“They used to tell me the way things was. My moms, she's not so well, you know. She acts strange sometimes still. I would go in the room and me and my dolls would find a place and just talk about it. I have all these brothers and sisters, and they drive me crazy. The house is always full of screaming and fighting and everything. So me and my dolls would find a quiet place like in the closet or somewhere and we'd just talk.”
“What'd your dolls say?” I asked, inching toward the door.
Rebecca's voice became normal again. “What do you think they said?”
I shrugged and she moved her suitcase and lay back on the bed.
“What'd your dolls say when you stopped playing with them? Did they say, âFeni, you not playing with us no more 'cause your daddy went away'? Is that what they said?”
“I don't care about my father going away,” I said, realizing I had not touched a doll since my dad left.
“Well, I stopped playing with those dolls when I got me a boyfriend, and that's when the dolls stopped talking.” Rebecca took the baby doll in her arms and closed her eyes. “They just shut up and didn't say no more. It was something. It was like they never spoke,” she said sleepily.
I stood in the doorway staring at her. She curled up with the doll, sighed, and turned away from me. When I heard the soft sound of her snoring, I stepped out of the room and slammed the door.
Nine
MARION CAME OVER IN TIME FOR DINNER, HER ARMS full of department-store bags. Rebecca and I were sitting silently across from each other at the kitchen table. We had not spoken since before her nap.
When Marion came into the kitchen, Rebecca's eyes slid across to me.
“She's a butch, right?” Rebecca whispered.
I wanted to slap her. “No, stupid! She's a lesbian.”
“Same thing,” she hissed. I balled my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms. I had never punched a pregnant girl before. Actually, I had never punched anyone.
“Some lesbians don't like to be called butch. Just like some pregnant people don't like to be called
pregos.
Make any sense?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes at me but then flicked a look at Marion that showed my point had been made.
Marion was all smiles as she set bags in front of Rebecca. She kissed Rebecca on the forehead and Rebecca pulled away a little. “You grew up to be just beautiful, didn't you. Looks like Clair spit you right out of her mouth! Isn't she something, Catherine?” Ma was standing behind Marion now, smiling. No one said anything. Rebecca blushed and stared down at the floor.
“Now, don't go getting jealous,” Marion said to me as she tore into a bag. “I just bought a few things for Rebecca because I know she didn't have much time to shop before she left.”
“That's where you've been all afternoon,” Ma said, lifting the bags onto the table.
“You know,” Marion said, “I haven't seen you since you were Feni's age. Maybe even a little younger. You probably don't even remember me.”
“I remember you,” Rebecca said. “Ma told me about you.”
The kitchen grew silent.
“Did she?” Marion asked uneasily. “Well, what did she say?”
I was sitting opposite Rebecca with my chin in my hands. She didn't dare look anywhere but at the floor when she spoke. “She said you all were close at Spelman. Real close. How close were you to my ma?” She looked up then, and my eyes followed hers to Marion. We all waited.
“We were as tight as a braid,” Marion said slowly. “All wound around each other like there was no beginning or end to us. Wasn't one of us any closer to the other than the next.”
“But you're a dite, aren't you?”
“A what?” Marion asked, laughter in her eyes.
“A dite. That's what Ma says.”
The laughter spilled over and Ma joined in. My eyes met Rebecca's, and for a moment we were connected by our mutual confusion.
“The word is
dyke,
” Marion said, wiping her eyes.
“Whatever the word is, that's what Ma says you are.”
“What else does your mama say?” Marion asked. She was looking proudly down at Rebecca and didn't seem angry.
“Oh, she says all kinds of stuff. Ma's crazy sometimes. But when she talks about you all, mostly she talks about Spelman.” Rebecca looked at Marion. “How come you're gay?” she asked out of the blue.
“That's rude,” I said, and Rebecca cut her eyes at me.
“Nobody's talking to you!”
“Well, you two have certainly hit it off.” Marion took a sweater from one of the bags and held it to Rebecca's shoulders.
