What They Found (3 page)

“Okay, sweetheart, there you are gaming on your best friend’s man.” Mama Evans sat next to Cheryl and turned off the dryer. “Go on.”

“So I took off my housecoat and my slip and asked him what he was going to do.”

“What did you have on then?”

“Mama Evans, I was running out of ideas!”

“Yes, dear, but what did you have on?”

“I didn’t have nothing on, and I did realize that it was too late to turn back. He looked me up and down and then he told me to sit down. I sat on the edge of the bed. Then he asked me what I was doing. Only, Mama Evans, he leaned forward and he looked so sincere that I told him everything that had gone on before. I told him about me and Evelyn being in here having our hair done. I told
him about how Evelyn said she was in love with him and how I was wondering if he was, you know, the kind of man that liked other men.

“He took my hands in his and said it was a kind thing that I was doing. I told him to sit down because I didn’t like having to look up to him and he sat right next to me. He started talking about how he didn’t think I was the kind of girl that just messed around with anybody, and he was happy to know I really meant to keep him and Evelyn together.

“I told him that I knew I was sacrificing my body and everything, but since it was for a good cause it was all right and that he shouldn’t feel bad about anything he did to me. He said I was one of the noblest women he had ever met. ‘You are willing to make a great personal sacrifice to make the world a better place. Not many people are willing to do that. Most people just want to talk a good game but they don’t want to get involved.’

“By this time I was feeling a little bad because he knew what the whole story was and going on about how wonderful I was and all the time I’m sitting there buck naked trying to keep my thoughts pure and it wasn’t easy. You know when you’re naked and talking to some boy you don’t know that good, it’s hard to concentrate.”

“If you say so,” Mama Evans said.

“So then he said I should put my clothes on and we could go out for a soda. I said okay and got dressed and
then we went downstairs and over to the coffee shop and he bought me a double latte. He made me feel really good about myself, which most boys don’t do, and I was even feeling good when he left. I thought it was over. He was sweet and he did love Evelyn, so I could see how he could control himself. That’s when I found out he was a troublemaker.”

“What did he do?”

“He went and blabbed to Evelyn,” Cheryl said. “She came right over that night and yelled at me! I’m the noble one and sacrificing and everything and she getting all hincty. He had already told her that we didn’t do anything … you know … intimate, but she was mad because he had seen me naked and hadn’t seen her naked. I said, ‘Well, you can solve that real easy. All you have to do is—’ ”

“Cheryl, what is wrong with you?” Mama Evans shook her head from side to side. “The girl doesn’t want to have sex with the boy until they’re married, and she doesn’t want to go around parading in front of him naked, either.”

“He was the one that started the trouble,” Cheryl said. “He could have just kept his mouth shut.”

“And what would Evelyn have thought if you were the one to tell her that you had offered to solve her problem behind her back, and was sitting up naked on your bed with her man?”

“She’d be okay if she didn’t jump to no conclusions, Mama Evans,” Cheryl said. “And that’s in the Bible. It says right there in … Judges or some place like that … it says don’t be judging people and don’t be condemning people. That’s in the Bible. Really, it is. So she shouldn’t even be mad.”

“Cheryl, I definitely think you need some highlights around your face,” Mama Evans said. “You need as much light as you can get, darling.”

“That’s just what I thought, Mama Evans,” Cheryl said. “Ain’t it funny the way we understand each other?”

T
he alarm clock rang at seven and I turned it off quick. I knew Mama had been up mostly all night. Mikey didn’t move so I went over and pushed him in the back.

“Get up and pee,” I said. “You got to get ready for school.”

I waited while Mikey sat up for a minute and then fell back down on the bed like he always do. When I pushed him again he swung at me and missed. Then he got this mean look on his face as he slid out of bed. I don’t know how a four-year-old boy can learn to look so mean.

Mama hadn’t opened out the couch. I looked at her face and it was a little puffy but not too bad. Her arm was scratched up so I knew her rash was messing with her again. I could hear her get up in the night but I didn’t
hear her crying. That was good. I got the medicine from the jar in the refrigerator. She had enough for two more days. Then she had to go downtown to the clinic.

