Sweet Thang

by Allison Whittenberg

  The maid/nanny brought the iced soft drink and put it on a felt pad.

  “You know everything,” he said coyly, and moved closer to me. “I was wondering if you might be able to do my homework and sign my name.”

  I moved away from him. “You want me to sign your name?”

  “Charmaine, please, it's just this little thing. It's just a paper or two. And the word problems in math.”

  “Eighteen sixty-five.”

  “What's that?”

  “The year slavery was abolished.”

  He rolled his eyes. Oh, come on, Charmaine.”

  “I'm supposed to just do your work for nothing, Demetrius?”

  “Who says there's nothing in it for you? I think this is a great way for us to spend more time together.”

  What kind of fool does he think I am? “You're going out with Dinah.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  “I see you every day with her.”

  “I'm not with her now. Please?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  He stroked my hand. The next part was straight from a daydream: he pulled me in close, I leaned my head back, and he kissed me on my lips. Yes! I thought. I looked around at the chaise, the wine rack, and the vase with the Chinese characters on it. “Do you use a middle initial?” I asked him.

  “No. Just write Demetrius McGee. Teachers don't know my handwriting yet.”

  Oh, Demetrius, I thought.

  “Oh, Demetrius,” I said.

  That evenings before doings his trig homework, I practiced writing his surname with mine: Chatnname Upshmv-McGee.

  • • •

  The following day, I had to watch Tracy John, but the day after that, I was free to deliver my work to Demetrhis's I awaited my new assignment.

  “You should have come yesterday; I had more work to give you. Doesn't your cousin ever go over a friend's house?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he has no friends.”

  “No friends? What's wrong with him?”.

  “Nothing. He only likes certain people. He likes Ma and Daddy. He likes Horace and Leo. The rest of us? inhabitants bf the earth can just go flush ourselves. I don't think he wants to meet anyone new,” I saidv mimicking the way Tracy John squinched his face.

  “Does he make that face when he meets new people?”

  “He makes a worse face,” I said, and squinched. We shared a moment. Me making faces. Him laughing. Oh, Demetrius.

  “He's very particular about the people he associates with;”

  The phone rang, and Demetrius took it in another room.

  I stood up, walked to the bookshelf, and copied down titles that struck me. I wrote down Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Millet and Gray's Anatomy. Then I looked up and found the answer to my problem. He was austere and talL He was striking, with high cheekbones and silky dark skin like Demetrius's. He looked far older than Tracy John, but I had a feeling he wasn't.

  “How old are you?” I advanced toward him.

  “Seven,” the boy said.

  I gripped his arm. “You're seven?”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  “I'm sorry,” I said, easing my grip on him. “Do you go to Wl B. Evans Elementary School?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your name?”

  “Basil.”

  “Basil, you have to do me a favor.”

  • • •

  I took a bright-clothes load down to the laundry section of the basement, hugging it to my chest. I was smiling and whistling as I worked.

  “What's wrong with you?” Leo asked.

  “I think I finally figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?”

  “Cousin Tracy John.”

  “Yeah?”

  I was grinning so much ? could feel my eyes pinching. “I'm going to kill him with kindness.”

  “Say what?” Leo's eyebrows flew up.

  I opened the lid on the washer. “Get this: I'm going to be so nice to Tracy John, it's going to blow his mind.”

  Leo seemed to lose interest.

  “Did you hear me, Leo?”

  He nodded and said, “That's what you should have been doing from the start.”

  • • •

  “Did you tell some boy to talk to” me?” Tracy John asked. His brow was furrowed.

  “What's the boy's name?” I asked, and put down the pencil that I was using to configure Demetrius's math problems.

  “Basil.” I turned toward him. He studied my face.

  “Basil, you say?” I asked.

  “Basil McGoo.”

  “McGee,” I corrected. “I did. Was he nice to you?”

  “He asked me over his house tomorrow.”

  “Did Ma say you could go?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you have a new friend.”

