by Janet Walker
Chapter Thirty-One
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
The sudden knock on the bedroom door startled Tracy and she yanked off the headphones, interrupting her escape into Sade’s music.
“Tracy! Unlock this damn doe!”
Tracy sprang from the bed. She reached the entry, twisted the knob’s lock, and pulled open the door. Diane Sullivan stood in the opening, forehead furrowed with displeasure, brown hair pulled back in a short ponytail. She wore a blue smock and dark slacks, the uniform for her job at the Haines Avenue Dry Cleaners. Tracy knew her mother worked from seven to four on Saturdays, but she hadn’t realized Diane had come home already.
“The hell you got the doe locked fuh?”
Tracy looked contrite. She had thought she and Charles were still in the apartment by themselves. Hence, the locked door.
“Run to Dray Harris and pick up sump’m for me,” Diane ordered.
Tracy’s stomach puckered with fear. Andre Harris was Area Place’s biggest drug dealer. He had always liked Mama, so whenever Mama and Charles broke up, Dray Harris was one of the men who called the house for Diane. He was also the one who occasionally sent, by Tracy’s hand, a small brown paper bag that contained the “sump’m” Diane now demanded. When Tracy was a child, she used to think the brown bags contained tea leaves. Now she knew it was marijuana. And a few years ago, the weed began to be accompanied by small soap-looking rocks in tiny plastic bags. She hated Mama for sending her to Dray Harris, and she hated Dray Harris for giving Mama crack.
But now she dreaded the trip to Dray’s for an added reason. Mama was asking her to go outside. And possibly run into Jinya Daggett! All week long, Tracy had rehearsed responses for this moment—had agonized over what to say when Mama asked her to run an errand this weekend. And today, while Mama was at work, Tracy’s stomach had cramped whenever she thought of the moment Diane Sullivan would come home and order the girl to the store. Well, it wasn’t the store, but the danger was the same. Tracy lay a hand on her belly and tried to look pitiful. “I don’t feel good,” she said.
“What? Yo stomach hurt?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When the last time you took a shit?”
“I…”
“Do that after you come back with my stuff.”
Diane spun away. Tracy stared at her mother’s back, paralyzed by the order.
“Um, I…”
Diane spun back, saw her daughter still standing in the doorway. “I don’t wanna hear no lip from you, Tracy! I just got off work and I’m tired! Now, take yo ass out there and git me my shit from Dray Harris!”
Tracy read the wild hardness in her mother’s green eyes, assessed the degree of tightness around the gray lips, and knew there was no way she would be able to get out of the assignment. Her eyes stung but she blinked back tears and responded obediently.
“Yes, ma’am.”
