Free The Stones Cry Out by Sibella Giorello

became your student was because the FBI picked him up. He’s a convicted felon. I have every right to contact him.”
    She raised her chin. "I don't like it."
    "I don't care."
    She stared at me; I stared back. Holding our gazes, we both knew that blinking was conceding. Helen's eyes were almost turquoise, a shifting blue that depended on how she held her proud head. Glaring at those eyes, I heard the awful music from the art studio, trudging down the hall, kicking through her office door, the millionaire rock star despairing that life was hard.
    She looked away. "All right." She shook a postcard in her hand. "All right, fine. Talk to Milky. Just don't bring me into it."
    "Helen, you brought it up."
    "Because you should see his face when he talks about you. It’s awful."
    Milky Lewis was a twenty-two-year-old former crack addict and the best flip we got from last year's drug task force. He also suffered from a terrible stutter that unfortunately improved when I interviewed him—which made me his main contact inside the bureau. Crack did things to a brain, rotten things, and Milky Lewis's brain started telling him we were going to get married. He even picked out an engagement ring, and to this day, ten months after the task force had ended, guys in our office were still stammering, "Ruh-ruh-raleigh, will you muh-muh-marry me?”
    Fortunately for both of us, Milky Lewis had other aspirations.
    During our interviews, when words came with such difficulty, Milky sketched portraits of the people and places he tried to describe. They were good sketches – really good. When we busted the drug ring, Milky served four months on a plea deal, and I went to visit him in prison. I asked him to draw some pictures unrelated to the task force, then I took them to Helen. In what might be her single good deed of a lifetime, Helen convinced the dean of VCU’s art school to offer Milky a scholarship -- probationary—for two years.
    A man who barely finished public high school, who dealt drugs for most of his life, now attended one of America’s best art schools. Free of charge.
    "How's he doing?" I asked.
    "His talent is very real, but still raw. It might stay that way. But he transferred into sculpture."
    I nodded as if that was very important. "Is he around?"
    Her aqua eyes flashed. "You cannot talk to him here."
    "Why not? I'm practically his benefactor."
    "You’re more like the Gestapo."
    I sighed, heavily. My sister's politics were so far to the left Karl Marx couldn't catch her in a bullet train. But that’s why she was cruising up the academic ladder, perching like a snob among the egghead elite.
    “So is he here?” I asked.
    “No, he is not.”
    I nodded, walked to the door, and told her to have a good time in Amsterdam.
    Her stony eyes were as defiant as ever. She lifted her sharp chin and said, "I will.”

Chapter 12

     
    That afternoon, I convinced my mother to come out of her bedroom by offering to drive her to the Pentecostal camp. On the twenty-minute drive, with Madame in her lap, she remained quiet.
    I parked the big Benz in a grassy field near the tented tabernacle. Honeysuckle hitched the air and cicadas thrummed away their short, happy lives. In the long grass, amid pickup trucks and dented sedans and family vans, my mother's antique car looked as out of place here as she did. Circa 1966, the jet-black Mercedes had its original red leather seats and push-button gear system. The car was like a cherished family member and most collectors would probably insist I should commit hari-kari for leaving the vehicle roasting under a blazing sun. But I didn't have a choice. My K-Car was off-limits to civilians, including canines.
    Walking beside me, my mother made her soft music, the silver bracelets tingling, her shoes clicking across the wooden boardwalk outside the tent. But she wore flats. Flats were a bad sign.
    The tabernacle was an open-aired building with a peaked roof and no walls. On the big stage, a dozen women in