In which Jada clears up and goes home to find Clinton’s cleared out
When Jada got back to her own house it was well past three A.M. She was dead beat. She and Michelle had filled more than twenty bags of trash, vacuumed the entire downstairs, put away the still-operational appliances, pots, and pans, thrown out all the broken china and other smashed bits from the kitchen, then swept and washed its floor. The house hadn’t looked really good, but it had lost some of its nightmare quality.
Jada, home at last, took her shoes off and put them on the mat by the door. The little area there was supposed to be a mud room, but Clinton had not finished the job. The floor was plywood and the slate for it lay where the bench and cabinet to hold boots and shoes should be. Jada, way too exhausted to be annoyed, took her coat off and put it across the back of a kitchen chair. Although she yelled at Clinton and the kids for doing the same thing, she was too tired to hang it up now. All she wanted was some sleep.
Cleaning up the wreckage next door had not only been physically exhausting but also emotionally draining. And it had frightened Jada. Somehow, despite her own massive problems, it had seemed that most other people’s lives were more secure. Ha! She knew that everything was in God’s hands, but to see Michelle’s home destroyed, her husband beaten, and her children paralyzed with fear frightened Jada, too.
She thought of Anne and the other girls at the bank. Two of them were single mothers and she knew that, like her, they lived from paycheck to paycheck She looked around her unfinished mud room and plywood kitchen floor. At one time she’d been proud of Clinton. She’d seen him as a builder, as a man who took action and made people and things come together. But now he was tearing them down and apart. Well, she had to try and be grateful. She said a short thanksgiving prayer. Things could always be so much worse.
She walked up the stairs as quietly as she could and passed the door of the baby’s room. That was one job Clinton had finished. He’d painted the room and built a changing table for Sherrilee. He’d even put her name on the door. Now Jada pushed it open and poked her head into the room for just a minute, only to check. But Sherrilee wasn’t there. She hoped that Clinton hadn’t let Jenna and Shavonne sleep with her. Walking more quickly to Shavonne’s door, she looked in. Jenna lay curled on one side of Shavonne’s double bed, but neither Shavonne nor Sherrilee was there.
That was strange, Jada thought, but perhaps they’d both crawled into bed with their daddy, though Shavonne didn’t do that much anymore. Of course, Shavonne could have had one of her frequent fights with Jenna and wanted to get away. Jada walked down the hall. Somehow this didn’t feel right. Not at all. But, she told herself, she was probably just spooked by the problems next door. Still, she couldn’t stop herself using unusual force.
She got to the door of their bedroom and threw it open. Nothing’s wrong, she told herself, but something was. No baby, no Shavonne, no Clinton. Only a note, lying in the middle of the unmade bed. Frightened, Jada strode over to it and snatched it up.
Jada,
I have made my decision. I have taken the children and I am leaving you. Your work schedule, your attitudes, and now your friendship with undesirables has led me to believe that you are not only a bad wife but also a bad mother. You will hear from my attorney, George Creskin and Associates. My children told me they didn’t want to stay with those drug kids.
Clinton
Jada’s eyes ran over the page a second time. Then a third. Clinton didn’t write like this. What was this? Was he insane? Her heart began to beat so fast that it felt like a thumping on the outside of her chest. She didn’t care. She didn’t matter. She ran to Kevon’s room and pulled the door ajar, but only Frankie was sleeping on the bottom bunk. She turned and ran back out into the hallway. She threw open the door of the linen closet where they kept their suitcases and backpacks. All the bags were gone. Like some kind of mad thing, she ran back into Shavonne’s room and slid open the closet door. Many empty hangers greeted her. She turned and pulled open the drawers of Shavonne’s bureau: underwear, socks, and T-shirts were gone. Gone. And her children gone, too.
Now, crazy with fear, she ran back down the hall to her own room. All of Clinton’s shoes were missing, along with his two good suits and his leather jacket. He was a madman! A madman! He had taken her children. Did he think that she would stand for this? Did he think that she had scrambled and worked the way she had so that he could take their family and walk out of the house? And what the hell would he do with them, with her children, now that he had them? He didn’t even take care of them here. Clinton had nowhere to go. How would he pay for a hotel, a baby-sitter? He had no job, no money, no help. He wasn’t even on good terms with his mother—hadn’t been since they married.
She began to run down the bedroom hall, but at the top of the stairs it all hit her. She stopped and stood statue-still. A fear deeper than any she had ever known hit Jada in the chest so hard that she had to sit down on the top step, one long leg tucked under her. Who should she call? What should she do? She put a hand up to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream out loud. There were two children still sleeping in the house, though they weren’t hers.
She couldn’t call the police—this wasn’t a police matter, was it? She couldn’t call a lawyer at this time of night. Anyway, she didn’t know a lawyer. Her mother and father were in Barbados, and neither was young anymore. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, shock them with this.
Jada’s right hand clutched the railing of the banister as she sat at the top of the stairs, frozen. Clinton couldn’t do this to her. Surely he didn’t hate her this much. And the children: would they willingly leave her? Had he forced the kids to go? Had he lied to them? Jada shook her head back and forth as if trying to shake the reality out. But it wouldn’t go.
Her marriage was over. That was clear. Her family was broken, but Jada knew she would find her babies, bring them home, and save them. This house and those children were what she had sacrificed her life to and no one was going to take them away. She was still strong enough to make sure of that.
But now, in the darkness at the top of the staircase, Jada lowered her head to her knees and quietly began to sob.