  He had no answer to that; he just ran away.

  “Yes!” I must have jumped three feet off the ground cheering;

  • • •

  The maid, who wore a severe expression, let me in. Did Demetrius's father treat her badly, or was she just a sourpuss? I guessed the latter. She showed me to the living room.

  I sat there drinking in the resplendence of that house. My house was cozy and traditional and warm, but this house was modern and minimalist. Stark furniture. Primary colors. Overhearing voices in the kitchen, I got up and saw my cousin and Basil at the breakfast bar playing a board game that involved dice.

  “Ain't Demetrius your brother?” Tracy John asked Basil.

  “No, he's my half brother,” Basil answered.

  “Half? Split in half?” Tracy John asked.

  “No, we have different mothers.”

  “And that makes y'all half ?”

  Basil nodded.

  “Maine likes your half brother.” Tracy John's voice was soft and insinuating.

  “I know,” Basil said. “A lot of girls do.”

  “What makes him so special?” Tracy John humphed.

  Since I didn't like the turn of the conversation,. I stepped from the shadows, saying, “Tracy John, it's time to go.”

  A few days later, Basil was over our house. Thankfully, they stayed outside and out of my way. They ran around the yard with a kite.

  I looked out ten minutes after they'd started playing, and they had unhappy faces, their plump lips turned down, and their chins propped in their hands.

  I went out to see what the problem was. They pointed at the tree. The kite was stuck on a limb that was six feet from the ground.

  I reached for it; it was one of those rare moments when I wished I was taller, if only a few centimeters. I stretched and stretched, saying to myself, I believe! can fly. I looked back at them; they stretched their short necks, looking up at me very hopefully. When I stopped, they looked dejected and disappointed.

  I went inside, and I came back outside carrying a prop.

  “That's Auntie's favorite chair,” Tracy John said.

  I patted him on the head. “So we don't tell her.” I told them both to brace the chair as I stepped onto it.

  I reached the kite and untangled it just as Tracy John took his hand off his side of the chair. I tumbled right onto Basil.

  Tracy John giggled.

  I got up from the ground, totally incensed. I went at him, trembling with fury. “Tracy John, you did that on purpose. I could have split my head open failing like that, you—you—”

  Only inches away from him, I remembered myself and my strategy. “You little dear thing, you,” I said, and pinched his cheek.

  After the maid/nanny came by for Basil, Tracy John came up to me with his hands on his hips, squaring off before me. “How come you're acting like this to me?” he demanded.

  I used my innocent voice. “Like what?”

  “Nice.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, inwardly grinning.

  “Yes, you
do!”

  “No, I don't.” This time I added a smile and called him sweet thang.

  At that, a look of horror swept over his face, and he ran from the room. I broke out laughing. I just broke out. He'd looked at me like I was some unidentified flying object. I loved messing with his little mind. My fiendish plot was working.

  “You're not going to get Demetrius. You're not gonna get anyone, as black as you are.”

  I knew the nasal, harping voice even before I looked up.

  “He belongs to me,” Dinah said.

  “Girls.” Our self-sustained silent reading teather clapped her hands.

  Dinah made like she was walking back to her desk, but then she added, “Besides, he doesn't like girls With flat chests.”

  Dinah was really talking out of her neck on that one. I Iradri't seen her together with Demetrius since I'd gone over to his house the first time. Nevertheless, Demetrius gave me few signs of intimacy. But he sure kept piling on the homework. The only thing he was doing himself was his Spanish, since I was studying French. Still, I got to sit next to him on the patio, sipping a cola that the maid had fetched.

  Demetrius sipped Mello Yello. “My dad likes you. He thinks you're wholesome.”

  “What do you think of me, Demetrius?” I asked.

  “You're pretty smart.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, that's about it.”

  I frowned and changed the subject, asking Demetrius about the Maryland license plate on his father's Japanese car.

  “We moved from Baltimore.”

