“Good job, good job!” Coach said. “Give it up,” he added, now clapping his hands. He went on. “Relay is about everyone pulling their weight. But sometimes, there has to be one person to just take over. Take the inside lane, and go for blood. Make a decision, because sometimes, there won’t be a leader there to tell you. There won’t be a coach or a frontrunner or a roadmap. Sometimes, you just gotta make a decision, take a turn and see what happens. If you trust yourself, nine times outta ten, you’ll get to where you’re supposed to be.”
“Wish where we were supposed to be was down my street. Woulda went home,” Lu mumbled. Ghost was on his knees trying to catch his breath. I would’ve laughed at what Lu said, but I didn’t have the energy. None of us did. Plus, he said it a little too loud.
“No, see, that’s where you want to be, son.” Coach picked up the two batons from the track, and wiped them down. “But this is where you need to be.” He slipped the metal sticks in his pockets. “And you know why, Lu?” Lu lifted his head, eyes on Coach. “Because you and Ghost owe me a mile.”
“Coach, I was last! Not Ghost. You said, ‘Ghost can’t be last.’ ” Lu looked apoplectic.
“Yeah, but I don’t ever want you to be okay with being last, son. So you both owe me one. Everybody else, I’ll see y’all Saturday, bright and early. We’re gonna try these relays, and if they look good, we’ll start working on other ones, and maybe even some hurdles.” The rest of us got up, limped our way to the benches. Car doors started slamming as parents showed up to pick up their half-dead kids. You could see others poking their heads out of the windows, trying to understand why the track looked like an apocalypse movie.
I looked for Momly, then caught myself, realizing that she wouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be. But there was Uncle Tony. He was holding Maddy by the shoulders—Maddy, unbroken, breathing—they both looked tired, as if they’d been running too. A rush of feelings came washing over me. The sizzle in my lungs now becoming a full fireball dropping into my gut. I turned back toward the track for a quick moment of Get yourself together, Patty. Be strong, Patty. I was looking out toward the track but not at the track. Not at anything.
I shook my head—refocus, girl!
“It ain’t gotta be fast, but it’s gotta be done,” Coach was saying to Lu and Ghost, and as the blur cleared, I saw them both now standing with their hands resting on their heads, their breathing almost back to normal. But they looked pathetic. Exhausted. And they had to put in another mile. Poor guys.
Deja walked by me, heading toward her mom. “Good job, Patty,” she said, tapping me on the back.
“Yeah, Patty,” from Krystal. “You ain’t no joke. Let’s crush ’em on Saturday.”
“That’s definitely the plan,” I said, now walking toward Maddy and Uncle Tony. I glanced back. Sunny was still on the track. Still leaning against the fence. His father hadn’t come yet, which was weird. The stiff-suit dude was always on time.
When I reached Uncle Tony and Maddy, Maddy gave me her usual big hug, and whispered, “There’s pizza in the SUV.” I let go of her, nodded, then gave Uncle Tony a hug too. Just reached out and grabbed him. I told him I needed a few more minutes. Then to Maddy, I promised, “Ten, tops.”
“Of course,” Uncle Tony said. And I turned back toward the track to join my boys.
“So, I’m ready to tell y’all what’s wrong,” I said to them halfway around lap one. See, I told Coach that if Lu and Ghost had to run, then so did I. That as a newbie, we also have to win and lose together, hold each other up.
“Somebody’s learned a lot this week, huh?” Coach teased. He had no idea what I was feeling. What I’d been going through. How could he?
“I’m in too, Coach,” Sunny said, sauntering over.
“Look, we takin’ it easy, Sunny,” Ghost said testily. “It’s all love, but don’t be showin’ off.”
And no one did any showboating. And once we knocked down that first two hundred meters, I was ready to talk.
“Well, we ain’t interested no more, Patty. We over it,” Lu jabbed.
“My aunt’s in the hospital. The one that takes care of me,” I said flat-out, to shut his stupid mouth for once.
“Shoot,” Lu said quick. “Patty . . . I was just jokin’.”
“I know.”
“She good?” Ghost asked.
