Deal With It (19 page)

Mommy was cooking one of my favorite meals—spaghetti and meatballs. I could smell the garlic, onions and bell peppers throughout the house. For the first time in my life, the aroma made me want to throw up. Things were definitely different. It was like being on a ride at Six Flags, and the ride was just beginning. I decided to secure my seat belt, close my eyes and pray that it would be over quickly.

Vance

As
I lay flat on my back in the middle of my bed, my eyes facing the ceiling, I went over the details of my day. It seemed that I must’ve had an out-of-body experience, because nothing had seemed real. What had Carver High’s point guard been doing at the free clinic with his girlfriend in the middle of the afternoon? I remembered scanning the room the minute Tameka and I had walked in, praying there would not be one familiar face in there and hoping that no one could identify us. All I needed was for someone to see us and spread dirty rumors about why we’d been there—like we had some sort of venereal disease or had just found out that one of us was HIV positive. None of those things were the case, but finding out that Tameka was pregnant had been just as scary. And the thought that she might keep the baby and actually go through the pregnancy—that was downright terrifying.

I was helpless in this situation. We were both in the same boat, but she was the one sailing. She was the one giving orders, making decisions about my future. My suggestion was to end
the pregnancy—a clean and swift solution to our problem. That way no one would ever have to know, and both of us could move on with our lives. I could go on to college without any worries, and she could finish high school and remain on the dance team. Our lives didn’t have to be interrupted unnecessarily. That would’ve been my decision, but she had another plan in mind.

I’d dialed her number at least ten times but never hit the send key. I didn’t hit it until the eleventh time, when I finally had the nerve to talk. Her phone rang three times before she finally picked up.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You feel better?”

“Not much,” Tameka whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” I asked.

“Because I’m in the laundry room,” she explained. “My cousin from North Carolina lives with us now, and she’s pretty much taken over my bedroom. My mom’s in the family room. My daddy, who’s rarely home, is in the kitchen. I had to go somewhere in the house where I could have some privacy.”

I sat up in bed, grabbed my basketball from the floor and tossed it in the air. I needed to do something with my hands, needed to get rid of some of my nervous energy.

“Did you decide?” I asked.

There was a long pause, and I wondered what she was thinking, doing. I imagined that she was just as scared as I was, maybe even more. After all, it was her body that was changing—her stomach that was growing. However, my future depended on the answer to that question.

“I’m not killing my baby,” she whispered.

The words had me paralyzed. I stopped tossing the ball for a moment and just held on to it, as if holding on to it would change things. As if holding on to it would make the room stop spinning. Didn’t she know that she was ruining my future and hers?

“Are you keeping it or putting it up for adoption?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’ll decide when the time comes.”

When the time comes? What time is she referring to? The time is now!

“I’m going to college in the fall, Tameka,” I explained to her. “I have a full scholarship to play ball, and I’m taking my free ride. I can’t make any promises that I will be there to help you if you decide to keep it. I don’t even have a job. I can’t even support myself, let alone a kid.”

“Then I’ll get a job,” she said. “Nobody’s asking you to put your future on hold, Vance. You go on to college and do your thing. You don’t ever have to even see the baby.”

And with that, she hung up. She was gone, and I was left with a million thoughts racing through my head. I had told her where I stood. She had dismissed my plan without any consideration. This could’ve been so easy, but she had complicated it with her emotions. The baby inside her wasn’t even a full person yet. It didn’t even have legs and arms—not even a brain. It couldn’t think or cry yet.

She was already attached to it, and her decision was made. So was mine. I was standing firm. Tameka was on her own this time. She was being selfish, wasn’t thinking of anybody but herself. She would have to find out the hard way that we were way too young to be anybody’s parents.

Indigo

Saturday
mornings came too fast, in my opinion. The smell of bacon hit my nose immediately as I stepped inside the doors of the homeless shelter, the smell of bacon mixed with mildew, that is. It was nauseating, but after a while you got used to it. I took off my jacket and hung it on the coat rack in the day room. Rita and her daughter, Jamina, sat in front of the television, catching an episode of a show on HGTV.

“Good morning, girls.” Rita was always bubbly, even in the morning.

I wondered how she could be in such a good mood when she didn’t even have a place to live. Not a real place.

“Good morning,” I mumbled, barely awake. Saturday mornings were when I usually slept in—until noon sometimes.

“Hi,” Jade said and waved.

“You ever watch this show?” Rita asked. “They’re redoing this woman’s entire house. It’s kinda neat how they are doing it, too. She’s gonna be so excited when she gets home.”

