EIGHT

Tell, Tell

JUNE BUG came by here today with his mind all confused. He must have been thinking it’s already April and I ain’t nothing but a fool. I can’t believe there is some other reason for him thinking I’d go out with him. On a date. He should’ve been happy I even let him in the house in the first place. That I didn’t just hold the curtain back and look at him and walk back over to the couch and sir down.

But it was snowing and blowing and real cold out, so I opened the door. The storm door was locked and I talked to him through it. I say, If you looking for your mama, she ain’t here.

He say, I know. Let me in.

I say, Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.

June Bug say, Dag, Tasha, stop playing. It’s cold as a mug out here.

I say, My mama ain’t home. What you want in here?

He say, You.

I say, Goodbye and pushed the door up while he was steady saying, Wait wait wait. Let me just leave this for my mama.

I looked to see him hold up a plastic grocery bag with the handles tied.

My mind started zip-zip-zipping. I know he wasn’t even coming here trying to leave some package at our house. All I could think it was was some crack. June Bug must’ve shined some light inside my head while I was standing right there wide awake, because he say, Girl, You need to quit. I told you it’s for my mama.

June Bug say Miss Odetta got the locks changed. He ain’t have a key and ain’t want to leave the package on they porch or inside they storm door. I know she got the locks changed. She got robbed almost a month ago, a little before Mama and Mitch took a trip to Toronto.

That night Miss Odetta come running to our house around midnight all loud and wild, blamming on our front door. Screaming out for Mama like she was crazy. Mama got up. I could hear her cussing all the way down the steps. I got up too because I ain’t know what was going on.

Miss Odetta pushed right on in past Mama, heading for the living room. Girl, some nigger done broke in my house and turned the place upside down, Miss Odetta say.

Mama walked on in behind her and I sat down at the top of the stairs. A light come on in the living room. Mama ask, When did it happen?

Miss Odetta say, all loud, When did it happen? How the hell I know when did it happen? What I look like? A psychic? I been out with Simpkin until just a few minutes ago. I come home to see shit throwed everywhere. Did you hear anything?

Mama say she ain’t.

Then Miss Odetta say, Maybe Tasha woke. She might have heard something.

I say I was up. Like I could sleep through all that loud talking.

I went down the steps. The light was brighter in the living room and it made my eyes water. Miss Odetta was all dressed up, sitting on the couch and holding tight to a big old pocketbook. Like she thought me or Mama was going to steal it. I don’t know if she was drunk or what. She smelled like she had been drinking, but she ain’t act drunk. Maybe getting robbed make anybody sober. I told her I ain’t hear nothing. Which was the truth.

Miss Odetta say, Whoever it was come in through the back. Climbed over top of my porch and come through the bedroom window. The nigger left footprints across my white bedspread like he was walking on the floor. Your bedroom around the back, but you ain’t heard shit?

Mama threw one hand up to Miss Odetta like she was directing traffic. And the sign she was throwing was one to stop. Mama say, all loud, You hold it right there, Odetta. I’m sorry you got robbed, but don’t you even be thinking you coming up in my goddamn house and talking to my child any old kind of way. She ain’t no goddamn watchdog.

Miss Odetta say, Girl, I’m sorry. I don’t mean no harm. I’m upset. My nerves shot. I mean, goddamn, wouldn’t you be upset if someone broke in here?

Mama say Miss Odetta should call the police.

Miss Odetta say she wouldn’t. Right then, I know me and Mama was thinking the same thing. Mama threw me a look that I caught out the corner of my eye without letting Miss Odetta see. This all must have had something to do with June Bug. With drugs. With money. Why else she ain’t want to call the police?

Miss Odetta hands was all shaking when she pulled a pack of cigarettes out her pocketbook. She kept fishing around, I guess for her lighter. But she ain’t pulled out no lighter. She pulled out a gun with her hands still shaking and lay it on the table.