“Yeah. Car accident. Broke her arm and she’s bruised up pretty bad. And she got a concussion. Crazy thing is my little sister was in the car with her, but, thankfully she came out okay.” No one said anything. Just kinda let that whirl around us for a second. “But on top of that, well, I don’t think I realized how much she actually be doing. Like, how much she takes care of. I mean . . . she takes care of my mother, for real. So now I gotta figure out how I’m gonna get my mom to the doctors and all that so she can get her blood cleaned. Plus, Momly’s how I get to the track. It’s just so much. Too much.” I could feel myself getting choked up.
“Wow. That sucks.” Lu said, as we rounded the second curve. He jogged closer.
“Yeah. A lot going on,” I replied, with nothing on it. “Uncle Tony will probably ask Skunk to help out with some stuff since he ain’t working.”
“Who’s Skunk?” Ghost asked.
“Cotton’s big brother,” I answered. Which makes him basically my big brother and practically Uncle Tony’s little brother. Y’know, my uncle just be looking out for Skunk’s knucklehead self. Keep him out of trouble.
“And who’s Cotton?” Ghost followed.
“Patty’s bestie,” Lu panted.
I shook my head at him, like really? “Ghost, Cotton is really Lu’s boo.” Not really, but they liked each other. Which was disgusting.
“Oh, word?”
“Nope.”
“Yep.”
“We just cool.”
“Don’t deny my girl, Lu, or I’ll leave you laid out across this track.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever, whatever,” Ghost cut in. “Patty, just put me on with them rich girls at your school.”
“Tuh. Boy, please.”
“What? You think they too good for me?” Ghost’s voice toughened.
Lap three.
I thought of T-N-T. Taylor, TeeTee, this is Ghost. “Nah, not even. You’re too good for them, Ghost. They ain’t ready for you,” I said, glancing over, catching a slick smile creeping across his face. Then I added, “Plus, they don’t eat sunflower seeds.”
“They don’t eat sunflower seeds?!”
“They don’t eat sunflower seeds?” Lu repeated.
“They don’t eat sunflower seeds,” I confirmed.
Sunny, oddly didn’t weigh in on the sunflower seed situation. So we all just jogged, the sound of eight feet moving in rhythm, slapping down on the track.
Last lap.
“Yo, so how long Mrs. Emily gonna be in the hospital?” Lu asked.
“The doctor said they doing surgery tomorrow morning. Hopefully she’ll be home by Saturday.”
“You still gon’ make it to the meet?” Ghost asked.
“That’s the thing. I’m gonna try my best, but I don’t know yet. I wanna be there for her, y’know? Don’t tell Coach, though. I don’t want him to be disappointed. He gave me anchor.”
“Wait, so you not gon’ tell him?” Lu asked. “Patty!”
“I know! But I’m still trying to figure everything out. This all just happened this morning,” I explained. “I’ll text him tomorrow, latest. It’s not like he can train another relayer in a day, anyway.”
“You better,” Lu warned.
Sunny sniffled. The first sound from him since we’d been running. I glanced over. He sniffled again as we came up on the last hundred meters.
“You good, Sunny?” I asked. He didn’t respond. Just ran face forward, and kept running, sniffling the whole way. Once we crossed the finish line, he quick-quick dashed tears from his face so no one could see them. But I knew they were there. We all did. “What’s wrong, man?” I shot
a look to where Maddy and Uncle Tony were parked. Coach was talking to them and I groaned. I had a feeling my uncle had already told him about Momly.
Ghost put a hand on Sunny’s shoulder. “Yeah, man, what’s goin’ on?”
“It’s just . . .” Sunny started but got caught up. “Sorry.” He took a deep breath, got himself together. “Sorry,” he said again. “Just, thinking about your mother. It just got me, y’know?” he said, his voice shaky. His father was there now, parked in his fancy car, a newspaper parked in front of his face. I knew Sunny meant to say my aunt, but it wasn’t no point in correcting him. I got it.
“Awwww, Sunny,” I said, opening my arms. “She’ll be fine.” We hugged, and then Lu and Ghost, my boys, my YMBCs, came in for theirs, too.
TO DO: Eat pizza! (and . . . do some other things, but . . . pizza!)
