The first big secret I ever learned was on the night I found my Daddy dead, crammed in the little space where my old bike’s training wheels turned rusted. I hadn’t ever seen a dead body before, cept one funeral when all I really saw was one dead arm folded cross a still chest, cause Momma ain’t let me get close; and sometimes, too, in the cop shows Momma loved to watch before bed and I snuck and watched, pretending to sleep, tucked between Momma’s bony elbow and fast beating chest. But Daddy was different. His skin, once deep brown, had turned dull gray like the sky when it rains and rains, and the sun hides behind full clouds til it’s too late to go out and play.
I was s’posed to be sleep, but I couldn’t sleep, so I crept down the creaky stairs looking for Daddy. He was always up late, too. I didn’t scream at first, when I found him there, cold. I just walked back up the steps, quiet like Momma always taught me, and pushed open her heavy bedroom door. When I told her, she screamed, so finally I screamed. Momma screaming felt heavier, scarier, more real than Daddy lying limp in that little space beneath the stairs.
Momma called the police, and they came with loud, red sirens. One officer peeked into all our drawers and cabinets, while the other draped yellow tape around our whole house til I barely recognized anything. I sat wrapped in a thick carpet blanket on the hard kitchen floor, trying my best to listen, but only hearing once, just as one cop whispered, "another fiend" to the other. I didn’t know that word, fiend. But I had heard Momma yell it at Daddy sometimes on the days the basement steps would rot with a sour stench. I ain’t know it then, but that first secret would be the quickest to figure out, the hardest to learn, and only the first of many, many more.
☀
“We there yet?” My big sister, Nia, unbuckles her seatbelt and lays cross the backseat beside me. Her skin shimmers in the sun from a half-cracked window, which lets a tiny breeze squeeze in that carries her cottony hair back and forth, up and down. People say Nia’s the one who looks like Momma. They have the same oval eyes and mahogany skin. My eyes are rounder, and my skin is pale yellow, like the color of french fries that ain’t quite cooked.
My nose finds the smell of rotten banana and that’s got me thinking back to that night, almost six months ago now. The smell fills the car, just like the stench in our old basement that stuck around even after Daddy was buried. I dig my hands into the seat cushions and touch something sticky, but it’s more peppermint sticky than banana sticky. Days ago, laying with a book in the backseat, one of my favorite places now, I got interrupted by Momma and Nia, right outside the car door, yelling. They ain’t see me, so I crept out before they could, hiding the banana I was just bout to bite. I hid it in a perfect place to come back for later, once all the fighting finally stopped. But it never did, and now I can’t remember where I put it. I rub my eyes as I look around. I want to fall asleep, but now I’m awake and smelling that stink.
Nia don’t look my way, just stares out the window, so I stare out the window. Ain’t nothing but flat green spaces. Cars speed by on both sides. I like that Momma drives slower than the other cars, cause then I don’t get carsick. I count signs bigger than me as they blur cross my reflection in the car window. There’s one for Toys R Us with a big picture of the new Easy-Bake Oven and Snack Center right in the middle. A ‘Now Open’ sign for a new restaurant called Ponderosa. And one with a picture of a bunch of kids playing with dirt, and words at the bottom that say: New Name, Same Fun. Visit Impression 5 Science Center, ahead in 28 miles. I wanna ask Momma to stop—for the restaurant or the science center, mostly, but even the toy would do—but I know we ain’t gon’ stop. So, I count and count and get to twenty-two, then I’m bored. I find my book between the seats and open to the bent page. Anne, the Green Gables girl, is in trouble again. I wonder what a gable is, and why it’s s’posed to be green. I can’t always understand the kind of words she’s using cause nobody I know talks all proper like that, but in some ways, Anne is just like me, so it’s my best book. Besides, even if I don’t always get her way of talking, I like the sound of her words, all big and eloquent. Ever since I picked it from my school’s Lost and Found, I been reading bout Anne and even learning how to talk like her. I ain’t ever had too many books of my own, so when nobody at my school came for it, I did.
The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. I roll the new words over my tongue slow like dripping honey. Myriad, myriad, myriad. Orchard, what is an orchard? Bridal flush of pinky-white bloom. Sometimes I try to use words like in my book, but when I do Nia teases me, saying I don’t even know what I’m talking bout. But even if me and Anne don’t look the same, we can still talk the same and be alike in other ways.
