I tell him, “Kiss the other one.”
He does.
“Walter, why have you never invited me over to your house?”
“What?”
“Why have you never invited me over to your house? You live three blocks away, and I have never chilled over your place.”
“’Cause it’s just an apartment. We ain’t got space like this. It would be me, you, and my mama sitting up on the couch looking at a thirty-two-inch and not a flat screen. How fly is that?”
“You had Carlos over for dinner.”
“He’s a dude. That’s different.”
“Why?”
“’Cause, I don’t care what he thinks.”
“You care what I think?”
“Yeah, I care a lot about what you think.” He kisses my toe again. “See, one day I’m going to ask you to marry me, and all I want in your mind is good and very fly thoughts. I don’t ever want you to see me with less or not up to par. See, when I ask you to marry me, you got to think of me as a good provider, somebody you can depend on. That means you can only see me with my best foot forward.
“Think about this. Have you ever asked me for something I haven’t been able to give? Don’t I always give you more than you expect? If you ask for one pair of Nikes, I get you two. That’s how I want it to always be. When I get rich, I’ma come get you, and we gonna make babies and live in a big house with a big backyard. Watch and see. Yeah, I know you don’t think it’s going to happen, but it is. God told me when I first met you that you was my wife.”
“God told you?”
“Yeah, and he told me you don’t know it yet, but you will.”
“Boy, it’s time for you to go.”
I pull my feet from his lap and head straight upstairs. I was thinking about letting him suck my breast until he said, “God,” which made me think about my grandma. He talked himself out of a little fun.
I’m holding the kitchen door open for him. When he walks by me, he hands me a little black box and stands in front of me while I open it.
“Oh!” It’s a pair of diamond earrings, and not tiny chips, either. “Are they real?”
“Yeah, they real. I ain’t gonna never give you nothing fake.” He walks right past me and doesn’t even try to kiss me. “See you later, wifey.”
Chapter Eleven
Sunday morning, I wake to Edith talking on her phone in my room. I sit up in my bed and say, “Hey.”
She holds up a finger to silence me in my own room. “I can imagine, Elder Wright. Of course, she is upset, and I will have an answer for you before service today. Yes, this morning. I am with his best friend. Yes, I understand, sir, and I will make sure they understand. Discretion is key. Yes, sir. Good-bye, sir.”
She sits on the foot of my bed. “Oh wee, you are not going to believe this,” she says looking up at me with eyes wide and two-year-old bright.
“What I don’t believe is you barging into my room on the phone like you pay rent here and waking me up. What’s up with all that?”
Her eyes remain wide and her face excited. “You know Kashia, right?”
“The pom-pom girl at Calumet?”
“Yes. She is Elder Wright’s daughter.”
“Okay, so?”
“She was pregnant, and she had an abortion. No one knew until her little sister found all the bloody pads wrapped and hidden in the garage. I guess Kashia was scared to throw them away. Anyway, one thing led to another, and she confessed to everything, and she even told who the father was.”
“Wow,” I say.
But Edith is looking at me hard, like I am not understanding something.
Oh, no.
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Not.”
“Yes, the one and only, Carlos.”
Oh, shit, dang. I stand up from the bed.
“Wait, I haven’t gotten to the good part yet, girl. Elder Wright feels that it was unfair for Kashia to have aborted the baby without the father’s involvement. He wants to meet with Carlos and his mother today after church service in the pastor’s office. The pastor, Elder Wright, his wife, Kashia, Ms. Carol, and Carlos are all to gather and discuss what happened.”
Why is she here spreading all this bad news? “What does any of this have to do with me? Why are you here?”
She is smiling a real big smile. “You are Carlos’s best friend, and Ms. Carol loves you like a daughter. If anybody can get them to come to Pastor’s office, it’s you.”
“Ha!” I laugh out loud. I look over to my clock. It reads SUNDAY, 7:05. “A person would have to be more than Ms. Carol’s daughter to wake her at seven on a Sunday, and you know this, Edith. And, believe me, this is not the best time to go over to their house talking about another baby.”
