Malawi's Sisters Page 14

  She shook her head fiercely, like a little girl refusing to eat her dinner, determined to get what she wanted. “You have to go now. Maybe we can talk later, but you have to go. Now.”

  “What do you mean, go?”

  “Just go.” She screamed at him, “Get out!”

  Sidney backed away from her and stared until she screamed again. She could see him flinch. He turned and without another word, left her. She heard him talking to Junior and Charlene. No doubt they’d heard the argument and Kenya felt sick. This wasn’t the home life she wanted for them. She and Sidney were supposed to be the perfect couple. Happy together. Respectful of one another. Committed for life. But their love was unraveling like an old knitted sweater and there was nothing she could do but let it come undone.

  25

  The news of Jeffrey Davies’ arrest was on every morning news channel.

  Finally.

  Malcolm turned off the radio and showed his ID to the parking attendant. The attorney Joe had found had come through. Now to make sure Davies went away for good. Malcolm was sure Florida still had the death penalty. He successfully navigated to his space in the lot under the courthouse. He remembered getting an email from the Palm Beach prosecutor late yesterday afternoon. Malawi’s body would be released for burial. He’d asked Cynthia to help coordinate the shipment of the body.

  The body.

  He hated to think of his baby girl that way.

  From the parking garage, he took the elevator up. Normally, he would take the stairs, but he was tired and out of sync with everything around him. He had wakened with a killer hangover, something he hadn’t experienced in a number of years. A Bloody Mary for breakfast had become a questionable habit, but it helped him feel better. Took away that dull achy feeling and helped him focus. He stumbled upon exiting the elevator and hoped no one saw him. He kept his head down and walked across the marble expanse to his office on the west side. He spotted several attorneys glancing his way, odd expressions on their faces, but he focused on placing one foot in front of the other.

  Just before he made a left to get to his office someone stopped him. “Judge Walker, are you okay?”

  Malcolm turned and saw the young attorney, Darryl Reeves, frowning at him.

  “I’m fine.” He stumbled back a step then steadied himself. “I’m fine,” he said again.

  “Sir, I think maybe . . . perhaps we should . . .” Reeves reached out and gripped Malcolm’s arm and Malcolm jerked away.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sir, I just think it might be best . . .” He reached again, grabbing Malcolm’s elbow as if trying to move him aside.

  “Get off me.” Malcolm felt unsteady. He just wanted to get to his office without a scene, but a surge of anger at the impertinence of this young man swooped through his chest and when Reeves reached out again, Malcolm balled his fist and punched the attorney in his nose. Reeves fell back, stumbling into the wall, his nose bloody. Shocked at what he’d done, Malcolm tried to apologize, but Reeves backed away holding his nose. Then Joe was at Malcolm’s side, steadying him, gripping his shoulders.

  “C’mon, Brother. I got you. C’mon.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” Malcolm tried to speak but couldn’t seem to form the right words. He looked at Joe who was apologizing to Reeves. “I got him,” he said and Malcolm tried again to speak, but Joe continued addressing the young man. “Go put some ice on that. I’ll take care of him.”

  Malcolm couldn’t seem to make sense of what was happening and let Joe lead him to his chambers. Cynthia’s face expressed shock and she stood up as soon as they came in. Again, Joe spoke for him and Malcolm surrendered to his friend’s guidance. “Get some water and some strong ass coffee,” Joe said to Cynthia.

  Malcolm dropped onto the couch in his private office and immediately Joe was peering into his face. “I’m fine,” Malcolm said, swatting his friend away.

  Joe laughed, a nervous concerned laugh. “Brother, you are not fine. Where the hell did you sleep last night?”

  Malcolm closed his eyes and tried to remember. He’d been at home, hadn’t he? But the evening was vague. He remembered waking at home this morning, pouring a drink, vodka and tomato juice. Bet was sleeping. Bet was always sleeping.

  “Brother, drink some water.” Joe handed Malcolm a bottle. “We got some coffee coming.”

