Free Odyssey by Walter Mosley Page B

the various family members on every holiday. She was a busybody but the kind of gossip who kept everyone informed.
    “How are the kids, Zenith?”
    “Grown.”
    “How’s Tom-Tom?”
    “Fine. Lurlene told Mama that you lost your sight.”
    “Blind,” Sovereign said. “I’ve gone blind.”
    “What happened?”
    “I woke up one morning and I couldn’t see a thing.”
    “What do the doctors say?”
    “That it’s psychological. The experts call it hysterical blindness.”
    “So you’re faking it,” she said in her most condemnatory voice.
    “Excuse me, but I gotta go rob some orphans, Zenith. Good-bye.”
    “Hold on, Sovy. I didn’t mean—”
    “My name is Sovereign, Zenith. You have a name and I do too.”
    “I didn’t mean that you aren’t suffering. But when you say
psychological
that means you’re making it up, right?”
    Sovereign replaced the phone in its cradle and then went to pull the jack from the wall. He went back to his sofa and sat there with his heart thundering.
    He was surprised at the rage his sister could call up in him after all these years.

    “Hello?” she said at three thirty-one that morning.
    “It’s me,” Sovereign James murmured.
    “It’s just Sugah, Mama. I told her to call me when she got in so I wouldn’t worry.… I don’t know why. I answered it on the first ring. You must’a not been asleep anyway.… No, I’m’a be right off.… Yes, Mama.… Yes, Mama.
    “You still there, Mr. James? I mean, Sovy.”
    “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
    “It’s my phone and my room and I gave her two hunnert an’ forty dollars when I got back from your house. So she can’t be tellin’ me who to talk to or when.”
    “I should have waited until morning.”
    “You don’t know. I might have been gone by then. Anyway it was probably important, right?”
    “Feels silly.”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s two things. I really shouldn’t bother you this late.”
    “I’m up now, daddy. Talk.”
    For the first time since his blindness Sovereign was thankful. He didn’t know why the girl he had barely glimpsed calling him
daddy
made a difference, but that solitary word out of her mouth opened a door to laughter.
    “What you laughin’ about?” she asked, the smile lurking in her throat.
    “It’s nothing. You just make me happy.”
    “Then tell me the two things.”
    “My sister called.”
    “That’s nice.”
    “It’s the first time I’ve heard from her in more than twenty years.”
    “Damn. That’s my whole life almost. What she want? Somebody die?”
    “She heard that I was blind and called. But when I told her it was psychological she said that I was faking.”
    “You want me to call her?”
    “Why would you do that?”
    “I’d tell the bitch that you had to be blind. How else could a man walk up to you with a bludgeon stick an’ hit you in the head and you don’t even try to duck? I’d ask her do she think you’d make that shit up too.”
    “That would set Zenith back on her ass,” Sovereign said. “It sure would. But no, honey, I just needed to tell somebody and I find that I don’t have that many friends.”
    “How come you don’t? You got a nice place. People could be over there all the time. You know, my mama’s apartment half yours and we got seven people in here sometimes, just sittin’ around.”
    “I don’t know. Most of the people I communicated with are at my job. I’ve worked there for twenty-one years.”
    “Couldn’t you call somebody you work with?”
    “I guess not.”
    “What’s the other thing?”
    “What?” Sovereign asked as he thought about the paucity of his social life.
    “You said you wanted to talk about two things.”
    There was Bert Sender, head of publicity, and Antoinette Laird, director of interoffice communications; these were friends, people he’d known for well over a decade. Neither one had called since he left the office. He had a home number for Bert from a dozen years ago.
    Why was