After Tupac & D Foster (3 page)

My house was painted white and had dark red shutters at the windows. Mama worked most days, so a lot of the time it was just me, myself and I. Some days, I’d just lay back on my bed and stare up at my ceiling. I’d stuck these glow-in-the-dark stars up there and some days I’d just stare at them until the light faded enough to see them real clear.

“You better call your mama the minute we get back,” I said to Neeka.

“Why? She’s probably still in the window clocking me.”

“Just call, Neek.”

Neeka nodded. Then we both got quiet. And stayed like that for the whole walk home.

CHAPTER TWO

Seems I’d always known Neeka. From our first baby steps, I remember the big hands of our mamas lifting us up out of the playpen. I remember the smell of our mamas’ coffee and the way their voices got all quiet when they were gossiping while me and Neeka chased each other around their legs and laughed at stupid stuff, like Elmo and the way dust turned all shiny when it got in front of some sun.

Neeka had come running to me first when she kissed Tony Anderson in her hallway. “His lips tasted funny,” she’d said, scrunching up her face. “Like old cigarette ashes or something.” And later on, when we’d seen Tony up at the park, him and his boys passing a cigarette around, Neeka had run back home and started rinsing her mouth out real hard with mouthwash and a washcloth.

“How come you let me kiss that nasty old boy,” she’d said. And I just sat there on her toilet seat, laughing at her craziness.

But D was different. She just appeared one day. Summer wasn’t even over yet but fall was already turning a few of the leaves on our block red and gold. Me and Neeka had bought matching jean jackets with white stitching on the pockets for when school started and we’d worn them that day with these brown velvet pants we had. We’d walk up and down the block thinking we were bad, but we were just hot in our fall gear. We’d come back and sat down, hot and sweaty, on Neeka’s stoop. Down from my house, some little kids were taking turns on a Sit ’N Spin toy and we watched them, one by one, get up off of it and fall down on the ground from dizziness.

When I looked away from watching them, I saw her standing across the street, leaning against somebody’s gate, watching us. Something about the way she stood there, just looking—no smile, no frown, nothing—it just caught something in me. Made my heart jump a bit. Something about the way she stood there was real familiar to me, like the way I’d want to stand someplace new and watch people I didn’t know.

“Who’s that girl over there, staring us down like that?” I said to Neeka.

Neeka looked to where D was standing and shrugged. Then she stood up.

“You looking for somebody?” Neeka said. It wasn’t a
real
unfriendly voice, just a little.

“Not really.”

And I guess she thought that was an invitation to cross the street, because that’s when she came over to us. I looked her up and down. She was tall and skinny and looked like she thought she was cute with her green eyes and pretty sort of half way of smiling at us. Her hair was in a bunch of braids with black rubber bands at the end of every single one. The braids were long, coming down over her shoulders and across her back, and her hair was this strange dark coppery color I’d never seen on a black girl—not
naturally
. She was wearing a T-shirt that said “HELLO MY NAME IS” in green letters, only there wasn’t a name after that, so it didn’t make any sense whatsoever. I looked down at her feet. She had on white-girl clogs like you saw on the girls on TV—the ones with blond hair who lived in places like California and Miami or somewhere. Everything about her was screaming
I’m not from around this way.

“Those your real eyes?” Neeka asked, right off. I’d never seen green eyes up close like that, but that wouldn’t have been
my
first question.

“Yeah,” D said. “Everybody be asking me that. This is my own hair too. Color and everything. It used to be real light but it’s getting darker every year. Figure by the time I’m grown, it’ll be jet-black.”

I stared at her. Wondering what it would be like to have hair that changed like that, to have eyes that green against that tannish skin. She looked back at me and for a minute, or maybe for a few minutes, we just stared—like we were trying to take in every single bit of each other—each of us trying to figure the other one out.

“Y’all sisters?”

“Yeah,” Neeka said. “We came from different mamas and different daddies, but we’re sisters.” She held up her hand and I slapped it, saying
You know it
.

“You always dress the same?”

Neeka shrugged. “You got a lot of questions for a stranger.”

“You could ask me some questions too,” D said.

“What’s up with the shoes?” I said.

She looked down at her shoes, then back at me. Something changed in her face that made me sorry I’d asked.

“They just shoes,” she said, looking off down our street. “I roam and they get me where I’m going.”

Neeka looked at her, then leaned back and put her elbows on the stair above the one she was sitting on. “What’s your name?”

