The Pact (3 page)

“I’m probably going back to Atlanta at the end of the summer.” I cut her off before she got carried away telling me about a school that didn’t interest me one bit.

“Well, if you decide to stay, I’ll show you around, okay?”

“Cool.”

“You see the girl over there in the yellow bikini?” she asked.

I nodded.

“That’s Veronica. Everyone calls her Ronni. Her father’s a doctor, and she thinks she’s all that…drives a drop-top Pontiac Sunfire.” She scanned the pool area. “Don’t tell her anything that you don’t want repeated.”

“I’ll remember that.” I plopped down onto a lawn chair. Michelle took one beside me.

“You see that guy over there in the red trunks, tall guy with the fresh haircut? That’s Aaron. His mother is a counselor at our school. He had to drop out last year because he got arrested for possession of marijuana. Now he goes to an alternative school….”

Michelle continued to tell me the life stories of all the kids at the pool. Made me wonder what her story was—she wasn’t so quick to share that information.

“What about the lifeguard over there?” I finally asked the burning question of the day. “Who is she?”

She glared as she looked in the direction of the lifeguard chair, propped her hands behind her head and made herself comfortable before answering.

“Oh, that’s Rena.” She frowned. “You think she’s pretty?”

That was a dumb question. It was as if she was testing me to see what my response would be, sort of like the trick questions that teachers put on tests. Anyone with eyes could see that she was pretty. Even Michelle.

“Yeah, she’s pretty.”

“Everyone thinks that about her. She’s not all that, though,” Michelle said, and then dismissed the conversation altogether, moved on with her introductions.

I stole another glance at Rena while she wasn’t looking, took in her beauty. As hard as she tried not to look my way, her eyes finally met mine. I smiled, and she actually smiled back. It might not be that hard to get her attention after all.

Indigo

I
could see the Navy Pier from the highway as my father’s pickup made its way into Chi-town. Chi-town is what we called Daddy’s hometown of Chicago. Whenever he brought me into the city, he felt obligated to give me a grand tour, pointing out the landmarks like Grant Park and the Art Institute. He always took me for a drive through the Ida B. Wells projects, the place where he grew up as a kid. Even though the projects had been rehabbed—and he almost didn’t recognize them anymore—he had to give me the grand tour anyway. He took the scenic route through downtown Chicago just so I could take in the Magnificent Mile, a place where thousands of people spent their money shopping.

I was so happy when we finally made our way toward Forty-seventh Street, on the south side, where Nana had lived in a two-story brick house since before I was born. As we drove through the neighborhood, a group of boys shot hoops on an old rusty basketball goal. I quickly scanned the crowd, just to see if there were any cute ones in the bunch. There was only one, and when his eyes met mine, I smiled. He smiled back, and Daddy frowned. I pulled down the visor and checked my reflection in the mirror; wanted to make sure I didn’t have any drool in the corner of my mouth. After all, I’d been asleep since the moment we reached the mountains in Tennessee. I vaguely remembered waking up for just a moment as we passed by the Tennessee Titans stadium in Nashville. And I could’ve sworn that Daddy woke me up when we reached Paducah, Kentucky, just to ask me if I wanted a burger from Steak ’n Shake. I remembered being more sleepy than hungry.

When the wheels of Daddy’s truck brushed the curb in front of Nana’s house, there were tons of people on the porch laughing, partying and having a good time. An old James Brown song was playing loudly. Daddy started singing the lyrics, something about making it funky. My uncles, aunts and cousins were having the time of their lives, everyone engaged in conversations trying to be heard over the music. It wasn’t as if the neighbors cared, because some of them were on Nana’s porch, too. I hopped out of the front seat of Daddy’s truck and stood at the curb for a moment, took a quick glance at the porch to see who was there. When my cousin Little Keith spotted me, he leaped from the porch and rushed toward the truck. He had a Blow Pop in his mouth and held a package of Skittles tightly in his fist.

“Indi!” He hugged me around the waist. “I thought you’d never get here!”

He’d probably been waiting all day.

“What’s up, knucklehead?” I asked, and knew he would get on my nerves before the night was over. He always did. “Gimme some of those Skittles.”

He loosened his grip on the candy and I emptied them into my palm.

“God, don’t take all of ’em!” he said.

“Shut up. They’re bad for your teeth, anyway.” I popped Little Keith upside his head. “That’s why your teeth are rotten as it is.”

“Indi!” Daddy gave me a look that said to behave.

“Nana’s been waiting forever for you. She made your favorite…macaroni and cheese.”

