Sellout

by Ebony Joy Wilkins

Three men in heavy coats stood on the corner throwing dice into a pile of money. A chubby baby wearing only a diaper wobbled nearby holding on to a bottle of milk. A woman, looking like she belonged with the baby, talked loudly on a cell phone about a clothing sale down the block. An old man, wearing a brown-and-white pin-striped suit, tried to sell Tilly a griddle iron. She told him no and pulled me down the block past him.

  “Don’t stare, girl,” she hissed. “It’s rude. Just keep on walking.”

  I couldn’t help it. There were so many people in the street. A girl around my age reached for my hand and offered to braid my hair for twenty-five dollars. A hairy kid wearing khaki pants and a baggy, sleeveless sweatshirt wanted Tilly to buy a leather briefcase, but she said no. At every corner someone offered us something: socks, toothbrushes, books for one dollar, and all kinds of toys. We did stop for grapes from a fruit stand.

  “Okay, here we are,” Tilly said, walking up the sidewalk to what looked like an old warehouse. My heart skipped a few beats.

  “Amber’s Place is in a warehouse?” I asked.

  “Hush, come on, you’ll see,” she said.

  The crisis center looked like a factory out of operation. A large billboard with torn lettering stood on the lawn by the front door warning intruders of prosecution. Three rows of bars stretched across every window and a security guard came out to pat us down before we entered. Apparently, one girl’s boyfriend refused recently to comply with the “no weapons” policy. I followed Tilly through the metal detectors anyway.

  Tilly placed her jacket, the bag of grapes, and her pocketbook on the table in front of the guard and passed quickly through the buzzer. I tried to follow after putting my own purse down, but the bell rang, and the guard stopped me with his big arms.

  The guard searched through my makeup, a small wad of cash, and my school ID. And then he held up a small pocketknife. My hands went straight to my mouth. My mom must have slipped that in when I wasn’t looking.

  “What in the hell are you doing carrying a knife, girl?” Tilly hissed through the space in her top front teeth.

  “I’ll give you one guess,” I told her.

  I hoped the guard wouldn’t take me away. Instead, he sent me back through the detector and frisked me, picking through each pocket and even opening the waistband of my skirt. There had to be some limit to the amount of embarrassment a girl had to take in one week. I was going into a crisis center as a volunteer, not getting on an international flight.

  “That couldn’t have been anybody but your momma,” Tilly said, shaking her head. “I should have known.”

  I nodded. My mom had slipped it in my bag along with her credit card. I’m sure she was only looking out for me and didn’t have any intention of bailing me out of this place.

  “What kinds of girls need a security guard anyway?” I asked. “Did you bring me to some secret jail, Tilly?”

  The guard kept my knife but waved me through. As soon as we were past security, Tilly looked excited again.

  The inside of the building looked nothing like the outside of Amber’s Place. The walls were pale blue and had a flower trim that matched the sofas lining the walls. Small circular tables were spread in the center of the large main room. Girls were everywhere. There must have been hundreds: dark skinned, light skinned, white, Hispanic, black, Indian, Asian, girls with dreadlocks, cornrows, straight hair, curly hair, short girls, tall girls. I felt like we were at some kind of women’s expo or multicultural convention. I stood with my mouth wide open, looking at each one of them.

  “What does she think this is? A circus?” a small Indian girl with a bob cut asked.

  No one answered her but the two girls with her laughed and stared back at me. I closed my mouth and caught up to Tilly, who had crossed the room.

  The girls chatted in small groups. Some were sitting, some were lying on pillows, and in one corner of the room others stood against the walls. They all seemed to be waiting for something to happen. A large TV played an episode of Jerry Springer and three girls yelled at the TV as if they were a part of the show.

  “Get her, girl,” one of the girls shouted, as one TV guest punched the other in the face. “That’s what she gets for messing with your man.”

  I pulled Tilly to the side.

  “Do you know all these girls?” I whispered.

  Only a few of the girls looked like my friends from home. One girl even resembled Heather, which made me sad, and reminded me of my promise to call her as often as I could.

