by Sharon Flake
She wraps her arms around his neck. Whispers something in his ear. Then starts playing with his earring.
I wait on the second car and Odd Job takes care of the people who come out the third one. Everybody wants their stuff now. Nobody’s got exact change. A few of the grown-ups are complaining about the prices and trying to swing a deal with Odd Job. They wasting their breath. Odd Job don’t change his prices for nobody, ’cept maybe me and Momma.
Before we know anything, everybody is gone. Odd Job turns to Sato and asks what flavor water ice he wants. He gives him a giant-sized cup piled high with the rainbow-colored kind. I have to ask him for a refill.
He’s got his arm around Sato’s neck, telling him that he likes how he handles kids. Next thing I know he’s asking him if he wants a summer job.
Sato looks all happy. He says his mother told him he better find hisself a job. Odd Job gets his boys to bring over two sizzling hot chicken sandwiches. He hands me one and asks why I’m so quiet. I’m just thinking, that’s all, how nice it’s gonna be working with Sato all summer.
Odd Job’s pinching my nose. “Raspberry Swirl, what you grinning at, girl?”
“Nothing,” I say, licking my lips. Glad they ain’t too dry or ashy.
“Nothing,” Sato says, repeating after me, then winking, like he’s thinking the same thing.
Momma’s sitting in the kitchen with her wig hanging from her hand and her head down on the table. She don’t answer when I ask how she’s doing. I drop my backpack. Run over and ask what’s wrong. She lifts her head up and says she’s fine— just got another headache, is all. But her eyes are red. Puffy, too.
Fat, juicy sausages lie in a plate on top of the stove. Thick, white, sticky water oozes from under a boiling pot of covered rice. My words come out fast. “You sick? Need some aspirin?”
“Clean your room,” Momma says. “Zora and her dad will be here soon.”
My tongue feels as thick as the sausages. “You sure you okay?” I ask in a voice as soft as the butter melting beside the stove.
Momma takes the top off the rice and sprinkles a pinch of sugar in it. “He found us.”
Rice water bubbles up and runs over the sides of the pot. The fire jumps and sizzles.
I know who he is. Momma don’t even have to say his name.
“I opened the door, and there he was.”
I push my fingernails deep into my arm. “How come he just can’t leave us alone?”
Momma cuts the fire off. Comes over and holds me close. “Your father used to be somebody,” she says, clearing her throat. “When he walked down the street with that red hair and pretty smile, people stared. Wondered who that good-looking man was.”
I push her away. Run to my room and get my stash from underneath the faded blue linoleum rug. Quarters drop on the kitchen floor when I run back in there asking Momma if Daddy tried to get money off her.
She bends down and picks up the change. “Yeah, money. Always money.”
I follow her into the dining room, sit down at the table and spread my money out. Momma didn’t give him a dime. That’s what she tells me. She packed him seven sandwiches and a jar of Kool-Aid. Handed him some soap and a washcloth and told him he could wash up with the hose in the backyard.
“He’s just like Shiketa,” I say. “He ain’t gonna let us live in peace.”
Momma reaches for my face. “You look just like him.”
I turn away. Ask her not to say stuff like that.
“Don’t you remember the silly songs he made up? Him riding you on his back up and down the street?”
I cover my ears to keep her words out my head. But I’m thinking ’bout stuff, too. Like the time he picked me up early from school, and took me to the zoo to feed the bears, and eat blueberry cotton candy and taffy apples. I gave him sticky kisses. He ain’t wash ’em off all day long.
I pick up two pennies I dropped. “I’m not like him, am I?”
Momma’s eyes move all over my face. “No, not all that much,” she says walking into the living room. She picks up magazines and stacks ’em in a neat pile on the glass coffee table she hauled in from somebody else’s trash. I lay on the couch, turn over on my stomach and reach for a piece of purple stationery lying on the floor.
Dear Shiketa,
When I was your age, I went to school. I worked two jobs. I didn’t beat people up. My head hurts a lot now. And I’m trying not to hate you, but . . .
* * *
I drop the letter when Momma sits down on the couch. I ask her why she’s writing Shiketa all the time.
