Take My Hand(9)

We were sitting near the window at the Regent Cafe. Regent had been on Jackson Street for as long as I could remember, but Alicia had never been there. When we sat down, I told her how it had been the place where King and his minister friends had gathered to discuss strategy. I recognized half the people in there, mostly friends of my parents.

Alicia put down her fork. “I was raised in the church.”

“Okay, everybody in Alabama was raised in somebody’s church. What does that have to do with nursing?”

I had invited Alicia to breakfast because I wanted to talk to her about the Williams girls, but once we were seated in a booth across from each other, our conversation veered left and then right. It was so easy to talk with her.

“No, I mean in the church. In it, like several days a week in it. The church was practically family. But when I was sixteen I found out Mama was messing around with him.”

I set down my coffee cup. “With who?”

“The pastor.”

“How did you find out?”

“I walked in on them.”

“Girl, no you didn’t.”

She shook her head, as if the memory were still fresh. “I threatened to tell my daddy, but Mama begged me not to. She said Daddy might murder the man. And the only reason I didn’t tell was because I believed her. I didn’t want my daddy going to jail. But it was an awful secret.”

“I bet it was.”

“Y’all want something else?” Irene, our waitress, had gone to high school with me. Back then, you couldn’t spit in that part of Montgomery and not hit somebody you knew. I caught her watching Alicia. The neighborhood was small enough for new faces to be a curiosity.

“We’re fine. Thanks, Irene.”

“I’ll take some more syrup,” Alicia said through a mouthful of pancake.

After Irene walked away, we continued. “So then what happened?”

“After that, I decided to put that church and town behind me. I came here to strike out on my own because I can’t stand carrying that secret.”

“Alicia, you know that’s not your burden to bear.”

“Turns out the old liar’s sermons are hard to shake. I want to do right by people. I’m still a believer, but it’s up to me and my choices to prove that God is real.” She lifted her chin. Alicia’s eyebrows were penciled in, and they rose in a half-moon shape around her eyes. She looked away from me, and I studied her round face, the cut of shadow across her cheek. She had not told her father, and now she carried the wound that would have been his.

“So you decided to become a nurse to turn the world right-side-up again,” I said. She wiped at a tear on her cheek and I put my hand over hers. “It’s okay. I get it. But why the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic?”

“Oh, now that’s an easier question.” She smiled broadly and her face cleared. “I took this job because the last time I checked, the man wasn’t standing on the corner handing out jobs to the first person who walked by!”

If Alicia didn’t want to return home, that meant she was out here doing this all by herself. Things were different for me. If things didn’t work out, I could always go work for my daddy, though having that fallback cushion didn’t comfort me. I had never considered working for him to be a real job.

I took another sip of coffee. “Alicia, I want to ask your opinion.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I got this family, these patients. Remember the file we talked about? The home visit? I went out to visit them this week, and one of the girls ain’t even on her cycle yet.”

“What you mean?”

“Alicia, I gave that girl the shot and she ain’t even bleeding.”

“Then why on earth did you give her the shot?”

“I didn’t know she wasn’t bleeding until afterward. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” I lowered my voice. “It’s not in the chart.”

“You got to tell Mrs. Seager. Some nurse has messed up.”

It was as if the previous nurse had assumed it. Poor, inexcusable health care from somebody who didn’t know her ass from her elbow.

“The girl is only eleven years old,” I said. “Even if Mrs. Seager doesn’t know about the mistake, don’t you think it’s messed up that an eleven-year-old is on birth control in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Civil. Some of these young girls are fast. They are starting earlier and earlier these days. Especially . . .”

“Especially what? Poor girls?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying, then?”

Behind her, I saw the door swing open. Ty must have seen us through the window because he made a beeline for our table.

“What’s up, y’all?” He swung his big body into the booth and next to mine.

“What are you doing here?” My tone was unintentionally sharp.

“You going to introduce me to your friend?”

“No, I hadn’t planned on it.”

“How you doing? I’m Ty.”

“Alicia.”

The way she smiled at him, I could tell she thought he was cute. I turned away. I had not seen him since I moved back months ago, and here we were both acting like nothing had happened between us. I’d known Ty since kindergarten. His parents were my parents’ good friends. When we graduated high school, Ty stayed home and enrolled in Alabama State up the road. He’d run track, sprints, and hurdles for the college, but when he came to visit me at Tuskegee I had still been surprised at how much he’d developed. A boy in a man’s body, I told myself. Until he kissed me and I understood that he was a man in a man’s body. One visit turned into three turned into more. Before I knew it, we were going steady.