The Realest Ever (4 page)

“Don’t put that baby down in here,” Aunt Ruth said,
looking over her shoulder.  She stopped smoking four years ago, but her voice was still a little manly from the four decades of damage she caused herself before quitting.  “I told Kat I don’t want her in here while I’m frying bacon,” Aunt Ruth continued.  “Don’t want no grease to pop up on her.”

Kyra didn’t say anything, but she did pick up her child and deposit her outside of the kitchen.  One of the things Kyra found
strange about her aunt was how Ruth could say something mean-spirited in a way that left plenty of defense if someone tried to call her on it.  She probably wasn’t doing it now, but Aunt Ruth did it so often Kyra had to give conscious thought to how she responded to her.

Kyra
found half a loaf of bread on the kitchen table. 

Ruth turned to face her.

“Don’t eat all my bread, neither.  I need
three pieces
for my breakfast.”

Aunt Ruth had one gold tooth, a canine, and a faint moustache above her
top lip.  Her nose was pudgy, as was the rest of her body.  Kyra didn’t think she was physically unattractive, but maybe the rest of the world disagreed.  Ruth had been married three times, each one ending in divorce.  She had one son who went to the military and then moved to California afterwards.  Kyra hadn’t heard anything about him since she’d been there.

“If y’all want some bacon, you should’a went down to
the WIC office, like I told you to,” Ruth said.  “We would have enough food for everybody.”

“We don’t need bacon,” Kyra said. 
What she needed was a utensil to make their peanut butter sandwiches, but her aunt was standing in front of the counter drawer.  Kyra understood that no one was eating anything until Aunt Ruth had her say.

“Your son asked me for some bacon,” Aunt Ruth informed.

Kyra looked back at him, and Quinell abruptly returned his eyes to the television.

“He’s just a kid,” Kyra said.  “He smelled bacon, and he wanted some.  I’ll tell him we’re eating peanut butter.”

“That ain’t the point,” Aunt Ruth said.  She turned towards the stove and began removing the crispy strips of pork.  She placed them on a plate lined with paper towels.  They looked and smelled delicious.  “The point is,” she said when she faced Kyra again, “that you didn’t do what I told you to.”

“
I only been here a week,” Kyra said.  The sight of the bacon made her stomach rumble.  It was loud, and she knew her aunt heard it.

“You been here long enough to get some food stamps,” Aunt Ruth countered.  “You go
t two kids and not a dime in your pocket.  They can give you an emergency card the day you walk in there.”

“You knew I didn’t have any money,” Kyra said, careful to keep her tone neutral.  If Aunt Ruth put her out, Kyra knew she’d have to take her family to a women’s shelter.  She had no other
relatives in Overbrook Meadows, and she didn’t have any money to take the Greyhound back to Little Rock. 

But
returning to Arkansas was not an option.  Even a homeless shelter was better than that.

“Yes I knew you didn’t have
no money,” Aunt Ruth said, greasy spatula in hand.  “But we also talked about getting you on some benefits, until you start working.”

“I said I would go Monday,” Kyra reminded.

“You could’a went yesterday,” Ruth said.  “You could’a went the day before that.  Hell, you can go
today
.  They got places open for emergencies.”

“I didn’t know it was an emergency,” Kyra said.  “You still got a lot of food in your refrigerator.”

As soon as she said it, Kyra wished she hadn’t.  Aunt Ruth’s eyes widened. 

“That’s
my
food!  I’m on disability.  I don’t got enough money to be feeding all of y’all.  I said I would give you somewhere to live.  I never said I could pay for all the food your kids been eating.  If you wanna know the truth, I think you being irresponsible, Kyra, not going to get those food stamps.”

Kyra took a deep breath
.  Her face reddened, but she managed to maintain her composure.  The word
irresponsible
hurt her more than Ruth knew.  Or maybe her aunt did know how often the word was tossed around in Arkansas.  Ruth knew about Kat’s father, and she knew about Kyra’s run-in with CPS.  Maybe she chose the word
irresponsible
because she wanted to pour salt on the wound.