“It’s private.” That’s all she says, like I ain’t got the right to know. Then she takes the letter and walks out the room.
I kick pillows off the couch. Knock the magazines back on the floor. “You should hate her, for what she done.”
When she comes back, she hands me a glass of apple juice. Steps over the magazines, sits down and tells me that it helped her seeing Daddy today. “Made me see how good we got it, you and me.”
I look around the place. Check out the chipped yellow paint around the windows and the brown spot on the ceiling from where the roof leaked before we moved in.
“It ain’t much,” she says smiling, “but it’s clean and it’s ours, for now anyhow. And we not, we’re not gonna let anybody— not your daddy or Shiketa—chase us off. Not no more.”
Tears roll down my cheeks. “They never gonna leave us alone. And I get so mad about it that sometimes I could just . . .”
Momma’s finger is up to her lips. “Shhh. Sniff.”
I wipe the tears away. “What? Something stink?”
“Close your eyes and smell.”
I shut my eyes and breathe in. Something sweet and pretty fills my nose.
“Flowers. Our flowers,” she says, closing my eyes when I open ’em. Leaning my head on her shoulder like I’m a baby. “We can make something sweet and good out of all the mess around us. If we want.”
I sniff again. Ask Momma if that’s the lilac bush I smell or the roses we planted out back the other day. Momma says she ain’t sure. That we can go out back and see. But neither one of us moves. We sit for another half hour, holding each other.
I got my eyes closed, but my mind won’t keep still. I’m trying to figure out how come Momma’s writing letters to Shiketa, and what my father’s really up to. I don’t say none of this to Momma. I can see from the letters, she’s more upset than she’s letting on. Maybe scared too, of what she might do if she don’t act like everything is just fine and dandy.
Dr. Mitchell said Zora didn’t want to come to dinner. She had a headache and stayed at home with the housekeeper. “I think she just said that,” he says, kissing Momma when he comes in the house. “But I didn’t argue.”
Momma’s wig is back on her head, and her eyes are clear since she put drops in ’em. “Is Zora mad at us or something?” she asks Dr. Mitchell. “The last two times you came over she wasn’t with you.”
Dr. Mitchell looks at me. “You two fighting?” “Not me,” I say, washing my hands at the kitchen sink. Momma is over by the fridge with Dr. Mitchell, handing him lettuce and cucumbers to wash. Telling me to call Zora and at least say hi. I give her this fake smile. Say I’ll do it later.
“Now,” she says, handing me the dish towel. “Dinner’s still gonna be a while.”
Dr. Mitchell wants us to straighten things out. “Your mother and I aren’t going to stop seeing each other just because you two aren’t getting along.”
I tell them that maybe Zora’s scared to come over because of what happened the last time she was here. Her dad says that ain’t it. “It’s something between you and her. I know it. But she’s not saying. You neither, I see.”
They looking at me like I’m lying. Momma hands me the phone and says, “Call her.”
I wanna tell ’em you can’t make people be friends. They gotta want to. When I dial the phone and start walking to my bedroom, my hands begin to shake.
“Tal
k to her out here,” Momma says.
Dr. Mitchell rips the lettuce in two and tells Momma to stop being so nosy. “Let them work it out.”
“Zora?” I say, when she picks up the phone.
“What do you want?”
I want to hang up the phone. I don’t. “Your dad said for me to call.”
“What?”
I go outside and sit on the front steps, till I see Momma by the window trying to listen in. Then I come back inside and go to my room.
“They want us to make up.”
Zora’s quiet for a while. “Who?”
She knows who I’m talking about. She’s just trying to be smart. I tell her that too. She hangs up the phone. I call her right back.
“You stole my money,” she says, not even asking who’s on the phone first.
I lie. Tell her that it wasn’t me. “Maybe you lost it or something.”
I’m waiting for her to hang up again. Or call me a liar. She asks to talk to her dad. I go to my bedroom door, look at Dr. Mitchell in front of the TV watching baseball and cutting up tomatoes.
“Why?” I ask.
“Just put him on.”
