Chapter 15: What a Boy Wants
The question came on a Saturday morning, in their own kitchen, with no cameras and no lawyers present — only Grace, Jalen, and Ruth Ann Holloway, who had come over with a basket of biscuits and a pot of jam.
Daniel Okafor had asked them to think about it before the next meeting, and Grace had written it down on a piece of paper and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a peach. The paper said, in Grace's careful handwriting: What does Jalen want?
Now Ruth Ann set the biscuits on the table and said, "All right, Jalen. No hurry. But tell us, in your own words. Not what the television would want. Not what a rich man would want. What you want."
Jalen spread jam on a biscuit slowly, giving himself time. The kitchen smelled of butter and strawberries, and the morning light came through the window in a warm, slanted bar. His mother was watching him, not prompting, not correcting, just waiting the way she waited when he was working out a hard sum in his head.
"I want to stay in school," he said at last. "I want to learn properly, not just get by. I like numbers, and I like it when a thing makes sense after you work at it. I want to go to a school where the books are not falling apart, and where nobody has to share one computer between four children."
"I want Mama to have a house that is hers," Jalen said. His voice grew steadier as he went on. "Not a big house. A small one, with a kitchen where she does not have to worry about the rent, and a porch where she can sit in the evening. She has worked for nine years in somebody else's house, keeping it beautiful for other people. I want her to have a place where she can put her own pictures on the wall."
Grace's eyes shone, but she did not interrupt. She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers.
"And I want the bills gone," Jalen said. "I hear Mama on the phone sometimes, late, when she thinks I am asleep, talking quietly about money. I do not want her to have to do that any more. I want her to sleep without worrying."
Ruth Ann reached for a biscuit. "That is three good wishes," she said. "Is there a fourth?"
Jalen thought about the children he knew: the girl in his class whose mother cleaned hotel rooms and who did her homework in a laundry room because their apartment was too crowded; the boy who carried his little sister to school because their mother left before dawn; Maya, who was lucky because her parents had steady work, but who still shared textbooks with a friend. He thought about how it felt to be unseen in a grand house, carrying a tray past people who looked straight through him.
"I want other children like me to have a chance," he said. "Children whose mamas and papas clean houses and cook and look after other people's children. They are smart. They just do not always get the chance to show it. If there is money left over — and I know there is a lot, and I know I am not supposed to spend it like a grown-up — I want it to help them go to school, and buy books, and learn numbers, or music, or whatever they are good at."
Grace stood up and hugged her son, right there in the kitchen, biscuit crumbs and all. "That is what we will tell Mr. Okafor," she said. "In your words, exactly. School for you. A safe home for us. Debts cleared. And help for other children. Nothing about mansions. Nothing about cars."
Later that afternoon, Maya came by with her maths book, and they did their homework on the front steps. She asked him, as she always did, whether he had finished the number puzzle from class. He had, of course, and he showed her how he had worked it out, step by step, without rushing her.
"So," Maya said, when they were done, "did you figure out what you want?"
Jalen smiled. "I did," he said. "And it turns out it is not a thing you can buy in a shop. It is school, and a home, and helping other children. That is all."
Maya nodded, as if that were the most sensible thing in the world. "Good," she said. "Because you are still you, and I would hate it if money changed that."
As the sun went down over Savannah, painting the sky the colour of the jam on their table, Jalen took the paper off the refrigerator. He did not throw it away. He folded it carefully and put it in his school bag, to take to Daniel Okafor on Monday. It was his answer, in his own words, and it was the first part of the settlement that truly belonged to him.