In her defense, Kyra
thought getting hooked on public assistance in Texas was the irresponsible thing to do.  She saw it many times:  Young girls realize they can get Medicare, housing and free groceries simply by remaining unemployed and not supported by their children’s father(s).  Kyra knew she’d work harder to get a job if she didn’t have too much help along the way, but her aunt had a valid point. 

“Do you want to take me to
the welfare office today?” she asked with a defeated look in her eyes.

“Naw
.  We got enough food to make it through the weekend,” Ruth said right away.  “It’s gon’ be too damned hot today.  And that place is always packed on Saturday.  You’ll be in line for hours.  But we do need to go first thing Monday morning.   I’ll take you then.”

“Okay,” Kyra said.

“Y’all can have that bacon,” Aunt Ruth said, wiping her hands on a wash cloth.  “It’s some eggs in the refrigerator, if you wanna cook ’em.  You wanna go out tonight?  Want me to watch the kids?”

Kyra frowned.  “No.”

“Alright,” Ruth said and promptly left the kitchen. 

Kyra was left standing there
, wondering if that was what this breakfast argument was about.  Did Aunt Ruth really just torture two children with the smell of bacon just so she could get Kyra to do her bidding?

Kyra pushed the thought away.
  When you have nowhere else to go, why burden yourself with complaints about how bad your situation is?  It’s better to look on the bright side, like how everyone had a roof over their head last night, and no one in the house was getting high.  Plus Kyra could feed her children a hot meal this morning.  That was something to be grateful for.

“You want some bacon and eggs?” Kyra called to the living room.

“Yes!”  Quinell jumped off the couch and headed her way.

“Hold on, I haven’t made the eggs yet,” Kyra said with a grin.  “I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

By e
leven o’clock Kyra had her kids fed and dressed and on the bus stop down the street from Aunt Ruth’s house.  Quinell didn’t talk much as they waited for the #8 to round the corner.  Kyra hoped he wasn’t getting depressed about their new environment.

“You ready to
go back to school on Monday?” she asked him.

Their bus
stop didn’t have a roof or clear, plastic walls like the fancy ones downtown.  There was just a fiberglass bench that was thankfully beneath a tall pecan tree.  The shade it provided was a welcomed blessing.  Quinell was busy trying to coax ants into an ant lion’s trap, but he dropped his poking stick and stood before his mother.

“I guess so.”

Kyra held her daughter in her lap.  Kat’s hair was freshly styled with ten shiny plaits that had the pleasant aroma of Royal Crown hair grease. 

“
You nervous?” Kyra asked her son.  “I know I used to get nervous when I had to move to a new school.”

“You moved a lot when you were little?” Quinell asked her.

“I did,” Kyra said.  “But not as much as you.  When I was little, I grew up not too far from here.  I went the same school you’re going to on Monday.”

Quinell’s eyes brightened.  “You went to Sunrise?”

Kyra nodded.  “Sure did.”

“Is it fun?”

Kyra
smiled.  “I don’t remember it that much.  The teachers are all different now anyway.  It won’t be the same for you.  I remember I climbed up on the roof one time during the summer.  That was fun.”

Quinell’s smile grew wider.  “Really?”

“They used to have a covered walkway in the back,” Kyra recalled.  “It had these poles holding it up.  Me and my friend used to climb them like monkey bars.  Once we got on top of the walkway, we could follow it to the school and then climb on it.”

“What was up there?” Quinell asked, his eyes
glistening.

“I don’t want you
trying to get up there,” Kyra said quickly.  “It was stupid for us to do it.  We could’a fell off and broke our neck.”

“I won’t try to get up there,” Quinell
promised.

“I’m serious
.”  She gave him a stern look.  After her trouble in Little Rock, Kyra found herself over-thinking everything about her parenting.  She couldn’t bear to get call from more social workers because of a curiosity she ignited.

