Sellout (16 page)

AMBER’S PLACE WAS eerily quiet, almost like we were in a haunted house and were waiting for the ghost to jump from a dark closet and scare us. Tilly and Red had gone straight to Harlem Medical Center to check on Maria.

“She’ll be alright, baby,” Tilly had said after dropping me off, “she’s having a baby, not dying. You girls carry on and plan a good show for her when she comes home.”

We all knew Tilly was right, but the thought of Maria lying in a hospital bed alone was too scary. The girls piled into the main room of the center one by one, but no one made a sound, no loud music playing, no fighting, no talking trash, no talking at all.

Coach walked in shortly after all of us and blew her whistle even though she already had our full attention.

“Okay, ladies, for those of you who don’t know, Maria is at the hospital,” she started, forcing the words out of her mouth. The armpits of her T-shirt were soaked with sweat like she’d jogged five miles to meet us. “We don’t have any news yet, but as soon as we know, you’ll know, too. She’s a
month away from her due date, but I’m sure mom and baby will be fine. Business as usual until we hear otherwise.”

I could feel the other girls eyeing me.

“Well, boss, what’s it gonna be?” Susan asked, standing up and stretching. It was nerve-wracking having all the girls waiting for me to take charge. But we still had a recognition ceremony to plan for Thursday night. Strangely, though, I was okay with it. It would be a welcome distraction from thinking about Maria.

I motioned for the girls to follow me, but I pulled Shaunda to the side first and whispered in her ear. She grinned and followed the rest of us into a corner of the lounge area.

“Okay, let’s talk about what we have so far so we can place orders today,” I said. The girls jumped in like I was giving prizes for the most suggestions. After a few hours we’d gone through a mock program, chosen the food, assigned decorations to Rochelle and Monique and certificates of completion to Quiana and me. I was pleasantly surprised at how willing the girls were to help with the planning, everyone except for Monique. She sat quietly throughout the entire meeting with her head down.

“Monique, are you okay?” I asked, during a break.

“Yeah, it’s nothing,” she said, wiping a tear away.

“Are you sure?” I asked her, not knowing if I was the right person to be prying in her private business. When she didn’t swing at me or call in her bodyguards, I sat down next to her.

She shook her head no, but started talking anyway. “He just won’t leave me alone.” I assumed she was talking
about Gray Hairs, the loser boyfriend who showed up for visitor’s day.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I told him I didn’t want to go with him anymore and he flipped out,” she cried. “He was waiting for me when I got home yesterday and said he’s going to be waiting for me every day until I take him back. He’s crazy.”

I looked around to find one of her friends so they could help her. Of course, I was the only one around. Tilly and Red were at the hospital. Coach was in her office waiting for news from the hospital. The other girls had run to get snacks and have a smoke before we started again. It was only me.

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just have to go back to him.”

Monique wiped her face with a crumpled Kleenex. Clearly going back to her loser boyfriend wasn’t the right choice, but I didn’t know if she would want to hear it from me. No one else was around, so I had to say something.

“Monique, you don’t have to go back to him,” I said quietly.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

“You don’t know anything about my life,” she said.

She was right. But I did know she shouldn’t have to be in a relationship that was unhealthy or unsafe. There had to be another way.

“You’re right, I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be,” she said sarcastically. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“Isn’t there someone at home you can talk to?” I asked, feeling really sorry for her. If I had a problem like hers, I could go to Tilly right away. My parents would be there for me, too. “What about your family?”

She sucked her teeth and looked at me again. “My stepdad is the only one. He works a lot, and doesn’t have time for my mess.”

“What about talking to one of your friends here?”

She looked at me like I told her pigs were now flying.

“I thought they were your best friends in the world,” I told her.

“Shows you how fake some people can be,” she said. I could tell she was referring to herself. “All the girls here have some secret they are carrying around, including me.”

“Most of my life I’ve been pretty fake, too,” I said. I thought about dancing in Adams Park, competing to grow my hair like my white friends at home, and praying that I would wake up with lighter skin so the boys would like me.

