Sellout

by Ebony Joy Wilkins

  “You know I’m cooking, girl,” Tilly said, smiling proudly. Everyone knew about Tilly’s food. “I’ll be ready for you about five. My granddaughter here is going to help me get ready.”

  I smiled and shot Tilly a look. How could she be standing here telling tales in church? She knew all I could do was boil water.

  “It’s nice to meet you, dear,” Ms. Rose yelled at me. “You remind me of my own granddaughter. Maybe I’ll bring her with me tonight.”

  “Alright, Ms. Rose.” Tilly pulled me out of the sanctuary. We made our way through the rest of the crowd and stepped out onto the street.

  We walked slowly back to her apartment, with Tilly holding on to me and humming the whole way. We passed her place and headed into the bodega. Her smile widened with every step. I prayed for empty aisles and bad tunes, so maybe Tilly wouldn’t dance through the store and embarrass me this time.

  “Hey, Amir,” Tilly sang, “hook me up with some meat, baby.”

  “You got it, Ms. Tilly,” he said, slicing a turkey for her. He winked at me while he weighed the meat on his scale. My cheeks were hotter here than out in the sun. I stood in one spot so I wouldn’t bang into anything and watched Amir’s strong arm muscles flex while he cut into more meat. “Did NaTasha tell you about Monday?”

  She pretended not to know and smiled like she was about to find out some juicy gossip about me.

  “Not everything, my dear, so why don’t you fill me in,” she said, leaning onto the glass in between us. Amir looked at me to make sure it was okay. He looked nervous. It was cute. Very cute.

  “Well, I was going to take NaTasha to see a movie,” he stammered. “I mean, if that’s okay with you, Ms. Tilly.”

  He just scored major points with her and probably didn’t even know it. She beamed like he’d just proposed marriage. She glanced over at me and nodded her head.

  “Of course it’s okay,” she said, taking the meat he handed her. “I was wondering what was taking you so long to ask her.”

  “Oh, Ms. Tilly,” he said. “See you both on Wednesday.”

  I made an exaggeratedly slow three-point turn toward the door and could hear Amir laughing behind me. I pumped my hips with every step just for effect. I wasn’t going to be remembered for the spilled beans forever if I could help it.

  We got back to the apartment and Tilly put on an apron right away. I wrapped one of her aprons on, too, just to make her laugh. She saw how big it was on me and shook her head.

  “You finally ready to learn how to cook, huh?” she asked, swinging a dish towel at me. I laughed and shook my head no. I started collecting dishes to set the table. Sundays after church were always a busy time around Tilly’s apartment. “Girl, take that off, you look silly.”

  Tilly started humming one of the hymns we had just heard during service. I watched her measure sugar levels with her finger, choose the right turkey legs to cook, and adjust the stove temperatures. She was really at home in the kitchen, and I admired her for that. She’d found something she loved.

  With the exception of cooking, I was just like her, from our round hips, to our attitude, to our coarse hair. For the first time I could remember, I was okay with all of it. I wanted to be just like Tilly.

  “I love you, Tilly,” I said. She turned and looked at me.

  “You know I love you, too, baby,” she said, flinging some sticky flour at me. I pulled some of it out of my hair. She nodded at my head. “You want me to fix your hair for you later?”

  The last time Tilly braided my hair, I came away with small bumps around the edges of my scalp and tears in my eyes. She had sworn she wouldn’t pull or twist too tight, but she lied. Those braids stayed in for a good two weeks and so did the pounding headache. They looked beautiful on my ovalshaped head, but I was like show and tell at school. The kids pointed and touched and stared like they’d never seen anything like it before. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have that same problem here. All of a sudden, I missed having my hair done, pressed or braided.

  “Sure, Tilly, if you don’t mind,” I said, placing all the forks on the right side of the plates. I lit the apple-scented candle in the center of her table and pulled the matching knives and spoons from the silverware drawer.

  “Course I don’t mind, honey,” she said, smiling. She added another layer of butter flavoring to the turkey legs and slid the tray onto the center rack in the oven.

