It wasn’t unexpected, but I must not have been prepared for it, because I flew. The can of soda also flew. We both hit the wall.
“You been stealing from me?” She screamed that question over and over again. She kicked me and she slapped me on the arms and shoulders and then my hands when I shielded my face from her.
It hurt, but as she hit me, I was glad of three things:
1. That she didn’t hit me on the face again.
2. That she didn’t find out that there was more money where that came from in my backpack.
3. That she didn’t get soda on the dress.
Because sometime between getting hit and hitting the wall, I had calmly decided that if any of those things were to happen, I would grab the butcher knife out of the kitchen and stab her to death. I wrote out my self-defense argument in my mind while she beat me. I wondered if my court-appointed lawyer would be able to get testimonies from classmates and teachers, avowing that I was indeed crazy and did not talk, and yes, I was insane enough to kill my mama.
I was still thinking about this scenario when she stopped hitting me. She grabbed her purse and said, “You return that dress right now, and you gimme that money back. I’m going be home tonight, and you better have my money.”
Her words came at me like bullets.
But they missed their mark, because as soon as the door closed behind her, I got to my feet.
I went to the bathroom and showered. Afterward, I used her Oil of Olay face wash and moisturizer. Then I went into her room and found a pair of white peep-toe high heels. It turned out that her feet were now about half a size smaller than mine, but I squeezed my big, wide feet into those shoes anyway because they were the only ones in her closet that matched the dress.
I went to her vanity, and I used her comb to pick out my hair the best I could. Then I dug a rubber band out of my backpack and put the whole mess into an Afro puff.
I used her makeup, too. Her blush, her eye shadow, and her lipstick. I tried to use her tweezers to shape my eyebrows the way Molly Ringwald did Ally Sheedy’s eyebrows in The Breakfast Club, but my arms were still sore from the beating. They didn’t want to stay up long enough to finish the job.
I went back to the living room and put on the dress. The fabric settled over my body like it belonged there, like it had been waiting for me. I had noticed that my body had been transforming for James. I used to be a skinny thing, all legs and arms, but after I met James, it seemed like my breasts went from handfuls to ample overnight and that there was more and more weight on my hips every day. My sixteenth birthday was two months away and I could see in the yellow dress that I now had more curves than Tanisha Harris, more proof that God and Molly Ringwald were on my side.
When I went back to the bedroom and looked at myself in the full-length mirror, it was somebody else standing there. Not Monkey Night, but a girl who wore makeup and dressed expensive and got invited to parties at Farrell Manor.
I could already see James and this new girl kissing over a cake with sixteen candles on it.
. . .
The shoes pinched my feet as I walked down Main Street, but I didn’t care. I was happy and it was spring. In fact, I stopped near the town statue of Robert C. Glass, the man who used to own all of our ancestors, and I picked a daisy. I put it behind my ear, just like I had put a flower behind my ear before handing James my note. Not only did it match my new dress, but also my newfound happiness.
“You ain’t supposed to be picking them flowers!”
I looked behind me and saw the three old men who kept up a continuing rotation of checkers games outside Mr. Greeley’s store. Back in the day, this is what all men did when they retired in Glass: played checkers outside the mini-mart until they died. Now maybe they go places and travel like the rest of the country, but somehow I don’t think so.