Now Jolita’s fussing with her hair. Her hair’s fine; it’s herself that isn’t. She’s in my bedroom, using the hair dryer, when she yells at me. “Junebug! These bottles are driving me nuts. Get them out of here.”

  I hear her kick a couple. They clank when they fall down and knock together. She’d better not break any, that’s for sure, or I’ll get Darnell to—No, I won’t either. I forgot.

  “Who are you going out with?” Mama calls out from the kitchen.

  “Excuse me?” Jolita comes out of my bedroom, holding the hair dryer, the plug dangling. She gives Mama a look that says no way is she going to answer that.

  “Come on,” mutters Mama to us, ignoring Jolita. “Time to eat.”

  She slaps those plates down in front of us. Baked beans and another hot dog. Carrot sticks. She moves into the kitchen, her back stiff. I can tell she’s angry. Tasha and I keep our heads down low to eat, staying out of trouble.

  We finish fast and start scraping those plates. After I help with the dishes, I lie on the sofa with my sailing magazines, looking at them. The water’s so blue in the ads you can hardly believe it. Foam curves back from the bows, crisp and aqua. My favorite is a picture of boats with big colorful balloony sails out front. Spinnakers. They look like clouds of rainbows puffed out.

  On the back pages are ads for catalogues that sell boat-building plans. Someday I might send away for some plans. But it costs three dollars just for the catalogue, so I haven’t decided yet.

  There’s someone banging on the door. Aunt Jolita unbolts all the locks and yanks it open. There’s that same man, the guy with the Mercedes and radar vision, with his gloves, hat, and big dark glasses. His teeth gleam at Jolita. He’s sleek as a wild animal.

  “You ready?” he asks, smooth-voiced.

  Mama rushes over to Jolita. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she asks loudly.

  “None of your business, girl,” says Aunt Jolita.

  No one calls Mama “girl” like that and gets away with it. Aunt Jolita brushes by Mama, wearing her red sequined top, tight black pants, gold hoops. High heels clicking.

  “Excuse us for a minute,” Mama says to the man. “We need to talk.”

  She takes Jolita’s arm, but Jolita yanks her arm away. All her bracelets jangle.

  The radar man isn’t smiling now. Looks like he’s going to give Mama about ten seconds and that’s all. Mama starts to say something, but Jolita pushes past her and rushes out the door to the landing. She hurries down the stairs. The man takes Mama’s arm and starts to shove her back into the living room.

  “Jolita!” Mama calls out, twisting away, free of his grasp. She runs out to the landing.

  But the man grabs her again. He won’t let go this time. Mama twists her arm hard and pulls free with a jerk. Then she gives a little cry, and she trips and tumbles backward down the stairs. I can’t see her anymore. The man leaves, his shiny black shoes tapping down the cement stairs real fast. I hear a door close. Jolita and the man are gone.

  “Mama!” I yell out.

  She’s lying in a heap at the bottom of the next landing. She doesn’t answer at all. I fly down the steps, my knees shaking. I’m crying a little high-pitched whimper.

  I touch her. She’s warm and soft, same as always. But she’s too soft. Her arm lies there limp.

  “Mama?”

  Tasha is crouching behind me, grabbing hold of my T-shirt. Mama’s just lying there as if she’s had enough. She can’t be bothered to try anymore. She gave up and went away someplace and left us behind, alone.

  But she can’t give up! I won’t let her. I run upstairs to the phone to call the ambulance. Tasha stays on the landing by Mama, her eyes round and her mouth tiny.

  I call the ambulance and the police, too. But they say they have a busy night and it’s going to be awhile. Then I have to tell Tasha to go get Harriet Ames, Mama’s friend, by herself, because I have to run out in front of the building to show the ambulance where to go.

  I’m shivering with cold out there in the dark, with just my T-shirt on and no jacket. The wind’s blowing right in under my shirt. I’m shivering so bad that my teeth are chattering and my body’s jerking from side to side, and it’s May. Not really that cold. But I am. I’m freezing and it seems that the ambulance won’t ever come. I hate to leave Mama up there on the floor like that. I hope she won’t wake up and find nobody there to help.

