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Mike did not stop touching her and kept kneading the little arm with his thumbs, going around the inflamed red place in the crook of her arm. “Every ouch you feel, every little pain is good. That’s the limb saying, I’m alive and here I am. If you didn’t feel no pain, that would be the bad news. Your job is to take it. Understand?”
She just blinked, since she couldn’t nod. Yeah, he would have to work on that as well.
A rustling from Cat’s cot told him she was awake. Cat clung to the end of the bed and watched him work on Andie, her face wreathed in concern and horror. “No one’s done that before.”
“No one’s willing to touch her black flesh. I am. I’m going to bring these limbs to life. You watch what I do Cat. This is Sunday morning, when I got time to do it myself, I can help. You want her to get going again, you got to do what you can to help. You going to?”
“Of course.”
Her dress was all rumpled from sleeping on the cot, but she had patted her hair into place. Waking up in the morning, she was so beautiful. He had thrown that all away. He didn’t even know what he had.
“Good. Get on the other side of the bed and straighten out her arm. Get it ready for the massage. Watch what I do, with this warm oil here.”
“I can’t take the pain if you both working me.” Andie moaned.
“Hush up, Andie. Do what he says, or I’ll slap you into the New Jerusalem.” Cat spit out.
“No need for all of that.” Why did Cat speak so harshly to the child? Well, maybe for the same reason he had to speak to her just now. No need in letting her stay in her fairy tale world. Andie was going to grow up and be a Negro woman in the world, better get used to all of the harshness that life was about—sooner rather than later.
“Don’t you tell me how to speak to my child, Mike James. A day late and a dollar short, coming up in here taking charge.”
“Somebody got to. Somebody got to tell you, Cat. I have the right.”
“Only because God above put you back into our lives. You wasn’t looking to find us.”
“You know this for sure?” Mike kept rubbing up the little girl’s arm, applying pressure with his two thumbs ignoring the wincing looks on her little face too.
That seemed to shut her up. Anything to get her to stop her accusatory tone. He had his reasons. And he wasn’t about to reveal them to her yet, until he gave her back her daughter—whole, complete, and uncrippled.
It was all he had to give her.
Chapter Six
Sunday was the best day to go down to the nightclub and beg for her job back. Cat left behind a frowning Andie and an upbeat Mike so she could catch the slow Sunday trollies to go down to the Wonderland.
By the time she got there, it was near lunchtime and her stomach seemed to take on a life of its own. She never had to cook since she lived over the club, so she didn’t have to buy food. She took part of her salary in the dinner the cooks made. The food was just palpable enough to eat so she could stay alive, but not lose her figure. Approaching the building from the alleyway, she knew well the sadness at losing her job. The emotion built up in her lower limbs, making them heavy and wooden with dread. All that lifted from her when she saw a familiar burnt orange couch being carried out by a strange man.
She ran.
Why were they taking her couch out of the apartment? Did losing her job mean losing her apartment as well?
“Stop that!”
The man holding the other end of the couch was her brother, Beansie.
“Beansie! What you all got my couch in the dirty alley for? I helped you get a job up in here and you taking my couch? ”
Her skinny younger brother still looked eighteen, even though he was in in twenties like her. He gestured to the other guy to put down his end and he did. Cat did not recognize the other fellow. He had the nerve to look at her with his mouth gaping open like a fish. What was he staring at?
“You need to get my couch up out of these chitling entrails and take it back upstairs.”
“Katie, you know nothing happen round here, but Miss Alice say so.”
“She tell you to put my couch out?”
“They needing that apartment for the new singer. You didn’t show up last night and you know what that means.”
She knew. She had been there at the Wonderland for eleven years. A long, long run by any stretch of the imagination. Still, she had never thought it would end like this. “I was seeing to getting Andie set up in the home.”