  Soon the cooked turkey legs were cooling on the stovetop, green beans were boiling, black beans and rice were on a slow boil in their pots, too, and I was kneeling in between Tilly’s legs getting my hair braided. Tilly hummed a fast hymn and parted my hair with enthusiasm. She had a comb in one hand, holding the hair in separate sections, and grease in the other hand, moisturizing my scalp.

  “You know what design you want?” she asked just as the doorbell rang. I didn’t know. I thought about the elaborate hairstyles I’d seen at Amber’s Place and around Tilly’s neighborhood over the past few weeks. I knew what I didn’t want, but I was okay with Tilly choosing a style for me. The twists she wore looked elegant. I told her something simple and cute, and got up to answer the door.

  “Ooh wee, girl, look at that head,” Ms. Rose yelled to me. “Your stuff was flying in church, but, girl, ooh wee. You want me to fix you up real quick before we eat?”

  Did everyone in Harlem know how to do hair except for me? I invited Ms. Rose inside and she hugged me tightly, so tight I almost missed seeing Shaunda slip past me. Ms. Rose let me go fast.

  “You two girls know each other, right?” Ms. Rose asked, grabbing Tilly up next.

  Of course we knew each other and I was slightly relieved it was her, and not one of the other girls. I just hadn’t expected Shaunda, who hugged Tilly and grabbed a seat on the couch across from all the hair products.

  “Um, yeah, we met at Amber’s Place,” I answered her, smiling at Shaunda.

  She returned my smile but didn’t say anything. I took a seat back in front of Tilly and she started to braid.

  I tried to keep my eyes on Ms. Rose and Shaunda, but Tilly had my head gripped hard like a football tucked in her arms. It was painful but I knew Tilly wasn’t trying to hurt me. I closed my eyes and listened to Ms. Rose and Tilly talk about the church building fund and the women’s missionary board, both of which Ms. Rose was in charge. Most of the conversation was gossip about nosy women volunteers, missing money, and slack members.

  Shaunda and I were quiet the whole time.

  “I told you not to get so involved, Rose,” Tilly told her, laughing about the ten-year-long building fund project with no construction work in sight. “You and I both know they ain’t building nothing in there but a new tour route for the visitors.”

  They both laughed. I heard Shaunda giggle, too, and shuffle through one of Tilly’s magazines. I wondered what she was really thinking about. Had she been in Tilly’s house before? Was she collecting stories about Tilly and me to share with the other girls? Had any of the other girls been in Tilly’s apartment before? All the questions started a panic deep in my chest and a headache worse than the pain from the tight plaits Tilly was folding on my head. I was so deep in thought I didn’t even hear Ms. Rose talking to me. Tilly flicked the comb against my forehead and they all laughed at me.

  “Huh? What? I mean yes?” I stammered, holding my hand against my forehead. They continued laughing. I caught Shaunda looking around at the paintings on the walls and the books I’d stacked into Tilly’s bookcases over the years. She wouldn’t have done that if she’d been there before. I took a deep breath until my heartbeat slowed to a normal pace again.

  “I was just asking how things have been going for you at Amber’s Place,” Ms. Rose repeated herself. The sides of her lips quivered when she spoke. “Shaunda here has told me all about you, I feel like I know you already.”

  I looked over at Shaunda to search her eyes, to no avail.

  My heartbeat sped up again. I wanted to know exactly what she told her grandmother. My volle
yball skills probably got left out, but the fighting and the teasing? I pulled away from Tilly for a second to take a break. I hadn’t even told Tilly the full story yet, and now her friends already knew.

  “Don’t worry, only the good stuff,” Ms. Rose said with the quivering lips. “I couldn’t bribe the juicy stuff out of her. She’s a good girl this one, now anyway.”

  Ms. Rose patted her granddaughter’s knee like you would a puppy dog. Shaunda ignored her and kept flipping through the Jet magazine she had been reading. I couldn’t picture her as the self-destructive, troubled teen that Shaunda referred to. But she was in there somewhere.