“Another baby?” Now she stands.
Dang.
“What do you mean, May?” She walks toward me.
“Girl, what time did you get up to be dressed for church already? And that is such a pretty purple suit. It matches your coat and hat. I remember when you bought the coat, but when did you get the suit? You know we haven’t been shopping together since they transferred me out of Calumet.”
Edith holds up her hand like a traffic cop. “May, stop. I don’t care about the other baby. Are you going to help me with the Kashia problem or not? This is the Lord’s work I am doing this morning.”
Her big smile is gone, and her eyes have thinned. She has her serious not playing look on her face, and since it is Sunday, and since it’s the Lord’s work I say, “Okay, I will call Carlos and see what he says.”
The left side of her mouth lifts up a little in a smile. She is getting her way, and she knows it. I pull my phone from the tangled sheets and comforter, and I dial Carlos’s number.
He answers on the first ring and sounds wide awake. “What’s up, May?”
“You up?”
“Been up for a minute. This girl Kashia keeps calling my phone and hanging up, and when I call her back, she hangs up. Stupid!”
“Not as stupid as you think. She has an issue with you.”
“I know, but that was a minute ago, before I got kicked out of Calumet. We used to kick it pretty good and, check this out, she broke up with me, so I don’t know why she’s tripping now.”
“She aborted your baby.”
“What?”
“Yeah, her people found out, and they want to talk to you.”
“What?”
“Yep. Edith is over right now asking me to get in touch with you because Kashia’s folks want to meet with you and Ms. Carol today at their church.”
“What? My mama? That just ain’t gonna happen, not right now. I could not even fix my mouth to say something like that to her. Nope, nope, and hell nope!”
“You might want to think about that a little more because I think this Elder dude will probably come over to your house with the drama. You better tell your mother before he does.”
“Damn, man, she’s already trippin.’ If I add this to the mix, she will snap for sure. There’s got to be another way. What time do they want to meet?”
“After church, probably like one-fifteen. The church is on Sixty-seventh and Halsted. They want to meet in the pastor’s office.”
Mama and me had gone to church with Edith twice: once to see her get baptized, and on a friends and family day. The pastor was young and kinda cute, but the church smelled like it had flooded, a lot.
“You gonna come on over here and help me with my mama?”
“What? How is that? I can’t move your mouth for you.”
“You know what I’m saying, May.”
And I do. “Okay, give me a half hour.” I click the phone off.
“You are going to be blessed for this, May,” Edith says with a full smile on her face.
“Oh, you’re going to be too. The blessings are just going to be spread all around.”
The smile relaxes from her face.
* * *
“I feel li
ke a Jehovah’s Witness standing on the porch this early in the morning doing the Lord’s work,” I say while pressing Ms. Carol’s doorbell.
“You better be careful, May. That’s real close to blasphemy.”
“Well, I do feel that way. I just need a church lady hat like yours to match my white coat.”
“This is not a church lady hat. Your mother gave me this hat last winter.”
“I stand corrected.”
We hear, “Boy, have you lost your damn mind? Who do you think you are, Bob Marley? Are you trying to populate the whole South Side? What, do you stick your little prick in a girl every time it gets hard? You are seventeen! Seventeen-year-olds don’t get two women pregnant. Answer the damn door before I slap that dumb look off of your face.”
When he opens the door, he’s smiling. No, grinning.
He whispers, “She’s fussing instead of crying.”
And I understand. A mother being mad is better than her being hurt. It hurts to hurt your mama. A mad mama is better than a hurt mama.
“Oh, you called your help this morning. You should have called them before you went around sticking your prick in any receptacle.”
I think about the girl he did it to on the beach, the one with the stretched-out pussycat, and I think about the bowl of warm oatmeal. I shake my head clearing the thoughts.
