Plenty Good Room Read online

  “I hope so; God would love to see you in his house. Bye, now, Tamara.”

  “Good-bye,” she said, and as she hung up the telephone, she thought, God? Would God really want me in his house?

  Leaning back on her pillow, Tamara drifted tiredly in and out of her own thoughts until her hand touched the folder that had been forgotten when the telephone rang. Sitting up straight, she picked up the folder, holding the familiar information that she’d read time and again. She opened it very slowly, her expression placid as she thumbed through the papers. Only a very perceptive eye could have noticed the slight trembling in her slim fingers as she held the pages and began to read.

  16.

  Food Fight

  “These people do need to hurry up,” said Lynnette petulantly. Clicking her tongue loudly through her perfectly lined red lips, silver bracelets dangling noisily from her upraised arm, she snapped her slim fingers, tipped in long manicured nails carefully lacquered in graduating tones of red.

  Simultaneously, Jayson and Tamara looked at each other, and he rolled his eyes upward meaningfully. The two of them had planned this luncheon weeks ago, since they rarely saw Lynnette in the office anymore. And though she assured them she was out because she was working in the field a lot lately, they both hoped she wasn’t just skipping work, since they knew how carefully Joan watched them, and they were certain she would inevitably catch her.

  “Just chill, Lynn,” said Jayson with a touch of irritation in his voice. “We have time, and anyway me and Tam are probably the only two going back to the office, right?”

  Lynnette gave him an annoyed glance and then replied dismissively, “I know what you tryin’ to say, Jay, but I do my time at work, just like y’all, so you can quit acting like I don’t. I just have other things to do sometimes—you know, places to go, people to see, and all that. Fieldwork is part of my job, remember?”

  Jayson really did love Lynnette, but her high-and-mighty attitude infuriated him sometimes, and that comment was a perfect example of the arrogant stance that he detested from her. He hated it when she talked down to anyone, let alone him! Her words had been clearly more than a little condescending, and he responded in an annoyed tone, “Why is it that every time we go out together you gotta act like the diva from hell? You are not Whitney Houston or Celine Dion, you know.”

  Tamara raised her eyebrows in a silent response to Jayson’s remark and inwardly winced, preparing herself for Lynnette’s scathing comeback. She knew Lynnette well, and there was no way that girl was going to let Jay get by with that statement without sending a biting, snappy retort his way.

  Sure enough, once Lynnette fully digested her male coworker’s words, she dropped her arm and whipped her head around to face Jayson. With her silver-ringed index finger she slowly moved the hair back from her face. As usual, her hair was impeccably styled, microbraided into a bobbed cut that flowed saucily over one eye, thanks to her new, shorter extensions.

  Then, in a slow exaggerated move, she dropped her hand from her hair while giving Jayson a long, withering stare. Her large eyes gazed at his as she spoke slowly, her perfectly enunciated words cutting through the warm air of the restaurant like verbal ice. “Well, I don’t have to be Whitney Houston to expect and demand good service. After all, I am paying my hard-earned money to eat here, and I have the right to expect that I’m waited on promptly and with courtesy.”

  Jayson raised his own eyebrows then before giving Tamara a quick glance out of the side of his eyes. He wiped his hand over his mustache and goatee and breathed in deeply. He could see that Lynnette was really angry, and twenty-twenty hindsight told him that he had started something that he might not be able to finish.

  Lynnette continued to stare unblinkingly at Jayson. Her round eyes were unwavering, and her full lips were pursed tightly. Replying then with feigned sweetness dripping with sarcasm, she asked, “What? No comment, Jay-Jay? I mean, is it okay with you that I expect good service? I realize that I’m not Celine Dion, because I am a sistah—you know, an African-American woman! You tell me, is a little good service too much for a sistah to ask for?”

  Jayson, unsure of what to say now that would not escalate the situation any further, silently returned her gaze. For several moments the two continued to stare at each other, clearly at an impasse, since neither of them was saying anything.

