“I know a lot about that.” I give him the short version of the battle on the home front.
“Well, we gotta work this one problem at a time,” Wiz says. “The principal at Frankie’s school is on board, so nobody there will be talking to the press, but in the Twitter and Facebook world, rumors fly. Eventually we’ll have to answer some.”
“It’s like football,” Walter says. “Got your play set; there’s a way it’s supposed to unfold. Then the ball gets hiked.”
Wiz laughs and nods. “It is very much like football.”
“But touchdowns do get scored,” Walter says.
“Unfortunately, by both sides,” Wiz says, and grips Walter’s shoulder. “I just want you to know that whatever happens, you won’t be touched. If things go too far south, I’ll fall on the sword. It’s starting to look like time for that second career anyway.”
I say, “Wiz. Frankie’s my relative. Like I said before, I’m the only person here who’s technically a juvenile, and I could think of a good story. Probably a great story.”
“Not happenin’,” Wiz says. “I work for child protection.”
Walter says, “Let’s all take a breath. No need to start solving problems that might never occur.”
ChapterFifteen
“All my plans are shot to shit,” Sheila says from the backseat of Leah’s car. She texted me three days ago to pick her up at the bus station—“an’ by god you better not tell anybody I’m coming”—so she’s already mad that we’re in Leah’s car, even though I told her my access to transportation is pretty much consigned to my bike since the onset of the Howard’s civil war. I took a chance and, with Walter’s blessing, had brought Leah up to speed on the whole enterprise.
“Somethin’s fishy,” Sheila says.
Leah asks what she means.
“You just drive,” Sheila says. “Ain’t none of your business.”
Leah shrugs. “Fine. All I care about is your son.”
So I ask Sheila what she means.
“Kid disappears into thin air. I go beggin’ on TV for whatever scumbag took him to bring him back. Nothin’ happens. I give up an’ go off ’cause I’m startin’ to hear all this negative shit about myself, like how I didn’t watch my kid . . . and abra-fuckin’-cadabra, he shows up. At social services, for chrissake, right where they were fixin’ to take him away from me in the first place. He ain’t harmed, nobody done nothin’ nasty to him? Then somebody figures out Yvonne might know where I am an’ next thing I’m hearing from you. Like I said, somethin’s fishy.”
I say, “What do you think it is?” Contradicting her would only etch her belief deeper in stone.
“Hell if I know,” she says, “but when I find out, heads are gonna roll. An’ I’ll betcha some of them work for the state, an’ if I find out some social worker had something to do with it . . .”
“C’mon, Sheila, you sure that’s where you wanna focus? Are you gonna spend all your energy getting even? Or are you gonna do what it takes to do right by Frankie? Seems like right now a social worker would be your best friend. And I’m the one who figured Yvonne might know.”
“Ain’t no social worker ever been my best friend. They were gonna take him.”
I say “They weren’t going to take him until he disappeared, Sheila. Somebody saw his arm and you were about to get a visit, but if he’s not bleeding out, they don’t pull him. Just because there was a CPS report doesn’t mean a kid gets automatically yanked. However, take those bruises along with him disappearing from under your nose . . .”
“Fuck you.”
Leah grips the wheel. “That’s where Frankie learned to talk like that.”
“Fuck you, too,” she says again. “Somebody’s gonna lose their job.”
Leah glances into the rearview mirror. “Somebody’s gonna lose their kid.”
Sheila whacks the back of my head. “Where’d you find this bitch?”
I say, “Pulled her out of the deep end.”
Sheila sits back hard in the seat. Folds her arms.
Leah says. “Where to?”
Silent contempt covers Sheila’s face.
“Come on, Sheila,” I say. “We can’t just drive around all afternoon. Your old place is rented out. You want to go to Nancy’s?”
It takes a second but she finally says, “Yeah. Nancy’s.”
That’s a reunion I’m going to be happy to miss.
“I hate that bitch.” Sheila’s once again in the backseat.
I say, “Good thing we stayed around.”
“Yvonne’s?” Leah says.
Sheila grunts.
We weren’t at Nancy’s five minutes before Nancy accused Sheila of abandoning Frankie after she “sucked up all the damn TV sympathy” and Sheila was accusing Nancy of . . . well pretty much everything up to and including global terrorism. Their only point of agreement was the future firebombing of social and health services. And after all that, when Sheila said she was going to Yvonne’s, Nancy said she could stay.
Now in the car, Sheila says, “Minute she heard I was going to Yvonne’s, all of a sudden she changes her tune.”
I laugh. “Nancy thinks Yvonne is turning you away from acceptable Nancy Boots behavior.”
“Ma’s a fuckin’ bigot.”
I refuse to explain the concept of irony. “Sheila,” I say, “you gotta quit doing dumb things. You gotta get clean, get a place, keep all the Butches in your life away from Frankie till he’s eighteen.”
No answer. I turn to see tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m not gonna get another chance with Frankie,” she says. “I got nobody.” She’s quiet another minute, then, “I never done right by Frankie ’cause I never even knew if I wanted ’im. Only when they said they was gonna take him. That’s when. And I don’t know if I love him or I just didn’t want somebody takin’ one more damn thing from me.”
It kills me when my sister’s shell cracks. It’s so much easier to do battle with a hard-ass. “Look,” I say. “I know you’ve always hated me, and I’ve always hated you.
