Fast Forward

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  So I cooked dinner, we ate and she cleaned up the kitchen. It was worth it to be sitting watching her clean everything up, plus I was actually learning how to cook. A few weeks ago she gave me an empty notebook to write down all my recipes. I also started writing down her recipes for life. I don’t know why. I guess it seemed like a good idea. And now I just kind of liked it. So I was just finished writing down how she told me to make pork chops when my cell rang. I answered even though I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Kenisha.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “This is Darien.”

  “Who?” I asked, having no idea who it was. I was just about to click off when he continued.

  “Don’t play with me, girl. You know who this is. I know you were waiting for me to call.”

  “Look, I don’t know who this is, and I know I didn’t give you my number. So please don’t call me again.” I closed my cell. I figured it was one of those stupid guys at school trying to be funny.

  “Problems?” my grandmom asked. I told her about what was going on at school and what happened after I left Freeman. I could see she was angry, but she still remained calm. “I’ll take care of it,” she affirmed.

  “Grandmom, don’t. Let me handle this. If I can’t, then I’ll let you know. But I can’t come running to you every time I have a problem. How am I supposed to be my own woman like that?”

  She walked over to me and smiled with kindness in her eyes now. “Know this, I’m always here to listen and to help. Never forget that.” I nodded. She walked out and went into the living room.

  I stayed in the kitchen a while. I glanced down at my cell trying to figure out who’d just called. But my thoughts were interrupted when my cell rang again. I knew the number. It was lawnmower guy. We talked for about an hour. He wasn’t coming home this weekend because he was still on line for the fraternity and schoolwork was getting harder. We talked about me at Penn Hall, but I didn’t tell him all that other stuff going on. I didn’t want him to worry. He already had a lot going on.

  It was late when we hung up. I’d gone upstairs and was sitting at my laptop playing online. Terrence sent me an instant message, so we started typing back and forth while. We signed off around one o’clock in the morning. Talking to him, then IM-ing was the perfect ending to my crazy day.

  Saturday, the next morning, my dad showed up early. I was still in my room when my grandmother called me down. “Good morning, Grandmom,” I said, having taken the back stairs directly to the pantry off the kitchen. “Hey, Dad, what are you doing here so early?” I asked.

  “Hey, baby girl,” he said, standing and kissing my forehead. “I have something for you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in the living room. I just got them in and thought you’d like one.”

  We walked into the living room and there were two identical boxes sitting on the coffee table. I immediately took them off and set them on the floor. In each box was a computer conference call system. “Get out, for me? Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. I bought five. I dropped two off to your friends Jalisa and Diamond. You are still friends this week, right?” He chuckled. I laughed and swatted at him. “I just wanted to make sure. So you go on and put it together. The instructions are easy enough. Enjoy.”

  “Wait, there are two of them. Who’s the other one for?”

  “You mentioned that you made a friend at Penn Hall.”

  “Oh, Cassie, right, okay.” I shrugged not even thinking about her. She was okay and we walked home from school every day and all, but she was acting strange lately, like she was jealous or something. She reminded me a lot of Chili, two-faced. There was no way I was giving her this. But I knew exactly who I was giving it to.

  “Listen, I gotta get to work.” I smirked. He must have seen my expression ’cause he called me on it. “I’m doing right,” he whispered as he kissed my forehead.

  “Thanks, Dad, for real, and before you ask, I’m on top of my studies at Penn Hall and at Hazelhurst. Jalisa and Diamond have been helping me out with the assignments.”

  “Good girl. I’ll talk to you next week. Stay out of trouble.”

  “I will.” I walked him to the front door and watched as he got to his car. That’s when it hit me. “Dad, wait,” I called out and ran to him. “Wait, you said you got five. Who’s the other one for?”

  “I thought you might want to chat with your sister. But your grandmother told me that Jade already had something like that. So I thought I’d keep one at the house, just in case you might want to see your old man or the boys.”

  “Good idea.” I hugged him hard, “Thanks, Dad.” I stood watching as he drove off. Then, coming from the opposite direction, I saw the same car from the guy last night in front of Ursula’s house. It was her brother. It hit me that he was the one who called me. Merde. How the hell did he get my cell phone number?

  He stopped the car, and Ursula hopped out. “Hey,” she said, closing the car door and walking over to me.

  “Hi,” I said, and then looked at her brother. He eyed me and nodded. I shrugged indifferently. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she said starting to walk toward my house like we were best friends or something. I walked with her. She was obviously pissed about something. “Sorry, he was getting on my nerves, and I was just tired of hearing his crap. I saw you standing there, so I told him I was going to hang out with you.”

  We walked up onto my front porch and stood looking down the street. His car was long gone, but we kind of looked anyway. “You don’t get along with your older brother?” I asked.

  “Half brother,” she noted emphatically. “We have the same mother, that’s all. He gets on my nerves. He just got back and already he’s into something. I told my mom, but she thinks the sun shines on his ass daily. They’re both a trip. I swear I can’t wait to go to college and get away from them.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said, sarcastically.

