Friends and Lovers (20 page)

She said. “What the hell you doing home this time of day?”

“School let out early.”

Her arms folded under her breasts. “You get suspended?”

“Call ‘em if you don’t believe me. You see everybody else passing by. You think everybody got suspended?”

“Stop rolling your eyes, and watch your mouth before I knock the taste out of it. Your sassy ass.” She inhaled and coughed again. She said, “What you just did was stupid.”

“What I do wrong this time?”

“Your fast ass. What you doing coming to my room?”

“I heard noises. Somebody coulda been breaking in.”

“Told you about coming in without knocking.”

“It wasn’t nighttime. I didn’t know you had company.”

She inhaled again. “What’s that in your hand?”

“My report card. I got four A’s and a B.”

“What that fast-ass yellow gal get?”

“She’s not yellow. And she’s not red. I hate it when people call her that. She’s the same as us.”

“You wish. Keep on talking crazy. What she get?”

“Debra got three A’s, a B, and a C.”

Momma tightened her lips and said, “I used to make
straight A’s. You’re stupid, Shelby. Just plain old stupid.”

I started peeling a potato and pretended I couldn’t hear.

She said, “Your fast ass gonna end up pregnant before you get out of high school. Your ass’ll be on the county by graduation.”

She’d said that so much, it didn’t hurt. I said, “Momma?”

“What you want now?”

“What make you think I want something?”

“ ‘Cause you yanking at your hair. What you want?”

“Can I get one of those hideaway beds for my birthday? I saw one at the swap meet on La Brea.”

“I ain’t got no swap-meet hideaway-bed money to be giving them Orientals. You see them bills on my dresser?”

“I’ll get my own bed.”

She laughed. “How?”

My hands were busy peeling the potato. I stopped long enough to look across the street and saw that man’s wife and kids getting out of their light blue Chevrolet. Laughing and shit.

Momma gazed across Market, watched him hug his wife and help her with the groceries. Momma looked at me. I turned away, but her reflection was in a silver part of the O’Keefe stove. She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, then said my name, said it the way a momma filled with shame would. She held her arms out to me. I went over. She hugged me. I hugged her tighter.

“I’m sorry, Shelby. Sometimes Momma does and says thangs to drive you away, but you know you the only friend I got.”

“Why you messing with him?”

“We gotta eat.” She rubbed my back and kissed my face. “Momma gotta feed her baby so she can get all A’s next time.”

“Maybe I can get a fake I.D. and get a job at Boy’s Market.”

Momma said, “No, you’re not. You’re gonna go to
school and work on them straight A’s so you can get a scholarship and go to somebody’s college. Say it.”

“I’m gonna go to college.”

“A four-year college.”

“A four-year college.”

“You better. Say that ten times a day. You understand?”

I nodded.

She said, “There’s some good men in college. Get one of them high yellow boys. Or get one smart like Martin Luther King.”

“Momma?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Can I go over to Debra’s and spend the night?”

“Can?”

“May I.”

“What I done told you about sounding stupid. Men don’t like stupid women. If you stop being trifling and don’t end up lazy, fat, and stupid, you might get smart enough to get you a white man. They likes and treats dark women better than our own men do. Now, your prissy friend Debra don’t have to be smart. She high yellow, they got their own special place in the world.”

“If she so special, why does everybody treat her so bad?”

“How they treat her bad?”

“All the girls always wanna fight her over nothing.”

“That’s her problem. Stop playing with her so much.”

Momma rambled on about that for a while. If I had’ve had a remote control back then, I would’ve pointed it at her and changed the channel. Maybe just pushed the mute button. Everything she said was a rerun.

She stopped planning my life and picking my friends long enough to rifle through the kitchen cabinet and find the rest of her carton of cigarettes. She sat back down, opened a new pack, tapped the life-taker on the table three times before she lit it. I used to hide her Salem 100’s, but she would rant and yell and damn near tear the house up trying to find them, so I gave up. Especially after she grabbed my arm so hard it hurt for three days.

“Momma, please, may I go over to Debra’s when I finish?”

“Why do you always wanna go over there?”