“Mama?”

She didn’t move. I pushed her shoulder a little, not too hard, and she made a little noise.

“You got to take your medicine,” I said.

“We got any juice?” she asked.

I said no, and she said she didn’t feel too good. She had to take her medicine twice a day. It was already seven minutes past eight. Back in the room, Mikey was on the bed again.

“Get up,” I said. “You got to go to school early. Mama’s sick.”

“I ain’t going to school early,” he said.

“You got to go early!”

“You can’t make me go.”

“Didn’t Reverend Glover say we had to take care of Mama when she was sick?”

“He didn’t say I had to go to school early.”

“I’ll give you seven cents if you go to school early.”

“I don’t want your old seven cents.”

“What you want?”

“You make macaroni and cheese for supper?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I want eggs for breakfast.”

“We don’t have any eggs,” I said. “When we move to
the big house we’re going to have one whole room with nothing in it but eggs and bread and pickles in jars.”

“I don’t want no stupid pickles.”

Mikey got dressed as slow as he could and I didn’t say nothing, because I knew if I did he would just sit down and start running his mouth. When he first started preschool he liked it just fine, but for some reason he didn’t like it anymore.

I put on my white blouse, the one with the red and brown birds on the collar that I liked, and my dark blue skirt and then white socks I had just found and washed. They were dry so I put them on and sat on the chair and looked in the mirror. They looked good and made me feel good. My knees were just a little ashy and I was going to put some Vaseline on them, but then I saw there was hardly any left in the jar. Sometimes Mama used it for her rash, even though it didn’t help much.

Mama’s eyes were closed when she threw a kiss in the air.

“You want to take your medicine before I leave?” I asked her.

“I’ll take it later, honey.”

Sometimes the medicine wasn’t easy for her to take. It gave her a rash on her arms and her back and sometimes on her chest. My friend Jamal’s mother, Mrs. Reed, said that the medicine also messed with the stuff Mama was taking to keep her off drugs.

“You get six parts of this and six parts of that,” Mrs. Reed said. “And then you got to mix them all up and hope they keep your butt alive.”

Mama was doing okay. She had stopped losing weight and stopped falling asleep when you were talking to her, but she wasn’t doing perfect. Not yet.

I checked the calendar and saw the little red dot over the number. I had put the dots on the calendar to remind myself when there would be money in the Families’ account. Mama said they were “party days.” I hoped I wasn’t wrong. Mikey walked down the stairs slow on purpose, just hoping I would push him or try to hurry him up so he could mess with me. No way. I went with him all the way to school and didn’t talk to him at all. And I gave him some looks that let him know I meant business.

The thing was, I didn’t want to have to spank Mikey. When Ronald, Mama’s old boyfriend, was living with us he gave Mikey a beating that made marks on his legs where he had hit him with the ironing cord. I hated Ronald. I still do.

There were two teachers and a crossing guard standing in front of the school when we got there.

“You people are sure early,” one of the teachers, a black woman, said. “How are you today, Miss Cummings?”

“Fine, thank you,” I said.

Mikey said, “I’m not going to stay unless you stay with me.”

“Then I won’t make macaroni and cheese and I’ll tell Mama not to buy you anything for Christmas.”

“Poopy head!”

But he stayed. As I was going down the block I turned and saw him leaning against the fence. He looked real little.

Mikey looked small, but he was only four. As I walked along fast I thought about how if he kept growing and got twice as big in four more years, which would have made him the same age as I am now, he would be almost a giant.

The bodega on 138th Street is always the first store open that takes our card. Mr. Alvarez always says he shouldn’t let me use it but he always does. On the dot day, the second Tuesday of the month, when there’s more money in the account, the stores are always full. I went in and bought a dozen eggs, some chicken thighs, a loaf of bread, and a quart of orange juice. Mr. Alvarez rang them up, took the card from me, and swiped it through the machine. Then he handed the machine to me and I punched in our secret code, which was 0-3-3-5-2. I don’t know how Mama came up with that number.