  “Come on, I want you to meet someone,” Tilly said.

  We walked through the sea of girls, who parted only a little as we came through. I could feel their eyes on me like little lasers. Most of the conversations quieted and even stopped as we passed by.

  “Hey, Tilly,” one of the girls called out.

  “Hey, Martine,” Tilly replied to a beautiful Hispanic girl with long black hair. The girl approached, inspecting me up and down like the security guard. She smacked her gum and hugged Tilly, keeping her eyes on me.

  “How you been doing, girl?” Tilly asked her.

  “Same old shit and you know I’m trying to be anywhere but here,” Martine said. A few of the girls around Martine laughed and so did Tilly. She actually cursed and my grandmother didn’t swing at her. I was amazed. I had no idea how Tilly was so familiar with these girls, but one of them just got away with murder.

  We kept walking until we reached a long gray hallway lined with doors. On each door was an inspirational poster, like “Life has a way of knocking at your door; be sure you’re ready to open it.” Tilly knocked on the second door on the right and turned the knob.

  “Inez, you in there?” Tilly called.

  “Tilly, is that you?” a woman answered.

  “You know it’s me, Red,” Tilly said. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

  “She’s a character, you’ll love her,” Tilly whispered to me. “Her name is Inez, but we all call her Red.”

  A woman Tilly’s age opened the door and pulled us inside with both hands. She reminded me of a cartoon character, the fire engine red hair with one blond strip was killing me. She wore a warm smile and had chubby cheeks.

  “Dios mío, if this isn’t Miriam’s daughter, I don’t know who is,” the woman said. She was a pretty woman. She wore a black suit that matched her glasses and black heels. Even with the heels she only came right below my shoulders.

  Tilly and the woman hugged. Then the woman hugged me tightly. For a small person, she was pretty strong. I looked at Tilly and waited for the air to start flowing back into my lungs.

  “Tash, Red knows your mother from when she was a little girl,” Tilly said. “We all used to come by to help at Amber’s Place. It’s like a second home to our family.”

  The idea of my mom growing up in Harlem was hard enough to picture. The idea of her volunteering in a place like this was unimaginable.

  “Red, this is NaTasha, she’s staying with me for a few weeks,” Tilly said. “She’s going to help us out here. If you need her, just holler. NaTasha, this is Red, she’s saved a lot of lives here over the years.”

  “Together, we’ve saved lives,” Red interjected quickly, turning to me. “Don’t let your grandmother fool you. I don’t do it alone. Tilly has been volunteering here for more years than I have been around.”

  “Okay, it hasn’t been that long, since I’m only twenty-seven,” Tilly said with her insulted face. We all laughed at that. She could probably pass for forty-seven, though.

  “We’re about to get started. Are you both going to stay around for a while today?” Red asked, grabbing a notebook from her desk. We nodded and followed her back out into the circus.

  CHAPTER SIX

  RED STOOD ON a stool, raised her notebook high in the air, and waved it like a magic wand. What looked like fairy dust came floating down, but Red actually hit a dusty ceiling fan while waving the book above her head. The girls laughed as she dodged the dirt falling on her.

&nbs
p; “Girls, I need you in your groups now, please,” Red announced. The girls dispersed to several round tables in the room and filled the seats.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Tilly. She mouthed “group time” and motioned for me to stick close to Red. I don’t know what I expected, but I knew she couldn’t hold my hand all day.

  Tilly winked at me and then joined a group across the room, leaving me alone in the center like a ringmaster. The girls watched and waited to see what tricks, if any, I had up my sleeve.

  “Girls, I want to introduce you to Tilly’s granddaughter, NaTasha,” Red said, coming to my rescue.

  I heard the giggles. I wanted to hide or disappear or die or something just so I wasn’t on display. I felt the girls watching me. No one said hello or moved to introduce themselves. I just stood there and tried not to make eye contact too much. My skin felt all tingly, like a mosquito kept landing on me and wouldn’t quit. Red pulled me toward a group of girls near the front of the room and sat me down in the circle of chairs.

