L.A. Blues Read online

  Although she didn’t say anything, I could see her softening. As much as Chica had stolen from Shirley while we were growing up, had given Shirley gray hairs when she was a teenager with all her running away and acting out, Shirley was the only one who went to see Chica’s ass when she was in jail and in the pen. I never went—I was too wrapped up in my job as a cop. In fact, Shirley was the one who renewed her foster license and helped rear Chica’s five children, and was now helping Chica to try and get the younger three of the children back in her custody.

  “Seriously, Moochie, what do you think of Riley?” I hadn’t met him yet, although I saw a picture of him. He was a lanky white boy, kind of a surfer-beach boy look, who used to work in Silicon Valley. Riley used to own a dot.com before he got strung out on crystal meth. Needless to say, he’d lost everything. He was beginning to rebuild his life again too.

  “He seems like a good guy . . . but—” Shirley paused before she went on.

  “But what?” I interrupted.

  “But, with both of them having a drug problem, I worry. Especially with her trying to get the younger kids back.”

  “Well, all I know is Chica must have some bad ass snatch to get a husband at this point in the game, but I sure hope she has learned that dick is not her friend.”

  “All right now, watch your mouth, young lady.” Shirley’s crisp voice reminded me of when she had Chica and me enrolled in charm school, modeling, and talent shows to build our confidence when we were teens. She never believed in impropriety or saying things that were not “lady like.” Lately, I’d been working on cleaning up my potty mouth. She should have heard me whale—I mean I cursed like a sailor when I was a cop.

  If anything, now that I was not around so many men, I cursed less. I decided I’d write that in on my fourth step as something I had to work on.

  “No disrespect, Moochie, but I mean Chica doesn’t seem to realize that men will hurt you—even the best of men. It doesn’t help that she used to like all those thug types, but someone like Riley can be treacherous—with him being a recovering addict and all.”

  Riley, a former businessman, who was now starting back up a new online venture, surely didn’t seem to be Chica’s type. I guess what they said was true. Opposites attract.

  Shirley looked appalled. “Z—when did you become so cynical? I know being a police officer changed you, and in some ways not for the best, but my goodness! Don’t you ever want to get married again?”

  I slapped my hands up and down in a “wash your hands of a matter” way. “Look, I’ve been married.” I held my hands up in a surrender gesture. “Just say that mess doesn’t work for me. I’m just not marriage material.”

  “I sure would love to see you settled down—”

  “Hah! Everybody I know that’s married is either cheating or miserable. Look at you and Chill!”

  “Well, I wasn’t always unhappy.”

  I almost asked her why she didn’t sleep with Daddy Chill anymore. It made me wonder if love was meant to last a lifetime, but I decided not to go there.

  “Besides,” I continued, “that’s how I’m making a living now. Following cheating spouses. I don’t even see why Chica wants to get married.”

  “Well, I wish her well. But Z, you shouldn’t give up on love. There’s nothing like it—when it’s right and when it’s good.”

  “Yeah, yeah. If love is so grand, what happened with you and Daddy Chill?”

  Shirley didn’t answer and anyway, she stopped talking as Trayvon, walked in from school. Like the others, Trayvon came home with Shirley as a newborn, but he was clearly her pet. Her eyes lit up at the sight of him. “How’s my boy doing?”

  “G-ma. I made the Honor Roll today, so Coach can’t say I won’t be able to play or go to basketball camp.” All the children called Shirley G-Ma for “Grandma.”

  I looked on as Trayvon worked Shirley’s heart strings. I must admit the boy had charisma—in fact, they were all some loveable kids. I couldn’t believe how they all got their start in a crack snatch, but who but God ever knows how kids will turn out?

  “That’s great, baby,” Shirley said, as she turned the pot down to simmer.

  “I have the application for basketball camp. Can you sign it?”

  “After you eat. I made your favorite.”

