Life Is Funny (20 page)

Grace sighs, but Marge beats her to talking. “It's running away from your problems,” Marge says. “They'll be here and worse when you get back.”

“It's not running away,” Grace goes.

“Europe isn't all that great,” Sam tells her. “They mess with you over there. Remember what Marty did?”

“I can't believe you guys don't understand this,” Grace says. “I thought you'd be excited for me.”

“It's good to go away,” I tell them. “You get to see things different.” They all squint up at me now. “You get to understand things different.”

“See,” Grace says.

“You feel different when you go away,” I warn her.

“Exactly,” she goes.

*  *  *

“Do you like Sam?” Grace asks me later. It's just the two of us by the pond. Sam's helping Tom fix part of the fence.

“How come he didn't go to Europe, too?” I ask.

She sighs. “There's this other guy who looks a lot like Sam, only the other guy's taller, and he kisses ass more, and when people want Sam's look, they usually pick the other guy.”

“That sucks,” I say, feeling bad for Sam.

“Not really,” Grace says. “He was never trying to get famous or anything. He hates all that celebrity stuff. All that attention. And he doesn't care about getting away, like I do. He does it for the money, which is what we all say, only Sam really means it.”

“Still,” I go.

“So do you like him?” Grace asks again.

“You mean like like or just like?”

“Do you want to fuck him?” Grace says. She's using her blue-topped toes to trail a stick in the water.

“Did y'all fuck when you were going out?”

“Don't change the subject.” She bugs out on the stick, and it falls into the water without making a sound.

“You're going to be a lawyer after you're done selling your body, aren't you?” I tell her.

“Don't say that,” she says. She's not kidding. Her eyes get all watery.

“Sorry,” I go. “I was just playing.”

She shrugs. “It's true.” She sighs. She's the best sigher I ever met. “They pay me a lot of money for the way I look. They pay me more the more skin I show. Do you know how many porn producers have called my agent?”

“Nuh uh.”

“Uh.” She nods.

“Shit,” I tell her. “I'd probably let you take pictures of me butt naked eating a banana and taking a shit if you offered me enough money.”

“So do you want to fuck him?”

“Did you fuck him?”

“Yeah,” she says. She smiles. Maybe it's the first time I've ever seen her smile. She's beautiful the way you think of beautiful in Bible talk or something. Like an angel or a saint. “He's the only one, though.”

“He said you broke his heart.”

“Yeah.” She sighs.

“Why did y'all break up?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. He's more like a brother, really. You know?”

No.

“I don't want to fuck him,” I tell her.

“Really?”

“He's fine,” I go. “Don't get me wrong. The boy is fine.”

“But?”

“I loves my Gingerbread.”

“You really do, don't you?”

I get all happy thinking about his mad letters. Thinking about his bitty ears and his happy laugh. Thinking about seeing him soon. Thinking about fucking him. Grace smiles again, a smirk smile, because damn if she can't tell what I'm thinking.

“You better watch out,” I tell her. “Or you're going to crack your face right in two and no Europe's going to give you the time of day.”

“You can fuck him if you want,” she tells me, laughing. “I wouldn't mind, or anything.”

“You're tripping,” I tell her.

“I swear,” she says.

“Nah,” I tell her after a while. “He is more like a brother, you know?”

The good kind. The kind with the purple teeth.

*  *  *

“It's a girl,” Aunt Eva tells me while Grace and Sam fold laundry and stack it in piles on the living room couch.

“What? It's a month early,” I holler into the phone, and Grace and Sam freeze, with my socks in their hands.

“She's not here yet,” Aunt Eva says. “The doctors saw on the whatyamacallit.”

I snatch my socks and start folding them myself.

“Any headaches?” Aunt Eva asks.

“One,” I say. “Marge rubbed my back and played me whale songs.”

“Whale songs?”

“I'm going to bring some for the baby when I come home,” I tell her.

“So you still plan on coming home?” Aunt Eva asks.

“What, you don't want me?” I go, and my head gets real heavy and my blood stops, the way it always was after my mama didn't come back and before Gingerbread laughed himself into my face.

