Something good, p.1
Something Good, page 1
Dedication
To my niece, Diamond Underwood, whom I love dearly
And to all those who thought dreaming was a luxury you couldn’t afford. It’s time to dream again . . . believe God will bring something good into your life.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Acclaim for Vanessa Miller
Other Books by Vanessa Miller
Copyright
Prologue
Six months ago
Glancing at the clock on her dashboard, Alexis Marshall bit down on the back of her lower lip. She had exactly twenty minutes to get across town to pick up the twins. Traffic was always terrible on Pineville-Matthews Road. She would be cutting it close. When she was a kid, this road had nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. Now, shopping centers and one eatery after another lined the street, and cars and more cars.
A car cut in front of her. She almost didn’t have enough time to put her foot on the brake. Pressing hard on the horn, she yelled, “What are you doing?”
When she stopped at the red light, her phone beeped, indicating she had a text message. It read: Your mother is missing. We can’t keep doing this.
“No! No! No! Not again.” She slammed her hand against the steering wheel. Her mother was always pulling stuff like this. This was the third in a year. Alexis picked up her phone and called her husband. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d have to pick up the kids. She had to go find her mother.
“Hey, hon, can you make it quick? I have a meeting to get to.”
Okay, she was going to make it really quick. “I need you to pick up the kids because my mother has left the nursing home and they don’t know where she is.”
“Again?”
She heard the contempt in his voice, but she didn’t have time for it. “I’ve got to go. Don’t forget about the kids.” Hanging up, she texted her mother’s nurse. On my way.
She put on her left signal, needing to move into the left lane to make a U-turn. A black Audi beeped at her as she merged into the lane. She waved at the driver as she pulled over one more time to get into the turning lane. Traffic was coming and going so fast that she had to wait for the light to turn yellow to make her turn. She made sure that there was a safe gap between the oncoming cars. After checking her blind spot she turned the steering wheel all the way to the left, made the U-turn, and headed back to the nursing home she had left not more than ten minutes ago.
She was speeding, and her heart felt like it was trying to jump out of her chest. She needed to slow it down, but the last time her mother pulled her disappearing act, they didn’t find her for twenty-four hours. It wasn’t until the hospital called, letting them know she had been admitted, that they found out where she was.
Her cell phone beeped again. Had they found her mother that fast? She picked up the phone, but it slipped out of her hand. Trying to catch the phone before it hit the floor, she bent over to grab it.
Her car swerved.
Oh no! She straightened in her seat, but the steering wheel jerked. She tried to grab hold of it and right the car again, but as she tried to put her foot on the brake, she accidently pressed down hard on the gas. The car jumped the median, and she went spinning and spinning into oncoming traffic.
Her eyes darted back and forth in horror, watching as she spun past the Pineville shopping mall, Red Lobster, and Wells Fargo Bank. Her foot got entangled between the gas and the brake. Her twins flashed before her eyes. She still remembered the day she gave birth to them. They came out all wrinkly and red, but the biggest surprise of all was that she delivered not just a son but a daughter. They were only ten years old now, too young to live without their mother.
The car in front of her tried to swerve. Cars were on every side. There was nothing she could do and no way to clear a path. She screamed.
Bang!
Her head jerked back, and the air bag exploded as she felt the impact of the crash. Eyes fluttering. Head hurting. Then . . . nothing.
Chapter 1
These gluten-free, avocado-toast-eating, green-smoothie-drinking, bougie country folk got on Marquita Lewis’s last nerve.
“Um, excuse me, but did you just roll your eyes?”
That Britney Spears song, “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” popped into Marquita’s head. She wasn’t trying to get fired from another job. She just got this waitress gig six weeks ago and had already been late five times. The last thing she needed was some bougie customer complaining about her because of some dumb breakfast order.
And it wasn’t really her fault anyway. She didn’t roll her eyes to be rude. It was an involuntary condition, brought on whenever she was in the vicinity of stupid. I mean, come on. How you gon’ ask for all these extra accommodations, then get mad because it costs more?
“I don’t think I rolled my eyes,” Marquita said back to the woman. “I’m not sure what you saw, but I’m just trying to get your order right.”
The woman’s friend lifted a finger to get Marquita’s attention. “Oh, and make sure there’s no pesticides in my smoothie. I only eat organic greens.”
“You did it again! How dare you roll your eyes. Is my order too difficult for you?” Bougie jumped out of her seat, grabbing her purse. “Come on, Lisa. We are not eating here. I have never in my life dealt with such a rude waitress.”
“Wait. Sit back down. I’ll put your order in. I’ll even throw in a gluten-free nut bar. And they are yummy.” The last thing Marquita needed was to cause a scene. She had already been put on probation because of her tardiness.
But now, all of a sudden, they didn’t care about the gluten-free extras. The woman got up, and the two of them three-inch heeled it out of the restaurant.
