Sweet Thang

by Allison Whittenberg

  I laughed. “You know what they say in church: take your time.”

  He took a breath. “Guess who's in the second grade?”

  “Tracy John Upshaw?” I gasped. Now I was short of breath.

  He nodded. “Second grade is so much better than first grade!”

  “They moved you already?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I'm in Basil's class. And Richard and Hughie are in the same class as me.”

  I cheered. “From your peewee league!”

  We hugged again.

  “The beginning of this year, I didn't have any friends, and I hated school. Now I have a lot of friends, and I'm on the football team.” His arms were stretched into the air. “Life is perfect. I love the world.”

  I shook my head. Look at that smile—nice even white teeth, not barbed as fangs. He was the cutest little thing in the world. He even asked me if I wanted some help.

  “No, I can finish this all by myself. You go tell Leo.”

  “Thanks, Maine.” He kissed me on my healing eyelid, then ran away.

  One day the following week, Ma was at work, Leo had tap, and Tracy John had peewee, so I had the whole place to myself. I could walk around naked, drink milk out of the carton, call Milliceht or Cissy and talk for hours. I ended up not doing anything special because I heard an unexpected knock on the door.

  “What are you two doing here?” asked.

  In the doorway, as Basil gave the reason, Tracy John was shivering. He sneezed twice. His warm brown eyes were glassy and watering. “Coach Albert sent him here. He said he was too sick to play,” Basil said.

  Basil ran to his dad's car, and they waved as I closed the door.

  “I missed it, Maine. I missed it. I missed the first practice with our gear on.”

  “There will be a lot more peewees, peewee.”

  I ran him a nice warm bath to stew in.

  “I don't understand. How did you get so sick so quickly?”

  He shrugged.

  “You were fine at breakfast.”

  He shrugged again and got into the bath. He didn't do his usual splash. No pep. No get-up-and-go. No zoom. Poor thing?

  As I was putting his helmet and his shoulder and thigh pads back in his closet, I felt a tug on my shirt.

  “I wonder what the team is up to right now,” he said. He had the towel wrapped around him like a cape.

  “Get back in the bathtub!” I screamed at him.

  He turned and ran back into the bathroom, leaving more soggy child-size-six footprints on the beige carpet. I went back toplacing his things in the hamper.

  I had only ten minutes more of peace.

  He yelled at me from the head of the stairs. “I'm done with my bath.”

  “Good,” I yel|ed back from the foot of the stairs.

  “What do you want me to do now?”

  “Get dressed in your pajamas. Do you need help?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, get into your jammies and get into bed. I'll be up there in a minute.”

  He coughed, then asked me, “What are you doing?”

  “Never mind that. Just do what I ask.”

  “You tell me what you're doing, Maine.”

  “I am fixing you some soup, Tracy John.”

  He ran back into the bathroom.

  I experienced a few more short moments of peace.

  “What's holding up the soup?” he asked. At least he was in his pajamas. That was progress. “What kind of soup is it?” He was standing on his tippy-toes, trying to look into the pot.

  “If you don't get back from the stove …,”I said.

  He didn't move.

  “Go away from the pot!” I raised my voice.

  He jumped back and tried to show me his fang face, but instead he lapsed into a coughing fit.

  “Why aren't you in bed resting?”

  “I can't rest.” He stomped his feet. “What kind of soup is it?” he asked.

  I took as deep cleansing breath before I answered, “Chicken.”

  “Chicken noodle or cream of chicken?”

  “neither. Chicken with rice,” I told him.

  “I want tomato.” He humphed and folded his arms. “When is Auntie going to be home?” he asked.

  “Same time as usual.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You ain't gonna call her so she can come home and take care of me ?”

  I patted his head. “You are in my care, sweet thang.”

  He ran away.

  I thought I was safe; then I heard the theme song to The Mew Griffin Show. I went into the living room.”

  “Tracy John, you're not going to stay in here. Go up to your room.”

