“Yeah, you can,” Joya says. She looks at me, sizing me up, and then nods. “You be all right.” It isn’t an assessment. It’s a command.
“You be all right,” I order her back, and it comes out only a little bit resentful.
Shar and Karice don’t really matter. I’ve been in fights plenty. They aren’t what’s wringing out my guts. I want Kai. I want Kai to come for me so bad it feels like a hundred mean hands twisting every organ in my abdomen.
I don’t want to talk to Joya anymore, at all. I should move back down to my habitual place, sit shoulder to shoulder with her like always. If I would do this simple thing, we could run out the minutes in silence. Joya’s not one for tears and speeches.
I can’t, though. I can’t make myself sit close to her. She isn’t Joya anymore. She’s some girl who is leaving me, some girl who’s getting everything I want.
Joya seems to think we’re good, though. She’s helped me plan a Shar defense, so we must be golden. She creeps a little closer. Her eyes are very dark brown, but they look black in the dim light.
“Paula? Imma call you, okay? We’ll still see each other.”
I twitch one shoulder, noncommittal. She’s throwing me a crumb, but I’ve been moved around enough to know it isn’t real. She might call once or twice. She might ask to visit. But her apartment is forty-five minutes away, in a different school zone, and her mama has a full-time job. Time is short and gas is pricey. The truth is, we are finished with each other. She wants to pretend different and have some kind of moment? Screw her.
“I mean it,” she says, pressing.
“We’ll see,” I say, with some finality. I need her to shut up now.
“My mama’s got a car. She’ll drive me here to visit.”
A lashing blackness rises in me as she says what her mama has; what her mama, who is coming for her now, will do.
“You won’t come back here,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t, and you won’t, either. Not unless your mama fails a pee test, and they drag you back.”
Joya’s eyes narrow. It’s the thing we’re both most afraid of, and I’ve named it. We never do that to each other, talk about how her mama could go back to the pipe, how mine might not get early release. These things could take our mothers from us, and we don’t invoke them.
We talk about how mamas are, and what we’ll do and say when ours come for us. I’ve heard a thousand times about this dinner Joya’s going to eat tonight at Demy’s Blues-N-Burgers. I know Demy’s has signed pictures of Hound Dog Taylor and Muddy Waters on the wall. She’s described the potatoes mashed with Cheddar and chives so many times, it’s almost like I ate them myself a long time ago. She knows when Kai comes, our first meal will be her famous pancakes with the orange zest in the batter. Kai always helps me paint my room, and we’ve endlessly debated the color I should choose. We plan our lives with mothers in great detail, as if their coming is dead certain. Nothing else is bearable. It is a silent pact that binds us, makes us into Gotmamas. I’m breaking our most secret and unstated rule.
“She won’t, though,” Joya says, and it’s more than a warning. It is a window, an offering. She’s made a space for me to take it back.
“I hope not. But, damn.” I shrug, all world-weary, like I regret her mama’s chances are so slim.
Joya scrambles up onto her knees and rears as tall as she can go. It isn’t very tall. “She won’t though, and you know she won’t. Say she won’t.”
I have a bitter flavor in my mouth, but it’s rich, too, as savory and sharp as lemon butter. I rise to my knees as well, taller than her, and I tuck my hair behind my ears, so she can see I didn’t need her stupid tactics. I already have my earrings out.
“I’m just being honest,” I say. “It’s dumb to have this big good-bye, when you’ll be back in six weeks. If your mama even makes it that long.”
She shakes her head. “I’m smoke, bitch. I am gone, and your sorry ass is stuck here.” Her voice is loud and her black eyes shine, welling in her weakness. I’ve gotten to her, and I can’t help how good it feels.
“For now, but you don’t see me crying about it,” I say, sneering. I say it like I’m tougher, though no one is. Not anyone I’ve ever met.
She leans in, closer. So close I feel her hot breath touch my face. “You will cry, though. Your lesbo mama likes that prison. She don’t want to come for you. She’d rather stay dyked out in jail.”
My lips peel back, inadvertent. She knows the thing with Rhonda hits me low. I don’t want Kai to be so lonely that she needs a prison boyfriend, or worse, for her to trade her beauty and her sex for more phone time and outsize orange envelopes and stamps. That’s why this fight is so very dangerous. We know all each other’s soft places. I hit her back in one of hers.