  Though Tamara had grown used to her friends’ social squabbles, this whole situation seemed to be getting pretty serious. Gazing from one to the other smilingly, Tamara said cheerfully, “Okay, you guys, that’s enough. We all came out here to have a bite to eat and enjoy one another’s company. Let’s just make up and be friends.” When there was no change in her friends’ angry demeanors, her cheerful composure began to slip a bit, and she added hopefully, “Okay?”

  Almost simultaneously, the two of them turned their solemn stares on her, and she gave them a small, awkward smile, which began to fade when they did not reciprocate right away.

  Abruptly Lynnette broke the tense moment. “Girl, you look so pitiful, I’ll stop fussing just so I don’t have to look at that little sad face of yours.”

  Jayson smiled, glad for a reprieve from the woman’s ire, and added, “You right about that, Lynn. Tam know she can make you feel bad for her. She’s talkin’ to us like she’s the teacher and we are actin’ up in school or somethin’. It’s that look on that cute little face of hers that makes you feel so bad you just can’t stand it.”

  “Stop, you guys,” said Tamara shyly. “I’m not that bad, and I wasn’t talking to you like I was a teacher, was I?”

  Lynnette and Jayson looked at each other and then turned to her and said in unison, “You were,” and they all laughed.

  The heaviness of the moment seemed to lighten. Flirtatiously Jayson winked at the waitress now standing at their table. He gave her his order, then said to Tamara conversationally, “You know, little Miss Sienna really could use some manners. That’s who you need to be trying to teach something, Tam, not us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tamara.

  “Tamara, give the girl your order,” said Lynnette with a divalike wave toward the waitress.

  After placing her order, Tamara again asked Jayson, “What do you mean—you know about Sienna and the manners, that is?”

  Lynnette glanced at Jayson and then said conspiratorially, “Girl, when that child calls the office for you, she is awful on the telephone. Even I know this, and according to y’all, I’m never in the office. Instead of ‘hello’ or anything halfway courteous, Miss Sienna just asks me in a smart-alecky little tone, “‘Where’s Tamara?’”

  “Ummm-huh,” agreed Jayson as he leaned back in the booth and nodded his head. “She did the same thing to me when I answered the telephone the other day.”

  “She did?” said Tamara, trying to ignore the immediate quickening of her heart rate. She remembered Mrs. Jackson’s advice about not taking the teen’s poor conduct so personally.

  Lynnette added, “Girl, the day when I happened to answer the phone, I just asked the girl how she was—tryin’ to be friendly with her, you know?—and she was just rude and nasty. ‘Just put Tamara on the phone,’ she repeated, and when I told her you weren’t in, that little heifer hung up the phone—hard!”

  Wincing when Lynnette said the word “hard,” Tamara was both disappointed and surprised to hear that Sienna was still behaving so rudely. “I had no idea she was acting that way. I wish you all had told me before. I will talk to her about it.”

  “Talk to her?” said Lynnette in the strident tone that invariably led to her talking too much, and usually saying the wrong thing in the process. Jayson sensed this was about to happen, and frantically kicked her shin under the table, but she ignored him.

  Still attempting to shut her up, he glanced at Lynnette warningly. “Just talk to her, Tamara, okay?” he said soothingly.

  Lynnette wasn’t about to let the subject rest, though. She pointed her finger at Tamara and added saucily, “You
need to do more than just talk to her. Shoot, it seems to me, in your house she’s the one doing all the talkin’, and that’s part of the problem. Tam, sooner or later you are gonna have to snap at somebody—and it might as well be Sienna’s bad behind! It is not healthy to never get mad.” She turned to Jayson, seated beside her in the booth. Rubbing her ankle, she said, “And stop kicking me! Those big size twelves you wearin’ ain’t no joke.”

  Jayson gritted his teeth then to keep from tearing into Lynnette about her insensitivity. Mortified, he watched as Tamara sat quietly staring down at her folded hands, her brown face red-tinged with embarrassment, her expression sad. He whispered, raspy-voiced, out of the side of his mouth as he elbowed Lynnette and gestured toward their coworker with his head, “Shut up!”