I read two more pages bout Anne trying to fit in where she don’t belong, then there’s a loud clanking sound and the car slows down. Momma mutters a bad word under her breath, the one that starts with D. I said that word once, just to test it out when nobody could hear me. It felt good. I repeat it now in my head like a silent chant, once for each time our car has stopped working—maybe twelve since we got it bout a year ago—but at some point, I stopped counting. Seems like our old Dodge Caravan—nicknamed Carol Anne like the girl in that scary Poltergeist movie—breaks more than it works.
“Nia, KB. Get out and push.” We know what Momma is gon’ say before she says it, so my seatbelt is already undone, and Nia is halfway out the car by the time she finishes the sentence. We step out into the sun, at the top of a stubby hill where the smoking car is stalled. Back when Daddy used to push the car, his muscles would grow big as he pushed, sometimes even up a hill. I am happy we get to go down the hill, at least.
“This is stupid,” Nia mutters, but I pretend not to hear. Instead, I keep quiet, we keep pushing, and Momma keeps steering and smiling.
Momma always smiles, even in the bad times. Her smile is like a gigantic, dripping ice cream cone, after I stuff my belly full with dinner. Even with a stomachache, I want that smile. I need that smile more than bout anything in the world, I think. Momma has different smiles for different things. This smile, when the car hisses and puffs and then stops, is squeezed tight cross her face like a plastic doll.
“Ugh!” Nia groans from the other side of the car. I still pretend not to hear, wiping sweat from my forehead and squinting up at the hot sun as I take off my favorite rainbow jacket with holes where there should be pockets, then tie it around my waist. Carol Anne don’t take too much muscle to push, probably cause we going down a hill, and cause we ain’t got much stuff with us. We drove straight from the Knights Inn that’s been home ever since we lost our real house, before we even had a chance to finish crying for Daddy. Before this, we never stayed at a motel. It smells like cigarettes mixed with fried chicken grease and sometimes we find bugs in the mattress, but it has good stuff, too. Our first day there, Nia showed me how to trick the vending machine while Momma talked to the man at the front desk.
“We got money?” I asked, eyes scanning back and forth. There was all kinds of good stuff behind the glass, like chocolate bars and potato chips, and even a toothbrush.
“We don’t need none,” replied Nia, matter-of-factly.
“It’s gon’ give us stuff for free?” My mouth got real dry thinking bout all the chocolate I could eat—one of them things we don’t get a lot, but still one of my favorite things.
“Nah.” Nia put both hands up on the glass. “Unless you know the secret trick.” She pushed her hands against the window til down fell a bag of chips and two packs of gum. “Ta-da!” Nia stuck her hands down in the bottom and pulled out her stolen treasure, stuffing everything in her pockets before Momma could see.
“How you know that? You been to a motel before?” I tried to reach into Nia’s pocket, but she swatted my hand away.
“No KB, motels ain’t the only places with vending machines.” Nia dug in her pocket and snuck out a single stick of gum, which she popped in her mouth. “You ain’t ever seen nobody do that before?” I shook my head, but Nia was already walking away.
Turns out, tricking that vending machine wasn’t the only new thing I learned at the motel. They also had hair dryers that stayed stuck to the wall, and people in uniforms that would come clean your room every day. After the first time I let them in, Momma came home from work at the Chrysler plant yelling and said we can’t ever let housekeeping do chores in our apartment. She likes calling it that better than the motel—we learned that the hard way—and even though I thought chores were over when we lost our house, still I do as I am told.
“Almost there, girls,” Momma yells from the front seat. As we push the car, I dig my worn shoes in the dirt. Cept it’s more like mud now, even though there ain’t been no rain today. I look back to see my own small footprints beside Nia’s bigger ones. The ground looks like it’s decorated with big and small polka dots as my shoulder shoves into hot metal. It’s a good feeling to help Momma, but every time I look over at Nia, she frowns.