Their house does not have a vestibule. When you walk in the front door, you are in the living room. Ms. Carol is sitting on her pink leather couch in her black satin pants pajamas smoking a cigarette with her ponytail hanging across her shoulder and down to her lap.
She exhales smoke and says, “Y’all ain’t got nothing better to do with your Sunday mornings than get involved in Carlos’s mess.” She looks at us, shaking her head no. “I ain’t going. The baby’s been aborted. What else is there to talk about? May, you go as my proxy. I got enough to worry about with the baby that’s coming. That girl and her parents are all I can handle right now.” She puts the cigarette out in a white marble ashtray on the gray marble coffee table. “I don’t need to meet another pregnant girl’s parents. That’s it. I ain’t going.”
She stands and leaves the three of us standing in the living room. “Stupid motherfucker!” she says slamming her bedroom door.
“Okay, I guess we know where Ms. Carol stands.”
“Yeah, there is no confusion about that,” I say.
“I’m not going either,” Carlos says.
“What?” Edith asks.
“Mama’s right. It’s over.”
“But Elder Wright and Pastor are expecting you both.”
“Hey, they are more than welcome to come over and talk to my mama if they want to, but I am not about to sit up in a preacher’s office and be lectured. Mama knows now. The hard part is over. Besides, what’s going on between Kashia and her parents is between them.”
“But you got her pregnant,” I say.
“No, that’s not certain. We fucked. She dumped me. She got pregnant, and had an abortion, and then screamed my name. That girl hasn’t called me in over three months. All of a sudden last night and this morning she’s blowing up my phone. Whatever is going on with Kashia is between her and her people, not me.”
“You serious?” I ask him.
“Dead serious,” he says with no hint of play in his voice.
I kind of want to be on Kashia’s side a little, her being a girl and all, but Carlos has a point. She has been quiet a long time.
“Okay.” Edith flips open her phone and dials. “Hello, Elder Wright. Carlos and his mother have declined the conference. No, sir, they are both quite adamant about not attending. Thank you, sir, and I will tell him.”
She clicks off the phone and looks at Carlos and says, “He told me to tell you”—she pauses, takes a breath, and smiles—“he said, ‘peace be with you.’”
Edith says the phrase with a snicker. Her snickering makes me laugh. My laughing makes Carlos laugh.
Edith says, “Oh, my God, the last thing he brought this morning was peace, but ‘peace be with you.’ Are you peaceful, Carlos? He woke me up at five-thirty this morning to bring you peace. Are you peaceful, Carlos?” She sits on the couch, and her hat topples from her head onto the cushion next to her. She extends her legs. “You better be peaceful after we upset your mother and your life this morning. Be peaceful, Carlos!” She is weeping with laughter.
I want to comment, but my laughter won’t let me. My best friend sits in a pink leather armchair and sighs with relief. He looks at me and asks, “Are you peaceful, May?”
“No, not at all. Peace is not with me.” I sit next to Edith and wipe the tears from my eyes.
Carlos looks over at us and asks, “Hey, y’all, did Bob Marley have a lot of kids or something?”
Chapter Twelve
Back in my bed, under the covers, I am peaceful until my phone vibrates from a text. It is Walter:
Talked to the pizza parlor owner. We are set for the job interview after school tomorrow. Edith, Carlos, and Michele are cool with it.
I don’t bother to answer because I need to sleep, but I can’t. I have a biology exam on Monday, and I haven’t gone over my notes or read the chapter. I have an A going in biology, and I don’t want to blow it, and now since the test is on my mind for real, sleeping is out. I throw back the covers and stare at my book bag as if looking at it will make it rise and bring me my notes and textbook.
I get up, hoist up my book bag, and go across the hall to the library. As soon as I sit down at the desk, Walter calls.
“Did you get my text?”
“Yep.”
“That’s cool ain’t it? And Ms. Carol said since it’s about a job Carlos can pick us up from school in her old car, so we should all get there on time. Man, we gonna be running that place, wait and see.”
