“Bullshit!” Pauline hissed at her, rubbing one of her bloodshot eyes.
“I’m not a foster parent, but I’m sure if I file expedited papers, they’ll go through, and I’ll take her from you,” Tempest stated with conviction. “Raise her myself if I have to.”
“Kensington’s overreacting.” Pauline, realizing the sistah just might be serious about taking her daughter away, was going on the defensive. “So I slapped her for being lazy or not doing the dishes. Big fuckin’ deal. My mother used to beat my ass all the time.”
“Well, that’s probably part of the problem. Are you proud of what you’re doing to her?” Tempest spotted a tear in the corner of Pauline’s right eye, but Pauline wiped away the evidence quickly. Deducing that Pauline wasn’t as hard as she pretended to be, Tempest reached over and gently caressed her cheek, pleading to Pauline with her eyes. “Kensington has a real shot at making something of herself. She has a bright future a
head of her. Don’t make this a vicious cycle.”
“Everything okay in here?” Dawna asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Tempest replied. Neither she nor Pauline had noticed Dawna standing in the doorway, holding a paper bag full of their afternoon sustenance. Tempest spotted some pork rinds sticking out of the top of the bag and figured it must be their lunch. “I was just leaving.”
Dawna put the bag down on the kitchen counter, eyed the same roach Tempest had seen earlier, picked up a copy of Jet magazine, and slammed the hell out of it until nothing was left but a carcass.
Pauline walked back over to the kitchen makeshift beauty parlor and busied herself by cleaning out a brush with a comb.
Tempest glared at her from across the room. Pauline glared back. “Remember what I said. Don’t ever let it happen again, or I’ll take Kensington, and then you better pray you never run up on me in a dark alley.”
Dawna ripped open the bag of pork rinds and started shoveling them into her mouth, enthralled by the conversation like she was watching her favorite soap. She was hoping Pauline wouldn’t be in too fucked-up a mood to finish her hair; she was planning to go to the male strip show at the Black Screw that night.
Pauline laughed, trying to save some face even though she was beginning to get scared. The sistah, fancy clothes and all, really was from the hood, and definitely didn’t play that shit. She could tell that much. “Are you threatening me?”
“Don’t let it happen again, or you’ll feel my wrath.” Tempest stormed out of the apartment and slammed the door behind her.
“Damn, do you do this shit with the parents of all the girls down at the center?” Pauline yelled out through the door.
Tempest started crying before she hit the parking lot, and she cried all the way home.
CHAPTER 16
a lovers’ christmas
“wow, sweetheart!” Geren exclaimed, checking out the number of hat-and-glove sets Tempest was tossing into their shopping cart at Kmart. “How many of those are you planning on getting?”
“About fifty, if they have them,” Tempest replied. “I’m trying to get all the girls at the center the same thing. You know how females can get. If I get even three or four of them a different Christmas present, the others will swear I’m playing favoritism.”
“True!” Geren grabbed Tempest by the waist and kissed her gently on the forehead. “You know what I adore about you most?”
“What?” Tempest asked, blushing.
“Your compassion.” He let go of her and started picking out sets to add to the pile. “That very first night at your apartment, when you described what you do for a living, I could see the excitement and dedication in your eyes. Not many people would commit themselves to doing what you do. It takes a special kind of person.”
“Well, I have my reasons, Geren,” Tempest said somberly. “Don’t make me out to be some sort of saint, because I’m not. I just don’t want to see teenage girls sink into depression and assume their lives are over simply because of an unplanned pregnancy. This isn’t a new problem in society. Did you see that HBO movie, If These Walls Could Talk? It spoke volumes.”
“No, I missed it. What was it about?”
Tempest gazed up at him, and he got an uneasy feeling. It was almost as if there was pure hatred in her eyes. “It was about three women who resided in the same house during different decades who all had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. One was a nurse who had an illegal abortion right on her kitchen table, one was a married woman with one too many kids already, and the third was a college student who had an affair with a professor. When she went to an abortion clinic to have the procedure done, an antiabortionist shot and killed the female doctor right in front of her.”
“Damn, that sounds real deep!”
Tempest looked away and threw a few more glove sets in the cart. “It was not only deep but extremely realistic. The crazy part is these men—the ones who say anything to get into a woman’s pants and then run for the hills when she ends up pregnant. The ones who think birth control is solely the woman’s responsibility. I hate men like that!”
“So I gather,” Geren said cautiously, hoping she wasn’t implying he was in the same category. He couldn’t wait to have kids. With the right woman, of course. He went to the opposite side of the display stand and picked up a pair of navy insulated gloves. “How do you like these?” he asked, trying his best to change the subject. “Do you think they match the jacket I have on?”
Tempest took a good look at the jacket he had on, which was ablaze with a kaleidoscope of colors. She wanted to tell him that jacket was not half as fly as he thought it was. It was downright unattractive, which surprised Tempest, since Geren usually dressed very stylishly. Instead, she just said, “Naw, I think black will look better if they have them. Black matches everything. By the way, that jacket is the bomb-diggity.”
“You really like it?”