showed up, Crystal made herself a couple of sandwiches for the road. Vanetta used most of what she had saved at the shelter to pay for the shattered window—and told Crystal not to come back. It was the only way the landlord would allow Vanetta and her children to stay.
A few days later, Child Protective Services called Ebony’s apartment, asking for Vanetta.3 When Ebony called Vanetta to warn her, Vanetta suspected Crystal. “I’m gonna kill that bitch,” she vented to Shortcake. “Do you know that bitch called social services on me!”
“You poured salt on her. Now she’s gonna pour salt on you,” Shortcake said.
“She pouring salt on my kids!” Vanetta cried.
The news about CPS had unnerved Vanetta. She didn’t think they would allow her children to stay in an apartment with no stove or refrigerator. Vanetta was broke, but she went to a used-appliances corner store anyway. Spanish music played over a clutter of used dishwashers, dryers, and other appliances. The owner, Mr. Rodriguez, a pudgy Mexican man with thick hair, identified different units piled in his small store with a stick resembling a teacher’s pointer.
“How much is your cheapest stove and cheapest refrigerator?” Vanetta asked.
“Baking? No baking?” Rodriguez asked with a thick accent.
Vanetta shook her head no. She would be fine with a nonworking oven.
Rodriguez poked his stick in the direction of a small gas stove.
“How much?” Vanetta asked.
“Ninety.”
She shook her head no again. “Too high. How much?”
Rodriguez shrugged.
They went back and forth until Vanetta talked Rodriguez down to $80 including the hose piece, which he had wanted to sell separately. She found a refrigerator somewhere else and talked the guy down to $60. She borrowed the money from a friend, promising to pay it back the first of the month, and finished the day shopping at Aldi. At the checkout counter, she placed the ice-cream sandwiches and other junk food at the end of the conveyor belt in case she ran out of food stamps and needed to put something back.
After unloading the groceries, Vanetta slumped down exhausted in the rocking chair and lit a cigarette. If CPS came knocking, she was ready for them.
Then other thoughts drifted in. She was still undecided about who she wanted to care for her children if she was sent to prison for the robbery. Lately, she was leaning toward a woman from her children’s day care. “I might go crazy, but I know they be taken care of,” Vanetta told herself. Then there was Kendal’s upcoming preschool graduation. Vanetta wanted to somehow find money to buy him a new pair of shoes for the big day. She wanted him to feel special, accomplished. In the inner city, much was made of early milestones. Later ones might never come.
—
The morning of her sentencing hearing, Vanetta roused her children, fed and dressed them, and began re-ironing her outfit on the living-room floor. Besides installing the stove and refrigerator, she hadn’t been able to do much else in the apartment, and it felt empty, unlived-in. Kendal joined Vanetta in the living room, standing with his hands at his sides in the tawny glow of the morning. She had dressed him in a red-collared shirt and his new shoes. A few feet away, a picture of him at his preschool graduation, in a cap and gown, was displayed on the mantel.
“Momma,” Kendal said, “kids aren’t supposed to go to court. They’re supposed to go to day care and school.” He wasn’t pouting. He was observing some strangeness in the world, a misalignment. He could have been saying, “Dogs aren’t supposed to like cats,” or “It’s not supposed to snow in April.”
Vanetta put down the iron and took a breath. “Kendal, will you come to court with me?” she asked, just as she had the night before.
Kendal saw that she needed him. “Momma, I will go to court with you,” he said decisively.
“If they give Momma the punishment, what you supposed to do?”
“Stick together, take care of my sister and brother, and listen to my titi.”
At the last minute, Vanetta had decided to ask her sister to care for her kids if she was sent away. She couldn’t say why.
Vanetta arrived at court early, quietly shaking under a conservative black sweater and matching slacks. She had put on makeup and earrings and had pulled her hair tight around her head. She paced the hallway, trying to think of what she would say to the judge, periodically stopping to watch the ponderous gait of shackled black men