“I have to study, Walter.”
“Oh, okay, all right. See ya tomorrow.”
He is way too happy about working a job that will take his weekends away.
“Okay, chapter eight, cell structure.”
The chapter reads straight-forward, and it matches my notes, which is cool. It doesn’t take me three hours. I would review a little more, but Michelle is blowing my phone up with texts and calls.
“You know when people ignore a call they are usually busy,” I tell her.
“All you’re doing is studying for the biology test, and that can wait. I have gotten three calls from people telling me Carlos got some girl at Calumet pregnant, and she aborted his baby. Is that true?”
I tell her, “Ask him.”
“I did, and all he said was that it was before he met me, like that makes a difference. I heard she was a pom-pom girl, not even a cheerleader. What do you know about the situation?”
“Very little, but it sounds like it’s over.”
“What do you mean?”
“The baby was aborted.”
“But, she said it was his.”
“Carlos was a basketball star at Calumet, Michelle. Girls there claim and have claimed all kinds of stuff about him. You are who he is with now. Don’t let their silliness come between you two.”
I hear her exhale a deep breath. “Yep, you are right. That’s why I called you, May. You see life how it is.”
“I am not sure about all that, but I do have to hit these books some more.”
“Me too, girl. I have biology the period behind you. See you tomorrow bright and early in the a.m. in lab.”
I am so glad my man is not in high school. All this drama is too much for me. I have been ignoring Samuel’s texts and calls all morning since he wouldn’t take mine last night. I want to talk to him now, but answering his calls or texts is out for a while. Mama and Uncle Doug are in the kitchen cooking. It is time to mooch up a meal.
Garlic and butter fill the air. Uncle Doug is scooping out chicken wings from the fryer, and Mama is adding cheese to the grits, and shiny buttered biscuits are sitting on the stovetop.
“You hungry, baby?” my mam
a asks.
“Yeah, she hungry. Leaving out of here before the crows and studying all morning. Oh and, May, your friend who drives that li’l red car been by here twice this morning trying to see you. I told him you was studyin’, and that we don’t visit that early on Sundays. I asked him was he going to church, and he looked down at his feet for the answer. Your mother told him to call you this evenin’ after you finished with your schoolwork.”
He’s looking to see how I will respond to him butting into my business, but garlic fried chicken wings and cheese grits have my attention. “That’s cool, Uncle Doug, thanks. I needed to study.”
* * *
My stomach is tight with brunch, and I am snug as a bug in a rug under these covers, and I have no problem at all falling asleep.
It’s Grandma and me sitting on a bus stop bench, and it’s summer. The little red car pulls up, but it’s not Samuel driving it. Walter is driving the car, and he has a baby seat in the front seat. It’s a baby boy with Papa’s face. The baby Papa calls Grandma, and I look up and see Papa and Grandma at the end of the block. I look back to the little red car and Walter is smiling at me.
I wake up because I want Samuel to be in the car. I go back to the library and study some more, read Mr. Pickens’s play, catch up on my magazines, go to few star gossip sites on the web, search for schools with theater programs, and look up Samuel Talbert. He has a Web site with tons of pictures, and there are other sites that have his image up too. He doesn’t text me until after dinner and the ten o’clock news.
Can I see you tomorrow?
If you are driving the late bus.
I laugh to myself.
I figured that, but in addition to seeing you on the bus?
Well, you could pick me up after my job interview and take me to my new job.
Where and what time? I am there!
* * *
Monday morning’s test went well enough, but my mind has been on two things: meeting the owner of the pizza parlor, and then hooking up with Samuel after. I am not excited about the prospect of employment because I am not working there. It is Walter’s constant pestering that has the job thing on my mind.
He’s been calling and texting nonstop. And it turns out it was Walter who asked Ms. Carol to use her car, so Carlos could pick him and Edith up from Calumet, and then drive us all over to the pizza parlor.
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