In which Michelle cleans up the debris with a little help from her friend
Michelle was on her hands and knees trying to pick the bigger pieces of broken glass out of the carpet. She’d stopped crying a long time ago—sometime after she’d quit looking for Pookie out in the dark, and before she’d tried to put some order into the wreckage of her children’s rooms upstairs. She’d had to settle for eliminating, filling six big garbage bags with all of the torn pillows, smashed toys, broken knickknacks, shredded posters, and other mangled bits and pieces of her two children’s material lives. Frank had helped her put their son’s bunk beds upright but, battered himself and with at least one rib broken, he had at last gone to lay down. Neither she nor Frank wanted the children to see their father’s face tonight, and maybe not tomorrow. It even frightened Michelle. She had put ice on it, but it was really too late for that. He would look frightening for the next week at least.
Michelle knelt there. She thought of the joke Jada always made. She was like Cinderella now, but there was no fairy godmother. She was about to get up from her knees when she saw yet more glass, these shards glinting from under the ottoman. As she reached to extract them she realized she’d used the exact same motion only twenty-four hours ago, though her house had been perfect then and she was only reaching for innocent Legos. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and with both hands now full of broken glass, she couldn’t wipe them away. What was the use, anyhow? she asked herself hopelessly. She’d probably be crying for years. She felt like a car crash victim. How right she’d been. Most accidents did happen in the home.
After the horror of last night, Frank had called a lawyer. The lawyer had gotten her and—after a considerable delay—Frank himself out of jail. The guy, named Rick Bruzeman, was a small very well-dressed man who seemed effective but far from sympathetic. Michelle wanted to tell him how outrageous, how awful the police had been, how she and Frank were innocent, and how this outrage, this unjust invasion should be on the front page of the newspaper. “Don’t worry. It will,” he said, “but not with that spin.” He didn’t seem to want to listen to her. Perhaps he’d heard it all before, and from people who weren’t innocent. What he’d done had been effective and efficient—he’d picked her up, he’d gotten the children released into her care, and he’d gotten Frank’s bail reduced and had him sprung—if that was the word you used for a legal exit from the Westchester Detention Center—but he seemed worse than cold. He seemed professional. He made Michelle feel more like a criminal than the police had.
Now Michelle stood up, the glass still in her hands, the tears still on her cheeks, and looked around again at the destruction. It was incredible, unbelievable. If the police had to search for drugs or whatever they suspected was hidden, did they also have to break, tear, and rip apart everything in their search? She started walking to the garbage bin she had placed in the center of the room and, as she did, her foot crunched against something spread in the carpet.
She looked down. What the hell was this? She crouched and looked more closely. At first she thought that it was potting soil from her corn plant, but then she recognized it was coffee. Coffee? Someone had opened—well, it looked like two or three of her sealed fresh cans of ground coffee, and had not only pawed through the stuff, but then thrown it onto the floor here. It had already sunk down into the weft of the carpet, but in some places it was thick enough to form little hills. Ironically she wondered if maybe Frankie would like to use the setting for his action figures—it would make a realistic battleground diorama.
She rose again, threw the glass into the garbage, and looked around. Framed pictures had been pulled off the walls, the canvases torn, the frames broken. The big mirror beside the credenza had been cracked. The contents of every drawer and cabinet had been pulled out and were lying now in mounds on the floor. There wasn’t an upholstered piece of furniture that hadn’t had its guts pulled apart, its cushions torn. Empty, the cushion covers now lay on the floor like giant crumpled condoms.
It was a nasty image, but there was something almost brutally sexual about all this, Michelle thought as she went for the Dustbuster. Her home had been rent apart. She felt almost as if she’d been invaded or raped. And look what it had done to Frank and her children. She’d pull it together as best she could, but the cracks and tears and dirt couldn’t be erased.
She looked past the dining room table into the hallway. She knew she should go outside and bring in her chairs, the chairs that were sitting in her front yard like drunken relatives advertising her family’s tragedy. She should also go out again and look for Pookie. But the fact was, she didn’t have the courage to do it. She had felt the neighbors’ eyes on her when she was outside. Anyway, she had to get this place decently cleaned up before the children could come in, but the task was so overwhelming that she didn’t know exactly what to do next.