I know I should give Zora back her money. But I’m not gonna. Anyhow, she don’t need it. She got everything. Too much, really. All I got is Momma. So I lay the phone on the bed and don’t pick it up for fifteen minutes. Zora’s gone by then.
When I hang the phone up in the kitchen Momma asks how things are between me and Zora. “You two friends again?”
“Yeah,” I say, heading outside to be with Dr. Mitchell. His car alarm went off and he went to check on things.
Dr. Mitchell’s on the steps looking at Miracle and some boys sitting in front of their place. He thinks they messed with his ride and made the alarm go off. He says he don’t want no trouble outta them every time he comes to visit. “Otherwise I might have to use my bat again,” he laughs.
He just came from the barbershop, so you can smell the lotion on his head. It’s sweeter than Momma’s flowers.
Momma’s at the window. She wants us to come inside and wash up before we eat. We stay put. Dr. Mitchell’s telling me about the time he lived in the PJ’s and got chased home by some boys who wanted his new sneakers. He’s moving his arms and legs like he’s running. “I only had those sneakers eight hours before they stole ’em right off my feet.”
Momma keeps bugging us. Saying the food’s gonna get cold. Dr. Mitchell stands up to go inside, then backtracks and goes down the steps. He wipes dried mud off Momma’s new Escort. It’s got 100,000 miles on it, but it’s better than what we had.
“You coming?” he asks, walking back up the steps. I’m right behind him. Thinking he smells just like my father did after he came from the barbershop on Saturdays. I reach for his hand. He holds tight to mine, and I pretend he’s my real dad, and he ain’t never gonna leave me.
We go to the kitchen to wash our hands, all three of us. Dr. Mitchell leans over and kisses Momma right where Shiketa hit her. “You look good to me,” he says, giving her a pinch.
“Eat up,” Momma says, passing the rice. I take two big spoonsful, then hand the bowl to Dr. Mitchell, and I don’t feel bad one little bit that Zora ain’t here with us.
Shiketa ain’t going to jail. The judge gave her six months in juvey and a year of community service. Shiketa got a bad attitude, so he wants her put away to teach her a lesson.
“Be glad you’re not headed to jail, young lady,” the judge says. “When you hit this woman in the head, you committed assault and battery.”
“That ain’t fair!” I say so loud even the judge hears me. “She should go to a real jail.”
The judge says for me to quiet down or get out.
Momma asks to speak. The judge is real nice to her. Tells her to take her time.
Shiketa’s whole family is here—dressed in suits and fancy dresses like they going to church. Miracle is over there too. Rolling her eyes at me every chance she gets.
“Well, Your Honor,” Momma says, rubbing her hands and squeezing her fingers while she talks. “Shiketa ain’t a bad girl. I mean, she isn’t a bad girl. She just doesn’t have any guidance.”
A woman in a peach pants suit jumps up and says that ain’t so. “Shiketa got plenty folks looking out for her. But she hardheaded. Wants to do what she wants to do.”
The judge hits the gavel on the desk. “Quiet.”
Momma clears her throat. Touches the spot where Shiketa hit her on the head. “Shiketa’s not bad, Your Honor. But how’d a seventeen-year-old get to live all by herself? Where’s she getting the money? Nobody’s answered that question yet.”
The judge looks over at Shiketa’s lawyer. He stands up and says Shiketa wouldn’t obey her mother’s rules, so she put her out. “Shiketa worked two jobs, Your Honor. At McDonald’s and a Laundromat near her apartment.”
The judge looks over at Shiketa’s mother. Asks her if she can handle Shiketa when she’s released from juvey.
“She can stay as long as she don’t act up like before,” her mother says, crossing her legs. “If she disobeys my rules, she gone.”
Momma keeps talking, saying Shiketa needs to go someplace else once she gets out of juvey. “Where she can learn to read better and get her G.E.D.”
“I can read,” Shiketa snaps. “So mind your own business.”
The judge slams the gavel down again. “You,” he says, pointing to Shiketa. “You do your six months and community service, and then I want you back here for placement in a group home.” He points to Shiketa’s social worker. “Have something in place. Don’t come back here with your hands empty.”