“I go by D,” she said. “I don’t have no sisters, that’s why I’m asking about y’all.”

“Well, I’m Neeka.”

I told D my name and she sat down, a few steps below me and Neeka.

“I guess I’m kinda like an only child.”

I frowned. “Like? Either you’re an only child or you’re not. There’s no gray area.” I watched her for a minute to see if she understood about gray areas. I’d just learned it myself and was trying it out.

“There’s gray,” she said. “If you don’t really know, right? If you have some idea but ain’t really sure.” D looked right at me again. I knew I liked her then, even if she
did
wear white-girl shoes. Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn’t like people who didn’t think. I didn’t know if that was
snobby
.Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

“But you the only kid in your house?” Neeka asked.

D nodded. “Yeah. Gets boring. So I roam.” She looked off down the street again. “This is a nice block.”

“Dag, you lucky,” Neeka said. “I got about seventeen brothers and sisters. All running me crazy.”

“She’s got four brothers and two sisters,” I told D.

“Yeah,” Neeka said. “But you gotta count all the twins twice because they’re bad. By the way,” Neeka said to D. “Where
is
your house?”

D kept looking out over the block. “Around the way. Gotta take a bus from here.”

“Well, what made you take the bus from
your
house over there in some vague place you don’t seem to want to reveal to us,” Neeka said, speaking slowly—like English wasn’t D’s first language or something. “To
our
street on
this
day and at
this
time?”

D smiled. I didn’t know then that it was her real smile, the way her lips only turned up a little bit, the way her eyes got sort of sad. I didn’t know that smile was gonna stay with me long after D had roamed on back out of our lives.

“I saw the trees,” D said.

“The trees, huh?” Neeka was making a slow circle with her pointer down by her leg—the down-low cuckoo sign.

“Yeah,” D said. “I saw all the trees and got off the bus and just starting roaming over this way. That’s how I found y’all. So here I am.”

“Yeah,” Neeka said. “Here you are. How old are you anyway?”

“Be twelve at the beginning of October.”

I stared at D. She looked older than me and Neeka because she was a little bit taller and already had some body going on.

“But it’s only August, so you’re eleven like us,” Neeka said. “We’re gonna be twelve next May. And you get to take the bus and the train by yourself ? And ‘roam’ all over the place?”

“Sho’ thang,” she said, and it took me a minute to realize she was saying
Sure thing
—saying it like the rappers be saying it. “Who’s gonna be taking them with me?”

“Dag! How long you been taking the bus by yourself ?” Neeka asked, trying not to sound too jealous.

“Forever and a day,” D said.

Neeka gave me a look. We weren’t allowed to go
anywhere
by ourselves.

“Flo works,” D said.

“Flo your mama?”

D nodded. “Kinda.” She stood up and brushed off her pants.

Neeka rolled her eyes. “You got a lot of kind-ofs up in your vocabulary. You
kind of
vague.”

D shrugged. “Yeah.” She looked up at the sky. “All I know is I been roaming all day. Figure I better get my behind home. Y’all want to walk me to the bus stop?”

“Nah,” Neeka said, trying to sound bored. “I’m comfortable here.”

“Me too,” I said. “Plus, we’re not really allowed to leave the block without permission.”

D swung some of her braids over her shoulder. “Yeah, I met a lot of kids who can’t go nowhere. Their mamas be strict like that.”

“You know a lot of other kids?” I asked her.

D shrugged. “Not really . . .”

“Here we go again with the vagueness,” Neeka said.

“Nah, I’m for real,” D said. “I
meet
a lot of kids, but I don’t
know
a lot of kids. Either they act shady or their mamas act shady, you know.”

“People just stupid sometimes,” Neeka said. “Be thinking they know stuff and they don’t.”

D nodded and her and Neeka smiled at each other. I almost felt jealous, but then I didn’t. Neeka’s brother Tash was a queen and people used to always try to talk junk about him around us. When we were little kids, me and Neeka would get into fights over it, but we finally just started ignoring and making believe it didn’t hurt us deep to hear people hating on Tash. I figured that’s what Neeka was talking about and if it was like a bonding thing, then we could all bond on it, because Tash was just as much
my
brother as he was Neeka’s.

I looked down at my boots—they were new, dark green with black laces and thick soles that made me a little bit taller. But they were heavy and my feet were sweating and itchy.

