Indigo Summer

by Monica McKayhan

  She’s a drama queen, I thought, as I laced up my Air Force Ones.

  “Why don’t we just move Evelyn over to this side of town?” Pop tried to reason with her. “I’ve got a nice little piece of property just two blocks from here. It wouldn’t take much work to fix it up for your mother.”

  That’s what my pop did for living. Fixed up old houses and rented them out. Or sold them, whichever made him the most money. Since before I was born, he and my grandfather owned the same real estate investment company; the family business is what they called it. After Granddad passed away, my father inherited the family business, and talked of passing it on to me. Every chance he got, he was pressuring me about working with him, wanting to teach me the odds and ends of the business. He couldn’t wait for my graduation day, so I could start full-time the day after.

  The problem was, I wasn’t interested in selling or managing real estate. And the family business was definitely not my idea of a future. I had my master plan and I was going to college. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life than manage a bunch of run-down properties. That’s where Pop and I bumped heads. We each had a different plan for my future.

  Killer, my German Shepherd, plopped his huge body down next to me on the step, licking on my shoe, and trying to chew on my shoestrings until I smacked him.

  “Stop, dude!” I said and made a mental note to give his stinking behind a bath when I got home from school that day. I didn’t want Gloria fussing about the dog smell in the house again. My backpack at my feet, I removed my doo-rag and brushed my waves as I continued to listen to the Drama Queen plead her case to my father.

  “Rufus, you know Mama. She ain’t gonna move to Stone Mountain and leave her house. Not the house that her and Daddy shared all those years,” Gloria said. “And all her friends are right there in the neighborhood where she lives.”

  “I understand, Gloria.”

  That was all Pop said that day. But next thing I knew, a RE/MAX sign was stuck in the middle of our front yard. Our house sold a lot faster than Pop and Gloria had expected and the new owners were anxious to move in and wanted us out. Before I knew it, we were packing our stuff into boxes. The problem was, we had nowhere to go. She and Pop had looked at dozens of houses in the newer subdivisions of College Park, but Gloria couldn’t seem to settle on one that she liked. She had to have the perfect house, with custom-made cabinets, the master bedroom had to be a certain square footage, and it needed to have a certain number of windows. She actually would walk through each house counting windows. Wow!

  “Why don’t we just have a house built?” She finally made a suggestion.

  “But where do we go while our house is being built?” Pop asked.

  “We can move into one of your rental properties temporarily.”

  “That would be fine, Gloria, but the problem is, I don’t have any available on that side of town.”

  “Don’t you have any tenants who are behind on their rent?” I could just picture that wicked little smile of hers. “One who’s just begging to be evicted?”

  “They’re all a little slow paying, Gloria, but I work with them. Always have. They’re good working-class people who just fall behind from time to time. That’s all.”

  “What about that woman in the property on Madison Place? The one whose husband left her. You’ve given her more than enough time to get caught up. And now that her husband is gone, she struggles just to make the rent every month. It’s always late, and sometimes short,” she said. “That’s a cute little house too, and I love it so much, Rufus!”

  “That family has lived in that property for nearly fifteen years,” Pop said. “I wouldn’t feel right asking Barbara to leave. And she’s got those children…and…”

  “I thought you wanted me to be happy.” I would’ve bet my lunch money that Gloria’s lip was all poked out as she began pouting, and I could just see her rubbing her index finger across my father’s face. “You could put her in one of your smaller places. You could put her in that place just two blocks from here.”

  Pop’s demeanor softened. I could tell. He was falling under her spell.

  “I could talk to Barbara. See if she wants that old place. It’s a lot older than the one she lives in now, but I could fix it up for her,” Pop reasoned. “The rent over here would be a little cheaper than what she’s paying now. That way she wouldn’t be out on a limb every month. She’d have to uproot her kids and send them to another school, but…”

  “It’s better than being homeless,” Gloria added.

  “If I’m going to do it, I’d better do it before school starts again in the fall.”

  “Is that a yes?” Gloria asked my father.

  “I’ll call Barbara when I get to the office,” he said.

  Gloria always seemed to get her way no matter what.

  On moving day, I carefully placed all my CDs—50 Cent, T.I., Kanye West—into a cardboard box. Packed away my DVDs—Friday, Next Friday, Friday After Next, and some of my old Kung Fu movies—into the same box. And I couldn’t forget my all-time favorite DVD, Rush Hour, and every episode of The Dave Chappelle Show, which was packed in the same box. I didn’t want the movers packing my sacred items. I needed to pack them myself, to make sure they made it to the new place safely.

  I placed the box on the backseat of my ’92 Jeep Cherokee that I’d saved up for and bought with money that I had earned by working the drive-thru at Wendy’s. As 50 Cent’s “Just A Little Bit” blasted through my speakers, Killer took his place in the passenger’s seat of my Jeep, his head hanging out the window as I pulled out of the subdivision I grew up in…a place where I had chased the ice cream man down the street at full speed every day just to buy a red, white and blue bomb pop; the same neighborhood where I had my first kiss with Ashley Thomas right in between Mrs. Fisher’s house and the vacant house at the end of the block, the place where I was chased by Mr. Palmer’s Doberman every time I took the short cut through his yard, and where I fell out of the tree in Miss Booker’s front yard and broke my arm when I was nine; the same place where I pushed a lawn mower up and down the street and made money cutting lawns every summer since I was twelve, and where the entire neighborhood gathered for cookouts and block parties every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and on Labor Day.

