Ramona Blue

by Julie Murphy

  I feel horrible, but my guilt will have to wait. “Y’all help Hattie out on the other side,” I tell Freddie and Ruthie.

  I squat down, letting her use my thigh as a step stool. “We gotta move, Hattie.”

  “I’m trying,” she says. “You try doing this with a beach ball in your shirt.”

  “Hey!” the man’s voice calls. And this time he’s much closer. “Y’all ain’t going anywhere. I’m done with you kids sneaking in here when no one’s renting the place. And if you have any doubt, you should know I’m carrying a pistol, so don’t you try nothing funny!”

  Hattie topples over the other side of the gate, but Freddie catches her.

  The four of us pile into the Jeep, and I’m not even fully in the car before Saul is reversing down the driveway, going much faster than any backward-facing car should.

  We’re quiet for a few minutes as Saul weaves in and out of streets, going exactly the speed limit. I sort through all our clothes and try to give everyone their stuff, but I can’t find Ruth’s shorts or Freddie’s sandals.

  It’s not until we’ve made it out to the coastal highway that Saul breaks out into hysterical laughter.

  And maybe it’s the tension, but so does everyone else.

  Except Freddie. And me.

  I nudge him with my elbow to try to get a read on him, but he rolls his eyes and shakes his head, turning away.

  “Whose house was that anyway?” asks Hattie.

  “Just a summer rental house that Todd used to clean. He used to do deliveries for Boucher’s, remember? We hooked up there a few times and would sneak into the pool when no one was renting it. I guess that must’ve been the property manager, though.”

  “Yeah, well, that was a little too close,” says Ruth over the wind. “I’m applying to colleges right now, Saul! I can’t really afford to get in trouble.”

  “What?” He looks to her in the rearview mirror. “You don’t trust your big bro?”

  “It’s not that,” she mumbles.

  Saul shakes his head. “Whatever. You think that asshole would’ve actually killed a couple of kids on a rental property? I doubt it.”

  Freddie sits in the middle with his arms crossed. “Really? You doubt that. Don’t know what world you’re living in.” It’s quiet for a minute before he adds, “I need you to take me to my friend’s house.”

  “Sure,” says Saul, his eyes drifting to me in the rearview mirror.

  I shake my head discreetly, hoping that he doesn’t press the issue any more.

  Freddie dictates directions, and as we pull up to Adam’s house, I’m surprised by how beautiful it is. Adam lives in a large robin’s-egg-blue plantation-style home with a wraparound porch. The house, though, is second to the sprawling live oak with branches so low they crawl across the yard. Deflated balloons dangle from the porch railing, and Adam sits waiting on the steps in black slacks and a blue jacket with a gold epaulet on each shoulder.

  I hop out of the back of the Jeep behind Freddie and follow him up the driveway.

  “You guys are soaked,” says Adam.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need to borrow some clothes,” says Freddie. “And some shoes if I can.”

  “Sure thing.” Adam still hovers between us.

  Freddie gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Give us a minute, okay?”

  “Oh, right!” he says. “Privacy. Sure. Yeah. I’ll be inside. But hey, don’t ring the bell. My parents are asleep.”

  As Adam walks inside, the clouds above shift, so that the moonlight creeping through the branches is reflecting off Freddie’s face now. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  To be honest, I don’t. Yeah, the whole thing was irresponsible, but we had a good time and no one got hurt. But more than anything, I hate the feeling of him being mad at me. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I really, really am.”

  He takes a few deep breaths. “We click,” he says. “And it’s almost easy to forget all the things that set us apart. Maybe sneaking onto private property is just some kind of stupid antic for you, but from where I stand, that’s how black kids get shot.”

