Tutored Read Free

one’s asking you to lose your job,” Leesa told her.
    “Well then, come back when you have everything.”
    Hakiam saw his cousin lunge for the woman and he reached out to brace her arm. “Just forget it,” he said.
    “I ain’t forgetting nothing,” Leesa said, stepping up her voice. “Who do you think you are, lady? Can’t you see I got a goddamn baby here—”
    At that point, Hakiam really got hold of her. He ushered her toward the door. “Why didn’t you inventory your stuff before you were called by the caseworker?”
    “What am I supposed to be, perfect? Do you know how many things I have to think of? Malikia was wailing her head off before you came—”
    Hakiam blocked out the rest of what she was saying. This was her way. She was a crisis frog; she hopped from one lily pad of trouble to the next. She was never prepared.
    Hakiam glanced back at the packed waiting area. There were paternity handouts on a side desk. “Every Child Has the Right to Know Who His Legal Father Is,” one pamphlet’s cover read.
    “It’s nearly time for me to be at work. It’ll be next month before I get another appointment. Shit. Do you know how much time I’ve wasted here just to end up with jack?” Leesa asked him.
    Hakiam didn’t answer her; he was too busy eavesdropping on a client being asked by a caseworker, “Are you registered to vote?”
    Back on the outside, a group of boys were going at each other. Hakiam couldn’t tell if they were playing or not. In the navy blue tie and slacks and crisp shirt of his school uniform, the one in the center was being smacked in the face. The other four were hitting him this way and that.
    The group moved and Hakiam stepped out to block any blow to the baby as she was handed off to him.
    Leesa asked him for his bus pass.
    “I don’t have one. I walked here.”
    “Didn’t they give you a bus pass at the GED place?”
    Hakiam shook his head.
    “Did they at least give you tokens?”
    “Nope.”
    “Everybody else I know got at least that from them.Make sure you get what you’re supposed to get,” she told him.
    Leesa booked it to the corner to catch the number 21 bus downtown.
    “I’ll be home the usual time,” she said before she left them. She raised a hand to wave goodbye, more to him than to her baby.
    Hakiam stood there for a moment, the eight-and-a-half-pound infant twitching in his arms. It was clear now that those kids were in the thick of a beat-down. Another vagrant went by in yellow-stained jeans, rolling a shopping cart filled with tin cans and scrap metal. Hakiam thought for a moment about why he had moved in with his cousin. His fresh start was quickly turning to an SOS (same old shit), and God was he ever thirsty.

4
    T
he ghetto
. Wendy’s father’s comment was typical of him. His favorite saying was “I help poor people all the time—by not being one.” He was very proud of the fact that he had yanked himself up by the proverbial bootstraps, and he wanted the world to know it. Though he was raised in one of the don’t be there sections of the city, he had been able to not only stay out of trouble with the law (not so much as a parking ticket) but also go to college (Indiana University of Pennsylvania on a one-thousand-dollar minority scholarship; the rest he made up with work-study and loans) and become gainfully employed (bringing home the high end of five figures yearly).
    Wendy knew it was one of her father’s goals in life not to look back, and certainly not to give back. She was just the opposite, which usually put them at odds. Like last term, when Wendy was involved with a volunteer organization that cleaned and painted inner-city schools. Her father had insisted on picking her up after thesesessions, although it would have been fine with her to ride public transportation.
    One day when they’d swung by Tannery Duckery Elementary School on Diamond Street, he had surprised her by suggesting they grab a bite to eat.
    “You want to eat out