You’d think that all the birds of the trees be asleep at that time of night. But I must have startled a whole flock of them awake, because they flew into my mouth that was hanging wide open and taking away all the words. I was thinking that maybe it was so late that I wasn’t seeing right. I was only imagining that, along with the remote control and the TV section of the newspaper, there was a gun all silver and shining laying on the cocktail table.

 

Miss Odetta ask me to go light her cigarette on the stove. I just stood there. Miss Odetta seen I was looking at the gun. So did Mama.

Mama say, Goddamn, Odetta put that thing back in your purse. You carrying it around like it’s some toy.

Miss Odetta put it back inside and say, June Bug can get you one. Every woman should have at least a thirty-eight. If I’d been home tonight, I would have killed me some motherfucking body. Breaking in my house!

I went quick to light the cigarette. Glad that Miss Odetta wasn’t home when her house got robbed. She ain’t even need to be shooting no gun at nobody. When I come back and give her the cigarette, Miss Odetta kicked off her runover shoes and put her feet up on the table. Her feet smelled all stink like some spoiled milk, and she had a hole in the toes of both stockings where the nails was all long and had scratched they way through. Probably trying to get away from the funk.

Mama let out a yawn while I headed straight for the steps. I got Imani out of her bed and put her in bed next to me. Imani was asleep, but I was still up when Miss Odetta left and Mama come into my room.

Without saying nam word, Mama put the light on and went and lifted up my window. She lowered the storm window and then let down the inside window, locking it tight.

I ask Mama, What kind of gun was that?

Mama say, I think it’s a nine millimeter. Something like that.

I ask, Is that the size of the bullets? Wide? They nine millimeters?

Mama say, I look like I run a pawnshop or something? I don’t know about guns. That’s probably June Bug gun, anyway. Not Odetta’s. She just holding it for him.

I looked at the window and ask Mama real soft, Could a bullet come through the wall? Remember that old woman was killed and one came right through the wall?

Mama say, Tasha, shut up and go to sleep.

I knew Mama was scared. Maybe she was like me, not sure what she was more afraid of. That somebody broke into Miss Odetta house. Or that somebody that drink like Miss Odetta, somebody whose hands shake like leaves in the wind, carrying a gun.

When Mama left the room, I reached under the pillow to find Jesus. He wasn’t there. I looked under the covers, under the bed. Jesus was gone. I guess he went off to join the angels. I took the covers and pillows off the bed and lay them down on the floor. I got down there with Imani. Closed them blankets over us and say into the dark, with my lips moving, quiet, I say, Jesus, tell all them angels we still here.

I felt sorry for Miss Odetta when I seen her the next morning. She was heading off to work half bent over in the wind. Behind her the sneakers on the wire in front of her house was swinging. Right above where June Bug park. June Bug I think is a real dog, a real son of a bitch, for laying up in the bed and not giving his mama a ride to work in the cold.

But when June Bug was standing on the porch today, he looked pitiful hisself. He had on this five-hundred-dollar leather jacket. I know how much it cost because I done seen it at the mall. But he ain’t have on no hat and no gloves. A stream of clear snot was running out his nose. That took the hardness out his face. Snot take the hardness out of any gangster face. It made June Bug look like the June Bug who was a boy when I was a girl. I ain’t slam the door in his face.

He say, Come on, Tasha, just let me wait for my mama. You know she be getting home soon. I ain’t got time to be running way back over here later. I got business to take care of.

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past four. I say, You can wait until four-thirty. That’s it.

He say that’s all right and I unlocked the storm door. He come inside and stamped the snow off his feet. June Bug Miss Odetta child, that’s for sure. Anybody with sense would’ve knocked the snow off on the porch.

I picked up Imani, who had crawled up behind me, and we went into the living room. June Bug come right behind us and flopped down on the couch right where Miss Odetta like to sit and put the bag at his feet. I was fenna give him a tissue for his nose, but he wiped the snot on one of his hands and tried to play it off by running his hands down the legs on his jeans. Then he put that hand he used for a tissue right on the arm of the couch. I ain’t say nothing. He was raised by Miss Odetta. He was just doing the best he could.

