August Martin’s baby momma wasn’t there.

            He looked around the courtroom, the ceilings were high, the lights bring and harsh, and the thought, somewhat absurdly, that those fluorescent lights were perfecting for such a judicial setting.  August took in the faces of people around him: single parents with their kids, lone adults bobbing their heads around nervously, older men and women, probably grandparents, looking stoic, or calm.  He couldn’t tell.  The children, he noticed, looked happy, weaving through the aisles created by the long wooden benches in the gallery.  Look at them, he thought, they don’t even know.

            The family court was on the third floor of the city’s courthouse.  The first and second floors were reserved from criminal and traffic hearings.  He’d spent too much time downstairs to ever want to be here again, but if he had to be here – and he did – he was glad to be in upstairs for once.  Now his life was much better; a new leaf had been turned.  He was the kitchen manager for a small chain of restaurants which were named after their addresses – 75 Park and 66 Washington – and he’d move away from this dark, dark city to a small town on the shoreline with his new girlfriend.  She wasn’t there either; she was an elementary school art teacher and today was Wednesday. 

            August’s right leg bounced up and down as he waited and listened to the other proceedings.  A father won full custody of his two kids from their mother.  The mother had violated probation and was facing jail time for repeated possession charges; a grandmother petitioned for custody of her granddaughter to save the child from the State throwing her to system.  It was all very sad.  The judge would call his name soon, and still she wasn’t there.

            And good riddance, he thought.

            August’s baby momma wasn’t there, but she had sued him for both child support and custody of their son, Carter, whom they’d had back when August lived dangerously.  At twenty years old, he’d been living the life of a rockstar, drugs and women, and even some men, when he accidentally on purpose used substances to allow himself the right to do things he’d only thought about sober.  That was six years and a lifetime ago, he thought, and now that he was making something of his little life, his baby momma – Mandi (he avoided saying her name in conversation and hated that she spelled it with an “I”) – wanted a piece of his peaceful pie.  She stopped bringing Carter around on their agreed upon days and a month later he received a summons in the mail. 

            It was kind of funny, he thought, and not “funny ha-ha” but “funny weird.”  He’d gotten his shit together while she kept on drinking.  Mandi’s mother watched Carter most of the time, he suspected Mandi didn’t even really like the kid.  She treated Carter like a photo op, a sympathy magnet, and, worst of all, a money printing machine.  Whether it was from the government in the form of tax credits and welfare or from August in the form of monthly checks, August supposed she didn’t care.  To her, it was always about money and kicking August where it hurts the most.

            This was the second hearing in two months.  The judge continued the case because Mandi hadn’t shown up.  That had disappointment August, only because he hoped she would bring Carter with her to the courthouse. 

            As the proceedings around droned on like the sound of low-flying plane, he thought about Mandi and Carter.  Maybe Mandi was jealous of him, and her way of expressing that was using their son as a weapon to hurt August.  She was stuck in her old ways, stuck in this dead-end city, headed for a brick wall in a stolen Audi.  But August?  August, for the first time, had a savings account, didn’t have to worry about if an emergency expense arose as they so often did.  For once, he was generally happy and lived away from his older sisters who’d taken turns housing him before he’d grown the fuck up.  Maybe, just maybe, Mandi wanted that for herself but couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the concept of growth.  Simple things could be complicated for simple people.

            August, however, was determined to give his son a good life, and if he had to take Carter from his mother to do it, then so be it.  August didn’t grow up with his own parents (and, to his therapist, he theorized that was part of the cause of his problem years – that, and bad decisions), but eventually turned out fine.  A few potholes and boulders in the road he hoped Carter would never have to navigate. Carter would know his father intimately, and they would have a close relationship like the one August had with paternal grandfather, Ross, who’d done the best he could to raise August.

            Like a bolt of lightning, a memory flashed into August’s mind.  He was young, maybe six or seven, playing at the park down the street from his grandfather’s house where they’d gone once a week for years with his grandma.  It had been a few months after his grandmother died of breast cancer, and though August didn’t understand fully, he knew death was something permanent, something you couldn’t erase.  Like those markers Mrs. Daniels says not to use on the whiteboard, he’d thought when mulling it over in his room.  August had been playing on the swing, going much too high and too fast, trying to show off for PopPop.  He turned his head to make sure PopPop could see how close to heaven he swung, but his grandpa wasn’t looking.  PopPop was staring off into the distance, probably at the pond his grandparents used to circle countless times while he tussled with other kids on the playground. 

            August had gone flying off the swing, and, he remembered, the fall took forever.  Time seemed to slow, and the details of the park flashed into vivid, harsh focus.  The bright green leaves swayed harmoniously with the breeze.  The cloudless sky was the baby blue of innocence.  The woodchips in one of the play areas were the color of firetrucks, but smelled like poop.  And then the crash.  He broke his arm that day, and his grandfather blamed himself.

            “No, PopPop,” August had tried to console at the hospital, “I was doing too much.  No really, it was my fault.  I didn’t listen when you said to take it easy on the swing.”

            The flashback came and went within the span of seconds like an angry snow squall on a fine winter day, and August shook off the dreamy shock of memory.  Suddenly, he wished he wasn’t here alone.

            He pulled his phone from his left pocket and ensure it was on silent.  He contemplated texting Roscoe Singleton, the man August considered his only, and subsequently best, friend.  They’d met briefly before August had Carter, as August had dated Roscoe’s best friend’s best friend.  Roscoe had his shit together when August didn’t, and August kind of envied that, the way he assumed Mandi envied him now.  But when Roscoe started drinking more often, they became drinking buddies, which turned into drugging buddies.  After spending a year in prison, August went to a DOC halfway house, but absconded from the house after a month, and spent nine months on the run.  Much of that time was spent with Roscoe drinking cheap beer, sniffing bad coke, and sometimes fucking. 

            A few months after August turned himself in, Roscoe was involved in a car accident that left someone hurt.  By the time August got out of prison, Roscoe went in for the first time, but they stayed in contact.

            “We’re trauma bonded, bro,” August told Roscoe in a call two or three weeks before Roscoe’s release. 

            They’d made plans to tackle life sober, leaving in the past people who refused to see how good life is – or could be – without the lugubrious and insidious influence of substances.  And that was exactly what they’d done, thriving in what felt life a new life, a rebirth for both men. 

            But August thought better of texting Roscoe.  This was August’s battle, and though he wanted support (and knew Roscoe would, without hesitation, come, and get there faster, somehow, than the laws of physics allowed), he didn’t want to drag anyone who loved him in this new life into drama from the old life.  It’s toxic, he thought.  Better not to spread the venom around.

            She’s still not here, August thought.  His lawyer had told him the judge would dismiss Mandi’s case against him if she didn’t show again.  Then August could file for custody of Carter and bring his son back into his life.

            Every time he heard the door open, his head jerked in that direction.  August stifled a nervous laugh, comparing himself to the motion-activated cameras in the self-checkout aisles at the store.  Smile, you’re on camera! 

            More cases were heard, and August felt uncomfortable as a spectator to matters he believed the public had no right know.  Finally, clearer than anything he’d heard in court that day, the judge’s thunderclap voice: “Martin versus DeJesus.”

            August stood up.  He took one more glance around the courtroom, at the doors on either side of the back wall.  The faces were long and unfamiliar, the children blissfully ignorant of just how fundamentally things changed here, in this room.  A new new beginning, he thought with his head lowered and a soft grin.  August inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and strode determinedly up to the defendant’s podium.

– Kashawn Taylor

Note: This story will be included in a forthcoming collection with Whiskey Tit Books.