  He coughed. “I want to watch TV”

  I stepped over to him. “I said go upstairs.”

  He sat back deeper in the sofa. “I don't want to.”

  I did my silent count to three and took a few more cleansing breaths. I smiled. “Oh, so now we're back on that again. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. I'm your sick friend who wants to watch Merv.”

  I scooped him up. I held him in one arm while I turned off the set with my free hand. I went to the stairs and took each step with great stamina and determination till I got to the top; then I made a right turn and went straight to that middle room.

  I set him on the bedspread, which had a brick pattern— brown and red bricks with white mortar oozing out.

  I pulled his big blue blanket from the closet shelf. I lifted him up again, then slid him under the covers.

  His little chin stuck out in shock. He hadn't known I was that strong. I was surprised myself; I had thought he'd be a lot heavier.

  Out his window, a squirrel was on the maple tree, flicking its tail.

  I held my pointer finger out to him and wagged it at him. “Now, stay where I put you.”

  At last, the soup was done. It was aromatic, and I was certain it would clear his sinuses. I put it on a tray and took it upstairs only to find him sound asleep. His wide lit-tie soft face seemed tranquil in dream.

  I shook my head and smiled. I turned and headed for the door.

  “Hey, where are you going with the soup?” he asked, peering through a squinting eye.

  • • •

  After Ma got home, I overheard Tracy John's praise of me. “Maine took good care of me. She fed me soup. I feel”—he coughed—one hundred percent better.”

  The next day, despite my TLC, Tracy John exhibited more cold symptoms, a redder nose, and a voice hoarser than Louis Armstrong's. Ma stayed home with him. In the afternoon, I came from school to find more complications.

  “Guess what? Auntie got fired,” Tracy John told me.

  I searched his face for a trace of mockery. There was none. His eyes were wide with sincerity.

  “Is it true?” I asked Ma.

  She nodded.

  “For missing one day?” I said.

  “I was out that other day too, when we went up to see Miss Mullins.”

  “So that's only two days, Ma,” I said.

  “A lot of businesses don't understand how it is to raise a child.”

  “They hung up on her,” Tracy John said while coughing and laughing.

  “That's the way it goes sometimes.” Ma shrugged, saying she would check on his soup.

  Tracy John looked at me and said, “Soup, soup, soup! That's all I get! I'm sick of it! I hate being sick!”

  I had learned to smile at his tirades. “Does it hurt to swallow?”

  “No, my stomach hurts,” he said.

  I grinned and gave him a soft pat on his tummy. “Mucus travels down there.”

  That made his penny eyes open wide. He asked, “What's mucus?”

  I leaned in close and put it in layman's terms. “Snot.”

  His full lips turned up at the corners. I'd known that would coax a smile out of him.

  “You'll be all better for your peewee tomorrow.”
/>
  “How do you know?”

  “Because I am the maharaja.”

  “You're the what, now?” He folded his arms, sitting up in bed.

  “The maharaja. All-seeing. All-knowing. All everything. Maha for short.”

  He tugged me. “Maha Maine, is Auntie going to get another job?”

  Actually, my crystal ball was a little fuzzy on that one.

  “Are we going to move to the poorhouse?”

  “Tracy John, we are not going to move to the poor-house.”

  “Is Uncle E going to turn himself in?”

  “What do you know about Uncle E?”

  “He's the reason we're broke, Maha Maine.”

  “We're not broke, Tracy John. We just temporarily don't have a lot of spare money.”

  “Is Santa Claus mad at us?” he asked.

  “No, Santa Claus is very understanding.”

  “So he's still going to get me the LEGO set.”

  “That's not the meaning of Christmas, Tracy John. The ifteaning of Christmas is Jesus's birthday,” I told him.

  “Then Santa's not getting me the LEGO set?” he asked.

  I grinned. “Daddy's working extra hours and Ma did save up some money from her job. We'll be all right.”

  After Ma brought the soup up to his room, I tried to feed it to him. He was resistant.