  “Does your mother still live there?”

  “My mother died in a car accident when I was fourteen months old,” he told me.

  “I'm so sorry.” I took his hand. “Do you remember her?”

  “Not at all.”

  I thought, I hope Tracy John remembers Auntie Karyn.

  “He got remarried. Nurses shouldn't marry doctors.” He spoke as smoothly as he always did.

  “My auntie was a nurse,” I said.

  “He was only married a year or two. The judge awarded him custody.”

  “You went to court?” I cringed slightly. I'd thought that only white people went to court over their children.

  “Yeah, the judge thought it would be better if we stuck together.”

  “Well, that's good.”

  “I don't care,” he said, grinding his words, making them seem trivial.

  “Yes, you do,” I insisted. “Basil's your brother.”

  “Half brother, and no, I don't care. He should have stayed with his mother down in Baltimore. Dad doesn't have time for him. He wants to make head of surgery within the next few years.”

  “Still, what about you and Basil? Don't you ever sit with him and go over his homework?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I'm not his legal guardian.”

  I grinned. Who was I talking to? Demetrius didn't even want to do his own homework.

  • • •

  Ma was totally against peewee football. She said it was too rough and Tracy John was too little. Tracy John begged and begged and begged to be on the team like Basil was. It's a funny thing about even the most stringent parents; you ask them for something one hundred or so tittle and miraculously, they change their minds. Ma conceded that Tracy John could be in the club, but upon his first scratch, he'd be out.

  Practice took Tracy John away from me on a consistent basis. One rainy day, however, I found myself home wit;h him, and my patience was short. I was unused to him sitting; at the table and to having to get him things.

  “I want an apple,” he told me.

  After I had given him one, he said, “I like my apples sliced.”

  I took the apple to the counter and sliced it through the middle, then into quarters.

  I handed it to him. “There.”

  He bared his would-be fangs and raked his would-be claws at me. Then he ate the snack and told me, “You cut it toobig.”

  That sassy, confrontational monster. That turtle-necked, corduroy-pants-wearing, angel-faced little creep.

  “Why don't you stop being so fresh and hardheaded?” I asked him, but he'ci already run away.

  He came back a few moments later with a basketball.

  “Stop bouncing that,” I told him.

  “I'm not bouncing it. I'm trying to twirl it,” he said, trying to maneuver it with his pudgy fingers, but it kept falling on the tile. “Horace can do this real good.”

  “Why won't you do what I told you?” I took the ball from him. “I'm not going to chase you every five minutes.”

  He tried to take the ball back, but I held it out of his reach. Then I put it in the pantry. “You are so spoiled. You don't know the meaning of the word no. You make me so sick and annoyed.”

  “Then why don't you leave?” he asked me.

  I got right up in his face. “Why don't I—why don't i?” I stamped my foot. “You're the one who should go. They should have put you in the orphanage.” No sooner did I air those looming feelings of resentment than I wanted to take them back. He looked like he was going to cry. “Tracy John, I'm sor—” I began.

  Tracy John swung at me and connected with my left eye. My glasses went flying and landed in the sink.

  “Tracy John, I'm sorry. I am. I didn't mean to say that.”

  He was still mad and swinging. I held his arm still. His nostrik flared, and his face was ruddy.

  “Tracy …” I watched him stomp out of the room. My left eye didn't feel like mine.

  Some kids get whoopings with their pants down or with a strap or a hairbrush or a limb from a tree. When Daddy got home, Tracy John got a spanking. Daddy put Tracy John on his knee and gate him ritualistic whacks with his bare hands. He said, “Tracy John, we tried to fight our way from getting on those ships. Then, when we were on the ships, we fought to turn them aroiind. Then, when the ships docked, we fought so that we wouldn't have to get off. That is why the last thing we should ever do to each other is fight. We should love each other, damn it. Now, I didti't want to do that, but you haVe disappointed me.” His words made the house shake, but that was only part one.

