That Girl

Underneath the huge, old, rusty awning, it was three shades darker and ten degrees cooler than in the street. Theo had been sitting on the porch rocker watching Shirlee go back and forth. It was strange to see a girl walking alone, but Shirlee was always out and about by herself. She always looked the same, too: once-upon-a-time-white canvas shoes, T-shirt tied above her belly button, jeans pulled up into her crotch. With one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes, she stepped into the yard.

“Do a dude name Melvin stay on this street?”

The girl’s hair was scraped up into a short peacock, styled with gelled baby hairs and curlicues. Her lips shined like she had just eaten chicken. Theo wanted to bust out laughing, but she knew that would be the absolute wrong thing to do. Shirlee had stopped short of climbing the porch steps.

“I don’t know no Melvin.”

“Oh, he owe me some money,” Shirlee said, squinting at Theo’s lap. “I know it ain’t the summertime and you up there reading a book?”

Theo rolled her eyes and her neck. “S-so? And?”

“What’s it about?” Shirlee said, suddenly softening her voice.

“I just started.”

“Your mama and daddy in the house?”

“Nah, my big cousin.”

“Read me some.”

“R-r-read you some?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t it?”

“I can read good in my head but not out loud,” Theo said.

Shirlee clambered up onto the porch and dropped down beside her. “I don’t mind if you be stuttering. See, I’m the opposite—when I’m reading, it seem like my brain stutter—but I can count them dollars.”

“What grade you in?” Theo asked.

“Going to the ninth but supposed to be in the eleventh. Teacher at Treadwell act like she couldn’t give me one damn point, but I don’t want to talk about that. Read the story.”

“Well, this takes place in England during the First World War,” Theo said. “And I’m going to the ninth grade.”

“O.K., that’s cool,” Shirlee said around the fingers in her mouth. She sucked the two by the thumb and was moving the rocker with her foot. “All we need is one of them hanging things.”

“What hanging things?”

“Like what people in Hawaii lay down in—uh, they hang it in the middle of two trees.”

“Oh, a hammock.”

“Yeah,” Shirlee said. “We need a hammock.”

The miraculous thing was that, unlike in school, Theo’s voice got clearer and sturdier as she read. She didn’t ever want to stop reading. Or to be away from the soft puff of Shirlee’s breathing. She didn’t want an end to the pressure of Shirlee’s foot hooked around her shin, or to cease hearing the determined sound of Shirlee sucking her fingers. She also didn’t want her mama to pull up and act crazy. Jane didn’t like strangers at her house.

“My mama’ll be home in a minute,” Theo said.

“I feel you,” Shirlee said.

She stood and stretched her long arms, revealing a narrow, muscly belly as her shirt crept up. She raked the back of her hair with her fingers, worked her lip gloss out of her pocket, and smeared it on.

“Well, it’s been real, girl,” she said, and bounced down the stairs.

Theo was tired of being friendless and lonely, of having no one who could understand her. She jumped up to follow Shirlee.

“You can come back,” she said. “Just only between the hours of nine and three. If you see a white Buick in the driveway, pass on by—oh, and never on the weekends.”

“O.K. You like Kool-Aid and pickles?”

“Who don’t?”

Shirlee threw up her middle finger and switched off. Jane would not approve. She, of all people, had seen fit to grow judgmental. Maybe it was because her third husband was a good man. He went to church, worked at the post office, and had got a big settlement check a few years ago. Sighing, Theo went into the house to tell Keita she was going to ride her bike, but Keita was still locked up in the guest room with Freddy Pettis. They were gonna have to break it up soon.

“On my bike,” she called as she continued out the back door.

She unchained her bike and skidded from the driveway into the street. She’d just make a few blocks and come back, take some time for herself before the adults got home.

“He’s a good man,” Jane must have said a thousand times about Roger, after previously saying you couldn’t melt and pour another man on her.

Theo had to admit that, in the two years since Roger had come along, Jane barely hollered or whipped her anymore. She was too busy in Roger’s lap, picking in his hair or rubbing his feet. Another thing was that he kept Jane out a lot. Roger spun Southern-soul records at the Classic Hitz club on the weekends, and Jane always went with him. His d.j. name was Roger That. It tickled Theo when he sauntered through the house singing in his beautiful voice and practicing his routine. He cupped a hand over his mouth, making it sound like a CB radio: “You better Roger That and keep on dancing.” No, Roger wasn’t so bad.