“That’s it girls!” Momma sings as we finally reach the bottom of the hill. The car makes a loud pop! And then it’s working again. Momma pulls on her braids as she waits for us to climb back inside. Nia’s first, quick. I take my time, so I can catch Momma’s eye in the side mirror. And there she is, just like I knew. First, one wink. Then, she blows two kisses. I catch the first and kiss it, catch the second and blow it back into the wind. Our special thing, just me and Momma. I buckle my seatbelt beside Nia and try Momma’s smile on her, but all it gets back is another frown.
Momma’s watching us through the rearview mirror before she pulls off, and I wonder how we look to her, two daughters, one who smiles just like her, one who frowns just like Daddy. Either way, she smiles at us both the same before driving again, even slower now.
☀
“Nia?” I tap her shoulder light at first, then harder. “Nia!”
“What do you want?” Nia rolls her freshly opened eyes.
“We there.”
This is my first time visiting Lansing, Nia’s second. Her first was before I was born. We have lots of family in Lansing, but we’re here to visit Momma’s daddy, who I guess we s’posed to call Granddaddy. Momma said we all gon’ stay here for the rest of the summer, before school starts back. My eleventh birthday is three weeks away. Nia will turn fifteen the week after. When I pointed that out, that these would be our first birthdays away from home, away from Daddy—Momma’s smile disappeared, just for a second, but then it was back, pasted in place like somebody glued it there, crooked.
Momma pulls into the driveway and Carol Anne groans, either from exhaustion or from the bump-bump-bump of the gravely road. As she parks, I try to remember the last time I seen my Granddaddy. It was years ago, probably when I was bout seven, back when I used to wear my thick hair in two ponytails parted right down the middle with Blue Magic hair grease making it shine and Pink Lotion laying down my edges. It was Nia’s favorite style, so it was my favorite style. Then Nia started wearing her hair in two different ponytails, one on top and one on the bottom like a unicorn. Back then, Granddaddy came to visit us in Detroit, when there was a funeral. I chew my thumb and try to remember the dead person in that casket. The dead arm laying on the dead chest that I could only see when standing on tiptoes. That picture fades now into the image of dead Daddy, but this was long before that. Back when I still thought dead people in caskets ain’t belong to nobody. They were always just dead people, not anybody’s kid or friend or Daddy.
“Ok, Ok, I’m up.” Nia stretches and opens her eyes wide. But I’m still stuck remembering that itchy lace dress I wore, the one that Momma loved, and eating the last piece of sweet potato pie before Nia could. I peek out my finger-smudged window at the little house squatting at the end of a long driveway. The biggest thing I remember from that other funeral was meeting my Granddaddy. He wasn’t bad, but he never smiled, and he never talked. I decided he couldn’t speak, like maybe he lost his voice in an accident. I imagined all the possibilities, til he finally grumbled hello in a voice low and deep as thunder.
“Come on girls, let’s get out!” Momma is cheerful, but Nia moans. Granddaddy’s house will make the third place we’ve lived in the months since Daddy died. The more we move around, the more I forget stuff. Like the pattern of my wallpaper in the old house on the dead-end street. I’m starting to forget what it feels like to have a home at all.
I swallow and fight back tears as I climb out the car, slow. Momma don’t like it when I cry so much. And Nia teases me, calling me Crybaby KB when I do. The K is for Kenyatta and the B for my middle name, Berniece, which was the name of my Daddy’s grandma. Nia started calling me KB when I was a baby. I have other nicknames like Kenya and TaTa that I like better, but KB is the one that stuck.
Gravel crunches under my shoes and something rustles in the bush ahead. I search for the noise as we march up to the tree-shadowed house like soldiers, but don’t see nothing. Just before we reach the wooden porch, wrapped around the house and sloping in the dirt, Granddaddy comes outside to meet us. His skin is dark as a moonless night with hair brushed in black and gray patterns, and a heavy limp that dips and jumps and dips again.
“Why he so bent over and wobbly?” I whisper to Momma. She swipes me on the bottom and flashes me The Look. I been getting The Look from Momma all my life—not nearly as much as Nia, but enough for me to know exactly what it’s s’posed to mean.
“Hush your mouth,” she hisses. I wonder why it’s a bad question but know better than to ask. These days, asking too many questions is just as bad as crying.
