Guess I should’ve paid more attention. If Mrs. Lora could see me right now, she’d drag me out to that old swing in her backyard, and we’d have us a talk.
If I got myself pregnant, Mama would kick me out of the house for sure. She’d been telling me that since back in the eighth grade, when I started to develop.
You get yourself pregnant, Epiphany, you’re on your own. Then you can just see how hard it is. See what I go through . . .
Other than that, it didn’t seem like it’d be such a big deal. There were pregnant girls all over the school. Nobody cared. They even had a special club for get-togethers and stuff. Mama probably didn’t really care, either. She just didn’t want a baby to take care of. She didn’t really even want me.
DeRon kept rubbing my leg. I wanted him to want me. I wanted somebody to. I got a little picture in my mind . . . me, DeRon, a baby. I could get out of Mama’s house for good. We’d have our own place. I could help DeRon with school, like I did in science class now, and he could make it big in basketball. In a few years, we wouldn’t be living off the Hill. We’d be living on it—in a big house with a swimming pool.
Yeah, right, who’re you kidding?
another part of me said.
You’ll end up in some welfare line. . . .
It was like there were two people inside me, with two different minds. Mrs. Lora called it the angel and the demon. She said usually the flesh is on the demon’s side. My body was on DeRon’s side right now, if that meant anything.
I caught a breath and tried to think straight, but there was too much going on in me. The preacher said that when temptation comes, you’ve got to pray. I closed my eyes, but I didn’t think I wanted to bring Jesus into this whole situation right now. I figured I knew what He’d say, anyhow. I shouldn’t be with some boy in the backseat of a car, no matter how fine he was. That all sounds good in church, but when you’re out in the real world, it’s hard.
When I opened my eyes, we were pulling into the parking lot of a closed-down grocery store across from the school. We were just a few blocks from J. Norm’s house, where I was actually supposed to be right now.
“Hey, listen, take me down the street, okay?” I said, and DeRon gave me the
you’re-crazy
look.
“Say wha’?”
“I just . . . I gotta go by work and check on him and make sure he’s all right. He falls down sometimes and stuff.” I needed more time. I needed to think about things for a minute—away from DeRon.
DeRon’s smile fell straight, and his mouth hung open like somebody’d whacked him upside the head. “You kiddin’, right?” He started to smile again, slow, first on one side, then the other. The car drifted along behind the store and turned into an old loading dock, so that we were parked down in the carved-out truck ramp, and nobody could see us from the street. There was just enough room in there for the car, and the concrete walls were higher than my door, so I couldn’t get out, either.
A pulse went wild in my neck, and my skin turned cold, but I was sweating. The radio cranked out a rap song, and I felt the drumbeats inside me.
DeRon leaned over and slid a hand into my hair, but it didn’t feel good this time. “C’mere, baby,” he purred, and leaned in to kiss me on the neck. “This ain’t your first time, right? Man, you’re so hot, Epie. I been wantin’ you bad.”
He got up on his knees and crawled over the console halfway onto me. I felt his finger hook under the strap on my tank top and slide it down.
My heart punched like a fist beating my ribs. My eyes darted toward the backseat. I tried to see if the doors were high enough above the cement walls to open.
DeRon laughed against my skin. “You wanna go back there?” He shifted a little, like he was gonna crawl into the backseat. I moved and got an arm between us. He hung on to my tank top, and I felt it stretch and slide down. I grabbed it with one hand and tried to push him off with the other.
“You bes’ quit teasin’ me.” His voice wasn’t so soft anymore. “C’mon, Epie, you was all ready to give it out the other night at Big Ray’s apartment, and jus’ a little while ago, you tellin’ me to leave my homeboys so we can be alone. Jus’ lay back and let DeRon show you how it’s good, girl.”
My head spun, and I felt him pulling the tank top farther, trying to take it, and me, with him into the backseat. Something tore. I pushed my knee between us, and it caught a soft spot in his stomach, and he coughed out air. The strap on my tank top broke, letting him tumble into the backseat.