After several blocks, Theo spun her bike back into her yard. She could hear his system thumping. Every evening, he came in turning on music. Bobby (Blue) Bland, Aretha Franklin, Millie Jackson, the Eagles, the Doors—anything could be playing. At the moment, he was blasting “Atomic Dog,” and Theo could hear him singing before she opened the door. Jane was dancing in her socks while Roger checked a pan on the stove. He spotted Theo, looked her sincerely in the eye, and began barking like a rabid dog. She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. That was the difference between him and the last man: Roger didn’t mind looking stupid.

“Girl, get ready for some macaroni salad, Italian sausage in a potato bun, and baked beans,” Roger said. “And look down there at that monster melon I picked up.”

He was also a much better cook than Jane.

As soon as Jane left the next day, Theo parked her rear on the porch swing to wait for Shirlee. Keita came out to investigate.

“I’m waiting on my friend,” Theo said.

“O.K.,” Keita said. “Boyfriend or girlfriend?”

“Girl, duh,” Theo said.

She stayed by the house all day, but Shirlee didn’t show. If Keita remembered, she didn’t mention it. Theo was not only ashamed but stunned, though that didn’t keep her from going back and forth to the porch the next day, too, until Keita shouted at her to quit going in and out. Theo chose to stay out, and by two o’clock she figured it didn’t make no sense for Shirlee to come then. She got on her bike to clear her head.

At dinner, Roger said, “The girl sure is quiet tonight.”

Jane set her fork down. “Something wrong, Pooh? You and Keita getting along all right?”

Theo nodded.

“You probably tired from riding that bike in the high noon,” Jane said. “Gone mess around and be black as a field hand. I remember . . .”

Jane forked the potato salad but didn’t eat it, nor did she continue her train of thought. She had gained weight since she quit smoking and started eating all of Roger’s good cooking. One night, Theo had caught her standing in front of the sink, shovelling a hunk of pound cake into her mouth. She’d frozen like a burglar.

“What were you saying?” Roger asked.

“I forgot,” Jane said.

“You all right, doll?” he asked Theo.

“Right as rain,” she lied.

Around noon that Friday, Shirlee finally switched up the street carrying a large paper bag. She wore jeans well ventilated with holes and a small doughnut on the side of her head, tied with red yarn ribbon.

“Took you long enough,” Theo called out.

“You must’ve missed me,” Shirlee said.

Theo rolled her eyes but was curious about the contents of the bag.

“Whew—can we go inside? It’s hot as hell out here,” Shirlee said.

“Lemme check,” Theo said.

Theo was sure Keita wouldn’t mind, but she didn’t want to chance it, so she stepped into the house, and, finding the front room cool and empty, she motioned for Shirlee. They tiptoed into Theo’s bedroom.

“Girl, you so lucky—got your own room. I don’t even got my own bed sometimes.”

Shirlee unloaded Vitner’s hot-and-sour chips, two pouches of sour pickles, Kool-Aid packets, and peach Faygo onto Theo’s vanity. It was as if she either liked everything Theo liked or had somehow read her appetite.

“Mind if I help myself to these chips?”

“Go ’head, girl,” Shirlee said. She had got on her knees in the closet and seemed more interested in exploring Theo’s stuff than in eating. “All these shoes—ugh—you oughta give me some. What size you wear?”

“Six,” Theo said, but Shirlee was already trying to work her feet into a pair of low red heels that Roger’s grown daughter, Natasha, had sent her.

“Damn,” Shirlee said. “Li’l-ass feet. I wear an eight—my daddy got big feet. I’m, like, how I’m so skinny and my feet so damn long? At least I could have a big booty to balance it off.”

Theo started on one of the pickles. “You still got time to grow one,” she said to encourage her.

“Thank you, friend.”

“I’m your friend?”

Shirlee nodded, sat very close. Theo’s neck was getting hot. For some stupid, embarrassing reason, her eyes filled with water that ran down her face. Shirlee kissed her forehead, her cheeks, then her lips; Theo could double taste her tears. They kissed, then said “Um” before kissing some more. Finally, Shirlee drew back.

“You want me to leave?”

“Not unless you want to,” Theo said.

“You be having bad dreams?”

“Yeah,” Theo said. “Sometimes.”

“Me, too, friend.”

“I got a good book for us,” Theo said the next time she saw Shirlee. She wore a low-rise denim skirt and had a paper bag clenched in her hand.

“Cool. I brought you something.”

Shirlee sat beside Theo on the swing and dropped the package in her lap—lip gloss, bubble gum, chips, Zebra Cakes, mini candy bars, and a hot-pink bottle of bubbles. Theo took the bubbles and shoved the bag back into Shirlee’s hands.

“Friend, I can’t take all this stuff.”

“Yes, you can, friend. I got it for you.”