  After she looked at Tamara’s distraught countenance, finally it dawned on Lynnette what Jayson had been trying to tell her. Tamara was clearly taking her criticism personally, and Lynnette had obviously hurt the girl by making her feel as if her efforts with Sienna were inept.

  Immediately repentant, Lynnette apologized, her words coming out in a rush. “Oh, Tam, I am so sorry. I suppose I need to learn to be less rude myself sometimes. I know I can talk too much, and then I say things that I have no business saying. I am so sorry, girl; after all, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have little Miss Sienna in your house.”

  She stopped talking then, and her red lips formed an O as she realized that she shouldn’t have let those words out. It was too late to take them back, though—they had gone from her big mouth directly to Tamara’s ears, and now she was going to have some explaining to do!

  Tamara slowly raised her head and looked into Lynnette’s large eyes with her almond-shaped ones and asked, “What do you mean, Lynn? Sienna wouldn’t be at my house if it weren’t for you? I’ve been under the impression that it was all Joan’s idea that she move in with me.”

  Jayson glanced from woman to woman as he listened with quiet interest now, certain he was about to be privy to some juicy information. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, this might be the moment he’d get to see Tamara really “snap out” on somebody, and he would love that somebody to be Lynnette!

  “I’m waiting, Lynnette,” said Tamara in a calm voice as she continued to stare unblinkingly at the other woman.

  With a frown Lynnette realized she had trapped herself this time, and finally gave in, saying, “Okay, okay! I admit it—I sorta gave her the idea to ask you. Joan wanted me to do it, and I just have too busy a schedule to have a little girl living with me. And I figured you wouldn’t mind, since you are always at home anyway.”

  Tamara looked at her friend, still not wanting to believe that she could be so insensitive and selfish. In a deep, strong tone, she said, “Your schedule or mine is not really the point, Lynn. You could’ve—you should’ve—asked me first, before you volunteered me to do it. Maybe, just maybe I might’ve had some other plans for my life, too. You were wrong to volunteer me for this behind my back without bothering to ask me, Lynnette. You were very, very unfair to me.”

  Lynnette was taken aback by the unmistakable anger evident in Tamara’s calm voice. She had never heard her friend speak so forcefully. Realizing that this meant the normally placid woman was very upset, Lynnette began to apologize profusely for the second time that afternoon.

  “I am sorry, Tamara.” Leaning across the table, she touched the upset girl’s arm with her hand. “Really, I am. You are absolutely right, Tam. I do know how pushy Joan can be when she wants you to do something, and I know that it was even more difficult to make a clear-headed decision, because you were taken by surprise when she asked, and that was unfair.”

  Jayson could stand it no longer; he was champing at the bit to add his two cents into the conversation between the two women. He pointed his finger at Lynnette and said, “You should be ashamed of yourself, ’cause that is exactly why she said yes, ’cause she was taken by surprise.”

  Lynnette turned around, gave Jayson an incensed glare, and said shrilly, “You don’t have anything to do with this! You need to shut up and mind your own business, Jay!”

  Jayson wasn’t about to back out this time, though, and he retorted, “I beg your pardon, Lynn; I do have something to do with this, too, because I was the one there when she was traumatized about saying yes when she wanted to say no. As usual, you were ‘working in the field’ that day!”

  Tamara sighed heavily. She was certainly in no mood now to hear the two of them snipe at each other again. She said quietly, “There’s no point in arguing about it . . . It doesn’t even matter how it happened. Sienna is here, and she lives with me. She’s my problem now, so the two of you don’t need to worry about it.”

  Glancing up, she noticed that the young waitress was standing at the side of their table, looking a little overwhelmed and obviously waiting for a quiet moment to inform them of her presence. The girl’s nervous smile could not disguise her look of embarrassment. She’d stood there long enough to have heard quite a bit of their heated conversation.

  “Excuse me . . . I have your orders,” said the waitress bashfully, turning quickly to the metal cart holding their covered lunch platters.

  Jayson and Lynnette glanced at Tamara’s despondent face and suddenly quieted, finally seeming finished with the constant bickering they had done all afternoon.

