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72 HOUR HOLD
by Bebe Moore Campbell
A Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf
a division of Random House, Inc.
ISBN: 1400040744
Copyright (c) 2004 by ELMA, Inc.
FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
Trina suffers from bipolar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and
violent. Watching her child turn into a bizarre stranger, Keri
searches for assistance through normal channels. She quickly learns
that a seventy-two-hour hold is the only help you can get when an
adult child starts to spiral out of control. After three days, Trina
can sign herself out of any program.
Fed up with the bureaucracy of the mental health community and
determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs
on for an illegal intervention. The Program is a group of radicals
who eschew the psychiatric system and model themselves after the
Underground Railroad. When Keri puts her daughter's fate in their
hands, she begins a journey that has her calling on the spirit of
Harriet Tubman for courage. In the upheaval that follows, she is
forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even as she
battles to secure a future for her child.
CHAPTER ONE
Right before the devastation, I had a good day. God should have
pulled my coattail then and there: "Enjoy this while you can, honey,
because Satan beat me in a poker game last night, and he's claiming
you and yours sometime soon." After all the praying and tithing I've
done, I deserved a heads-up. D amn. Whatever happened to sending a
sign? Lean cow, fat cow. Burning bush. Dove with an olive branch.
Yoo-hoo! Something.
It was probably better that the events evolved with no
foreshadowing. Preparation wasn't possible. And what difference
would it have made anyhow? Knowing that the hounds are tracking you
doesn't mean you won't get caught; it means you have to get to the
swamp fast.
So there I was, clueless: lolling in the bed, stretching my legs and
my toes--which needed a pedicure--ticking off a list of things to do
in my head, I began to wake up. It was the second Saturday in April.
Sunshine was making its way through a thick haze. Rising up, I
stared out of my bedroom window, squinting a bit as I tried to
discern the LA skyline, framed neatly between the two huge palm
trees in my backyard. Thick pea soup almost obliterated the view,
but I didn't look away until I sighted those buildings. Once I knew
the city had survived the night, my shoulders came down. Anything
can happen at any time in an earthquake zone, and I've learned to
take nothing for granted. I've gone to bed some evenings only to
awaken at dawn to broken windows and cracked dishes. That the Bank
of America and Wells Fargo headquarters hadn't been shaken and
dashed into oblivion during the night meant I had survived as well.
I'm always grateful for a morning with no tremors, no frantic dogs
barking.
Trina was beside me, not a heartbeat away, her hip pressed into my
thigh. She felt warm against me, the pressure of her body weight
comforting. The day after her eighteenth birthday, when most girls
were declaring their independence, my daughter was still creeping
into my bed. Even when she hated me, she wanted to be close. She was
still fresh from last night's bath and smelled like Dove and that
pale yellow lotion in the big plastic bottle. That staple of
American vanities and kitchen counters promises to banish dry skin
forever but can't even begin to handle seriously crusty feet. My
grandmother's feet at the end of February would have had that lotion
begging for mercy. But then, when you grow up plowing Georgia clay
barefoot in the hard times, nothing on or in you remains soft. For
Trina's smooth, buttery skin, that watery lotion worked just fine.
The toes pressed against my calves were just as supple as the rest
of her and just as lovely. Gazing at my sleeping daughter, I could
take her in without annoying her. Such a pretty child, I thought.
There wasn't a blemish on her honey-colored face. When she was a
little girl, I was lulled by the well-wishing smiles of strangers
who were bewitched by the dazzling enormity of her round eyes and
endless smile, her marble-sized dimples and naturally sandy hair.
Trina seemed to take the attention in stride, but it inflated me. My
gingerbread-brown face was symmetrical, with two eyes placed where
eyes should be, lips that weren't full or thin, a nose that would
keep me alive, hair that was thick and strong but otherwise
unremarkable. Nobody turned to stare at me when I walked down the
street, not the way they did with Trina. I used to think of her
beauty as an insurance policy that would guarantee her a perfect
life. A lot of people who aren't beautiful think this way.
It was six o'clock, and I had a standing appointment with the
treadmill and some free weights. Trina stirred, then turned over and
stared at me.
"Hey, grown woman," I said, teasing.
"My back hurts," she said, her voice still tinged with sleepiness.
She yawned and arched her body, then settled herself beneath the
covers.
This was a setup, and we both knew it. "Well, you should get on the
floor and do those exercises I showed you. That will get the kinks
out."
"Aww, Mommeee!" she wailed, fully awake.
"Aw, Mommy, what?"
"Can't you rub it just a little bit?"
I felt a twinge of annoyance. She knew I worked out every morning.
"Turn over."
Her motion was languid, a movement befitting the idle rich.
I leaned over my daughter and began kneading her back and shoulders.
There were no knots of tension anywhere. She became limp beneath my
fingers. In a few minutes she was asleep again.
Downstairs in my kitchen, I stopped to get a bottle of water before
going into the small gym located next to the garage. Thirty minutes
on the treadmill at five miles per hour, followed by fifteen minutes
of lifting free weights, then about twenty minutes of floor
exercises--that was my routine. I've always been into fitness. I
opened the windows, turned on loud salsa music, and began my
workout. By the time I had finished running in place, my forehead
was dripping and my clothes were damp. I reached for the free
weights, lifting and lowering, extending and holding, until my
biceps were ready to secede from the rest of my body. I forced
myself to do two hundred sit-ups and fifty leg thrusts, panting and
sweating like a beagle on crack. Forty push-ups to go. I counted
from one to ten, then ten to one, then twenty to one. Shrink the
challenge--my way of psyching myself out. All my muscles seemed to
be bursting when I finally began stretching. Time for euphoria. I
did it!
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