Theo fished the wand from the bottle and slowly blew a long stream of bubbles up toward the awning. Together and quietly, they watched them fly around and die.

“How ’bout I do something to that head of yours?” Shirlee said. “All that hair and you got them ponytails like a baby.”

Theo nodded, and in a moment they were in her room. Shirlee was sitting on the chair, and Theo on the floor between Shirlee’s knees.

“Whew,” Shirlee said, stretching a piece of hair down past Theo’s bra.

“My cousin’s goes to her waist, plus it don’t nap up like mine do,” Theo said.

Shirlee stopped in the middle of brushing and leaned to one side.

“Girl, you wouldn’t be able to tell me absolutely nothing if my hair went all the way down to my waist. I’d be too busy shaking it.”

“Like this?” Theo said, tossing her head.

Shirlee yanked a scarf from Theo’s dresser and hung it around her own head. “More like this,” she said, and began to whip it from side to side, lifting her leg to make her butt jump. They laughed so hard. Finally, Shirlee picked the brush up again, but she didn’t go back to work on Theo’s hair. Instead, she stared into Theo’s mirror.

“Can I tell you something?”

“O.K.,” Theo said.

“It’s something that happened to me last year. Now, do you really want to hear this?”

“Girl, if you don’t hurry up,” Theo said, hoisting herself from the floor.

“So Mrs. Tyler sent me to the office because she said my shorts was too little, and Mr. Barnes checked them all right. I walked in the office, and he stopped what he was doing and frowned at me. He said, ‘Come here, child. Come round the desk.’

“I went over there, and just like that he stuck his hand between my legs. My breath went out of me. You just don’t expect no man like that to do that to you. But seemed like I blinked and his hand was gone. His face had been regular and everything. He was, like, ‘You don’t want to be walking around with this on. You’ll have them nasty tail boys thinking all kinds of things about you. Now, go ask Mrs. McCaskill to let you call your grandmama, and don’t wear them shorts back.’ ”

“You didn’t say nothing to nobody?” Theo said.

“Who gone believe me? Sometimes I think I made it up ’cause it happened so quick. Other people felt on me before, but they did it with their fingers or wanted me to touch on them. He just touched me like he was checking my temperature down there or something. Do you think that count?”

Theo didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t answer. Shirlee was still gazing at herself. Theo gazed at the reflection but couldn’t call Shirlee’s expression. She couldn’t call her appearance, either. Shirlee had very good things about her, like her dewy, yellow skin and her pillowy lips, and very bad things, like her hairy sideburns and teeth troubled by a lifetime of finger-sucking. Maybe she, too, was conflicted by her face.

“I must be too damn touchable,” she said to the mirror. “What’s the book?”

“Dun-dun-dunnn,” Theo said, getting it off the nightstand. “It’s ‘Dead W-w-wrong: A Look at Some of America’s Most Heinous Killers.’ ”

She had highlighted and written all over the pages, even though it was from the library.

“What do ‘heinous’ mean?” Shirlee said.

“Evil,” Theo said evilly.

She plopped down on her back, and Shirlee lay beside her. Theo read about Joe Ray McDonald, a Wisconsin drifter who strangled and bludgeoned his prostitute victims, then dug his initials into their stomachs. Shirlee every so often butted in with a “Damn, that’s fucked up.” As she sucked her fingers, she played with Theo’s earlobe, and Theo finally had to set the book aside for lack of concentration. She wondered if Shirlee was a dyke, if they were both dykes.

“Men always killing women,” Shirlee said. “We should go around killing them for a change.”

“Yeah, girl, you right. Jane’s husbands used to beat her and everything.”

“This how we gone do it. We’ll hang around at the pool hall and whatnot, and when we see one of them looking at us we gone go up to them and say, ‘I got a yo-yo for you to play with.’ That’ll drive them wild, and they gone come running.”

Theo giggled and practiced: “I got a yo-yo you can play with.”

Deep inside, she trembled with fear, and power, and the fear of power. She had not stuttered any of those words. Some nondescript man slithered toward them, trying to trick them into his car. So intent was he to get down that he either ignored or didn’t notice the icepick she had raised above his head. It went into the skin and muscle of his back with a nasty crack. She described the process in great, bloody detail. Beside her, Shirlee had firefly legs.

Shirlee’s house was a shadowy place choked with listless bodies, a roaring TV, and bold roaches. Upstairs, a fight was happening, composed of what sounded like an army of boys. Shirlee’s grandmother hobbled down the hall without looking up, humming a church song.