“I bet he need a cane to walk, cause he so old.” Nia is suddenly beside me and trying not to let Momma hear her giggle. I giggle too, happy to get an answer, and happy it’s from Nia.
Just like I remember, Granddaddy don’t speak, only opens his arms to say, come on in. Nia drags her feet as she walks, so I drag my feet, too. But Momma walks quick with her very best smile stretched cross her face. She is first up the steps, and is fixing to hug Granddaddy, but he seems nervous and moves out the way. So, she stands next to him instead, with that other smile for when she’s mad but has to act happy cause we at church.
“You remember Nia, and KB.” Momma offers us up like treasures, but Nia got a hole in the knee of her pants and my too-small shoes are black with mud. Granddaddy looks at Nia first, then me. It’s quiet, like a test. He stops on my face and looks straight way in my eyes. I wanna look away, but I notice his eyes got tiny spots of dark in the part that’s s’posed to be white.
“Kenyatta,” he grumbles. It’s the only word he says to me that day.
The house is silent and smells like a mix between the old people that kiss my cheeks at church, and the tiny storage unit where all our stuff lives now. I’m surprised there’s framed photos of me and Nia and Momma on the tall mantel. I wonder why Momma never brought us to Lansing before. I guess cause it’s so far away. It took us two hours to get here, and another with pushing. I keep looking and see plenty of other pictures, but no more with us or Momma. Some of the people in the pictures look just like Momma, though, even though I don’t know them.
“Let’s take a look around,” Momma says, but I keep my own pace as Momma and Nia and Granddaddy move ahead.
Next to the pictures on the mantel are tiny statues. They are all kids, weird-shaped but kids, with skin the color of tar and hair nappy like mine. Some are playing, some asleep, and some ain’t doing nothing but looking. The one I like best is two girls, one braiding the other’s hair. They both have pretty faces, like the singing angels in our church’s Christmas pageant. I always wanted to be one of them angels, just like Nia was, but when I auditioned, I ain’t get the part. Instead I had to be a goat, sweating in a fuzzy costume and peeking out at the angels, all with hair braided and tied in bows and makeup they could wear just that day.
At the end of the room is a giant bookcase, and I stop to look, even though Momma and Nia keep on with Granddaddy to see the rest of the house. The bookcase leans to one side, like it might bend over from the weight of so many stories, with the leaning side propped up with a thick Yellow Pages. Beside it is a big raggedy couch, dirt-smeared red and with a big dent right in the middle, cross from a giant, muted TV with an antenna sticking out the top. At the motel, the tiny TV was impossible to turn on and fuzzy once it started, so I hope we can watch this one. It’s a strange thing to be so important, a TV, but it reminds me of them late nights tucked in Momma’s elbow, of Scooby Doo and Animaniacs with Daddy on weekends before we even got out of bed. Him and Momma would make room for me right in the middle of the fluffy covers, and I would lay there til they made me get up, pretending to watch the bright images lighting up the screen. Truth is, I mostly just liked being right there in that small space where I fit perfect.
“Time to eat.” Granddaddy is suddenly beside me, pointing to a square table in the dining room. We sit down without talking, Granddaddy and Momma on the ends, me and Nia between. Granddaddy made hot chili with beans, and cornbread with a hunk of melting butter on top. It’s a funny meal for a hot day, but I’m hungry so I slurp burning bites from my spoon. Then, I ask for Nia’s food when I’m done, cause she’s barely eating. I watch Granddaddy as I eat, cause he don’t eat neither. He watches Momma. He watches Nia. Then he watches me. I lay my head down by my bowl, like when my teacher makes me put my head down in class for finishing my work too quick.
After I finish both bowls and Momma finishes one bowl and Granddaddy and Nia finish nothing, we all stay at the table. We don’t talk, just sit. Momma and Granddaddy read the newspaper, even though it don’t seem like Momma is doing much reading cause her face keeps getting all scrunched up and sometimes her eyes stay closed awhile after she blinks.
“So, how is Sister Stephens?” Momma breaks the silence, turning to Granddaddy. “Still head of the usher board?” She clasps her hands together while she waits.
Granddaddy finally says, “yeah,” and Momma sucks her bottom lip into her top lip, just like Nia does when she’s annoyed with Momma.