  “I didn’t mean to hit him,” Malcolm said thinking about Darryl Reeves. He took several gulps from the bottle. “Christ, I don’t know what happened.”

  Cynthia came in and presented him with a large paper cup of coffee. The bottle of water started to slide out of his hand and he gripped it before it spilled. Joe took the bottle from him and warned him not to spill the coffee.

  “Though it wouldn’t really matter if you spill it on yourself. I’m not sure what that is.”

  Malcolm sipped the coffee and looked down at himself. His pants were wrinkled and there was a stain just above his knee. Tomato juice, he thought.

  “You need to take a leave of absence.”

  “I’ll be okay.” He’d have some coffee and get himself together.

  “That’s not a suggestion, Brother. I’ll talk to Reeves and let’s hope he’ll be understanding of your situation. You can’t continue working. Take some time off.”

  Malcolm started to argue, but Joe’s expression, a mixture of sympathy and irritation, told him to be quiet and accept his fate. He’d fucked up. He’d have to accept the consequences.

  Joe dropped him at home, and he immediately showered feeling unclear on when he’d last bathed. He dried off and dressed in a loose shirt and sweatpants. Bet was likely still sleeping. He didn’t check on her. As he surveyed the contents of the refrigerator, unsure what exactly he was seeking, Teddy called his cell phone and asked what the hell had happened at court this morning.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “There’s a fucking video of you staggering through the courthouse and then taking a swing at someone. Jesus Christ, Malcolm, what the fuck were you thinking?”

  “A video?”

  “Yes. A video. You know that little app on everyone’s phones these days? Didn’t we talk about this?”

  Malcolm ran his fingers across his forehead. What had Teddy said? Don’t do anything to attract attention. He hadn’t done it on purpose.

  “My phone has been buzzing all morning,” Teddy said. “Listen to me, Malcolm. No talking to anyone. You hear me? Nobody.”

  “Right.”

  Malcolm couldn’t fathom why someone had recorded his encounter with Reeves. He’d apologize to the young man, of course, but the memory of what had happened already was a blur in his mind. He poured himself another Bloody Mary and turned on the news. The last thing he’d wanted was for Malawi’s death to become a headline. And now he’d just made it worse.

  26

  By mid-morning Kenya unplugged the house phone. It’d been ringing repeatedly for hours. The first few times she answered only to hear a voice she didn’t recognize ask if her father was an alcoholic. Another caller asked if alcoholism ran in the family. She wouldn’t answer any more calls.

  Kenya skipped her morning run, feeling nauseous, her stomach in knots, her head pounding, but she got Junior off to summer camp and called Grandma, explaining that she didn’t feel so well and asked if Charlene could spend the day there. Fortunately, the kids were subdued and hadn’t asked about their father. She couldn’t talk about him.

  She swept and mopped the kitchen floor, then vacuumed the sitting room. When all the cleaning was done, she stood in the hall listening to the silence until her cell phone rang. It was Ghana.

  “Have you talked to Dad?” her sister asked.

  Kenya said, “No,” fearing something had happened.

  “He’s all over the news,” Ghana said, her voice panicked. “He was drunk and punched someone. It’s been caught on video. They’ve been showing it on the news. The national news. Have you talked to him? I called but
he didn’t answer the phone. Do you think we should go over there?”

  Kenya took a moment to consider what her sister was saying. She’d never seen her father drunk. He drank wine occasionally, bourbon during the holidays, but there was never a time she could ever remember him being drunk.

  “Get online and look,” Ghana was saying. “I called Uncle Teddy and left a message for him to call me back. We have to get this taken down.”

  “Who did this?”

  “I have no idea. But I swear, if I ever find out, I will kick the shit out of them.”

  Kenya was confident Ghana would do such a thing. She had seen her sister angry, seen her punch and kick a boy in middle school who’d called her a bad name. The boy had teased Ghana about her large chest. He had tried to touch her there, and Ghana responded by kicking the boy in his private parts. When he was on the ground, she kicked him again, shouting at him to never touch her there ever again. And he never did. But their father, he was not a violent man.

