Take My Hand(10)

“What y’all doing in this new job? Do you really need a clinic to give out rubbers?”

My face grew hot. He had some nerve talking like that. Alicia began to spout statistics about teenage pregnancy. “Sixty-five percent of unmarried mothers in Alabama are Black. We’ve got to get that number down. So we give them this shot,” she said, “called Depo-Provera. They don’t have to worry about remembering to take a pill.”

“Well, ain’t that something.”

How easily the word rubbers skipped off his tongue when he had not used one. The truth of the matter was that I had allowed it. My trust of our long friendship had blinded me. He was not some stranger. He was Ty, my best friend. My first boyfriend. It had not occurred to me that giving in to my feelings would change my life.

“What you doing here anyway?” I asked.

He pointed to my plate. “I came to get me some breakfast.” He grabbed a piece of my sausage before I could stop him, and started talking with his mouth full. “Them girls shouldn’t be messing with boys, anyway. Y’all ever heard of a chastity belt?”

Alicia laughed loudly, but I didn’t even crack a smile. The day I called him and told him about the pregnancy, he had calmly offered to marry me; I thought he was joking. When I realized he wasn’t, I said, Are you crazy? and hung up the phone. Now I could feel him watching me behind his smile. He raised his hand for Irene and asked her to bring our check.

“That’s awful nice of you to pay for our breakfast,” said Alicia.

“I’m not a knucklehead like she thinks,” he said.

“Shut up, Ty.” I rolled my eyes.

Alicia looked between us. “Oh, I see. You two like each other.”

He shook his head. “Civil need an attitude adjustment.”

After he paid the check, we made our way outside. Two boys rode by on bikes. They waved at Ty. “Hey, y’all better stay out of trouble,” he yelled at them. A truck rolled past and kicked up dust. I sneezed and drew my sweater around my shoulders.

“Bless you. Hey, y’all want to come to my house tomorrow night? My mama is cooking Sunday dinner, and I’m sure she’ll want to hear all about the clinic,” Ty said, watching me.

“I can’t. I got something to do,” I said.

“You haven’t come to dinner in almost a year, Civil. You hurting my mama’s feelings.”

“I said I got something to do.”

“You want to come, Alicia?”

“Go,” I said before she could refuse. “You need to meet some folks in town, and Ty’s mama knows everybody.”

“Alright, then. Where you live?”

As Alicia reached in her purse for something to write on, I waved at them and crossed to the other side of the street, where my car was parked. I did not glance back because I could not look at him without revealing more to Alicia than I already had.



* * *



? ? ?

THE MONTGOMERY PLANNING Agency was sandwiched between a laundromat and a donut shop, an unlikely place for a federal agency, but it did make it easy to find. I’d already been there once before when I was in the process of applying for the clinic job. The agency oversaw our clinic and I’d had an interview there.

The desks were arranged in rows. The only person with his own closed office was the man who ran the agency. I remembered him from before. He constantly talked about his grandchildren. Only three of the six desks were occupied. Two women typed and the third was on the phone. The woman on the phone, the one with the bushy eyebrows that joined in the middle, placed the receiver to her chest. The brows gave her an intent look, and by the way she asked if she could help me, I figured I’d interrupted her from something important.

“Hi, um, yes, ma’am, my name is Civil Townsend.” I talked quickly. I hadn’t had a chance to run my idea past Alicia, so I figured I should just go on and do it before I changed my mind. “I’m a nurse over at the Family Planning Clinic. I’d like to ask about public housing for one of my patients, a family that lives out on Old Selma Road.”

“Are they already on public assistance?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Technically, the clinic’s services were public assistance. Whatever else they were getting was a mystery to me. The Williamses barely owned a pot to piss in, as Daddy would say. If anybody was a candidate for public assistance, they were.

“Have a seat, dear.” She put the receiver back to her ear. I sat down in one of two plastic chairs across from her desk and waited.

When she finished with her call, she turned to a low file cabinet beside her desk. “Does the family have a social worker assigned to them?”

I hadn’t thought about that. I’d just charged in there with my plan to get the Williamses into a real apartment, but it made sense that if they were on public assistance, they probably also had a social worker.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe they do.”

“Well, the social worker will have to fill out the paperwork. Do you know her name?”

“No, ma’am.”

She looked down at the paper on her desk as if her mind were already elsewhere. “Tell the social worker to come here, and we can get the process started.”

“If you give me the paperwork, I can get it done. I think I’ll see her next week.” Well, now I was flat-out lying. The public assistance question had been an educated guess. Meeting up with the social worker was a whole nother level of lie.