  They gotta hurry. Those rescue people have to get here soon.

  It seems like forever, but finally they come and lay Mama flat on the stretcher. Her eyes flicker open a little bit, but she doesn’t say anything, and she has to go in the ambulance all alone. She’s pushed in on the stretcher and then the two big doors are shut tight. I hope they’re shut tight. I hope she can’t roll out the back. Then she’d be lost forever. I forget what hospital they say she’ll be at. I keep nodding and crying, and the rescue people think I understand, but I don’t.

  I stand out on the wide cement place and watch the red flashing lights of the ambulance pull away in the dark with my mama. I never before felt such a big hole inside. Never.

  Eight

  Upstairs, Tasha and I have the door closed and locked. The neighbors have come and gone. It’s late. I told everybody Aunt Jolita’d be home momentarily. The police don’t ever show up. That man can get away with whatever he wants and he knows it.

  Tasha and I go to bed by ourselves. It feels funny to do that without Mama home, like when you don’t brush your teeth before bed and lying under the covers doesn’t feel right. Tomorrow we have to go to school and tell everybody that Aunt Jolita is good to us, feeding us right and everything, so we don’t go to foster care even for a week. I know kids in foster care. The project’s bad. But foster care’s worse.

  When we get home from school, Aunt Jolita lets us in. She’s been waxing the kitchen floor so it shines, and she’s dressed in a torn pair of blue jeans and an old T-shirt instead of her party clothes.

  “How’s Mama?” I ask.

  “Oh, pretty good,” Jolita says, scrubbing hard at the tiles, black with tiny flecks of orange, yellow, and blue in them. She doesn’t look at me, just at the floor.

  “What’s pretty good mean?”

  “She has a concussion. That’s when you hit your head. And she has to rest a few days. They’ll be X-raying her foot this afternoon.”

  “When’s she coming home?” I ask.

  “She doesn’t know yet.”

  “We usually have Kool-Aid after school,” Tasha says.

  “Is that so? Well, the floor’s wet. You’ll have to wait.”

  Tasha’s scowling because she’s trying not to cry. Everything feels so different with Mama gone.

  “You quit that pouting, young lady,” Jolita says, standing up and putting the bucket in the sink upside down to dry.

  I want to smack her, I feel so mad. Instead, I turn around and go into my room. I’m breathing hard, thinking about last night and how they went out and left Mama hurt on the stairs like that. And Jolita never said she was sorry, either. Not to us, anyway.

  Someone knocks at the door. When I look out from my bedroom, I see Trevor and Jolita talking together with the door open. Tasha’s in the rocking chair, sucking on her fingers, not crying, though. That’s something. I wonder, what business has Trevor got with Jolita?

  Suddenly he turns to me. “Can you come out?” he asks. “Me and Robert are getting a game up.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?” Jolita asks. “It’s a nice day. Of course you can go out. I’ll watch Tasha.”

  “You will?” I feel confused. Maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe Jolita is trying to be extra-nice, washing the floor and everything. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Come on, then,” Trevor says. “We gotta hurry.”

  But when we get downstairs and out back, there’s no one there. I don’t see Robert or any other kids.

  “Maybe they’re waiting around front,” Trevor says.

  “There’s no hoop around front,” I say.

  He pays me no attention and starts wandering around the front of the building, and I follow after. It’s nice enough out, warm, with high thin milky clouds. A good sailor always looks at the sky. But those high thin clouds sometimes mean a rainstorm’s coming in.

  “You see those clouds?” I start to say. “Hey, Trevor …”

  But Trevor’s over at the curb and a Mercedes pulls up. The door opens. Radar man steps out.

  “He was, too, with Darnell. My friend Robert told me,” I hear Trevor saying to the man. “I swear.”

  “Come over here!” the man calls to me.

  “Take this,” he says to Trevor and stuffs some dollar bills in his hand. “Now get out of here.”

  Trevor shoves the money into his pocket and takes off, running, without looking at me. The man waits for me to come a little closer. I take one or two steps and stop. That’s close enough.

