Thrown-away Child

children that Violet held back behind her.
    “They yours, Vi?”
    “Just the girls. The boy, he belong to my sister.”
    “Well now, aren’t they just cute as three little bugs.”
    Miss LaRue winked at the children. Violet looked up to the front of the car, exchanged a sigh and a silent greeting with Matthew, the driver. Miss LaRue said to Violet, “Come on over here on your own, Vi.”
    Violet felt awkward but did as she was asked and stepped over toward the car. When she was out of the children’s earshot, Miss LaRue asked her, “Tell me, what can my committee get for those three adorable children?”
    “Pardon me, but no thanks,” Violet said, retreating from the car, trying but failing to hide the insult she felt. “I am providing Christmas for my own family." She returned to Ruby, Janice, and Perry, who clung to her.
    Miss LaRue looked hurt, at first. Had she not meant well? But then something else crept into her face, something not so charitable. Ruby saw the change. Miss LaRue said nothing more to Violet. Neither would she look her way. She spoke a few words to Matthew, though. Matthew tossed a wink at Violet, and the Cadillac quickly pulled off.
    “Who was that?” Ruby asked her mother.
    “Just one of them ol’ damn St. Charles Boulevard women.” Violet made a spitting sound. “Made a fool of herself out to Hollywood, she did. Then she made a damn fool out of the rich man who married her.”
    “She the white lady you work for?”
    “Used to, I expect.”
    “I don’t like the way she looked at you, Mama.”
    “You noticed that, child?”
    Ruby said she did. And she said she would never forget the look.
    “Best you don’t forget,” Violet told her daughter. “Best, too, you never get the airs to be giving that look to anybody else. Way Miz LaRue looked at me now, it surely don’t have nothing to do with Christmas. Way she looked at your mama—made me feel like two cents waiting for change.”
     
    “Two cents waiting for change,” Mama said. She trembled again. “I got a widow’s telephone call make me feel like that, just before you two come by.”
    “What are you talking about?” Ruby asked.
    “Minister Tilton call me up. He tell me to come by Sunday for sure. He say your daddy going to be called from beyond for testimony about certain troubles…”
    I soon learned the nature of these troubles. It came in the form of two white men in bad suits hammering at Mama’s front door with the wooden butt ends of their .38-caliber police specials.
     

TWELVE

     
    ”Afternoon, Mama,” said the loud one, stepping through the door and right past Mama, scanning the small front room, drawn revolver in his hand. He looked straight through Ruby, as he had her mother; as if the two of them were windows instead of women. He was less cocky when he spotted me. In fact, he smiled and reholstered his .38, reassured by the presence of... what? Someone from his own gene pool? He motioned the other one through the door, then addressed Violet with too much courtesy to have meant it. “I’m Detective Mueller, ma’am, and this here’s Detective Eckles.”
    Mama folded her arms and stared at the two cops, saying absolutely nothing. I had the idea she felt the same as I did about the courtesy. Also I had the idea that her silent treatment was a useful technique that had come to her with time and much experience. Th6 cops were reliably dazed for a couple of seconds.
    Detective Mueller fumbled with the cheap brown hat draped over the shoulder of his short-sleeved yellow shirt. His flabby sides were wet from perspiration from his armpits clear down to his gunbelt. Detective Eckles looked at the pointy toes of his snakeskin boots, like he was a smart-alecky school kid waiting to be disciplined by the principal. Mueller flicked his eyes over me again, deciding I was no ally after all. Maybe it was the way I looked back at him, like he was a sick person’s former lunch.
    “Ma’am?” Mueller’s voice turned soft as funeral parlor talk. “You know why we’re here?”
    Mama was having none of Mueller’s new tune. “What you mean by mangling on my door with your damn gun and calling me your mama? And how come you suddenly got a case of the nices?”
    “How’s that?”
    “You deaf, too? I know your eyes is poor. You haven’t got the first idea what your ownself looks like.”
    “Ma’am, I—”
    “Elsewise, you know I’m not ugly enough to be your mama. What’s your real mama