Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (2 page)

“Man,” Ron said, cuffing him on the back of his head. “You got two cute girls here, and you ain’t even gonna try to take ’em with you? I thought I raised you better than that.”

“I’m meeting people at the Galleria. You coming?” Michael called.

“Who’s gonna be there?” Jasmine asked.

“Me, Darius, Eddie . . . prolly some other people.”

“Nuh-uh,” Jasmine said. “You’re cool, but your boy ain’t.”

“What ’s wrong with my boy?” Michael asked, grinning.

Jasmine made a
tsk
sound. “He ignorant, that’s what.”

“Damn son,” said Ron as he walked back to the driver’s side. “Your whole crew can’t get no play.” He got in, slammed the car door, and did a U-turn. On his way past us he leaned out the window and called, “You get tired of messing with these fools, you come down to the mall and see
me
,” then rolled up the amber window and drove off.

Jasmine’s problem was that she had lost her virginity to Michael’s friend Eddie four months before. He told her he would go with her afterward but instead he went with Cindy Jackson. We saw them all over the city all summer, holding hands. It drove Jasmine crazy. Jasmine liked to pretend no one knew any of this, even though JASMINE FUCKED EDDIE AND NOW SHE’S PRESSED!! had been written in both the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms at school for months. Cindy wrote it in both places. I told Jasmine Cindy was probably real familiar with the boys’ bathroom.

“The only difference between that girl and the subway,” I said, “is that everybody in the world hasn’t ridden the subway.”

I thought Jasmine would feel better, but instead of laughing she sniffled and said, “He left me for some trashy bitch.” After that I just let her cry.

 

 

On our way
to Jasmine’s house, she said, “I’m sad about Tupac, a little. It is sad. You can’t ever do anything. I bet you if I got famous, somebody would kill me too.”

“What the hell would you get famous for?” I asked.

“I’m just saying, if I did.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’d be just like Tupac.”

“I’m just saying, Erica, you never know. You don’t know what could happen. You don’t know how much time you got.”

Jasmine could be melodramatic like that, thinking because something bad happened somewhere, something bad would happen to you. I remembered when Tupac had went to jail, and Jasmine cried because she said we could get arrested too, and I said,
“For what?”
, but it didn’t matter, she just kept crying. Mostly to make her feel better, we had bought IT’S A SET UP SO KEEP YA HEAD UP T-shirts at the mall. My mother screamed when she saw us wearing them.

“Setup,”
she said. “Y’all take that crap off. Keep believing everything these rap stars tell you. I’m telling you, the minute a man says someone set him up for anything, you run, because he’s about to set you up for something.”

There were a whole lot of men we were supposed to stay away from according to my mother: rap stars, NBA players, white men. We didn’t really know any of those kinds of people. We only knew boys like Michael who freestyled a little but mostly not well, who played ball violently like someone’s life was at stake, or else too pretty, flexing for the girls every time they made a decent shot, because even they knew they would never make the NBA, and we were all they were gonna get out of a good game. The only white men we knew were teachers and cops, and no one had to tell us to try and stay away from them, when that was all we did in the first place, but my mother was always worried about something she didn’t need to be.

 

 

When we got
to Jasmine’s apartment, we went straight to her room, which felt almost like it was my room too. We lived two blocks from each other and slept at each other’s house as much as we slept at our own. My schoolbooks were still piled on the corner of her floor, my second bathing suit was hanging over her desk chair, where I’d left it to dry last weekend. Me and Jasmine always shared everything, and after I showered I went through Jasmine’s closet like I would have gone through mine, looking for something to wear out later. Only this year was sharing things getting to be a problem, because we were starting to be built different. I put on a pair of Jasmine’s jeans, which were tight around my hips and she told me so. “Look at you, stretching out my jeans with your big old ass,” was what she actually said.

