“You got company, Shorty,” his boys would say when they saw her coming. They’d lean back on their cars, pull their hats down low, and watch the show. Mama would yell and scream like a banshee, demanding Curtis bring his midget ass home. One time she knocked out his car windows with a tire iron; another time she tried to slash his tires with a cooking knife. “I’ma kill you, you muthafucka!” she’d yell. “They gon’ bury your tiny ass in a baby casket.”
Every time she showed up at the Grey and White, Curtis would hold up his hands and try to calm her down. “C’mon, Mildred,” he’d say. “You don’t need to be acting like this. Simmer down, now.” He’d promised to come by the house later. He’d tell her they’d work it out. Then she’d sit at the kitchen table waiting on him all night long, but he’d never show up. “Don’t nobody love me,” I’d hear her sob. “Nobody at all.”
I don’t know what made Mama act so crazy, or how love and anger got so mixed up in her head. All I know is by the time I met Derrick, when I was twelve years old, everything I knew about relationships was what I’d learned from her.
Chapter 8
Age of Consent
Sweetie stood on the porch steps with her hands on her hips and a Newport dangling from her mouth. “So,” she said, looking down at me sitting on the step beside her. “You givin’ that nigga some pussy?”
Derrick and I had been dating three months and this was Sweetie’s way of asking me how things were going. I leaned my head against the railing and ignored her. Sweetie and I were sisters, not friends. I wasn’t trying to tell her my business.
I had more important things to think about, like the outfit I was wearing. Derrick was on his way to pick me up to take me to Jellybean skating rink and I needed to look fresh. I had on my pink oversized T-shirt that hung off one shoulder Flashdance style and some dark blue Jordache jeans that my brother Dre stole off somebody’s clothesline. Sweetie said I could have the jeans because they didn’t fit her in that skintight way she liked. I took my banana clip out of my back pocket, gathered up my hair in a side pony, and tried to slick down my edges with my hands.
“Gotta give him that cooch,” insisted Peaches, who was sitting beside me on the porch step. She had a giant tube of strawberry Lip Smacker she kept rubbing over her lips, like she was trying to get them extra glossy. But she wasn’t fooling me. I knew for a fact that she would lick the shit out of that Lip Smacker when she was hungry. “He ain’t gonna stay with you if you don’t give him some pussy.”
The two of them were talking at me like I cared what they thought. They didn’t know I didn’t give a shit about their opinions anymore. I had a boyfriend, and he was the only one who mattered.
Derrick and I went everywhere together. In the mornings he would pick me up in his Chevy Nova and drive me to Dean Rusk Elementary, where I was the only girl in seventh grade whose boyfriend had a car. In the afternoons I’d walk over to Fish Supreme, where Derrick had a job as a fish fryer, and sit at a little plastic table and wait on him to be done. On the weekends we’d go to Jellybean. I loved how he’d take me by the hand and introduce me to his boys: “This is my lady.” Or, “This my girl.”
The first few times we went to the rink, he tried to teach me how to skate. But mostly, I just stood on the side and watched him whiz by. He moved like those wheels were part of his body, like he was flying through space.
On the porch, Sweetie exhaled her cigarette smoke. “So did you give it up?” she asked again. “’Cause Peaches is right, he ain’t gonna stay with you if you don’t give up the bootie.” I rolled my eyes. Sweetie didn’t know shit about my life.
Sometimes Derrick and I would just sit in his car and talk—just talk!—for hours. He’d ask me about school and how my day was, and we’d talk about Mama. I told him how she called me all kinds of names, like bitch and ho, and said I was ugly. He put his arm around me and cooed, “Don’t listen to her. She don’t know what she’s talking about. You look good to me.”
It had been a long time since I’d had somebody to talk to. The last best friend I had was KooKoo, a scrawny little chicken from when we lived with Curtis on Oliver Street and Mama kept a coop in the backyard. After school I’d run home and crawl into that chicken coop and pet KooKoo’s little chicken body. After Curtis left, I’d cry to KooKoo about how much I missed him and how much I hated Mama for running Curtis off. That scrawny-ass bird would look at me with her beady eyes like she understood every word I was saying. I’d leave her coop stinking like chicken shit, with feathers in my hair. But I didn’t mind. KooKoo was the only one who really cared about me. Then one day I came home from school and ran up the stairs, through the house, and into the backyard. Mama was standing there holding KooKoo by the neck, only KooKoo didn’t have a head. My mother had murdered my best friend.