“Don't change what I said,” she tells me. I hear a mess in her voice. The same mess I heard when the police called that first time to tell us to get my mama out of jail. “I just know that when people leave, they often times find no reason to return.” That mess in her voice pulls up my head and pushes my blood to move again. That mess makes me want to reach through the phone somehow and grab her up.

“It's nice here,” I tell Aunt Eva, “but I want to come home.”

I hear her blow her nose, and I think about how I wouldn't have ever guessed that you might have to go away before you find out how bad you need a person to want you back.

“Well, I need a name for serious now,” she complains at me. “Are you going to help me out with that or not?”

“Appaloosa,” I say.

“Keisha!”

“Loquatia?”

“God's going to give you your own special room in hell if you don't get it together, girl.”

“Irony.”

*  *  *

We play Truth or Dare in Sam's room. We speak soft, so we don't wake up Tom and Marge.

“Truth,” Sam says to Grace.

“When was the last time you jerked off?”

Lord.

“After dinner,” he goes, fast. “Your turn. Truth or Dare?”

“Truth.”

“Did you blow Josh?”

“Shit.” She rolls her eyes.

“Did you?”

“No.” She whips all that hair around to look at me. “Keisha. Truth or Dare?”

“Truth,” I go, all nervous, trying to remember the last time
I
jerked off. Yesterday? Or this morning? Lord.

“Are you a virgin?” Grace goes.

“Hell, no.”

Grace whips her hair back around again because Sam's saying to her, “Truth or Dare?”

“It's my turn,” I tell them.

“Truth,” Grace says to Sam.

“Who blew Josh?” Sam asks, fast again.

“Shit.” Grace moans.

“Who's Josh?” I ask.

“This guy,” they both go.

“Who blew him?” Sam asks.

“Ebony,” she says.

“No way,” he goes.

“If you tell anyone, she'll kill me, and I'll tell everyone you can't get it up,” Grace warns.

“Okay, okay,” he goes. “Keisha. Truth or Dare?”

“It's my turn,” Grace says.

“Oh, now you care,” I tell her. “Dare,” I say to Sam.

“I dare you to ride Hermes tonight, double with Grace.” Damn.

“No fair,” Grace says. “You can't put me in her dare.”

“Want to bet?”

*  *  *

Sam leads Hermes out of the stall with me in front of Grace on Hermes's back, which is high and uneven, so some part of my ass is hanging off no matter how I shift around. Grace's arms are around my waist, and we're both scared shitless. The sun is just coming up, so we can barely see, but there's this silver water web shining over everything: the grass, the fences, the ground. Sam leads Hermes and us outside the paddock into the field, and then the silver changes to that gold and brown like you see in old-timey pictures. The sky is mad huge, and the air tastes like fresh parsley.

“Don't be scared,” Sam goes.

“I hear that,” we both say.

He slaps Hermes on his ass, and Hermes's back slaps at my crotch, and Grace is screaming, and the slapping turns to rocking, and Hermes's feet thumping the ground fills up my ears, and the wet air and earth fill up my heart, and I scream and scream, and then I laugh.

THE SUN WARMS my arms, and the stoop cools my butt, while I hang on the steps, watching Brooklyn dance by. I pull my ears and put a pebble on my chin and watch the bagel lady and the coffee man settle in, and then my neighbor comes out and I say, “Hey.”

And Drew goes, “Hi,” and he drops to a step seat in the shade.

We check out bikes and icy trucks and girl couples and the skinny man who sweeps the streets with a brushless broom and yells at the garbage, and we chill still and calm for a while, and then Drew asks me about summer school, which is cool, and about the kids I teach B-ball to in the afternoons, and I ask him when he's going back to college somewhere far away from here. He says in a couple of weeks, he's just killing time, waiting around.

“The final fucking countdown,” he tells me, until he's free.

He's a good dude, wired deep, always has been ever since his family moved in when I was eleven. Rich and white and insides real tight, private school, fancy cars but no attitude, just mad sad, crazy quiet. He pulls out his pocket chess set, and we play a few, and I'm wondering how I always do what he felt like all those times the cops pulled up, and then all the times his daddy comes back, and his mama lets him in. This good dude, Drew, he might almost be a for-real man, but he must still be waiting for that shit to end.