Shirlee was primping in the bathroom mirror, working patiently with her baby hairs, swirling a dollop of Ampro gel with Vaseline so that the gel wouldn’t crust up. Then, an eternity of cherry roller ball for her lips, eyeliner to make her eyes look tiny, mean, and sexy, and a beauty mark beside her mouth. Theo couldn’t understand how Shirlee could be so calm and cool in there: the room smelled strongly of piss, and the watery light from the bulb made Theo’s eyes ache. Hard-dragging footsteps were getting nearer, and the door of the bathroom swung open, causing the girls to turn. Shirlee’s mother came in with a low umph, staring them up and down.

“You think you cute? You ain’t cute, bitch.”

When the woman left, Shirlee threw her head back so tears wouldn’t mess up the fresh eyeliner. “Come on, girl. Let’s dip.”

Theo grabbed her hand and squeezed it briefly. They walked through the hall and out the front door.

The sunshine was a shock after the dim house.

“We gone get some green,” she said.

Theo stopped in her tracks, heart thump-thumping. “I ain’t never smoked no weed before.”

“Trust me. It’s all good. We gone fly high, li’l mama.”

But Theo became more and more uncertain as they went. It was getting hot, and Shirlee was walking too damn fast and too damn far; no wonder she was so skinny. Finally, they came to a brick house with green grass and a flower bed in front of a bay window. When Shirlee knocked, a big bear of a man opened the door.

“Uh-uh,” Theo said, “I ain’t going in there.”

“One second, Lane,” Shirlee said, sounding like she was trying to stay collected. She pulled Theo over to the side of the house. “I been knowing this nigga. He give me tat for tit.”

“I ain’t doing that.”

“You ain’t got to do it. I’m gone do it,” Shirlee laughed. “You staying up front.”

“Girl, that’s a grown man in there.”

“That boy ain’t but seventeen. Now, do you want some weed or what?”

“Not if you gotta get it like that,” Theo said.

“I don’t have to get it like that. I want to get it like that. That’s the difference.”

Shirlee disappeared into the house; Theo sat on the couch with her legs pinched together. “This Is How We Do It” was on the stereo. After it had played four times, Theo decided that Shirlee had been gone an unreasonably long while. She began to suspect that, somewhere in that house, bear boy was showing Shirlee’s young body no slack. When Shirlee returned, Theo would remind her about the Wisconsin drifter and the danger of this kind of life style. She hadn’t heard screaming or a thump or anything like that, though, so she figured that whatever was happening was welcome.

She decided to leave, but as soon as she’d locked herself outside she regretted it. The heat was suffocating. Her tongue felt like dough in the stove of her mouth. Each step seemed like her last; she fought the urge to give up and lie down in the street. Finally, her house shimmered before her like a mirage. Miraculously, she was under the awning, and her key was turning in the lock. She stumbled onto the couch. Some time passed; she could hear Keita’s voice cutting through to her consciousness.

“I hope to God you’re not pregnant.”

“I might be a dyke,” Theo mumbled.

The next morning, her back hurt. She felt not only like an old woman but like she had been born an old woman. The sounds in the house were unfamiliar, quieter. Her bedside clock claimed it was ten. That couldn’t be right; she never slept this late. She got out of bed and was surprised to see Jane in the hall. Jane never missed work.

“I’m playing hooky to take care of my baby,” she said. “Anything you want to talk about, Pooh?”

Theo shook her head.

“ ’Cause you know you can talk to me about anything. . . .”

Since when?

“You sure you and Keita getting along O.K.?”

Theo nodded.

“You not gone say nothing?”

She shook her head.

“Rog made you blueberry waffles. Make your bed while I throw you one on the waffle iron.”

Theo jumped to it. She had discovered the word “delectable” while looking up synonyms for “delicious.” As she straightened her sheets, she envisioned Roger quitting his job and opening a restaurant called Delectables where he sang the menu. People would come from far and wide, and Hollywood would hear about it and give him his own cooking show, “Delectables with Roger,” and he would sing and kiss his fingertips because the food was so good. At the end of each episode, he would cup his hand over his imaginary radio and say, “You better Roger That and keep on cooking.”

By the time Theo got into the kitchen, Jane was working the waffle out of the iron. Her arm fat shook, and dimples were pushing through the fabric of her shorts.

“You look different, Ma,” Theo blurted.

Jane set the plate in front of her—one egg sunny-side up, a waffle, and a sausage, perfectly circular and evenly brown, not charred the way she had made them before Roger. Jane’s hands went to her hips.

“Different how?”

“Never mind,” Theo said.

Jane emptied the coffeepot into her mug and dumped in sugar. “Some girl came by for you earlier this morning.”

