King of Her Desire

45

So I'm sitting there in back of the courtroom with Mima watching all these bailiffs and whatnot rushing around trying to keep the two families from attacking each other in the goddamned courtroom.

The judge wasn't even out there yet, and it didn't look like they were going to be able to bring him out anytime soon because the minute things would quiet down a little, somebody from one family would overhear some shitty remark somebody from the other family made and go lunging across the aisle and the bailiffs would have to shove them all back away from each other again.

Mima kept barking at our half of the shit show but this one huge Black bailiff threw a hand out and told her, "Our job, ma'am," a few times. So she tried to stay seated from then on so that they wouldn't just throw her out of the room, period.

And then Rafe looks back at us, points at me and starts bellowing, "Get him the fuck outta here! I ain't no charity case! I'll stay in jail 'til I rot before I take any o' his goddamned money! Let 'im take his punk ass on back to California'n' forget about us—he ain't God!"

And then one of the women on the McCreary side—oh, they arrested everybody they could grab—starts yelling, "I don't know what you're gettin' all high and mighty for now! Y'll been livin' off welfare all your goddamned lives. Them children been gettin' Medicare, Medicaid and I don't know what all cause you lied an' tol' people they was some kinda halfwits like 'at one got thrown in prison didn't have no sense at all!"

And then all these guys on our side started yelling back about all the "inbred imbeciles" in the other side's family—would've been funny if it wasn't my flesh and blood in there acting like a bunch of inbred imbeciles in a court of law.

And then we heard the one thing I'd been fearing sinee that damned fool roared through the yard and got us all riled up.

This little spitfire of a woman, littlest but loudest thing in there with her curly red, steel woolly hair, stood up and said, "We gon' put a stop to that, too! Mama callt CPS on y'all many a time, but after they see what y'all done last night they gon' listen to us for once! Burnin' people's houses down—it's a wonder you ain't burnt your own down tryin'a cook that crystal back up in there somewhere! We tol' them people you was all crazy as hell and now I guess they'll believe it!"

Mima grabbed my arm right then and I said, "I heard it."

"Well, you better get on outta here then! Take 'em over to that other woman's house'n'—"

"Oh, I'm takin' 'em to Cali as soon as I can get a plane in the air," I said.

And I ran out to the hallway and sent an S-O-S to Abra as fast as my fingers could type something sensible.

Sochi and T leapt up as soon as I came out, trying to read my face. The sibs just looked shell shocked and a little bit scared. But they'd been through so many weird situations in their little lifetimes they kind of just watched us adults waiting for their marching orders. Hurt my heart looking into those little eyes trying to read mine to see just how bad it was going to get.

"It's like West Side Story in there," was all I could tell T before my cell buzzed and I had to talk logistics for a bit.

And let me fill in some of the blanks here, while I'm at it. Because it wasn't just us and the McCready's fighting. The whole area was dividing into warring factions as the big housing developments inched closer and closer to the areas like ours.