  The neighborhood was all a kid like me had. That and Kim Porter, the girl who broke up with me the same day she found out that I was moving to the south side.

  “It’s too hard trying to go out with somebody at another school, Marcus,” she’d said.

  Then she said those four words that pierced my heart.

  “Let’s just be friends.”

  The words still rang in my head, long after they had lingered in the air. Let’s just be friends.

  My life as I knew it was over.

  Chapter 3

  Indigo

  My breasts had grown a little bit over the summer, even though I was still in the same A-sized cup, I could tell they were just a little bit bigger than they were at the beginning of the summer. I wore my pink low-cut top that I’d picked up at the mall on Saturday just to show them off a little, my low-cut Mudd jeans and pink, black and white FILAs.

  The first day of school was not the same without Jade. We’d made so many plans before she moved away. Times had gotten too hard for her mother and she decided that they should move in with Jade’s grandmother in New Jersey. Jade hated living there, too, because her grandmother was nothing like Nana. She was mean and stuffy, Jade told me, and she made them go to church three nights a week and on Sunday, too. She hoped it wouldn’t be long before her mama found them an apartment or something. She’d have to find a job first, and that was the hard part. Thank God for free nights and weekends, because I was able to call Jade every night after nine o’clock from my cell phone. And we talked all day on Saturdays and Sundays. That helped, although it still wasn’t the same as having her next door.

  On the first day of school, I was forced to walk to the bus stop
with Angie Cummings, who was literally “a nobody” on the face of the earth. She was a smart kid who made straight As and wore what looked like her Grandma Esther’s clothes to school. I was more of a B student, and sometimes C when I didn’t apply myself as much. I wanted to make good grades, but sometimes I just got caught up in other stuff and didn’t pay as much attention in class. For people like Angie, who didn’t have a life, straight As came much easier for them.

  Even though I’d known Angie since kindergarten, and we attended the same church, she wasn’t someone I hung out with. She was kind of weird and wore bifocals. But since she was going to the bus stop, and I was going at the same time, there was no harm in walking together, although she was the type of person that would ruin your reputation for life. And I’d worked too hard for my popularity. Outside of the cheerleaders, Jade and I were the most popular two girls at our middle school because we could dance so well.

  It was hard being popular, too, because people were always trying to be friends with me. And boys were always trying to talk to me, telling me how cute I am, and making comments about my body. Now that’s what really got on my nerves, the comments about my body. My body was the one thing that made me uncomfortable, because it was always changing. I knew how smart I was, knew I could dance, and I could beat everybody, even Nana, in a game of Monopoly. But when it came to my body, now that was a whole different story. My breasts were always changing, and I wasn’t built like a light pole anymore. There were bumps growing in some places, lumps in others, and my hips were filling out a little. Even my booty was coming full circle, and was more round than I remembered it being in the fifth grade. Now that was weird, but the weirdest thing of all came three years ago, sixth grade, right after recess was over one day on the playground. I remember it just like it happened yesterday.

  Miss Brown had blown her whistle to let us know that it was time to come inside. It was after lunch, and it was on a Friday. I remember because I was so excited that Nana Summer was coming for a visit that weekend, and I knew she’d be at my house by the time I got home from school. My stomach had been cramping for about three days, and when I told my mother about it, she gave me some Midol and asked, “You started your period, Indi?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, if you’re having cramps, it probably means that it’s coming soon.”

  “What’s it for, Mama?” I asked her, “I mean, why do women have periods?”

  “All women do, Indi. It’s just a part of life.” That was all my mother said, before she took me to the CVS drugstore and bought me sanitary products and told me how to use them. I could tell that she was just as uncomfortable talking about it as I was.

  So I left it alone, until that day on the playground when I felt a warm gush in my underpants and I took off running at full speed to the restroom. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life, and on the bus all the way home, my jean jacket tied around my waist, I felt like a freak or something. Thought all of my classmates were staring at me. As if they’d all known.

  I was so happy to see Nana standing in our kitchen when I got home. I grabbed her around the waist, and hugged her so tightly from behind.

  “Can we talk?” I whispered in her ear, as she stirred something on the stove. It smelled like spaghetti. “In my room?”

  “Sure, baby,” she said, turned the fire down underneath the pot and followed me to my bedroom. “What is it?”

  “Do I look different today?”

  “Different how?” she asked.

  “Do I look more grown-up than I did the last time you saw me.”

  “A little taller maybe. But I was just here at Christmastime, Indi. What’s this about?”

