THE ONLY REASON I call Maleeka is ’cause it seem like I’ma lose my mind if I don’t talk to somebody besides Cricket. Before she start to brag about her own life, I brag about my place. I make it sound better than it is, bigger, cleaner, ’cause I don’t want her thinking I’m in some beat-down ratchet motel. “Maybe one day you can come visit me.”

She’s happy for me, proud. “But what about your grandmother? You ever going to live with her?”

“I changed my mind. Anyhow, my sister said she ain’t care where I went.”

Maleeka don’t say nothing, maybe because for a long time it seemed like JuJu ain’t care about me nohow. So, who wouldn’t believe that ain’t still true?

I walk up to the dresser and pat Cricket’s belly. Maleeka just got back from California with her robotics team. They made tenth in the country. Stayed in LA a week. After I heard enough, I tell her, “I got a baby.”

“What?”

“I … have … a … baby … girl.”

“You’re lying.”

“Her name is Cricket.”

“For real? How? Whose?”

I tell her the whole story. She say I must be nuts. “And how can you afford to feed her and buy diapers?” She ask so many questions, I wanna scream. ’Cause I ain’t got all the answers. Don’t need all the answers, really. Today she had clean diapers, milk, and a place to live. Who knows about tomorrow?

“What about shots?”

“Huh?”

“Shots, Char. Baby shots. A baby has to have them because if they don’t, they can get sick and die.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll think about that later.”

“JuJu know?”

“Yeah, she know.” Now that there ain’t no lie. “She don’t like it. But what can she do? Cricket’s mother is coming back, watch and see.”

She ask me more questions. I tell her I don’t know everything. “But I think I did the right thing … taking her with me. Too many kids in foster care anyhow.”

I can tell she thinking. So, I’m happy when she finally say, “You’re right about that.”

I’m smiling.

She’s quiet.

I walk over to my desk and pull out a crayon. Before I know it, I’m coloring.

“Why you so quiet? What you doing?”

Now it’s me that take a long time to answer. “Nothing.”

“Liar. Yes, you are.”

I almost don’t tell her. But why not? I already told her I got a baby. “Coloring.”

“Oh.”

“I’m too old for stuff like this, for real. But they was here when I got here, so—”

Last time she colored she was about ten, she say. She would color at this age too, Maleeka tells me, if that’s what she wanted to do. “Raina still plays with dolls.”

“No, she don’t.”

“Remember, her sister told us that one time.”

I remember. JuJu keeps a doll in her room that Mom got her one Christmas. She change her clothes with the seasons and holidays. I gave her a haircut once. I was mad at JuJu when I did it.

Picking up a blue crayon, I tell the truth for once. “I’m good at coloring. Better than anybody I bet.”

I’m waiting for her to tell me what she good at ’cause she’s good at so many things: writing, building robots, math, getting As, making friends. But she don’t talk about herself this time. She say, “I’m proud of you, Char.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I can see you trying.”

Don’t nobody else see it, I almost say. “Maleeka, I— Never mind.”

“What, Char?”

“Nothing,” I say at first. Then more words come out me, fast as water out a fireplug, and not ’cause she making me. “I apologize—for always calling you names, picking on you, getting Daphne to beat you up while the twins and me talked about you like you was dirt when you always was smarter than us, gooder too.” I breathe in deep, let it out slow. “You ain’t deserve none of that.”

“I know. But why are you just seeing it now, Char? Never mind.”

“My parents died. And I got so mad. God ain’t leave me nobody but JuJu.”

She start crying too. “I’m sorry … about your mom … and father. I wish they never died. My father either.”

“I was real nice before then. People don’t remember that, but I was.”

“I remember. We was in elementary school and—”

“I didn’t like you then either.” I laugh.

“But you wasn’t mean to me back then.”

“No, and I was still cute.” I wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Wasn’t nobody prettier than me. Wasn’t nobody dressed better than me. My mother kept me like that.”

“Sure did. Your mother was something else.”

“She was, wasn’t she?”

“Remember that time she made Valentine cookies for your class and my classroom next door?”

I tell her that I cook as good as my mom. “So does JuJu.”

“See, Char. You still got something to hold on to.” She talk about the mirror her dad left her, the poems.

I think about my mother’s cast-iron pans under the sink. Dad’s bat. “Yeah, I still got something,” I say, walking over and taking his baseball out my backpack. Holding it tight, I tell Maleeka I need to go. “The baby—”

“I know. You gotta change her. I’ll call you sometime, Char. Promise.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t want to stop talking to Maleeka. But most likely she woulda hung up on me first. That mighta made me mad. And I don’t want her to think I’m the same old Char.