“Isn’t it almost time for the big family picnic?” Momma tries again. She sits up taller and rests her elbows on the table, but all Granddaddy does is nod. Momma frowns, and they both go back to reading.
I want to get up, but Nia stays put, so I stay put and count the statues in the kitchen. Thirty-seven, then I’m bored. I try to make faces at Nia, but she’s too busy rolling her eyes. Momma says one day when she rolls her eyes, they’ll get stuck.
“Well, I guess I’ll get going.” Momma folds her newspaper and stands. Nia looks confused and then scared. I drop my spoon into the empty bowl, and it makes a loud, metal thud. Granddaddy don’t look up from his newspaper.
“Going where?” Nia asks. Momma don’t speak, only looks at Nia, then me, with wet eyes. Then Nia says, “I’m going, too,” and stands up. I stand up, too, but Momma shakes her head.
“You girls will stay here with your Granddad,” Momma says. “I have to go take care of some business.” I look down fast, before Nia can see my tears. But then I see she’s crying, too.
“No, Momma!” Nia screams. She rushes to Momma, buries her face in the soft place in her neck. I ain’t tall enough to reach that place and settle for hugging Momma’s waist. We stay that way for a while, me crying and Nia begging and Momma rubbing our hair. Soon, Momma is kneeling, and Nia is crying, and I am rubbing both of their hair. Finally, we let Momma go. But we don’t know why, and we don’t know for how long. She grabs her purse and walks to the door with us following. Granddaddy looks up from the newspaper at last, but he stays at the table. Seems like now would be a good time for him to start acting like he cares; but he don’t.
“One day, you’ll look back and thank me for this time,” Momma whispers, pulling me and then Nia into her arms for a goodbye hug before she turns and walks out the door. For a second, I feel like I’m back in that rotten basement again. First Daddy, now Momma. I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine myself leaving one day, instead of always being left behind. But even this makes me feel sad. I want to cry again, but I stretch my face into a cracked smile, like Momma. I been crying or trying not to cry since the day Daddy died. Not no more.
Nia spots my smile, so I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue to make her laugh, just like on the nights when Momma worked late, and Daddy was nowhere to be found. We’d watch reruns of Good Times all night and make each other laugh, and it wouldn’t matter so much that the bathwater never got hot and dinner was cereal with stinky milk. Momma clip-clops down the steps and Nia snorts—not on purpose but cause it’s a habit now—then we both giggle into the space between us, that special space where no matter how far we go, we can always get back. Stuck standing at the shut door we laugh and laugh, cause we know Momma’s wrong. We ain’t ever gon’ be thankful for something so bad.
☀
The sky that night is like fire-burnt marshmallows, with some patches too dark to see, but some patches that glow. We sit on the big porch, me and Nia and Granddaddy, none of us speaking. Back in Detroit there was always so much noise. I used to cover my ears with earmuffs, even in the summertime, and say over and over, I just wanna be alone. I just wanna be alone. I just wanna be alone. No matter how many times I said it, I never got to be alone. There was always somebody there, always so much noise. But now, ain’t no noise. I’m still not alone, but feels like I am, here with Nia and Granddaddy and wondering if either one of them even likes me. I decide not to worry bout it though, and just enjoy the quiet I always wanted. I open my book and peek at Nia who got headphones in her ears, as usual. She begged Momma for days after finding a new Walkman at the secondhand store, and now she listens to it nonstop.
Hours ago, before the sun crept into its shadow, Momma backed out of Granddaddy’s graveled drive, no smile painted on her face; only a blank frown that spread to her eyes. She frowns so much now, and I know it has something to do with Daddy. And not just cause he died. She been sad since before that day. Some nights I’d hear her arguing with Daddy in a big whisper that crossed the thin wall between their room and ours. If I asked bout it the next morning, she’d keep humming and washing dishes and say I imagined it all.