“Little Keith, how you doing?” Daddy asked as he pulled my suitcase from the back of the truck. I had everything I could think of, packed into one suitcase and an overnight bag. I had all my CDs stuffed into my Louis Vuitton backpack: Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Kanye West and my favorite, Soulja Boy. I fell in love with Soulja Boy when I saw him at the For Sisters Only expo in the fall. That was when I realized that he was much cuter in person than he was on
106 & Park.
Girls were screaming and chasing him all over the Georgia World Congress Center that day at the expo, and I was right there in the midst of the crowd. I could do the Superman Dance better than anybody.

“I’m doing fine, Uncle Harold. Did you bring me something?” Little Keith bounced around. Way too much energy for a Saturday afternoon.

Daddy pretended to pull a silver dollar from behind his ear and then handed it to him. “Something like this?”

“Whoa! This is tight. I gotta go show Nana.” He took off running up the stairs into the house.

It didn’t take much to impress him, I thought as I made my way up the stairs. I was wearing my Baby Phat jeans, a pink halter top and pink flip-flops to match. I had lip gloss smeared on my lips—the kind Lil Mama sang about in her video. My little Baby Phat purse was stuffed with perfume, eyeliner, a small container of Victoria’s Secret lotion, my big hoop earrings, a mood ring that Jade had given me for my sixteenth birthday and a package of peanut M&M’s.

Before I could even step onto the porch, I was greeted by my father’s cousin Benny, who leaned against the railing with a Budweiser in his hand. His alcohol-scented breath caught me off guard when he got too close.

“Well, if it isn’t Indi Bindi Boo.” He smiled, revealing spaces in his mouth where teeth should’ve been. “Loan me twenty dollars, girl.”

Everyone on the porch laughed when he said that. His favorite line for everyone he greeted was “Loan me twenty dollars,” even though he knew that you were broke. I was definitely broke. The only money I had was the twenty-one dollars that Mama gave me before I left, and hopes of an extra ten Daddy had promised me.

“What you know good, Harold?” Cousin Benny shook my father’s hand and passed him a can of beer all in one motion.

“Not a whole lot, Benny. What’s going on with you?”

“Just trying to stay above water.” He smiled. “Loan me twenty dollars, Harold.”

Everyone on the porch roared with laughter again. No doubt, Cousin Benny was the comedian in the family. His wife, Doreen, rocked in a chair on the porch and smiled as I approached. She seemed much prettier when I was smaller. Now she looked as if she had aged, and not gracefully. I remembered spending weekends at their house and sleeping over with their daughter, Sabrina. We would swim in Sabrina’s blue and pink plastic pool in their backyard and eat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch.

“Hey there, Indi. You sure are getting big,” Doreen said. “What grade you in now, seventh or eighth?”

“I’m in the tenth grade now.” I smiled politely.

“Tenth grade, wow! You’re still as pretty as can be,” she said. “You and Sabrina used to be so close when you were little. You two are still about the same height….”

“And the same size,” Cousin Benny added, “except Sabrina got a little more hips. But you…you built just like a light pole, Indi.”

He laughed heartily again, and everyone else did, too. I was embarrassed about my weight being discussed like that—and in front of everyone on the porch as they sat around playing dominoes and drinking Budweisers. Uncle Keith must’ve recognized the look on my face and rescued me as he swung the front screen door open, grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. Uncle Keith was my favorite relative in the whole family next to Nana. He always made me laugh, and he always had something nice for me, like a silver necklace or a crisp twenty-dollar bill. He was my daddy’s younger brother, and they looked almost identical, except Uncle Keith was a little taller—and way cooler. He knew just the right things to say, and he always took me to the coolest places when I was little, like to the lake, to a concert in Washington Park or for a slice of Chicago pizza. He was a lot like Nana—easy to talk to and very wise.

“I thought you might need to be rescued.” Uncle Keith smiled and then kissed my cheek, making a farting noise. He tickled me until I begged for mercy.

“How did you know I needed to be rescued?” I asked.

“Uncles know that kinda stuff.” He winked. “What you been up to, girl?”

“Nothin’ much,” I said.

“I want you to meet Debra.” He wrapped his arm around the shoulder of a vanilla-colored lady who was standing nearby. “Debra, this is my niece, Indigo.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Indi. I’ve heard so much about you.” She smiled. “And Little Keith has been waiting for you all day.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said, and knew that she wouldn’t be around long. Ever since Uncle Keith had gotten a divorce, he always brought women to family gatherings—and always a different one. You never saw one twice. “Where’s Nana?”

“She’s out back,” Uncle Keith said, and then took a drink from his bottle of beer.