So, instead of pulling out a new box of trash bags, she turned around and walked back up the stairs, passed the children’s emptied and scarred rooms, and into the master bedroom. Frank, one eye blackened, both cheeks bruised, was lying on the bed, perhaps lightly dozing. She should let him try to recuperate, but she couldn’t. As she got onto the bed, he opened his eyes. That was all she needed—to see his dark, pained eyes staring into hers—to start her crying again. “Oh, Frank, it’s so horrible. They’ve destroyed us, Frank.”
“No, they haven’t,” he told her and put his right arm out and around her. He winced with the pain of moving, but his arm felt so good on her shoulder and back. He soothed her while she wept against his side. “Michelle, babe, they attacked us. But they didn’t destroy us,” he said in his deepest, most serious voice. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know who decided to pull this horrible bullshit on us, but I’ll find out and I’ll take care of it, babe. I swear I will. We got the best lawyer. They busted us and there was nothing here. Nothing.” She nodded, her head now against his chest. “Thank God they didn’t plant something here.” Michelle shuddered at the thought. “We’ll sue the town, we’ll sue the county, we’ll sue the state. Keep a list of everything torn or broken. They’ll pay.” He looked at her. “They didn’t hurt you? They didn’t touch you?”
“No. No,” she answered him.
“They’ll pay. A few people will pay in other ways, too. I swear it, Michelle.”
“But why, Frank? How could they—”
“I don’t know, babe. But I’ll find out. Bruzeman is connected. He’s expensive but he’s worth it.” Michelle didn’t want to tell him how she felt about Bruzeman. “Maybe it was because of that shopping center deal,” Frank mused. “I don’t know. But they didn’t destroy us. They didn’t touch you, did they? Nobody at the police station touched you?”
She shook her head. “But look at what they did to you, Frank. And the children. They—”
Frank’s hand tightened on her back. “Fuck those corrupt bastards.”
“They’ve ruined the furniture, Frank. My chairs. The sofa. They wrecked the carpet and … Pookie’s gone. He doesn’t come when I call him. And the neighbors …”
“He’ll come back, don’t you worry. And tomorrow you go out and buy new furniture,” Frank told her. “You hear me? Get what you want, what they can deliver immediately. Furniture doesn’t make a family. And keep that list, Mich. Write down everything that’s been spoiled. We’ll get it all back. We all stick together, nothing can hurt us.” He moved his hand to her cheek and cupped it gently. “You know I would never do anything like drug dealing, Michelle. You know that, don’t you?”
Michelle looked at his bruised face and nodded. “We stick together and nobody can hurt us,” Frank repeated. He leaned forward and kissed her. Then he put her head against his shoulder and gingerly leaned his cheek against her hair, as if its cool glow could comfort his throbbing cheek.
Michelle rested there, against his strength, until his breaths deepened and evened out. Then, much comforted, she went back downstairs to again deal with the wreckage.
“Oh my God!” Jada felt like bursting into tears, but looking at Mich’s face she knew she had to keep it light. “Have you been decorating again?” She asked and shook her head. “Um, um, um. Martha Stewart doesn’t live here, Cindy. How could they have done this to a white girl’s house?” Jada looked around the room. “Sweet Jesus, help us.”
Michelle was tugging out yet another bag of garbage. “If Jesus decides to help, tell him to bring more trash bags,” she said.
Jada shook her head at the irreverence and put down one of the dining room chairs she had carried in. “I’ll go get the others,” she said.
“Have you seen Pookie around your house?” Michelle asked, though she didn’t have much hope.
“He’s gone? I saw him running up the street the night the police were here.” Jada touched Michelle’s arm. “God, I’m sorry. The kids must be …” She shook her head. “Man, this does look like an accident scene.”
“Well, you know what I always say …” Michelle began to make a joke, but she couldn’t finish. She was moved that her girlfriend had crossed that horrible line of tattered yellow police tape and was here beside her, that she understood her. Michelle wasn’t stupid, even if she didn’t have a college education. She knew that on their quiet, deserted-looking block there were eyes from every house surveying hers. Everyone was constantly assessing and reassessing property values. Would the pocket park refurbishment upgrade the value of their lot? Would the rise in school tax lower the selling price of their house? What, she wondered, did a drug bust next door do? Probably it depressed house values almost as much as it depressed her.