I didn’t know where the words came from, but my tears came from deep down inside. Monique was already crying, so we both sat quietly for a minute, just trying to understand each other’s pain.

“I was so scared to come here,” I told her. “But I’m learning it’s easier just to be myself, because there’s always gonna be someone like Quiana or Rochelle who won’t like me. It just isn’t worth it.”

She didn’t say anything, but I saw her nodding her head like she was hearing me.

“No hard feelings?” she asked, out of nowhere. It was her best attempt at an apology. She held her fist in front of me and I tapped hers with my own.

She handed me a Kleenex and I wiped my face dry. Truly I wanted to help Monique. Maybe Tilly or Red could talk to her.

“Can’t you just decide for yourself not to see him anymore?” I asked. “I don’t have any of the answers and I don’t know what you’re going through, but you seem like you’ve made up your mind about him already. That doesn’t mean you have to go back.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, “thanks for listening.”

“Anytime,” I said, dabbing my eyes. We had addressed so much in our moment but I wasn’t sure we’d resolved anything. It was nice to hear her apology, but I wished I could give her more answers to her problem with her boyfriend.

The other girls joined us again and took their seats. Thankfully, they didn’t notice anything.

“So, who’s giving our speech on Thursday?” Quiana asked. Good question. We didn’t have much time left and the details still weren’t all in place. I turned right to Quiana and winked and she started waving her hands frantically like I was trying to spray her with cheap cologne. “Oh, no, you already know that I ain’t doing it.”

Everyone laughed. Monique kept her head low. Shaunda slowly raised her hand in the air, like she was waiting for a teacher to call on her, so I did.

“What?” I asked. “You want to do it?”

Shaunda nodded, but looked at the other girls cautiously.

“What could you possibly have to say in front of a crowd of people?” Quiana teased her. She leaned forward and pressed her elbows into her knees. “You can’t even talk in front of us.”

I thought she would have a meltdown, but Shaunda took a deep breath to calm herself.

“I have a voice and a story to tell,” she said, more calmly than I would have been able to. I recalled our conversation on Tilly’s stoop and prayed Shaunda wouldn’t start crying. The girls would eat her alive. But she didn’t cry, she narrowed her eyes and sat up straighter. “I thought I’d start off by telling everyone about how I was bullied for years, how I started believing the lies and began hurting myself, but that after spending time working on building my self-confidence here at Amber’s Place, I no longer let other people’s foolishness run my life. I’m the only one who can help me survive, no one else.”

Her jaw was clenched and she looked directly at Quiana. The whole room shifted uncomfortably. She and Quiana were in some sort of staring match. I looked back and forth, waiting for one or the other to pounce, but neither did. Quiana nodded and slowly leaned back in her chair. Shaunda stayed put.

“Sounds like a good speech to me,” Susan said, giggling and play-shoving Quiana, who laughed and jumped to her feet.

“Okay, I’m gonna catch you bitches later,” Quiana said, moving toward the door.

“Wait, we’re not done yet,” I said quickly. I didn’t think we’d get another planning session before the reception. We still had the certificates to do. I told her so.

“Well, I was supposed to check in on the boys an hour ago, so I guess you’ll just have to go with me,” she said.

Panic raced through my bones. Tilly would kill me for leaving the building without her knowing about it. Shaunda and Susan were going to stay to work on a speech. Rochelle was going home to work on decorations with her mom. So I packed up my things, motioned to Monique to come with us, and followed Quiana out the door.

On the way to Quiana’s apartment, Monique told us the full story about her boyfriend, whom we’d all agreed to call L.B. (Loser Boyfriend). Quiana was so mad I thought she was gonna ditch us right away and go after him herself. She definitely didn’t want Monique going home alone. I had a feeling Monique was too scared to go anyway.

Even though I had heard some of it before, I was so caught up in Monique’s story, I realized I didn’t recognize where we were anymore. I wasn’t even sure what neighborhood. I was scared now. Tilly would not be happy about me wandering aimlessly with two of my not-so-friendly new friends, especially if I was lost. I thought about her story of being left in an unfamiliar part of the city.

