IT WAS MALEEKA that got me to come downstairs. The stuff she said about her mom helped. “It wasn’t till she got back to her old ways and habits that things started to change for her for real for real.” That’s why she think I should color, she said, wash up every day, put on my lip gloss, get my hair did. I ain’t do none of that. But I am downstairs in my robe and pajamas sitting at the dining room table between JuJu and Maleeka, where I can keep my eyes on the front door.

JuJu puts another bowl on the table. “Glad to see you out your room.” She goes back to the kitchen for a pitcher of Kool-Aid and my favorite cheese biscuits. I’m smiling when she get back. So is Maleeka. They reach for my hands and we pray, like we did that Christmas at the house. I don’t tell them I can smell Carolina’s chitterlings cooking on the stove. JuJu might say it’s me stinking up the place, which is true, kind of. She got a can of Febreze sitting by her napkin just in case.

My sister passes me the green beans and potato salad. I hand her the bowl of fried chicken and a bottle of hot sauce. Maleeka puts peas on both our plates. I ain’t hungry. I don’t know how much I can eat, I say. Seem like I lost ten pounds since I been home. I can see it in my bony fingers and skinny arms. My old clothes don’t fit, so JuJu brought me new ones—paid with cash. Now that I’m down here, she plan to fatten me up, she say. But I got no appetite.

I look around the dining room like I’m new here. My eyes go from my mother and father’s picture over the mantel, to me and JuJu’s pictures—taken every year at school till our parents passed. We ate dinner together every night in here, even when my father’s favorite sports teams played. He bought a small television once. Put it on the mantel. Momma made him return it. The year before he died, Dad seem to always have a business meeting right around suppertime. Mom ain’t like it, rolled her eyes. He kept it up anyhow.

JuJu ask Maleeka if she is ready for Charlese Jones Academy of Excellence. It starts tomorrow. Once she done swallowing food, Maleeka say, “I’m ready. You ready?”

“Maybe next week.”

“Char—”

“I’m downstairs, JuJu. Why can’t you be happy about that?”

“I’m glad about that, but what about school? What about therapy?”

I throw the fork past her head. “Okay! I’ll be in class tomorrow!”

“Showered?” She pick up the can and sprays over her shoulder.

I tell her what she want to hear, but I’m not washing. I can’t.

She and I don’t talk the rest of the meal. We look at everything except each other. Then Maleeka asks my sister if she ever heard of Maya Angelou. She surprise me and Maleeka both when she say yes, and spits some words from one of her poems:

You can write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Reaching to pinch my cheek, my sister says, “You rising, Char, not dirty and dusty while you doing it either.”

I feel dirty, I wanna tell her. Dirty as a fly in garbage, seeds underground. So, maybe Anthony is right. I’ll always be one of them, belong to him. Saturday school and a shower can’t change that.