“That trick never works for anybody,” I said.
“But something about that . . . it just made me realize something,” Rebecca said. “It just made me think that that's what everything's all aboutâthings not working out the way they supposed to, the way somebody promised they would.” She looked at Marion again. “It's always like that. Always the same.”
Marion shook her head slowly. “I know what you mean,” she said.
Ma was staring intently at Rebecca. “I look at you and see Clair all over again.”
“But I'm not Clair. I'm
Rebecca
!” Rebecca said, without blinking.
“Do I know that!” Ma laughed, rising from the table. “I wish I could have dessert with you, but I want to try to make a meeting tonight.” Ma carried her plate to the sink.
“I think I'll go with you, Catherine,” Marion said, searching her bag for cigarettes. She put one in her mouth before rising.
“There's a cake in the freezer. If you put it in the microwave on three, it'll be room temperature.”
At the doorway Ma said, “Make sure the kitchen is clean, Feni. I'll see you both later.”
“I'll see you tomorrow night, maybe,” Marion said, pulling on her coat before they disappeared out the door.
“Your moms is really pretty. She has that pretty skin. She probably never had a pimple.” Rebecca ran her fingers lightly across her forehead. “Marion's nice too. I thought she'd be some big butch on a motorcycle or something.”
“She has a motorcycle.”
I got up and began piling the dishes into the dishwasher. Rebecca took one last bite of tofu, then pushed her dish toward me.
“They're nice and everything, but me, if I was going to be somebody's mother, I'd make a little time for dinner. They got up from this table like bats out of hell.”
“They have careers and stuff. Ma works hard to make ends meet.”
“You sound like a recording,” Rebecca said. “And anyway, you guys are doing pretty well meeting ends. How many rooms in this house. Five? Six?”
“Well, she does have a career,” I said.
“Well, she has a daughter too!”
I sprinkled some soap on the few dishes in the washer and closed the door. “That's none of your business, and besides, I don't mind. I like being by myself.”
Rebecca leaned back. “She has to work on making tofu. It's really good when you know how to make it.”
“I hate the way that stuff tastes.”
“That's because you're not grown up enough. Tofu is for mature people like me. It's like wine. Maybe when you're older, you'll like it. Next time tell your mother to throw a hot dog in the microwave for you and just us ladies will eat the tofu.”
“My mother doesn't like that junk either. Neither does Marion. They left most of it on their plates. It tastes like barbecued rubber bands.”
Rebecca stared at the tablecloth.
“I'm sorry,” I said quickly.
“For what? For not knowing nothing? You're just some rich kid way out here in the country. What do you know?”
“Seton isn't the country. It's the suburbs.”
“Well, you don't learn nothing in the suburbs either. You stay stuck up in this mansion and don't talk to nobody. You just a little girl anyway. I don't care what you got to say.”
“This isn't a mansion,” I said, twisting the dish towel in my hands. “It's just a house. And it's my house and you're in it.”
“Like I want to be. I hate this house. I hate Seton. And I hate you and your mother's nasty way of cooking tofu.” She got up from the table and made her way slowly to the stairs. “I never wanted to come here. I wanted to stay where I was and have this baby. But my stupid mother thinks it's the nineteenth century and people shouldn't know I'm knocked up. Well, I am, so everybody better face the facts. And I'm not some street kid who has to be taken in by a rich family. I got my own family and my own friends, and I don't need to come all this way from home to bring some eleven- or twelve-year-old who doesn't know her neck from her elbow into reality!” She stomped up the stairs.
Eleven
THE ROOM WAS DARK AND QUIET WHEN I CAME UPSTAIRS. Rebecca looked too still to be sleeping, so I pulled the curtains open. Behind the trees the moon was full. I stared at it for a long time, liking the way the bare branches shot up through its whiteness.
“Don't even try talking to me about nothing, 'cause I don't feel like talking,” Rebecca said hoarsely. She had been crying.
“I don't want to talk to you.” I went over to my own bed and began to get undressed. “I just don't like you coming into my house thinking you can run things.”
Rebecca turned onto her side. “I don't care about this house, Feni,” she said softly. “I don't care about you or your mother or anything. If it was up to me, I'd be back in Manhattan with my sisters and brothers. I'd be back with my boyfriend and my friends. I have friends. I miss them too. They're gonna write me here. You just wait. I'm gonna be getting mail every day. My friends have lots of money to pay for stamps and envelopes and stuff. They have fancy cars and nice clothes.”
“You always talk about money and all the stuff people have.” I climbed under the covers and put my hands behind my head.
“That's what counts. That's what matters. The more money you have, the more power you have. You can do all kinds of things if you have a lot of money.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don't know! Your family is loaded, so don't come asking me âlike what.' You can take trips to expensive places and buy houses and raise families. If you ain't got no money or you have to quit your job like my mother did when she got sick, you have to get money from the city to feed all of your babies, and then even after that some of your babies still be hungry. Plus, everybody likes you when you have money. Everybody wants to be your friend.”
“Just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you have a lot of friends.”
“Well, maybe not you, 'cause you the type people don't want to go near. My friend Cloe was like you. She didn't hardly talk to nobody. She kept all of this stuff inside her all the time.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got stupid and cracked out.”
“She went crazy?”
Rebecca looked at me, letting her mouth drop open slightly. “Crack, Feni! C-r-a-c-k. Crack. It's little white rocks you buy in a vial and smoke. Hello?”
“I know what crack is. I just didn't know that's how you talked about somebody who was using it.”
“Learn the language already,” Rebecca said. “God! You're black. Talk like it.”
“Kiss off!”