I was always a little nervous when I punched in the number because I was afraid that maybe there wouldn’t be any money and we couldn’t get anything to eat. Sometimes on the last few days, before the new money came in, we would be hungry.

Mr. Alvarez put the food into a plastic bag and I took it home. Mama was still in bed. I got her medicine from the refrigerator again. Her main medicine, the one she
had
to take, was in a plastic strip. You had to break it to push the pill out. I took one out and poured a glass of orange juice.

“Mama!”

She opened her eyes, saw it was me, and opened her mouth. I put the pill on her tongue and she made a face as she swallowed. She sat up and drank the juice. Her pills were big and sometimes she had trouble keeping them down. Once she had thrown one up and we had to find it on the floor and she had to take it again. That was yucky.

I felt better seeing that main pill go down. She had to take another one in the afternoon. It used to be six but now the doctor had cut them down to two a day. The other pills, the ones for the rash and the one because of her habit, didn’t mean that much. They made her feel better, but the two main pills kept her from dying.

“I’m going to school,” I said. “I put some eggs and bread and the rest of the juice in the refrigerator.”

“There’s money on the card?”

“Yes,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t buy a lot of stuff on the first day.

* * *

I was late, and Mr. Griggs pointed toward the sign-in sheet.

“You don’t know what time school starts, young lady?” he asked.

“I know,” I said, signing my name under the others.

He asked me my homeroom, gave me a late pass, and waved me on down the hall. It wasn’t like I wanted to be late, and there were at least seven names ahead of mine.

Shakespeare, the class hamster, was loose and some of the girls were standing on chairs making believe they were afraid of him. Two boys had pointers and were trying to get him out from under the radiator.

“What are you doing?” I asked them. “You going to hurt him with those pointers.”

“Why don’t you shut up!” That’s what skinny-faced Marva said.

“You
better shut up before you get slapped!”

Miss Goldblum was sitting at her desk like she didn’t know what to do. I crouched down on the floor, got Shakespeare, and took him back to his cage.

When the class came back to order Miss Goldblum started talking about how George Washington was elected as the first president of the United States. What she was saying was all right, but I started thinking again about moving into a big house. I had told Mikey about it so many times that I was beginning to believe it myself. Sometimes, when things weren’t going well, I would make myself stop thinking about moving. Most of the time,
though, I did think about it, and made plans to fix up a new place like the houses I saw on television. When I told Mama she said I was a mess but I could go on dreaming as long as I wanted.

Along with the big house I dreamed that Mama was all right and we didn’t have to worry about things like her T-cells and making sure she took her medication. Everybody who knew what was wrong with Mama stayed away from our house. That made me feel bad, because being sick isn’t something you should have to be ashamed about.

I didn’t hear Miss Goldblum come up beside me, just some kids laughing. When I got back from thinking about Mama and the house I was going to decorate she was right by my side.

“Can you get your mind back to this class, girl?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She didn’t have to say that.

The rest of the morning went by slow but at last it was over. I was hungry. All they had for lunch was some greasy hamburgers, hard French fries, and vegetable soup. I can’t stand no greasy food but I cut up the hamburger and put it in the soup. Then I found that the soup was cold. I ate part of it, though.

I saw Mikey in the lunchroom and waved at him and he made his make-believe gang signals at me. The preschool kids couldn’t eat with the regular kids, so I couldn’t talk to him.

When the last bell rang Miss Goldblum called me over to her desk and said that I had to write twenty-five times that I would pay attention in class.

“I can’t stay after school,” I said. “My mother is sick.”

“You should have thought of that earlier.”

“You can ask the principal, but I can’t stay after school.”

“I will do just that!” she said, and we walked downstairs to the office. She told the clerk and the clerk went in and told the principal.

“Mr. Griggs says to let her go,” the clerk came back and told Miss Goldblum. “She’s needed at home.”

“Then you write it at home and you had better be on time tomorrow.” Miss Goldblum was all huffed up.