Amazed by her Grace, Book II

by Janet Walker

  * * *

  It was as if her breathing were controlled by some valve inside her body and someone had slipped inside and turned the valve up, full force. She wanted to stop the raging breaths but could not, so her nostrils flared. She licked her lips, but moments later they were dry again. Her ears roared, the rest of her body pounded. She glanced around, peering, unable to stop the shifting of her eyes. Perspiration lay along her cheeks and rolled away from her armpits, down the sides of her body. She drew her arms away from her body for relief from the sticky dripping sensation. She passed along a sidewalk that ran between two buildings. Jumped when she heard an apartment screen door slam shut. Flinched when a bird skimmed by overhead. She was almost there, and maybe things would go fine, maybe she wouldn’t run into Jinya Daggett today. And maybe Jinya wasn’t mad enough to do something to her. Maybe prison had changed her, made her grow up, and so maybe after Aunt Madge accused them, Jinya had decided to just let things slide. To overlook the accusation. To say, well, yeah, she didn’t beat Tracy this time but she had beat her in the past and they did take the cigarettes, so maybe they deserved the aunt’s lecture.

  Yeah, right.

  Tracy emerged from between two buildings and hesitated, looking first one way and then the other, down Haines Avenue.

  And there she was! On a front porch three doors down, leaning against the iron pole that supported the porch roof. Jinya Daggett’s head was tilted with interest because she was talking to a woman who sat in a chair and wore denim Daisy Duke shorts. The woman was cutting her eyes flirtatiously up at Jinya, and Tracy could see Jinya’s chin and mouth spread in a grin.

  Instantly, Tracy headed back the way she had come.

  Panic surged in her chest but she did not run. Rather, she walked briskly between the two buildings and kept glancing back. She walked because Jinya had not seen her, so there really was no reason to run. But all the noise in her body—the roaring, the pounding, the panting—grew louder, and when she was in the middle of the path she looked back again and nearly melted with weakness because the giant beige girl now stood yards away, in the same spot where Tracy had wheeled around, and was looking at her! Jinya wore Army boots, camouflage pants, and a large shirt, and her stance and body language—arms held away from her torso, as if suddenly halted in mid-motion—suggested she had run to the spot. Jinya’s face snapped with triumph and mischief.

  Later, Tracy would be unable to recall making a conscious decision to run. She would only remember running, and doing so faster than she ever had in her life. Only at the beginning, when they were still between the buildings, did she see Jinya behind her, in pursuit. After that, she lost sight of the manly girl but ran anyway, running hard and strong and fast, her chest burning with the effort, until she reached her mother’s front door. She flung open the screen and pounded the wooden inner door with her fist—Maama! she wailed—and fumbled in her pocket for her door key and tried to insert it in the lock, but the door snatched open and Diane Sullivan, alarmed and angry, asked what the hell was her problem, bamming like that, and Tracy rushed inside and looked outside—no Jinya—and looked at her mother and, winded and shaken and rubbery-legged, said in a trembling voice, “A dog was after me. A rockwilder!”

  “I don’t give a fuck ’bout no dog. Did you git my shit from Dray Harris?”

  Tracy’s breathing was out of control now; her nostrils flared with such force they locked in that position. But she did a quick comparison of the danger outside and the anger brewing in her mother’s eyes, and decided to go with the familiar.

  “Uh, no, he wasn’t home.”

  Tracy watched closely. The anger in the green eyes changed course, flowing away from her and toward the invisible Andre Harris. Diane Sullivan turned toward the kitchen. “Shit! Bastard never somewhere when you need ’im. I’ll go find his ass myself.”

  Tracy exhaled with relief, glad that Mama and Charles were such stupid grown-ups they couldn’t pay the bill to keep their phone turned on. Otherwise, Mama would have simply paged Dray instead of having to leave the house to find him. Tracy went into her bedroom. Earlier, she had lied to Diane about having a stomachache. Now, she really did have one, and she knew she would have it until she left Area Place and got back to MacDonald Park and Beck Academy. And Miz Grace.