  “Tell me about it,” she said, equally sarcastic.

  “I think he called me last night.”

  “You gave him your phone number? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about hanging with him now,” she said, looking at me like I’d just killed a dozen puppies.

  “No, for real no. I don’t even know how he got my cell number. Nobody around here has it except Cassie.”

  “Then that’s how he got it.”

  “Cassie gave him my cell number? Why? For what?”

  “Probably ’cause he made her. He makes the girls around here do all kinds of things for him. He’s a serious straight-up user, and I’m not saying that ’cause I can’t stand his ass. For real, he’s bad.”

  “Well, when he called I had no idea who he was. I didn’t remember when he told me his name. So I kind of hung up on him.”

  Ursula burst out laughing. “Ohhh, I love it. You are a trip. I bet that’s the first time any girl ever hung up on his ass.” She continued laughing. I just smiled and looked down the street.

  “Kenisha, are you ready for breakfast?” my grandmother said as she opened the screen door to the front porch. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company.”

  “Grandmom, this is Ursula. She lives down the street.”

  “Hi, Mrs. King,” Ursula said.

  “Good morning, dear. Would you like to join us for breakfast?”

  “Um, uh-huh, yeah,” Ursula said, quickly.

  “Um, uh-huh, yeah?” my grandmother repeated sternly.

  I was so embarrassed. “Grandmom, she means…”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her mouth, Kenisha. I’m sure Ursula can speak for herself. Ursula, in this house we speak properly. Yeah, uh-uh, dis, dat and de odder won’t work.”

  “Yes, Mrs. King,” Ursula said smiling, immediately changing her tone and straightening up.

  “You girls come on in, wash your hands and set the table.”

  We followed my grandmother back into the house. “How did you know my grandmother’
s name was King?” I whispered.

  “Girl, everybody knows your grandmother. She’s been living around here since the dawn of time.” We started laughing.

  After we set the table, we sat down, said grace and ate. Breakfast was good, as usual. Ursula ate like she’d never had food before. It was a good thing my grandmother cooks like crazy ’cause she had like three servings. Ursula and I cleaned up the kitchen then sat around talking. We talked about school and our classes and the teachers. We talked about the different places we hang out including the pizza place around the corner from Freeman.

  “So how long you been dancing?” she asked.

  “Since I was four years old.”

  We talked about my sister and Ty, then after a while she told me about her family. Her mother worked two jobs and was never home, and her father was in prison. She usually cooked, cleaned and took care of herself and the house. She mentioned her brother and how his being at the house was hell for her.

  “Where does he go when he’s not at your house?” I asked.

  “He stays with his dad most of the time.

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s seventeen. We were born fifteen months apart.”

  “I’ll be seventeen the beginning of summer.”

  “Does he go to Penn Hall, too?”

  “Nah. He dropped out of school a year ago. He’s supposed to go back to get his GED like he promised my mom, but he’s not doing anything about it. Typical.”

  “Where’s his dad?”

  “He lives in Maryland. His dad used to be a Redskins football player. That’s how my mom met him. She was hanging out, and they had a thing for a while. But it didn’t last. She said he was nothing but trouble. But if you ask me, that’s all Darien is—trouble. He just got his ankle bracelet off.”

  “He had an ankle bracelet, like for house arrest?” I asked. She nodded. I shook my head. I never actually heard of anybody having house arrest before. As tough as LaVon pretended to be, he was nowhere near getting in that much trouble.

  We talked about families some more, but I wasn’t in the mood to share so she did most of the talking. It was like she was waiting for someone to come along to hear her drama. I felt like I should have a bust of Freud sitting over my shoulder like Tubbs.

  When it was almost lunch, we went outside and sat on the front porch. We were talking about music we liked when Darien drove by in his car. “That’s a nice car,” I said.

  “His dad gave it to him for getting off house arrest.”

  “What?”

  “Girl, please, you don’t know the half of it. He gets everything he wants. All he has to do is ask his bank. I’m not jealous or anything, but I’m just saying that’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, it is kind of wrong,” I said. “So why was he on house arrest?”

  “Who knows? Whatever, I know that he went to youth detention a few years back for stabbing somebody,” she said. I immediately thought about Terrence. He was in youth detention, too. “He got out and went back in almost immediately. After that he just kept getting in trouble.”

  “Typical bad boy.”

  “Drama is more like it. But I’m just warning you up front. I did the same thing for the others, but don’t nobody be listening to me.” Her cell phone rang just as she was about to say something more. She answered.

  She talked a few minutes then agreed to something. As soon as she closed her cell, her brother drove up. “You gotta go?”

  “Yeah, he’s picking my mom up from work, but he doesn’t know how to get there. I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay, see ya,” I said. When she left I started thinking about her brother. He was cute and all, but he was too far out of my league. I never met anyone who got into so much trouble.

  I spent the rest of the day chillin’ not feeling like doing any homework. I hung out in the garden with my grandmother until late then stayed in my room installing the new software in the computer. Sometime after dinner my cell rang, it was that number again. I answered. “Hello.”

