The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (47 page)

“You know how impetigo spreads?” Momma said. “Now stop picking at your wrist before it gets raw.”

This wasn’t no mosquito bite, though. I couldn’t leave it alone, neither. But there was nuthin wrong with
my wrist, far as I could see. I rubbed it down with lotion and put Vaseline on top of that. All that did was give me greasy skin. My wrist still itched. I wanted to get home so I could try alcohol like Momma used when I got chiggers on my legs, but Momma liked to hang around after weddings, even for people she didn’t know. This girl was the niece or granddaughter of somebody Grandmommy used to go
to church with. That didn’t mean Grandmommy thought she had to come and drag me along. At least Momma wasn’t makin me wear them real lacy dresses no more. All the other eleven year olds – and some of the ten year olds, too – had relaxers, and they could run a comb through their hair without worryin about breakin any of it off. But I was stuck with twist ties and barrettes. Momma got
the hint I
wouldn’t bother with em no more at the last weddin when I kept shakin my head and clankin those dumb barrettes together. Today she finally pressed my hair.

“It’s not here,” Ms. Bentley said. Her and Momma and Ms. Waters went through the Guestbook. The bride and groom had left the church about twenty minutes ago, and the front doors were wide open lettin the sticky and humidity in. Me and Ms.
Bentley’s boyfriend, I mean
companion,
as Momma called him in her voice to make stuff sound more important than it was, me and Ms. Bentley’s companion stood in the doorway of the north ex, or whatever it’s called, so Momma and Ms. Bentley’d get a clue. He fiddled with his keys in his pocket, tryin real hard not to frown. But he mumbled stuff to himself and smiled at me when he caught me watchin.
Momma taught me how to act, though. I could stand there ladylike all day without buttin into grown people’s business.

“Well,” Ms. Waters said, “I guess not.” She raised her eyebrow cuz she didn’t believe it herself. Momma, Ms. Bentley, and Ms. Waters stood there and looked at each other for a second before Momma decided we could
finally
go.

Martin Hughes (r) scored 25 points in Fisk’s 65–63
victory over the Tennessee State Tigers.

I pushed the liver around on my plate so it wouldn’t touch the mashed potatoes. Then I wiped my fork on a napkin so the liver juice wouldn’t dirty my peas. I stuffed peas in my mouth, and Momma glared at me.

“You better eat some of that meat, Keisha.”

She didn’t expect me to eat all of it. She never expected me to eat all my liver, only a mouthful so
I never got why she bothered to give it to me. Liver was all spongy, what brains might taste like, cept the liver holds all the stuff that makes puke, and that just makes it worse. Momma cut off a piece the size of my pinky. She shook the plate so hard my peas rolled into the brown streaks.

“There. You can handle that … You know, we didn’t see Sugar Daddy today.”

Grandmommy sucked her teeth
and snorted. “You probably missed that trifling, dirty old man. He must have slipped out.”

“No, Mom, his name wasn’t even in the Guestbook.”

“Maybe he’s out of town.”

“When did that fool ever miss a summer wedding?”

“Can I git some more mashed potatoes?”

Grandmommy looked at me sideways. “I don’t know.
Can
you
git
them? Who taught you to speak that way?”

I opened my mouth real wide and spoke
slow.
“May.
I.
Get.
Some. More. Mashed. Po. Ta. Toes?”

“I still see that liver,” Momma said.

I picked up the piece she cut off for me with my fingers and swallowed it whole.

“Keisha …” Momma said.

“I ate it!”

“Everything else was very sweet. They took communion together, and I really do prefer string quartets to the organ, but it was weird not seeing that chocolate or olive-green polyester
suit in the back.”

“Womanizing antics,” Grandmommy mumbled. “They’ll survive Sugar Daddy not attending. I’m surprised he never hit on her.”

“Mom, you know she’s too classy for him.”

“Sugar Daddy?” I said.

“I remember when he came to my wedding. I remember the gift.”

“Went to mine, too,” Grandmommy said.

Grandmommy always brought up something else whenever Momma mentioned anything to do with
Daddy. Daddy had moved down to Alabama, so Grandmommy couldn’t keep an eye on him. But it was my fault I said I didn’t know I could walk five miles without gettin tired. That happened last summer, when Daddy still didn’t have enough for a car. I didn’t hear everything Grandmommy said over the phone, but she did tell Daddy she’d come down there after him with a shotgun if he dragged me across Mobile
again.

So, this summer I didn’t get to see him at all, and I was stuck here with Grandmommy making me speak proper.