  Everyone’s nerves were frayed and sensitive, and the carefully planned lunch that was to serve as a social outing for the three of them seemed to be now officially a bust. Instead of laughing and talking together as they’d expected, the three of them began to eat quietly, each enmeshed in recollections about the events leading up to Sienna’s arrival at Tamara’s home.

  17.

  Jailhouse Blues

  White-lipped from pressing her mouth closed tightly, Tamara held one leather-gloved hand unconsciously to her stomach, which was churning anxiously in anticipation of today’s meeting. She’d postponed this day for a while, not exactly eager to visit the inside of this particular place and unsure of what sort of response to expect from Sissie Bailey’s daughter, Samyra. The deep breath she took to clear her head didn’t help much, since the pungent odor of Pine-Sol permeated the jailhouse air, and inhaling the overwhelming smell into her nostrils only made her feel queasier.

  “Tamara Britton,” said the guard from the check-in window.

  The man’s baritone voice interrupted her meandering thoughts, and she stood so quickly that she dropped her briefcase. Hastily Tamara bent over and picked up the leather satchel before replying in a voice that sounded much too loud to her in the empty room, “I’m right here.”

  The guard’s keys jingled as he unlocked the outer door for her from the inside. The heels of her leather boots clicked loudly on the linoleum floor and echoed down the corridor as she followed him through the long passageway leading to the cell-block areas.

  In a small room located at the end of the hall, the tall, bald African-American man turned, looked down at her, and gave her a sad smile. “Miss, I’ll have to search you now. Sorry. It’s just part of the job. You’ll have to set your bag on the table there, ’cause I’ll have to look through it, too.”

  With a small, nervous smile, Tamara put the bag on the table that faced the holding cell, raising her arms as indicated, and looked up while he patted her body lightly.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked once he was finished, but before she could reply or even glance his way, he’d begun to check her bag as swiftly as he had examined her.

  “Follow me, miss,” he said, striding toward a door made of finely meshed steel wire.

  Tamara grabbed her bag from the table and then quickly caught up with the long-legged man, who was using his key now to open the heavy door in front of them.

  He turned his head and looked down at Tamara, and though his large eyes met her own, she felt as though he were looking right through her. Apparently attempting to calm her obvious nervousness, he explained, “We’ll just have
to walk through this short hallway. Normally we hold only a few ladies here, but we’ve had a lot of business lately,” he added with a wry laugh.

  Tamara’s eyes were on his face as he spoke, and when he finished, she inhaled deeply and shook her head up and down. Her throat was suddenly so very tight that she dared not try to speak right then.

  The man touched her arm briefly. “Don’t be scared, Miss. Just ignore them when they yell stuff at you. They’re just sad and lonely women for the most part—remember that. But you can’t let ’em see you scared.”

  “I’m fine,” Tamara replied, her voice still crackling hoarsely despite attempts to clear her throat. Somehow she managed to keep her gaze steady, though, and even turned her stiff lips up into a slight smile.

  With his large fingers he gave the key a turn before tossing over his shoulder to her, “Okay, miss, here we go.”

  Once the door opened, Tamara squinted, trying to see down the dimly lit hallway, noticing that the pungent, piney odor was mixed now with a slightly musky one. As Tamara’s eyes adjusted to the lighting, she saw some women sitting on their cots, and others standing at the bars of their cells; most were looking at her curiously. Though not brave enough to look any of them in the face, Tamara could feel their gazes on her, and she saw their shadowy profiles out of the corners of her eyes while walking by.

  A couple of times women shouted words toward Tamara as if they were flirtatious men and she was their prey, “Hey, sweet baby! Who you comin’ to see, Miss Sunshine? I sho’ hope it’s me!”

  Tamara knew what the women were talking about, and couldn’t help but wonder if the women were really “that way” or if it was only the desperateness of their situations that led them to pursue love in one another’s arms. Continuing forward, Tamara stared straight ahead, the words of the guard ringing in her ears. “These are only sad and lonely women,” he’d said. He need not have told her this, since Tamara innately understood these women. Not naive, she knew that they had been found guilty of crimes, yet their incarceration in this dark and shadowy place still saddened her deeply.