Chapter Text
Jada remembered the case, the headlines and news cycle. Ten-year-old shoots little sister’s rapist, trial set to begin. She remembered the division in Detroit, the debates on Twitter, the feeling of anger for the siblings, the fear she had that a ten year-old would be harshly sentenced. She remembered imagining the riots and protests. She remembered thinking that it would be the only time she would accept people burning her city to ashes. She remembered her relief when a court found young Cedrick Walker innocent, as if he were her own son. The relief of everyone in her circle to know that justice was not dead. That was a year ago.
She did not think his would be a case to land on her desk.
Rain beat heavily on the building and windows. Jada was at her desk, preparing her tongue to meet with Cedrick and his sister Taniyah, who were Walkers no longer, having been adopted by Samuel Tremaine. She knew she was not to mention the incident, or even allude to it. She was there to help them find a path to educational success.
Still, as she clicked her pen, she couldn’t shake the feelings of heaviness on her shoulders. She had seen kids that had witnessed traumatic crimes, been abused, been neglected. She had never dealt with a child who’d pulled a trigger.
The phone on her desk rang. It was Hilary at the front desk, informing her that the Tremaines had arrived. Jada hung up and stood, taking a deep breath before making her way to the entrance of the youth center. It was still early in the day, so the center typically bursting with raucous kids was quiet and cold. Most of her day was usually spent in her office, but beyond the walls, she enjoyed the sounds of instructors joking amongst themselves or kids tattling on one another over minutiae. At the end of the hallway, she could see young Cedrick and Taniyah standing before a tall white man, who was helping them out of their rain coats.
Cedrick was on the taller side for his age, and stood with an unreadable face. His brows were thick and bushy, with a wide nose between them.
Taniyah wasn’t as keen to supress her reluctance, quickly turning to her father as Jada came forward. She had a slender build with the same bushy brows, but with more prominent cheeks. Jada thought they were both adorable.
She stuck out her hand as she came before them. “Jada Yates,” she smiled her rehearsed smile.
The white man did not smile back. “Samuel Tremaine.” He shook her hand and quickly let it go, resting one on Taniyah’s shoulder. Up close she could see faint rings around his eyes. Jada could tell he was protective from the way he didn’t release the kids, and didn’t have time to waste.
“This way,” she ushered them towards her office and led the way. Once inside, she closed the door behind them. She relieved Samuel of their wet coats and hung them on the hook, smoothing her skirt before turning to face them.
Samuel sat in a chair before her desk, while Taniyah ran to the toys in the kids corner. Cedrick slugged behind, and sat on the ocean toned sofa, watching as Taniyah pulled Barbie dolls out of the toy bin.
After sitting behind her desk again, Jada asked for everything that had been required for their work to go swell: school transcripts and withdrawals, immunization records, psych evals. Samuel came prepared with everything in a thick manila file folder.
Taniyah’s evaluation stated she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and haphephobia, which Jada had anticipated. But Cedrick’s stated he suffered from that, too, alongside diurnal urinary incontinence, and bipolar disorder. The psychiatrist’s notes specified that his outbursts were especially violent, for which he was given a prescription.
Jada became hyper aware of her own face as she read over the diagnoses, and pressed her lips together to suppress a wince. She read somewhere, last week when she found out she would be working with Cedrick, that children who had taken lives rarely ever recovered. She looked up from the pages at Samuel, who was watching his children across the room.
She cleared her throat and he faced her again.
“Have you found any prospective schools?” She asked.
He nodded. “A few. They’re all so… alternative, though.”
She knew what he meant. “Yes, well, the circumstances are special.”
“But they deserve a normal childhood,” he reasoned, “A regular school. And I don’t get why Ced must repeat the fifth grade when he has passed standardized testing twice now. Is there anything you can do about that?”
Jada glanced around the room, suddenly insecure. “Truthfully, it depends on the school. Detroit Public School System is less likely to provide a little give than some private options. But the decision to hold a child back is not exclusively determined by their intelligence. Other factors come into play like social skills, behavioral and emotional development, and attendance. So private schools are likely to provide the same answer, given his current needs. I will do my best to advocate for him and ensure the decisions being made on his behalf are nondiscriminatory.”
There was no way she was going to recommend Cedrick progressing to middle school if he was wetting himself during school hours. Intelligent or not. Middle schoolers were ruthless. It wasn’t hard to imagine him getting picked on for peeing in class. Who knew how he might respond?
She showed Samuel a selection of her recommended alternative public schools, highlighting their programs and results. Samuel objected to the list, stating it’s where bad kids were sent after so much failed discipline. He was right.