I WENT TO bed that night with a belly full of pizza. It was the first night in ages I didn’t have to police Maddy’s plate. The first night we ate without Momly’s tired face looking back at us. Without the smell of turkey wings mixed with the smell of clean. No white plates to put in the sink, because Uncle Tony had us eat on paper ones. It was the first night that me and Uncle Tony actually had to help Maddy with her homework. She had to practice for a spelling test. She wanted to know if the word Dr. Lancaster said, “concussed,” had anything to do with bad words. Me and Uncle Tony laughed, told her it had to do with a concussion, then we had to tell her that neither of us knew exactly what a concussion was. It was the first night that I tried to make small talk at dinner. Momly was always good at starting conversations at the table, even if Uncle Tony was better at stealing them. He couldn’t start them, though. And silent dinner was killing me, so I tried to.
“Y’know, the other day I got into it with this girl,” I said, pulling another slice of pizza from the box. “At practice.” Not sure where it came from. Probably just thinking about how good practice went with me and the girls today, and how sucky it went on Tuesday. I glanced at Maddy, and she was in full-blown cheese mode. It was like eating pizza clogged her ears. She would take a bite, then stare at the slice as if it was talking to her, telling her how delicious it was.
“What? Who?” Uncle Tony perked up, tightened his eyes. “Why?”
“Just this girl, Krystal. I didn’t bother tellin’ nobody about it because we squashed it,” I explained. “But she called Momly my ‘white mother’ and I just, like . . . lost it.”
Uncle Tony slurped the hot cheese, then set what was left of his slice down. Grabbed a napkin, cleaned the grease from his hands and mouth.
“That made you mad?” he asked. “I mean, I know Emily’s not your mother, but did that girl saying you had a white mom really offend you?”
I chewed on crust. Chewed and chewed, thinking. Thinking about . . . everything. I swallowed, shook my head.
“Nah, not really. It wasn’t that. I was more mad that she said it like she knew our family. Our situation.” I glanced at Maddy again. She was nibbling like a rabbit, which meant she was now listening. Didn’t matter. She needed to hear this part. “So I had to defend us. I had to defend Momly.” Maddy looked at me. I looked at Uncle Tony. He nodded and picked his pizza back up.
“You know, Emily would’ve told you not to get into no mess with nobody over her. She would’ve said she doesn’t need you to defend her, because she’s the adult and it’s her job to defend you.”
“Yeah, I know. She probably would’ve got on the phone and snitched on me to Ma.”
Uncle Tony snorted. “And what you think Bev woulda said?” He took another bite of his pizza.
I thought for a moment, ripping the crust in my hand open to pick the soft white bread out of the crunchy part. I glanced back up and shrugged, bread between my fingers like a pinch of cotton. “Probably woulda yelled at me.”
“Concussed you out,” Uncle Tony joked. “Just like she’s gonna do me since I forgot to call her and tell her about everything that happened today.”
I tossed the bread in my mouth, chewed. “Yeah, but then she probably would’ve told me she was proud of me.”
To that, Uncle Tony didn’t have a follow-up joke, like normal. That was a first. Instead he just said, “I’m proud of you too. Me, Emily, Bev, Ronnie, and little Waffle here”—Maddy bounced her eyebrows at me and flashed a joker-y grin—“we all are.”
This was also the first night in a long time someone tucked me in. I don’t mean actually tucked me in, but just came and checked on me. I always did it for Maddy, counting her beads, and toward the end of the week when there were fewer to count—and after the accident there were much fewer to count—I would make up all kinds of silly stories until she fell asleep. Lately, they’ve all been some weird spin-off about Frida. Other times, I would just sit on Maddy’s bed and listen to her make up tales herself until she dozed. Crazy ones about what our mother’s legs might be doing. Maybe they were dancing in Mexico. Maybe they were off kicking butt somewhere. “Who knows,” Maddy would say. “Ma’s legs ain’t no junk.”
Tonight, though, my uncle came and checked on me. This was after he’d finally spoken to my mother. After my mother talked to Maddy. After she talked to me. After she made my uncle put her on speakerphone so she could pray. After she asked my uncle to take her off speakerphone so she could tell him what she would’ve done if anything had happened to Maddy, and how dare he take all day to call her. After she asked for Momly’s hospital room number. And after she told us she loved us. All of us.
