Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(84)

“And he’s so good with Lo.”

No, he’s not. He creeps me out and touches me every chance he gets.

It’s nothing unusual. Mama and Aunt Pris keep creepy men around who help pay the bills. Iris and I have gotten really good at avoiding their hands, but Ron has stayed longer and seems to have more hands than the rest.

He finally shows up thirty minutes later.

“You’re late,” Mama tells him, a frown puckering over her dark eyes.

“I say I’m right on time, baby.” He lowers his head to kiss her, shutting her up.

“So nasty when he puts his tongue in her mouth,” I whisper to Iris.

“I know.” Iris scrunches her expression. “But they seem to like it.”

By the time Ron takes his tongue out of Mama’s mouth, she doesn’t look irritated anymore. She wraps her arms around his neck while he whispers in her ear. Aunt Pris enters the living room, looking like a buttercup in her yellow sundress. She rolls her eyes and twists her bright red lips.

“Like we ain’t late already,” she says, popping Ron on the head as she walks by. “Let’s go.”

Me, Iris, and Aunt Priscilla squeeze into the back of Ron’s old Cutlass Supreme. Mama rides with him up front.

“No air in here?” Aunt Pris complains.

“You could be walking,” Ron says, looking at Aunt Pris in the rearview mirror.

“And you could be home, since this ain’t your family reunion,” Aunt Pris fires back.

Iris and I giggle, and I catch Ron glaring at me in the mirror, too. I don’t care. I like it when Aunt Priscilla says all the mean things to Ron I wish I could say.

“Broke ass,” Aunt Pris mutters again under her breath.

“Broke ass” is the worst thing a man can be in Aunt Priscilla’s book. Usually Mama’s, too, but ever since Ron started “sniffing around,” as Aunt Pris calls it, she’s changed. For once, Mama doesn’t seem to care that Ron can’t pay her bills—that sometimes, she has to pay his. Aunt Priscilla never hides her irritation that Mama is fine with Ron’s wallet being empty as long as her bed isn’t. It breaks their code of survival.

I stick my arm out the window and let it wave like water.

“If you don’t roll that window up, Lo,” Mama snaps. “Long as it took me to press that hair, and you gonna roll down somebody’s window?”

“Sorry, Mama,” I mumble, rolling the window up, but leaving a tiny, rebellious crack at the top to let the breeze in.

“I hope they’re playing horseshoes,” Iris says.

“I’m not good at horseshoes,” I remind her.

“I’ll show you. Remember when you couldn’t even get hopscotch right?”

I pinch her side playfully, and we both giggle. When we were younger, I could never get hopscotch, so Iris would jump ahead of me and I would follow her lead until I started doing it on my own. I don’t know why it was so hard for me, but mimicking her steps was the only way I got it. “Hopscotch” is our code now for when one of us needs help from the other. We’ve both yelled hopscotch on the playground when a bully has tried to mess with us. Maybe it’s silly, but it’s our thing. It’s hard in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, and we don’t have much, but Iris and I have each other.

“We’re here,” Mama says. She half-turns in the seat and studies my hair. “Remember. Don’t sweat your hair out.”

I glance out of Ron’s car window doubtfully. It’s so hot they already have sprinklers on at the community center where the reunion is being held.

“Go find the kids,” Mama says, hands on her hips. “We don’t need y’all in grown folks’ business today.”

We “find the kids” and play horseshoes and kickball, while the grown folks play spades, Bid Whist and dominoes, their laughter and all the things we aren’t supposed to hear reaching our ears anyway. When it’s time to eat, Iris and I sit at the kids’ table with a little bit of everything on our plates.

“What’s your favorite?” I ask Iris.

“Fried chicken,” she says around a greasy mouthful, pointing to a leg, thigh, and breast on her plate. “Can’t you tell?”

“I like this étouffée.” I spoon up some of the soup and rice from a Styrofoam bowl.

“I can teach you how to make it,” an old lady nearby says.

It’s my great-grandma MiMi. We don’t see her much since she lives in the bayou out in the middle of nowhere.

“Okay.” I shrug. “Maybe someday.”

She takes my chin between her fingers and studies my face. “You’re growing up, Lotus,” she says. “Such a pretty girl.”

Does MiMi see Iris sitting beside me with her light skin and long, silky, “good” hair? She’s the one people usually notice, not me. We’re dressed almost identically, both wearing white tube tops and shorts.

“Uh, thank you.” I look away when MiMi keeps staring at me. She has a way of looking right through you. Mama says she practices voodoo like a lot of the women in our family used to do. She’s kind of scary, and I’m glad when she lets my chin go and moves on.

We eat and run all day until it’s close to getting dark. The sun’s about to go down, and I’m playing hand slap with one of our cousins when Aunt Priscilla walks over, frowning and glancing around the pavilion.