Girls Like Us (12 page)

I nod my head at Lizabeth and tuck the envelope in the big pocket of my uniform and tend to breakfast.

Something not right at breakfast this morning. Quincy talking real fast. And trying to hurry me up. Like if I didn’t get my eggs eat real fast, they was going to fly off the plate. I can’t read too many words, but I can read a clock just fine. Quincy not late for work. I swear I can’t ever get her figured out.

Felt like that letter would burn a hole in my pocket, but I finally got breakfast over with and set off to the post office. I got to work a few minutes early and I saw me a sight in the break room. Jen was holding a pack of ice to Ellen’s mouth. Jen kind of crunched her eyebrows together and shook her head, so I didn’t say nothing. I closed the door and went on out to my work counter.

Today, I done a stack of ironing. I ironed a bunch of tablecloths and napkins and even Miss Lizzy’s pillowcases. She don’t tell me to iron her pillowcases. I do it for a treat. So they all smooth under her face. I spray them with good-smelling water she keeps in her laundry room before I set the iron to them.

Miss Lizzy sat with me for a little while and talk. She talk about her little boy. About when he died. He had a disease that was a science name. She said it was a blood disease, about a luke. She talk about he was just a little boy. How sad it was. How much she miss him. That she just wish she could see him one time. Just to touch him.

I know how she felt. My baby ain’t dead. But I can’t touch her. I sure wish I could.

After Miss Lizzy told me her story, I come up here and tell mine into this tape. I’m making this a tape by its self. I maybe think my child wouldn’t like to know this part. It’s part of her remembery, but maybe it’s cruel. Folks been cruel to me, and I don’t want ever to be cruel to my child.

I was pretty once. That’s not bragging on myself. It’s a fact. People said I was pretty. And I was skinny. Until sixth grade. Then I started getting boobs and hips.

My clothes got tight in some places, and boys whistled and said, “You be fine!” And they try to rub up against me and laugh that . . . laugh. Not a happy laugh. One that scared me.

But I was dumb. I didn’t know.

In seventh grade, things was going good and I was used to the whistles. The boys only talked and pushed against me. And the laugh didn’t scare me so much.

Here’s the part I don’t like to say. I don’t like to think it. But I got to tell the truth on this tape.

I . . . I sorta . . . liked boys talking to me. And wanting me to talk to them. Granny didn’t talk to me ’cept to holler. I never had no friends. People called me White Trash and dumb and like that.

I thought those boys liked me.

I made us a good dinner of pork chops that was grilled with special sauce and potatoes cut thin and sautéed in butter and fresh green beans.

I was full of confusion and upset and jangling pans and silverware, sounded like a whole circus show.

“Has something happened to get you in a tizzy, Quincy? You seem off-footed,” Lizabeth said.

I decided to tell them. “I work with a woman name Ellen. She got a husband. Today she come in with her face all busted up. Jen tole me that Ellen’s husband done it. He drinks. And when he gets all liquored up, he wants her paycheck so he can go drink some more. Ellen didn’t want to give him her paycheck ’cause he drinks up all the rent money. So he bust her in the face and beat her up.”

I stopped and looked at Biddy and Lizabeth. “Here’s the thing. This ain’t the first time he done it. He does this a lot.”

Biddy and Lizabeth just sat there.

I stopped cutting my chop. “Cain’t you two say boo to a ghost?”

Lizabeth made a little face I couldn’t figure out. “What are we supposed to say?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Lizabeth! This ain’t no Special Ed girl. This is a full-growed-up woman. She don’t have to let no man knock her around like that.”

Lizabeth looked like she was gonna cry. “Quincy, do you think that you have to let someone treat you badly because you’re Special Ed?”

I got all the over fidgets then. “No, that’s not it. I . . .” Biddy was staring into her plate. She sure wasn’t going to be no help.

“It’s just Ellen and Jen is my friends and it don’t seem right that they . . . I mean . . . Ellen, she’s growed up — she should know better. . . .” I husht. That ole lady don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.

“Just never mind about the whole thing,” I said.

I get up early to check Mama Duck. Around sunup, she flies off and leaves her eggs. I got scaredy the first morning. I ready to put a towel on her eggs to keep them warm, when Mama Duck come flying home. She lit in the yard. Waddled to her eggs. Set right down. She wiggled and waggled and squirmed. She used her beak to push her eggs around just right. Then she drank water.

I feel OK. She had to leave her babies to do her business. But she come right home to them.

Miss Lizzy’s been poorly. I don’t know why. ’Cause she don’t want to talk. She whispered on the phone one morning. Then she acted a little better. Maybe a old lady sickness that passed.

I been scrubbing and putting a shine on that old house. It makes me smile to see how nice it looks when I get through with it.

I feel funny today. Like something missing and I don’t ’zactly know what. It isn’t like something that makes me sad to miss it. Then I know. It’s been a while now. One whole calendar page since we moved here. That means it’s been one calendar page since somebody called me bad names. It’s been that long since some boy said nasty things to me.

And now I got my own little house. A room with a princess table. Miss Lizzy and Mama Duck. And I got me a friend. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with this much happy.

This morning I thought the sky done fall. It was barely dawn o’clock when Biddy come squealing into my room.

“You got to see, Quincy!” That fool girl jerk the cover off me. I jump up ready to slap her sideways.

“It’s a baby duck. We got a baby duck!”

I decide not to kill the silly girl right this minute. I’d go look at the duck first. “Biddy, don’t come in here snatching covers off me. You gonna get hurt thataway. And you ain’t got no baby duck. I didn’t see you lay no egg.”

But I was talking to her backside. Time I got down to the garden, Biddy on her knees peeking behind the bush. I swear I see more of that girl’s hindparts than make me happy. I squat down and, sure ’nuff, there’s a fuzzy baby duck just a-peeping around.

“Ain’t she the cutest baby duck you ever saw?” Biddy say.

“It’s the only baby duck I ever saw.”

Biddy was off walking on clouds, and she babbled away. “Its name is Li’l Peep.”

I shook my head. “You named this duck? Biddy, I swear they gonna lock you in a loony bin. . . .”

Biddy kept on a-chattering. “You the prettiest baby duck in the whole wide world. Your mama gonna take good care of you, and you gonna grow up to a fine duck.”

She push her nose closer to the little duck, and Mama Duck snake out her neck and pop Biddy a good one. Mama Duck hiss and snort and cluck and quack up a blue streak. We back away and Mama Duck settle her feathers.

“They was a bunch of eggs. How come they’s just one baby?” I axt.

“The rest will hatch out real quick. We gonna have us a whole herd of cute baby ducks,” Biddy say whilst she rub her duck-bit nose.

“We gonna have us a whole pile of duck doo is what we gonna have,” I say.

Biddy kept watching Mama Duck and Li’l Peep, but I got tired of squatting. I stood up. “I’m goin’ back to sleep. I figure the rest of them ducks can hatch without me.”

Biddy didn’t pay me no mind. I’d have to sprout a few feathers to get her attention.

When I woke back up, Lizabeth was outside in her walker watching Biddy watch the duck.

“Well, Quincy, what do you think about the new addition to our family?”

I rock back on my heels and stare Lizabeth down. “Last time I checked, nobody in my fambly had a beak or web feets.” I stood up and push past her. “Or white hair and wrinkles, neither.” I couldn’t stop my mouth. “Nobody in my fambly fat and blondey, neither, so don’t be pushin’ you ownselfs into my fambly.”

I look at Lizabeth feelin’ kinda proud of standin’ up for my ownself and saw that old lady look like I done crush her face with a rock. I know how that feel. Then her face change.