That fool! Shirlee knew not to come by when Jane’s car was in the driveway.

“I hope you don’t be having folks in my house, Theodara Robinson. You nor Keita. I better call and talk to her real good.”

Theo was just happy Jane hadn’t said anything bad about Shirlee. She would’ve gladly slung a few choice words if Jane talked bad about her.

Shirlee sat cross-legged in the middle of her bedroom floor, between the bunk beds, rolling them something to smoke. Theo wasn’t about to sit on that floor with all them roaches marching, so she perched on the edge of Shirlee’s bunk. To keep from staring at Shirlee’s smooth, yellow skin and open legs, Theo focussed on the part in her friend’s hair. Shirlee looked up and caught her gaze. She smiled, took a bite out of her Kool-Aid pickle (which she ate without sugar), and scooted over to give Theo sour, bitter kisses.

“Guess what?” Shirlee said.

“What?”

“You oughta let me spend the night with you.”

“Huh?” Theo said.

“You heard me,” Shirlee said, rolling her neck.

Theo had heard her. The “huh” was for not understanding why she would say such a thing.

“Shirlee, you know you can’t spend the night over my house.”

“Yes, I could. I could just dart in the back door and into your bedroom and just dart out before anybody get up.”

Theo smiled at the simplicity of the plan, and then a terrible coldness poured over her heart at the thought of Jane catching them. She must have frowned.

“I ain’t scared of your mama,” Shirlee said.

“You ain’t got to live with her, and, besides, I see you almost every day.”

“But not on the weekends, and night is different. People sweeter at night. You probably smell like a baby, probably make little noises. And it’s things you can only do at night.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know—secret, sweet stuff,” Shirlee said.

Theo was melting at the idea. It would have to be on a black night with no stars. She would leave the back door unlocked with the hope that a serial killer wouldn’t discover it before Shirlee did. Once Shirlee was in the bedroom, every stitch of her clothing would come off as if by magic. Her nipples would be like erasers on her chest, her shoulders pulled back like a gymnast’s. A small light shone in the spot where the principal had once cupped her, the light of the world. It winked as Shirlee walked toward Theo’s bed. She would smell like Juicy Fruit and pilfered Cool Water and, faintly, of pickles.

“Let’s go to Mr. Campbell’s. My sister wants some pink bobby socks,” Shirlee said when they got into the street.

Stepping inside the Sophisticated Lady Shop gave Theo a frantic, welcoming rush. There were a zillion things for sale or snatch, too much for any shopkeeper to inventory: plastic music-class recorders, débutante gloves, lace doilies, powder puffs with powder that smelled like fairy feet, Don’t-B-Bald serum, Valentine’s Day body stockings, fake hair hanging off tracks—Mr. Campbell charged by width, so some women came just to buy bangs—and anything else that could make a woman’s insides and outsides pleasant. His anti-theft precautions were two big mirrors angled from the ceiling and his old mother on a stool at the back.

Theo’s right hand fingered the mascaras, colored blue and purple, but she put those back. Cherry roller-ball gloss, Blue Nile roller-ball fragrance, and a unicorn-head key chain went into her bra. Shirlee liked to browse, but Theo went up all the aisles just once, preferring to get in and out. On her way out, she grabbed a bag of Skittles and a rusty half-off pair of hoop earrings to pay for in order to seem legitimate. Surely Mr. Campbell could hear her heart going thup-thup-thup as he rang up her purchases, but he smiled at her, gave her change, and put her things in a bag. Theo felt awful when he smiled.

Still jittery, she walked off a bit from the store and lit a cigarette as she waited for Shirlee.

“Take your fast ass home, Robinson,” a woman shouted.

Theo took off running.

“Mind your mothafuckin’ business,” she heard Shirlee yell behind her.

It took Shirlee a minute to catch up.

“Scary ass,” she said, skidding to a stop.

Theo wanted to slap the taste out of her mouth. Shirlee had Theo hanging around the hood like a vagabond; Theo was bound to get caught up.

“I gotta go,” she mumbled.

“Bye, scary Mary.”

Shirlee stomped off. Theo was relieved to walk home alone; sometimes Shirlee was just too much. She locked her bedroom door and soothed herself by examining her new possessions, one by one. Keita knocked, causing Theo to jump.

“Your mama here.”

Theo shoved the things into her pillowcase and got to the front door, panting. Keita was coming up the walk with grocery bags. Theo went to see if there were more and carried some to the kitchen table. Much to her disappointment, Jane had started getting pots and pans out of the cabinets.

“Roger not cooking tonight?”

“Nah,” Jane said.