I shrugged. “So we can do homework together. Talk.”

She said, “Why don’t she ever come over here?”

“We got roaches. One fell in her hair the last time.”

“Like they don’t have roaches.”

“They don’t.”

“Why you always have to run down there? This your home.”

I shrugged. “Ain’t you gonna have company again tonight?”

Momma didn’t say anything. She went back to staring across Market. I went back to cooking, back to sweating like I had a fever and making french fries and fried chicken. An ocean of grease splattered from the cast-iron skillet to the gas stove. The orange wall already had permanent Crisco spots. Oil spots that looked like tears. Like the whole house was crying.

Momma sat in the heat of the kitchen looking mad and hurt. Her head drooped. She bounced her right leg, hummed a church song, and picked at her cuticles. She hummed when she was upset.

“Momma, chicken’ll be done in a li’l bit. We got hot sauce?”

She didn’t raise her head.

“Momma.” I put on my best laugh. “We eat chicken all the time. Fried chicken, baked chicken, thick chicken soup, chicken hamburgers, peanut butter and chicken sandwiches. Debra said that’s why I’ve got chicken legs.”

Momma raised her head and looked across the street again.

I giggled and touched my flat chest. “Guess I should eat a whole lotta chicken breasts, huh, Momma?”

She shifted and kept her eyes in that man’s business. That man hadn’t glanced her way one time since he’d raced out of our front door and stumbled across Market Street.

I stopped trying to be so damn cheerful. And I didn’t
look at her again while I started making the strawberry Kool-Aid.

Even with the backdoor open so the inside heat could go play with the outside heat, I sweated hard enough for my hot-combed hair to go back to a nappy afro. Usually I bitched about how nappy it would be the next day, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care about how her cigarette smoke had clouded up the room in a smoggy kinda way. Don’t think I cared about much. Momma smoked the rest of her cigarettes, back to back, down to the filter. She smoked and coughed and smoked and coughed. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings when I slipped in my little dig about her having company. I did want to give her some pain, but after I did, it didn’t feel that good. Sometimes a sister can lose through a victory.

Debra answered like she knew it was me calling back: “Well?”

I don’t think I’d ever felt so down. I said, “I told him.” “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I took an EPT and the rabbit croaked.”

“You didn’t tell me you took an EPT.”

“I didn’t. I wanted to see what he would say.”

She made a disagreeable sound. Debra said, “And?”

“Well, he didn’t say what I thought he would.”

“What did you expect him to say?”

“He talked about moving into a bigger place, reviewing some fucking finances, shit like that.”

“What did you want him to say, Shelby? You call the man in the middle of the night and lie to him, what was on your agenda?”

“I didn’t have an agenda.”

“Sounds like it to me. What did he do wrong?”

I looked at my naked left hand again. Momma never had a ring on that hand. My last name is Momma’s maiden name. On my birth certificate the places where the information about the father should be written in are blank. As blank as I felt right now.

I said, “He got all logical and shit.”

“Hold on.”

“What’s that loud-ass noise?”

“House alarm.”

“What’s wrong? Debra, what’s up? Hang up and dial 9-1—”

“It’s just Leonard.” She let out a hard sigh. “He keeps pushing the wrong button when he comes in.”

“Oh.”

“This house is too big when Leonard’s gone.”

She yelled, said she was in the den, then asked him how was his day. He’d been out in Pasadena filming some comedy movie. She put the phone down and I heard hugs, giggles, and kisses. I didn’t pay attention to them. Just kept staring at the moon.

“Shelby?”

“I’m still here.”

“When do you get back home?”

“Wednesday afternoon.”

“Come to the clinic.” She sounded hurt. Like I had disappointed her again. “I’ll test you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Shelby.”

“All right, all right.”

“What’re you and Tyrel going to do if you are?”

“Debra, not now please.”

I thought about that little girl Debra had met a few months ago. Remembered “You fuck you get pregnant.”

“What are you getting ready to do?”

“Leonard is getting ready to shower.”

“And?”

“I’m going to get in with him.”

I closed my eyes for a second. Opened them and understood Debra’s priorities. Saw where me and my crisis didn’t fit in.