After Daddy died, I looked up that word, fiend. I know what the smell was, and what Daddy was doing on them stairs, and how Daddy died. At least I think I know, cause I ain’t ever ask nobody. But I think Daddy was doing drugs, and he did too much til he died. But there’s more, a bigger secret I ain’t figured out yet, but Nia has. Sometimes her and Daddy would fight, like the way grown-ups fight with yelling and slamming doors and punching fists into walls. And at Daddy’s funeral, Nia stood up right in the middle of the church and opened her mouth to say something, but Momma shushed her, quick, making her sit back down in a huff of whimpers and sniffles.
I pull off my gym shoes—damp now cause I ain’t wear no socks—and stretch my legs in front of me, wiggling my toes in the cool night air. This summer, I’m gon’ get Nia to tell me that secret cause I think it’s why Momma and Nia didn’t cry at Daddy’s funeral, and why they don’t want to cry now. Maybe if I figure it out, I can fix everything, and we can all go back home.
Granddaddy stands up from his big rocking chair and slowly walks into the house. It’s black dark outside now, so the words in my book disappear. I strain my eyes, try to make out anything in the darkness but ain’t nothing to see, cept, barely, the leaves of a giant tree, stretching and growing and pointing in all directions. A strange noise like when the wind gets caught in my bedroom curtains makes me wonder if something is crawling nearby—maybe a raccoon? I ain’t ever seen a raccoon, cept for when I begged Momma for a subscription to National Geographic. We couldn’t afford it, but she found me just one encyclopedia at the secondhand store: animals starting with the letter R. I read in that book that raccoons have thumbs like humans and can turn doorknobs. After six straight nights of raccoon nightmares, I hid the book under Daddy’s stairs, where I knew nobody would ever find it.
I shiver and stand, trying to think bout something else. But now my mind is stuck on that book. On raccoons and Daddy’s stairs.
“Nia?” My whisper comes out more like a shriek. But Nia, still with them headphones on, don’t budge. I creep closer. Her eyes are closed tight, and her head sways slow, back and forth, to a rhythm I can’t hear. All I can hear instead is a bunch of noises I don’t recognize. Too many noises I don’t recognize. “NIA!”
Her eyes pop open just as I reach to shake her shoulder. She jumps, and her Walkman lands with a hard thud on Granddaddy’s wood porch. “What’d you do that for?” Nia scoops up the Walkman and shoots me her very best mean face. I smile, even though it don’t make no sense. Nia turns the Walkman over and over in her hands, but she can’t find nothing wrong.
“I just wanted to get your attention,” I whisper. “You wanna go inside?”
“Nah, I’m gon’ stay out here.” Nia stretches her long legs out, crossing one ankle over the other as she leans back on the corner porch post. Her legs are thicker than mine, especially her thighs, but we both got the same little spots all over—not quite moles or freckles, but more so little brown speckles—just like Daddy.
“How long you think it’s gon’ be,” I ask before she can turn her music back on, “before Momma come back?” Sometimes Nia tells me the stuff the grownups won’t. She was the one who finally told me the truth bout Santa, after I asked her why Santa forgot our house one Christmas.
“You serious?” Nia rolls her eyes, a half smirk cross her face.
“What you mean?” I say, slow, chewing the ends of my hair.
“Don’t be such a baby, KB. Momma ain’t coming back.” Nia laughs but it sounds all wrong, more like a whine caught in the back of her throat. I can’t tell if this is one of them times when Nia says something mean just to mess with me, or if this time, it’s really true.
“Yeah she is,” I say, cause I can’t think of nothing better. Of course, Momma’s gon’ come back. Nia goes back to her rocking and swaying as I count all the reasons in my head: Momma and me and Nia are a family. We barely even know Granddaddy. We got school again in the fall. We already lost Daddy. “Why would you say that,” I ask, but Nia don’t respond.
My mouth turns dry til my spit is a giant lump I can barely swallow. I want Nia to say something else. And I want her to come inside with me. I sigh and stand, mouth “goodnight,” as I stumble cross the porch through the blinding dark, even though I know it ain’t gon’ reach her. I know I ain’t gon’ reach her.
Granddaddy’s sitting on the couch in front of the TV, but it’s off. I wonder what he’s doing, sitting there all quiet. He don’t say nothing, just stands and walks to the back of the house. I figure he wants me to follow, so I do. His quiet feels just as tiring as Nia’s being mean, but right now ain’t nothing much I can do bout either one. I make sure to stomp as loud as I can, though, when I follow Granddaddy to a room back by the kitchen, a tiny room with a tiny bed. Ain’t nothing in the room but the bed and a dresser, with a pile of towels and two pillows on top, one for me, one for Nia. Granddaddy nods his head—I barely seen he did it—then leaves.