I sat down on the other end of the couch with Imani, trying to remember where I seen the Lysol last. If it was in the bathroom or back in the kitchen. While I thought on that, I ask him, How you like the west side?

He say, How you know that’s where I moved?

I say, Your mama name still Miss Odetta, ain’t it?

June Bug laughed.

He know his mama and he should’ve knew Miss Odetta come dragging that bone over here about him moving the day after he left. She told Mama he moved in with some girl with dreadlocks. She say, Look like the girl got a head full of snakes. Like Methuselah.

Mama say, Methuselah? What you talking about? What make you think he had a head full of them dookey Rastafarian dreads? Where that at in the Bible?

Miss Odetta say, I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about the woman. The woman. Ain’t that her name? she ask. She was sitting on our couch waving around a cigarette just about half ash, and I was trying to follow it with an ashtray.

I say, No, that’s Medusa.

Miss Odetta say, That’s her.

I say, And she could put a curse on you. If you looked at her, she turned you into stone.

Mama say, Medusa? Come on now, Tasha. I don’t pretend to be no damn Bible scholar, but I think I would remember if there was some bitch running through the Bible with snakes in her head turning niggers into stone.

I told Mama she wasn’t from the Bible. She was from ancient mythology.

Mama say, Oh, that’s different.

Miss Odetta pointed at Mama with the hand she was holding the cigarette in. The ash fell on the table and I got it up quick.

I don’t believe Medusa from no ancient mythology, Miss Odetta say. She the skank my baby living with. Got her hair all snaked up and crazy on her head. Child too damn black and ugly to have her head that nappy. She be looking evil half the damn time too! I swear I’m going to look up and she going to be done turned my baby into a stone-cold statue. Lord, I just hope they don’t have no baby. It would be a little black and crispy thing like her.

Mama say, What would be wrong with them having a black child? June Bug ain’t exactly light, bright, or no damn where near white hisself. Shit, if you feel that way, then he should be with a white girl.

Miss Odetta let out a loud burp that she ain’t even excuse herself for. She say, I’m just saying. You the one know about them things, anyway.

Mama say, What things? I don’t know about no goddamn things. You mean Mitch?

Miss Odetta nodded and blew smoke out her nose and mouth at the same time. I was glad I had already put Imani in bed.

Mama waved her hand. She say, You need to quit, Odetta. Acting like I’m Whoopi Goldberg and shit. Like I never met a white man I ain’t like. Let me tell you something; if I’d been setting out to meet one in the first place, Mitch ain’t even the kind I would’ve went after. I’d a gone for one of them dark Italians look like they part nigger anyway kind of white men.

Miss Odetta say, I ain’t mean nothing by it. I’m just saying, is all. I just ain’t ready to be no grandma. I’m too young.

Mama laughed and so did Miss Odetta. Mama say, You older than me.

I don’t think that was what Miss Odetta was worrying about. I don’t think she could come right out and say she miss June Bug.

Sitting on the couch, June Bug told me he lived on the real west side. Not in the Puerto Rican west side, which is just like the east side, broke-down and raggedy. He say, I live right on the lake. You can see Canada.

I say, So? Ain’t nothing special about looking in on Canada and living on funky Lake Erie.

June Bug say, Girl, you ain’t got a view of nothing from here. Not a damn thing.

I say, I can see plenty from here.

June Bug laughed. He say, That’s what they want you to think. Not me. They don’t even want no niggers where I moved. But I’m there. Right where they don’t want me.

Imani was squirming to get down, so I let her. I say, I don’t want to be nowhere where people don’t want me.

June Bug waved his hand at me. He say, You done changed.

I told him he was the one who changed, and he say it’s true. He say but he still think like he always done. Big.

Maybe Miss Odetta got him thinking big. She always seen to it that June Bug had the best of everything. The best skates, bike, sneakers, video games, headsets, haircuts, sweats, jackets. He probably had the best drawers, too. And I know where she got some of the money for it. From Mama.