“Rabbit,” Mama said, as I held my breath and tried not to cry, “Come down here and pluck these damn feathers.” That night, Mama fried KooKoo for dinner and served her up with hot sauce. After that I didn’t have anyone to talk to until Derrick came along.
“Damn, your mama be trippin’,” he said when I told him how she’d fire her .22 in the house whenever she got mad. We were sitting in his car parked at the curb, like we did almost every night. “She’s crazier than an outhouse fly,” he added. “But don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
Derrick didn’t want me for sex the way Sweetie’s boyfriend did her. He just wanted to talk. Of course, sometimes we kissed and he’d try to feel on my titties. And he did make me rub his wiener, whispering, “just kiss it,” as he pushed my head down to his crotch. But I laughed and said, “Stop, Derrick! You stoopid.” And he stopped.
I didn’t tell Sweetie about Derrick because I knew she wouldn’t understand. It was obvious she hadn’t been paying attention the way I had when all those different preachers told us, “Sex is for the marriage bed.” I was gonna wait for marriage, like we were supposed to. But Sweetie wasn’t trying to live right. One time I caught her showing Peaches how to suck a dick with a cherry Blow Pop. There was no way fourteen-year-old out-of-wedlock dick-sucking practice was okay in the eyes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I didn’t want to talk about sex with my fast-ass sister, but she wouldn’t leave it alone. “Diiiiiid yooooooo fuuuuuuck Derrick?” she asked again, this time talking extra slow and flapping her hands in the air like she was doing sign language.
“No!” I finally yelled. “And mind your damn business.”
“Urghhh!” Peaches groaned loudly, throwing up her arms like she’d just seen a fumble at the touchdown line. “Stop being such a baby! You think he wants to sit and talk all day long? Don’t no nigga need you for that!”
“What niggas like,” said Sweetie, slowly swiveling her hips like she was dancing, “is a wife in the streets and a freak in the sheets. You gotta give him some of that ass and you gotta give it to him gooooood.” Then she leaned forward, lifted one leg, and slowly turned in a circle, humping the air like a dog in heat, which I guess was supposed to be a demonstration.
A few nights later, the three of us were hanging out with our boyfriends in the kiddie playground at Washington Park. It was late—way past the time kids would be there—so we had the playground all to ourselves. Sweetie and Peaches were sitting on the bottom of a slide, sipping on forties, while their boyfriends were showing off, doing pull-ups on the monkey bars. Derrick and I were on the swings nearby.
I was trying to decide if Derrick would think I was a baby if I asked him to push me, when I noticed Sweetie get up and walk over to Crispy. She pulled him toward her by the belt loops on his jeans, and whispered something in his ear. He grinned and put his arm around her. I watched as they started walking away together, heading out of the playground toward some trees.
“Where y’all going?” I called after them. I couldn’t believe Sweetie was leaving. It was her idea to come here in the first place. We’d all been sitting on Mama’s porch when she looked over at Crispy and said, “You wanna go to th
e park?” She was sucking on a Blow Pop when she said it, only she wasn’t sucking on it like a regular person, she was rolling her tongue around in circles, reminding me of how Uncle Stanley’s mouth would move after he had a seizure.
“Yo,” said Crispy. “The way you sucking that thing though . . . yo.” Which I guess meant, “Yeah, the park sounds nice!” because the next thing I knew we were all piling into Derrick’s Chevy and heading to the playground.
“Where y’all going?” I called again.
“We out this bitch,” Crispy answered, not even bothering to turn around. He threw up a peace sign, then dropped his arm back around Sweetie’s shoulder.
“Peaches!” I yelled to my cousin. She was holding Mike’s hand and walking in the other direction.
