"Is that you Tamara?" the voice on the phone asked.

I recognized him at once, but I didn't answer. DeWayne Curtis was the last person on earth I felt like talking to this Sunday morning, particularly since I hadn't even gotten out of bed.

"Is that you?" he asked again.

"Who the hell else do you think it is? You called my house didn't you?" I finally said.

"I need to talk to you, Tamara. It can't wait. I'm in a phone booth down the Parkway."

"What?!" I screamed into the phone in disgust and propped myself up on my pillow. DeWayne Curtis's continuing assumption that I should arrange my life to suit his needs continued to enrage me. Fifteen years ago when I'd met and married him, I'd been young and foolish enough to think that his arrogant selfishness was strength. I knew better now. "What do you want?" I asked with no pretense of politeness. Our son, Jamal, was in his room, presumably asleep, and there was no need to conceal my true feelings; I was free to talk to DeWayne as I pleased. "Say what you want and stay out of my life." I reached for a cigarette in the nightstand drawer where I used to keep them, forgetting that I'd stopped six months ago. DeWayne had that effect on me.

"I need to talk to you," he repeated, more urgently this time. "Something's gone down that I've got to talk to somebody about. I've got to come by, Tammy."

So it's Tammy now, I thought. It must be serious. He hadn't called me Tammy since I'd left him. I didn't say anything for a couple of minutes; I figured I'd let him wait. It was raining outside; even before I'd opened my eyes, I'd heard the drops hitting the pane on the skylight I'd put in last summer. It gave me a certain pleasure to thing of DeWayne Curtis standing in the rain waiting for me to make up my mind. The only thing I'd really felt like doing this morning was lying in bed--undisturbed and peaceful--with nothing more taxing on my mind than whether I should brew a pot of that Blue Mountain coffee I'd brought back from my yearly splurge trip to Negril or give my caffein-jones a break and make a cup of Red Zinger tea.

"Tammy," DeWayne said again. I sucked my teeth. "Tammy, Terrence died yesterday. Terrence is dead."

"Sweet Jesus," I said and sat up. "Give me a few minutes to put some clothes on, DeWayne, and come on by."

I hung up and sat there for a minute, thinking about what he'd just told me. I knew that it would be only a matter of time before that boy died, living the kind of life he'd lived, but I also knew what DeWayne must be feeling. He may have been a tired-ass son of a bitch when it came to women, but he loved and took care of his sons. It was the one and only thing I really respected about him. I knew this had hit him like nothing else could.

DeWayne had four sons by different wives, including Jamal, the one I'd given him. Except for Hakim, who at sixteen was the closest to Jamal in age, and the one I'd helped raise for the five years we'd been together, I didn't really know the others. I'd seen Gerald a couple of times; he was the one DeWayne'd had by his white wife, Emma. I'd seen Terrence, the lately dead and the one by his first wife, even less. Terrence and Gerard were both losers as far as I could tell: Terrence messed with crack, and Gerard always had a nasty attitude and a nutty look in his eyes, like he'd as soon pull out an Uzi an waste you as nod hello. DeWayne's sperm must have improved with age; Jamal and Hakim were both turning out OK.

I tried to remember the last time I'd seen Terrence, but I kept drawing a blank. I could only remember him as a kid. The first time I'd met him, he'd come by our place the day I brought Jamal home from the hospital. He'd been a big-eyed eight-year-old who knew Delores, his mama, hated my guts but who'd brought his new baby brother a Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five album and a bottle of apple juice anyway. He'd been awkward and skinny, and I couldn't see any of his daddy in him or tell if anything about him would look like my son. It's hard to say what will happened to a kid in a lifetime. I don't know when Terrence went bad and started messing with crack or why life had jerked him around like it had. But he didn't deserve to die at twenty-two-years-old--nobody does.

"Hey, Ma, can you give me a couple of dollars?" Jamal said, breaking into my thoughts as he bounded into my room and plopped down on my bed. He looked as if he'd shot up a foot over the summer, but he hadn't yet grown into his body. He moved like a baby giraffe, all legs and height, but he still had a kid's face that even the hint of a mustache didn't change. I could see my dead brother, Johnny, in him whenever I looked at him.

"We got to talk," I said. He read my eyes and worry flitted across his face.

"What happened?"

"Your daddy called a few minutes ago. Terrence died yesterday."

He didn't say anything, but his eyes filled with tears and he quickly glanced away so I couldn't see them. He saw his two oldest brothers maybe once, twice a year, but he always spoke of them with affection--imagining, I guess the relationship he wished they had. DeWayne's wives and the children he'd had by them lived out their lives in separate worlds from ours, but the worlds seemed to mesh for Jamal. To him, the blood-bond between him and his brothers was stronger for its absence.

"How did he die?" he asked without looking at me.

"Crack," I said. I didn't know that for sure, but I assumed that that was what had killed him. "Did your daddy tell you Terrence was doing crack?"