  “Where she think she was going dressed like that?” a dark-skinned girl asked the group as soon as I was seated. She had the darkest skin I had ever seen. She pushed her millions of tiny braids behind her back and propped both hands on her hips like she was posing for a picture. I was the idiot who wore a nice new skirt to a miniprison. Baggy jeans and a white T-shirt was the outfit of choice for most of them. I hadn’t even gotten close. Why didn’t Tilly tell me? I wanted to melt right into the floor.

  “She thought we was ballroom dancing today, huh, Quiana?” said a Hispanic girl with thick, curly hair pulled up in a ponytail on the top of her head. She stood up and started to salsa right there in front of me. The whole circle started laughing.

  “Yeah, except we don’t ballroom,” Quiana answered her. She bent over and shook her backside into the girl with the ponytail. Red and I were the only ones who didn’t find their joke funny. Tilly was too far away to defend me.

  Red held up her notebook and I hoped she would throw it at them or ship them off to another group. No luck. They sat back down in the two chairs directly across from me and smiled slyly.

  “Hey,” the girl on my left whispered. She was looking behind her chair like she dropped something. I turned to help her search for whatever it was.

  “Hey, yourself,” I whispered back.

  “Shh…don’t let Red hear you,” she said and rolled her large blue eyes around and around like pool balls rolling on a table. “She hates when we talk out of turn during group time.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said quietly, glancing at Red but leaning closer to the girl with the eyes.

  “I just wanted to say hi, that’s all,” she said. She shifted her eyes toward the floor and smiled sweetly. She was a plump girl with pale skin and thin black hair to her shoulders. I relaxed a little and smiled at her. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her stomach like her breakfast would come back up at any moment. I scooted back toward Red.

  “Okay, ladies, today we’re talking about regret and rebuilding,” she said loudly for all the groups to hear. “Share with your group one regret and one way you plan to rebuild from this regret. Let’s state our rules of discussion out loud please.”

  “Share, respect, and take turns,” the girls yelled together. The room erupted as the girls chanted. Their voices sounded like a hundred balloons popping one after the other.

  As soon as the assignment was given and the chant was over, the girls started to chatter. I was happy to have the attention off of me for a while. I looked around for Tilly. She was seated in a circle across the room, three groups away from my own.

  Tilly caught my eye and waved. I waved and turned back to my group. Quiana and her dancing friend waved mockingly at me, too. I smiled weakly and lifted a shaking hand. They shoved each other and started laughing again.

  “Who would like to start us off, ladies?” Red asked.

  “Well, I regret getting knocked up,” a girl on my right blurted out. So much for not talking out of turn. “No one told me it would feel like this.”

  Her stomach nearly reached her knees like the baby could come at any moment.

  “Okay, Maria, tell us more about your regret,” said Red, writing something on her pad. When she wasn’t writing, Red rubbed her hands together or pushed her hair behind her ears or rocked her body like she was in a recliner.

  “I mean, I’m going to love her and everything, but I can’t go with my friends no more and I can’t hang out with my baby’s daddy like I used to,” she said. “If I would have waited, maybe things would be different, you know? I wouldn’t have to go to the doctor every day and I could just kick it again.”

  “You was having too much fun under them sheets,” Quiana said and slapped hands with the Hispanic girl next to her. They both laughed. “Should have thought about that earlier, mami.”

  “Shut up, Quiana,” Maria told her. “I know that already. That’s why I’m talking about it, stupid.”

  “Ladies, please remember to respect one another and wait for your turn,” Red said. “We don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable here.”

  Too late. I shouldn’t be hearing these kinds of things from people I didn’t even know. I was here to help, so I sure hoped Red didn’t expect me to share. I looked back at Tilly, but she was in full conversation, not looking at me.

  “Okay, so, Maria, what have you learned from that regret?” Red asked. “What do you plan on doing to not make that same regret again?”

  “I learned to keep my legs closed,” Maria answered, encouraging the other girls to laugh with her while she held her stomach tightly. “And Carlos will just have to wait.”

