Those Bones Are Not My Child (10 page)

“A Doberman.” Zala shook her head, staring at the dress form.

“What?” Kofi rolled over, knuckling his eyes.

“A damn Doberman,” she told him. “Just what we need,” she laughed. “Probably eat more than all four of us put together.”

Kofi sat up trying to make sense out of what she was saying. Standing there staring, shaking her head, her fists on her hips, the head scarf gone and her hair all over her head, she looked like somebody else’s mother. Bestor Brooks’s mother looked weird like that sometimes on Saturday mornings, except she always had a cigarette in the side of her mouth. He was thinking how much he wished he was at Bestor’s house when the phone rang.

It looked like she was just going to stand there staring at it with her eyes wide open. “Pick it up, Ma.”

Cupping it with both hands, Zala breathed into the mouthpiece. “Sonny, is that you?”

Kofi could tell by the way her voice changed when she started walking back and forth talking that it was Dad. He climbed out of bed.

“Well, of course they told her. We were worried, Spence. They thought he might be down there, or that she might—Is he with you?”

For a second, Kofi thought she was handing the phone over to him. She did that sometimes after making faces at the ceiling then slamming her eyes shut. But was only dropping her arm for a minute ’cause what Dad was saying was driving her crazy.

“Lemme talk to him.”

Zala held Kofi back, her hand hard against his chest. The line crackled as though water had seeped into the cable.

“Where the hell are you?” But he kept on talking and wouldn’t let her get a word in. “Dammit, Spence, I am not playing around, this is serious. We had the police over here. They’ve been looking all night. Two nights now he—”

“Let me tell it.” Kofi could see they’d only argue and get everything mixed up.

“He’s gone, Spence. He’s gone. Some lunatic’s running around killing children and you ask me if this is a bit? What kind of bit? I’m out of my mind—the police, everything, you nowhere all day, neighbors gawking, and all you can say is your mother. To hell with your mother, your son is missing.”

Kofi put his hand over the buttons just in case she tried to hang up. And that’s when he noticed Kenti was on the other side of her trying to reach over to do the same thing. But neither of them could stop her.

Zala shoved their hands aside and slammed the phone down. “ ‘A joke’!” she shouted. “A
joke
. Did you hear that? Your stupid father thinks I’m making up stories just to upset his mother. A heart condition my foot. Since when has that woman had a weak anything?”

Kofi made himself small against the sewing machine to give her room. And she took it, walking back and forth raising dust from the carpet.

“Don’t talk so loud,” Kenti said, hunching her shoulders up and looking at the wall.

“What? You talking to me, miss? Where you get off talking to me like that, little girl?”

Kenti squeezed in by the mirror and poked the dress form in front of her.

“And he’s upset.
He’s
upset. And not once did he offer to do something.

His own son. You see what kind of … dumbass …” She was hissing like a snake and she was reaching for words with both hands strangling Dad and Kofi tried to come up with something to make her stop it.

“Maybe … maybe we should call Mr. Gittens?”

“The landlord? Call the
landlord
, Kofi? What do you suggest, his PO box number or that little hole-in-the-wall office back of the beauty parlor where he never is anyway? The landlord.” She was reaching again, like Mr. Gittens was hiding in the overhead light and she would tear him down from there with her bare hands.

“It would take Missing Persons to find that bastard.”

When her eyes fell on him, Kofi nodded and moved away from the phone so she could call Missing Persons. But she went into the stare thing again. The phone book was on Kenti’s side, but she wasn’t even moving to get it.

“Call 911, Ma.”

“911. Right. 911.”

Her grip on the phone should have melted it. Kofi looked over at Kenti and she darted out from the corner and jumped into the sofa bed. Kofi stood by, hoping his sister wouldn’t start crying. He listened hard by the phone, but couldn’t tell what the 911 lady was saying back to her. But he could tell by the way his mother drew her mouth away from her teeth that she might explode any minute. Her hand was moving over the things on the table. He found the pencil and handed it to her. He watched her scribble a number on the back of Aunt Delia’s dress pattern, then hang up.

