SARAH

 

Only fifteen minutes after leaving the office, we arrived at the Miller apartment building to find Doc Taylor already there, his short, round figure waiting outside his car. Neither I nor Karl had spoken during the ride over, the radio providing the only sound, Karl gazing out the window, his knee rhythmically jogging up and down. Even after all these months since we parted, I could sense that things still weren’t right between us. He could no longer look me in the eye and I clearly made him anxious to be around. He never really talked to me anymore either, unless he had to. Whereas before, we used to talk all day about everything.

I parked up next to the doc and we got out.

“Hey, Sarah,” Doc Taylor said in greeting.

The doc was sixty-two years of age, African-American, five feet five, a little rotund, and always wore a flat cap over his bald head. He had been a close friend of my father’s for the past fifteen years, and in all that time, he’d never once charged us for his services. He was a great advocate of his community and offered himself wherever he was needed. Very close to retirement, he always wore a slightly jaded look, the result of almost forty—often heartbreaking—years as a doctor in the city. Even so, his brown eyes held the torch of benevolence in them and a big heart beat in his chest.

Having greeted each other, Karl grabbed the doc’s bag and we made our way toward the dilapidated Miller Building. Gazing up at the place, it always reminded me of a rotten tooth sticking out of the ground. The mass of cracked brickwork was in a terrible state and over the top of all the first floor windows hung boards that had apparently been there longer than many of the tenants. Inside, the building was even worse and we were greeted with the usual potent stench of urine and rot that always lingered in your nostrils for several hours after you left the place. The hallway floor was covered in detritus that had been there longer than I’d been coming: several busted shopping carts, a ripped-off door lying smashed, an old sofa covered in holes overflowing with stuffing, general garbage scattered among it all, something to feed the rats I suppose.

Making it through the trash, we began our ascent up the stairs, the elevator forever broken down, the doors smashed in and police tape the only thing preventing someone from falling down the shaft. Eventually, we made it to the seventh floor where the Codys lived. In the corridor leading to their apartment we had to step over a man who was passed out on the floor, his back leaning up against the wall and his legs stretched across the passage. When Doc Taylor checked his pulse, the guy roused and began grumbling, unhappy about being woken up. The doc simply apologized and allowed the man to go back to slumber.

Making it to the Codys’ door, I rang the bell and Theresa opened it within a few seconds. While she stood in the open doorway, I observed her tired face, creased before its time by her heavy lot. It lit up momentarily at the sight of us on the threshold of her apartment and I observed the glint of relief ease her burdened features.

“Come in come in,” she offered, leading us inside.

When we stepped into the place, the extreme smell of damp struck us immediately. This was around the tenth time I’d been to the apartment, and every time the stench of rot was harsher.

“Where’s Troy, Theresa?” Doc Taylor asked.

“He’s this way,” she replied leading the doc along the corridor and to a small bedroom in the far corner of the apartment. “I been keeping him here,” she added when we reached the door, “because it’s the driest room in the place.”

She took us inside, where we found the skinny little boy sitting up in bed with his quilt wrapped around him, taking puffs on his inhaler. The doc grabbed a chair from the corner and pulled it to the side of the bed, sitting himself down. Having finished with his inhaler and catching his breath, the boy smiled at us all and said his hellos.

“Okay then, champ,” the doc said warmly with a soft grin, “I hear you ain’t feeling so good. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” the boy replied with a smile, showing off the gap in his teeth.

The doc turned to Karl, who stood with me and Theresa in the doorway, and asked for his bag. When he had it, Taylor placed the bag at his side and snapped it open.

“You all good for now, doc?” I asked him.

Without turning from what he was doing, he said he was. So Karl and I took Theresa through to the lounge, where her three other children sat watching television.

Theresa walked up to the set and switched it off.

“You kids wanna play in your rooms while we talk?” the mother said to her brood.

Knowing that this was a command rather than a straight-out question, they each shuffled off of the couch and made their ways listlessly out of the room, the mother ruffling each of their hair as they passed her.

“Take a seat,” she said, signaling the couch.

Karl and I took the proffered places. Sitting myself down, I couldn’t help but look up at the great patches of black damp in the corners of the walls, the smell strongest in the lounge.

“You all wanna coffee?” she asked when we were sat.

We both agreed that that would be delightful and she went off into the kitchen. While we sat there, just the two of us, I observed that Karl’s knee had begun mechanically bobbing once more.

“I tell you what,” he suddenly said, “I’ll start videoing the place.”

“That’d be cool,” I agreed, just as desperate for him to go as he was to leave.

