On the Come Up (8 page)

She said, I’m Latania, who you? AnnMarie told the girl her name, then they lit up, blowing streams out the open window. Latania said, Turn on the radio, Niki, so Niki put on the radio and they listened to Hot 97 for a while, DJ Drastic playing a string of songs, and by the time “Waterfalls” came on, Niki seemed to’ve relaxed and they all started in about the hottest girl groups—TLC, En Vogue, SWV, Destiny’s Child …

Later, Latania caught a dollar van back to Jamaica where her mother lived and Niki walked AnnMarie home.

They walked a ways in silence. Niki’s shoulder brushing hers, cigarette smell still on her breath.

Don’t say nothing to Nadette.

Nadette? Why would I.

Jus’ don’t say nothing to nobody.

AnnMarie said, I won’t.

And she didn’t. But she thought about all the times Niki had slipped off with Nadette, all the things she hadn’t known, and it crystallized right then, how sometimes you grow up without nobody having to explain.

In the walk-in, Darius had said, Come lay with me a small little minute.

And when he eased himself into her slow, he whispered, You okay, you okay, baby …? His lips by her ear, hands running down her body. Stroking. Licking, making her wet.

She’d said, Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

If you asked her now, years later, she’d tell you it wasn’t one thing in particular—a certain beef or comment dropped, the need for retaliation or an unspoken urge that made her life spin off the way it did. There’d been the studio room and the walk-in closet and the fact they was fucking like bunnies, AnnMarie thinking Darius was It—the be-all, end-all, the rope that tethered her. Coulda been the situation that happened in high school with the silver fox–lined coat or Carlton and Carlotta still in the house or the memories popping up outta the blue. Coulda been. Or maybe it was that she started to sense the smallness of her life, knew lines had been drawn but didn’t know how to cross them.

Far Rock.

The Rock.

Lost Town, Ghost Town.

Niki had told her once, Far Rock was built on top of an old graveyard. Bones buried all the way from Bayswater to Bannister. She wondered if it was true.

There was no map.

She had no compass.

But she wanted to change things.

It wasn’t a conscious thing, or maybe it was.

Eighth grade, spring semester, Brittany finally got kicked out for breaking some teacher’s jaw. Gone for good. AnnMarie heard about it in the lunchroom, a hush falling across the table as Patrice leaned forward and told. She got shipped off to one a those juvie schools for violent kids, Patrice said. My mother friends with the teacher. Mr. Nobella, he in the hospital. He pressing charges. Good, AnnMarie thought. I hope he do. Fat bitch finally getting what she deserve.

AnnMarie walked around on cloud nine, having discovered orgasms, making Darius wait for her as she found the spot and felt the lapping sensation move through her body down to her toes. Daydreaming in school, the throb between her legs making her sigh into her hand. But mostly she focused on the words and numbers and passed her tests and sang for Mr. Preston in the front row.

In May, he took the choir class to sing for a school over in Cedarhurst, a rich neighborhood on the other side of the expressway. Mr. Preston knew the principal back when he went to Teacher College. He said, Consider this an opportunity, people. They didn’t know what he meant and didn’t care. Field trip meant no school for the day.

They walked in a cluster, Mr. Preston leading them across streets and boulevards and nobody skipped out, everyone curious
to see what a white school look like from the inside. They weren’t disappointed. Air-conditioning in the auditorium. Velvet curtains hanging. Spotlights mounted from the ceiling. AnnMarie tried to keep her eyeballs in her head as they filed across the stage. Never seen so many white people all at once. Mr. Preston shaking hands with the man must be the principal.

Down front in the rows of seats, all those mouths moving—she couldn’t hear no specific words, just a sound like a unified rumble bouncing off her eardrum. Mr. Preston rapped his baton on the music stand and it got quiet. The choir kids straightened their backs the way they practiced, and when a paper airplane sailed through the air and landed at Mr. Preston’s feet, they ignored it, singing first “Precious Love,” then “Classic #45,” and when AnnMarie’s solo came she dialed those kids out of focus, only thing matter was Mr. Preston’s baton moving—one, two, three, four. She took a breath, pushed the air out her lungs in the form of a note, the right note in the right key and soon her voice was crashing off the walls, off the velvet curtains and those spotlights no one had turned on. When she got done they clapped. All the white kids clapping mad loud.
Respect
, thank you very much. She looked over at Mr. Preston and could see the relief on his face. Halfway bowing his head, Principal Man walking over to shake his hand.

The choir kids stepped down off the row of bleachers, gathering in a loose cluster, waiting for Mr. Preston to finish marveling. Beautiful space. Great acoustics. AnnMarie watched the Cedarhurst kids file out, taking all the air with them as they left the room. Principal Man rocking back on his heels, saying something. Something about a PTA to thank.

Then they were heading home, a empty feeling in AnnMarie’s chest, she didn’t know why. They’d passed through the hallways, peering in the classrooms where the doors had been left open, taking in the big rooms and the white kids staring, passing out
the back where the tennis court was, kids doing calisthenics on a ball field. Walking past all the shiny cars parked in the school lot, trimmed bushes next to all those windows, no mesh bars blocking out the light. Blocks and blocks they walked, and when one of the choir kids kicked the lid off a garbage can Mr. Preston kept walking, stiff-backed, chin out, leading them back across the expressway.