Theo’s insides frowned; she hoped her mother wouldn’t be trying something with a high degree of difficulty. Jane was staring into the refrigerator but came out with twitchy eyes and no food. She ground her knuckles into her eye sockets.

“What am I supposed to be doing?”

“Cooking,” Theo said, trying to get in to hug her mother.

“Please,” Jane said, pushing her off.

Theo went to her room to lie down. After a while, the radio came on, which meant that Roger had arrived. J.Blackfoot commanded a taxi to take him to the other side of town. Soon Jane was calling her to eat. Theo counted to thirty and went. Jane’s meatloaf looked grumpy and tasted grumpy, even after Theo microwaved a coat of cheese on top. No one was eating it; as a matter of fact, no one was eating at all. They were looking Theo in the face.

“Huh,” she said.

“What a word to say to your mama,” Jane said.

Roger spoke. “What you be doing here in the daytime, Theo?”

“Reading, riding my bike. Keita be doing her schoolwork. I w-watch TV sometimes. Jerry Springer.”

“Oh, no,” Roger said.

“It’s funny.” Theo forced herself to giggle.

“I love you, you know that?” Jane said.

The words came out hard, hard enough for both Theo and Roger to look at Jane funny. Her eyes resembled a baby seal’s.

Theo couldn’t sleep that night. Her thoughts were feverish, wondering if Shirlee was mad at her and then picturing her buttery legs in her shorts. The more she thought about her friend, the more she thought Shirlee should be able to spend the night. Other people’s friends spent the night at their houses. Jane was too unreasonable. While Jane was in the tub, Theo phoned Shirlee and asked if she still wanted to come over.

The third time, they were too bold. Shirlee came earlier, around nine, so she could stay longer. Not an hour later, Jane was shaking the knob.

“Who you talking to, girl? Unlock this damn door.”

Before Theo could get to her feet, Jane had shouldered it open. Shirlee ran out the back of the house while Theo lit out for the living room with Jane on her heels swinging an extension cord. It landed on Theo’s thighs, her shoulder, her cheek. Why did she have to be in only her drawers? Why had they been greedy?

“What’s going on?” Roger said.

“Don’t come out here, Roger,” Jane growled.

Fuck this shit, Theo wanted to shout. In the seconds of distraction caused by Roger, she snatched the knobby end of the cord and wrapped it around her wrist.

“If you don’t let go of this damn cord.”

“No!” Theo said.

Jane wrapped her end around her wrist as well. Theo pulled herself to her feet, body sparkling with pain. Jane gave the cord a yank, and Theo yanked back. Theo saw Jane preparing for the jerk of all jerks, and she let go of the cord, sending her mother tumbling to the floor, looking more stunned than hurt. She went to stand over Jane, wanted to mash her foot in her mother’s face.

“Get from over me,” Jane snapped.

What the fuck was Jane mad about? She wasn’t the one who had been assaulted. Theo’s welts tightened and released, but the pain was interesting, not overwhelming. The worst was on her shoulder, where the skin was raw. She noticed Total’s “Kissin’ You” super low and still on repeat on the CD player. Just a few minutes ago, the song had her feeling like a goddess, but now she felt like a kicked dog. Jane was off the floor, looking for something. Theo flinched when she came near her. Jerkily, Jane laced Theo’s arms into a robe and tied the waist. Theo didn’t make a move. If she got into a fight in school, she couldn’t say, “I learned it by watching you,” the way the boy on the anti-drugs commercial had said to his daddy. A row with Jane made her feel a thousand times worse than a school fight. When she turned sixteen, she would move out.

“I should’ve followed my first mind and made you talk to me. Maybe it wouldn’t have come to this,” Jane said. “You need to understand that I’m your mama, and I am the only person you got in this world. I’m responsible for everything. And you cannot be a bulldagger.”

At least they couldn’t have no out-of-wedlock children, Theo thought, as she watched her mother vacantly.

“The mere fact that that girl is out all times of night like this should tell you something. She headed for the pipe and the needle and will have you headed there, too.”

Theo wanted to tell Jane that she was her own person, but she knew it would do no good. Jane was worried about the wrong damn thing; what she should be worried about was how she had just ripped Theo’s skin open with an electrical cord. She could tell Jane was going off to cry, even though she didn’t have any reason or right to.

Theo woke to the sound of fiddling and scraping in her room but didn’t take the blanket from over her head.

“Your mama told me to come get the TV,” she heard Roger say.

The electric screwdriver whined, stopped, and whined again. After a while, it stopped for good, and she heard a huge commotion. She could tell Roger was looking at her.

“You want something to eat, girl?”

Theo said nothing.

