It had been a long time since I’d had somebody to talk to. The last best friend I had was KooKoo, a scrawny little chicken from when we lived with Curtis on Oliver Street and Mama kept a coop in the backyard. After school I’d run home and crawl into that chicken coop and pet KooKoo’s little chicken body. After Curtis left, I’d cry to KooKoo about how much I missed him and how much I hated Mama for running Curtis off. That scrawny-ass bird would look at me with her beady eyes like she understood every word I was saying. I’d leave her coop stinking like chicken shit, with feathers in my hair. But I didn’t mind. KooKoo was the only one who really cared about me. Then one day I came home from school and ran up the stairs, through the house, and into the backyard. Mama was standing there holding KooKoo by the neck, only KooKoo didn’t have a head. My mother had murdered my best friend.
“Rabbit,” Mama said, as I held my breath and tried not to cry, “Come down here and pluck these damn feathers.” That night, Mama fried KooKoo for dinner and served her up with hot sauce. After that I didn’t have anyone to talk to until Derrick came along.
“Damn, your mama be trippin’,” he said when I told him how she’d fire her .22 in the house whenever she got mad. We were sitting in his car parked at the curb, like we did almost every night. “She’s crazier than an outhouse fly,” he added. “But don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
Derrick didn’t want me for sex the way Sweetie’s boyfriend did her. He just wanted to talk. Of course, sometimes we kissed and he’d try to feel on my titties. And he did make me rub his wiener, whispering, “just kiss it,” as he pushed my head down to his crotch. But I laughed and said, “Stop, Derrick! You stoopid.” And he stopped.
I didn’t tell Sweetie about Derrick because I knew she wouldn’t understand. It was obvious she hadn’t been paying attention the way I had when all those different preachers told us, “Sex is for the marriage bed.” I was gonna wait for marriage, like we were supposed to. But Sweetie wasn’t trying to live right. One time I caught her showing Peaches how to suck a dick with a cherry Blow Pop. There was no way fourteen-year-old out-of-wedlock dick-sucking practice was okay in the eyes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I didn’t want to talk about sex with my fast-ass sister, but she wouldn’t leave it alone. “Diiiiiid yooooooo fuuuuuuck Derrick?” she asked again, this time talking extra slow and flapping her hands in the air like she was doing sign language.
“No!” I finally yelled. “And mind your damn business.”
“Urghhh!” Peaches groaned loudly, throwing up her arms like she’d just seen a fumble at the touchdown line. “Stop being such a baby! You think he wants to sit and talk all day long? Don’t no nigga need you for that!”
“What niggas like,” said Sweetie, slowly swiveling her hips like she was dancing, “is a wife in the streets and a freak in the sheets. You gotta give him some of that ass and you gotta give it to him gooooood.” Then she leaned forward, lifted one leg, and slowly turned in a circle, humping the air like a dog in heat, which I guess was supposed to be a demonstration.
A few nights later, the three of us were hanging out with our boyfriends in the kiddie playground at Washington Park. It was late—way past the time kids would be there—so we had the playground all to ourselves. Sweetie and Peaches were sitting on the bottom of a slide, sipping on forties, while their boyfriends were showing off, doing pull-ups on the monkey bars. Derrick and I were on the swings nearby.
I was trying to decide if Derrick would think I was a baby if I asked him to push me, when I noticed Sweetie get up and walk over to Crispy. She pulled him toward her by the belt loops on his jeans, and whispered something in his ear. He grinned and put his arm around her. I watched as they started walking away together, heading out of the playground toward some trees.
“Where y’all going?” I called after them. I couldn’t believe Sweetie was leaving. It was her idea to come here in the first place. We’d all been sitting on Mama’s porch when she looked over at Crispy and said, “You wanna go to the park?” She was sucking on a Blow Pop when she said it, only she wasn’t sucking on it like a regular person, she was rolling her tongue around in circles, reminding me of how Uncle Stanley’s mouth would move after he had a seizure.
“Yo,” said Crispy. “The way you sucking that thing though . . . yo.” Which I guess meant, “Yeah, the park sounds nice!” because the next thing I knew we were all piling into Derrick’s Chevy and heading to the playground.
“Where y’all going?” I called again.
“We out this bitch,” Crispy answered, not even bothering to turn around. He threw up a peace sign, then dropped his arm back around Sweetie’s shoulder.
“Peaches!” I yelled to my cousin. She was holding Mike’s hand and walking in the other direction.
“Bye, girl!” was all she said.
Then it was just me and Derrick sitting on the swings in the cool air. “Fuck those bitches,” I said. “Let’s go back to Mama’s.”
“Nah,” he said, taking me by the hand and pulling me off the swings. “I got a better idea.”
“Where we going?”
“Rabbit, anybody ever tell you that you ask too many questions?” he said. “Don’t worry about where we going. I got you.”
Derrick led me across the playground and toward a patch of trees. The farther we walked, the darker it got, until it was just the stars and moon that lit our way. Derrick stopped, slid off his fake black leather knock-off Members Only jacket, and laid it on the ground at the base of a big oak tree with the inside of the jacket facing up.
“C’mon and sit down,” he said, waving his hand like he was offering me a seat on his sofa. “I don’t bite.”
I sat down with my legs crossed. He knelt beside me and started kissing on my neck. “I really like you, Rabbit,” he said. “You my baby. I think I’m falling in love.”
Sweetie and Peaches talked at me like they knew everything, like they were some kind of experts in sex. But what they didn’t tell me is that once you open your legs for a man, he can’t ever get enough.
“One time” was all Derrick asked for, whispering in my ear as we lay out under that oak tree. “One time,” he said. “One taste, just a li’l bit. C’mon, baby, lemme just put the head in. I promise it won’t hurt.” But I might as well have given Derrick my body wrapped in a bow, because after that night in Washington Park it felt like he owned it. He wanted it in the park, in his car, on his sister’s living room floor while she and her kids were asleep.
One night he broke into an upstairs apartment, where a lady named Catfish used to live before she moved to the projects. She had bugged-out eyes and a mess of kids, and her apartment had been vacant for months, ever since they’d left. Derrick pushed open an unlocked window, climbed inside, opened the front door, and let me in.
He’d brought along an old towel, which he spread on the dusty floor. “See,” he said. “I made it nice for you.”
I looked from him to the towel but didn’t make a move. There was no way in hell I was gonna lay down in all that dirt. But before I could open my mouth to tell him I was leaving, he grabbed my hand and said, “I love you.”
I don’t know why those words made me so weak, but every time Derrick said them I couldn’t resist. Maybe it’s because no one in my entire life had ever told me they loved me before. But Derrick was a pro, feeding me so much sweet-sounding bullshit I felt like I owed him something in return.