Mama used to all the time sell her some of our food stamps. I ain’t like it. Mama sold them fifty cent on a dollar. I can’t say Mama ain’t make out. She got money in her hand, but Miss Odetta made out better. Going to the grocery store getting food half price put even more money in her hand to spend on June Bug. Mama stopped selling them when Miss Odetta found somebody to give her a better price. Thirty cents on a dollar. I ain’t even want to see what woman was desperate enough for money she’d sell her stamps that cheap.

The thing is, I ain’t even stop liking June Bug when some of Mama money was going right on his back. I got to say he always looked good. He would be running around with a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes on. Even in the summer. He’d wear sport jerseys. Real ones. Official ones, with the tags, while we wasn’t doing nothing but playing kickball and dodgeball and hide the stick and pop the whip and football in the street. June Bug always looked like he was dressed up to go somewhere.

Like this boy called Long Legs who used to live up the block. He would be all clean every Friday during the summer. That was the day his daddy come to pick him up for the weekend. To take him over to his house on the north side. Long Legs would take a shower after lunch, dress up, and sit on his porch. He used to make us all sick, because he’d come off the porch to play and make a big deal out of it. All afternoon Long Legs would say, I can’t get my clothes dirty because I’m going to my dad’s. I can’t go bike riding because I’m waiting on my dad. Hey, don’t step on my sneakers because my daddy coming to get me.

His daddy did come get him and I think we was all jealous of him for that. Lots of kids claimed to have a daddy, but his was the only one that showed up. Regular. His was the only daddy I ever seen.

Long Legs’ daddy drove a pretty car. A burgundy deuce and a quarter. It was always clean clean and shining like it was brand new. We would all gather around it like it was some spaceship that had just landed. Like Long Legs’ tall daddy was some kind of alien. He would reach down and touch all our heads and smile. Like he was happy to see all of us. Sometimes he’d give us each a dollar before he left with Long Legs. Then me and June Bug and the other kids would sit on the curb where the car had been and talk about Long Legs like a dog. His daddy too.

That’s a old car Long Legs’ daddy drive. My daddy drive a better car than that. He drive a Lincoln. That ain’t really none of Long Legs’ daddy nohow. My mama told me. She pinned Long Legs on him. Long Legs think he something. Wait until next week, I’m going to scuff up his sneakers before he go. I would always stick to the same line. My daddy dead, I’d say. June Bug would always say, When I grow up, I’m going to have me a better car than that. Way better, and I ain’t going to live on the east side neither. I only remember saying once that I wanted to move on the north side. Even though I’d never really been there.

June Bug reminded me I had said it. He say, You ain’t planning on spending the rest of your life here, is you?

I say, Don’t even be cracking on the east side. You lived here up until last week.

June Bug say he never coming back to live here. Which was fine with me.

He say, What you should do is let me take you out. Show you some things. Take you some places.

I say, You asking me out for a date?

He say he was.

That’s when I had to bust him and tell him I knew he had a girlfriend. I reached over and swatted him upside his head. I say, I told you Miss Odetta done told your business.

Imani seen me swat June Bug and she started laughing.

He say, Don’t you be laughing at me, you crumb crusher.

I say, You leave my baby alone. Don’t you be calling her names.

June Bug say, I ain’t stutting your baby. She cute, though, like you.

I rolled my eyes. I mean really, he was rapping so weak.

He told me he did live with a woman and he had other women. He could get a woman whenever he wanted one. He say he could get them like that, and he snapped his fingers. Not just them female hypes that would do anything for a hit. He say they would even do it for kibbles and bits.

I say, Get out of here. They do it to you for some dog food?

He say kibbles and bits was little pieces of broke-up crack. Crumbs. He say he respected them. People think they hos. But they ain’t. He say they some of the most honest women he done ever met. They all about business. You got something they want, and they willing to pay for it. He say them other women he know is hos. Even the one he living with, because all they want is your money.

June Bug say, I know she living with me because I’m living where I’m living. Because I got me a Trooper.

He say, I want to take you out because you for real, Tasha. You honest.

I nodded. I say, I see, I’m honest. Like them hos who ain’t hos.

