“You sounded like a goddamn saw, carrying on like that.” The click of her cigarette lighter came from above me. She lit her Virginia Slim and took a drag.
That’s when I decided to stop singing and, while I was at it, to stop talking. At that moment, it seemed like it was probably in my best interest.
. . .
The thing about being really dark is that you don’t bruise. I went to school the next day, and nobody noticed anything different, except that I had stopped talking all of a sudden.
Miss Karen, my kindergarten teacher, told me to my stone-silent face that I was just going through a phase. But a few months later, she started withholding toys and other things from me unless I said thank you. Out loud. I guessed she had let go of that “phase” theory.
Quitting toys cold turkey was like most things, I discovered: hard to be without at first, but after a while you got used to it.
With enough time and patience you can get used to anything. Believe that.
. . .
Those were Dark days, which is why I remain grateful for the discovery of Molly Ringwald movies, two years after I lost Tina Turner.
There was one particularly sad friend of Cora’s named Elmer. He worked with her on the assembly line at the Farrell Fine Hair factory, and either he was in true love with her or a straight fool for lost causes, because he seemed to adore my mother.
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t encourage his love and made it real clear that he wasn’t her only friend. But still . . .
One night he showed up with a box-sized bulge in his left pocket. Even at eight, I recognized it as one of those boxes that jewelry came in. That’s what living with Cora had taught me.
“I got something for your mama,” he said when I answered the door.
I opened the door wider and looked back at Cora, who was watching a rerun of Good Times in her big easy chair.
“I got something for you,” he said to her when he got inside the living room.
Cora’s eyes lowered to his left pocket. “What you got, baby? Is it in your pants?” She was the queen of saying nasty things in a sweet voice, and Elmer deflated a little. I supposed it was hard for any man to have his jewelry box reduced to a hard-on.
“I got to talk with you about it, first,” he said. He pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to me. “You wanna go into town? See the dollar show on me. And get you some popcorn, too.”
I looked at Cora. Sometimes she let me have presents. Sometimes she didn’t. And five dollars was a lot of money to give to an eight-year-old.
“She don’t need five dollars,” she said to Elmer. “Come back with four,” she said to me.
I nodded and walked out.
“She still not talking?” I heard Elmer ask her behind me.
“I guess not,” Cora said. And then the door closed on that conversation.
. . .
The dollar theater in Glass wasn’t picky. They pretty much played whatever all the other dollar theaters in the chain were playing, especially if there weren’t any black movies available. It was August 1984, and everybody must’ve been playing Sixteen Candles, because that’s what was showing at the one movie theater in Glass.
I gave the old black man at the box office window my folded five-dollar bill, and he gave me back four wrinkled ones. Then I went into the theater and watched a white movie that didn’t have a single black girl in it and loved it. The first time I saw it, I loved it. And as the credits rolled against the backdrop of Molly Ringwald kissing the most popular boy in school over a birthday cake, I cried, because before then, I had not known that unpopular girls could make good.