“You wish you had my ass,” I said, which was true, she did, because hers was flat like a board and people teased her about it. Jasmine was small but all the meat she had on her was settled in her tummy, which was a cute little puff now but would be a gut someday if she ever got fat. It made me happy sometimes to think that even though Jasmine’s face was better than mine, if I ever got fat I’d get fat the way my mother had, all in the hips and chest, and some people would still be all right with that, more than if I had a big giant stomach like Jasmine might one day. We weren’t bad-looking, neither one of us, but we weren’t ever going to be beautiful, either, I knew that already. We were the kind of girls who would always be very pretty
if
but
if
never seemed to happen. If Jasmine’s skin cleared up and she could keep her hair done and she did something about her teeth, which were a little crooked, and if I lost five pounds and got contact lenses and did something about the way my skin was always ashy, maybe we’d be the prettiest girls in Mount Vernon, but we weren’t, we were just us. Jasmine had beautiful dark eyes and the most perfect nose I ever saw on anybody, and I had nice lips and a pretty good shape, and that was it. We got dressed to go to the movies because there was nothing else to do, and even though Jasmine’s pants were a little tight on me and the shirt I’d borrowed was pushing my chest up in my face, I looked all right, just maybe like I was trying too hard.

 

 

When we got
to the lobby of the new movie theatre, I told Jasmine I liked the way it was done up: the ceiling was gold and glittery and the carpet was still fire-truck red and not dingy burgundy like red carpet usually was. Jasmine said she thought the whole thing looked fake and tacky, and speaking of fake and tacky, look who was here. It was Cindy, in some tight jeans and a shirt that said BABY GIRL and showed off the rhinestone she had stuck to her belly button. Eddie was there, too, and Michael and a bunch of their friends, and they waved us over. When Cindy saw Jasmine she ran up and hugged her, and Jasmine hugged her back, like they hadn’t been calling each other skank-ass bitches five minutes ago. The boys all looked confused, because boys are stupid like that.

“Look what Eddie gave me,” said Cindy, all friendly. She pulled a pink teddy bear out of her purse and squeezed its belly. It sang
You are my sunshine
, in a vibrating robot voice
.
It scared me.

“That’s nice,” said Jasmine, her voice so high that she sounded almost like the teddy bear. Cindy smiled and walked off to go kiss on Eddie some more. She was swinging her hips back and forth like the pendulum our science teacher had showed us, as if anyone was really trying to look at her.

“Instigator,” I whispered to Jasmine as Cindy left. Jasmine ignored me.

“I don’t have a teddy bear, neither,” said Eddie’s friend Tre, putting an arm around Jasmine. Jasmine pushed his arm off.

“C’mon, Jasmine. I lost my teddy bear. Can I sleep with you tonight?”

All Eddie’s friends had been trying to push up on Jasmine since they found out she’d done it with him, but Jasmine wasn’t having it. She looked at Tre like he was some nasty-flavored gum on the bottom of her shoe. She’d told me next time she was waiting for the real thing, not some punk high school boy. Michael put an arm around each of our shoulders and kissed us both on the cheek, me first, then Jasmine.

“You know these are my girls,” he said to Tre. “Leave’em alone.”

He didn’t need to mention me, but I felt good that he had. His friends mostly left me alone already, because they knew I wasn’t good for anything but kissing you a little bit and running away. Michael nodded good-bye as he and his friends walked toward their movie. Eddie and Cindy stayed there, kissing, like that’s what they had paid admission for anyway. I grabbed Jasmine’s hand and pulled her in the other direction.

“That’s nasty,” I said. “She looks nasty all up on him in public like that.”

“No one ever bought me a singing teddy bear,” said Jasmine as we walked to the ticket counter. “Probably no one ever will buy me a singing teddy bear.”

“I’ll buy you a singing teddy bear, you silly bitch,” I said.

“Shut up,” she said. She had been sucking on her own bottom lip so hard she’d sucked the lipstick off it, and her lips were two different colors. “Don’t you ever want to matter to somebody?”

“I matter to you,” I said. “And Michael.”

Jasmine clicked her tongue. “Michael,” she said. “Say Michael had to shoot either you or that Italian chick who’s letting him hit it right now. Who do you think he would save?”

“Why does he have to shoot somebody?” I said.

“He just does.”

“Well, he’d save me, then. She’s just a girl who’s fucking him.”

“And you’re just a girl who isn’t,” Jasmine said. “You don’t understand anything, do you? Look...” She whirled me around and pointed at Cindy Jackson, who had her arms wrapped around Eddie and his hand scrunched in her hair. “When are we going to be that kind of girl?”