June Bug shook his head. He say, You for real, Tasha. Like that time when we kissed.

I say, I never kissed you! Lying. Lying like a dog. When I know good and well he kissed me in between our houses one night.

I was only eleven and that would’ve made June Bug fourteen. It was the Fourth of July, and Miss Odetta had took him up in Canada somewhere and got fireworks. Legal. All we had before they showed up was some caps we was popping with bricks, some firecrackers that was mostly duds, and some corny sparklers. June Bug had all kinds of bottle rockets, cherry bombs, and some big big firecrackers about as thick as your thumb. He had threw one of them big firecrackers between our houses. He thought it would sound louder going off there. But it ain’t go off.

I raced to get it, and he came right behind me. I can’t even say what we thinking. How we thought we was going to find it in the grass in the dark. We didn’t. It found us. That thing boomed like a cannon. I ain’t have time to scream. I grabbed hold of June Bug and he kissed me. Right on the mouth. Maybe he seen it in a movie or something. But I done been to the movies, too. So I slapped him. I say, Let me go. I just peed on myself.

When June Bug reminded me of what I’d told him, I had to laugh. I pulled a pillow up over my face and say, I never say that.

He say, Stop lying, Tasha. I liked that you say it. I can tell you, ain’t no other girl ever say nothing like that to me. He ask, You that honest with Peanut?

My heart started bamming all hard. I wanted to know what he knew about me and Peanut, but I wasn’t about to ask. I threw the pillow at him and say, Your time up, June Bug. Its four-thirty.

He say, All right. Cool. I say I was going to leave, and I am. You must still be some little girl if you messing with him, Tasha. Because he ain’t nothing but a boy.

I stood up, trying to give him a signal. But he sat there.

I say, You don’t know what Peanut is.

June Bug stood up then. He say, I do. I don’t even know him and I know what he is. Me and my partners got boys like him working for us. We buy and sell little niggers like him.

I sucked my teeth. Yeah, right, I say. Peanut too smart for something like that.

June Bug picked up the bag off the floor. Laughing. He say, Who got the money, girl? And, oh, by the way. June Bug opened the bag. This ain’t nothing but a prescription for my mama. Some allergy medicine. I ain’t want to leave it out. The hypes, you know.

I looked at the bottle. It was sealed. I say, You could’ve told me what was in it in the first place.

He say, You could’ve asked. You know you can trust me, girl. With your life. At the door, he say, Tell your mama hello for me.

I locked both doors behind him, knowing right then I wasn’t going to tell Mama he say nothing. She was off with Mitch. Mama be with him all the time now, and I don’t like it. But I don’t say nothing to Mama with my two lips about her and Mitch. If I do, she might slap me.

 

Mama sometimes say she going to slap me clear into the middle of next week, but most of the time she just be talking. Even when she beat me the day I had Imani. I didn’t go traveling through time. I stayed right there in the room with her.

The last time she slapped me was the week before she went to Toronto, and I can’t say I ain’t deserve it. I was running off at the mouth and showing her no respect. But Mama know she was wrong for what she had done. I found out she took Imani down to the welfare office. Miss Odetta the one slipped up and told it with her drunk self. It was late, and I wasn’t hardly paying neither one of them no mind. I was down on the floor, reading to Imani, when Miss Odetta ask Mama how it had went at the welfare office. Mama shushed her. But Miss Odetta was too drunk, or she just ain’t care. Maybe it was her way of making sure I knew. Miss Odetta ask, What your caseworker say? They going to keep you on because of Imani?

I was too through with Mama right then. I snatched up Imani and stomped up the steps. Mama had kept Imani two days that week. One day when it snowed bad and another when I was running late and Imani wasn’t helping things because she ain’t do nothing but cry from the time I got her up. Mama was all sweet to me. Had sugar all in her mouth. She say, Tasha, go on to school. Leave Imani here. She’ll be all right.

So I went on to school with no diaper bag, no stroller, no baby. Just my backpack. Anybody seeing me could think I was just some ordinary girl doing nothing but keeping one eye out for the bus and one eye out for the dealers. I was thinking that Mama was trying to help me, but she was really all the time planning. All the time using my baby.