Michelle didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stand in her yard again, waving at Mr. Shriber when he slowly jogged by or saluting passing neighbors’ cars. And for Jada, a woman who had worked so hard to find acceptance for her family here, to ignore all those invisible but watching eyes and step over the line, well … Michelle felt herself choke up. It was more than what she should expect, but she didn’t want to collapse and show Jada just how bad she felt, how bad it was. She supposed she didn’t have to. Jada’s eyes, open wide, showed that she knew.
“I’m so sorry to drag you into this,” Michelle began. “I know you have your own problems.”
“There’s sure enough to go around,” Jada agreed, beginning to pick up debris.
Michelle felt suddenly guilty. She hadn’t even asked Jada what was going on with Clinton. God. There were enough troubles to go around.
“Did you finally talk to Clinton?”
Jada nodded as she began to pick up torn paper. “I told him he had to make his mind up by the end of the week or I was going to get an attorney.”
“Oh, Jada. I can’t get over it. How could he?” Michelle tied a twist wire around her trash and shook her head. “He’s gone crazy on you.”
“Crazy? Forget Clinton! You should see Tonya. She thinks Clinton’s a catch! Is she going to support him? The ridiculous way she likes to dress up, she can’t support herself. She’s a fool from Martinique, who gets herself confused with the Empress Josephine.” Jada opened the last trash bag and began to throw stuff into it, including the box it had come in. Garbage made garbage. Kind of like Tonya having children.
“You mean she’s the one I met at your church pageant?” Michelle asked in disbelief. “The one with the hat, and the awful hennaed hair? No!”
“Uh huh.” Jada snorted again, bent over, and threw some sofa stuffing into her trash bag. “I want you to believe me when I tell you I’m not jealous. I don’t want to sleep with him. But he’s my husband and he is committed to the family or he’s out the door. I just can’t get over his bad taste. You’d think fifteen years with a man would improve that. I weaned him off Colt 45 and got him drinking Budweiser. I threw out that Peach Glow hair dressing and taught him Paul Mitchell gels. But the man’s heading right back to funky Yonkers.”
“Forget him. How did the kids seem to you?” Michelle asked.
“A little shaken up,” Jada admitted. “But who wouldn’t be? This wasn’t a search, it was a vendetta.” She surveyed the visible damage as she swiveled her head around.
“It was worse,” Michelle said. “You should have seen it before I picked up the first eleven bags of garbage.”
Jada shook her head. “These men were out to find something,” she said. “And you mean to tell me they didn’t? Hell, you tear my house apart like this, you’re gonna find a marijuana seed left over from the sixties.” She shook her head again and bit her lips. “Um-um,” she said. “I didn’t know police ever did a job like this on white people.”
“Frank says they were out to get him.”
“Looks like they did get him, from the picture,” Jada said.
“What picture?” Michelle asked.
Jada shook her head and held up both her hands. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. She got real close to Michelle and took her by the shoulders. “I know you’re not a church-goer, Michelle, but this is a time when everybody needs to fall back on God, because it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“I fell back on Frank,” Michelle said. “And it can’t get worse than this,” she added, looking at the ransacked rooms.
Jada sighed. “Please God, I hope so. But people can be really, really cruel. And the courts can be worse than the cops. Believe me, I know plenty of people in White Plains who’ve been through it. Innocent people. And some guilty ones who still didn’t deserve to be treated like dog shit.” She let go of Michelle’s shoulders but patted her gently on the back for a moment. “Okay, honey, that was my version of a pep talk. Now let’s clean this place up the best we can before the kids have to get in here.”
Michelle looked at her friend. “Should I keep them home from school tomorrow?” she asked. “Let them recover for a day, or would it be worse to do that?”
Jada thought of Anne at the bank and her morbid curiosity, even pleasure, at Michelle’s bad luck. “Kids can be cruel,” Jada said. “Real mean. But you figure, if they have to face it, they might as well face it on Monday.”