Who Do I Talk To? by Neta Jackson Page A

pole-thin young woman with the flawless caramel skin barely looked old enough to have a kid Sammy’s age, but she’d always seemed to keep an eye on him. “Well, I’m sure your mom will be back soon. Come on and eat with Gramma Shep and me.”
    Sammy moved down a few chairs and grinned. “Yeah. Can’t wait till she get back. Mama say we gettin’ our own place now.”
    But Tanya wasn’t back by the time the dishwashers started cleanup—and Tanya had traded her breakfast chore for Lucy’s lunch assignment. “Hey, come on, Sammy, help me wipe these tables, okay? You start there while I get Gramma Shep settled for a nap.” I winked at him. “Babies and grammas need their naps, you know,” I stage-whispered. He giggled.
    I didn’t dare take my mom up to the bunk room, in case she woke up and tried to come down the stairs by herself, so I helped her stretch out on a sofa in the multipurpose room before I went back to the dining area. She’d be fine. My mom could sleep with a party going on, and it was better if there were people around anyway.
    Still no Tanya. “Do you like to draw, Sammy?” I asked as we dried the last table. A smile lit up his face. So I found some scratch paper and a bunch of markers left over from the ad hoc “after-school program” Precious had supervised and let him color on the floor of my once-again-crowded office. At first he was a little timid to have Dandy curled up on the floor, too, but the next time I looked, dog and boy were nose to nose as if consulting how best to paint the Sistine Chapel.
    My throat caught. What were my boys doing today? Should I try calling them now? No, more likely to catch them around suppertime. I tried Precious again—and this time she answered.
    â€œHey. Whassup, Gabby.” Her voice was flat, tired. Didn’t sound like the Precious I knew, ready to jabber about whatever trivia had caught her fancy in the paper that day, or—even more likely—never missing an opportunity to rib die-hard football fans that her Carolina Panthers had “whupped” the Chicago Bears in the divisional play-offs last season.
    I decided against unloading my melodrama up front. “That’s why I’m calling you , Precious. Haven’t seen you around since I got back from North Dakota.” I knew I’d told her I was taking my boys to see their grandmother—though she probably didn’t know I’d brought my increasingly confused mother back to Chicago with me. “Are you okay?”
    A pause. “I ain’t gonna be frontin’ ya, Gabby. I’m all tore up.”
    â€œPrecious, what’s wrong?”
    I heard a long sigh in my ear. “Sabrina got all mad ’cause I wouldn’t let her go to the prom with some baggy-pants gang banger. That girl up and went anyway—an’ I got so amped, I showed up at the hotel and dragged her out.” She snorted. “Wasn’t a good scene, know what I’m sayin’?”
    My eyes were so bugged out, all I could do was make a strangled noise I hoped sounded like “uh-huh.”
    â€œAnyway, she up an’ ran off, jus’ disappeared . . . Didn’t nobody there tell you this, Gabby? Estelle and Edesa and they Yada Yada Prayer Group cooked up an all-night prayer meetin’ a week or so ago, prayin’ God to protect my girl! You wasn’t there?”
    I gulped. “Sorry, Precious. I must’ve still been out of town.” I didn’t say that when I got back a week and a half ago, things got “all tore up” at the Fairbanks household too. If someone at Manna House told me that Sabrina had run away, it definitely didn’t penetrate the fog in my brain.
    â€œYeah, well. Girl, I was goin’ outta my mind! Then I get a call from the state cops—they picked up Sabrina hitchhikin’ with some no-good hustler ’bout a hundred miles outside