“Your mama just want the best for you.”

Roger was new here and didn’t know any better, so there would be no point in trying to set him straight. When she peered from under the blanket, she saw that he had taken her door off. He returned and put a tray on her nightstand. She didn’t touch the food, but she read the note from Jane.

THEO’S NEW SUMMER SCHEDULE:

Mon-Fri—Magnolia Day Services w/ Aunt Trina
Tuesday—Adults on Fire for Christ Bible Class
Wednesday—Youth on Fire for Christ Bible Class
Thursday—Usher Board meeting
Friday—Upper Room Counsel w/ Mother Buchanon
Saturday—Youth Choir practice
Sunday—Upper Room Counsel w/ Rev. Tod

Theo was embarrassed to see how Jane had put everybody in her business. Spending all that time in church was bad enough, but going to Magnolia Day with Aunt Trina was going to be the worst. For one, it was with Aunt Trina, and, two, it was an adult day-care center for special people to get out of the house. Three weeks of it would kill her or turn her into one of them. She didn’t know how she’d make it through.

“How was your day?”

“Great,” Theo said, returning the smirk her mother gave her.

But, really, the day hadn’t been too bad at all. It had been like watching a real-life TV show with very peculiar characters. She’d learned all sorts of things, like when Aunt Trina said you could put disorder on a schedule as long as you kept it busy with quality activities. She’d also learned plenty of new vocabulary words listening to her aunt talk in her bill-payer voice. Like how Ishmael and Poppy were verbal and high-functioning. Donald was nonverbal but could sign what he wanted. A tower of a man, he walked on his tiptoes and kept his fingers flapping by his ears, as if as long as he heard them they were still there. Or maybe they were telling him delectable secrets. Only one student, Nadine, really disturbed Theo. She rocked side to side and repeated a single syllable in varying lengths and volumes—lub, lub, luuub. All the other students looked a little different, but Nadine could’ve been on TV. Her skin was clear, her wavy auburn hair in a long braid, and she had sea-foam-green eyes. Right before lunch, Theo had spotted her all alone and went up to her. She tried to focus Nadine’s lovely eyes by holding the woman’s shoulders steady, looking her straight on, and saying with her mind, If you keep your eyes still, it will change your life.

“Lub,” Nadine said.

“Theodara, leave Nadine alone,” Aunt Trina said.

Aunt Trina, who had a lot in common with her sister Jane, had been the biggest surprise, sweet and gentle to the people she worked alongside and sweeter and gentler to the special people. But she was still the same old Aunt Trina to Theo. They were having lunch together in Aunt Trina’s office when she started up with the questions.

“Theodara Robinson, you weren’t really doing what Jane said?”

Theo rolled her eyes.

“The old folk used to say that stuff will make you weak as water,” her aunt said, laughing.

But it wasn’t funny to Theo. Her mother was such a traitor, and she talked too damn much. Theo had never told anybody about the time she’d caught Jane and a man who looked like Olive Oyl hunching on the kitchen floor when Jane was between husbands.

Devotional duty was supposed to be rotated among the Youth on Fire, but they knew better than to ask Theo. Keith Jackson, however, marched right up to the front like Bobby Jones. Keith was in eighth grade and looked like a pear; in spite of that, he was smooth on the microphone.

“Good evening, saints,” he said. “It was on my spirit to do something a little different tonight. I hope don’t nobody mind. Brother Dobbs, can you come up here and help me? You, too, Cecelia.”

That left only Theo and Rodney Anderson for the audience. As Keith and the others began to sing, Theo carefully considered the lyrics: “I want two wings to veil my face. I want two wings to fly away.” Though a many-winged creature would surely be an awesome sight, Theo decided she needed only the two wings it would take to get away. When the song was over, Keith prayed. Theo’s attention went to a rickety card table, which held juice and cookies for the end of class. After a triple amen, Keith squeezed in beside her, spilling a portion of his thigh over into her seat. Now she wouldn’t even be able to read the Harlequin Romance she’d brought to pass the time. Jane would pay for this. As soon as Jane turned sixty, Theo was going to put her in a nursing home where they neglected their residents.

Up front, Brother Dobbs was telling everyone to turn to Revelations. He stumbled through a reading, something about Jesus having a wedding—not at a church, but to the Church.

Cecelia Tod was another star student. “The whole point of this scripture is that the Church needs to make ready for Jesus to come like a bride would for her wedding,” she said.

“You’re on fire tonight, Li’l Sister Tod. What does it look like for the Church to get ready?”