I headed for the back patio, where loud music was blasting from the speakers—different music from what was being played on the porch. The people on the front porch listened to old-school tunes, while the folks in the backyard listened to hip-hop. Voices were raised to speak over the music. I took a look around the kitchen at the pans filled with barbecued ribs, chicken, fish and spaghetti. Through the back window, I spotted Nana in the middle of a crowd of people, shaking her hips to the music. She was dancing with my cousin Jimmy, who was teaching her how to do the latest moves. I smiled as I watched her. She had on an outfit I’d rarely seen her in: a pair of blue jeans hugging her hips, a huge T-shirt that read WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMA across the front and a pair of white Reeboks. She was jazzy, I thought as I crossed my arms across my chest and watched her get jiggy wit’ it.

“Indi, what’s up?” My cousin Sabrina approached, a toddler attached to her hip. The little girl had a bottle hanging from her lips and a teddy bear pressed tightly against her chest. “You finally made it.”

“Yep, I just got here,” I said and smiled at my cousin, whose hair was in microbraids and pulled back into a ponytail. When we were little, people thought we were sisters because we looked almost identical. Sabrina had always had the life that I wanted…. She had four brothers, so her house was always lively, with lots of kids to play with. There was always a party at her house. Loud music, drinking and card playing—that was the way I remembered Sabrina’s house. And she could literally do whatever she wanted. If she wanted to stay up late, her mother didn’t care. If she wanted to stay outside long after the streetlights came on, that was fine, too. She could even have boys over and go places with them before she was twelve years old. That was the life I envied back then. I loved spending the weekends at their house.

My parents were exactly the opposite. There were rules at my house. I wasn’t allowed to stay up as long as I wanted to. I actually had a bedtime, and I wasn’t allowed to stay out past dark, except on special occasions like the Fourth of July. And as far as boys were concerned, my father was still adjusting to the idea that I had a boyfriend. I
had
a boyfriend, as in past tense. I instantly thought of Marcus. We were officially broken up for the summer, and I missed him already.

It was hard to believe that Sabrina was now a mom at the age of seventeen. Being a mom didn’t seem fun at all, especially when you had to take the kid with you everywhere you went. And not only that, Sabrina had to work just to pay a babysitter, and she couldn’t go places and do things like she used to—not without finding someone to watch her baby. She didn’t even graduate from high school, because she had to get a job when she was in the tenth grade. She was a grown woman inside a teenager’s body. I felt a little sorry for her. Not to mention she looked older than seventeen—more like nineteen or twenty.

“Indi, meet my little girl, Brittany,” she said. I couldn’t help but stare. Brittany was beautiful, with hazel eyes and huge dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was thick and curly. “Brittany, say hello to your cousin Indigo.”

“Hi, Brittany.” I smiled at the little girl as she laid her head on Sabrina’s shoulder, pretending to be shy. “How old is she?”

“She just turned two last month.”

“She’s so cute.”

“She looks like her daddy,” Sabrina said. “He’s supposed to be coming by here to pick her up. We’re not together anymore, but we try to be civil for Brittany’s sake. I have a new boyfriend now. You see that guy over there playing dominoes with Uncle Charlie and them? That’s my new boo….”

She smiled and pointed toward a card table on the patio, and the guy wearing a red fitted cap with a do-rag underneath looked our way. He smiled and waved and kept staring at me, so much so that it made me uncomfortable. I looked away in order to break the stare.

“His name is Dugan,” Sabrina explained, unaware that her so-called new boyfriend was still staring at me. “That’s not his real name, though. His real name is John, but we call him Dugan. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

I wasn’t really up for meeting Dugan, but I followed her across the lawn anyway. Nana spotted me walking that way and saved me.

“Indi!” She stopped dancing long enough to give me a big hug. “I’ve been waiting for you, sweet pea.”

I missed Nana and couldn’t wait for all the guests to leave so that we could catch up on our gossip. I had lots of things to tell her—about school, and about what had gone on in Atlanta since the last time she was there. Nana had become one of my best friends, because she was a good listener and had so much wisdom. I could talk to her about anything, and she always had the right answers.

“When will you be done shaking your groove thing?” I asked.

“Right now,” she said. “Excuse me, Jimmy. My special guest has arrived, and we have to go in here and make some corn bread to go with dinner.” Nana locked arms with me. “Let’s go, sweet pea.”

We headed into the kitchen, sat at the old wooden table—the one where I had eaten a million bowls of Froot Loops and Nana and I had talked about everything under the sun. I loved barbecues at Nana’s house, and the loud music and laughter that came along with them. I loved catching up with relatives I hadn’t seen in ages. But what I loved most of all were the quiet times spent talking with Nana.