  Kenya pulled open her laptop and typed her father’s name and the word “drunk” into the search engine. The video popped up as the first selection, and Kenya clicked on it. “I’m looking at it now,” she said into the speaker. The image was grainy but she could see the back of her father staggering through the courthouse. Another man stopped him and seemed to be trying to escort him out of the hallway. After a brief interaction, her father swung at the man and hit him in the face. The man staggered back against the wall and just a moment later another man showed up. Kenya recognized Joe Willis, another judge at the courthouse and a good friend of her father’s. The video stopped.

  “Oh. My. God,” she said.

  “Exactly,” said Ghana. “Look, let’s go over to the house. It will be better if we go together, don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” said Kenya, still seeing the image of her father punching the young man.

  Ghana parked on the street and walked by her sister’s Mercedes, already in the driveway behind her parents’ cars. Chaos was oozing from the house. The front door was ajar and the voices inside were loud and angry; her mother’s voice shaking the walls. Ghana closed the door behind her and found her mother, father, and Kenya in the kitchen.

  “You never listen.” Bet poked the air with pointed fingers. “You never listen to anyone. People calling here asking personal questions, all because you don’t have any control.”

  Her father stood by the refrigerator, his mouth pursed in a tense line, watching her mother with a loathing Ghana had never seen before, and it frightened her. Kenya was positioned close to her mother, her hands outstretched but not touching, her face begging for peace. “Mama, please stop. Please, Mama. Please stop.” Kenya repeated these words like a quiet mantra their mother didn’t seem to hear.

  “I’m tired of all of you,” Bet said, sweeping her hand in a wide circle.

  Ghana was dumbfounded. This was not her family, she thought. They didn’t fight like this. She couldn’t remember her parents fighting, storming through the house shouting at one another. No, it never happened that way. Yet it did. She just didn’t want to remember. These disputes were never real brawls. Instead a tense silence filled the house and Daddy would disappear while Mama began raging. The girls would listen, silently, while their mother thundered through the house, screaming insults at their father who was nowhere around to hear. Or worse, she directed her anger at them, frustrated they were making too much noise, complaining she couldn’t work, couldn’t focus. They cowered from their mother’s fury. Her hostility.

  “Just be quiet,” Mama would scream. Ghana, small, in Kenya’s room, arms around Malawi while their mother raged on like thunder they hoped would eventually pass. Kenya, humming, trying to distract them with a song. A song their father used to sing to them. Trying to remember the words and throwing out a word or two—when I wake up in the morning love—until Ghana would remember a line—and something is heavy on my mind—and they would all sing, Then I look at you, and the world’s alright with me. Quietly, while their mother whirled and roared. Their tiny voices tuning out the disturbance, pretending everything was fine. A lovely daaaaaaayyy . . .

  “No one understands,” Mama would scream. “No one. I can’t do all this by myself. I just can’t do it.”

  Do what? Ghana was never clear on what her mother was so upset about. Being a mother to three girls? Being a wife to an important judge? Her mother, the artist. It was just who she was, they reasoned. Who she had always been. Dramatic. Emotional. Uncontrolled.

  “This is all your fault,” she was screaming now, her face scrunched, her eyes almost closed, her fingers pointing toward her husband. “You did this. She wanted to get away from you. You ruined her. Treated her like she was the only child in the world, and it turned her against us.”

  “Enough!”

  Ghana was startled by her father’s voice, booming, strong, filling the kitchen, freezing her mother by the dishwasher. Everyone stared at him.

  “I am done.” His chest seemed to expand as he heaved in a breath. “Done with you blaming me. This is not my fault. I am done.” He didn’t acknowledge his daughters, simply turned and pushed past his wife. The air continued to swirl and Ghana felt dizzy. Her mother was motionless, focused on the spot where her husband had been, as if in shock.

  “Mama,” Kenya said, moving gingerly closer, palms up, head cocked. “Mama, come sit down.” Ghana pulled a chair from the dining table and waited for her mother to move, but Bet continued to stand, now searching the floor as if she’d dropped an earring.

