Little Lamb Lost Read Free Page B

in one hand. In the other was Michael’s blanky. My throat did
that thing again.
    Mac’s expression still revealed little
emotion, but now I had the feeling it was taking more effort. “I need to head
back to the office,” he said. “Are you okay to drive once we get there?”
    I nodded. “I’m fine. Really.”
    As we made our way to Mac’s Cadillac, I
couldn’t help but notice a car parked alongside the curb across the street. An
old Dodge Charger, painted a garish lime green, with chrome twenty-four-inch
rims. Ashley glanced at it, once, then twice, quickly. The driver slouched, a
sideways baseball cap low over his forehead. He cranked the engine and roared
away as we buckled up.
    It was a mostly silent ride from
Avondale to downtown. Mac dropped us off in the parking lot of our four-story
office building, a former department store. “You coming in?”
    “No, I think we’ll just go to St.
Monica’s.”
    The heat was stifling in my
seven-year-old Honda Civic. I cranked the AC up all the way, but felt myself
beginning to perspire again under my thin blue shirt. Birmingham, trapped in a
valley between two mountain ridges, was hazy from the constant smog that
hovered from June through September. A cool breeze would’ve been nice.
      Ashley leaned her head against the passenger
window. She looked worn out. I turned onto Fourteenth Street and drove to the
south side of the city. St. Monica’s Home for Recovery sat halfway up Red
Mountain, overlooking downtown. A boardinghouse built for steel workers in the
1800s, it was a mammoth place with an old-fashioned front porch, columns and
all. The surrounding area had morphed from middle class to slum to upper class.
The Catholic Church had been lucky to purchase the house during its slum phase
and could make serious money on the property if they wanted to move the home.
Nona, however, wasn’t about to let that happen. She was there for life.
    I parked in the small alley that
bordered the house. One of the residents was sweeping the steps. Ashley and I
entered through the leaded glass door into the living area. Four or five women
relaxed on couches, engrossed in a courtroom show on a console television. A
woman at a small secretary said Nona was in her office. Ashley and I made our
way down the hall to a small enclosed area in the back that had once been a
screened porch. Nona was behind her massive, cluttered desk. She lifted her
over-two-hundred-pound frame out of the chair and immediately put her arms
around Ashley, who started to cry again. “There, baby, hush now.”
    Nona was proud of her African heritage
and wore flowing mudcloth dashikis and headwraps. I watched as Ashley’s face
sank into the soft folds of Nona’s earthy tunic. Nona knew how to handle
tragedy. She was no stranger to it herself. Raised in segregated Birmingham,
she dropped out of Parker High School when she was seventeen. Kicked out by her
tyrannical father, she began drinking and lived from flophouse to flophouse
until a priest found her and straightened her out. Father Clark ran St. Monica’s
until Nona took it over upon his death several years ago. Although there were a
number of good treatment facilities around, St. Monica’s was my first choice
because of Nona.
    After several more minutes of “Hush,
baby,” Ashley’s tears ceased, and she dried her face on the tissue Nona handed
her from the box on her desk. “You and I are going to stay together tonight,”
Nona said to Ashley. “Why don’t you take them things up to my apartment?” The
third floor of the boardinghouse had been converted to a two-bedroom apartment
when Father Clark founded the home, and now Nona lived there. “Here,” she
flipped through a chunky ring of keys until she found the right one. “I’ll be
up in just a minute and make us something to eat, okay?” We watched Ashley
retreat to the staircase off the hall.
    “How’d you find out?” I asked.
    “Dazzle called me. Poor woman.”
Michael’s