  I open my mouth to argue but am silenced when I remember the moment I told him to trust me, even though I knew, I knew, I knew that we had no business at that house. “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  Freddie massages his forehead, grimacing as he does. “You can’t pretend to be color-blind or some shit when it’s convenient for you, okay? I’m black. This is the skin I wear every damn day. You’re my best friend. You can’t tell me that you don’t see that my black life is not the same as your white life.” He closes his eyes for a moment and shakes his head, like he’s answering his own silent question. “Maybe you haven’t thought about things like this before, because you don’t have to. I get that. But when I tell you I’m uncomfortable, I need you to listen, okay? I know there’s stuff I don’t understand about the gay thing. But you need to understand that my life in this skin is different from yours.”

  The guilt I felt earlier is nothing compared to the ignorance I feel now. How could I not know? How could I be so selfish as not to realize that he was hesitant for a reason? My skin crawls with shame. “I understand. God. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I feel awful. I know that doesn’t make it better. I don’t have any excuse.”

  All his words ring true. Sure, Freddie has more money and lives in a nicer house, but when someone with a gun catches the two of us on their property, one of us is more likely to be carried out on a stretcher, and it’s not me.

  I step toward him and hug him tightly. “I won’t ever put you in a position like that again.”

  “Okay.” He hugs me back and whispers, “Good night, Ramona Blue.”

  As Saul drives the rest of us home, I let my head fall back and watch the stars drifting by from the open top of the Jeep. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be gay, especially in the South, but if I’m being honest, I haven’t spent much time thinking about what being black in the South might mean. Or anywhere else for that matter.

  Anger and shame weigh heavy on my chest, but this isn’t about how I feel. It’s about Freddie. I hate that this is a reality he has to live with every day, and I wish I had some kind of answer to the bigger problem, but I don’t.

  SEVENTEEN

  Halloween falls on a Friday, and everyone looking for a real good time has made the hour drive to New Orleans, while everyone else is going to Melinda Harold’s masquerade party. That actually makes it sound much classier than it is. Really, it’s a huge party Melinda’s parents have been having for at least a decade now, and the perk is that the adults are too drunk to care how drunk all their kids are.

  I sit on the bathroom counter watching Hattie carefully apply fake white, feathery eyelashes. She’s dressed as an angel, I think, in a short lacy nightgown that isn’t the kind of thing you actually sleep in and cascades over her bump.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  I think back to the last huge party I went to and how well that went for me. “Positive.” Originally, we were supposed to hang out with Ruth and Saul, but Saul pulled out at the last minute. Whatever reason he ditched us for, Ruth wasn’t happy about it, so she opted to stay home. Left with the choice between Hattie and Tyler or my couch, I will always choose my couch.

  “Babe!” Tyler yells from the living room.

  “Babe!” I mimic.

  Hattie rolls her eyes. “Y’all gotta learn to like each other.” She steps back and takes one final look at herself before applying a coat of icy-pink lip gloss. Turning to the side, she examines her hem. “Do I look too pregnant in this?”

  “You are pregnant.”

  She groans. “Let’s go! Put on your costume, Tyler!”

  Tyler shuffles down the hallway. He wears his usual uniform—slightly too tight skinny jeans and a heavy metal band T-shirt.

  Hattie hands him the red cape hanging from the bathroom door and the headband with devil’s horns.

  �
��Do I have to wear the headband?” he asks.

  “Babe, it’s a couple’s costume. Without the horns, you look like some weirdo in a cape.”

  Tyler huffs as he pushes the headband into his purposely greasy hair. “Let’s roll, Mama.”

  Him calling my sister Mama makes my stomach turn.

  I shoo them both out the door and hand Hattie her jean jacket, because I am cold just looking at her. The weather down here is sporadic at best, but tonight actually feels like Halloween, with wind rustling through the trees.

  The minute the door shuts behind them, I do a little victory dance.

  I never have the place to myself. Or at least I feel like I don’t. Maybe it’s because our place is less than seven hundred square feet with four grown adults and one baby on the way, but some days it feels like my little smidgen of a bedroom is disappearing. Especially with Hattie always sleeping in my bed.

  In the kitchen, I dump the bags of candy my dad picked up into one giant mixing bowl and then hunt down the cat ears I’ve worn every year since seventh grade. After slipping on my favorite flannel shirt and coating my legs with bug spray, I sit out on our front steps and wait for the trick-or-treaters.

