Keesha's House

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

STEPHIE
—pregnant, trying to make the right decisions for herself and those she cares about

JASON
—Stephie's boyfriend, torn between his responsibility to Stephie and the baby and the promise of a college basketball career

DONTAY
—in foster care while his parents are in prison, feeling unwanted both inside and outside the system

CARMEN
—arrested on a DUI charge, waiting in a juvenile detention center for a judge to hear her case

HARRIS
—disowned by his father after disclosing that he's gay, living in his car and taking care of himself

KATIE
—angry at her mother's loyalty to an abusive stepfather, losing herself in long hours of work and school

KEESHA
—struggling to find a way to take care of herself and protect her younger brother after her father kicks her out

 

Dedicated with love

to my sister

Barbara

PART I

HOW I SEE IT

NOW THIS BABY     
STEPHIE

My parents still think I'm their little girl.

I don't want them to see me getting bigger,

bigger every week, almost too big to hide it now.

But if I don't go home, where can I go?

Jason said,
You could get rid of it.
I thought of how he tossed

the broken condom in the trash, saying,
Nothing

will happen.
Now this baby is that nothing,

growing fingers in the dark, growing toes, a girl

or boy, heart pulsing. Not something to be tossed

aside, not nothing. Love and terror both grow bigger

every day inside me. Jason showed me where to go

to take care of it.
I looked at him and said,
I can't.
Now

he isn't talking to me, and if he won't talk now,

I know what to expect in six months' time—nothing.

His family doesn't know about the baby. When I used to go

there every day, his mom would say,
It's nice to have a girl

around the house.
But they have bigger

dreams than this for Jason. All my questions are like wind-tossed

papers in the street, and after they've been tossed

around, rain comes, and they're a soggy mess. Now

I'm hungry. I had a doughnut, but I need a bigger

meal. I'm not prepared for this. I know nothing

about living on my own. At school there's this girl

I know named Keesha who told me there's a place kids go

and stay awhile, where people don't ask questions. I go,

Yeah, sure, okay.
I kind of tossed

my head, like I was just some girl

who wouldn't care. But now

I wish I'd asked her the exact address. (Nothing

wrong with asking.) To lots of girls, it's no big

deal to have a baby. They treat it like a big

attention getter—when the baby's born, they go

around showing it off to all their friends. But nothing

like this ever happens in my family. Mom and Dad won't toss

me out, or even yell at me, if I go home right now.

But how can I keep acting like the girl

they think I am—a carefree teenage girl with nothing

big to worry me. As for what I've started thinking now—

don't go there. Heads is bad; tails is worse: like that no-win coin toss.

WHAT'S RIGHT?     
JASON

Coach keeps asking me what's wrong.

I missed the free throw, cost our team the game.

I thought I could count on you
, he said,

quiet, really puzzled, those dark eyes steady,

looking through me. How can I say, Forget

the championship, forget the scholarship, college

is out of the question? And without college—

what? You want to know what's wrong?

I want to know what's right. I can't forget

Stephie's eyes, the light through her tears. The old game

plan won't work now.
Are you two going steady?

Coach asked. He was serious. He said,

She's a lovely girl, Jason.
All I can say

is, times have changed. In his day, you went to college,

married the lovely girl you'd gone steady

with for four years. Nothing went wrong

like this. I wish I could play the game

like that. I wish I could forget

about this baby. But I can't forget

the night it happened. Stephie said

she loved watching me play in the big game;

she loved the brains that got me into college,

but there was more than that. I was wrong

if I thought that was all she saw in me. Steady

light in her eyes. I want to be steady

for her now. But I'm not. I can't. Forget

it. It's all turning out wrong.

When I drove her past the clinic, she said,

You want me to kill our baby so you can go to college,

play basketball, be a big hero in every big game?

Those words:
Kill our baby.
No. This is not a game.

I need some kind of job, a steady

income. I could stay here and go to college

part-time, but I'd have to forget

about my basketball career. Whoever said

these are the best years of your life was wrong.

But Stephie's also wrong. I don't think everything's a game.

I just can't seem to say,
Yes, I'll be the kind of steady

father I should be.
It's hard to forget about college.

I FOUND A PLACE     
KEESHA

Stephie walked by this afternoon, holding

her umbrella in front of her face.

When it rains like this, all day, into the night,

that's when you need a home

more than you need your pride. She still

goes home to her folks, but she's scared

of something. I can tell when someone's scared

and I can usually guess what it's about. She's been holding

her books in front of herself, and she still

wears that heavy jacket, even when the weather's good. Her face

clouds over whenever it's time to go home.

She'll go home again tonight, but one night

soon, she'll find her way here. Just watch—Sunday night

or a week from Tuesday, she'll show up scared,

like she's the first girl that ever ran from home.

I know how it is. The night I ran off, holding

on to my picture of Mama, like her face

could talk to me or something, I still

believed someone would come after me. I still

thought the cops or
somebody
would look for me all night,

and Dad would say he didn't mean it. His face

when I left, so tight and dark. I'm scared

when his eyes flash like that—
Don't come back.
Holding

his bottle like a gun. What would a real home

be like? An everybody-sit-down-at-the-table home?

I remember when Mama was still

alive, sitting on that brown couch holding

Tobias. He had an earache, he cried all night,

and she stayed up and tried to quiet him. She was scared

of Dad. I remember his face,

so angry when one of us cried. And her face,

softer when he wasn't home.

I'm never going to live like that, scared

of what a man will do to me. I'm still

in school. I found a place to sleep at night,

and I'm smart. You won't see me holding

a baby anytime soon. I'm still trying to hold

my own life together. I face each night

by calling this place home. No one's going to see me acting scared.

HOW I SEE IT     
DONTAY

They'll be sayin' I ran

off, but that ain't how I see it. To me—

I went to Carmen's house

where all my friends chill out,

and when I called home for a ride,

my foster dad said,
You got there on your own, son;

you should be able to get home.
They call me
son

like that. But if I was, they'd run

out in that fancy car and give me a ride

when I need one. It ain't no home to me.

It look like one, sittin' on that green lawn, out

in the suburbs. My caseworker say,
This house

has everything. Four bedrooms, three baths, the house

of your dreams.
Sound like she sellin' it. Their real son

has a bathroom to hisself, and a sign that says K
EEP
O
UT

on his door. He got the whole crib on lock, runnin'

the whole show. But me—

I feel like I'm beggin' if I ask for a ride.

I hafta ask if I can eat! I got a ride

home last Thursday, and when I went in, the house

was quiet. They was all done eatin', nothin' left for me.

My foster mom said,
Sorry, son,

you need to learn, if you want to run

around with those kids, and stay out

past suppertime, you can't expect us to go out

of our way to feed you.
Where they live, you need a ride

to go get food. You can't just run

to the corner for a sandwich or go to a friend's house

and eat with them. Carmen's grandmama call me
son

too, sometimes, but if I'm hungry at their house, she'll feed me.

So now I don't know what to do. It's gonna look like me

messin' up again. But to me—they locked me out!