I pressed my lips together, tight.
“Get over here, woman,” he ordered.
My breath caught.
I’d heard one of the Hot Bunch demand that of one of his Rock Chick so many times, I’d be able to buy Roam and Sniff top of the line Mercedes if I had a dollar for every time I heard it.
And I always just shook my head, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically, thinking if I had a man who told me to walk my ass to him, I’d walk my ass the other way.
That man being Moses, I walked my ass right to him.
He wrapped his arms loose around me.
I placed my hands on his chest.
They felt good there.
Under my right one, I could feel his heart beating, strong and true.
“You gonna read me the riot act every time I freak out?” I asked.
“Only when the situation warrants it,” he answered.
Hmm.
“I’m gonna be some work,” I told him something he couldn’t have missed.
He confirmed my suspicion by saying, “I didn’t miss that.”
I slid a hand up and curled my fingers around the side of his neck.
His arms grew tighter.
“I don’t want you to think I didn’t love him. For some reason, that’s important to me. In my way, the girl I was, not yet a woman, I loved him,” I admitted.
“Okay, baby,” he whispered.
“Before I hated him,” I finished.
He nodded before he dipped his head, his cheekbone brushing against mine as he pulled me even closer to give me a hug.
A hug.
He held me to him in his living room like he intended to do that all night.
And I could stand there all night.
I could stand there for weeks, held in Moses Richardson’s arms.
Eventually, he asked, “You want ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
He lifted his head and looked in my eyes. “You wanna make out some more before, after or in the middle of ice cream?”
I shot him a grin. “All of the above.”
He grinned back.
When he dipped his head that time, it was to capture my mouth.
He kissed me soft before he slid his tongue inside.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed against him.
He angled his head and took the kiss deep.
I cupped the back of his head with a hand to hold him right where he was.
It didn’t feel good being held to him like this, feeling his strength pressed against me, his tongue stroking mine leisurely, taking it slow, giving, sweet.
The wonders of all that had no words to describe them.
And I lost myself to whatever that was.
Since I was lost, happy where I was, in his embrace, connected to him, Moses gave me all I was willing to take.
He did scoop out some ice cream for us.
He just did it . . .
Later.
Choices
Shirleen
AFTERNOON THE NEXT day, I was sitting in my Navigator, staring at the high school, my phone in my hand, my heart in my throat.
This was because Roam’s history teacher had called and asked me to come in to have “a discussion.”
I hated schools. I’d take visiting a hospital or walking my ass into a police station over walking into a school.
And with my old profession, both of those were saying something.
Not to mention, with my membership in the Rock Chicks, being able to visit a hospital or walk into a police station was an important skill to have.
Moses told me he often didn’t have his phone on him when he was at work.
Still, for whatever reason, I pulled up his text string, which had seven texts (yes, I counted). Him giving me his address. Me confirming I got it. Him saying something sweet after I confirmed. Me telling him I was on my way to his house last night. Him confirming he got that and telling me he was looking forward to feeding me. Me texting that morning to say I’d had a good time the night before. Him replying, telling me he did too.
I’m at the school. Roam’s teacher called. I’m worried, I typed in.
Neither boy had had trouble with school. It took some tutoring to get them up to scratch when they started back after being out for so long, but then they just assimilated.
Easy as pie.
Which freaked me out.
I’d talked to Jules about it because I’d found that odd. I thought that would be a battle too and was surprised when it wasn’t.
“We’ll keep an eye, Shirleen,” she’d said. “But not for the normal reasons. Sometimes, when kids get it good after they’ve had it bad, they try overly hard to prove they deserve to have something that’s just their due. Like an education. They don’t want it taken away, so they go beyond the pale to make certain it isn’t.”
It didn’t seem like they were trying overly hard. I didn’t have any practice, but it just seemed normal. They didn’t have an aversion to school like I did when I was their age. They didn’t jump for joy every morning at the prospect of hauling their asses out of bed, shoving their books in their bags and heading out with a pep in their step.
Since it was seemingly normal, we just rolled with it.
And now I’d been called by a teacher to come in “as soon as you can, Miz Jackson,” and have “a discussion.”
I stared at the text, wondering if I should send it.
In usual circumstances, I might text Daisy, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t talking to her that I didn’t type the text into her string.
It was just . . .
Now there was Moses.
Before I could chicken out (of a lot of things), I hit send, opened my door, pulled myself out of my car and hoofed it on my high heels to the school.
School was out for the day so the halls were quiet, but I could see through the windows there was a woman at the reception desk in the administration office.
It took a lot, but instead of giving in to my heebie-jeebies I was in a school and turning around to walk right out, I walked in there.
She looked up.
“Hey,” I greeted. “I’m Shirleen Jackson. Mr. Robinson called and said he wanted to talk about my boy.”
