“They have to stay together.” Panic spliced through Mercedes. “How could they not stay together?”
“It just depends on where spaces are available. That’s why we encourage the extended family to keep the children in these types of situations.”
“But Porsha hasn’t really abandoned them. I mean, not like someone who leaves her baby at a bus stop or whatever. She just— Can you excuse me a minute?” Standing to open the sliding door, Mercedes stepped out and touched Ayjia’s shoulder as she passed behind the girl coloring at the patio table. Over the stone wall, she called, “Off the fence please, Dayton. Come draw a picture with Ayjia.”
“I hate drawing.”
“I know you do, but please do it anyway.”
“I’m hot. Can we go in the pool?”
“After dinner. Come sit in the shade and you’ll cool down.”
“When’s dinner?”
Mercedes swallowed back a groan, digging deep for another level of endurance. “After my meeting. Off the fence, please.”
He dropped to the concrete, crumpled briefly, then bounced back up.
She clutched her stalled heart and waited for him to come back, then promised him ice cream for dessert if he would draw her a fire truck.
Entering the bliss of her air-conditioned apartment, she mostly closed the door then sat so she could see the kids again. “Sorry about that. He’s a climber. Anyway, like I said, Porsha usually just hares off for a couple of nights, but she always comes back.”
“She always leaves them with you?”
“Usually with my mother.” Mercedes watched the kids play tug of war over a crayon. “But Mom’s not really an option,” she added when Shonda showed interest. “When Porsha leaves them there, I take time off and get up there to help.”
“What about their father?”
“Ayjia’s dad is not in the picture and that’s a good thing.” With any luck, he’d been killed in whatever prison he’d wound up in. “Dayton’s father is married. He sends Porsha money, but I don’t think he’s ever met Dayton. I certainly don’t see him taking both kids. Look, I just want to get Ayjia a tetanus shot and put them in daycare for a few days until Porsha gets back, not disrupt their entire lives.”
“They need to be in school, Mercedes.”
Mercedes winced. She knew that. “I can’t take them back to Holbrook right now. I need to work. I can’t take custody for the same reason,” she insisted.
“Single mothers work,” Shonda pointed out gently. “I have a daughter.”
Mercedes rubbed her brow, thinking she at least understood now why Porsha didn’t have a job. It was so complicated. “I think you’re part of a special breed,” Mercedes said. “One that’s better equipped to handle work and kids.”
Shonda’s dreads bounced as she shook her head and smiled her nice empathetic smile. “No. Most single moms are exactly like you: women who wind up on their own with kids to look after and they find a way to make it work because they have to.”
But Mercedes had known for years she would never be a mom. She hadn’t braced herself for this dilemma. Which added another layer of resentment aimed at her sister. Be grateful for what you have.
She didn’t let herself go down that rabbit hole. She forced herself to stay focused on the kids.
Shonda adjusted her clipboard on her knee and wiggled her pen. “One thing that might help, if you had custody, we could ask Dayton’s father to transfer his support payments to you. That would take some of the financial sting out of it at least.”
“Financial!” Mercedes hadn’t even gone there yet. She shook her head. “You’re moving too fast. I can’t do this to my sister. I can’t do it to the kids! They ask about Porsha all the time. They miss her.”
“Can you contact her? Perhaps telling her what you’re contemplating will motivate her to come back.”
“I’ve been trying.” But Porsha hung up on her before she got two words out. “She’ll come back when she’s ready. She always does.”
“I’ll try to contact her myself, to explain that if she doesn’t turn up to contest it, the judge is likely to grant custody to you.”
Outside, Dayton’s chair was empty. Leaping to her feet, Mercedes shoved open the door and yelled, “Dayton, get off that fence!” She sounded just like Porsha.
“Please,” she added, finding her Auntie M voice. “And come wash up. We’re going out for dinner soon.” Take-out burgers, the working mother’s standby.