  “Your friend’s a snitch,” says the man. “You know what that is?”

  “Someone who tells on people?”

  “Right. But you’re not a snitch, are you?”

  “No,” I mumble. I just want to get away. I don’t want to get near the car.

  “So you were with Darnell the other day, weren’t you?”

  I look at him, but I don’t answer.

  He folds his arms and smiles at me as if he likes what he sees. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to ask a few questions.”

  “Better ask Darnell, then,” I say.

  “Ahh. I can’t. He’s not around, you see. That’s the problem.”

  I’m thinking fast now. How can I get out of this? I have to make him think that I’m trying to help him.

  “Ask his mother. She’ll know. He’s real close with his mother.” I know Darnell’s mother doesn’t know where he is. And Gabe won’t let the radar man hurt his mother.

  He thinks this over. “Is she home?”

  “year.”

  I act real patient, as if I’ve got all the time in the world. Neither one of us moves. Then he reaches into his pocket.

  “Here’s five dollars,” he says. “You run up there and find out from her where Darnell is, and I’ll give you ten more when you get back. All right?”

  He stretches out his hand with the money. I don’t move. I can be as stubborn as Tasha if I have to.

  “No, thanks. I don’t need your money,” I say, polite as anything.

  I turn around and start walking toward the building, as if I’m gonna go find Darnell’s mother. She’s home, too. Asleep or maybe just getting up for work. But I’m not going upstairs to their apartment. No way.

  Instead, I walk through the dark lobby and out the back door. I slide under the fence and scramble down the embankment to the train tracks, and then I start running.

  My feet are pounding along those railroad ties. Every step thuds in my chest. On and on I run, until I’m gasping for air and I have a cramp in my side. I run past the place where the old factories are. Past the place where I saw the ugly stray cat. To the bridge. I clamber up the embankment and slide my body in through the hole sideways, the way Darnell did.

  “Darnell!” I call out. For a minute I think maybe he’s still in the hideout, but of course he’s not. And then I start to cry.

  Afterward, I lie still in the dark dirt on my chest, breathing hard. I think about all the things that happened, starting last night—Mama falling and the ambulance taking her away, and Jolita scrubbing the floor and then talking to Trevor. Darnell must have taken some of that man’s money, for sure. But he must have had good reason for it. And now the man wants his money back. Well, I’m not helping him.

  I realized then that Jolita knew the man was downstairs waiting for me. That was why she said I could go out. That was why she said she’d watch Tasha. Not because she was helping me out, but because she always does what her friends want her to do.

  For the second time, I feel that hot shame about my family—about Jolita. The first time was when she wouldn’t stand up to Georgina when we were trapped in the library. I gotta face the fact that we just don’t matter to her. Not enough, anyway. If she won’t help us out, if she won’t protect us and keep us safe, we have to let her go.

  Then, I guess because I’m a junebug, I ask myself a question: How come a boy like me is hiding in this dirty old hideout? It isn’t right being in here, and I’m not going to do it. This is the one and only time I’m ever gonna use Darnell’s hideout. I’m not gonna need it, that’s why. And then, suddenly, I don’t care if that new elderly care apartment is small and full of old people and the kids at King Elementary are snobs. Mama’s got to take that new job, and I have to help her the best I can. I scramble out of the hole and brush the dirt off my clothes.

  I can’t wait to get home and call Mama at the hospital. And better yet, tomorrow I’ll go down and see her. Hiding here in this hole? I’m just wasting my time.

  When I get back to the apartment, I realize I don’t have my key, so I pound on the door.

  “Jolita?” I yell out. “Open up.”

  Bang, bang, bang on the door. But no one answers, and right away I get scared. What if the radar man came up here while I was gone? What if he and Jolita took Tasha away someplace? I feel just about sick to my stomach.

  “Tasha!” I call out at the top of my lungs.

  And then I can hear the bolts turning and the door opens a little. Tasha’s standing there, tears covering her whole face. And she’s all alone.