  The other girls laughed and reached to feel Maria’s belly. Quiana glared at me the whole time. I smiled along with the other girls. At least the lesson was learned. I imagined life with a baby in my arms. I couldn’t even survive a day by myself without help, let alone taking care of another human being.

  “Who would like to go next?” Red asked, flipping to the next page on her pad. She elbowed a tall Hispanic girl with dirty-blond hair. “Monique? How about you? You usually have a lot to share with us.”

  Monique adjusted her halter top so we could no longer see her purple lace bra, and started talking about stealing money from her mother’s purse.

  “I only took it so I could party with my girls,” she said, smirking. “She wouldn’t have known if I didn’t trip over her on my way out the door.”

  Monique looked upset for a moment, but then started laughing. Her laugh was muffled, though, like someone was holding a hand over her mouth. A couple of the girls joined in but a few looked around at one another, confused. Red, too.

  “Um…Monique, do you mean tripped over something near your mother?” Red asked.

  “Nah, Monique’s momma drinks as much as my parents do,” a dark-skinned girl with shoulder-length hair added, pushing Monique on the shoulder. “Where you think she learned to drink like that from?”

  Red shifted back and forth in her chair.

  “So, Monique, what did you learn from this?” she asked.

  “Next time, I’m gonna wait until I know she’s passed out good,” Monique said, amusing her friends. She caught Red writing something down on her paper and held her hand against her heart and bowed her head. “I mean, I’m not gonna steal and I’m gonna try to quit drinking.”

  I didn’t belong here, among these girls. How was I supposed to help with any of this? These stories were straight from the talk shows, stories that weren’t even real. Red caught my eye and my heart started beating fast. I really hoped she wasn’t going to ask me to say anything.

  “You have to mean the words, not just say them, for them to matter,” Red told the group. “Otherwise, we’re wasting our time here. You all know the mistakes I made at your age—sex, drugs, stealing, detention centers, and even assault. It wasn’t pretty, but I’ve turned myself around and we’re here so that you will recognize you can do the same.” />
  The girls were finally quiet.

  “NaTasha, we know you’re visiting, but I’d like to give you the opportunity to share if you’d like,” Red said after awhile. “We all have issues and sometimes it’s easier to talk about them and get them off your chest. Everything said in this circle stays in this circle, just to let you know.”

  The girls waited and glared.

  I was perfectly okay with all of the issues on my chest. I didn’t need to share, want to share, nor was I going to share. I wasn’t one of these girls. I didn’t have problems like they said they had. They would roll on the floor laughing at my problems. Well, they could wait all night if they wanted. I crossed my arms and waited patiently for Red to move on.

  The girls exploded.

  “Hey, I thought we had to share, Red,” the girl with big, blue eyes shouted out.

  “Yeah, so what’s your story, huh?” Maria said, looking at me. “You don’t get to sit here and listen to my shit and then act like you’re all holier-than-thou. I don’t think so.”

  “You think you’re better than us, pretty girl?” Quiana asked. Quiana sat with her elbows on her knees, challenging me to stay quiet. I still didn’t open my mouth. I had forgotten anything that I might have shared anyway. No one had ever called me pretty before, sarcastically or not. “She does think she’s better than us, girls. She isn’t from here and she isn’t like us and she doesn’t care nothing about us.”

  “Ladies, that’s enough,” Red finally interrupted, waving the notebook in front of Quiana like a white flag. “It’s her first day with us. Maybe she’ll want to share tomorrow.”

  Fat chance.

  I didn’t speak the entire train ride home. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep and Tilly let me. I didn’t want to have to tell her I wasn’t going back to Amber’s Place. I didn’t want to disappoint her already.

  When we got back to Tilly’s neighborhood, I convinced her to let me walk around alone for a while. I wanted to think about the day and all the things I’d heard. At first, Tilly insisted on going with me, but I told her I really needed to be alone. She looked hurt, but gave in after a few minutes, and made sure I kept her house key and a couple of dollars on me.