Duh, Theo thought, the Church has to douche and shop for a dress. Theo pictured Jesus on his wedding night, gently removing his robe. His hair blew continuously and without wind. His holy rod trembled with desire, and he bit his lip, trying to hold back the emotion. Theo covered her laugh with a cough and kept coughing until Brother Dobbs told her to go see about herself. She darted out of her chair and into the hall, where she noticed that Reverend Tod’s study door was ajar. She cut through the gloom and sat behind his desk. She slid her feet out of her shoes and tugged the shaggy carpet with her toes. The room’s dimness and the air-conditioning raised up hairs all over her skin. Making fun of Jesus, freaking with Shirlee, stealing—Theo should soak up this good air since she was probably going to roast like a weenie in the hottest fire of Hell.

Maybe Hell was inescapable. Some people had Hell on earth, like the flat-headed kids in Romanian orphanages or Sojourner Truth. Some people had Hell of the mind, like the students at Magnolia Day. And Theo, probably. Doing all this thinking, she was leaving fingerprints all over the pastor’s glass desk. In the hall, the pale, red glow of the exit sign beckoned, so she crept toward it. The door opened with an enormous hiss; she paused, listening to and watching the lonely street, but no one came to save her. When she got back to class, Brother Dobbs looked at her funny. She put her hand over her lower stomach, a gesture the old man could interpret in many ways, and took a new seat, closer to the refreshments.

“What did you learn tonight?” Jane asked in the car.

“Plenty,” Theo said.

“Like what? Better yet, I want you to write me a paragraph about it when you get home. And I know that girl been calling my house and hanging up, bringing Satan all up in my home. You hear me?”

Most people didn’t know that the spirit was housed between the skin and the muscle. An invisible razor was cutting Theo’s loose. The feeling was excruciating but a blessing as well, because her skin had been so tight that it had been smothering her spirit. She dragged herself from the car. Inside, Roger popped out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“You feeling any better, girl?” he asked, as if she’d had the flu.

Theo was all set to walk back to her room like she hadn’t heard him, but Jane stopped her.

“Don’t you hear your daddy talking to you?”

It struck her then that Jane was absolutely Looney Tunes. Theo mumbled some answer to Roger, but he couldn’t reply, given that Jane was kissing his jaw.

“Lord, I don’t know what we gone do with that child,” Jane said.

Later, Theo heard the pipes groaning as Jane ran her bath. She called Shirlee.

“Your mama tromped that ass, didn’t she? You want to go to the mall tomorrow? I want some Sbarro’s.”

“No, Shirlee. I just . . . I just . . .”

Theo had known that the conversation would go this way. She didn’t know why she’d even called.

“I’m ’bout to come over there.”

“No!” Theo said. “Do. Not. Come. To. My. House.”

“I don’t know why I tried to hang with such a kid.”

“I’m ’bout to go, Shirlee.”

“What you call me for?”

“I don’t even know, but I gotta go.” But she didn’t; she listened to their silence.

Shirlee’s voice was a rush. “I miss you already. Please, friend. I’ll come late.”

“Real late,” Theo said.

Long past midnight, there was a light tap on the window, and Theo jumped out of bed. She hadn’t been asleep, but she hadn’t been awake, either. She skipped shoes and slid out the back door. Shirlee was on the top step, lighting a cigarette. Theo had the urge to push her down the stairs.

“Step down with that smoking, girl.”

“My bad. Scary ass.” Shirlee laughed. “So we going to the mall tomorrow or what?”

She was puffing and walking around. Under that tree, they had lain in the dappled sunshine, their skin glued with sweat. That magic, Theo knew, was gone.

“Give me one of those,” she said.

Shirlee swept a cigarette from somewhere and stuck it into Theo’s mouth. She touched the place on Theo’s cheek that had been bruised by the cord. It made Theo nervous and shameful and something else she couldn’t identify.

“I-I-I can’t hang with you no more,” she said.

“You couldn’t hang with me in the first place,” Shirlee snapped.

Tears were in her eyes. Theo’s heart quickened, but she didn’t know the right words, so she didn’t attempt any.

“So it’s like that?” Shirlee said.

Theo shrugged, not wanting to cry herself.

“It’s been real, girl.” Shirlee nodded. “It’s been really real.”

And, like that, she was gone. No one would ever again cup Theo as tenderly as that girl had. The thought shook her from her daze, but when she jogged into the front yard Shirlee was already halfway up the street.

“Leelee,” Theo called.

Shirlee started running. The T-shirt that had been knotted at her waist flapped loose behind her. Theo smoked the cigarette to the bitter end, flipped the butt into the grass, and brushed the ashes off the front of her nightshirt. She called her friend’s name again but, this time, within her head. ♦