Mama come up to my room soon as Miss Odetta left, and I accused her soon as she walked in the door. I screamed at her, You make me sick. Using my baby so you can keep on getting a check. What? You done told them welfare people Imani your child?

That’s when Mama slapped me. A pain shot through my teeth. She say, I don’t know who the hell you think you talking to. I brung you into this world. Don’t make me take you out of it.

It took all I had to make my voice regular, but I say real calm, Mama, what did you do? Mama sat down on the foot of my bed. I sat up at the head. I felt safer there, out of close reach of Mama.

She picked Imani up and say, In the first place, you should know better than to believe what Miss Odetta say. And in the second place, you ain’t got to put up with them welfare people. You ain’t got to look at them when they act like they don’t want to give you a check. When they act like you taking money out they own pocket.

I say, Mama, you should get a job then. I ain’t say it to be smart. And Mama ain’t take it like I was.

She ask, Doing what?

I told her I ain’t know what. I told her maybe she should go back to school. Get her G.E.D.

Mama say, Tasha, please. She was stroking Imani hair. She had combed it nice in neat cornrows. Mama looked off in the empty space between us and say, Tasha, I can’t even read.

I say, You can too read, Mama.

I know Mama don’t like to read. Whenever we get something like a microwave or VCR, she don’t never read the instructions. Only when she screw something up. Like when Mama put tin foil in the microwave Aunt Mavis give us for Christmas a few years back. Sparks was flying around in it like a science experiment gone crazy. Mama was screaming and I was screaming and we run out the kitchen as the glass in the door shattered. Mama rambled around in the junk drawer in the kitchen after that, and I read where it say in the instructions not to put foil in it.

Mama say, Goddamn it! Wouldn’t you think them motherfuckers would put something that important on the box it come in? We could’ve been killed.

Mama say, I can read like a little child. Like a retard.

I say, Don’t say that, Mama.

Mama started talking quiet. In a voice that was so sharp and so soft, it was cutting me and loving me all at the same time. She say, I never told you why I dropped out of school. Shame. Do you know what it’s like to feel shame like that? So much you can’t tell nobody? Not your mama. Not your sister. Not your friend. Nobody. What was I going to tell them? I was sick and tired of feeling stupid every goddamn day of my life. Feeling like I failed. Then I had you, and I ain’t feel like that no more. Finally, I had did something right.

Mama was crying by then. I started crying too. So did Imani. Like she even knew what she was crying for. We both moved to Imani at the same time. Pulling her close. Holding her between us. Keeping her between us. Where she should be. Not Mama on one side and her on the other.

I liked it being just us with no Mitch. He all the time be busting up in the middle of things. Coming in right where he don’t belong. Because he don’t belong at our house. On our couch sitting right next to Mama. Laying up in the bed with her. When Mitch come over and he be playing with Imani, wrestling with her on the rug like they in the WWF, getting her hair all fuzzy, I don’t say nothing. I don’t say nothing when she whine and want to follow after him and Mama. Go upstairs with them at night like they her mama and daddy. I let her go. Sometimes they take her. Sometimes they don’t. But I’m glad when they do. When Imani go and get in bed with them. Get right in the middle of them.

When Mama told me she was going to Toronto with Mitch, I ask, Don’t you want to take Imani with ya’ll?

Mama just laughed. She was all excited about her trip. She say she never been in a hotel before, only a motel. I ask Mama what was the difference, and she say it was money.

She say, You ain’t scared to stay in here by yourself, is you? Maybe I can get Odetta to stay with you.

I say all loud and anxious, Don’t do that!

Mama cut her eyes at me, and I thought she might be suspecting something. So I quick got control of myself and say, like I was calm and mature, I’m old enough to stay by myself for two days. Anyway, Imani going to be with me.

Mama say, And she the only one I want here with you. I’ll still get Odetta to stop in and check on you.

I ask, What she need to check on me for? She need to be watching her own house.