I stared up at the row of tall brown high-rises in front of us that must have stretched for an entire mile. We stopped in
front of one of them and Quiana pulled out keys and started walking toward the doorway. I stopped and looked around for a minute. No way was I going to be able to tell Tilly where I was.

There were bars on every window. There were even bars surrounding a single tree in a patch of grass near the doorway. The Dumpster in front of Quiana’s building clearly wasn’t in use, because there were dirty napkins and frozen ice wrappers all over the ground around it.

“What are you waiting on, a doorman?” Quiana and Monique laughed and held open a heavy steel door for me.

“Oh, no, I was just wondering where we were,” I said, struggling to hold the heavy door. “I’ve never…um…been over here before.”

Monique looked at Quiana and then back at me. I hoped I hadn’t said anything to offend Quiana. The last thing I needed right now was for her to get upset and desert me.

“Yeah, I bet you haven’t,” Quiana answered, sucking her teeth. She waved her hand around like Vanna White. “Welcome to public housing. We’re still uptown, north Bronx. Can you handle it, rich girl?”

I wanted to tell her I wasn’t rich, but they wouldn’t have believed me. I wrapped the strap of my purse over my head and across my shoulder and followed her into the dark entryway. My heart raced as a wall of hot air hit us from the elevator. I sucked a big gulp of smelly air into my lungs.

“Of course I can handle it,” I said, stepping in before the doors crushed me. They weren’t the doors that automatically
opened with a sensor like the subway cars. These doors were waiting for victims. I took another, smaller breath, this time without using my nose.

“Hit floor eighteen for me,” Quiana said. I hit the button and prayed all the way up. She watched me watching the buttons light up at every floor, and laughed.

“I should have brought my camera for this,” she said, nudging Monique, both of them watching me. The air got heavier and the stench stronger as we got higher and higher off the ground. I was sweating like I had just left a sauna room. My T-shirt felt more like a soaked bathing suit.

I peeked through the small window on the elevator door around floor twelve but I couldn’t see anything. When the doors opened on floor eighteen, I sprinted out like I was crossing a marathon finish line. Quiana rolled her eyes.

“I don’t like small spaces,” I said, wiping my forehead.

She opened the door to her apartment and motioned for us to go inside. Three teenage boys lounged on a sofa and hardly looked up from the movie they were watching. Monique and I excused ourselves and hurried past the television, but Quiana stood right in front of it, with her hands on her hips.

“Y’all know you ain’t supposed to sit in front of that TV all day,” she yelled like someone’s mom would. “Did anyone get the mail or clean up the bathroom?”

The boys didn’t move. One of them waved for her to move. While they were arguing I took a look around. The walls were painted black and there were more posters framed
around the walls than I had seen in small video rental stores. It reminded me of an art gallery back home, except these pictures were of brightly colored naked bodies. No wonder the boys never left the apartment.

“You two want anything?” Quiana asked us.

We both shook our heads and followed her into her bedroom.

“Good,” she said, “ ‘cause we probably don’t have nothing anyway.”

I expected to see black wallpaper, voodoo dolls lined up on her dresser, and two Japanese swords crossed above her headboard. But Quiana’s bedroom looked just like any other teenage girl’s room, concert posters pasted onto a light tan wall, a purple-and-white striped comforter with pillows and shams to match. She also had framed artwork of a city landscape. She saw me looking around.

“What are you gawking at?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing, I like your room,” I said, noticing the bars covering her windows.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said. “Let’s get these certificates done. I’m sure you’re dying to roll up out of here.”

Monique and Quiana got comfortable and found spots on her bed, like they had done it many times before. I dropped into a purple beanbag chair near the bed. I pulled out the same notebook I’d written all the other reception details in and waited for the ideas to start flowing.

“What are they going to say?” Monique asked after awhile. She pulled one of Quiana’s pillows across her stomach and
leaned forward onto it. Quiana chose a disc from a CD tower near her and pushed play. A jazz, hip-hop mix filled the room. This girl was full of surprises.