Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

Sweet Thang started rationalizing for her. “In some ways it’s simpler for a stranger. You must have a lot of history with her I don’t have.”

“Oh, we’ve got history,” Tammy said. “I don’t even want to start talking about that. You’ll be bored to tears, but I’ll be the one crying.”

“It’s not easy with family,” Sweet Thang said. “Sometimes you’re harder on your own family than you are on a stranger. It’s natural. We judge the people we love a lot harsher.”

“No, that’s not it. You know what it is? And, I’m sorry, I don’t even know you, but I’m just going to tell you this. What did you say your name was? Laura?”

“Lauren, yes.”

“Lauren, here’s how it is when you grow up where I did and then you leave. People back home-my family, everyone-think that because I went to college and live out here now, I must be living in some rich la-la land. Well, you know what? This isn’t Shangri-la. It’s South Orange. My husband and I have two children and we’re struggling to make ends meet just like they do back home, we’re just doing it in a place that doesn’t smell like piss.

“But anytime someone gets in trouble, it’s always, ‘Go to Tamikah, talk to Tamikah, she’s got money, she’ll help you out.’ But I don’t. And I can’t. I’d have half of Baxter Terrace sleeping in my basement if I didn’t draw that boundary. And even though I know I need to draw it, I still feel guilty.”

“But you’ve got your own family to worry about,” Sweet Thang countered. “You have to do what’s right for them. I understand that completely.”

“I bet you understand a lot right now. My sister stole your jewelry. So, congratulations, you’re part of the club now.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Sweet Thang said. “Honestly.”

“I still feel terrible about that and … you know what? It’s cold out here. Would you like to come inside?”

Sweet Thang smiled pleasantly. In less time than it had taken me to completely screw up this interview, she had completely unscrewed it. Like I said, the girl had a gift.

“That would be delightful,” she said.

* * *

Tammy walked inside ahead of us, asked us to sit in the living room, then went into the kitchen for some quick negotiations with Ryan the Devoted Husband with the Wandering Eyes. Within moments, there were excited noises and suddenly two little girls were scrambling into their jackets, rushing past us out the front door. Dad trailed close behind.

“Cold Stone! Cold Stone!” the younger one sang as she ran out into the driveway for what was obviously an impromptu trip to a nearby Cold Stone Creamery.

“Bribery,” Tammy explained as she reentered the living room. “I just wanted us to be able to talk without those little ears around. They don’t know about any of this sort of stuff and I want to keep it that way.”

“How old are they?” Sweet Thang asked.

“Emma is four and Gracie is six.”

Which meant they were the same ages as Alonzo and Antoine. They were cousins who lived perhaps three miles apart. Yet their lives could scarcely have been more different.

“They’re adorable,” Sweet Thang said.

“They’re also a handful, but thank you,” Tammy said, sitting down and smoothing her pants. “So I think I’ve figured out why you’re here. It’s Windy Byers, isn’t it? I heard about him. You think Akilah has something to do with his disappearance?”

“We’re not sure,” I said honestly.

“You don’t think she kidnapped him or something, do you?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “If anything-and this is just a hunch at this point-I think Windy’s wife may be involved. It’s possible she learned about the affair and went out for revenge, burning down Akilah’s house and having her husband killed.”

Tammy put on a confused face.

“But why would she do that now? She’s known about the affair for years.”

“She has?” I asked. Now it was my turn to be confused.

“Oh, sure. I don’t want to say she condoned it. But Akilah made it sound like she knew about it and was more or less okay with it. Or maybe resigned to it is a better way to say it.”

“Huh,” I added, ever the eloquent speaker.

“But, in any event, I don’t even think it matters anymore. They broke up. Or, I should say, Akilah broke it off with Windy. So why would Mrs. Byers go after Akilah now?”

Why, indeed.

I stared stupidly around the Dunwoods’ living room for a moment, as if the answers were somehow tucked neatly behind their Pottery Barn furniture. If Windy and Akilah weren’t an item anymore, that might suggest these two events-a bonfire on Littleton Avenue and a kidnapping on Fairmount Avenue-were not connected after all. But if that was the case, why was Akilah running around Newark saying everyone was after her?

“I’m still trying to sort all this out, and I know you are, too,” I said. “So do you mind if we start at the beginning?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay, your mother told us Akilah and Windy met about six or seven years ago, is that right?”

Tammy looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “That sounds about right,” she said.

“And, I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what exactly would bring a fifty-something-year-old councilman and a teenaged girl from the projects together anyway?”

“I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked myself that same question,” she said. “I think for her it was the power-and the money, of course. I mean, he got her a job. He gave her nice things. She called him ‘Boo’ or some ridiculous pet name like that. She felt special that someone so important would sneak around to be with her. And for him? Who knows? I mean, you know that family comes from the projects, too, right?”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. The Byerses and Baxter Terrace go way, way back. Both the boys were raised there. I think their mom, she’s dead now, but she kept living there right to the end. So I think, I don’t know, this is just me guessing here, but for people like us-people who made it out of the projects-there’s a lot of different ways to deal with it. Me? I got out and stayed out and I don’t particularly like to go back.

“But for some people-maybe it’s just guys, I don’t know-it’s like a point of pride. They still want to keep coming back around the old neighborhood. They say it’s to keep it real, but I think they just want to show off. And I think some of them also keep a taste for project girls. Windy, he married up-I think Mrs. Byers’s daddy was a doctor or something-but the word around Baxter Terrace was that he always liked to have a girl who was a little more down home that he could visit. So there he is, the big shot, coming back to Baxter Terrace. And there she is, the pretty young girl. It happens.”

And Windy was far from the first politician in our nation’s history to have it happen to him.

“So that’s how it started. How did it end?” I asked.

“Well, he cut her off,” Tammy said. “She broke up with him after he told her he wasn’t going to pay for that house anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he was suddenly having money problems or if his wife wasn’t letting him do it anymore or what. But one day he just came over and said, ‘You have to leave.’ ”

“Even after he had two children with her?” Sweet Thang interjected.

Tammy looked at Sweet Thang for a long moment, then cast her eyes downward and said softly, “They weren’t his.”

Oh.

“She told everyone they were his. I think she even tried to convince herself they were his. She liked the idea of the boys having a councilman for a father. But even before they split up, I started making noise about how she should go after him for child support. Make it legal, you know? She said she didn’t want the fuss, but I was going to hire a lawyer. Then she finally told me they’d never pass the paternity test. I guess Windy wasn’t always around, so there were other men. Please don’t tell my mother. She’s ashamed enough as it is.”