Karl got up from the couch and went to work with the camera, walking around and documenting the state of the glistening walls. I was glad that the growing tension between us could subside a little now he was gone. Our relationship had only lasted three months, after we’d been friends for six years up till that point, but it had to end for reasons I’ll go into later. Let’s just say I realized I would only lose a friend if we continued down the road he seemed determined to take us down.

After I’d been on my own in the lounge for a while, I got up from the couch and joined Theresa in the kitchen. On entering, she was standing over the cups, gazing down at them blankly while the kettle boiled away in the background. It was then that I noticed tears running down her cheeks. She glanced over at me as I stood in the doorway and, with a look of embarrassment, quickly wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a trembling voice.

“It’s okay to cry, Theresa,” I remarked softly.

“Yeah, but I gotta be strong. Be a lioness for my cubs.”

“You are strong, you’re just letting a little hurt out is all.”

I walked toward her and offered my open arms. She slowly placed herself within them and sobbed into my chest. I could feel her pain resonate from her and, as I closed my own eyes, tears welled inside them. She was so alone in the world. An ex-addict who had lost her children four years ago when they were taken into care. After attending a government program, she was clean and won them back from the state. Ever since, she had done her best to raise the children decently. But whatever decency Theresa earned through hard work and being the best mother she could was lost by the indecency of where they lived. This woman—this brave woman—was fighting everything all the time, and often it became all-consuming.

Theresa let go of me, dried her eyes, straightened her clothes out and went back to the coffees.

“We will help you,” I said firmly to her.

“You’ll do your best,” she sighed. “But those bastards run the game, they won’t let you win. They’re all playing with loaded decks and we get just the one card, which they already know. All the time we’re playing their game.”

“They can’t cheat forever. Eventually, we’ll have enough evidence on them. Do you know that we have other families in the building who are clients?”

“Yeah, you said before. But it ain’t enough. We’re just little people to them, holding our single card and hoping that it makes a hand.”

“But there are also some families that are clients of Holcher and Sons, another law firm like ourselves. Today we got a call from their offices and they want to attempt a class action suit against the landlord. With a few more clients each, we’ll have enough and then the courts won’t be able to ignore us.”

Theresa began pouring the water for the drinks and she let out another sigh; steam coming out of a weary, overworked engine.

“Just hold on,” I tried to reassure.

With effort, she bent her mouth into a tepid smile and finished the drinks, which I helped take into the lounge. We sat back down on the couch as Doc Taylor popped his head in through the open doorway.

“I got you a coffee, doc,” Theresa informed him.

The doc smiled sweetly at her and said thank you, before turning his attention to me and asking if I’d step into the hallway with him. I smiled at Theresa and left her on the couch while I went outside with the doc.

“He’s real bad,” Taylor whispered the moment he had my ear. “I wanna take him to the hospital for a check up. I wanna get some scans and x-rays of his lungs. However, after that, I don’t think it’s safe to bring him back to this apartment.”

“Then what do we do?”

“I don’t know, but he can’t stay here another night.”

I thought for a moment and realized I had no choice.

“He can come stay with me,” I told the doctor.

“You okay with that?”

“Yeah, I’ll okay it with Theresa, but I don’t see any issue.”

“You check it with the mother and I’ll get the boy ready to leave.”

“Okay, doc.”

With that I left Doc Taylor and rejoined Theresa on the couch.

“Theresa,” I began, “the doc just told me that we gotta get Troy out of this apartment. He wants to take him to the hospital.” Theresa gasped, placing her hand over her mouth. “It’s only precautionary,” I explained in an attempt to calm her. “But after that, he can’t come back until the place is better.”

“But where’s he gonna go? I ain’t got no one else. My ma lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the city and my sisters have both got kids of they own that they struggle to keep.”

“He can come and stay at mine while he gets better. But only if you say so. I wouldn’t take Troy without your permission.”

Theresa looked at me, fresh tears gleaming in her panicked eyes.

“You’d do that?” she asked in a quivering, slightly incredulous voice.

“Only if you want that,” I put back to her.

She smiled and took both my hands, looking me dead in the eyes.

“You’re an angel,” she remarked, fighting back the tears as she spoke. “An angel sent down to lift us poor folk off the floor.”

A lump formed in my throat at this.

“I couldn’t think of anyone who’d look after my boy better than you,” she added with a tender smile.

I beamed back at her, my own eyes lachrymose, and we hugged once more. It wasn’t long before Karl had finished videoing the place, Troy was ready, Theresa helping to pack his stuff, and we were about to leave.

On the doorstep, the mother gave the frail little boy a lasting hug and tearfully said goodbye, his brothers and sister waving us down the hall, where the drunk was still asleep.