LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Asha frowned, her ebony microbraids swinging as she spoke. “Don’t listen to him. He thinks Jay-Z is cute. Look at Malachi.” We all turned our heads. “He’s chubby, has a zipper running across his teeth, and let’s not even discuss that pimple sitting in the middle of his nose. Can you say yuck?”

      “Hatin’ is so unattractive.” Courtney flung his wrist and twisted his mouth to the side.

      I didn’t say a word. There was no way I could admit that despite the extra weight and the braces on his teeth, Malachi’s cinnamon-colored skin and almond-shaped eyes were the prettiest things I’d ever seen.

      I circled my answer quickly on the note, pushed my shoulder-length hair behind my ears, and walked over to where Malachi was standing by the monkey bars kickin’ it with a few of his friends. I could hear Courtney and Asha running behind me.

      “Malachi.” I placed my hands on my hips. “Don’t be dropping notes on my desk.” Before he could respond, I continued on. “I don’t appreciate you being all in my face with your childishness. What kind of man writes notes? Now lose yourself.” I tossed the note at him and as I turned to walk away, a bunch of oules and ahhhs created a choir behind me.

      “Zsa,” Courtney said, as we returned to the bench. “You love him, don’t you?”

      I couldn’t hold it in any longer, so I giggled and fell onto the grass. “I sure do.” I smiled. “I sure do.”

      “Y’all just nasty.” Asha frowned while standing over me and Courtney, who had just fallen beside me. “Real, real nasty.”

      After lunch I finished my classwork with the quickness and found myself daydreaming about me and Malachi getting married. I wrote Mrs. Malachi Askew with hearts all around it on small scraps of paper. I found myself naming our unborn children: a girl named Zsa-Zsa, after me of course, and a son named Malachi, after his father.

      Once I floated back from my daydream, I looked up and saw Malachi staring at me. I don’t know what got into me but I gave him the biggest smile in the world. I was cheesin’ from ear to ear, and for a moment I thought I could see hearts floating around Malachi’s head. He blew me a kiss and I blew him one back. As I started giggling to myself, the bell rang. “Okay, class,” my teacher said. “Have a good weekend and see you on Monday.”

      See you on Monday? For a moment I was confused. I looked at the calendar and today was Friday. All day long I hadn’t thought once about what today was. Had I remembered it was Friday, I would’ve stayed at my desk all day and sulked. I hated Fridays. I hated them. Fridays were when my daddy would get paid and my mother would act as if all that mattered in the world was the money he gave her, the weekly Chinese food he brought home for us to eat, and the attention he paid her. Friday also meant that my daddy would be drunk at an earlier time than he was any other day.

      I couldn’t believe I was caught so off guard. I watched my classmates pack their backpacks and brag about the weekend they were due to have. I wished that I could change bodies and be one of them, because Fridays for me didn’t say time off from school and endless playdates with my friends. It said pain, tears, and nightmares. Not laughing, not fun, but bombshells of, “Whack! Get off of me, Zach! Whack! I’m tired of your drinking, Zach! Whack! I’ma call the cops! Whack-whack!” This is why I hated Fridays. Mondays through Thursdays were my saving grace.

      “Zsa.” Courtney interrupted my thoughts as we left school and started walking down Clinton Avenue and headed home. “How come we can’t ever come to your house and play?”

      “I’ve been wondering that too,” Asha followed up.

      Instantly, I was a mix between embarrassed and pissed. Pissed because they had the nerve to want to chill in my crib. And embarrassed because I didn’t know how to say, “You can’t come to my house because we don’t have nothing. All of our furniture is cheap, tore up, and mostly broken. I’m not sure if the apartment is going to be clean, or worse, I don’t know if my daddy is drunk and has already beat my mother because of something ‘she asked for.’ So, no, you can’t come to my crib because if you really knew how I lived, you might not want to be my friends.”

      Since I couldn’t say any of that, I said what my mother told my aunties and cousins whenever they wanted to visit. “Don’t nobody want a buncha hood rats tearin’ up their stuff!” I placed my hands on my hips. “My parents work too hard for me to be bringing a whole lot of company home. So, no, you can’t come home with me. My mother won’t allow it.”

      “Oh,” Asha said as if she didn’t know what else to say.

      “I’m not no hood rat,” Courtney complained, jerking his neck from left to right. “You got me all the way twisted.”

      “That’s what they all say,” I said as we reached the front of my building. “Now beat it. See y’all later.” I shot ’em a two-finger peace sign and entered the lobby. But no sooner than I walked past the same crackheads I flew by this morning did tears streak down my cheeks.

      After a few moments of whimpering in the hallway, I had to get myself together. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and headed up two flights to our apartment. I could hear the radio playing as I twisted the knob and opened the door.

      My mother, who was the color of the evening sun with hazel eyes and dark brown shoulder-length hair, smiled at me as I walked in. Most people said that I was my mother’s twin, except my complexion was milk chocolate.

      My mother opened her arms for a hug and I walked into her embrace. “Hey, Zsa-Zsa,” she said while kissing me on the forehead. “How was school?”

      “It was okay.” I hunched my shoulders.

      “Well, you have to tell me about it later.” She released me from her embrace. “But for now, go wash your hands while I set the table. Your father brought home Chinese.”

      I hated Chinese.

      “You see I brought your favorite,” my daddy, who resembled Denzel Washington, said as he walked out of the bathroom. “Shrimp egg foo young.”

      I hated shrimp egg foo young.

      “Thanks,” I said, watching him take a beer from his six-pack and pop it open. I was careful not to step on my five-year-old sister, Hadiah, who was rolling around on the floor playing with her dolls as I headed to my room.

      “Wassup, Zsa?” my brother, Derrick, said as he headed toward the front door to leave for the evening. Leaving had become a new habit of his. I couldn’t wait for the day when I could escape.

      “Derrick,” I heard my mother say as I unloaded my book bag on my bed. “Why are you always running out of here on Fridays?”

      Before I heard my brother’s answer, I sucked my teeth. I swear that was the dumbest question I had ever heard. If nothing else she knew why he was always leaving. I knew hitting was wrong, but the truth be told that question alone made me want to slap her.

      “Ma,” Derrick said. “I’m sixteen now.”

      “You’re still not grown,” my father interjected.

      Derrick was silent for a moment and then I heard him say, “See ya later, Ma. I love you.”

      After an hour of eating, my parents laughing and talking about the news, my daddy had licked off the bottle of Hennessy and finished his third beer. “Do that dance, baby,” he said to me, while turning the radio on. “Do that dance they teach you down at the community center.” He sipped his beer.

      I fought the frown that had inched its way on my face. I didn’t see this as my daddy being interested in me dancing. I saw this as the steps he took toward slapping my mother.

      “Jazmyn.” He smiled at my mother. “Get her to do that dance for me.”

      “Go on, Zsa-Zsa,” my mother urged. “You know we love to see you dance.”

      Reluctantly, I put on my tap dancing shoes, stood in front

Скачать книгу