“You think this'll fit?”
Rebecca's mouth dropped open when she looked at the sweater. “It's beautiful!” She stood slowly and held the sweater to her. “It's so soft.” Part of the sweater sat on her stomach. “All these bags are stuff for me?”
“Nobody bought me anything,” I mumbled, ripping up a piece of tissue.
“Help me set the table, Feni,” Ma said.
In the dining room I could hear Rebecca oohing and aahing with each rip of paper. “That sure was rude of her to ask Marion about being gay,” I whispered.
“That's the way you learn, isn't it? By asking?”
“If that was me, I would be on punishment for a week!”
“I don't know, Feni. Marion doesn't mind you asking questions.”
“You mind?”
“Of course not.”
“You used to before. Before you stopped drinking.”
Ma put a salad fork down and looked at me. “My life is split in half, Feniâwhen I drank and when I stopped drinking. Everything I did when I drank, I'm sorry for. . . .”
“Whenever I think about that, I get mad.”
“You should.”
“Are you sorry for saying Rebecca could stay with us? I am.”
“No, I'm not sorry, and I don't see why you are.”
“She's rude, Ma. And she acts like she's not used to having nice stuff.”
“She's not, Feni.”
“Well, her family should get some nice stuff, then. At least that way, everybody could get used to it and not embarrass themselves when they come to somebody's house who has nice things!”
“They don't have the money, Feni.”
“Then they should get some money.”
“From where?” Ma asked too patiently.
“From wherever. . . .”
When Marion came out of the kitchen with Rebecca, Rebecca was wearing the sweater and a different pair of pants. It was not until Rebecca looked up at Ma to smile a thank-you that I realized: We were Rebecca's “wherever.”
Ten
“I REALLY APPRECIATE YOU LETTING ME STAY HERE, MS. Harris,” Rebecca said to Ma at dinner. “This house is lovely.”
The words sounded as though they'd been rehearsed a thousand times. I grimaced, picking silently at my tofu. It tasted rubbery and bland beneath the mounds of barbecue sauce.
Ma and Marion took miniature bites and chewed them slowly. “I'm glad you're here,” Ma said. “We could use some company in this empty house.”
“How far is the doctor from here?” Rebecca asked.
Marion wiped her mouth and took a sip of water. “I found one who accepts Medicaid on Berkeley Street. She sounds like a nice woman. I made an appointment for Wednesday. I was hoping I could take you, or that Catherine would be able to, but my day is chock-f.” She looked at Ma. “Yours isn't any better, is it?”
“Not Wednesday,” Ma said. “I have meetings until four-thirty. Then, one of our members is celebrating ninety days' sobriety, so I want to be there.”
A few years ago Ma and Marion stopped drinking and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. At the meetings other people who have stopped drinking help them get through “one day at a time.” Ma gets scared sometimes and thinks that if things get too hard, she'll start drinking again. At the meetings people sit in a big circle and say, “My name is Joe S., and I'm an alcoholic.” Then everyone says, “Hi, Joe,” and Joe feels welcomed. Ma cried when she said the word
alcoholic
for the first time, she told me later. She had never called herself that before, and to her the word sounded like a curse.
“That's right,” Marion said, stirring her tofu around in the barbecue sauce. “But Bernadette is free Wednesday. She could take you, Rebecca.”
“Doesn't she have school?” I asked.
Marion shook her head. “She's taking Wednesday and Thursday off.”
“When she was my teacher, she never took a day off.”
“And you're all the better for it, Feni,” Marion said, laughing.
“Is Bernadette my age?” Rebecca asked.
Ma and Marion exchanged looks and smiled. “She'd like to be,” Marion said. “Bernadette's my girlfriend. We've been together more than eight years now.”
“God, I'm surrounded,” Rebecca mumbled. “Is that the only appointment you could get?”
“It's the earliest,” Marion said. “Dr. Greenberg said she couldn't give us another until a couple of weeks from now, and with you being close to your last trimester and all, Rebecca, we need to get you started on childbirth classes. Catherine and I will alternate as coaches.”