Mama cut her eyes at me again. She say, Odetta is going to check on you.

I know Mama meant what she say, but by the day she was leaving, packing a small suitcase she’d borrowed from Miss Odetta, I already had plans to be with Peanut. It wasn’t like I really even invited him. He invited his own self. I just called him the day before while Mama was at the beauty shop.

I almost backed out of the call even though Coco had done told me Peanut broke up with that mixed girl. I’d put off calling him, because I thought he know some dog had brung me some bone about him. I seen in Seventeen that you should be casual with a boy. If he know you chasing him, he going to run. Then I seen this other article from a different month that say ain’t nothing wrong with making the first move, ain’t nothing wrong with flirting. Just thinking about that advice, that clashed worse than stripes and plaids, made all the nerve drain out of me.

I let the phone ring once and was hanging it up when Peanut say, Who’s this?

I ain’t say nothing.

He say, Come on, now. I can hear you breathing.

Hearing his voice like that, soft in my ear, made words come to me. I say, Peanut, what kind of phone manners you got? Answering a phone like that. Ain’t your mama taught you nothing?

Peanut laughed. He knew it was me. So, Tasha, What’s up?

I say, Nothing. I was sweating back. Funky. I ain’t know what to really make conversation about, so I ask him about school.

He say he was only passing one of his classes.

I ask, What you passing?

He say, I ain’t saying, but I’m aceing one. There’s still a chance I can pass the year if I hit the books.

I say, Hit the books? If you was Mike Tyson, you couldn’t hit them hard enough to pass.

Peanut ask, You think so?

I say, I know so. We only got one marking period left. It’s obvious you ain’t passing math.

Peanut say, Girl, I need to hook up with you. You the one the brain. Maybe we can study.

I told Peanut Mama was going away on the weekend.

He say, Well, we can hook up then. I’ll come over and see you and Imani.

I say, Look, I want you to come see me.

I told Peanut about Miss Odetta keeping a watch on me. Peanut say, Don’t worry about her. He say he could come to me at night out the back and over the fence. I told him I’d call him after Miss Odetta done checked in on me.

When I got off the phone with him, I found my pack of birth control pills. It was a mess where I had missed and skipped and took them out of turn, so I took two that night and another one the next day to try to get things straight again. The ones left over I flushed down the toilet.

I couldn’t wait until Mama left for Toronto. Mitch was late picking her up and she was all packed and standing at the front door, peeping out the curtains, waiting for him. There was a look on her face like she was half worried that he wasn’t coming.

I was half worried about that too. All I could do was think about Peanut since I’d talked to him. I was sitting on the floor of the living room playing with a puzzle with Imani when Mitch finally pulled up.

Mama ran and sat on the couch to look like she was waiting patient, casual, and wasn’t even stutting him. When Mitch come in, he say he had to stop to get the car washed and oil changed. He say, We’ll bring you girls back something. He picked Imani up and kissed her. I cut my eyes at him and gave him a don’t-you-be-even-trying-to-kiss-me look. Mitch read it loud and clear. He patted me on the shoulder and say, Be good darlings. Mama say, You remember what I say.

Miss Odetta ain’t even come check on me that night. She called a little before nine. I had put Imani to sleep and had a bath. I called Peanut and he picked up on the first ring and he come to me all in the dark of the night. Even the house was dark, because I wanted Miss Odetta to think I had gone up to bed.

I couldn’t believe how quiet Peanut was when he come flying over the fence. He was like some animal. His feet hit the ground so quiet, you wouldn’t have thought he weighed no more than a cat when he done got big. Bigger than I ever thought he would be.

Some longness has pushed into his bones. He almost tall as me, and his shoulders and back have got thick with real muscles that I could feel hard and strong when I hugged him in the kitchen.

I don’t know when Peanut changed. When he started looking more like a man than a boy. It seemed sudden to me, but I know it happened a minute at a time. A day at a time. A night at a time while I was in love alone. Sitting in my bedroom with my light on. Cramming Latin in my head. Fighting the battles of the Trojan War. Solving all the problems in the algebraic world.