  Part two involved me directly.

  Tracy John wore a scowl of puzzlement.

  “Is there something you want to say to Charmaine?” Daddy asked him.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. Then closed it. This was the same boy who had gone right into a boxing stance and jabbed out his right arm, connecting with its target, my face, just moments before.

  Tracy John fixed his face the same way he did when he was eating beets. “No,” he said. Then he said, “Yes.” His face squinched up more. “I-I-I guess I-I'm sorry I hit you, Charmaine.”

  “Tracy John—” I began, but he ran away before I had a chance to finish.

  “It was my fault, Daddy—”

  “Charmaine, I don't care what you said; that boy has got to learn to keep his hands to himself, especially with women. Besides, no child ever got brain damage from a swat on the rear end.” Daddy lifted the homemade ice pack (cubes wrapped in a washcloth) from my eye. “That boy's got a punch.”

  Who was he telling?

  • • •

  Later on that night, we heard a commotion on the stairs, and Leo and I sat up in bed.

  Tracy John was going downstairs, lugging a full-sized suitcase. He headed straight for the front door, set the bags down, then began struggling with the doorknob.

  Leo and I crouched by the stairs.

  “What's Tracy John doing?” Leo asked me.

  “What in the hell do you call yourself doing?” Daddy stood in front of Tracy John.

  “I'm running away from home,” Tracy John declared in his distinctive voice.

  “Honey, what are you talking about?” Ma asked him.

  “Tracy John, you are about to get your little butt cut. I'm hot gonna take any more foolishness out of you tonight,” Daddy said

  I ran downstairs, fearing that Dadd
y would take him over his knee again.

  When I got to the foot of the stairs, Ma was asking Tracy John, “Do you know what's out there ?”

  “Bonsall Avenue,” Tracy John answered quickly.

  “Give me that.” Ma took the bag from his hands said gave it to me.

  I took it back upstairs to his room and opened it. I realized why irwas so light. He didn't have anything practical in it, just a bar of soap, a towel, a football, and his piggy bank.

  “You're gonna get in that bed, and you are going to go to sleep. Do you understand me?” Daddy told him. His voice boomed from downstairs.

  As I put his piggy bank back on his dresser, Tracy John and Ma came upstairs. Tracy John said, “Don't touch my stuff.”

  Ma held him back. “She's just putting your things away,” she said.

  “I don't waht her in my room,” he said.

  “I'm leaving,” I said, exiting quickly.

  • • •

  The next day, I still felt terrible. During lunch I explained to Cissy and Millicent what had happened.

  “That poor little thing,” Millicent mourned.

  “You shouldn't have said that to him,” Cissy said.

  “Take a look at my black eye,” I told them.

  “Put yourself in his shoes,” Millicent said. “That little boy has had enough upheaval in his life.”

  “All everyone gives him is sympathy. What about me?” I asked.

  “What about you? What do you have against you?” Millicent asked.

  “I'm just perfect. Everything is well.”

  Millicent nodded. “That's just what I said.”

  • • •

  Sitting in maddeningly dry classes for the rest of the day was useless, like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. I held my eye, though it didn't hurt much anymore. This was nothing. I remembered one time I saw Auntie Karyn. Her bruises took on rainbow colors on the long bone of her jaw. A little blue. A little yellow. Auntie Karyn hadn't deserved what she had gotten. I wished she hadn't fallen for that man. If she hadn't, she would have still been alive. Strange, though—Tracy John wouldn't.

  The bell rang, and I went down the hall to another class and on and on as if on a conveyer belt.

  “I didn't know black people could get a black eye,” Dinah said, and nudged me.

  I was mad enough to grab her and throw her against the locker. Smash her head in, a few times. Rake her on the pavement. Throw her in a garbage truck. Then dust off my hands. But as my trance of anger lifted, I found she was down the hall. I couldn't get to her even if I was still inclined. That was the traffic pattern of rush hour, and between periods it was gridlock.