“Check,” he goes, and I move my king out of the fray, and jiggle my knee and fight the want to ask or tell or say it's going to be okay, but like most times, he's out there, mad far away. Then the checkmate, and we shake, but I moan and groan and play the sore loser to see him smile, and he does, and Tory shows up on her blades, wobbling and bobbling and going, “What's up?”

“Hi, Tory,” Drew says, and she tip-crashes her little self over onto the sidewalk, and he helps lift her, which is a trick I taught. She had a crush on me, but now she likes Drew, and really she always knew that her cousin Keisha's my sweetest thing, my Gingerbread head dream.

“Your aunt having her baby yet?” I ask, while Drew packs up his magnet horses and castles and royalty, and Tory says no, but Keisha's mama's as big as the circus fat lady and this week it'll come, maybe.

Drew says, “Later, you two,” and disappears next door through his green screen, just breaking poor Tory's little summer heart, but she still waits in case he changes his mind and asks her to marry him.

Then, when she sees he's indoors for good, no more, she flops next to me and whines, “He is so
fine
,” and I roll my eyes, and she lets out a big old sigh, and then we sit awhile, and pretty soon she sighs again and moans, “I want Keisha home.”

And I go, “You're not the only one,” and we slap a soft five, and I say, “I'm just going to sit on this step for the next ten days and wait until she shows her pretty face.”

So she nods, and we watch the sidewalks and the tag sales and the trees and think about Keisha and feel the breeze, but it's only a minute Tory can keep quiet, before she complains, “I'm tired of waiting for things,” while I ripple my fingers on the brownstone step and tap my foot on her toe stop. “For my baby cousin to be born, for high school to get here, for turning fourteen to make my own money at a real job, for a boyfriend, for Keisha to get home, for you and her to be big enough for a wedding. I've got to wait for everything good. Everything's always waiting.”

And I tell her, for an almost-nine-year-old, she's figured out life pretty clear now, and there's not much else to know, and that makes her smile, the way I like to see people smile, all crooked teeth and crunched eyes, happy.

And me and her and she and I and we sit there thinking our own thoughts, and Tory uses her stubby thumb to spin her skate wheels, so they get to be a purple and orange blur, and I tap on her head, braid by braid by braid, and she gets to laughing, and then she leaves her wheels and grabs my arm, and goes, “Let's play,” and I know what she means, and I shake my head and say no way, just to see her beg, and she begs and begs, and I say okay.

Tory clomps back up on her feet and makes me stand tall, and she pulls my arms straight down to my sides, and spreads my fingers wide, and she slides back and looks up, and yells, “Go!” And I try my hardest to stay still and not move, not jiggle, or rock, or tap, or weave, and I try it by watching her big brown eyes looking all over me, and I try and try, and I'm better than I used to be, but I can't help it, I move my tongue inside my mouth and my toes inside my shoes, and I think I've won, but she's too smart and she shouts loud, “You moved! You moved!”

Then we sit all over again, watching four guys and a girl and a moving van block the street and a limo and a rental and a FedEx honking and three bug-eye dogs barking and an old lady hosing at her windows. Then little Tory says, all serious, “I'm sorry, Gingerbread.”

And I ask for what, and she's all how maybe that game makes me feel bad and maybe it's mean, and she looks about to cry, and I say, “It's okay, don't worry, if it didn't feel like a fun game, I wouldn't play.” And she asks me again all about being a crack baby hyper boy and does it hurt and how long do I have to take that medicine called Ritalin. And I tell her how it could have been bad, but those two who snatched me up for their own on my first daylight helped make it all right because when you have something start you off hard, if you have a good mama and a good daddy or a good anybody to help you through, you can do anything.

Then we watch the roofs and the sky and some floaty leaves flutter by, and Tory says, do I wait for my birth mama to find out where I live, do I wait for my birth daddy to say who he is, or do I wait for my brain to unmush or for people to stop calling me Gingerbread or for high school to be over or for Keisha to get back and come kiss me or to be rich or to not have a bedtime anymore.