  “It’s been rough, but I think I’m finally starting to fit in,” I said. Ms. Rose and Shaunda didn’t look convinced. Tilly even tightened up on my hair.

  “Is that what you’ve been trying to do up there, fit in?” Tilly stopped halfway through a braid and pulled my head around to face her. She knew I was trying to fit in, anywhere and everywhere. “Is that what these braids are about? Because that ain’t the reason I brought you here, to be somebody else. You’re supposed to be up there learning about yourself.”

  “No, Tilly, that’s not what I’m trying to do,” I told her. She kept mouthing something under her breath. I could see Shaunda looking over to hear what Tilly was saying. “Let’s talk about it later, alright, please?”

  Tilly finished braiding but kept talking about what a shame it would be for me to have wasted my time here. I didn’t want to be any of those other girls; it was just easier to not stand out so much all the time. She just didn’t understand.

  Ms. Rose and Tilly kept talking about how fitting in was the wrong way for me to go. Shaunda even chimed in a few times. What did she know? She was acting odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t really want to pay too much attention. I was just glad Tilly didn’t leave my head halfway unbraided. The girls at Amber’s Place would get a kick out of that.

  We sat to eat and the grandmothers still wanted to discuss my fate.

  “She’ll learn one day,” Ms. Rose said, as if I wasn’t even in the room. Tilly had a tendency to do that, too. “Maybe not this time, but it will happen.”

  “I know that’s right,” Tilly said, stuffing a loose piece of turkey in her mouth. “That’s what I prayed for.”

  Praying about my social standing was going too far. God surely didn’t have the time.

  “Tilly, please,” I begged, “can’t we talk about something else?”

  “How about our volleyball match? NaTasha is pretty good,” Shaunda offered. This girl was never coming to dinner again. She might as well have given a play-by-play demonstration of how the girls almost killed me with a volleyball.

  “Or, how about the beautiful weather we’re having?” I asked, looking at Shaunda again.

  “Funny you should bring that up,” Tilly said, smirking. “I heard it was supposed to storm tonight.”

  “That’s too bad. It was such a beautiful day,” Ms. Rose said.

  It was too easy to distract two women who liked to talk a lot. It didn’t really matter the subject. They just liked to talk. A few times I found myself zoning out of their conversation. Thinking about Amir was more fun.

  Shaunda wasn’t paying much attention to them, either. She might as well have not been there at all. Her grandmother probably forced her to come anyway. This girl sitting at Tilly’s table was almost a different person from the one I knew at Amber’s Place. I wanted to know what was going on, but without our grandmothers around to intervene.

  “Shaunda, you want to sit out on the stoop for a while?” I asked, interrupting all flow of conversation going on next to us. Shaunda looked up and only grunted an answer that I couldn’t hear. But we cleared our plates and started down the stairs.

  “So, what’s up with you tonight?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

  “What are you talking about? My grandmother said you wanted me to be here,” she said, looking at me like I had a third eye on my forehead.

  “She did, did she?” I asked. I was going to kill Tilly. No way did I want Shaunda in my personal space, especially acting like she didn’t even know me. Just a few days ago, she was willing to tell me all I needed to know to survive. “Why are you acting so funny anyway?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, NaTasha,” she said, rolling her eyes and looking down the block. The sweet, helpful girl who’d shared a locker and all her dark secrets with me had clearly left the building.

  “Did I do something to offend you, Shaunda?” I asked, sounding desperate and insecure. I didn’t care.

  “No, you didn’t do anything,” she said. But her tone said the opposite.

  “So, if I didn’t do anything, what then?” I asked, getting frustrated and a little nervous. “I thought we were friends.”

  “I don’t have any friends, NaTasha,” she snapped. The muscles in her neck were strained and she looked close to tears. “I thought we were friends until you turned into one of them.”

  “One of who?” I asked.

