I GOT IN the shower, wet myself some—no soap. Cried the whole time. I didn’t need a towel to dry myself because only my feet got wet. But I at least wanted JuJu to see I was trying.

Maleeka’s in my room when I tell her that I showered. “So, you washed up? You sure?” She sniffs around me. “I don’t know, Char.” She sprays the air. “Want me to comb your hair?”

“No.”

“Okay, then.” Her eyes bat. “You know it smell like onions in your room?”

I roll my eyes.

In my pajamas, sitting down on my bed, I ask how her day is going. She alway say the same thing. That she’s fine. Next, she pull out the book. Reaching into her backpack again she pull out something else. It’s flat as paper, wrapped real pretty with a red bow taped in the middle. “Now, before you open it. Let me explain. Oh, I can’t do that or you’ll know what it is. So, open.” She rubbing her hands together, happy.

“Really, Maleeka. A coloring book.” She sit down on the floor close to me.

“Don’t get mad, look?” She take it from me, turns the pages. It’s a coloring book full of famous people, women. They all doing whatever they was good at that made ’em famous, seem like. Maleeka stops on page twenty-six. “There she is. Maya.” She’s at a desk writing. Out the window is a small town and a sign that says Stamps, Arkansas. That’s where she’s from.

She flips more pages. “Here’s my favorite famous old person. Hattie McDaniel from the Gone with the Wind movie,” she say like I ever heard of either one.

“Why you like her? She ain’t even pretty.”

Maleeka making a face at me. “She’s dark … I’m dark. People thought less of her because she played maids and slaves in the movies. You thought less of me, Char. Most everybody at our school did.”

She sits herself on my bed, then get under the covers with me. When I yell for her to get out, she ignores me. Tickling under my arms, on my belly, behind my neck, she try to get me to agree to change my mind about coloring. I laugh until I spit like I done a lot at the house. Then I’m sad again. So sad I could cry. Her fingers find mine, then hold them up toward the light. “What if I color with you?”

“No, Maleeka.”

“Why’d you quit anyhow?”

’Cause crayons shouldn’t be in a place like that, kids either, I think to myself. But I lie and tell her I don’t know. “Why you care if I color or not?”

“My mother sewed and she stopped being sad. If you color—”

“No.”

She goes in her backpack and pulls out a pack of crayons this time. Opening the box, she sit a bunch of ’em in the middle of my hand. I see Anthony breaking and stomping ’em. Breaking and stomping me too. But I pick some of ’em up anyhow—just to make her be quiet.