“ ‘Not an emergency,’ Kofi. Your brother is not an emergency. You got that? And you too, miss. Just remember that. You two better remember that.”

She gave him such a hard look he felt his chest caving in. He felt like he was about to get yelled at for wanting to run away when he wasn’t even thinking it. He moved out from under her stare and sat on the arm of the sofa bed. Kenti was looking out the window between a space in the knotted-up curtains. Fireflies were sparking in Aunt Paulette’s yard. If he’d had the energy to lift his head, Kofi was sure he’d catch the boarder on the third floor spying on them through binoculars.

Zala sat down and strung some words together before calling Missing
Persons. She rehearsed it quickly as she dialed, reminding herself of the officers’ names. She was fully prepared on the third ring. But what she got was a recording. It said Missing Persons was closed for the weekend and to call Homicide. She held on, frozen, and the message was repeated. Call Homicide. She could not even move to write down the number; her thermometer stuck at zero.

T
he Youth Division of Missing Persons was an oblong room split down the middle by a counter. The room resembled the attendance office at the children’s elementary school—wooden benches where people waited, a wall case with pigeonholes for mail, scarred desks and dented file cabinets, ringing telephones and clackety typewriters. At school, though, there was a sense of subdued order, and the workers, mostly women, were cordial. At MPYD, the bustle was noisy, and the workers, mostly men, wore uniforms and badges. There was no semblance of order anywhere, not even in the arrangement of furniture and fans. Aisles were interrupted by cardboard files and stacks of phone directories. And at the far end, near the closed-in office, tall army-green file cabinets were set in a U shape. Those typing at that end worked in shadows.

The squad room was dingy, and there was a graininess in the air, giving it the look and feel of newsprint. The form that a big-boned redheaded sister had slapped down on the counter for her to fill out was almost too faint to read.

Zala bore down with the chewed-up ballpoint, using the margins to report efforts made to locate the missing subject, Sundiata Spencer, a.k.a. Sonny Spencer. She’d started phoning at 7:30 a.m., and her efforts looked impressive on paper.

Mr. Lewis of the Boys’ Club was out searching the woods. Presumably, the two officers had filed a report on whatever search had been conducted the night before. She’d tracked down Sonny’s former band teacher, and he was making calls on her behalf. Simmons was going to have his regulars ask around. Dave was checking the juvenile shelters. Paulette was using a special hot line to conduct a hospital search for any young John Doe victim answering Sonny’s description. Delia promised
to track Spence down and tell him to meet her. Mercer, the man Spence drove for sometimes, vowed he’d deliver Spence to the Decatur Street Police Station by ten o’clock sharp. The clock over the window said 10:25.

The window, tilted open at the top, let in traffic noise from the street and student hubbub from Georgia State University. What sunlight came in was murky, filtered through panes green with soil mold. On either side of the window were children’s photos, some glossies, some photocopied flyers. Sunday clothes, school-picture smiles: they were pinned to dirt-streaked corkboards gouged out by pushpins. Some pictures were cracked and dusty. Where pushpins were missing from corners, photos had curled up, covering the faces of the missing.

“You think this is bad, you ought to see Homicide on the third floor.” A young sister with a short-cropped ’fro was speaking to a male rookie who was balancing a jar of pens on a stack of folders. “Four to a desk and only three telephone lines. They’ve got to sit on their collars to get their paperwork done,” she laughed, tugging at her uniform. The blue material strained at the hips. Creases were deep at her thigh joints.

“How about support staff?” The rookie, a nervous-looking blond in a crisp new uniform, glanced over at Zala, who was trying to get the attention of the sister, whose nameplate said
SGT. B. J. GREAVES
.

“Say what? Support? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Excuse me.” Zala leaned over the counter, but Greaves waved at her to be patient, after slinging a large paper clip across the counter.

Zala put one five-by-seven and two wallet-size pictures of Sonny together with his medical record and the map Mr. Lewis had drawn on Metropolitan Boys’ Club stationery. She attached the papers to the form and waited, the edge of the counter hot and hard against her breasts.