She nodded. “Just out the door, to the left, down the hall, take a right at the end. Mr. Robinson is in the second classroom on the right.”
I nodded back, muttered my gratitude and took off, my heels echoing on the tile in the empty hallways, my hackles coming up.
I’d had to have meetings with the folks at school to get the boys admitted. I’d also had to go to parent-teacher conferences for three years running. None of this had been comfortable, and not because I was worried about my street-tough boys in new environs (or not only because of that).
And I was seeing right then it was because it was bringing it all back.
This wasn’t just Leon and starting things with him when I was a junior and he was a senior and how bad that all went.
It was that, back then, I hadn’t come into me. I was awkward. Uncertain. My older sister was popular, I was not. I hadn’t found my way and looking back at it, I’d always felt embarrassed, even humiliated at how I’d handled myself.
But now I saw that there was no way I’d understand who I was, what I wanted and how to get it.
Hell, I wasn’t sure I knew any of that now.
But then, I was a kid.
Why did I expect so much of myself?
I found the room and knocked on the open door, my eyes to the handsome, somewhat disheveled man sitting behind the desk.
At my knock, he looked up at me, and I was relieved when he smiled.
“Miz Jackson,” he greeted.
“That’s me,” I answered, taking a step in.
He stood. “Thanks for coming.” He gestured to the student desks in front of his own. “Please come in.”
I walked in farther as he looked down, shuffled papers around, grabbed some and rounded his desk
.
“Have a seat,” he invited, and as I took a seat at one of the student desks, he didn’t return to his own. He sat at the one beside mine. “We met at parent-teacher conferences last winter.”
“I remember,” I told him.
“Sorry to take your time, but I thought this was important,” he said.
“What was important?” I asked.
He offered the papers he had in his hand to me.
“My students turn in their papers online. I printed this one out. It’s Roam’s report on the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.”
Slowly, I reached out and took it.
When I did, I felt my heart start beating faster because in the top left corner, it said:
Perspectives of American Military Action in Vietnam
American History
Mr. Robinson
By Roam Jackson
Roam Jackson?
Roam’s last name wasn’t Jackson.
Mine was.
“Do you go over your boys’ homework, Miz Jackson?” Mr. Robinson asked.
I looked from the papers in my hand to him. “Sometimes. When they ask me.”
He dipped his head to the paper. “Did you read that?”
I looked down at it, forcing my eyes to anything but the words Roam Jackson.
There were no marks on the paper. No grade.
I read the first couple of lines and saw this was not something Roam had asked me to look over.
I looked back at Roam’s teacher and shook my head.
Mr. Robinson nodded his. “Right then. Outside of it being glaringly obvious he did more than watch a couple of episodes of Burns’s documentary, a lot more, I’m not entirely certain how to describe the prose of that report.”
I felt my back hitch straight. “What are you saying?”
He looked me right in the eye. “It’s well beyond a high school senior’s aptitude.”
That was when I felt my eyes narrow. “You sayin’ my boy plagiarized this report?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m saying Roam is an exceptionally gifted and intuitive writer.”
Say what?
I stared at him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring this to your attention before,” he went on. “However, even if his earlier reports and test essays were very good, I’ve noted as the semester wore on, his talent has markedly increased. That said, I’ve seen nothing from him like that.”
“He hates writing reports. It drives him ’round the bend,” I said quietly. “Like, seriously.”
Mr. Robinson nodded. “I’m not surprised. For many outstanding writers, their need to tell their story, get their point across, doing this in the way they want the words to be crafted to share their narrative is a painful process. It can be very frustrating, as they can be very hard on themselves because each word has to be the perfect one and more, they all have to fit just right.”
I looked down at the paper.
“It’s my understanding Roam hasn’t applied to any colleges,” Mr. Robinson remarked.
I lifted my gaze again to him. “We had the talk. Only briefly. He didn’t seem interested so I didn’t push him.”
Another nod from Mr. Robinson with a gentle, “I know his history, Miz Jackson, and this doesn’t surprise me. Saddens me, but doesn’t surprise me. I will say that it’s more than just this assignment that made it clear. However with this,” he tipped his head to the papers again, “it’s more than clear he should go on to higher education.”
“To be what?” I asked.
“That’s yours,” he replied, now pointing at the papers in my hand. “Take it and read it and you’ll understand. But I’ll tell you what it did for me. That was not a high school report. That was not even a college level essay. When I read that, I forgot I was reading an assignment. It was like I was reading a book, a very good one, and when it was done my first reaction was annoyance because I wanted more.”
“Lord,” I whispered.
“He took a chance with that, Miz Jackson. He didn’t simply inform me of what he’d learned about American involvement in Vietnam. There are four parts to that report told from the perspectives of an American general, a member of the Viet Cong, an American Marine, and a Vietnamese peasant. It reads like fiction even if every word is factually correct. And the even-handed empathy for each viewpoint that he shared through his narrative was astonishing. Especially as written by the hand of a high school senior who wasn’t even alive during the conflict he was writing about.”