  As I pull out all the Tootsie Rolls for myself, it’s a pretty steady parade of neighborhood kids. Some actually have good costumes, but most wear hand-me-downs or a mash-up of found objects. I know a lot of families go to nicer, bigger neighborhoods to trick-or-treat, but a lot of people who live here don’t really have a way of getting around other than their feet.

  Around nine, and as the stream of trick-or-treaters is thinning, I get a text from Freddie saying he just got out of work and that he’s coming over with pizza.

  I hand out candy to a few ninth graders before calling it a night and heading inside with my bowl of mostly Tootsie Rolls.

  Walking through my front door, I realize that Freddie’s never seen the inside of our trailer, and for a moment I look around and see our place for what feels like the first time. One plaid couch and a puke-brown recliner complement the puke-beige carpet. Peeling linoleum in the kitchen. Dingy white cabinets. A low-hanging ceiling that bows in the center. Discarded hotel artwork from Dad’s job.

  I’m not embarrassed, or at least I tell myself I’m not. There are times when my life feels like a shrinking box that only money can expand, but most days it is a simple life that we’ve worked hard to maintain.

  Before Freddie shows up, I decide to do the dishes to hopefully reduce some of the clutter.

  Freddie arrives, balancing a large pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza in one hand and two DVDs in the other and wearing a T-shirt that says This Is My Halloween Costume.

  “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” I say, taking the pizza from him.

  “Nice cat ears.” He kicks his shoes off and plops down on the couch like he’s been here a thousand times, not even blinking at the fact that we don’t have a kitchen table. “Okay,” he says, holding up each DVD case. “We’ve got possessed dolls or murderous hillbillies.”

  “I’ll take murderous hillbillies. Do you think we need plates?”

  “Nah,” he says. “Just eat out of the box.”

  “Sounds good.” I grab a half-full liter of Dr Pepper from the fridge for us to share and put in the DVD.

  We sit hip to hip on the couch with the pizza box balancing on our knees as we pass the soda back and forth. Freddie’s body is warm, and he still smells like chlorine from this morning. We’ve been swimming almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’m trying not to get too used to the routine, because I know that when Freddie leaves for school, I’ll be going back to my usual life, which doesn’t include a pool membership.

  With the only light coming from the TV, we sit in a shadow of blue and stuff ourselves full of pizza. The movie is unnecessarily gory and kills everyone who is not blond and big-boobed in rapid succession.

  “The black guy always gets it first,” says Freddie. “I just want to see a movie that does, like, the ultimate fake-out and brings the black guy back to life.”

  “Or what if he was alive the whole time and crawled back to where his friends were and saved their asses at the very last minute?”

  He chuckles. “The black guy saves the day.”

  What I think, but don’t say, is that Freddie has saved almost all my days since he reappeared in my life a few months ago.

  We push the pizza box to the side and move on to my bowl of Tootsie Rolls. We watch the rest of the movie, taking bets on who will be next to die.

  When my dad comes home from his shift at the hotel, he waves hello. “You get any trick-or-treaters?”

  “Yeah, a bunch of neighborhood kids.” I motion to the pizza. “We got some leftovers if you want them.” He’s so bad at remembering to take lunch breaks, and none of the management at the hotel is in any hurry to remind him.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever turned down pizza.” He gladly takes our leftovers before stumbling to bed. I’ll never figure out how it is that some people can work so hard and get paid so little, while so many people who are paid the most hardly work at all.

  We put in the next movie, and before long our shoulders slump and our heads sink into our chests, and we’re both asleep.

  I wake briefly when my sister and Tyler come in. Tyler is drunk. I can tell by the sound of his shuffling feet. I keep my eyes barely closed as Hattie turns off the TV and throws a blanket over the two of us.

  And that’s when, in his sleep, Freddie pulls me close to him like a rag doll. Sleep is this fuzzy cloud hanging low around my head. I could force myself to wake up all the way and scoot to the other end of the couch. Or even tell Freddie he should go home. But I don’t. Because just the feeling of being touched—being held—is the release of a pent-up sigh.