Jamal nodded. I never knew what DeWayne told him or didn't tell him, and I rarely asked. Their relationship was theirs, and I stayed out of it as much as I could. DeWayne was an asshole, and I only hoped that that simple truth would not hurt Jamal when he finally found it out as much as it had hurt me when I had.

I hugged him and held him tight, and he didn't try to break away. He had a man's body now, and the difference between that and the child's body he'd had a year ago shocked me for a moment. At fourteen, he thought himself a man and looked like one sometimes, but I could still see the boy. After a minute, he pulled away.

"Is the...the funeral going to be soon? I want to say good-bye." His voice cracked, the kid breaking through.

"Your daddy will be coming by in a few minutes, and you can talk to him about the arrangements he's made." He nodded and headed toward his room, and after a few minutes I heard Ice Cube's voice blasting from behind his closed door.

I pulled on some jeans and the Howard University T-shirt I'd bought the last time I'd been in D.C., and went into the kitchen to fix myself a pot of strong Jamaican coffee. Then I sat down at my kitchen table and stared out at the rain.

***

There are three things in this life I cherish: my independence, my son, Jamal, and my peace of mind. DeWayne Curtis had it within his power to mess with two of those. In the past few years, I've managed to clear my life of things that aggravate my spirit: I used to be a cop. Some might say I couldn't handle the shit I was supposed to put up with--being black, being a woman--and I guess that's about right. I knew who I was and I wouldn't let them change it. I quit four years ago and Hayle Investigative Services, Inc., was born. Since then I've changed lots of things. I used to smoke; I chew gum now. I gave up pork (except barbecued ribs on the Fourth of July), and I see as little of DeWayne Curtis as I can manage. But blood is blood, as my brother, Johnny, used to say. He died when I was twenty, which is probably why I married DeWayne at twenty-one. Grief will do that to you.

I'm in my thirties, too old to put up with anything or anybody that breaks my day. Yet DeWayne always seems to pop back into my life like the proverbial bad penny, and there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot I can do about it. I can't deny my son his father. But my peace of mind is another matter, and that was what was at risk as I faced him over coffee this morning.

"I loved that boy, Tamara. I loved that boy. Why is it that everything always turns to shit? Why can't I be happy? Why does everyone I love leave me?" He asked the questions all at once, and they flowed into each other in a weepy litany of self-pity.

I studied him for a minute without saying anything. He was as fine in his forties as he'd been in his thirties, and probably as he'd been in his twenties, but now he had money and attitude. He could charm the panties off a nun if he set his mind to it, and he knew it. Even this morning, in the midst of his grief, he looked like he'd just stepped off the pages of GQ. He had taken the time to put on a deep-gray, washed-silk shirt that fit his body like a glove and worked with his deep-gray charcoal trousers. His gold watchband glittered on his wrist in a flash of expensive subtlety. I glanced past him out my kitchen window and thought about how leaves on the big chestnut tree in my neighbor's yard were almost gone and how the lilac bush Jamal had planted by the front porch probably wouldn't make it to spring. I also noted the roof of his new silver Lexus glistening in the morning rain. When I glanced back at him, I noticed the tears in the corners of his eyes. I'd seen DeWayne Curtis in a lot of moods, but I'd never seen him cry.

"Want some more coffee?" I asked. He took some, and gulped it down. "I wish I could say something, DeWayne, except I'm sorry."

"Just letting me come here is enough, Tammy."

"Don't call me Tammy," I snapped. It had been his pet name for me when we'd been together, and the sound of it rolling off his lips for the fourth time this morning made me want to puke. He looked at me, surprised then hurt. I quickly looked away. It had taken me years to get over our joke of a marriage, and I didn't want to see any of his sudden vulnerability or feel any fake closeness.

"I didn't mean to say anything to offend you. I just meant it was nice of you to let me come by." He said it nastily, sarcastically; the DeWayne I knew.

"I didn't mean to snap," I said, backing down. The man was grieving, after all; I had the upper hand. "But just don't call me Tammy."

"We were married once," he said pulling the old charm up from somewhere. "Those were some of the best years of my life."

I nearly choked on my coffee. He chose to ignore me and stared at the wall above my head for a moment. I sneaked a look at the clock. He'd been here for ten minutes, and I was ready for him to leave.

"Tam...Tamara," he said after a minute. "There's something I've got to tell you that I haven't told anybody else." The urgency in his voice caught my attention. "Terrence--wasn't the first one. He wasn't the first."

"The first what?"

"He wasn't the first one to die."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," he said impatiently.

"What are you talking about?" I didn't mean to say it angrily but that was the way it came out, and I didn't change it. "DeWayne, what do you mean?"

"Listen to me damn it, he wasn't the first one of my boys to die." He touched my shoulder more firmly then he probably meant to, demanding my attention with force. I pulled away angrily, but the despair in his voice startled me. "He wasn't the first one of my sons to die." he repeated.

He's in worse shape than I thought, registered somewhere in my mind.

"DeWayne, you have four sons," I said patiently. "You have lost Terrence. I know how terrible this is for you, and I grieve with you, but you have only lost one of your children, not two."