“Lord,” I breathed.
“Roam is a natural storyteller, Miz Jackson. You can’t teach what he’s got. His voice is unique, and although I’m not surprised he struggles with it, you will not find even a hint of that in his work. It flows beautifully.”
My eyes drifted down to the paper.
“It’s too late now to apply for him to start in the fall,” Mr. Robinson continued. “But I’d strongly advise you have another discussion with him. With his grades, and the way he writes an essay, he’d have no issues getting accepted and he could perhaps begin for mid-term enrollment. Or he could take some time and start next year.”
I didn’t see Roam slaving away at a computer, writing books for a living.
I didn’t even see him walking around with a backpack on some university campus.
What I saw was the fact my boy’s world was opening up.
He had opportunities.
He had choices.
His past was bleak no matter what way you looked at it.
But his future was bright whatever way he wanted to take it.
I didn’t feel I had any of that when I sat at a desk like this years ago.
But I got to live it with Roam.
And Sniff.
“Maybe I should have pushed it,” I told the papers.
“I wouldn’t have,” Mr. Robinson told me.
I looked at him.
“It’s only a guess,” he continued, “but that guess is that you’re sensitive to allowing both your boys to feel in control of their lives, their destinies. This is crucial not only because of their pasts, but for them to learn to make smart choices for their futures. It is far from necessary for Roam to have a college degree in order to be a writer, if that’s his choice. What’s necessary to be a writer is to fill your life with as many experiences as you can get to inform your writing, enrich it. If more schooling is not his thing,” he shrugged, “it’s not. It isn’t everyone’s thing. He can gain life experience in a lot of different ways, and I’m sure we can both agree he has more than enough of one kind already. But I’d broach the subject with him again.”
“I will, Mr. Robinson.”
He smiled. “Please call me Keith.”
“And you should call me Shirleen.”
His smile got bigger.
I smiled back then looked down at the paper.
“I’ve been teaching history a long time,” he said, and my gaze shifted back to him. “And I have never, not once, assigned a paper when a student has used that kind of creativity in order to fulfill an assignment. I honest to God didn’t know how to grade it. I felt like an armchair quarterback who’s never played football in his life calling a play.”
“Wow,” I whispered.
Boy, I couldn’t wait to read that report.
“Precisely.” He grinned.
“I’ll have the talk with him,” with them, “soon’s I can.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Shirleen.”
I stood. He stood. We shook hands.
And I didn’t care what he read in me holding that report to my chest as he walked me to his classroom door.
“Shirleen,” he said when we’d reached it.
I stopped just in the hall and turned to him.
“After my mind unboggled, reading that report,” he started, “it came to me the young man who wrote it and how that young man got to the point in his life he was in my class and able to write it.”
I stared in h
is eyes.
“They were very lucky to find you,” he said quietly.
“I feel it’s the other way around,” I replied.
He gave me a gentle smile. “Like I said, they were very lucky to find you.”
“Gotta admit, Keith, wish I had a teacher like you in high school.”
He seemed embarrassed by the compliment, and if he’d scuffed the floor with the toe of his shoe, I would not have been surprised.
“But glad Roam got you,” I finished.
“That pleasure has been mine,” he returned.
“Like I said, glad Roam got you.”
He chuckled and I grinned at him.
We said our goodbyes and I walked a whole lot faster back to my car.
I didn’t even start it up after I tossed my bag to the passenger seat before I turned my attention to Roam’s report.
I had no idea how long it took me to read.
What I knew when I reached the end was that my boy could seriously write.
I was nearly home when my car rang.
I looked down at the dashboard to see it said Moses Calling.
I took the call, greeting, “Hey, my man.”
“You all right?”
“Yep.”
“Roam all right?”
“Apparently, I got Alex Haley livin’ under my roof.”
“Say again?”
“Just heard the word that Roam’s an exceptionally gifted storyteller.”
“Who gave you this word?”
“His history teacher. And just to say, I just spent the last however many minutes reading Roam’s “Perspectives of American Military Action in Vietnam,” and the dude does not lie.”
Moses chuckled. “So it was good news.”
Good?
Hell no.
Exceptionally awesome?
Absolutely.
“We didn’t talk much about college. Roam didn’t seem into it. Sniff either. I’m opening up discussions again,” I shared.
“Good,” he murmured.
I let seconds slip by before I whispered, “My boy’s exceptionally gifted.”
“Does this surprise you, baby?” Moses whispered back.
“Not even a little bit.” I let more seconds slip by before I asked, “How do I get him to believe it?”
“No idea, sweetheart. But I think the best way to try is just to start.”