Momma sits down next to me. She holds my hand and says, “Maybe she’s gonna have a chance now.”
I don’t know. I think Momma just made things worse. Shiketa’s looking back at us and saying something we can’t hear. Miracle’s shaking her head, like she can’t believe what just happened.
When we get outside, Momma asks me if I wanna go for ice cream. I just wanna get away from here. Shiketa’s people are right behind us. I don’t want them starting nothing.
“Hey, you. Wait up.” It’s Shiketa’s mother. She got on shoes so tall and pointy, it looks like she could stab you with the heel or the toe. “What’s your name again?” she says, lighting up a cigarette right in Momma’s face.
“Mrs. Hill,” Momma says, fanning smoke away.
“Well, Miz Hill, my daughter was raised just right. I sent her to school with all my other kids. They graduated. Working now too. But Shiketa got a hard head. So naturally, hard times gonna follow somebody like that.”
Momma is not as tall as this woman. And even though Momma’s dressed real nice, her clothes look like rags next to hers.
“I wasn’t trying to say you didn’t raise Shiketa right.”
“Yes, you did,” one of Shiketa’s sisters says. “I heard you say it right in there. And you wrong too,” she says, playing with three little gold bracelets she’s wearing.
Momma starts to walk away. Then stops. She tells Shiketa’s mother that Shiketa’s only a child and she don’t need to have her own place and be paying her own way. She needs somebody to look after her. “To make sure she goes to school and does the right thing.”
The woman moves closer to Momma. “People like you get on my last nerve,” she says. “Thinking you can do better. Acting like you better too.”
I tell Momma to come on and let’s go. But before we do, Miracle walks over and gives us her two cents. “She like to play rich,” she says, pointing to Momma.
“Planting all them flowers. Sweeping up all the time and minding other folks’ business.”
Shiketa’s mother steps in front of Miracle and tells her to go someplace else. “You think you can do better by Shiketa?” she says holding a finger in Momma’s face. The one with the big diamond ring on it. “Take her. Let her come live with you once she does her time. Then we’ll see how much you know ’bout raising kids.”
I don�
�t move. Not even to look Momma’s way. ’Cause I’m so scared she gonna say, “Okay, when Shiketa gets out she can come live with us.”
“Well,” Momma says, taking her time talking. “If I had the room . . .”
Shiketa’s mom throws down her lit cigarette and stomps it. “See? Y’all kind always talking. But never do step up to the plate when the time comes.”
Momma turns around and heads down the steps. Stops. Walks back up to Shiketa’s mom and says, “She’s your child. Raise her, like I raised mine. And don’t be expecting me to do your job.”
Miracle’s mouth is hanging open. Shiketa’s sisters look like they wanna smack me and Momma. Her mother stands there saying that Momma ain’t nothing but talk.
We take off down the steps.
“They following us?” Momma says, pulling me by the hand.
I look back. “No. They still standing there.”
“Good,” she says, walking faster. “Let’s hurry up, ’fore they do.”
Momma and me went out to eat, so it was late when we got home from the trial. Miracle was sitting on our front steps by then. We had to ask her to give us room so we could get into our own place. I was mad. Momma, too. But she ain’t wanna start no trouble. So we went inside and stayed there.
By the time it was dark, our steps were almost full. Miracle and her friends was there acting up, celebrating ’cause Shiketa got off light, not having to go to county jail. The noise was so bad we couldn’t hear the TV unless we turned it up full blast.
“I’m calling the cops,” Momma says.
I beg her not to. “You do that, and somebody gonna hurt you again. Maybe worse this time.”
One o’clock in the morning we smell weed. Miracle’s still out front mouthing off. Drinking wine straight out a bottle and saying they should take all Momma’s stupid flowers and throw ’em into the street. “Then bust up that junk car she bought.”
Momma can’t sleep. Me neither. So one minute she’s in the kitchen looking for something good to eat. The next minute she’s cleaning. She’s already done all the woodwork and cleaned out the stove. I tell her we need to just go to bed. But that won’t make no sense, ’cause we not gonna be able to sleep nohow.