Uncle Tony knocked on the door. I had just finished doing my Frida research for the night and was sitting at my desk, staring into the mirror, wrapping my hair—combing it around my head and pinning it in place before covering it in a scarf, a pretty silk one Ma gave me with stars all over it.
“Come in,” I said, tying a knot in the fabric.
“Hey,” Uncle Tony said. He was holding an empty plate and kissed me on top of my head, the image of the two of us in the mirror, obviously related. Uncle Tony set the plate on the desk.
“Hey,” I said, getting up and climbing into bed. Uncle Tony took a seat on the chair.
“I just wanted to come say good night,” he said. “And to let you know I called Skunk, and he’s going to help us out with some stuff.” He nodded, awkwardly, before finally just saying, “And . . . I wanted to check on you. How you doing with everything going on? School isn’t your favorite place, Momly’s going through what she’s going through, track is stressful, I’m sure, and Maddy, I know can be a handful because she’s got your mother in her.” He smirked just for a second.
“I’m cool.”
“Yeah?” He didn’t seem surprised by my answer, but he leaned in anyway and asked, “You sure?” He looked at me like he could see that thing on my face that Becca saw. That I saw in hers. That look that says I got thoughts somewhere I can’t get to. Under-thoughts.
But what was I supposed to say? I mean, I was fine because I had to be.
“Yeah, I’m sure, why?” I faked, but before he could call me on it, I changed the subject, which, when I think about it, might be one of my hidden talents. “What’s the plate for?”
“Oh,” Uncle Tony said as if he had forgotten about it. He reached behind his back and grabbed it, then sat right beside me. “Well . . . I was wondering if maybe you would have a cupcake with your uncle.” He extended the plate to me. “Go on. Your ma won’t know, and you better not tell Momly or Maddy on me.” A wink and a grin.
I gave him a blank stare. Folded my arms across my chest.
“Go on,” he nudged. “For me.” I sighed, bit down on my lip, and pretended to pick up a cupcake. Held the invisible cupcake to my lips, took a bite.
“Good, right?” Uncle Tony said, doing the same, his eyes starting to water. “Strawberry.” I kept my hand to my mouth, now covering it. Keep it together. Come on, Patty. Keep it together. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t help but think about my life without my little sister, without Momly. My life without my mother, or uncle. A
nd even though I was grateful for all of them, I wondered how my life would be different if my dad had just . . . woke up. Why couldn’t he have just woke up? If he was here, I could just be . . . regular. But I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t say nothing. So I just nodded at my uncle, who was now wiping tears from his own cheeks, and swallowed my pretend cupcake. And then, it all burst out of me. All those stupid tears I’d been cramming back finally broke loose. I cried me a flood.
The next morning I didn’t send Ma a smiley-face text like I normally did. But that’s because Uncle Tony took off work—something that never happened—so that he could fill in for Momly and take Ma to the hospital dialysis unit to get her blood cleaned. And because Momly was in the same hospital, I convinced Uncle Tony to take me and Maddy with him.
It was super early, like around six thirty in the morning, when we left the house and piled into Uncle Tony’s SUV. There were papers all over the backseat, half-full cups of coffee in the cup holders, and a few french fries—hard yellow twigs—that must’ve been there forever on the passenger seat, wedged between the cushions. His SUV didn’t smell like clean. It didn’t have that nose-itchy scent that we were used to in Momly’s car. It still smelled poisonous, but not the good kind.
When we pulled up in front of Ma’s house, our other house, Maddy ran to the door like usual.
“Once, Maddy,” I reminded her.
“I know!” she shot over her shoulder, pushing the doorbell. “Coming,” Ma said through the wood. The sound of locks unlocking. Ma opened the door and pushed on the screen door, which I held open so Maddy could get her hug, which was extra-extra-long this morning. Then I gave Ma a kiss on the cheek and wheeled her out to the car. I mean . . . SUV. Uh-oh. I hadn’t thought about the fact that Uncle Tony didn’t drive a regular car. A car like Momly’s. One that Ma could hoist herself into. So as I pulled up to the passenger side, Uncle Tony hopped out of the SUV and came around to help.
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