inside the apartment. A foul odor of burnt plastic greeted them. The place was reeking of burnt plastic and ammonia. A stale, foul odor emanated throughtout. The visitors held their collective breaths.
“Could we just open the shade a lil’ sump’n, please?” Josephine asked.
“Yes, please open a window,” Sophia requested. “It’s a nice day out.”
“You can’t trust no one. Sometimes I forget to close the window and they come in here—Coco always make sure all the windows and the door are locked. No one is ever gonna sneak up on her.” Ms. Harvey was crying and nervously chattering.
Sophia moved closer to her. Deedee and Josephine glanced around the place. Things seemed ordinary except on the center table.
“Ms. Harvey...” Sophia started.
While Eric and Sophia looked around the place, the eyes of Deedee and Josephine followed Ms. Harvey. The woman quickly and cunningly scooped remnants of last night’s party, all the time ignoring her company. She quickly walked away to the trash can in the kitchen, dumped the works and then hurried back.
“Sit down and have a seat. She ain’t here yet. Y’all might as well get comfy. She bought this sofa, you know? Y’all gonna wait for Coco, right? I can’t wait to see her… ooh, she know not to be out so late… all night? Now you know this a little bit too ridiculous,” Ms. Harvey said.
The woman slowed down for a bit and Sophia seized the moment as Ms. Harvey sat down.
“Ms. Harvey. Ah… well, Coco, she’s in the hospital downtown—”
“Huh, what?” the woman shouted, jumping up. Her housecoat opened, revealing a body withering with years of drug abuse. Her sagging breast waved side to side as she spoke incoherently. “What’s Coco doing down in the hospital?” She gathered the red robe at the waist. “I mean, why’s Coco downtown, in some hospital? What she doing, huh? That girl done lost her mind. You just wait until she gets up in here,” Ms. Harvey ranted.
“Ms Harvey, she—” Sophia said, with tears welling. She reached into her purple Chloe handbag for a Kleenex tissue.
“She was supposed to be celebrating her high school graduation. She did great. She delivered her speech and walked across the stage. I was so proud of my daughter. I went and had a few drinks at the bar with my friends. I had to celebrate but I came back home. She’s still not here… oh… Then what the fuck is she doing in a damn hospital downtown?”
Ms. Harvey paused as the words ricocheted slowly off her inebriated mind. She sat down pulling the robe about her. The deranged mother’s tiny frame seemed to disappear in the shroud of the fabric. The visitors were speechless and Ms. Harvey let out a loud and long, piercing scream.
“No-o-oooooo… Don’t tell me… please don’t tell me,” she shouted sobbing loudly.
The visitors looked at her in awe. There were no dry eyes in the apartment. Sophia rushed to her aide. She hugged the distraught mother as she spoke to her.
“Ms Harvey, Coco was shot, but she’s recovering. The doctors want to talk to you.”
“Shot!” she shrieked and started hopping around the place.
The bad news shot her into a fit of hysteria. Eric rushed to hold Sophia because he felt she was in danger of being hit by Ms. Harvey’s flailing arms. He moved her out the way just in time. The distraught mother wailed for minutes. Ms. Harvey curled her frail body into a fetal position on the floor, crying like a newborn. With tear-stained face, she glanced hopefully at Eric, Deedee and Josephine in turn. She got up, shook her head and walked away .
“I tried to warn her about all this hanging out but she wouldn’t listen,” Ms. Harvey said. Then suddenly, she paused. “What the doctor want to see me for? I wasn’t with her. I didn’t shoot her,” Ms. Harvey said, looking around, expecting an answer. Then she chuckled. “They should be out looking for the peoples who shot my daughter. I’m going down there. What hospital she in? I’m going there to give them doctors and everybody sump’n to think about. They just killed Miss Katie, they ain’t gonna kill Coco. The first thing you know you get shot and they wanna do heart surgery so they can bill the city. It’s all the damn new HMO and healthcare plan. You can’t just go to any doctor. You gotta find one inside your health plan and if he’s not good then you can’t change cause they won’t pay.That HMO Miss Katie belonged to wouldn’t approve any more treatment for her. And her insurance was up, so they pulled the life-plug on her. Those doctors wanna tell you who can live and who can’t. It’s the fittest of the fit and the richest of the rich who rules. I’m poor, so I’m gonna get change and go see my daughter. What hospital you say she’s at?”
“St. Vincent’s,” Sophia said.
Ms. Harvey walked away, leaving a heavy, dark haze in the living room. Sophia sniffled still feeling the woman’s pain. Eric moved close and hugged her. Immediately, thoughts of his dead brother’s wife, who had been missing for over ten years, swam in his head. She was probably lying dead somewhere unknown, Eric mused. She was a victim of an awful crack habit and behaved a lot like Coco’s mother. The reason Deedee felt close to Coco dawned on him. It hit him like a ton of bricks. He remembered how Deedee described her mother the last she had seen her.
Denise, his dead brother’s wife, had gotten heavily into drugs after his brother’s sudden death. She couldn’t handle his murder, for he had died in an ambush which remained unsolved. His death had hurt everyone. Deedee told Eric about vividly remembering the last month before her mother, Denise, was carried away by the police and paramedics after stealing to support her burgeoning crack habit. She lost a lot of weight, there were a lot of similarities between her mother’s appearance and Coco’s mother. Deedee always spoke about the hatred she felt toward her mother.
He had tried to explain but Deedee didn’t want to understand. She wouldn’t listen. She had quietly changed her name on the school register by forging her mother’s signature. She had been Denise D. Ascot, but changed it to Deedee. Deedee despised her mother because of the drug abuse. During the period they lived together, Deedee told him of often wishing for her mother’s death. She used to say a special prayer before going to sleep.
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