  “It came today,” I whispered. I didn’t want the rest of the world hearing, and certainly not my daddy if he was anywhere in the house. Surely she knew, just as everyone else probably did. Even Jade had seemed standoffish that day.

  “What came today?” Nana asked.

  “You know,” I said. “I started it.”

  “Indi, what on earth are you talking about?” Nana asked, feeling my forehead with her back hand. “Are you feeling okay, you look a little flush.”

  “I got my period today, Nana,” I whispered.

  “Oh, that’s what this is all about.” She laughed a little, as if this was funny. How could she laugh, when my insides were in turmoil? “Perfectly natural thing for a girl your age, Indi. We’ve all traveled this road before.”

  “What’s it all mean, Nana?”

  “Well, it means that you’re not a little girl anymore. You’re a young lady now. And you have to conduct yourself as such.”

  “It means I can’t play with my Barbies anymore?” I asked, already torn by the decision to continue to play with them or to pack them away in a cardboard box. Twelve was such an awkward age. You don’t know whether to play or act grown-up.

  “You can play with your Barbies as long as you want,” she said. “But you should also start thinking about other things, like helping your mama out around this house, cleaning up behind yourself a little more, making better grades in school. You need to be more responsible.”

  “Why do we have to have menstrual cycles, Nana? Does it have something to do with boys?”

  “Well, it means that now you can become pregnant,” Nana said, taking a seat on the edge of my bed and inviting me to sit down next to her. “Every month your body produces an egg which travels through what’s called your fallopian tubes, and on down to your uterus.” Nana drew a line with her fingertips to show me where my fallopian tubes began and where my uterus began. “In order to prepare for this egg, your uterus creates this thick lining to make a nice cushion for it.”

  “What’s the egg for?” I frowned.

  “The egg comes to connect with the sperm of a man in order to make a baby.” Nana wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s why it’s even more important now that you don’t fool around with boys.”

  “I hate boys anyway.”

  “You won’t always hate boys. In fact, you’ll grow to like them very much. And you’ll find yourself in situations where your hormones will get the best of you.”

  “What are hormones?”

  “That’s a whole other discussion. We’ll talk about that another time,” Nana said. “Now as I was saying, the purpose of the egg coming is to connect with the sperm. But the two should never connect until you’re married to the man of your dreams and you have both talked about starting a family. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “And until that time, every month, your body will still produce that old egg, and in anticipation for it, your uterus—” she drew a line with her fingertips again “—will always make this nice cushion for it. Think of it as a pincushion, like the one I use when I’m hemming your dresses.”

  “A pincushion?” I almost fell out laughing.

  “Yes, a pincushion.” Nana smiled. “And after a little while, when the uterus sees that it no longer needs the extra blood and tissue, that old pincushion will begin to dissolve itself.”

  “And that’s when my period comes?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Every month like clockwork. At least until you get to be my age.”

  “Your body doesn’t make pincushions anymore, Nana?”

  “It’s a whole lotta things my body don’t do anymore.” She laughed. “You just keep on living, child. You’ll see.”

  “I love you, Nana.”

  “I love you, too, baby.” She took my breath away when she hugged me. “Now come on in here and help me with dinner. But first I want you to get this room cleaned. And do it without your mama having to ask you to sometimes. Okay?”

  “Okay, Nana.”

  That day my Barbies had been packed into a cardboard box, never to surface again.

  “I heard Jade moved to New Jersey,” Angie said as we made our way to the bus stop.

  “Yep.” I tried to keep the conversation at a minimum j
ust in case someone was watching.

  “You talked to her?”

  “Every day.”

  “Does she like it there?”

  “No. She hates it,” I said. “Never wanted to move there in the first place.”

  “I know,” Angie said. “It’s a shame how they got put out like that.”

  “Put out?” I asked. “They didn’t get put out.”

  “Well, my mom works with the owner of the property’s wife, and I heard my mom talking to someone on the phone who said that Jade’s mama didn’t pay her rent on time and they got evicted.”

  “Well, that person your mom was talking to on the phone didn’t know what she was talking about,” I said. “Jade’s mama wanted to move to New Jersey.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Well, you should get your facts straight before you go spreading rumors.”

  “Okay,” Angie said, not wanting to get into confrontation. “You going to the Homecoming Dance?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “I don’t know. If somebody asks me, I might.”

  “That’s nice. I’ll probably be at home studying.” She snickered, as we approached the others at the bus stop.

  Angie just sort of vanished into a nonexistent state, and Bo Peterson started working on my nerves the minute I laid eyes on him.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Indigo Summer,” he said. “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “Why are you talking to me, Bo?”

  “Gonna be kinda lonely for you without Jade around,” he said. “Got you hanging out with the likes of Angie Cummings. Angie your new best friend?”

  “We’re not hanging out,” I said, my eyes glancing over at Angie, and then looking away. I wasn’t trying to hurt her feelings. “Shut up, Bo!”

  “You gon’ start dressing like her Grandma Esther, too?” he asked.

  All of his boys started laughing, and I just rolled my eyes. This was exactly why I told Nana that boys were stupid.