She hesitated to recommend a private alternative school. It was a catholic academy that costed thousands a semester, but the children whose parents could afford to get them in always showed dramatic improvements after the first year. They had some of the best test scores in the state and statistically higher college admissions rates. She pointed all of this out to Samuel.
“The best part is their premier recreational and sports activities. Mother Francis invests a lot into their extracarriucular programs, all of which is covered by tuition.”
Samuel thought for a second, glancing over at his children. “Taniyah does like music. Cedrick keeps saying he wants to play football.” He smiled.
Seeing him finally relax a little made her feel relieved. She sat back in her leather chair.
“Do they offer some type of tuition assistance?”
She knew that might arise.
“Unfortunately not, however I have already curated a list of external assistance programs that you qualify for. If you do choose Mother Francis or any other private option, then you’ll need to get the paperwork done before each deadline in order to secure funding.” She slid a paper from her own clipboard across the desk, and watched as he picked it up. “I’ll also email it to you.”
The snap of plastic cut off their conversation. They both looked over at the children to see Taniyah on the floor with a broken doll in her hands. Jada got up from her chair and walked over to Taniyah, who’s wrinkled brows said fear.
“Uh-oh. Is it broken?” Jada crouched down examine the pieces.
Taniyah’s eyes watered, and she nodded.
“It’s okay, honey. I break things all of the time.” Her mind went to the engagement and three year relationship she’d ended just four months prior. At one point, she’d felt like that Barbie: broken, naked, inanimate. Some days she still did, but it was days like today that kept her going.
“But it’s really fun learning how to put things back together. You get a chance to see how things work.”
But considering the doll’s limb was cracked and hanging, it was better suited for the trash.
“Thankfully, there’s a doctor in here somewhere,” Jada dug into the toy bin in search of the Barbie doctor tools: stethoscope, coat, clipboard. But Taniyah jumped up before Jada could find anything.
“Daddy!”
Jada watched as the girl’s puffy pigtails bounced when she ran to Samuel. He smiled and welcomed her, taking the doll.
“Does someone have a boo-boo? Let’s take a look,” he pretended to examine the doll like a patient.
“Oh,” Jada said, standing again. “Is your daddy a doctor?”
Taniyah nodded. “Yeah!”
Samuel chuckled, “I’m a chiropractor. This looks like a job for an orthopedic surgeon, though. How about we let Miss Jada make her an appointment while we go home?”
Jada smiled and sat against the side of her desk, watching closely.
But Taniyah jerked the doll away from him. “No!” She forced her eyes closed.
Jada and Samuel made eye contact for a brief moment. Then he tried to reason with Taniyah to return the doll to the bin. She wasn’t receptive, and pulled her legs in to her torso as she sat on her father’s lap.
“Maybe you have something you can use to fix her at home?” Jada suggested. Samuel looked up in shock, but Jada winked. He went along with it.
“Yeah, I think we are suited for a job like this. What do you think, Cedrick?” Samuel rubbed Taniyah’s back while glancing across the room.
Cedrick was still sitting, this time with his muddy shoes on the sofa as he reclined on his back. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
Jada bit down on her lip, wrestling within over whether to say something. She had a few words about the mud on the cushions but she couldn’t fathom making a bad impression on either the children or their father. It was like Samuel read her mind, though.
“Hey, buddy. Shoes off the couch,” he warned. Cedrick did as told with a sigh, and sat up again with his elbows to his knees and chin in his hands.
She exhaled and pushed herself off her desk. At least they seemed to respond to him well. Her mind became curious about their relationship. It was natural to wonder, to her at least, how a white man got on with raising two black children—especially two black children from the roughest part of Detroit who’d been through the things Cedrick and Taniyah had been through. To add, she knew he was single, doing it alone. A wave of sympathy washed over her, but it was quickly overcome by noble revelation that she was there to help.
Samuel stood, too, beckoning Cedrick. Then he turned to Jada. “I’ll make an appointment to tour Mother Francis. If it’s as good as you say, I’m willing to take the leap and enroll them. Would you happen to have any contacts there?”
She did. Her father was a former Marine, who served with the dean’s brother. They were still good friends. She herself had attended Mother Francis for high school, but she wasn’t going to say that yet.
“Yes, actually.” Jada returned to her desk and extracted a card to the dean’s office. She passed it to Samuel, who nodded and slid it into his pocket. Then he helped the children into their raincoats again before thanking Jada. She opened the door for the family and escorted them to the front desk again, bidding them a good day.
That went better than expected, she thought and watched them load into his black Lexus in the parking lot. Then again, she wasn’t certain what she’d been expecting. The easy part was over. Now she had to work through exactly how she was going to deliver on her promise that Cedrick and Taniyah would have as normal lives as possible.
She watched Taniyah in the backseat playing with the broken doll as the car pulled away.