Rebecca nodded and asked, “What's ninety days' sobriety?”
“Marion and I don't drink,” Ma said, and she explained Alcoholics Anonymous to Rebecca.
“Any other questions? Like how much we weigh? Or when do we go to the bathroom?” I asked.
“That's enough, Feni,” Ma said sharply.
Beneath the table Rebecca bumped against my leg hard.
I bumped her back and made the table shake. Ma and Marion looked at each other and said nothing.
“Clair mentioned that you're giving the baby up for adoption,” Ma said. “Do you know the couple?”
“I'm gonna meet them. They're coming here sometime soon. All I know is that they can't have kids and they want a baby, so they're going to adopt mine. I wasn't going to let them at first. But me and Ma talked.”
“Adoption is a good thing,” Ma said. “I mean, if you're sure that's what you want.”
Rebecca shrugged. “I don't know. Who cares, anyway? I could have more babies. I just hate the way people act about it. You'd think nobody in the world ever got pregnant when they was fifteen. My grandmother had her first baby when she was fifteen. And
her
grandmother was thirteen. People all the time staring and whispering behind my back. Like I care.”
“People are going to judge you no matter what you do,” Marion said. “Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.”
Rebecca looked at her for a minute before she smiled. “You all think it's wrong, don't you? I mean, that I got pregnant.”
Marion looked at Ma, then back at Rebecca. “Well, it's certainly not the
best
time, don't you think? With Clair sick and you still in high school. Later would have been a lot better.”
“We're not here to judge, Rebecca,” Ma said.
“Then how come you're here? How come you all are letting me stay here? Feni don't want me in her house.”
“Don't put my name in it,” I said.
“Well, you don't, do you?”
“You want me in
your
house?” I asked.
“Free country.”
“We're here,” Marion cut in, “because we have the things you need to get through this. There is space and quiet here, most times. And even though it doesn't seem like it with neither of us being able to go with you to the doctor on Wednesday, we do have time to spend with you and make sure you're all right.”
“We're also here,” Ma added, “because we want to make sure you keep up with your classes, finish school, and get a chance to make yourself into someone before starting a family. You're a bright girl, Rebecca. We don't want you to slip through the cracks. We won't have it.”
“And,” Marion continued, “we're here because we're Clair's friends.”
“Friends don't do stuff like this for each other,” Rebecca said.
Marion picked up a tiny piece of tofu. “These friends do,” she said.
“I know this isn't a good time to be knocked up. I really do want to finish school and everything. . . .”
“You should have thought of that before,” I said.
Rebecca glared at me, rolled her eyes, and stuck a chunk of tofu in her mouth.
We ate mostly in silence. Every now and then someone asked Rebecca a question about her mother or sisters and brothers. So, in pieces, I learned where Rebecca came from.
“What's Harlem like these days?” Marion asked at one point.
“The same,” Rebecca said vaguely.
“I don't know Harlem anymore, so I have no idea what âthe same' is.”
“The same raggedness. The same poor people. The same grayness. The same greatness. The same beautiful people,” Rebecca mumbled.
“Do you miss it?” Ma asked.
“I've only been gone a day!”
“Don't get snotty,” I said.
Rebecca sucked her teeth and turned to Marion. “The thing I know I'm gonna miss the most is all the stuff you see. Like once, I was walking down a Hundred Sixteenth Street. It was last fall when we was having all those hurricanes and it was gray and rainy a lot. But this one day it was just kind of cold and cloudy. I was coming back from buying Ma a pack of cigarettesâ”
“Clair's smoking these days?” Ma asked.
“She's trying to quit. She started smoking because of her nerves,” Rebecca said before continuing. “Anyway, there were these three kids and they were sitting on the stairs of this burned-out building. One of them had a Slinkyâone of those green plastic onesâand he was trying to make it walk down the stairs like it does in the commercial. Only it wasn't doing it right. It would just go down one stair and stop. But the kid kept trying and his friends kept watching it.”