Will u take care of a newborn for 2 months while baby’s mother in rehab? Favor for me. Adorable baby. Good karma.

Within thirty seconds Sabryna texts back.

R U crazy? No way. 2 much else 2 do.

Within fifteen seconds I text back.

NYC pays $10.50 per hour.

Within ten seconds my phone pings.

I’M IN!!!

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

“SO DID YOU FORGET to bring the baby, Lady Lucy?” Sabryna asks me loudly when I arrive later at her crazy little Jamaican store.

For some reason a live parakeet is perched on the plantain barrel. Never saw a parakeet before in the store. I won’t even ask.

“I was dealing with the big New York City foster care mess today. I think it’s all under control. Tomorrow Social Services will most likely drop off the baby. They’ve got the paperwork, and they’ll have a boatload of questions for you. Be ready. And don’t give them funny answers. Social Services is not into comedy.”

Sabryna nods. I know she’ll come through. “I’m a little scared, Lucy. But I love babies…and the money, that sure doesn’t hurt.”

“This is going to be great for you, and great for this baby.”

I truly believe what I’m saying. Sabryna is simply a superior human being—honest and hardworking and smarter than almost anybody I know, including myself. And she’ll know just how to handle the one or two social workers who will show up with Val’s baby. I know because I guided her and Devan through a mountain of paperwork for their citizenship application. I also supplied the help of a friend’s daughter, a paralegal, who treated the case as if she were standing in front of the Supreme Court.

Sabryna will be truthful, but she’ll be wise enough to phrase her answers with just the necessary amount of truth.

Here’s a possibility I could imagine:

SOCIAL WORKER: And what is the status of young Devan’s father? Where is he in his son’s life?

SABRYNA: Oh, Lawrence left us long ago. Now he is in a better and even more beautiful world.

No doubt Sabryna will cast her eyes heavenward and certainly not expand upon her sentence with the information that Lawrence deserted Sabryna and their son shortly after Devan’s birth. He hopped a grain freighter for the “better and even more beautiful world” of Barbados. Hasn’t been heard from since.

I check my cell phone and see that the time is six thirty. Immediately Sabryna sees me looking at the time, and she announces: “I will start closing up the store early. The usual seven o’clock will be far too late with a baby coming. And…”

She says the word And with great force. Then pauses.

I ask, “And what?”

“And if Willie and Devan are not coming through that door in one minute, they’ll both be getting a whipping from me.”