“May I be excused? I’ll be back before the light’s gone.”

“You watch yourself with Tey and Marcus,” Momma said.

Momma and Grandmommy don’t like Tey and Marcus much
cuz of their father. Grandmommy swears their daddy sold coke or smack or one of them really bad drugs. He been in
and out of jail so many times – he gotta be doin
sumthin,
Grandmommy said. Tey and Marcus’s grandmother lived next door to Grandmommy for years, and she couldn’t believe that woman would let her son turn into such a mess. (But at least she trusted their grandmother, which was the only reason I could play with Marcus and Tey.) I didn’t see their father all that much. When he did come around, he’d
drive his blue Pinto up and down Jefferson Street at 70 MPH. Late at night, if I heard gears shift three or four times, then a loud screech, I knew he was back in town, back from wherever he was hangin out, at least. Bein in jail was bad, but Marcus and Tey weren’t too bad, so their own father couldna been, neither. I wonder if he was like Daddy. Daddy was fine til he got laid off. He spent all
last summer lookin for a new job, but nobody bothered to hire him. He couldn’t pay for the water for a while, so I had to pee in a bucket (I still ain’t told Momma and Grandmommy bout that, and I ain’t gonna), but he got a job now. He probably had enough to get a new car. I coulda spent the summer with him, like I’m supposed to. If I just kept my dumb mouth shut.

So, maybe Tey and Marcus’s father
wasn’t so different. Maybe he lost his job and turned to dealin to take care of his two kids. Grandmommy figured he left em next door when he didn’t have enough to support em. They showed up at the weirdest times durin the school year and summer and left again sometimes before I could say bye. But they’re not bad kids. Not at all. The worst thing they did was sell bootlegs out the back of some
dude’s car. They thought it was cool cuz they got connections to the music business. I could care less. Those CDs weren’t from no real rappers.

“Oooooo, Keisha back in her girlie braids!”

“Shut up, Tey!” Wasn’t my fault Momma did my hair right after the weddin. “It looked good. You wish your nappy head could!”

“Your head nappier than mine,” Tey said. “Probably why you gotta hide them naps under
braids.”

I rolled my eyes and watched Marcus light a pagoda. He’d been waitin a while for some to arrive. We were all bored of firecrackers and rockets after the 4th. The pagoda didn’t get here in
time. Tey smiled at me. I cut my eyes at him and folded my arms. The five stories spun in blues and reds and greens and yellows and whites. Like a water fountain should be, but all on fire and burnin
bright. We could shoot fireworks all night if we wanted. Not too many cars came down our street.

“Granny went to a funeral today,” Tey said. “How come there’re so many weddings and funerals in the summer? Weddings are good, right? Why you wanna celebrate a good thing when everybody dies?”

“Marriage is only good at first. It don’t end up that way,” Marcus said.

“That still don’t tell me nuthin.
Why so many people die in the summer anyway? Do heat just fry old people?”

Marcus sucked his teeth. “That cat Granny went to see wasn’t old.”

“Old,” Tey said, “but not
old
old. Forty something-or-other’s still up there.”

“Can we
do
something else?” I said. Momma was somewhere round forty, and I had no idea how old Grandmommy was. It wasn’t never a good thing when a woman hid her age like that.

Sometimes I forgot my wrist bothered me, like a quiet, annoyin sound I could get used to in a room. But it got to itchin before we passed Discount 4 Less. Momma and Grandmommy didn’t want me anywhere near the place. They’d be real pissed if they knew I was gettin candy right next door. Discount 4 Less on the corner used to be a Lee’s Chicken way back in the day. I loved Lee’s. Daddy used to get
me a fish sandwich every Saturday at the one not far from where me and Daddy and Momma used to live. When Lee’s shut down, somebody tried to turn it into a fashion boutique. Then it was a Meat ’N’ Three. Didn’t nobody have success until these foreign cats started sellin beer and tobacco cheap.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and clenched my teeth real tight. I held my hand hard against
my leg and scratched and scratched and dug and dug. I breathed air through my teeth til I started makin hissy sounds. The skin burned, and I scraped some of it away. But underneath the hurt, it was still itchin. I put my wrist in my mouth and nibbled a bit.

“Girl?” Marcus said.

“What’s your problem?” Tey said.

“It keep on botherin me.” I showed them where I clawed and the little red spots that
popped up around it.

“That’s what Vaseline’s for. If it help your crusty knees, I’m sure it’ll fix that.”

I kicked at Tey. “Dumbass. I already done tried that.”