  Now it was Trayvon’s turn to light up. Although Chica was Chicano, Trayvon, who was biracial, looked like any medium-brown-skinned black teen. People sometimes said he even looked like he could pass for my son since he wore a curly fro about the same length as I kept my hair cropped. Like all of his siblings, Trayvon’s father, Dog Bite, had been black. He’d been murdered in prison five years earlier.

  Trayvon picked up a wooden ladle spoon and reached into the pot of spaghetti sauce. “Mmm, you put your foot in this spaghetti.”

  Shirley playfully slapped his hand. “Get out that pot, boy. Let me fix you a plate.”

  I remembered how I used to love me some Shirley’s spaghetti, which she usually garnered with spicy Italian sausage, stewed tomatoes, bay leaf, oregano and a lot of basil when I was growing up in her home.

  Within the half hour, Malibu, Soledad, Brooklyn and Charisma showed up from their nearby bus stops. They wore their backpacks attached like camel humps on their backs. They were equally excited to know this was spaghetti night, too. You would think it was steak, but I knew how it felt to have a secure meal when you might not have had one.

  I joined the family for dinner, and it felt good to be part of a family again. I helped the girls set the table. We used a pussy willow from Shirley’s front yard as a center piece. It was taken from one of the willow plants, which lined the yard. They stood next to a running waterfall, shaped by large rocks lined on each side that ran down the hill, as part of Shirley’s landscape in the front yard. At night, the water fall lit up, something I always loved.

  After we bowed our heads, Shirley led the prayer. As usual, Chill stayed in his room with his TV tray and ate while he watched TV. He’d become so reclusive the girls called him “Uncle Pete,” after the demented uncle in the movie Soul Food.

  “Auntie, are you coming to the wedding?” Trayvon asked.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “I’m going to walk my mother down the aisle,” Trayvon informed me.

  “I’m going to be a flower girl,” Brooklyn lisped.

  “Good for you both.” I always admired how her children loved their mama to death—even when she was all cracked out. Their loyalty was amazing.

  Just peering into Chica’s children’s faces, I realized how I was getting older, because I could just see us sitting in those same chairs when we were the same ages as Chica’s older children.

  When Shirley poured a Waterford crystal stemware glass of burgundy, for a moment, my mouth watered and I felt the old familiar taste in my palate. Although she didn’t offer me a drink, when I silently passed up by not asking for one, it felt good. One day at a time. I was staying sober. This was my new mantra. I could never have a social drink again. I was still struggling to accept this fact. One drink was never enough for me.

  After Trayvon and the other children finished eating, he announced, “I’ve got a scrimmage game at Inglewood High this evening at six. Delonte’s mom is going to take us.”

  “Do you have a ride home?” Shirley asked.

  “No, ma’am. I think she’s picking us back up too.”

  “I’ve got to take Malibu to drill team and Soledad to soccer so that’s fine. But, call me if you need a ride.”

  Now that the days were longer, most of the sports were played outside on the high school field.

  Trayvon turned and gazed back at me and Shirley. “Love you, G-Ma.” He turned to me. “Auntie, can I wear your Starter jacket?”

  I hesitated, but since it was black, I nodded. “Okay.” In L.A. or Inglewood, you couldn’t wear red in a Crip area, and you couldn’t wear blue in a Bloods area, so Trayvon knew what time it was.

  I
jogged to the garage and grabbed up the vintage jacket for him. It was a perfect fit. He’d grown over the winter and was almost my height now–five feet nine.

  “See you, Auntie Z. Love you.”

  “Love you,” Shirley and I say in unison, but my mind was on something else.

  “What’s wrong with Daddy Chill?” I noticed he was sitting alone in the den talking to someone whom I couldn’t see.

  Shirley shrugged. “He’s getting weirder every day. He only talks to his cockatoo, Bill.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I’m just sick of living with him.”