Neither of us responded.

“When I get my house, I’m painting the walls that color right there,” Rita continued. “It’s gonna be sharp! You hear me? Four bedrooms, two and a half baths, just like I had before.”

“Mama, please,” Jamina said. Her mother was embarrassing her, and I knew the feeling because my mother was always embarrassing me.

“She doesn’t see the vision.” Rita continued to describe her make-believe house.

Maria stepped into the day room, carrying two aprons.

“Good morning, girls,” she said. “Glad to see you so bright and early this morning. Why don’t you head on up to the dining room and get cleaned up for breakfast.” She tossed Jade and me an apron. “They’re already starting to line up.”

Jade and I took the stairs up to the dining room. I washed my hands in the sink in the kitchen and then tied my apron around my waist. Folks were lined up for breakfast like they were at the breakfast buffet at Shoney’s. Looking at their hungry faces made me sad. I took my place behind the chafing dish filled with scrambled eggs. Jade stood beside me, a pair of tongs in her hand as she placed bacon onto each plate.

Serving food was exhausting, and the thought of having to clean the bathrooms again made me depressed. It was one thing to clean the bathroom at home; at least there I knew who was using it. Here, there was no telling who was using it. The stench of pee always hit my nose first when I stepped through the doors, and there was always toilet paper everywhere. It was like people just threw toilet paper on the floor just for the heck of it. And the sinks, which had once been white ceramic, were now black and disgusting. Living here would be the worst thing ever.

I filled my bucket with Pine-Sol, some sort of degreaser and scalding-hot water. Even a mixture like that wouldn’t take away the pee smell, but I used it anyway. Just as I was reaching for the mop, Maria appeared in the doorway.

“I want you girls to do something different today. Instead of cleaning, I want you to spend some time with the other teenagers in the meeting room. Follow me,” she said.

Jade and I followed her to a little meeting room, where at least ten teenage boys and girls sat in a circle in wooden chairs.

“What’re they doing?” I asked.

“They’re just talking,” Maria said. “You don’t have to say anything, but I just want you to sit back here and listen. This is a group where the young people can share their thoughts and experiences with each other.”

“If we’re just sitting down, listening to people talk, how can we earn time for our community service?” Jade asked.

“I will make sure you’re credited with time earned,” Maria said. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

If she insisted, I didn’t have a problem sitting back and doing nothing. Anything was better than cleaning nasty bathrooms. I took a seat in the back of the room, and Jade sat next to me. One of the male Hispanic counselors, Jose, opened the group with prayer, and Jade and I bowed our heads, too, praying silently.

“Okay, let’s start with you, Keisha,” Jose said. “Let’s pick up where you left off yesterday. You were explaining how you felt when you and your mother had to move away from your father.”

“It hurt,” Keisha said. “A lot. I loved my daddy a lot, but I was tired of him hitting my mother. She didn’t deserve to be hit like that.”

“How could you say that you love someone who beat your mother like that?” another girl asked. “I hate my mother’s husband! He threw us out of the car right there on the side of the road. Burned rubber and never came back for us. We ended up hitchhiking with a total stranger back to our house, and then the punk wouldn’t let us into the house. Told us to go find somewhere else to stay.” She was angry. “That’s how we ended up here.”

“She can love her daddy if she wants to,” interjected a heavy girl with micro-braids in her hair. “You can still love somebody even when they ain’t right. Especially if they strung out on drugs or something, like my mama’s boyfriend was. He was cracked out, for real.”

Jade and I looked at each other. I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. These people had major issues. Nothing like ours. The stories got worse as the meeting continued.

“What about you, Jamina?” Jose glanced at the scared-looking girl, who wore her hair in the shortest ponytail I’d ever seen in my life. She pulled her sweater tighter. “Do you want to talk today?”

I got the feeling that she didn’t talk much and didn’t have a desire to. She was just fine living in her own little world.

“Come on, Jamina,” Keisha said. “You sit up in here every day and never say a word. It’s obvious that some stuff is bothering you! Get it off your chest, girl.”

“Yeah,” said the heavy girl whose mother’s boyfriend was cracked out. “We all share our business with this stupid group every single day, and you just sit here like you crazy or something.”

I felt sorry for Jamina. Wasn’t it enough that she had been through something terrible, whatever it was? Now she was being pressured to relive it, and it wasn’t fair. I wanted to go to her defense, but I just listened and kept my mouth shut.

“I’m not crazy,” Jamina said softly.

“I heard that you killed your best friend,” Keisha said.

