The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [102]
“Give it here!”
Scott grabbed Shawanda and held her until she gave up and slumped in his arms.
Ron said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Fenney. I’ll leave now.” He opened the door, but stopped. “Shawanda, why don’t you let the judge put you in the prison hospital in Fort Worth? They’ll put you on methadone.”
Shawanda said nothing, so Ron left, shaking his head. Scott released Shawanda, and she dropped to the floor. He sat in one of the chairs and looked down at this young black woman.
“Why do you do it?”
Shawanda’s eyes came up. “’Cause it make me feel special.”
“You don’t need that. You are special.”
She laughed. “You sound like Louis. He always saying ‘Shawanda, you God’s special girl.’”
“He’s right.”
“No, he ain’t, Mr. Fenney. Nobody never give a damn ’bout Shawanda, not my daddy, not my mama, not no one.”
“Pajamae does.” He turned to her. “You love your mother, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Fenney, I love her very much.”
“So that’s me, Louis, Pajamae, Boo, Bobby…and Ron. Six people who think you’re special.”
“That sound real nice, Mr. Fenney, but if I get out, I don’t figure me and you gonna see much of each other.”
“Sure we are. Our daughters are best friends. They’re like sisters.”
She turned to Pajamae. “That right? Boo like your sister?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She turned to Boo. “Pajamae like your sister?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And she smiled the sweetest smile Scott had ever seen on her face. “That’s good.” She looked up at Scott. “Mr. Fenney, if I don’t get out of here or if they…well, you know…you promise me something?”
“Sure. What?”
“Take care of my Pajamae.”
Five weeks ago, when Scott had taken a little black girl home to Highland Park, his wife had asked him what he was going to do with her when her mother was convicted: Adopt her? Raise her as his daughter? Send her to Highland Park schools? He did not answer his wife that day because he wasn’t thinking of Pajamae that day; he was thinking only of himself, his fear of returning to the projects. But this day he answered.
“Yes, Shawanda, I promise.”
“It’s perfect!” Boo said.
They had looked at six houses, Scott and the girls, each cheaper than the prior one, until they walked into this tiny fifteen-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath cottage over by SMU with a backyard that had a rope swing and a pool the size of the master bathtub at 4000 Beverly Drive. It was priced at only $450,000, within Scott’s reduced financial reach, and it was in the Highland Park School District, so Boo wouldn’t have to start over at another elementary school.
“One bedroom for us,” Boo said, “and one for you. You can have the big bedroom.”
Pajamae ran into the backyard, and Scott said to Boo, “Honey, you understand, if her mother gets out of jail, Pajamae’s going back to live with her.”
Boo turned her green eyes up at him. “Well, we’ve been thinking.”
“I bet you have.”
“She doesn’t have a father and now I don’t have a mother, so we thought maybe you and her mother could get married or something.”
“Married? But she’s—”
“Only twenty-four, I know. But Pajamae said it’s okay for a man to marry a younger woman. She said they do it all the time in Hollywood.”
“But, Boo—I’m still married to your mother.”
Scott was running at 7.5 miles per hour up a ten-degree incline on a commercial treadmill. But he wasn’t at the athletic club in downtown Dallas; his mind was not clear, his spirits were not high, and his eyes were not firmly attached to the backside of a beautiful young woman running in front of him; there was no girl running on a treadmill behind him checking out his butt; he did not feel young and successful and virile—or special. He was running on the treadmill in the exercise room of his Highland Park house, which would be his for only two more weeks.
Their visit to Shawanda that morning had raised the same questions in his mind: Had he done the right thing? Had he made the right choice? Was saving Shawanda’s life worth sacrificing his perfect life? Was a heroin addict’s life worth his lawyer life? He couldn’t save her life, not with the evidence Ray Burns had against