“What, the stupid kind? Everyone knows he’s messing with that girl who works at the earring place at the Galleria. Probably other girls too.”

“That’s not even the point, stupid. She’s the one he kisses in public.”

“Well, that’s her own dumb fault, I don’t see why you gotta be worried about it,” I said. “I wouldn’t kiss that idiot in public if you paid me. I wouldn’t kiss his fingernail in public.”

Jasmine kept watching them kiss for a minute, and she looked real sad, like she might cry or something. “That’s your problem, Erica, you don’t understand adult relationships,” she said.

“Where are there adults?” I asked, looking around. I put my hand to my forehead like I was a sea captain looking for dry land, and turned around in circles, but everywhere it was the same old people doing the same old things.

“You’re right,” Jasmine said. “I’m tired of these little boys. Next weekend we’re going to the city. We’re gonna find some real niggas who know how to treat us.”

That was not the idea I meant for Jasmine to have.

 

 

We had our
cousins’ IDs, and we’d been clubbing a few times before, in Mount Vernon, but it wasn’t the same. It was usually just a bar with a DJ, and someone always knew us; we never stayed that long or got into any real trouble. Once we were inside, people would appear out of nowhere, all
Ain’t you Miss Trellis’s daughter?
or
Didn’t you used to be friends with my little sister?
If we flirted even a little bit, someone would show up to say,
Yo
,
those are some little girls right there,
and our guy would vanish. Sometimes a guy would get mad and report us to the bouncer, who would tell us it was time to go home.
You had your fun girls
, he’d say, and the thing was, usually we had. The point was getting in and saying we’d been there. Clubbing in the city was something else.

In a TV sitcom, one of our mothers would have called the other and busted us, but Jasmine’s mom worked nights at a diner in Yonkers, and my mom passed out around ten, two hours after she got home from working as a secretary in White Plains, and no one was making any TV show about the two of us so that was that. Her mom thought I was at her house and my mom thought she was at my house, and meanwhile we were standing on the platform of the MTA toward Manhattan.

Jasmine wouldn’t let me wear panty hose, because I’d borrowed her shoes that opened at the toe and laced up my leg from my ankles to just below my knee, and I felt naked: Her skirt was too short on me. The only thing Jasmine let me do right was bring Michael with us, and he was standing there in his brother’s shoes, since he only owned Tims and sneakers. He also had his brother’s ID, even though his brother didn’t look a damn thing like him. Michael was smaller and copper-colored and looked to me like he ought to wear glasses, even though he didn’t.

“Money earnin’ Mount Vernon’s not good enough for you two anymore?” he asked, his hands stuffed in his jeans’ pockets.

“Mount Vernon’s not good enough for anybody,” said Jasmine. “And this city needs a new damn motto. Do you know anybody here who earns any real money?”

“Mr. Thompson’s doing all right,” Michael said, and I thought to turn around and see if Mr. Thompson was standing on the platform watching me, because I knew if he was he’d be disappointed.

 

 

It hadn’t finished
turning into night yet when we’d gotten on the train, but when we got off in the city my legs shivered. It was still early, so we got slices of pizza from Famous Ray’s, and sat in the window, watching people go by. Our reflections in the window glass looked watery, like we were melting at the edges.

“All right,” said Jasmine. “Who are we tonight?”

“Serene and Alexis, same as always,” I said, “And Michael, you’re Ron, I guess.” I was thinking of the names on our IDs.

“No, stupid. I mean, who are we when guys ask questions?” Jasmine said.

“Seniors?” I said.

“Nah, we’re in college,” said Jasmine.

“What college?” I said.

“You two? Clown College,” said Michael. Jasmine threw a dirty napkin at him.

“That’s you, Michael,” she said. “We in City College. I’m a fashion major, and I’ma get rich selling people nice clothes so girls don’t go around lookin’ like Cindy Jackson, lookin’ trifling all the time, and so you, Erica, can find some pants that actually fit your ass in them. I got a man, and he’s fine, and he plays ball, but I may have to kick him to the curb because lately he’s jealous of me, so I’m at the club lookin’ for someone who can handle me.”