He looked at me, through me in disbelief. "I never told you about my boy in Virginia, in Salem, did I? He was down there and I was up here...I never told you about him."

Anger hit me, so deep I could almost taste it. One more lie, just one more! I thought, and then I was mad at myself for giving him the power to still hurt me. Lying came as easily to DeWayne Curtis as cursing comes to some men. Throughout our five years of marriage, he would lie to me about everything--from how much he'd paid for a bag of cookies to where he'd spent the night.

"So you have another kid?" I asked, pouring myself more coffee, avoiding his eyes. I took a sip, not allowing him see through to my feelings. That was the one good thing that being a cop had taught me. I could lie with my eyes as easily as the coldest bastard who walked the streets. He answered slowly, his tone suddenly confidential.

"I was just twenty-two, trying to make it on my own. My first boy." His eyes shifted away from me, telling me I still wasn't hearing the whole truth, but I didn't want to press him. "The boy's mother was twenty. It was 1969. Liberation Times, but not down there, not in that town. A woman got pregnant, she had to have it. But there wasn't any love between us. Not like there was between you and me."

I let that one pass.

"But I did stay in touch with the boy, and she named him after me. She call him DeWayne."

"Did she have a name?"

"Willa. I sent him what I could, and at least he knew he had a daddy, although I wasn't a daddy like I was to the rest of my boys, I wasn't able to be. But he's dead now."

"When did he die?"

"A year ago. A year ago yesterday. The fourth day of October, Tamara. The same damn day as Terrence." A chill went through me. Life was definitely kicking DeWayne's ass. But I had heard of stranger things. During my years in the department, I'd seen so much shit without reason or rhyme it didn't even shock me anymore---one of the reasons I'd had to leave. Death that kicker who never takes a holiday, could knock on anybody's door whenever he felt like it, and DeWayne was no exception. Neither was I, for that matter. But maybe DeWayne was reaping what he'd sown.

"Tamara, something's happening. Something is happening to my kids and I don't know how to stop it.

"DeWayne, sometimes things just happen...it's been a year ..."

"Why the same day like this, the same damn day, exactly a year apart? I'm still mourning my first son, and then this shit happens, like somebody's telling me something I don't what to hear. Something is not right, Tamara, I know it. You know how good my instincts are. You know they're better than gold. It's a pattern somebody's throwing at me, kicking my ass with a pattern I can't see."

"There's no pattern, DeWayne. It's just a terrible coincidence. How did your first son die?"

"Shot. A hold-up, the cops said. He was coming home from work and somebody shot him dead."

"It's been a year, do they know who did it?"

"They picked up some kid a couple of months ago. They been holding him for trial. A boy not much older than Hakim. They say some of his friends told them that he was the one who did it. They say he had DeWayne Junior's wallet and car keys."

"And Terrence, how did he die? An overdose?"

He looked down at his lap. Maybe the shame of how his son had died, of how he had let him live, was hitting him for the first time. He looked old suddenly, and I knew how he would look as an old man, wrinkles creasing his face, no teeth.

"Yeah," he finally answered, head still bowed. "Tamara. Something isn't right about this. Those boys dying so young, my kids..."

"What's not right is that they were young," I said, "and that you loved them and that you're grieving for them like you've never grieved before." And, I thought to myself, that your guilt is kicking in, how you treated their mamas and how you weren't there for them like you should have been. That's what's wrong with you.

He started to cry, without any sound, the tears rolling down his face. Jamal came into the kitchen then and sat down next to him. I left them alone together and went into the living room closing the kitchen door behind me, but after a few minutes, DeWayne came in and sat down beside me.

"Tammy, could you go to my boy's place and look around to see what you can find?"

His question caught me off guard. "There's nothing to find, DeWayne."

"Just go and look around. The cops thought he was just another junkie, that's all he was to them. They might have missed something. That boy was trying to stay away from coke. He hadn't done anything for two months. He was cleaning himself up. Something else killed him.

"I'll pay you for it, Tamara, I know you can use the cash. I'll pay you double whatever you charge, plus your expenses."

Despite myself, my interest picked up. Money, that was what made DeWayne tolerable. Money. It always came down to that. And he was right. I needed the cash. I was doing better than I had the first few years after I'd left the force, when everyone, including me, had told me I was crazy. Things had improved, but they were slow this month. Spring was my big season--men got the hots and started cheating on their women, and kids ran away to check out the world. Everybody was looking for somebody and willing to pay me to look. But nobody left home heading into winter. The few freelance cases the Public Defender's office shot me always seemed to dry up in October. I could definitely use some bucks.

Jamal came into the room and sat down beside us, his eyes and ears taking in everything we said. When he glanced up at me, with a begging in his eyes the likes of which I hadn't seen since he'd been a kid and wanted something bad.

"OK, DeWayne," I said after a minute. "I'll go over to Terrence's place and see what I can find." Jamal gave me a look that said thanks, and I nodded back. "I'll do it for you, I thought as I gave him a half-smile. And for that skinny little boy who defied his mama's wishes and came to bring you his blessings.