“Yep, that’s what I heard, too,” affirmed a girl with a red bandanna tied around her head. “Pushed her right off the balcony of your apartment.”

Tears rolled down Jamina’s cheek. Her shoulders were crouched as she wiped them from her face. “It was an accident,” she said softly.

My heart started beating fast, and I stopped slouching, sat
straight up in my chair. I wanted to cry, too, when I saw Jamina’s tears.

“Y’all were fighting, right?” Red Bandanna asked.

“We were arguing over some stupid boy. She liked him, and he liked me. She thought that I had stolen him away from her, but I wasn’t even interested in him. I swear I wasn’t,” Jamima insisted in between tears. “We were on the balcony, and she pushed me. I pushed her back, and before I knew it, we were rolling around on the floor.”

“How did she fall? That’s what I been wanting to know ever since I read about it in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
” Keisha said.

“I saw it on the news,” said the girl whose mother’s boyfriend was cracked out.

“She lost her balance,” Jamina continued. “She fell over the balcony. I tried to catch her, but it was too late. I couldn’t catch her. She fell ten flights and was dead when the ambulance got there. I loved her like a sister. We had been friends since first grade. We were family. I would’ve never hurt her intentionally, but we were mad at each other…and…”

The room was silent as Jamina cried.

“Friends get mad at each other every day. They say things that are hurtful, but they don’t really mean them. I wish every day that I could have that day back again. I would’ve told her I was sorry, and that I loved her. And that I was proud of her,” Jamima said. “I would give anything to have her back.”

Jose wrapped his arm around Jamina’s shoulder and handed her a Kleenex. “You okay?” he asked.

Jamima nodded a yes and blew her nose.

“My mom was the only one who believed me, not the detectives who questioned me, not the reporters who had camped outside our house. Not even my father,” Jamina said. “He left us. Said it was too much for him to handle. Mom tried to keep our house and worked to make ends meet, but without my
father’s income, she couldn’t do it. The house was foreclosed on, and we had to move out. When they repossessed our car, Mom lost her job, and we had nowhere else to go. So we ended up here, but only until she gets on her feet again.”

My eyes were watery, and I wished I had a Kleenex, too. I looked over at Jade, and she wiped tears from her eyes. The entire room was teary-eyed, and I needed some fresh air. I stepped out into the hallway to gather myself. Tried remembering why I was fighting with my best friend, too. It wasn’t about a boy, but something sillier—like the dance team. I was mad at my friend because she had succeeded at something. I was jealous of her. Our fight had gotten out of hand, but it hadn’t gotten to a point where one of us had died, and I was glad.

Today, when Jade and I stood in the day room, waiting for our fathers to pick us up, we were different. Jamina’s story was still stuck in my head, and I was sure that it was still stuck in Jade’s, too.

“Sorry about the dance team thing…you know, the way I acted when you made team captain,” I said. “I was selfish, and I should’ve treated you better.”

“I’m sorry for snitching on you when you had detention. I could’ve covered for you if I’d wanted to, but I was just mad,” Jade said. “And sorry for saying your butt looked flat.”

“Sorry about the fight at Macy’s, too,” I said. “And sorry for ripping the seam out of your favorite Guess shirt.”

“Oh my God, that was the worst part about it, my Guess shirt. You could’ve ripped anything else!”

“You broke my French-manicured nail.” I smiled. “You know a sister can’t walk around with bootleg nail. You were wrong for that.”

“How can you compare a French manicure to my Guess shirt? You know I can’t find another shirt like that, Indi.”

“I’m sorry. Dang, you got a red one and a white one, too,” I reminded her.

“I think you should give me your Ecko Red shirt to replace it.” She laughed.

“That’ll never happen, chick.” I laughed, too. “But you can wear it with your skinny jeans, the ones you got for your birthday.”

“Cool,” she said. “I wanna wear them next Friday night to the skating rink. You going?”

“I’m still grounded…until further notice,” I said dryly. “Parents are tripping.”

Jade’s father pulled up outside, and she buttoned her coat up and put her hat on.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Indi,” she said and handed me a warm smile.

Just as she walked out the door, I stopped her. “Jade,” I called. “I’m proud of you for making team captain. You were the best pick.”

“You serious?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I smiled and pulled my hat on my head and zipped my coat.

“Later, ugly!” Jade smiled, walked back over to me and pulled my hat down over my face before rushing out the door.

I pulled the hat off my face. “Call me when you get home, heifer!” I yelled and hoped that she heard me.

I had my friend back, and it felt so, so good.