  I stood at the island counter, studying my former foster mother—who was still like a mother to me. Déjà vu. It reminded me of being a child again, watching Shirley’s every move. As a foster child, I learned powers of observation akin to that of a space alien. I knew intuitively when kids were going to be sent back home or replaced in another foster home. I tried to be really good so I wouldn’t get replaced. I was one of the lucky ones. Shirley seldom got rid of kids unless they were unworkable like little white Tommy, the fire setter, who once burnt down the garage.

  Underneath it all, though, I always felt like between Chica and me, we were kind of Shirley’s favorites. There were generally two other children while we were in placement. Shirley and Daddy Chill couldn’t have been better parents to us throw-away children. We had even gone on cruises with them several times while I was growing up.

  I objectively examined this woman who put her fingerprints on me on the second half of my childhood. From Shirley, I learned to love nice things. Imported marble tables. Antiques. Vintage clothing, almost over designer clothing. Good art. Reading. Classical music. Shirley still drove a vintage Mustang from the 60’s that was in perfect shape with its new engine and paint job.

  I thought back to this pending divorce and I wondered if Shirley was going through mid-life crisis at sixty. She still had a youthful figure and appearance. Shirley couldn’t even put it in words, what she was feeling, and why she wanted a divorce. From what I learned from my divorce, there was never a day of demarcation in a marriage. It was like trying to draw a line in the ocean.

  Although I hadn’t stayed married long, I understood where Shirley was coming from. There was never no one day where you realized you went too far, when you killed love, when somewhere along the way you stopped speaking, stopped making love, stopped loving each other. There were no bells and whistles. You just wound up on the road of no return.

  Perhaps there is a season to love; a slow changing from spring, summer, winter, then back to spring. Maybe that is what happened with Shirley and Chill, I thought. They were obviously in a state of winter. Hopefully, things would thaw out and go back to spring.

  This made me wonder who Shirley actually was as a woman, not just my Moochie, the woman who saved my life. I decided to change the subject, hoping that this would make Shirley forget about the divorce—for now anyhow. I didn’t want any new changes in my life. I asked Shirley a question I never had considered before. “Moochie, how did you become a foster parent?”

  “I had a bad relationship with my mother. I lived with my aunt the first part of my childhood, then I was sent to live with her mother when I was almost grown.”

  “How old were you when you went to stay with your mother?”

  “I was twelve—almost grown. I never did get that closeness to her that my brother she kept with her had, though.”

  “Where did you live at first?”

  “I grew up in the bigoted South, with an aunt who took care of me by the letter of the law, but really didn’t care. Maybe that’s why I became a foster mother. I can’t stand to see children mistreated.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I always wanted to make a difference. That’s why I got into the Black Panthers. That’s how I met Chill. He seemed like a man who wanted to make a difference.”

  Her words reminded me of what Romero said to me when I was in the hospital. That he wanted his life to count, that he wanted to make a difference.

  12

  I shot back to my garage apartment and took a shower in my miniature half-a-bath. When I came out, I looked around the room that functioned as a living room, bedroom, and kitchen, and let out a sigh of contentment. My spot suited me just fine. A thin swath of linoleum on the back section marked off the kitchen.

  Towel draped around my middle, I padded over to my IKEA desk and glanced down at the pictures I had to turn over to my latest client, a husband who suspected his wife of cheating. I perused the pile of digital photos I printed out of the wife going in and coming out the Snooty Foxx Motel on Western near Martin Luther King Boulevard. Motel Row, it was called. I was there with Flag a few years ago, and it did have the famous mirrors overhead.

  Although I didn’t feel good about having to give these to the husband, the job was paying eighteen hundred. At least, I was earning money again, it was legal, and like they say, “Somebody gotta do it.” As an officer, I did surveillances and stakeouts before, but I didn’t realize, until recently, how my police training had made me a good investigator. Last week, I bought a licensed gun—a pearl-handled Glock—but I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it. I also finally purchased a used car out of the Penny saver.