Peanut looked so good, I got shy with him. I couldn’t look right straight in his face. He ain’t have his books with him, and I was glad. I led him by the hand through the kitchen and into the living room, where we did it on the couch. Not all fast like he used to but a lot slower. A lot more like Peanut knew what he was doing. I held tight to him, smelling him all fresh like soap and deodorant while he kissed me. Feeling his long lashes tickling my face. His thin little mustache tickling my neck. We breathed every sound we wanted to make deep inside each other’s throats, and the house was so quiet I could hear him moving in and out of me. In and out. He stayed long enough for us to do it again and for us to have cold pizza and pop. I don’t know what time it was when Peanut got up to leave. He say he ain’t want to go, and I ain’t want him to. But he say he’d come back the next night.

 

Which he did. But later than the night before. Miss Odetta had come over that afternoon to see if me and Imani needed anything. I told her we didn’t, and she say she’d check on me when she come back from the store. It was almost ten, and she hadn’t come back. I’d already got Imani to sleep, and Peanut had already called, wanting to know if he could come over yet. At almost ten-thirty there was a knock at the front door. For once in my life, I was happy Miss Odetta was coming to my house, but when I opened the door I seen June Bug standing on the porch, smelling like he been drinking.

He say, Mama sent me to check on you. She got a terrible headache and can’t make it. Without being invited, June Bug stepped on inside. You ain’t got nobody up in here? he say, walking from the living room into the kitchen.

I followed right behind him. I say, It’s just me and Imani. She sleeping already.

He say, Maybe I should check on her.

I grabbed him by the arm and say, No, you don’t. You ain’t going upstairs. I don’t want you waking my baby.

He say, You know, you sure is growing up. Looking all good. When did you get this fine, girl?

I say, June Bug, you got to go.

He say, All right. I’m out handling my business right now, but we going to get together and talk sometime. I want to talk to you.

I say, Please, you ain’t got nothing to talk to me about.

June Bug car was out front of our house, and somebody was honking his horn. You going to be all right all alone? he asked.

I asked, Is your mama going to be all right all alone? June Bug laughed.

I closed the door and peeked out the curtains. The light come on in the car when June Bug opened the door. Look like he had five other guys with him. Dealers. June Bug got in and they sat there for a while. Then I heard this bass music so deep, it rattled the glass in the front door. I thought the music was coming from June Bug car. It wasn’t. It come from this car I seen gliding up the street, driving real slow, with no headlights on. I watched it pass like a ghost.

People been saying that’s a game these boys be playing if they want to get in a gang. They be driving around and sometimes they be at red lights waiting for you to flash them or honk at them for them to turn on they lights. If you do, they’ll wait for a green light and shoot at you when they go past. Even if they just riding down the street and you flash them, they’ll do it. I let the curtain fall aside and heard June Bug nem pull out fast, they tires squealing. I guess they was all late for work.

I went on and called Peanut, and I don’t know why my heart was beating all fast when June Bug was here today. If June Bug really knew something, he would know I ain’t no girl no more. Not because Mama say I grown, not because Imani made me grown. Peanut did.

I became a woman that last night he was over. Peanut just kept pushing in and out of me and each time he did, I breathed inside of him and he breathed inside of me and pushed harder. I let him. All the way deep until a sound rose from a place in me that Peanut could not hold inside his mouth. He tried to push it back down in my throat with his tongue. But it floated out into the quiet of the house. A low moan that hung in the air while Peanut kept on moving and I held on to him. I could see myself in his eyes. Peanut was smiling down at me, and when he finished, he whispered, You know what this mean, don’t you, Tasha?

No, I say.

Peanut say, Tonight, I made you woman.

I wasn’t ready for Peanut telling me that. I ask, For real?

He say, Yeah, for real. Don’t you feel like a woman?

I looked away from him, not saying nothing at first. He turned my face back to his, and I seen myself again. Right in the center of his eyes. I say, I do. But don’t tell nobody. Don’t tell.