I take off my muddy shoes and hang my rainbow jacket in the empty closet. I ain’t got no pajamas so I keep all my clothes on cept my jeans, which I fold tight and set on top of the dresser. I’m s’posed to braid my hair before bed like Momma tells me to and like Nia taught me, but I just pull it into a thick, messy ponytail. Stupid Momma ain’t here and stupid Nia don’t care.
☀
That night, I lie awake and listen to crickets. They make a rhythm like raindrops that reminds me of a day when flooded streets trapped me and Nia and Momma and Daddy together in the house for an afternoon. It was a Saturday, which was a day we usually spent apart. Daddy would leave early and, as usual, not say where he was going. Momma would do laundry all day, and sometimes go to the grocery store or secondhand store, depending on what we needed. That would just leave me and Nia. Used to be, we would play together, but then it got so she would do her own thing, and so I would pretend to have my own thing to do, too.
But not that day. The rain started the night before, and by morning it was coming down in heavy buckets. Daddy tried to leave, but he opened the door and water from the porch rushed in and covered his feet.
“Maybe you don’t have to go?” Momma whispered from the couch. And for once, that question ain’t start a fight. Daddy stayed, and we played games and ate popcorn and watched movies all day. Even though I caught Daddy staring at the door a few times, he never left, not once. Momma covered his face with kisses every few minutes, I think to thank him for staying. They held hands, me and Nia shared a blanket and a bowl of ice cream, and nobody fought all day long. I thought we were finally fixed. But that night the rain stopped, and it all started again.
Granddaddy’s little room for me and Nia is black dark, so I can’t see nothing cept the little bit of light peeking in from under the door. I imagine Granddaddy sitting on the porch, rocking and humming in the silent dark, and then I imagine Momma there too, their knees touching, a smile lighting her eyes. I try to imagine Granddaddy without a frown on his face, but it’s all I can see. Maybe he was different once, but to me, he’s just a grumpy old man.
I still got a whole summer here with him though, like it or not, so I try to start thinking of stuff to do. I wonder if Momma had adventures in Lansing when she was a girl. There ain’t many adventures to have in Detroit, unless you count the times I bought lottery tickets for Momma. Momma don’t believe in spending money on stuff we don’t need; cept lottery tickets. She’d send me to the store with a ripped-out slip of paper filled with numbers, and instructions to tell the man at the counter, “A dollar straight and a dollar box,” which made me feel like a grown-up. Kids ain’t allowed to buy lotto tickets, but nobody ever stopped me.
I must’ve fell asleep, cause even though I don’t remember her coming in, Nia’s knee touches mine in the cramped bed. I can’t see her, but she’s snoring loud as our old, rusty lawnmower Momma taught me to cut grass with after she begged Daddy to teach me for months.
“Nia,” I whisper in the shadowy room. I want to wake her, make her explain what she said bout Momma. But she only snores louder. I ain’t scared of the dark, but the dark here feels different, like it’s wrapping my whole body in a hug that’s too tight. In my head, I count the piercing cricket chirps. I want to fall asleep, so I count and count. Seventy-six, then I’m sleep.
Contributor Notes
Kai Harris is a writer from Detroit, Michigan. Kai holds a BA in English Language & Literature from the University of Michigan, an MA in English: Creative Writing from Belmont University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Fiction at Western Michigan University, where she is also Editor-in-Chief of Third Coast magazine. Kai recently published a short story, "For Jeannie" in the Hilltop Review, and also won the Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Award in Fiction for her short story, “While We Live.” In addition to fiction, Kai has also published poetry, personal essays, and a peer-reviewed article in the Killens Review. Kai’s writing, which centers on the black experience, has inspired paper presentations and lectures at the Mellon Emerging Scholars Conference and the National Black Writer’s Conference. Follow Kai on Twitter @authorkaiharris for a healthy dose of #blackgirlmagic. Read more at kaiharriswrites.com.