When I looked up, D was watching me. She’d tucked one of her feet behind her leg like she was trying to hide her white-girl clogs. “I guess I should get going. I’ll probably come back around this way, though.”

“The trees’ll be waiting for you,” Neeka said. Then she smiled. “You got a rope?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, next time you come,” Neeka said, “bring it, all right?”

D nodded then and smiled, that same smile—but this time, her whole face relaxed and it was one of the prettiest smiles I’d ever seen in my life.

“I’m cool with that,” D said.

Me and Neeka watched D walk down the block and turn the corner.

“She seems cool,” Neeka said.

I shrugged, staring at the corner long after D had disappeared around it. A part of me was still with her—turning that corner and heading off the block—on my own. Free like that.

And a few days later, when D showed up, she was wearing new sneakers and carrying the rope in her knapsack. As we stood there, unraveling it, talking about who’d be first and what rhymes we knew, D got real quiet.

“Feels like forever since I had me some friends to jump double Dutch with.”

“Wherever Flo living is the wrong place to be,” Neeka said. “ ’Cause around here, if you got a rope, you’re
gonna
have some peeps to jump with.”

“That’s what it feels like,” D said. “Feels real good coming back here.”

“Long as you bring the rope,” Neeka said.

“Oh, it’s like that?” D said, playing along with Neeka’s craziness.

“You know it is, girlfriend,” Neeka said. “You know you gotta come to the table with something if you wanna eat.”

“You can come even if you don’t have no rope,” I said. “Neeka’s just messing with you. Repeating something she probably heard her mama saying.”

“Don’t talk about my mama,” Neeka said.

“Ain’t talking about your mama. I’m talking about
you.
That’s why Jayjones be calling her a parrot.”

“Who’s Jayjones?” D wanted to know.

“Nobody,” Neeka said. “A big nobody.”

“A big fine nobody,” I said. “He’s Neeka’s big brother.”

A group of little girls came over and stood near us, watching us untangle the rope.

“Y’all doing double Dutch?” one of them asked.

“Yeah,” Neeka said. “You can watch, but don’t even be thinking about asking for a jump.”

The little girls all nodded and it made me remember being little like that, watching the big girls jump.

“I don’t mind going last,” D said. She took the open end of the rope.

“I don’t mind going first,” Neeka said.

I picked up the closed end and me and D started turning.

“Slow down, y’all. It ain’t a double Dutch
race
,” Neeka said, and we slowed the ropes a little bit. When Neeka jumped in, we started counting.

“Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty . . .”

And the three of us had a rhythm going.

CHAPTER THREE

Neeka’s big brother Jayjones was going to be a pro ball player when he grew up. But in the meantime, he played ball for Grady High School and worked at KFC. At night he smelled like chicken grease and sweat, but he was so fine, most girls ignored the smell.

His full name was Jackson Jones, but the first time he got on a basketball team, he was just a little kid playing for the Police Athletic League. There was another kid named Jones on the team, so they put J. JONES on one jersey and P. JONES on the other. After that, we all started calling him Jayjones.

When he was a freshman at Grady, he scored forty points in his play-off game and me and Neeka made T-shirts that said I KNOW J. JONES and wore them for a week straight. That felt like a long time ago. He was still a high scorer, but we weren’t trying to wear any T-shirts about it anymore.

“Y’all want some chicken?” Jayjones asked, coming over to my stairs and sitting down with me, Neeka and D. It was Saturday and D had turned twelve the Monday before. Leaves were falling off the trees all over the block and even though it was October and we still had some warm days, most days you could tell winter was starting to get its groove on. But it was Saturday and the temperature had gone up to eighty degrees. We were all sitting on my stairs, trying to catch the last few crazy hot days. Jayjones was wearing his basketball shorts and his hair was braided in zigzag cornrows. His legs were long and skinny with big calf muscles. He had a dimple right at the top of his cheek and when he smiled, it got deep—making you do a double take if you didn’t know him, because that was a strange place for a dimple to be. I saw D look at it. Then frown a little bit and look again. In the little while we’d known her, she’d met Jayjones a couple of times. I couldn’t tell if she thought he was fine or not because she didn’t say anything one way or the other about him. But I
knew
Jayjones thought D was cute. She’d only turned twelve, but she looked a lot older and guys were always trying to talk to her. Jayjones was see-through like all the others—you could look dead in their faces and see everything they were thinking about somebody.