  “I can't taste anything,” he said. “And I missed the practice. I miss everything. Why couldn't I be sick last week when I was grounded?”

  I pointed at him, putting two fingers to his mouth, and then made the peace sign. I spooned out a portion of the soup and put it right up to his lips.

  “Open” I told him.

  He did.

  “Swalbw.”

  He did.

  “Good,” I said, and winked at him.

  He smiled at me.

  With things smoothed out between Tracy John and me, I felt definitely more focused—on Demetrius. My eyes were soft with affection for Demetrius McGee. I had him all to myself, right across from me at the kitchen table. He was wearing a pair of black slacks, creased and shiny, and a burgundy shirt. They were so in right then.

  Yet he seemed distracted. He always seemed just a little not there even before Tracy John came into the middle of the room.

  “Tracy John, what did I tell you about being a pest when I have company?”

  “All I wanted to do was say hi,” he said.

  “Hello,” I said, and spun him around, giving him a little slap on his bottom, much like a ranch hand did to a steer to get it to move.

  As soon as I got rid of him and went back to my Demetrius, Leo came in.

  “Will you go, Leo?”

  “This is not off-limits,” Leo argued. “I'm going to get a glass of milk, Maine.”

  “Get it quickly. And go.”

  “You need to calm down some,” Leo told me.

  “I'm sorry about all these interruptions,” I said to Demetrius. “Now, where were we?”

  “I want to do my paper on Martin Luther King.”

  “Great choice. There's so much on him. I even have a book by him. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Commutaty? I can lend—”

  He pushed the U.S. history book away. “Look, why don't you just write it up?” he ventured, and then added, “I trust you.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Just write the five pages.” His voice was full and confident.

  “You want me to write your term paper for you?” I asked in the hopes that I was guessing wrong.

  He touched my hand, lightly, softly. And the rest of me tingled. He winked at me. “What's the difference? You've done plenty of work for me.”

  “This is not homework, Demetrius. This is graded.”

  “So?” he asked, again moving closer to nie, his lips coming in for a landing on mine. I looked past him and saw Leo's and Tracy John's heads by the doorjamb.

  “Excuse me, Demetrius.” I stomped out to the living room.

  “Don't do it,” Leo pleaded.

  Tracy John tapped me. “Maha Maine, you can't keep cheating for Demetrius.”

  Leo raised his fist in the air. “Right on.”

  I shut my eyes. “I don't need the peanut and the tap dance kid pressuring me.”

  “Demetrius's the one pressuring you,” Leo said.

  I couldn't muster a response. They were right. I knew that. It was just that I saw my whole future with Demetrius. We would go to the same college. I had my heart set on Howard University, the Ivy League school of black colleges. On our graduation night, he'd propose to me. Our engagement would last a little under a year. Then I'd be Mrs. Charmaine Upshaw-McGee. Our first house would be a town house in the city. Society Hill, perhaps.

  “Why don't you do my homework too?” Tracy John asked.

  “He's right. You might as well,” Leo said. “How could you let yourself be used like this?”

  “Yeah, how?” Tracy John asked.

  “Enough, both of you.” My heart was palpitating, my armpits were sweating, my pupils were probably dilating. Any moment, I was going to need blood pressure medication. Relax. Rehx, Maine. “Tracy John and Leo, can I ask you a favor? Don't tell Ma or Daddy about this. Please. Pretty please.” I folded my hands in prayer.

  They both looked at me blankly, so I begged some more. I bowed and scraped.

  “We won't say anything.” Leo nudged Tracy John. “Will we, Tracy John?”

  Tracy John was still considering it.

  Leo pinched him; then he said okay.

  Over the next week, I did a lot of soul-searching. The homework that I'd done for Demetrius was bad enough, but writing someone's whole term paper and signing that person's name—Wasn't that, like, really illegal?