  This girl might be the craziest one of them all. She couldn’t mean Quiana, Rochelle, or Monique, or she was dumb, too. Since when was I a part of any group at Amber’s Place? This had to be some kind of misunderstanding. She must have seen the confusion on my face.

  “I was the one who talked to you, not them,” she said. She was really mad. “Now they talk to you and about you and still, no one notices me. No one sees me anywhere. You step in and overnight, you’re the star of the show. I guess I got what I asked for, huh? And I bet Red didn’t even consider putting me in charge.”

  It was just a guess, but Red might have already seen this unstable side of Shaunda. It was clear that she was serious, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around her being so upset by my helping out with the reception.

  Shaunda, who looked like a supermodel, was jealous of me. It made no sense.

  “Yeah, but they’re torturing me,” I said, defending myself. If she only knew I would rather trade her places. It would be easier to be invisible. “You’ve seen them, they treat me like crap.”

  “Yeah, but they see you,” she said, softening her voice. She let the tears roll down under her nose and chin. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Shaunda, you’re so beautiful, you can’t possibly think that no one notices you,” I said. I wasn’t sure if my words would make her feel any better, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. She held up her hand to stop me. She wiped her face and neck with the palms of her hands, drying them on the thighs of her dark blue skinny stretch jeans.

  “It’s okay, I’ve learned to live in the shadow,” she said. “I’ve been there my whole life.”

  She had no idea how much we really had in common.

  Before I said anything else, Tilly and Ms. Rose came bounding through the front door. We stood and I exchanged hugs with Ms. Rose, while Shaunda stood to the side with her head down. Tilly and I watched them both walk down the street.

  “That was nice, huh, baby?” Tilly asked, nudging me. “Everything okay out here between you two?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and that’s all I could say.

  “Looks like you’re finally making some new friends,” she said.

  Tilly seemed so happy that I nodded.

  By the time we got back upstairs, the sun had completely set and the dishes were already cleared and washed. I picked up the phone to call my parents.

  “Tash, baby, we miss you so much,” my parents said, almost in unison. It was good to hear their voices. It was good to think about my home again.

  “What’s going on at home?” I asked excitedly. I wanted to hear how much everyone missed me. Dad said work was good. Mom said the shopping was a bore and asked about the pocketbook I was supposed to find for her. I had actually forgotten all about it. I told her I’d start shopping for it soon.

  “So, has Tilly given you enough black history lessons yet?” my dad asked, and we all laughed. I filled them in on everything. I should have lef
t out a few details, like the fighting and name calling, but I didn’t. I even told them about dinner with Shaunda and my park time with Amir.

  “So, I guess you are having a good time after all,” my mom said sadly.

  “You sure you’re alright up there?” my dad asked. He needed to hear me say it. “It sounds a little too dangerous to me, to be getting so involved. Remember, you’re coming home soon, but you can come home sooner if you want to.”

  “Yeah, your friends are ready for you to be home. They even stopped by to drop something off for you,” my mom added. What friends? Heather was the only one who ever visited. “Heather came by, and Stephanie was with her the last time.”

  The conversation quickly took a turn for the worse.

  No way could I go home now even if I wanted to. My worst enemy would be waiting at my door when I returned. I hoped Heather didn’t think Stephanie and I would all hold hands and skip down the block together. That girl had treated me like fresh dog poop and now she was stopping by my house and talking to my family?

  “You know, I’m really okay up here,” I told them, rushing them to get off the line. “It’s really not that bad. And I’ll be home in no time.”

  “Just come home in one piece, okay, kiddo?” My dad got the hint. We were almost done. My mom had a harder time saying good-bye.

  “It sounds like Tilly’s put you to work up there, huh?” she asked. I ignored her. How could she have welcomed Stephanie into our home? I wanted no part of it.

  “I love you guys,” I told them. We blew kisses through the phone and they asked to speak to Tilly. I handed the phone to Tilly and ran to punch a hole in something.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I THOUGHT ABOUT Shaunda and her sob story. Not only did I need to plan a reception for these girls, but now I felt guilty for doing it and personally responsible for Shaunda, too.