Marquita yelled, “It’s like that, huh? Y’all probably weren’t going to tip anyway. Go on to Burger King and get a sandwich you can afford.”
It wasn’t until she heard the gasps at the surrounding tables that she thought, I shouldn’t have done that. Rent was due next week. She was already behind and expecting an eviction notice any day now. She just hoped her manager was outside on another one of his gazillion smoke breaks and didn’t see what she’d done.
“Can I speak with you in my office, Marquita?” the manager said as he came up behind her.
Dog and double dog. Her nosy coworkers turned their heads—all up in her business. “Ain’t none of y’alls name Marquita, so there’s no need to look this way. Mind your business. Take orders.”
“Marquita!” the manager snapped. “Now!”
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” She sullenly walked behind him, taking note of the shirt sloppily hanging from the back of his pants as he slue-footed his way to the office. Marquita wanted to kick herself. She had just messed things up again for her and her son, Marcus. Since she was fourteen years old, Marquita had been working and taking care of herself. She’d had Marcus two months ago, a week before her nineteenth birthday.
They stepped into her manager’s Cracker Jack–box size office. Marquita took some boxes off the chair in front of his desk and then sat down. She’d been through this drill a dozen times since she took on her first job five years ago because her mother was in rehab again, trying to kick a habit she never should’ve had in the first place. So it became Marquita’s responsibility to make sure her younger sister and brother were able to eat.
“I’m letting you go, Marquita.”
He said those words with such calm, as if no check for Marquita didn’t mean eviction and that she and her son wouldn’t be on the street with no place to go.
“You can’t. I need this job.” She was close to tears as she stood. Why does this keep happening?
He shook his head. “We can’t afford to lose customers. I’ve had too many complaints about your behavior, and now you’re causing customers to walk out the door. You’ve got to go.”
“Look, I’m sorry about those customers, but they were too bougie for me.” She snapped her fingers. “I couldn’t help how I responded to them, but I promise I’ll do better. Just give me another chance.”
“I’ve given you too many chances. Most of you young girls weren’t raised right. I know y’all don’t know how to act on a job, so I try to work with y’all.” He stood, walked around his desk, and opened the door.
Marquita’s neck rolled as her hand went to her hip. “Who don’t know how to act? You don’t know nothing about how my mama raised me.” But her mother, Gloria Lewis, hadn’t train ed Marquita for much of anything, unless teaching her children how to protest evictions and then how to quickly pick up all their clothes and pack them in their cars once the sheriff showed up to throw them out counted as some type of skill.
The manager backed up a bit and conceded. “I don’t know your mother, but I’ve witnessed how you act at work. It’s obvious that you have a lot to learn.”
Marquita’s eyes brightened with a thought. “What about a warning? You can’t just fire me without a warning first, right?” She’d received warnings on all her other jobs before getting booted out the door. It wasn’t fair not to get one here as well.
“Girl, bye, what did you think you were getting all those times you showed up late and I told you that couldn’t continue?”
“But you never said you were going to fire me. How am I supposed to pay my rent? Me and my son don’t have nowhere else to go.” She was talking loud and knew that the customers and coworkers heard her begging for her job, but what else could she do? She just had to find a way to keep a job so she could pay her bills.
Why did she have to roll her eyes at those customers? Didn’t she know better than that? Or was it like her manager said? She wasn’t raised right. If so, how could she possibly know how to act on a job?
“Do I need to call the police and have them cart you off my property?”
She scoffed at that. “It’s not your property. You up in here collecting a check just like the rest of us.”
“Oh, okay, but I’m the only one of us”—his finger wagged from her and then back to him—“who’s still collecting a check, because you fired, boo. And I will call the police if you don’t take that apron off and get out of here.”
The last thing Marquita wanted was for the police to come in here and drag her out like they’d done to her mother on multiple occasions. Marquita still had nightmares about neighbors watching them being thrown out of one place after another. Those were scary times, but things got even scarier when Child Protective Services took them away from their mother when Marquita was eleven. They spent an entire year in foster care, waiting for their mother to get out of yet another rehab and find a place they could move into. When Marquita had her son, she promised him that no one would ever take him away from her.
“No, no. You don’t have to call the police.” She snatched off the apron. “If you don’t want me here, then I don’t need to be here. It’s not like I can’t find another waitress job.”
As she walked through the eating area, making her way to the front door, she turned and shouted to the customers, “Don’t order the chili. Bugs fall in it all the time, and my wonderful manager feeds it to unsuspecting customers anyway.”
He ran toward her, trying to chase her out of the restaurant, while simultaneously providing the customers a nervous smile. “We don’t have bugs. Don’t believe a word she says.”
Marquita opened the door and ran out. Her manager was a smoker. No way would he catch her.
