I didn’t go home after I left Miss Odessa’s house that day. Instead, I ended up at the house of a tall, lanky girl, with a cute round face, named Tina. I had recently met Tina through Maria. A month after I met Tina, Maria’s family moved to San Jose so now I spent most of my time with Tina. Unlike some of the other girls I knew, who would steal your clothes and your man, I trusted Tina because she was always honest and up front with me. She was probably the only real friend I had now that Maria was gone. I had promised that I’d help her braid her hair that night. Like with most of the kids that I roamed the streets with, I didn’t even know Tina’s last name. And, it didn’t really matter, because most of my so-called friends never stayed around too long, anyway. Either they moved away like Maria, got themselves caught up in some criminal situation that cost them their lives, ended up missing under suspicious circumstances, or got locked up. Three of my late friends, two girls and a boy in the same family, had all died in the same year. The girls had been murdered, and the boy had committed suicide when he found out he had AIDS. The fact that I was still alive and walking around free was as much a mystery to me as it was to other people.
Tina said she liked hanging out with me because I was smart. But she’d only started saying that after I started sharing information with her that I’d sopped up from the magazines and encyclopedias in Miss Odessa’s apartment. Other kids started to look at me with admiration when I used some of the big words I’d learned.
I was doing something constructive and positive for another person, besides fucking or getting high, and that made me feel good about myself. It saddened me to know that some kids, some even older than me, didn’t know that there were black folks from Guatemala. Tina was one of those kids. She didn’t even believe me when I told her that that was where my parents had come from until I dragged her to our apartment one night and had Mama say something in Spanish. I didn’t know much Spanish, but I knew enough to know that Mama had used a few cuss words when she chased me and Tina out of her kitchen while she was trying to fry a fish.
Tina and I didn’t speak again until we were a block away from my building, and even then, we were still running. “Girl, your daddy didn’t speak when I spoke to him, and your mama spewed some gibberish and looked like she wanted to bust my brains out with that frying pan. No wonder you like to hang out so much,” Tina told me, looking behind her. “I hope you don’t take none of your other homies to your home,” Tina said in a serious tone of voice. “With your folks being so strange, you won’t keep no friends too long.”
After I finished braiding Tina’s hair in her tiny bedroom, we shared a joint and a can of beer. And, before I left the run-down house on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive that she shared with her alcoholic mother, she told me something that shocked me.
“You remember that boy Wade?” she asked, sniffing and rubbing her runny nose. Tina used to be pretty, but the drugs and fast life had taken a heavy toll on her. She already had dark circles around her eyes and a face that looked as hard as concrete. She didn’t bathe on a regular basis or do much with her hair. I felt so sorry for her and the way she looked. That was why I always volunteered to braid her hair for free, when I charged other girls twenty to thirty dollars to hook them up with the same hairdo.
Tina’s mother was always fussing about the water bill being so high, so Tina didn’t take baths but a couple of times a week. I really liked Tina and I tried to look out for her. Every time she came to my house I encouraged her to take a long shower and to use my deodorant. But I could only do so much for her. She still looked and smelled downright foul most of the time. That’s why she couldn’t keep a boyfriend. Some of the boys that she used to fool around with ran when they saw her now. And, some of the boys that I used to fool around with did the same thing to me, but for different reasons. I didn’t stink, and I did my best to make myself look good when I went out. I honestly didn’t know why I couldn’t keep a boyfriend. Just hearing the name of the one boy that I would have walked on water to be with made my heart skip a beat.
“You do remember Wade, don’t you?” Tina asked, grinning.
I blinked and bit my bottom lip, trying my best to keep from smiling. But Tina saw me smile, anyway. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, patting the neat braided designs I’d just completed.
“Wade Eddie Fisher? What about him? His mama came to my house yesterday to borrow some more money from my daddy,” I complained. “As usual, she was going on and on about him doing so good down there in Hollywood. I haven’t seen him in anything yet, and you know how much television I watch.”
“I seen him on a commercial for Pepsi,” Tina informed me.
“Humph! Well, a Pepsi commercial is a long way from him being in a movie,” I muttered bitterly. “The way he went around bragging about how he was going to take Hollywood by storm, I expected him to be costarring with Eddie Murphy by now.”
“But a commercial is better than nothing. I read in one of those magazines you gave me that people can make a lot of money doing commercials. Somebody with Wade’s looks and body can make a living just doing commercials.”
“I guess so,” I offered, the bitterness still in my mouth, coating my tongue like venom. On one hand, I was happy that Wade was doing so well and living his dream—if that was the case. But I still had a lot of resentment toward him for the way he had treated me at the restaurant that day, especially after all the sex we’d had in his messy bedroom. “Why did you bring his name up?”
“I seen his mama at Safeway last night. Poor Miss Louise. She was ahead of me in the checkout line. When the clerk ran her credit card through and it got declined, I had to loan her twenty dollars to pay for her groceries.”
“Well, if her son is doing so good down there in Hollywood, how come she can’t pay her credit card bills?” I asked, giving Tina an amused look.
“Hell if I know,” Tina said, with a shrug. “Anyway, she waited until I paid for my shit, and we walked out together. Wade was sitting in that old car of hers.”
“So what?” I asked, rising from Tina’s lumpy bed.
“They gave me a ride home, but along the way, Miss Louise stopped off at Mr. Bailey’s house, you know, that old barbershop man she’s been fucking around with all month. She wanted to borrow some money from him so she could pay me back. While I’m sitting in the car with Wade, he starts talking a bunch of shit about the old days. Who’s still in Berkeley, who’s dead, and who’s in jail. When I tell him that you are the only friend I got left, he tells me that if he ever settled down with a black girl, it would be you.”
“I don’t know why he told you that,” I responded, with a gasp. “But I know for a fact, he likes white girls.”
“That’s probably true. Most of the brothers I know do. But Wade likes at least one black girl, and that’s you,” Tina told me in a serious tone of voice. “Why else would he say some shit like that if he didn’t mean it?”
I didn’t know what to say next. For one thing, I was not impressed. As far as I was concerned, I was too good for Wade Eddie Fisher. But I was willing to give him another chance if he wanted it. “I wonder why he would say something like that about me.” From the look on Tina’s face, she was wondering the same thing herself. I had told her about the incident in the restaurant.
“Because you are the only one around here that didn’t laugh and make fun of him when he said he was going to Hollywood,” Tina explained. “He said he would never forget that.”
I gave Tina a thoughtful look. “But he forgot my name that day at Giovanni’s,” I said, with a pout, anxious to leave now.
“Oh, girl. You know how dudes trip when they are around their friends. Or maybe he had a thing going with that boy or something. Fags are coming out of the closets left and right these days.”
I had no reason to believe that Wade was gay, so I didn’t even bother to comment on that.
“Well, what Wade said might have meant something to me if he had told me himself.” I smirked, heading toward the living room, where Tina’s mother, Miss Honey, was passed out drunk in the middle of the floor. I hopped over her on my way to the door. It took me a while to undo the three locks on it.
“He’s having a party next Saturday night. You want to go?” Tina asked, squatting down on the floor to put a pillow under her mother’s head. This is what Tina did when her mother passed out. It did no good to haul Miss Honey to the sofa or her bed because somewhere along the line, she’d end up back on the floor, anyway.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, with a sniff. “If I don’t have anything better to do, I just might go.”