The Black Kids(38)

“Coulda lived in View Park, or Ladera Heights, or—” my uncle says to my father.

“Don’t start,” my father interrupts. “How’s the store?”

“Still standing. Guadalupe and her husband have been helping me keep guard. You should be there, Craig. It’s yours, too. It’s Mama’s. It’s our blood.”

“I gotta get stuff done here.”

“Of course you do.”

My father and my uncle stand around awkwardly facing each other.

“We have insurance, Ronnie. It’s not worth risking your life over vacuums.”

“Not enough for this. Besides, do you know I got that brand-new Dyson in the other day? The one that won the International Design Fair. Put me back a pretty penny, had to order it by catalog. Anyway, I’m gonna take it apart and figure out how they work so we can get a head start on being best in the neighborhood for Dyson repairs. They’re gonna be huge soon, Craig.”

“Fuck the Dyson, Ronnie,” my dad says.

“Don’t start in front of the girls, Craig.” Ronnie smirks.

“Why don’t you show your cousin your room?” my mother says.



* * *




Morgan and I don’t say anything to each other as we dutifully climb the stairs up to the bedrooms.

“What happened in here?” Morgan says as we pass by Jo’s room.

“They’re converting it into a guest room.”

“But you have a guest room already.”

I shrug.

Inside, Jo’s books are on the floor, their spines savagely splayed. Her tape tower has been felled. Her posters are torn under the weight of thrown clothing still on the hangers. Her trophies peek out golden from under the wreckage. She would be pissed about her records, which lie flat like tipped cows. It looks like a store in the process of being looted. Her room is painted like the inside of a pistachio and still smells faintly of boardwalk Rasta incense. I wonder what kind of cheese Jo is. I’d like to be a robust brie or Manchego, maybe, but I’m afraid I might actually be a sharp cheddar. It’s better than being a Kraft Single, I suppose.

Morgan walks through the room, running her hand along Jo’s former life.

“You guys got a lot of stuff,” she says.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. We have about as much as everyone else I know, so I’ve never really given it much thought.

She picks a dress from out of the pile, looks at the label, raises her eyebrows, and places it back down on the bed without a word.

“How can you guys even breathe with people like that around you?”

“They’re not all like that.”

She gives me another eyebrow raise. Morgan’s eyebrows are assholes. I want to shave that right one off in her sleep.

“I wanna stay in this room,” she says. “We can be right next door to each other.”

Morgan used to be afraid of our house, I remember. When we were little and my parents had her and Tanya staying in our guest room, Morgan would climb the stairs and hop into bed with my parents, or with Jo, or sometimes with me. There were too many noises, too many windows for burglars to climb through; everything echoed, and everyone was too far away, she said.

“Suit yourself.” I shrug.

“Do you have a car?” Morgan says.

“Not yet. I’m saving for one.”

“I thought your parents bought your sister her car.”

“They did. But she crashed it, so now they’re making me buy my own.”

“That sucks.” She makes a space for herself on the bed and plops down.

Before Morgan can get to it, I quickly snatch up Jo’s diary from among her things.

It’s puffy, plastic, and ink-stained, with blue lines across pink pages. A tiny lock secures the cover, to be opened by an even tinier key that I had to dig through the rubble to find. I used to read it sometimes when we were really little and I was feeling sneaky.

“It’s kinda weird that I’m here and your sister’s not,” she says.

I shrug.

“She graduates this year, right?”

“Um… She’s taking time off from school right now,” I say.

“To do what?” Morgan says.

I’m not sure if my parents told Uncle Ronnie and Morgan about Jo’s getting married, but I’m sure as hell not gonna be the one to say anything.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Live?”

Morgan once again raises her eyebrows but says nothing.

When Morgan leaves to use the restroom, the first thing I do is pry Jo’s diary open, waiting for my sister to speak to me, only to find the pages torn from the spine. Her book of secrets is like an open mouth with all its teeth yanked.

Outside, my uncle and my father argue inside the orange halo of a streetlight.

“Dammit, just stay here, Ronnie!” my father says to his big brother. “Stay!”

“I ain’t no damn dog,” Ronnie says before he gets in his truck and heads away.





CHAPTER 9


Me and Kimberly: A Friendship in Three Parts


PART I: 1981


I didn’t even know I was black until Kimberly’s sixth birthday party, back when she was still Courtney Two. When I found out, I tried to drown her. The reason I did it was because she told me I couldn’t be a mermaid, which is admittedly not the best reason to attempt murder. The sun was shining, and her birthday presents were piled up like a Christmas tree. Every once in a while, a newcomer would add another present to the pile, and one or two others would tumble onto the pool deck.