands or losing the job. He asked his wife for advice. Scott’s mother responded without a second thought: tell him no.
So after retiring to the master suite, while Rebecca stood naked before the bathroom mirror and removed her makeup and checked her body for early signs of aging, Scott told her about Dan’s visit to his office and Mack McCall’s demands and he asked his wife for advice. She, too, responded without a second thought: “Do it! If Dan says drop it, you damn well better drop it. Are you going to give up everything we have for a goddamn-”
“What, Rebecca? A goddamn what?”
She whirled around, incredibly naked, and said, “A goddamn black whore, that’s what!”
A. Scott Fenney, Esq., had zealously defended his rich clients against all comers-business competitors, the government, famous plaintiffs’ lawyers, and young women claiming sexual harassment. But never against his wife. Of course, he had never had a black whore for a client. Still, his natural lawyerly instinct was to defend his client. So, perhaps because McCall’s demands were still weighing on his mind or because he had never thrown a game in his life or because rich boys like Clark McCall had always graveled his butt or because he knew Louis was not right about Scott Fenney or because of the love Shawanda showed for Pajamae that very morning or because of two little girls with their hair in cornrows on the floor above…or maybe just because this beautiful woman standing naked before him had denied him sex for over seven months…and his heat for her now turned into anger at her-Scott Fenney lashed out at his wife, defending Shawanda Jones with a passion normally reserved for only the richest of clients: “What, she deserves to die just because she’s black and a prostitute? What if you had been born black, Rebecca? Would you still have been Miss SMU and chairwoman of the Cattle Barons’ Ball? Or would you have ended up a hooker on Harry Hines, too?” He pointed to the floor above. “But for the grace of God, Rebecca, Boo could be that little black girl!”
His naked wife laughed without smiling.
“Don’t you get self-righteous with me, Scott Fenney. You wanted money and all the things money can buy as much as I did-this house, that Ferrari…How much did you pay for that suit? I married you because you had ambition, you wanted to be a rich lawyer. You didn’t go to work at the legal aid so you could help poor black people in South Dallas. You went to a big law firm so you could make lots of money working for rich clients living in Highland Park. And now you’re suddenly growing a conscience? I don’t think so.”
She pointed a finger at Scott. “You do this, you ruin my life over a whore-who you know goddamn well is guilty as sin-and I swear to God, we’re through!” She now pointed upward. “And that little girl will be better off without her mother.”
Upstairs on the third floor, Boo and Pajamae were getting ready for bed. A. Scott had read to them, which Pajamae enjoyed. It was fun to have a friend. Boo had insisted they share her room so they could talk. Pajamae agreed. But now Boo was kneeling up in bed and wondering what the heck Pajamae was doing, spreading out a comforter on the floor with a pillow.
“What in the Sam Hill are you doing?”
“Whose hill?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Oh. Fixing my bed.”
“On the floor?”
Pajamae looked at her bed on the floor, then at Boo in the tall bed. “You sleep in the bed?”