  “It’s okay now, Tasha,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

  I lead her over to the refrigerator and get out the Kool-Aid. Let’s start this afternoon over again.

  “You know what?” I say to her.

  She looks at me but doesn’t answer. She starts sipping on the Kool-Aid, though, orange this time.

  “Tomorrow I’m going down to the hospital to visit Mama and find out when she’s coming home. You can stay with Harriet Ames. You won’t have to stay with Aunt Jolita.”

  She nods her head. “Okay,” she says.

  For early dinner that afternoon, Harriet brings us a great big casserole of American chop suey, and then she sits with us while we eat and pours us milk and everything. It’s almost as good as having Mama back.

  Tasha eats a whole ton of food, but there’s still a lot left. For dessert, we have a chocolate cake that Darnell’s mother brings over. I watch her and Harriet Ames talking in the doorway in quiet voices. I know they’re talking about Jolita.

  Just then Jolita comes up the stairs and breezes into the apartment, throws her purse on the couch. “Hello, ladies,” she says as she goes by them, cool as anything.

  Then she walks right to the kitchen and cuts herself a piece of cake and sits down at the table with us, licking the frosting off her fingers. Harriet and Darnell’s mother disappear down the hall.

  Saturday, Aunt Jolita gets up early for a change. She’s smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Tasha and I sit on the sofa and watch cartoons for almost two hours. Then Jolita says, “Move over, kids.” She sits down and flips through the TV channels.

  I get up and look around the apartment. All the floors are cleaned and waxed now. Looks like she went on a cleaning fit. My sneakers squeak because the wax is so thick. The oven door and the toaster are gleaming. Looks to me as if nobody lives here. No kids, anyway. I like it better when everything looks kind of used.

  I go stand in front of Jolita. She’s staring hard at the home-shopping channel, using her coffee cup for an ashtray. I feel anger coming up from my feet into my mouth. I don’t know what I’m going to say. But I have to make her see what she’s done.

  “Move out of the way, Junebug,” she says. She wants to see how much some earrings cost.

  “Did you wish for all this to happen?” I ask. “Did you wish for Mama to get hurt?”

  She doesn’t yell back at me like I expect. She just flicks off the TV, reaching the remote around my legs so I won’t block the signal. I stand right where I am. She doesn’t answer. Then I know she didn’t wish it. She didn’t wish for anything.

  “I’m taking the bus down to the hospital. And Harriet Ames said she’d watch Tasha.”

  “Yeah, all right,” she says, not looking at me, checking her nails.

  “Then you can go out with your friends,” I say. “Because that’s all you want to do, anyway.”

  Her head is down. She nods without even arguing back. And suddenly I don’t feel so mad at her. She looks so pitiful with those long red fingernails and all that clanky jewelry and no reason for any of it.

  I flop down on the sofa beside her. “You got anything special you want to do?” I ask.

  “No,” she whispers back. “Nothing special.”

  I go down and wait at the bus stop on Waverly Avenue. The bus with the sign on it for Torey Hill Mall, Robert told me, that’s the hospital one. I get on and drop my coins in. Smells like metal up front. Like a bunch of pennies got loose and ran all around the place, leaving a coppery smell behind.

  I slip down onto a hard plastic seat. It’s bright orange. The driver’s wearing a blue uniform like a mailman’s. The ladies have their shopping bags wedged between their feet. The bus lurches forward, rocking everybody. Their heads sway all at once, and off we go.

  I watch rows of little stores slide past the window—Army/Navy, hardware, laundromat, corner grocery. I wonder if Darnell took a bus when he ran away. Or maybe a plane, he had so much money. I wonder if he misses us all and wishes he could come back. But maybe he went to California and he’s doing fine. I catch myself staring sadly out the window. That’s no good. I have to sit up straight and get ready to see Mama.

  I look at the store windows. My birthday’s next Saturday, but I don’t really want anything from a store. When I saw Mama lying on the stairs all crumpled up, I realized we can’t stay the way we are. We can’t end up like Aunt Jolita with nothing special in mind. Dressing up, smoking cigarettes, and that’s all.

 

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