Ayjia began packing up her crayons while Mercedes turned back to Shonda. “Sorry. He just won’t stay off that fence.” At least putting him in school would free her from six hours of screaming at him to keep his feet on the ground. But no. She just couldn’t do what Shonda was suggesting. Porsha would see it as self-interest and it wasn’t. She genuinely wanted the kids to be with their mother.
And for their mother to show up in more ways than one.
“Something else to consider,” Shonda said. “If you have medical benefits, the children could probably be added if they were legal dependents. Judging by how active Dayton is, that might be a good thing.”
Mercedes wanted to try Porsha one more time before she let Shonda proceed. She promised to call the woman in the morning, then waited until she had fed the kids, unpacked and played the Kerplunk game they’d bought on the way home from dinner, and put them to bed. Then she spent a couple of hours going through all the paperwork that had piled up while she’d been gone. When it was close to midnight, she tried Porsha’s cell.
“Hey Sis!” Porsha said, all cheery and partied up. “Hey, be quiet,” she ordered someone in the background. “It’s my sister and my kids.”
“The kids are in bed, Porsh.” Mercedes wished she hadn’t had to deal with her sister in this state, but sober, Porsha might not have answered at all.
“What time is it there?” Porsha asked, kind of slurring.
“Time to come home, hon. We have a situation.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Ayjia needs a tetanus shot.”
“What happened? Dog bite?”
“No, just a cut. On her chin.”
“Oh, she’ll be fine.”
“Has she had all her shots?”
“Do you know what those cost?”
“That’s a no?”
“Oh Gawd. She’s gonna start,” Porsha told someone and took a long, hissing inhale, hopefully from a cigarette.
Mercedes clenched her teeth. “Look, I’ll pay, but you have to sign for it.”
“Can’t you handle things for a few freaking days? You’re overreacting. She doesn’t need a shot. Oh, yeah baby, I need a shot, thanks!” she said in an aside to someone, laughing throatily.
“Porsha. She needs a doctor.”
“Is she bleeding to death? Having convulsions?”
“Would you come if she was?”
“I don’t need this, Merce.”
Mercedes drew in a long breath. Losing her temper wasn’t going to help. “They keep asking for you.”
“Tell them I’m on vacation. It’s not a crime to want five minutes to myself. Jesus, Mercedes, you’re living my life. You can see why I’d need a break.”
A life that Mercedes would never have. Not without a surrogate. When she had lost most of her uterus to removal of benign tumors, Porsha had promised to be her ‘spare womb’ when the time came. It had taken the sting out of knowing she would never carry a baby herself.
Now Mercedes faced the hard truth that even that would never happen. Not the way Porsha polluted her body. It hurt along with being taken for granted and dismissed as overreacting. She tamped down her fury and bitterness, saying only, “Break’s over. Time to come home.”
“It’s too much for you, isn’t it?”
“At the moment, yes. I can’t get them medical attention. I had to bring them back to Flagstaff because I need to work. They’re not in school—”
“Oh, hell, school’s almost done for the year. Don’t worry about that.”
“Are you completely fucking stoned?” she snapped. “Listen, I had social services here today. They want me to take custody so I can put them in school and get them into the doctor. What do you think of that?”
“Will it get you off my fucking back?”
“Porsha. It’s time to come home.”
“When I’m ready.” Click.
L.C. was unpacking his truck into his side of the duplex when Mercedes hummed to a stop in the golf cart.
The boy, Dayton, sprang off before it had come to a complete halt. Mercedes scolded him to watch for cars while the little girl yelled at him to “Wait up!” Both kids ran pell-mell toward him like dogs enthusiastically greeting a familiar visitor.
It was a contagious excitement that made L.C. grin. A more male-based enjoyment revved at a deeper level as Mercedes strolled behind them.
“Where’s Zack?” the kids asked.
He dragged his gaze from where Mercedes’s sleeveless tropical-print top exposed her pale shoulders. She even smelled tropical, like coconut and pineapple. Yeah, he liked piña coladas.