  A few hours later, I wake to the sound of sizzling. With the blanket wrapped tightly around my shoulders like someone’s tucked me in, I peek over the back of the couch to find Freddie in my shitty little kitchen with its peeling linoleum, making eggs in an old frying pan, one that’s not nearly as nice as his at home. He’s the first person, I think, who I’ve not been related to, who has found a way to fit into my world—my world that has always felt so much smaller and less important than everyone else’s.

  NOVEMBER

  EIGHTEEN

  Every day I think of Grace a little less until she is an itch of a memory, like when you know you’re forgetting something, but you don’t know exactly what it is.

  With Freddie around and Hattie’s stomach growing every day, life is faster and more all-consuming than I ever remember it being before. I look forward to the mornings when I go swimming with Freddie and Agnes. I’m getting faster and I feel stronger. My legs barely even burn after my paper route anymore.

  One day after school, I go with Hattie and Tyler to BabyCakes to look at, well, baby stuff. “So are we registering or what?” I ask. Hattie isn’t even due until April. I can’t imagine what she could possibly need so early.

  She shakes her head as she fingers through the bottle nipples in the first aisle. “Not today. I just want to get a feel for this stuff.” Her brow furrows as she checks over her shoulder. “Where’s Tyler?”

  “No clue.”

  “Tyler!” she calls.

  “Coming!” he yells back as he rounds the corner on one of those motorized scooters.

  Hattie crosses her arms over her belly. “What the hell? Those are for, like, people who need them.”

  Tyler speeds down the aisle toward us and then hits the brakes hard, forcing the wheels to squeak. “Who’s to say I don’t need it? I had a long day at work yesterday, okay?”

  “It was your first day,” Hattie reminds him. “You only filled out paperwork.”

  “That’s why it was so long.”

  Tyler finally has a job, and it’s thanks to Dad, actually. He got Tyler in with the maintenance guys at the hotel. Dad went out on a limb, but it was for Hattie, not Tyler.

  We zigzag up and down the aisles, the motor on Tyler�
��s scooter humming behind us.

  “All this shit is so expensive,” says Hattie. “How do normal people even have babies?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say, but the truth is I don’t know. This stuff really is expensive. You need strollers and cribs and bottle warmers and diapers and ointments and diaper bags, and it never seems to end. For such a little person, it seems like an awful lot.

  The three of us stop below an aisle of hanging mobiles. Fish, trucks, angels, ballet slippers, rabbits, construction hats, princess crowns, clouds, trees. Every type of thing you could think of dangles above our heads, and the three of us, even Tyler, are mesmerized. The ceilings here aren’t too terribly tall, so with my height, my head is nearly in the same space as the mobiles.

  “I like the stars and the clouds,” says Hattie, pointing to a light wooden mobile with hand-painted white puffy clouds and gold shooting stars. “I wish we could paint clouds on her ceiling.”

  “Maybe we can,” I say. Even though there are no extra rooms in the trailer and all the ceilings are already dark with water stains.

  “Her?” laughs Tyler. “It’s a boy. I’m a straight shooter.”

  “Gross,” I mumble.

  “And I like the fish,” he says. “He’s gonna be a fisher.”

  While Tyler plugs the scooter back in, Hattie buys a pair of lavender booties.

  “You don’t really care if it’s a boy or a girl, do you?” I ask as she hands the cashier a ten-dollar bill.

  She smiles with her lips sealed and absentmindedly rubs her belly. “No,” she says. “Not even a little bit.”

  On Thursday morning I wake to a text from Saul.

  If you are receiving this text, you are invited to my housewarming party on Saturday eve. Yes, I, Saul Pitre, have left my mother’s bosom in favor of the bachelor life. Food, beverage, and good times provided. Price of admission: your body. HELP ME MOVE.

  And then moments later I receive another text directed specifically at me.

  Ramona dear, bring the straight one.