“Bye, girl!” was all she said.
Then it was just me and Derrick sitting on the swings in the cool air. “Fuck those bitches,” I said. “Let’s go back to Mama’s.”
“Nah,” he said, taking me by the hand and pulling me off the swings. “I got a better idea.”
“Where we going?”
“Rabbit, anybody ever tell you that you ask too many questions?” he said. “Don’t worry about where we going. I got you.”
Derrick led me across the playground and toward a patch of trees. The farther we walked, the darker it got, until it was just the stars and moon that lit our way. Derrick stopped, slid off his fake black leather knock-off Members Only jacket, and laid it on the ground at the base of a big oak tree with the inside of the jacket facing up.
“C’mon and sit down,” he said, waving his hand like he was offering me a seat on his sofa. “I don’t bite.”
I sat down with my legs crossed. He knelt beside me and started kissing on my neck. “I really like you, Rabbit,” he said. “You my baby. I think I’m falling in love.”
Sweetie and Peaches talked at me like they knew everything, like they were some kind of experts in sex. But what they didn’t tell me is that once you open your legs for a man, he can’t ever get enough.
“One time” was all Derrick asked for, whispering in my ear as we lay out under that oak tree. “One time,” he said. “One taste, just a li’l bit. C’mon, baby, lemme just put the head in. I promise it won’t hurt.” But I might as well have given Derrick my body wrapped in a bow, because after that night in Washington Park it felt like he owned it. He wanted it in the park, in his car, on his sister’s living room floor while she and her kids were asleep.
One night he broke into an upstairs apartment, where a lady named Catfish used to live before she moved to the projects. She had bugged-out eyes and a mess of kids, and her apartment had been vacant for months, ever since they’d left. Derrick pushed open an unlocked window, climbed inside, opened the front door, and let me in.
He’d brought along an old towel, which he spread on the dusty floor. “See,” he said. “I made it nice for you.”
I looked from him to the towel but didn’t make a move. There was no way in hell I was gonna lay down in all that dirt. But before I could open my mouth to tell him I was leaving, he grabbed my hand and said, “I love you.”
I don’t know why those words made me so weak, but every time Derrick said them I couldn’t resist. Maybe it’s because no one in my entire life had ever told me they loved me before. But Derrick was a pro, feeding me so much sweet-sounding bullshit I felt like I owed him something in return.
Before Derrick came along, I had big plans to wait until marriage. But with Derrick on top of me and Sweetie’s ho advice ringing in my ears, me and my plans didn’t stand a chance.
It had been early fall when Sweetie and Peaches stood on Mama’s porch and schooled me on sex. By that winter, both of them were pregnant. A few months later I turned thirteen. Then I got pregnant, too.
Chapter 9
Love and Options
“No way,” said Mama. “I don’t believe in killing no babies.”
“But Patricia is so young . . .”
“I already told you, no.”
Miss Munroe, our caseworker from the Fulton County Department of Family and Child Services was standing in the middle of the living room, with her clipboard in hand, trying to get Mama to listen. But Mama wasn’t having it. She just sat on the edge of the ratty brown sofa with her neck muscles popping out like thick cords of rope, and kept saying no.
“No,” she said again. “I ain’t doing it.”
Miss Munroe cleared her throat: “But Miss Williams, if we could just discuss Patricia’s condition . . .”
“I said, no.”
Miss Munroe was short and plump, with a little-girl face and freckles running across her nose. Watching her and Mama, it was obvious she didn’t know the first thing about how to fight. She wasn’t yelling or cursing or promising to cut a bitch. Her titties were so little she probably couldn’t even hide a thin single-edge razor blade in her bra, much less a big wooden-handled kitchen knife like I saw one of Granddaddy’s customers whip out during a fight. Instead Miss Munroe just stood there stiff as a board, trying to get Mama to do what she wanted by glaring at her and clearing her throat.
