MY CELL KEEPS ringing, so I gotta answer. “Char.”

“What, Maleeka?”

“You up?”

“Duh. I’m talking to you, ain’t I?”

“I’m outside.”

“What?”

“Open the front door.”

“I can’t—I’m in bed.”

JuJu gave her a key to our house, she says. She put it in Maleeka’s hand when she seen her at the pizza shop the other day. “So, I’m on my way in.”

My sister told Maleeka she might need her to check on me sometime while she at work or school. JuJu leave by eight and gets in by nine at night, calls me in between, but I don’t pick up most times.

I hang up. ’Cause I need sleep. Need my brain to shut up, to stop making me sad. Next thing I know she outside my bedroom door knocking.

“Go away, Maleeka—”

“I’m just gonna sit out here, Char, till you open up.”

I turn and face the wall, close my eyes, wake up a whole hour later and ask, “You still there?”

“JuJu’s thinking about calling the city social workers or somebody like that. She doesn’t want to, Char, because maybe they’ll put you in a psychiatric hospital or take you from her.” She mentions Cricket. JuJu told her what happened, I see. She with JuJu’s friend again, Miss Eleonora. She fosters children. I ain’t want her to leave. But I see the truth JuJu was trying to show me when the diaper rash wouldn’t go away and she rolled off the bed right in front of me. “Cricket need a full-time mother, Char. Not a girl so sad that tears done turned into her middle name,” my sister said.

I step over last night’s dishes. Walk by a pizza box with dried-up slices in it. Take a tray of glasses into the bathroom. See the rest sitting in the tub. Then I move the dresser and unlock the door.

She walk by me like she ain’t here to see me. I’m still near the door when she pull my desk chair over to the bed, sits down and takes a book out her backpack.

In bed with the covers up to my chin, I watch fingers pinch her nose. “Remember that time in the bathroom when you put on deodorant?” she asks.

I was always using deodorant in the girls’ room.

“You had them big old hairballs underneath your arms.”

“Just leave, Maleeka, okay?”

She check out her watch. Opens the book. “I got twenty more minutes.”

“For what.”

“To be here.”

“JuJu paying you to be with me?”

“No!”

“Then why you here, Maleeka?”

“It stinks in here. You know that?”

She got no business opening my window, letting ice-cold air in here. I tell her that after I run over and slam it shut. I got both fists up when I say, “I never beat you up, but I coulda. I still can.”

“Well, I hope you shower first.” She squats to pick up a paper cup with moldy, dried-up red Jell-O in it. “Char.”

I’m back in bed when I say, “What?”

JuJu told her about Cricket, she says, filling up her arms with some of the mess in here. “I’m sorry.”

I tell her that maybe Cricket woulda turned out bad being around me and April. Leaving me might bring her some good luck, I say.

She dropping trash in the can. “My father’s mirror brought me good luck.”

I remember that mirror.

“So did his poetry.”

He could write really good.

“Maybe I’m your good luck charm.” I can tell she smiling even with my back her way. “You woulda burned down that whole classroom without me there.” She talk about how scared she was that day. How she almost didn’t show up at all. I wish I hadn’t.

She keep talking, walking, moving, cleaning. In a little while, you can see the floor by my bed. Trash cans from my desk and bathroom sit in the hall now, running over. The can in her hand freshens the air. “My mother was sad a lot.” She walks and sprays. “That’s how I ended up with those clothes.” They was made by hand, terrible. I brung Maleeka in clothes that my sister stole. “It don’t last always,” she tell me.

I sit up on my elbows. “Was she depressed after she got cancer too?”

“Yeah. So was I. Every day. But they say the cancer’s gone now.”

She spray till I cough. Hits up the bathroom next. Standing over me she say, “I think my mother woulda died if I wasn’t there. Sad can do that to you, Char—make you wish you was dead—or want to kill yourself.” She talk about the time her mother’s chemo got the best of her. She stayed at home all by herself one whole week till her mom came home. “Then I cooked for her, cleaned, helped her get dressed. Just like I done before.” Her hands start to shake. Holding ’em behind her back, she breathes, calms herself. “You need somebody, Char, when you get too sad or sick.” She smiling. “I’m your somebody, like it or not.”

She changes the subject. Asks me about the pictures on my walls and a box of expensive crayons I told her about once. Mr. Bobbie got ’em online. Two hundred crayons, some in colors they don’t make no more. “They at Goodwill. Gone.”

“My mother sewed. When you going through it, you need something to do with your hands to keep you busy.”

“Well, coloring ain’t it.”

“This is a book from the library at school.” She by my bed on her knees. With her elbows digging into me she leans over to show me the jacket. “Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” She asks if she can read it to me.

I don’t wanna hear nothing about birds. But if I say that, she gonna say or do something else I don’t like, so I tell her to go ahead, read. “But keep your elbows off of me.”

She read real pretty. Every character got a different sounding voice, even the person she calls the narrator. That’s the only reason I start to listen. Her voice is warm as hot tea with honey.

After three pages, she stop and ask me what I think. “She sure is country, I know that. Otherwise I got no thoughts.”

She starts up again.

“You think she really wrote that—I mean all them words. Or did she interview some people and write their stories?”

It’s autobiographical, she tells me. Then she explain what that word means.

“So, she talking about her own life and the real stuff that happened?”

“Yeah. What did you think?”

“Stamps, Arkansas … at least she knew where she was. I ain’t know what part of town I lived in till I ran away.”

“Oh.”

Did my sister tell her not to ask me no questions? To only smile and say nice things? ’Cause that’s what she does.

I yawn, then smell something stank—me. I write put on deodorant on a list I started my first day back but never did one thing on it. She put her book away. Pulls her phone out her book bag and ask if I wanna see pictures of melon head John-John and other kids from our middle school. I sit up quick. His hair is blond on the tips. He pierced both ears. Got a tat on his neck. I’m not sure what it is.

“He almost look cute,” I say.

“He still can’t get no girls.”

Desda show up on her phone next. She lost weight. There’s only half of her now. I can’t say that she got cuter ’cause she was always cute. She got a camera hanging round her neck. Maleeka say she’s in the photography club at the high school near McClenton. She got a girlfriend now and everything. One picture after the other make me laugh, and wish I was back in middle school.