He got tangled in the floorboard a minute, and I grabbed what was left of my shirt, felt my heart bumping against the broken strap.
DeRon roared and cussed a blue streak.
I looked around the car, panic crackling through me, making my thoughts rush and spin. Even if I rolled down the window in front, I wasn’t sure I could shinny between the car and the walls of the loading ramp. I thought of some guy Mama had lived with right before we moved to Mrs. Lora’s. He beat her black and blue, and then dragged her off to the bedroom. I saw it happen. “I’ve gotta go to work,” I said. “I’ll lose my job.”
DeRon snorted. “C’mon, girl, stop messin’ wit’ me and take that thang off.” He pointed at my shirt. He’d lost a shoe somewhere, and he had his long ol’ legs all crunched up in front of him. It would’ve been funny if I wasn’t so scared.
Think
, I told myself.
Think of something
. And then I heard J. Norm in my head, saying,
You’re a clever girl. . . .
There was more space between the car and the wall on the driver’s side.
“You first,” I said, and DeRon went for his pants. While he was busy, I scooted over into the driver’s seat and hit the window switch. The radio was so loud, and DeRon was so busy, he didn’t even notice until I was squatting in the seat and grabbing the keys. He looked up when the radio went off, but by then, I already had my feet on the window frame and I was shinnying between the side of the dock and the car.
“Hey, what’re you doin’?” he yelled, and made a lunge for my foot. I ducked out of the way and took a chunk of skin off my arm, rolling onto the dock.
“I’m leaving, you jerk! Your keys are out here.” I threw his keys where it’d take him a while to get to them, and then I turned and ran. I didn’t look back to see how DeRon got out of the car, or whether he tried to follow me. I just kept running—through the streets of small houses around the school, past the new condos that were changing the neighborhood, all the way to J. Norm’s street.
By then, I couldn’t run anymore. My lungs were burning, and my legs felt like rubber. I stopped by someone’s yard fence, wiped my face, looked at my arm where it was bleeding, and tried to decide if there was some way I could tie my tank top back together.
I heard DeRon’s car roaring up the street behind me, so I just started walking, holding up my tank top with one hand. Only eight more houses before J. Norm’s, and I figured I was as safe on the sidewalk as anyplace. This was the kind of neighborhood where, if you screamed, someone’d probably do something about it.
DeRon pulled up beside me, the front tire bumping over the curb. Rolling down the passenger window, he leaned across the console. “Man, Epie, what’re you doin’?”
“I’m going to
work
.” I didn’t look at him, just kept walking. If I’d had a baseball bat in my hand, I probably would’ve knocked out his window with it. All of a sudden, I remembered that my stuff was still in his car, too. “Give me my backpack.”
“Come ’n’ get it.” DeRon smiled, then swerved around a parked car. When he pulled back to the curb, he was holding my backpack just inside the window. “You want your stuff?” His eyes curved upward, like he thought it was funny. My books from school were in there. If I lost the books, somebody would have to pay for them, and all the money I’d been saving up would be gone.
I stopped walking and moved toward the car, then reached for the backpack. DeRon laughed and pulled it away.
“Give me my stuff!” I yelled. My hands were shaking, so I squeezed them into fists.
DeRon jerked his chin back like he couldn’t believe I wasn’t playing along. He caught sight of my arm. “Girl, you bleedin’.”
“Yeah, nice, huh?” I tried to look like it didn’t bother me, what’d happened in his car, or that I was stuck on the sidewalk now, holding my shirt together.
He popped the door open. “Girl, get in this car.”
“No.” I started walking again, a creepy feeling sliding over my shoulders now that the car door was open. J. Norm’s place was only three doors down. I’d just have to worry about the backpack later.
DeRon followed me, revving the engine, then hitting the brakes again and again, so that the car bounced up and down. Now that I thought about it, I wondered how he got a car like that, anyway. His mama didn’t have any money, and you didn’t get paid for playing high school basketball, no matter how good you were. Maybe Big Ray was so friendly with him for a reason.