All year she’d kept in touch with Crystal over the phone. After the hotel, Crystal’s mother found a place to live in the basement of a house in Springfield. AnnMarie’d said, Springfield? Where that at. Crystal said, I don’t know. Somewhere out here … Crystal told her how she found a cat dead in the street, its head mashed up and bloody. She asked about Wallace and AnnMarie told her he’d dropped out. How he a rapper now.

Sometimes she’d see him around the way, cyphering, putting all the other boys to shame.

Start of 9th grade at Far Rock High School, her mother switched out the walker for a cane and was moving around more. AnnMarie would see her down on the street, sitting with Crystal’s grandma on two lawn chairs, catching the last of the September light but still glaring when she went by with Teisha or Nadette or Niki. They a bad influence, she’d say. AnnMarie just tsked. She’d told her and told her, they a singing group. They singing. Blessed didn’t believe her. She’d heard through the grapevine about the dancing and thought they was rude girls. Loose girls and vulgar.

She didn’t say nothing about Darius. For some reason, Blessed didn’t mind Darius. Even though they was smoking weed and making love and music, like Lauryn and Wyclef.

October came with rain and more rain. The whole world turning soggy and wet.

One school morning, AnnMarie got herself up early, threw on a sweater and ran over to Nadette’s building to get back the coat she’d loaned her friend.

Nadette was sitting in the kitchen, wearing a low-cut leopard-print camisole, counting money, a huge pile a money spread out on the table. AnnMarie said, Dang Nadette, that’s a lot a money. Nadette tsked, then stretched her arms above her head, yawning. She said, Girl, I earned it.

AnnMarie said, Can I get my coat back? Darius had bought it for her. Special for the start of high school. It was a cropped black leather coat, lined in silver fur and mad sexy. All the girls asked to borrow it.

AnnMarie found it laying on the floor next to a pair of five-inch heels and shrugged it on. She went out into a fine mist, holding her book bag over her head, walked the eight blocks up Mott Avenue to Far Rock High School, a place she looked forward to, knowing all the beefs of her middle-school years were behind her, where Darius waited for her each afternoon and no one dared mess with her.

She pulled open the door, went up the steps and got in line, kids slinging they backpacks up on the table, moving one by one under the metal detector, and when her turn came the guard waved her through, the alarm slicing the air, making all the kids turn and look. The guard saying, Empty your pockets but she was puzzled. What the fuck set that off. Her hands going into her pockets, all her pockets—her fingers feeling the cold slim piece of metal and she groaned inside, moaned inside ’cause there it was, Nadette’s four-inch switchblade dropping into the plastic tray.

This time they called her mother. Two-month suspension. We have a no-weapons policy, Principal said. Blessed was furious. She said, What you doing with a blade. It wasn’t mine, Ma, I keep telling you. It was Nadette’s. She borrowed my coat and left it in the pocket.

Carlton said, Birds of a feather, Miss Blessed. You hang with ghetto, you gon be ghetto too.

Shut the fuck up, Carlton, AnnMarie said. Nadette got a job. She make more money than you, Mr. Nobody Driver.

He just laughed and walked away.

She wanted to poke pins into his eyeballs, she hate him that much.

Well, me na gon homeschool you, Blessed said. And you damn na hanging around here. The school don’t want you, get yourself another school.

She went to Springfield High after that. Crystal told her to choose the school. We be together, she said. We’ll have fun. But one week into the transfer, Crystal’s mother moved again, this time out to Canarsie.

It took the wind out of her.

At Far Rock, she’d been reading
Where for art thou o Romeo
and sloping graphs in math, singing “My Sweetest Love.” Coming in midsemester, she didn’t know what was going on. No choir. Math teacher talking about
quadratic functions
. What the fuck a quadratic function? She start to feel anxious all the time, that feeling like she gonna up and blow away. Like a helium balloon let go in the wind, floating higher and higher ’til it wasn’t nothing but a speck in the sky. You blink and it be gone.

At lunch she’d stand with her tray, wondering where she supposed to sit, all the kids at tables huddled together, she’d stand and stare. Where the fuck she supposed to sit. Gym came before
lunch and there was a door there near the girls’ locker room that led to the street. She started using it. Caught the bus back to Far Rockaway and to Darius, who was free most days—three years of high school and he’d been done.

They made love in the warm darkness of the walk-in, hips grinding, limbs entwined, and she felt that floaty feeling go away, his body like a anchor holding her down.

Two months into the transfer, she came home one afternoon looking for a notebook she’d left behind that had phrases and songs and little ideas written inside. She’d fallen asleep on the couch and when she woke, her mother was leaning against her cane, watching her.

You know why you so tired? Blessed asked.

Say what, AnnMarie said, blinking.

Me say
, you know why you tired.

What, Ma, why you bothering me …

It was sweet going in, eh? Now it sour coming out …

AnnMarie stared at her.

That’s right, the doctor told me, you pregnant.

It was true, four days ago AnnMarie’d gone to the clinic where her mother got her prescriptions filled. She’d taken a test. She’d sat on the crinkly paper in the examination room, just sat there, dumb. Couldn’t move. Doctor talking, talking, she didn’t hear a word he said. Even though it’s what she’d wanted.

What you got to say, AnnMarie, Blessed said.

Fuck you and fuck him for opening his big mouth, AnnMarie said. Then she burst into tears. She hadn’t told nobody. Not Niki, not even Darius.