I simply said, “Okay.”

“Then I’m going to heat up his dinner and talk to him.”

“No problem. Well, tell your husband I said hello.”

“Him and Tyrel are going to Drew Medical tomorrow afternoon.”

“I didn’t know. What are they going to Watts for?”

“One of those all-day teenager-motivation things put on by the mayor. Last year they said Chaka Khan, Dawnn Lewis, the sister who plays the mom on
The Parent Hood
, all of them participated.”

That was so unimportant. My wet eyes were still on the moon. Half of my mind was on the past; the other half was pondering my future with Tyrel. So much of my damn life has been spent suffering consequences from crappy decisions and bad actions.

“Shelby?”

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep.”

“Sure thing, Mrs. DuBois. Kiss the hubby for me.”

“Shelby.”

“What?”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t act like you’re okay. It’s me and you.”

“Okay.”

“You haven’t taken an EPT, right?”

“Right.”

“Then you don’t know you’re pregnant for sure.”

“Right.”

“Don’t panic.”

“Okay.”

I let Debra go. Felt like I had to let everybody go.

Wednesday came.

When I got home from work, the living room had been cleaned top to bottom. Shelby had been home, changed, and left three pair of shoes scattered in the bedroom. Her work clothes were draped across the golden wingback chair. Workout clothes were in the bathroom—spandex over the shower rod, panties on the door knob, sports bra
and tank top across the top of the door.
Life’s Little Instruction Book
was on the back of the toilet along with a basket of potpourri. She left a scribbled note taped to the fridge. It said she’d gone to Debra’s job to pick her up, then they were going mall-hopping, starting at the West-side Pavilion, then down on Melrose to Spike’s Joint. Which was no big deal, because she spent quality time with Debra whenever they got the chance. Going to the mall was their social event. Department stores were their recreation field.

I paged her twice. She didn’t call back.

Shelby was gone until midnight. She came home empty-handed. I was asleep when she crept in. Since I’d gotten home from Dan L. Steel, I’d spent the dimming of the day in the second bedroom working like a slave on a spreadsheet for a presentation tomorrow afternoon, changing the frequency of the graph to make the company look better than it really was. Sales weren’t bad, but they were down a few percent. By nine I was asleep with that monks’ chanting CD playing. That dry music always sent me into a coma.

I heard Shelby at the foot of the bed, slipping out of her jeans, black oversize man’s jacket, and a baseball cap—my blue Nike cap with the swoosh on the front. She was in tomboy mode. Her eight or nine silver bracelets clattered and clanged when she slipped them off her wrist. Her earrings made the same sounds. That noise woke me.

She said, “You want me to turn the computer off?”

I cleared my throat, then licked the leftover tuna taste that had funked up my breath. “Yeah.”

She yawned. “You save your files?”

“Yeah.”

She was naked. Her figure was looking a little fuller, her thighs heavier. Did her justice. Her breasts were small, but stood firm like chocolate-covered pharaoh’s mountains; a swatch of her ebony skin was more valuable than the Temple of Artemis. She always looked like one of the Seven Wonders to me. I could make an overnight
fortune if I could find and bottle an ounce of the cultural mud she was made from.

I said, “I paged you twice.”

She didn’t respond. Shelby went down the hallway and into the second bedroom. The computer beeped three times; the screen-saver illumination that lit up the hallway faded. The bathroom door opened and closed. The shower turned on.

I fell asleep waiting for her to come back.

I don’t know how much time had gone by before I heard her over at the chest of drawers, gulping a glass of orange juice. She threw a pill in her mouth and swallowed hard. After another swig of her juice, she belched a little, then stood with a downcast face, one hand deep in her mane, and stared at the wall.

I said, “What are you taking?”

She jumped. Almost dropped her juice.

I repeated the question.

Shelby said, “I went to the doctor.”

She told me she had body aches, a touch of the flu, and she’d picked up antibiotics to knock the bug out of her system.

Shelby put the o.j. on the stand and tugged on a beat up brown T-shirt. It had white letters that read
STILL GUILTY
.

She said, “I’m going to sleep in the other room so I don’t give you my germs.”