She Wants Her Too by Tasha C. Miller

Author:Tasha C. Miller [Miller, Tasha C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Creative Afflictions Press
Published: 2015-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty Three

Case of the Ex

“Does anyone know that man?” César pointed across the playground to the eerie stranger. It was the beginning of April, spring was in the air on an unseasonably warm day, and César had taken Maya and Amir to the park not too far from the house. He watched the children play on the jungle gym as he sat and chatted with the other nannies. It was a sight to see, the 6’4” gay Italian man gossiping among the petite Latina and Caribbean nannies.

All of the other nannies shook their head “no” at his question, though. They had all seen the strange man before, but they didn’t know him and he didn’t have a child.

“I don’t like it.” César watched the man lurk around the perimeter of the playground, looking intently at the children. On this day, César was convinced that the man had zeroed in on Maya and Amir.

Just as César crept across the park to approach the man, the mysterious stranger ran off. But the next day he returned and César confronted him directly. He was immediately hostile, and that raised César’s suspicions. The other nannies flagged down a police officer, who removed the man from the park and warned him not to return.

But he returned again anyway, and appeared to take pictures with his camera phone. César, convinced that he’d taken pictures of Amir and Maya, approached the man. They exchanged words again, and César demanded to see his cell phone. Backed into a corner, the man swung on César and missed. César—an otherwise gentle soul—pummeled the man right there in the middle of the park in front of Maya and Amir and all the neighborhood children. The other nannies gathered the kids to shield them from the fight and called 911.

The man was no match for César, who beat and detained him until the police arrived. César immediately called Jacqueline, who had just returned home from the three day retreat a few days before, and was finally unpacking her and Cleopatra’s suitcases and doing laundry.

By the time Jacqueline got to the playground, the ambulance had already taken the strange man away. She panicked until she had her arms wrapped around both Amir and Maya and saw that they were fine.

But the story César told her didn’t calm her nerves. Some man taking pictures of the kids. “Who was it?”

César tried to describe him to Jacqueline as an EMT tended to his bruised and cut up knuckles. He showed her a grainy video that he had taken. The man was a tall, skinny, scraggly black man with a receding hair line, wearing old clothes.

César leaned over and whispered in Jacqueline’s ear. “I said nothing to the police, but at one point when I was beating him, he said he was their father.”

A short time later, after she left work, Cleopatra emerged from the subway and turned her corner only to see someone standing outside their house.

“What the hell?” Her cell phone went

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