“I can be there in ten, but don’t go asking me for no favors after this. Lord knows you didn’t do shit last time I asked for one.” She hangs up, and even though it stings, Shauna’s never been more right.
She arrives in less than ten minutes and calls me, says she’s outside. My shoes are on but I haven’t opened the blinds yet. When I step out the door, the light hits like the first sip of vodka on an empty stomach and I can’t tell if it hurts or if the sun has never felt better. Feels like my skin absorbs it. There’s no tingle while I walk down the stairs and past the shit pool, but the moment I step out the gate, it begins. Spreads top of the head down. I run to Shauna’s car, an old Saturn station wagon, get in, and slam the passenger door shut.
A cry erupts from the backseat and I twist around to see the baby in her car seat.
“Shit. You done woke her up.” Shauna reaches back and pats the baby’s belly until she stops shrieking and returns to her sleep.
I cough a couple times. “We really can’t be just sitting here like this.” I try not to say it too loud, like the volume might lessen Shauna’s eye roll, the heat flaring up in her cavities. I know she doesn’t like being told what to do, but she returns her attention to revving the car anyway and we’re off to Cole’s house.
I let us sit in silence for a couple minutes and the guilt gnaws at my stomach, feels like it’s reaching into me and squeezing. I can’t handle it paired with the tingle that continues to trail me. I keep looking out the window, behind us, but I can’t figure out where the eyes are, just that they’re there. At least it means they aren’t with Trevor and Alé.
“Look, I’m real sorry about last time. Shoulda listened to you, but you gotta understand that shit been rough for me too, and I ain’t been in the best place to help nobody. Not fair to you though, so I’m sorry. And I really appreciate you doing this for me.”
There’s a click that continues somewhere under the hood of the Saturn and I tap my finger on my thigh in time to it.
Shauna glances at me at a red light. “Wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t need to talk to you anyway.”
Her eyes are hungry again, the same way they were too many months ago when she was moaning and cleaning and her nipples were cracked. They aren’t a predatory hungry, more like a sick bird waiting to be fed before nighttime, before it’s too late.
“Talk about what?”
We’re getting close to Cole’s now, but Shauna slows down, pulls over to the side of the road. She parks the car and looks at me. I switch my gaze from her to her child, who is awake and staring at us with eyes that glitter almost like one of those windows with a one-sided mirror. You know there is a whole world behind them, but all you can see is your own face.
“They ain’t just dealing soft drugs anymore.” I can hear the Tennessee drawl in Shauna’s voice, scared and squeaky. “And they running with some scary niggas who don’t give a shit about them or they families. Kiara, I got a child. I got a child.”
And Shauna begins to moan. This time her moans are more of a wail, ripping out inside the car. I swear they’re gliding right out her mouth and down my throat because I feel like I’ve swallowed all the salt in Lake Merritt and I can’t separate the tingles from the punctures from the nausea.
Shauna is sobbing and the baby is staring, both her hands held out to us, not moving, but waiting. I grab on first, put a finger in her small palm. Shauna sees me do this, still keening with everything in her, and turns to put a finger in the other palm. I use my right hand to touch the back of Shauna’s neck, lightly rubbing it like Mama used to do for me when I had a nightmare that cycled into teeth chattering. We form a whole circle of internal moaning. Shauna lets it out large and bellowing. The child whimpers so softly I can barely hear it over Shauna’s moans. I’m not sure what comes out my mouth, only that it kind of sounds like a hum or a song or an inverted lullaby.
Shauna’s child releases her grip when the sounds fade to soft murmurs, and Shauna looks at me, tilts her head like she’s trying to solve something but she isn’t quite sure where the pieces are.
My forehead starts to pulse, really pulse, like my heartbeat begins in the head.
“Shit.” I look out the rearview mirror and there’s no movement on the street besides the swish of a basketball net in the wind outside an apartment building.
Shauna shifts her body back to the steering wheel, but doesn’t start the car. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I’ve heard her say this same thing a million times and it’s never warranted a response before, but this time she looks like she wants me to answer.
“I got in some shit and I think I’m being followed.”
There’s no sign of shock or fear or any other expression I would have expected on Shauna’s face. Instead, she just asks, “By who?”
“Cops, I think.”
At that, Shauna leans her torso forward onto the steering wheel and puts her head down.
“How the fuck we end up here, Ki?” I’ve never heard Shauna talk like that, all barriers down defenseless, and it makes me think of when we were younger, how cold and confident she was.
The day I first met Shauna, Alé was teaching me how to skateboard and we were out off Eighty-First Avenue in Deep East. Shauna was sitting on her auntie’s porch steps twisting her little sister’s hair, and Alé got on the board and raced past them, me running after her like I could ever actually keep up. Shauna, thirteen and woman already, called out to us. She said, “Y’all keep doing that and you gon’ make a breeze, mess up her hair,” and we slowed down to stare at her because we’d never heard no girl talk like that or look like that or put her hand in the crease of her waist like she meant it. Really meant it.
My smart ass wasn’t gonna have none of that, so I said, “Whatchu gonna do about it?” And Shauna came down those steps like a dog on the hunt, right up to me with a snarl. I was still skinny in every way, didn’t have any meat on my bones to pound Shauna, who was all soft belly and hips that cradled it like they already knew she’d be with child in a matter of years.
Alé was circling back around to stand by me. Even her square shoulders could not compete with Shauna. It isn’t that Shauna was that tall or nothing; she simply had outgrown the bodies we were still shedding. She was on to the next one, titties that spilled out her tank top and bounced when she walked—strutted—in beat-up sneakers that everyone told her she best replace. Shauna always said she’d rather be barefoot, but her auntie wouldn’t let her leave the house like that. Eventually, she gave up and let one of the boys swooning over her buy her some crisp new shoes you could tell she never liked.
The day we met, Shauna was ready to fight. I didn’t even know how to throw a real punch and Alé didn’t believe in fighting nobody, just standing by and loving me. Shauna was starting to talk shit when the boys arrived on their bikes. We thought they were just passing through, about ten of them, older than us by a couple years maybe. Then one of them grabbed my ass and Shauna saw it coming, pushed past me real quick, lifted her leg, thigh shaking, muscle bulging, and kicked. Knocked the boy who grabbed my ass right off his bike.
The other ones had started circling, but Shauna’s blow made them flee, tires squealing. The prelude to our fistfight dissipated into her huffing and me in complete awe, telling her, “Thanks.”