A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [164]
Reaching back, the driver kept trying to force a pacifier into the child’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up!” he screamed. Again the young woman struggled to smile, looking longingly at Jada, the bearer of all happiness, all that she desired. Flailing her arms, the child kicked the back of the seat. The driver began to slap her legs, only to have her howl louder in outrage and helplessness.
“Leave her alone!” Jada yelled, but he kept hitting her. “She’s not doing anything wrong. She’s a baby, that’s all. It’s not her fault.”
She pulled out the bag and threw it into the car, spilling the glistening rocks onto the front seat and floor. The man and the woman were picking them up. The child’s screams followed Jada through the hot afternoon as she walked alongside the still, black water of the canal. The Navigator slipped up beside her. “Here.” She held out the money. Polie passed it to Feaster and told her to get in. She ignored him and kept walking.
On her way home, she tried to figure out which of these houses was Delores’s. They all looked the same. She was pretty sure it was Lowell Street. She asked a few people if they knew Delores, but no one did, and Jada didn’t see her car anywhere. Her mother was probably climbing the walls by now. She knew she should go home, but for the first time in weeks she didn’t care. Just like Leonardo and the old bitch, that poor baby didn’t have a chance. One way or another she’d kill it, too. Hurt and disappointment, that’s all she was good at, the only things Jada had ever been able to count on her for. That little girl just now screaming from buy to buy, sick and hungry in her dirty diapers, that’s the kind of life it would have, if it was lucky, because this time there wouldn’t be any Uncle Bob and Aunt Sue, nobody but her to pick up the pieces, or some foster home that probably wouldn’t even let Jada come and visit.
When she came to the projects, she leaned against the chain-link fence and watched some guys playing basketball. “Hey, Jada,” a voice called from the shade of the bleachers. It was Thurman.
Jada sat next to him. He was eating a sub. His hair had sprouted to a black fuzz. He needed a shave. He had a job nights now at the pizza place, so his grandmother had let him back in. For a few minutes they sat in silence, watching the sweaty game while he ate.
“I went back there, you know,” she said.
“Where?”
“The woods. But Cootie’s dog, he was gone.”
Thurman wiped his mouth with his hand. “Oh yeah?” He grinned. “Wanna go find him?” He stood up and flipped a heel of bread into her lap. “You can give him that!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “C’mon,” he said, rubbing her belly as she leaned into him. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, stroking his fuzzy head. “I should go home first. My mother, she’s sick in bed.”
“She’s down by the tracks. I saw her. She was with some creep. One of them bums from under the bridge. Scary guy with no teeth.”
Jada ran down to the railroad tracks, but no one was around. When she finally got home her mother was on the couch, holding a bloody towel to her nose. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. The blood was running down her throat, she said, gagging. Not knowing what else to do, Jada ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. Her mother’s hands shook so much that the water spilled all over her. Jada held the glass to her mouth. Her mother tried to take a sip, but she choked and blood gushed down her chin. Jada pressed the towel against her nose. She’d looked everywhere for a rock, she gasped through the towel, but couldn’t find any. She’d even gone out looking for Polie, but no one would tell her where he was. All she could get was shit some junkie shot her up with, some poison that was killing her. “I think I’m dying. That’s what it feels like.” Her skin was sweaty and greasy gray. Her eyes bulged out of her head.
“All right. All right,” Jada said in a panic. “That’s why you gotta quit, Ma. For you and the baby.” She wished she had the brochures. Her