The first time Miss Munroe came to check on us was when we were living on Oliver Street, not long after Curtis left. I guess somebody—a teacher, maybe a neighbor—reported us kids to DFACS for being so dirty that it looked like nobody was taking care of us. After that, every place we moved Miss Munroe would magically show up in her white Buick, knocking on the front door and calling out to Mama, “Hello, Miss Williams!” in a singsong voice like the two of them were friends. Even back then I knew that was a situation that would never happen in a million fucking years. Mama didn’t mix and mingle with white folks and Miss Munroe didn’t look the type to have a friend with no front teeth.
The first year Miss Munroe started seeing us was right before Christmas. And the very first thing she did was sign us up for the Empty Stocking Fund, a charity that gives poor kids Christmas presents for free. Before Miss Munroe came into our lives, Mama’s idea of celebrating Baby Jesus’s birthday was throwing James Brown singing “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” on her little record player. But thanks to Miss Munroe, we started getting actual toys, which Mama handed us on Christmas Day in crumpled brown paper bags from the Super Saver.
When I was eight, I got a plastic tea set. The next year I got a baby doll with eyes that opened and closed. The Christmas before I met Derrick, when I was eleven, I got a red and white book bag that said coca-cola on it and a knockoff Barbie doll in a pink princess dress. I tried to make Fake Barbie ride on top of one of Mama’s empty Schlitz Malt Liquor cans like it was a horse. But the can was too big and one of Fake Barbie’s legs popped off and flew right across the room.
It wasn’t just Christmas presents that Miss Munroe got us, either. She had all kinds of hookups. She told Mama about Free Vaccinations at the Health Department; Free After-School at the YMCA; and the Free Dentist who came around every summer in a big white truck that made me think he probably drummed up extra business by running a side hustle as the ice cream man. Miss Munroe gave Mama vouchers for Free School Shoes at the Buster Brown store and Free Winter Coats at the Kmart. And now she was trying to give Mama Free Advice about what to do about my pregnant ass. I stood in the corner of the living room and listened to them talk about me like I wasn’t even there.
“We should think about the impact this pregnancy will have on Patricia’s education,” continued Miss Munroe, tapping her clipboard. “There are options you may not have considered . . .”
“What kind of options you talkin’ about?” asked Mama.
“Well, adoption is one possibility. There are so many families willing to provide a loving home . . .”
Wait . . . what did she just say? It sounded like Miss Munroe was trying to get Mama to give my baby away. But that couldn’t be right. The baby was mine. It was already inside me. Giving my baby to somebody else would be like letting me have a doll for Christmas, then snatching it away.
&nb
sp; Mama didn’t like what she was hearing, either, because she looked Miss Munroe dead in the eye and told her again, “No.”
I never understood the relationship between Mama and our caseworker. Miss Munroe looked like she was genuinely trying to make Mama’s life easier with her vouchers for Free Shit. But every time she came by, she always pulled me to the side for a private conversation, asking me a million questions—“You doing okay, Patricia? You getting enough to eat?”—like her real mission was to get me to snitch on my own mother.
Maybe that’s why Mama couldn’t stand her. “Stale-ass cracker,” she’d say the minute Miss Munroe was gone. “Coming in here tryna tell me how to raise my own gotdamn kids. That bitch can go straight to hell.”
If Miss Munroe knew how much Mama hated her, she never let on. She just kept showing up at our door with a handful of vouchers and a bunch of crazy ideas, which she always described to Mama as “great opportunities!” Like the summer before I met Derrick, when Miss Munroe got it in her head that I should go to Free Sleep-away Camp.
“This will be a wonderful opportunity,” Miss Munroe had gushed to Mama, standing in the living room with a camp brochure in her hand. “There will be all kinds of fun activities, like swimming and hayrides.”
“I can’t afford all that,” Mama told her.
“Not to worry,” said Miss Munroe with a smile. “The camp is subsidized. It won’t cost you a thing.”
All Mama said was “hmmph,” which I guess Miss Munroe took as a yes. Because before she left, she cheerily handed Mama a typed-up list of everything I would need for camp: a sleeping bag, pillow, bathing suit, beach towel, tennis shoes, five pairs of shorts, eight T-shirts, flip-flops, and a flashlight. Then she gave Mama a Kmart voucher to pay for it all.
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