Durin the summers, most of the teenagers didn’t have the students from Tennessee State to hang out with – the freshmen and sophomores who’d put up with them, at least. So all the teenagers could do was bum around like me and Marcus
and Tey, cept they didn’t like lightin fireworks. All the teenagers round here sat around in cars at Hadley Parks blastin music or crowded outside of Alger’s Market at the mini shopping center, right across from Discount 4 Less. The lady who owned Alger’s let them mill around as long as they bought sumthin from her first. Plenty of cops cruised by to make sure those knuckleheads didn’t cross over
to the wrong side of the parkin lot for beer or smoke anythin worse than cigarettes.

Marcus spotted her first. He was always spottin her, watchin her whenever she visited Grandmommy. Ryan could always be found with those girls who got their hair done at the beauty shop every week and got their nails done up with designs, and hand massages, and knew how to look like ladies instead of hos. Grand-mommy
woulda beat Ryan
and
my aunt if she ever caught Ryan flashin her cleavage crack or a thong. Marcus liked to stare at her long enough just to let her know. She was only a year older, but Marcus was too ghetto for her. He still hadn’t figured that out.

“Hey, Ryan!” I yelled. Me and Tey and Marcus were standin in front of the Alger’s Market entrance, and Ryan was to our right, almost on top of us.
Those girls weren’t talkin too loud. Ryan just liked to ignore me. I didn’t let her ignore me.

“Ryan, you see me here, girl.”

Ryan pretended to laugh with her girlfriends. They made a couple of “Naw, for real?!” faces and slapped each other on the shoulder. Ryan turned her back toward us, flashed her big ol’ booty in low-cut tight jeans. That’s one thing I never understood about black girls.
They could be real skinny like Ryan, but they had them round jello butts that stuck way out in the back.
Grandmommy said the Lord had to make sumthin for a man to hold on to, but I couldn’t understand how anybody found that cute. I prayed God didn’t make my booty big like that.

“Ryan.”

She hesitated a second and then darted her eyes towards me. “Oh, hey, KeKe.” KeKe. KeKe! Didn’t nobody but
Ryan call me KeKe no more. I guess she thought that was better than Keisha. She was so proud she didn’t have a name like LaShonda or DeVonaé or – Jesus, no! –
Keisha.
She had a nice white girl name.
Ryan
. And didn’t let me forget it. Sometimes I wished Aunt Lil’d named her
La
Ryan so she woulda had to gotten over herself.

“I thought Auntie straightened your hair,” she said, plinkin one of my barrettes
with her fake fingernail.

“She did. It looked good, too!”

“C’mon, Keisha,” Tey said.

“You can see I am having a con. ver. sa. tion,” and I rolled my eyes. Tey sucked his teeth and went into the store. Marcus smiled at my cousin and followed his brother. Ryan didn’t look at him.

“What are you doing with those two hood rats, KeKe?”

“We just gettin some candy. We goin straight back home. I promise.”

“You know what Auntie and Grandma will do if they find out you were here with them.”

“You know what Grandmommy’ll do if she find out you wearin lipstick.” If God gave a fourteen-year-old girl a jelly butt that attracted men, that was His business. But if she wore makeup to get attention, then she was askin for it.

Ryan grinned and tugged one of my braids. “So, how was the wedding?”

“Borin.
Too many songs. Chants and stuff where we all had to follow … It was like real church. Momma made a big deal about some guy named Sugar Daddy not bein there. How come they call him after a candy bar?”

Ryan’s girlfriends laughed. Ryan said to herself, “Ohhhh my God.”

“What?”

“You’re a ’tard, KeKe.”

“Why?”

“Look, I gotta get home soon. Mom and Dad need me to housesit. I’ll catch up with you
later, okay?” She turned her back on me and started talkin to her girlfriends again.

Tey and Marcus got a bag full of Rain Blo gum, Junior Mints, candy necklaces, Lemon Heads, Gobstoppers, gummy worms, and Atomic Fireballs. All I could get were Nerds and a couple pieces of banana Laffy Taffy (my favorite). I could stick em down in my pocket and sneak into my room before Grandmommy or Momma realized
I’d been to the store.

“You behavin now, baby?” Cashier Lady said when I put my candy up on the counter. That’s what she always said to us kids and the teenagers, too. She was real fat, but not jiggly fat. She didn’t have a lot of rolls. I remembered when she used to have bulges everywhere, hangin over her pants and shakin right over her elbows. Maybe I was six or seven then. She got smaller
every year, sittin there behind the counter sweatin all over her stomach and arm pits and listenin to the oldies AM station.