“Anyway,” Rebecca continued, “Cloe lost it after that.”
“How old was she?” I asked, not believing that someone young could do something that stupid.
“Fifteen like me. Only difference between me and Cloe is that she got stupid to get rid of those demons in her head. Real stupid.”
“Well, I don't have any demons in my head.”
“You have those walls all up around you. That's just as bad. Come a day you gonna want to tear them down brick by brick and gonna find that the cement is all hard. What you gonna do then?”
“I don't know what you're talking about. These walls are about as real as those talking dolls you said you had. You might think you know a lot, but it's all in your imagination.”
“I never said I knew a lot. You said it. So it must mean I do. I know you want to ask me all kinds of questions about this baby, but you're too polite. Rich people don't do that, do they? They wait until someone offers up the information.”
“I don't care anything about your being pregnant.”
“Now, that's a lie. I saw how you was looking at my stomach when I got out of that car. And all during dinner you couldn't take your eyes off of me.”
I didn't say anything. It was hard to believe how right she was.
“Well, go ahead, ask me. We got to live together for the next three months, so you might as well get all that stuff out of your system.”
“I told you I don't care,” I said as a thousand questions filled my mind. I wanted to know what had happened, how she'd gotten pregnant. I wanted to know where she and Danny had done it and how many times.
“You want to know if it's a boy or girl, right?” Then without waiting she said, “Well, it's a boy.”
“How do you knowâ”
“Well, I didn't find out what it's gonna be, 'cause I can't keep it, butâ”
“Why don't you want to keep him?”
“See, I knew you wanted to know.”
“You just wanted to tell me, so you might as well go on.”
“I don't want to be like my moms. She had to leave school because of me. And then all her friends went on to do all this cool stuff like your moms and Marion. When I first found out I was pregnant, I was going to keep him. But I could always have more,” she said, pulling at the crocheted balls on her bedspread. “Anyway, the Robertses, that's that couple that can't have no kids, they're rich like you all, so he'll be happy.”
“Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're happy,” I said.
“Then trade beds with me.”
“What?”
“Trade beds with me. You got that big bed with that soft mattress. I know, 'cause I felt it. That's how your whole life's been, isn't it? All rich and soft.”
“You must be crazy!”
“See, I knew you was selfish. Here I am all pregnant and you won't even give over your bed for one lousy night.”
“Take it!” I said, pulling my pillows off the bed and walking over to Rebecca's side of the room. “Is that how you get your wayâby manipulating?”
Rebecca picked up her pillow and headed for my bed, smirking. “Manipu-what?”
“Look it up!” I said, climbing in bed and turning away from her.
“Whatever it is,” she whispered, “it works!”
In the darkness I gave Rebecca the finger and closed my eyes.
Twelve
“YOU KNOW WHAT DITES DO TOGETHER?” REBECCA whispered loudly. She was closest to the window now, and I had to look past the outline of her stomach to see into the night, the attic smell of the mattress wafting up around me.
Downstairs, I heard Ma's key in the door, then the sound of her heels clicking toward the den.
“I don't
care,
” I said.
“You know what
anybody
does together?”
“I don't care.”
“You ever been with a boy?”
“You're so damned nosy. Why don't you go to sleep already? Isn't your baby tired?”
“No, he's not tired, and I'm telling your mother you cursed if you don't answer my questions.”
“I don't care if you tell my mother,” I lied.
“You too embarrassed to talk about it,” Rebecca said.
“I don't want to talk about it with
you.
If anybody, I'd talk to Caesar.”
“Who's Caesar? Your boyfriend?”
“Caesar's a girl. She's my best friend.”
“Who'd name their girl Caesar?”
“Her parents.”
“That's a boy's name. Where do rich people get these names from . . . Feni, Caesar . . .”
“She was named after somebody way down the line somewhere. Her dad said it's a strong name so she'd grow up to be strong.”
“I want to meet her,” Rebecca said.
“No.”
“Why not? You embarrassed to have a pregnant girl in your house?”
“No. Caesar just doesn't come here, that's all.”
“I'll bet you she comes here when she finds out about me.”
“Bet you she won't.”
“Hah!” Rebecca said smugly.
I turned away from Rebecca and changed the subject back. “I know what Marion and Bernadette do together. They love each other.”
“Bernadette's that lady who's taking me to the doctor, right?”
“Yeah. She's going to be tutoring you too.”
“Is Seton like Greenwich Village or something?”
“What's Greenwich Village?”
“This place in New York where a whole lot of gay people are.”
“There're gay people everywhere.”
“Well, I've met more here in one day than I met in New York in my whole life!”
“And you say
I'm
sheltered.”
Rebecca was quiet for a moment. “So you think they really love each other?”
“They love each other more than my mother and dad. Marion and Bernadette are still together.”
“You ever been with a boy?” she asked again.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don't want to be!”
“You ever been with a girl?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Same reason. I'm twelve! It's not a race!”
“Nobody said it was a race. I was just wondering. You saying I'm fast?”
“You said it. I didn't.”
“You saying I shouldn't have done it?”
“I don't even know you. I don't care what you do.”
“I think I shouldn't have gotten pregnant. I'm scared, you know. Scared to have this baby.”
Outside, the wind whistled past the window and rattled the pane. Rebecca moved and her bedsprings squealed.
When my grandmother was a teenager, her best friend got pregnant. She kept the pregnancy hidden from everyone until it was time for the baby to come. Grandma was with her on the night the baby was born. But Grandma said that because her friend was so young, there were a lot of problems. And the baby died. I shivered and pulled the covers up over me. I knew what Rebecca was afraid of.