“You could spend your life in here and they couldn’t even find you to start with.” An old man behind her on the bench kept rubbing his knees. At the other end of the bench, a young Asian couple sat staring. He drummed his fingers on a cloth-covered box crammed with documents. Her eyes were downcast; she seemed to be studying her wedding band.

A woman clutching a wad of tissues scraped her feet to get Zala’s attention. “Polite will get you exactly nowhere,” she said in a voice that sounded more steely than tearful.

Zala tapped on the counter. Heads turned, expressions fleetingly
polite, just like at Sonny’s school, except no one got up and came over. Zala flushed, arguing with herself to speak up.

Make a stink, Mama Lovey used to tell her when she came back empty-handed. “You go back to that store and you make them wait on you.” The twins would try to pump up her heart, rehearsing her for the oral reports she dreaded. Shoulders down, back straight, she was to speak out, chin high. “Raise hell,” Gerry would tell her, for some wiseass classmate was bound to make fun. “Give ’em this,” Maxwell would say, bringing his fist close to his nose, and stiffening all over to show her how to look fierce. Mr. Lewis had told her that she might be badgered, bullied even, asked embarrassing questions of a personal nature down at the station. She’d been through “personal” with Spence’s VA group, so she felt prepared for that. But she’d thought they would rush her into a patrol car and interrogate her on the way to the woods. This was not how it was supposed to go. This was like waiting on line at the phone company, or taking a number in the deli section of the A&P.

“I need to talk to somebody.” Zala pumped alarm into her voice. “My son is missing.”

A male officer turned, winding himself in the phone cord; he looked annoyed. A female officer bent over one of the cardboard files sighed in exasperation and looked around the squad room.

“Officer Judson will be with you in a minute. Please have a seat.”

Zala turned toward the benches. Families that had been in the hall arranging papers and getting their stories together hovered in the doorway. A few straggled in and took seats. Others hunkered down in front of them, talking things over.

“I’m telling you,” the woman with the tissues said straight at Zala, her voice full of warning and push. The old white man rubbing his knees bobbed his head to second the motion.

Her face went hot. She leaned against the counter. She was afraid that if Officer Judson didn’t come soon, she might do something abnormal to show how urgent the situation was. Scarier still, she realized, standing there clutching the sisal straps of her shoulder bag, that she was longing to do something strange, something totally self-effacing, just to get it over with, so nothing anyone could say or do could embarrass her any further.

The fibers of her bag straps dug deep into her finger joints. Barely
able to straighten her hand, she wondered if it was possible to sever a finger by sawing the strap across her hand. They’d move fast if a stump started spurting blood all over the squad room.

The hands of the clock were grinding into position. It was 11:00. Phones were ringing, fans whirring, the keyboards clacking away, file drawers gliding open, desk drawers being slammed shut. But no one was responding to her. There were hinges in the counter. She thought about lifting the panel and walking through. There were plants on some desks; on others, mugs with curdled coffee. There were, in fact, throwable objects everywhere. She was picturing herself hurling a staple gun through the window when the redhead lumbered up out of nowhere.

“Done?” She whisked up the forms, her red-lacquered nails scraping the counter. She brushed muffin crumbs from her shirt and leaned over, beckoning Zala closer so they could talk over the noise. Zala inhaled the spinachy smell of fresh henna.

“Has he run away before?” Officer Judson crimped her mouth, perusing the form.

“He hasn’t run away,” Zala said. “He went to find his friends on a camping trip and lost his way. At least that’s what we think happened. We hope it’s nothing worse than that, not … anything worse than that.”

“ ‘We’?” The officer looked around at the invisible others, then detached the papers and spread them out on the counter, a gesture that set Zala to boil. She had not strolled into the gas company about a discrepancy in the bill. She wanted to be seated somewhere—in that office at the far end of the room, for instance—not serviced at the counter, where the people behind her could hear her better than Judson, who stood shifting her weight back and forth.

“Good … excellent.” Judson slapped at the marginal notes with the back of her hand. “This is what we like to see,” she said, like a teacher examining homework.

“Is there some place we could talk?”

“I’m afraid not.” She invited Zala to look and made a face: you see how things are.

“Then could we get going, maybe talk on the way?”