  “Please, come sit.” Kenya patted the chair.

  A drink was in order, Ghana thought, but instead of liquor, she put on the kettle for tea. Something to relax her mother. Bet finally moved, dropping heavily into the chair, like a rock dropped from up high. Kenya quickly pulled out another chair, dragging it close to her mother, squeezing Bet’s forearm. She looked at Ghana, but Ghana didn’t know what to say or do. So she shrugged, feeling exhausted and took a seat on the other side of the table. Kenya reached across and squeezed her fingers; Ghana squeezed back. Everything was crumbling. Her family. The world. Everything.

  “What do we do, Kennie?” she said.

  Kenya started to hum. Ghana immediately recognized the old song and sang a few words, “When the day that lies ahead of me, seems impossible to face.” She stopped, terror filling her chest. Malawi wasn’t with them. Just two musketeers. But she cleared her throat and began again, singing the words she remembered, “When someone else instead of me, always seems to know the way.” Kenya joined and they sang together, “Then I look at you, and the world’s alright with me.” Her mother’s head fell forward and she slumped to her right, leaning into Kenya who stretched her arm over her mother’s shoulders. They would get through this, Ghana thought. They would get through it. She kept singing and Kenya kept singing.

  “And I know it’s gonna be, a lovely day . . .”

  27

  Malcolm stared at the casket, mahogany with a glossy finish and brass fixtures. Beautiful workmanship. Kenya chose well. After a few moments studying the wood grain, his gaze drifted to the colorful stained-glass windows of the church. His wife’s church, with the Reverend Willoughby in the pulpit talking about his daughter as if she were dead. Outside the sun was shining. He closed his eyes, the bright windows leaving an image on his eyelids.

  But she was dead.

  His mother shifted next to him and her fingers patted and squeezed his hand; for a moment he wanted to push her away. He didn’t need her sympathy. He needed to get up and walk out and keep walking until he could make the whole world disappear, go back in time, tell Malawi to stay in D.C. And maybe she would still be alive. But he was stuck now on this wooden seat between his slumped wife and his mother, whose back was as stiff as the pew. He was stuck in this ceremony to say goodbye to Malawi, this funeral service, this private hell. His close friends were here, seated behind him, including Joe and Teddy. Cousins, too, he barely knew. All here to remembe
r, as if he could possibly forget his baby girl.

  Reverend Willoughby said, “let us pray,” and Malcolm leaned his head in his hands, each elbow resting on each knee. Malcolm wasn’t a man of prayer. He considered himself a man of action. Action, he could control. Prayer, he couldn’t. Praying had never done anything to help him. It didn’t save his father. It didn’t help the criminals in his courtroom or any of the thousands of children who died every year from disease and violence despite the desperate prayers of their parents. God has a plan for everyone’s life, Bet used to say. So what was His plan now?

  Soon Malcolm would be called up to speak about Malawi, to tell the world how wonderful she was, how sweet and kind and sassy, how much she’d be missed. That wasn’t quantifiable, he thought. He should have prepared remarks to stop himself from rambling, but he couldn’t hold a particular thought long enough to write it down.

  His mother nudged him to stand and pointed at the hymnal, sharing it with him as if he was going to sing along. Her voice was low but firm as she sang a song only vaguely familiar to Malcolm. Bet, on his right, groaned along, the book drooping in her hands. Kenya’s voice rose strong and beautiful. She was on the other side of Bet, towering above her mother.

  A large wooden crucifix hung behind the pulpit. So how does taking Malawi figure into your big fancy plan, Christ Jesus? Tell me that. A plan. That was what Malcolm needed. He needed a plan, though to do what exactly, he wasn’t sure.

  The minister was overly dramatic, Ghana thought. But he was playing to the emotion of the greater community, not so much to the Walker family. Not to say the Walkers were not heartbroken. Of course they were. But not like that. Not dripping with this thick sentiment of sadness the Reverend Willoughby was slathering over the people from the District of Columbia, as well as friends and family members, distant and close. This service was a show for the cameras and reporters who sat dotted throughout the church.