  I shook my head. Why does anyone get married anyway? Seems like women are cheating as much as men these days, so what’s the point?

  I put the pictures back in the manila envelope and slipped them into my computer’s desk drawer. I could already imagine how the husband would overreact like on that show Cheaters when he gets the news. I cut on my laptop and checked my e-mail. I had a lot of junk mail, but I filtered through it. I put an ad for my new business, Soldano’s Private Investigations, on Craig’s List, and someone had already responded. Just from the wording of the email, it sounded like another husband trying to catch his wife cheating. I read a recent statistic which said wives cheated at a much higher rate than a few decades ago. I guess women’s liberation had caught up in the bedroom, as well as in earning power.

  Afterwards, I played with Ben as they instruct the owners of ferrets to do on the Internet, then I put him in his cage. So far, I kept him alive for several weeks, so I was doing all right. For the first time since I’d become sexually active, I admitted to myself I was not ready for a relationship. I’d been celibate for six months, if I didn’t count my vibrator.

  Even when Flag, as in the Flagpole, called me after I got out of rehab, and the chance at wild sex was waved in front of me like a carrot—and although my twat almost leapfrogged up in my uterus, I got so frisky just hearing his voice—somehow I found the strength to say no.

  Sex and drinking often went hand in hand for me, so I had to say no. I was taking my recovery seriously this time. I stopped drinking temporarily in the past through AA meetings, but I never went to a rehab. I knew now my continued sobriety would be a matter of life or death for me. To fight down temptation, I changed my cell phone number and didn’t contact Flag anymore.

  Earlier that afternoon, I attended my AA meeting, which inspired me to write in my notebook. I was working on my fourth step, where I was staying stuck.

  “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

  As I was writing out my faults, looking at my guilt regarding my younger siblings, my guilt over Okamoto’s death, and my inability to forgive my mother, I decided to watch some of the old Blockbuster movies I rented.

  I cut on my CD player and put on an old version of the movie, Set it Off. Flaws and all, I loved this movie because it featured the projects where I grew up, and the women characters were the bank robbers. I liked movies where women were shown as empowering themselves—even if, as in this case, they went about it the wrong way. But given each woman’s set of circumstances, what else could they do?

  I knew I’d never rob a bank myself, but I cheered on Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett, Vivica Fox and Kimberly Elise as if they were my sisters. I was at the scene in the movie where I cry at every time—I already h
ad my tissues out and was wiping my eyes and blowing my nose—the part where Queen Latifah got shot up by what looked like all of L.A.P.D. Suddenly my cell phone vibrated. Who could this be? I wondered, as I reached for it.

  At first I didn’t recognize the voice; it was so loud and out of control. “What? Who?” I kept saying. I could hear the loud clamor of voices in the background. Sniffing, I reached over and put my movie on pause.

  Finally, I realized it was Shirley. I couldn’t make out her words, between the screams and hollers, something I was not used to, since she always seemed in control. I had to ask her to repeat herself twice. “What did you say?” I still couldn’t understand her.

  About the third time, I finally made out what she was saying.

  “Someone’s shot Trayvon.”

  My heart dropped, and then the hammering started. “What? I’ll be right there.”

  In a blind flurry of arms and legs locomoting through my small place, I frenetically flipped close the cell phone, grabbed my purse and car keys and barreled to the front house.

  “Who called you?” I asked, as Shirley grabbed her London Fog trench coat.

  “Southwest P.D.” Her eyes were shooting wildly all over the place. “I thought his game was in Inglewood.”

  “I did too.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” I never saw Shirley look so helpless.

  As we were leaving, I heard the baby, Brooklyn, crying, “My brother got shot,” but Malibu, as always the mother figure, hushed her.

  “He’s going to be okay, Brooklyn.”

  They were all looking upset, and wanted to go to the hospital with us. We decided it would be too much to handle. We decided to leave the children at home. We didn’t know what Trayvon’s status was. I tried to remain calm in front of them.