  Also, why hadn't Demetrius approached me with this earlier? Mr. Gowdy had given us this assignment way back in SeptembersBack then, I had chosen to do mine on faniiie Lou Hamer, and my final draft had been xlone for weeksc All I had to do was type it. Over the next few days, I had to cram in all this research for Demetrius's paper.

  I bit my lip as I typed. The first word was the hardest. Martin. There. Luther. King, I pecked, was a man to be honored.

  Charmaine Mae Upshaw is a woman to be dishonored, I thought.

  I typed quickly and accurately, making only two mistakes. Instead of whiting them out, I typed that page over again.

  Fannie Lou Haifter was harder to type. Her mantra, “I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired,” kept swimming through my mind.

  Martin Luther King and Fannie Lou Hamer. Two people who stood for honesty and justice. And there I was straight-outlying.

  Martin, Faniiie, sorry.

  In the end, I believed that writing two papers had been good for me. I had wanted a challenge.

  When Ma peeked in on me, I casually flipped over the cover sheet that had Demetrius McGee's name on it.

  She was full of chatter about how the eleven o'clock news was off and it was past my bedtime. But then she fixed me some chamomile tea and poured it into my favorite cup.

  • • •

  I finished typing and proofing both papers the following evening. I rang Demetrius to celebrate. I asked if he'd like to go to the movies or something. He told me he was too busy.

  On the Monday due date, I saw Demetrius talking to Dinah on the school steps.

  “Here.” I shoved the paper at him and walked away from them.

  “How else do you get someone like Demetrius to talk to you?” Dinah yelled after me.

  Humiliation glowed within me like fire, but I walked on. It was done now.

  Dinah ran up beside me with her swishy hair brushing against my forearm.

  “He's still seeing me, Charmaine,” she said.

  I stopped walking. My fists were balled.

  She backed up a few steps.

  “Maine, it's not worth it,” Millicent said, coming up to me and pulling me away. Cissy was with her.

  When Dinah saw that, she just got meaner. “Buckwheat.”


  “If the fact that we're dark bothers you, I'd just like to tell you, we'd like to be light,” Cissy screeched.

  Millicent frowned. “That's telling her.”

  Dinah laughed and walked away. “You're all a bunch of losers.”

  “It takes one to know one,” Millicent called after her.

  Cissy turned to me. “It doesn't surprise me that Dinah is still going out with him.… I mean, Demetrius is cute. He's really cute:”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked impatiently, perturbed. “I'm good enough for him. I'm better than her. He just doesn't know it.”

  What kind of fool did they think I was? I knew the score. If I could have taken back all my labor, I would have During fifth period, I had to listen to Mr. Gowdy sing the praises of Demetrius's (my) essay. He even asked him to present it in class the following day.

  Demetrius winked at me.

  • • •

  I went home dejected. Totally crestfallen. Tracy John was making out a pretend Christmas list and a real one.

  “Because Une is mad at Santa Claus and there is an oil crisis,” he explained.

  “Tracy John, what do you know about the oil crisis?”

  Tracy John looked at Leo, then said, “Jimmy Carter.”

  Leo gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Do you want to add anything to my pretend Christmas list?” he asked.

  “I know what Maine wants for Christmas-Demetrius,” Leo said.

  I growled at him. “Very funny: Put me dqwn for a camera.”

  Tracy John busily scribbled my request; then he showed it to me. “Is that how you spell ‘camera’?”

  “Very good.” I looked at his dream list, on which some thirty toys were enumerated, including that confounded LEGO set. “Your ma was a great photographer.”

  “What's that?” he asked, his brow furrowed with curiosity.

  “Someone who takes pictures. And, boy, do I have photographs to prove it.”

  “Photographs?”

  “Yes. Pictures.”

  “Pictures of what?”

  “The three of us.”

  “Me and you?” His penny-colored eyes sparkled.

  “And your mqmmy,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “All over the place. Center Gity. Fairmount Park. Down Fifty-second Street. We even went to the Main Line once.”

  “Where?” he asked again.

  “I'm telling you where.”