  “Yeah, you know me now, right?”

  “Hi,” I said, not particularly impressed that he called me again, although he did have a nice voice. To hear him talk, you wouldn’t think he was all drama, but apparently he was.

  I asked him about his bracelet, and he told me that he got it by getting into a fight. I told him that that’s what got me kicked out of private school.

  “I didn’t think you were from around here,” he said.

  “Virginia isn’t on the other side of the universe.” He laughed. I smiled. It was a nice laugh. I wondered if everything Ursula told me about him was true. She did sound kind of jealous. I mean his dad had all this money and he was living large and all, kinda like I was before.

  “So what about your dad?” he asked.

  “He played professional football then retired and opened a computer company. He’s all right.”

  “For real, my dad played football, too. They probably played against each other. That’s tight.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said cautiously.

  “That’s tight. I never met anyone who was kinda like me. I mean our dads and all. It’s kinda nice,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “About what, knowing somebody whose dad played football?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I knew what he wanted to hear, but I wasn’t ready to reach that conclusion. Yeah, we had a lot in common on the surface, but he was still too far over the top for me. “It’s a’ight, I guess.”

  “You playing now,” he joked, “so why don’t we hang out?”

  “Probably not a good idea,” I said, knowing for damn sure that it was a really, really bad idea. But I was still tempted. He really seemed nice, and we did have that thing with our dads in common.

  “Why not?”

  “Aren’t you seeing somebody, like Sierra?”

  “Nah, she still all up in my face though, but she over. She just won’t let go. For real, she’s too erratic for me. I’m tired of her drama. I’m looking for somebody sweet. You know anybody like that?”

  “Not really,” I said, trying not to giggle, but it slipped out anyway. He laughed, too.

  “A’ight, a’ight, so think about it,” he said.

  “Yeah, okay, I gotta go.”

  As soon as I hung up, I took a deep breath. I had no idea what I was doing. But talking with Darien was fun. He kinda understood me, and he listened. Maybe talking to him was okay. Maybe he wasn’t all that much trouble.

  eleven

  Holdin’ On

  “An open scab takes forever to heal, especially when you pick at it. The more you pick the uglier it gets. I thought it would be cathartic to believe that all good things come to those who wait. Naive much? My bad.”

  —MySpace.com

  Another day behind me, I marked it off on my computer calendar. I checked everything I needed to get done this week. I messed up by not doing a reading assignment and trig worksheet over the weekend. But I figured I could catch up quickly enough. The thing was not to fall too far behind.

  All in all the weekend was good. After hanging out with Ursula then talking with Darien on Saturday, and then going to church on Sunday, I finished uploading my conference call software to my laptop. It was working perfectly. The first thing I did was call my girls to make sure that they were on board. They were. So using the laptop, I talked face-to-face with Jalisa and Diamond. We had a great time. With the split screen, it was like they were right there in my room with me.

  I tried to get in touch with Jade, but she wasn’t around all weekend, so I left her a message with my code so that she could give me a call. I also text-messaged Terrence. I knew he was busy with his classes, plus being online was probably really tough, so I figured I’d hear from him in a few days. My grandmother was right. There was no need worrying about what he was doing or with whom. There wasn’t anything I could really do about it anyway. Besides, I trusted him.

  So now I’m sitting in
class pretending to pay attention. The class had just finished the Crucible and they were discussing current ramifications of a totalitarian society. I was busy doing my trig worksheet.

  “Ms. Lewis, do you want to weigh in on this discussion, or is this class boring you today?”

  Hearing my name called, I looked up. Merde, I got caught. Again. “Huh, what was the comment?” I asked, as a couple of students in the class turned around to look at me as others laughed.

  The teacher, at the front of the classroom, was looking directly at me. He crossed his arms over his chest then leaned back against his desk. “Would you please pass that paper up front to me now?”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. Merde. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get another worksheet. I could. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t duplicate my answers. That wasn’t a problem. It’s that this wasn’t the first, second, third or fourth time I’d gotten caught doing Hazelhurst work in this class. Reluctantly, I passed my trig assignment to the front of the class. The teacher took it, read a few of the calculations then frowned at me. “Trigonometry. Do you have this class?”

  “No, it’s just something I do,” I said coolly.

  “You systematically work college-level complex calculations for fun? Just something you do?” he asked. Now all the students were looking at me like I had three heads. There was no real answer to the question, so I decided to let him have this round. I shrugged.

  “Trigonometry is a very difficult subject, and you find it fun? What is it, like Sudoku for you?” he asked, then glanced down at the worksheet again.

  I could tell he was trying to figure out something, maybe one of the problems. I smirked. I could also see he was stumped. “Yeah, sometimes,” I said. Some of the students snickered and laughed. He looked around then back at me. “Since this class is obviously boring and you find trig a more stimulating distraction, why don’t you spend the rest of the class time in ISD.”

  Finally, a break. In-school-detention was exactly what I needed to catch up on my Hazelhurst reading assignment. I got my note and went to the ISD room. As soon as I walked in, I smiled. Ursula was sitting in the back of the room.