“I’m not,” Quinell said.  “Was it toys up there?”

“That’s what we went looking for,” Kyra confirmed.  “We thought we’d find all kinds of cool stuff.  But mostly it was just rocks they had all over the roof.  It was some Frisbees and tennis balls the kids threw up there, but they were all old and ugly from being in the sun and the rain for so long.  Lord knows I shouldn’t have had my butt up there in the first place.”

But as she spoke, Kyra couldn’t stop a wistful smile from brightening her features. 
The voyage to the summit of Sunrise Elementary would forever be one of her fondest memories.  She and Donovan were big time explorers when they were little.  Their imagination was often the only escape from a reality that was much too ugly for eight year old Kyra to see every day.

“Are you glad we came back?” Quinell asked, noticing his mother reminiscing.

“I didn’t come back for me,” Kyra said.  “I did it for you.  I know things don’t look too good right now, but it’ll be better here in Texas.  Do you like living with your auntie?”

Quinell took too long before he nodded.

“Do you like it better
here
or in Arkansas?” Kyra asked.

Quinell
answered right away this time.  “Here.”

Kyra nodded.  She looked up and was happy to see their bus coming to a squeaky stop in front of them.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

The bus was fairly empty
, so Kyra didn’t have to squeeze her family into two seats.  She took a window seat and sat Kat in the empty spot beside her.  Quinell got two seats by himself across the aisle.  He faced the windows, smiling with his sneakers dangling a foot off the floor.  Kyra was happy to see him happy.  But she knew she wouldn’t be free of her nagging guilt until she righted all of her wrongs.  The problem was, some dated back to before Quinell was born.

When
she first left Texas in 1999, Kyra went to live with her Aunt Joyce in Little Rock.  Joyce already had five kids of her own, including four year old twins.  Joyce did the best she could to care for her sister’s brood, but she lived in a bad neighborhood, and Kyra’s brother Duke was the oldest man in the house.  Kyra only had three years left in high school, and Joyce knew that she’d been fending for herself for quite a while.  Aunt Joyce left Kyra to her own devices, for the most part, and she was thankful that Kyra graduated high school
before
she got herself pregnant.

After graduation
, Kyra found a job as a waitress.  Shortly afterwards, she fell in love with a boy she met at a neighborhood house party.  Tommy was tall and skinny with rich, dark skin and a pocket full of dope money.  He only used a condom three quarters of the time, and Kyra was not surprised or particularly upset when she learned that his
withdrawal
method was not effective.  She was only nineteen, but most of the other girls in Kyra’s neighborhood had babies by that age.  Not one person in Kyra’s life told her she should’ve waited when they noticed her belly growing bigger and bigger.

Kyra went to live with her grandmother because Aunt Joyce didn’t have the time or patience to
help raise a brand new baby.  Kyra’s relationship with Tommy continued as usual, even though the bun in her oven began to garnish negative attention.  Kyra heard rumors that Tommy was still with his ex-girlfriend Alisha.  Alisha even confronted Kyra a few times.  When Alisha called Kyra a
ho
, Kyra called her a ho right back.  And when Alisha wanted to meet up to fight, Kyra was down for that, too.  But thankfully others intervened when they saw how far along Kyra was at that point.

“You can’t be fighting no pregnant gir
l!” an older bystander warned.

“Her face ain’t pregnant,” Alisha had said.
  “I can slap the shit out of her.”  She had her rings removed, her weave removed and her shoes off already.  Alisha had a razorblade hidden in her mouth as well, but Kyra wasn’t afraid of her.  She brought half a dozen cousins with her to rival the half a dozen hood rats Alisha brought as backup.

The tension reached
a boiling point on Christmas Eve, two months before Quinell was born.  Incensed that Tommy was really going to stay with Kyra and start a disgusting
family
with her, Alisha went to Kyra’s grandmother’s house and knocked calmly on the door.  She wanted to rip Kyra’s hair out when she answered, but Alisha maintained her cool until Kyra summoned Tommy to the door.