A shiver went through me, and I wanted to kick myself. I was so stupid. Of course DeRon and Big Ray were so tight for a reason. Just because DeRon didn’t use that stuff didn’t mean he didn’t deal in it. Shoot, kids at school would probably buy from DeRon just to get in good with him.
I looked ahead, hoping J. Norm’s next-door neighbor, Teddy, or the guy in the garage apartment, Terrence, would be out trimming the bushes or something, but there was nobody. J. Norm wouldn’t be outside. He never was.
DeRon bumped up onto the curb far enough that I jumped sideways into somebody’s lawn. “C’mon, Epie. Knock it off. I’ll give you a ride home.”
I kept walking, and DeRon drove a half-moon on the sidewalk, then bounced back onto the street. Something scraped under the car, and he cussed a blue streak and yelled out a half dozen names for me. He sounded like Russ during a fight. Russ could call Mama stuff that would make your ears burn.
DeRon squealed ahead to J. Norm’s house, pulled the car up and parked it, and got out. “Yeah, I know which house it is.” He stood on the sidewalk, looking like he wasn’t even worried that in this neighborhood somebody might call the police on you just for driving a car like DeRon’s and wearing a do-rag. “I seen you walkin’ down here after school, like you his little ol’ housemaid. Now ain’t that sweet?”
I turned off to cut across the yard, but he got in front of me. He grabbed my arm and twisted it until he could see the place where the skin was scraped. Tears popped into my eyes because it hurt, and I remembered what it felt like to have somebody yank you around. That guy Mama dated before we moved to Mrs. Lora’s wasn’t near as mellow as Russ.
DeRon’s eyes were hard as glass when he looked at the blood on my arm. “Don’t you go tellin’ people I did that to you. I didn’t do nothin’.”
I tried to pull my arm away, but he was strong. He lifted a hand and wrapped it around my throat, then smiled and dragged his fingers across my chest. “Come on, baby. We got a good thing. You know you want it.”
Let go!
I opened my mouth to say it, but the words wouldn’t come out. I pulled against his grip, but he twisted harder. My eyes filled up, and I felt like that little girl hiding behind the sofa while Mama got into it with some guy. DeRon disappeared behind a blur.
“I got it.” He leaned close, and I felt his lips against my ear, his breath hot on my skin. “You gonna make me work for it, huh?” He kissed my neck, moved his hand up my arm until he was holding on to the raw place. “C’mon, Epie. Stop jerkin’ me around.”
He squeezed harder, and I squirmed. I heard a door open somewhere nearby. “Something wrong down there?” The voice came from overhead, and I figured it was Terrence in the garage apartment.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong,” DeRon answered, letting go of my arm and backing off a step. He looked toward the apartment. I could hear Terrence coming out. There were other people with him, more than one coming down the steps.
I wiped my eyes and tried to get hold of myself. The last thing I needed was someone making a federal case out of this and thinking they should tell Mama.
“We just talkin’,” DeRon said.
“That true, Epie?” Terrence was just a few feet behind me now. Someone else had stopped on the steps. I could hear the bottom one creaking. I looked over my shoulder and saw Terrence’s girlfriend, M.J. She ran the Book Basket store across from the church and knew every kid in the neighborhood. She was probably the one who called the police the night we got in trouble in the memory garden.
“That true, DeRon?” she asked, and tossed a long, dark ponytail of braids over her shoulder, like she was ready to whoop up on somebody if she needed to.
“Yez, ma’am,” DeRon said, backing off another step, smiling at her. “I just brung Epie in for work.”
“Epie?” Terrence’s voice was low and serious. I wanted to turn around and let him see the ripped shirt and the bloody arm.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, it’s fine. I gotta get up to the house. I’m late, and J. Norm’s probably wondering where I am.” I circled around toward DeRon, so Terrence and M.J. wouldn’t see the broken strap, and I headed across the yard. My legs went soft and my feet felt like they were sinking in quicksand. Every step seemed like a mile.
“I’ll hang on to yo’ stuff for you, Epie,” DeRon called after me, and I knew this wasn’t over. After I was done with work, I’d have to head home tonight, for one thing.