“Don’t think you’re going to get a reference from me. You can forget that!” he yelled as she made her way to her 2003 Chevy Cavalier.
Snapping her fingers and twisting her lip as she got in the car, she forgot about needing a reference. She’d been on this job for less than sixty days. Her last job had been almost ninety days because she’d worked up to two weeks before giving birth to Marcus. She’d experienced back pain on that job and had to take a few days off. She probably couldn’t get a reference from them either because she’d showed out when they fired her too.
Sighing deeply, Marquita pulled out of the parking lot and headed to her mother’s apartment to pick up her son. He was the bright spot of her day. She hated having to leave him at her mom’s place while she worked, but day cares were too expensive. Marquita didn’t know how people could afford childcare and be able to eat too. It was all just too much.
When she arrived at her mother’s place and saw the eviction notice on the door, she was outdone. Marquita lived on her own, so her mother’s constant evictions didn’t affect her like they used to. But her brother, Mark, was sixteen and her sister, Kee Kee, was thirteen. Where were they supposed to sleep once Gloria was kicked out of yet another place?
Marquita already didn’t like bringing Marcus over here because she never knew what kind of drama might be popping off. She didn’t have the money for day care, but if her mother went to another women’s shelter, she’d have to find it because she was not letting her son step foot into a place like that.
Rolling her eyes, she snatched the notice off the door and entered the apartment. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked Kee Kee, who was sitting on the sofa, bouncing Marcus on her lap.
“Mama wasn’t feeling well so I stayed home to take care of my little man.” Kee Kee made cooing sounds. She kissed Marcus’s cheeks. “Isn’t that right, Moochie?”
Moochie was the nickname Kee Kee had given Marcus. Marquita thought it was cute, but there was nothing cute about her sister skipping school. “You are too smart for this, Kee Kee. Out of the three of us, you have a real chance to get a scholarship, go to college, and get out of here. You are not going to mess that up just because I had a baby.”
“I’m just trying to help. I didn’t want to leave Moochie with Mama today.” Kee Kee nervously cut her eyes toward Gloria’s bedroom. Then she plastered that same don’t-want-no-trouble smile on her face that appeared whenever Gloria got to acting like she needed Iyanla to fix her life.
Marquita figured that her mother must have gone into a rage, for God knows what, and scared Kee Kee so bad that the girl feared for Moochie. Marquita didn’t get why Kee Kee wasn’t immune to Gloria’s antics by now. The girl was just too soft, too good-hearted to be in this family.
Marquita went into her mother’s bedroom. Gloria was lying in bed with a heating pad on her head. The heating pad normally came out after Gloria ranted and raved through the house about some perceived injustice. The whole world always against her.
“What happened now?” Marquita asked.
Gloria lifted the heating pad from her head. “Why are you back so soon? Get fired again?”
Marquita tossed her mom the eviction paper she’d taken off the front door. “Yeah, I got fired and you got evicted again. Let me know when I’m saying something that sounds like a surprise.”
“You getting fired sure isn’t a surprise. It happens all the time.” Gloria sat up, legs dangling from the side of the bed as she turned off the heating pad.
“And you getting evicted certainly isn’t a surprise. It’s been happening every five months like clockwork since I was a kid. When will you realize that you have to pay rent if you want to keep a roof over your head?” Marquita had no room to talk, since she was a month behind on her own rent and had just lost her job. But she was new to this. Her mother was true to her eviction game.
“I told that landlord that he had to give me another month to come up with the money. He can’t just evict me without getting a court order.”
Marquita pointed to the eviction notice. “Isn’t that from the court?”
“Don’t get my blood boiling again, Marquita. They not just gon’ throw me out on the street without a fight.” Gloria’s hands went to her head.
Marquita didn’t want to give her mother another headache, but she wasn’t finished. “Don’t let Kee Kee miss school to keep Marcus anymore, Mama. It’s not fair to her.”
“I wasn’t feeling well after talking to the landlord. Kee Kee asked to help with Moochie, and she did her school assignments while the Mooch slept.”
“Kee Kee is smart, Mama. You can’t be acting like a raving lunatic around her. That stuff makes her nervous. That’s why she stayed out of school. She was afraid to leave you with Marcus.”
Gloria waved that comment off. “She’s heard me talk to these slumlords a thousand times. She ain’t never missed no school because of it before.”
She wasn’t trying to disrespect her mother, but Marquita’s eyes did that thing they do whenever she heard ignorance.
“Roll your eyes at me again, Marquita Ann Lewis, and I’ll knock them in the back of your head.”
“I’m going home.” Marquita walked out of her mother’s bedroom, packed up Marcus’s diaper bag, and then took her baby out of Kee Kee’s arm. “Don’t miss school to sit with my kid no more. You are better than that.”
