“Well, your mama will go back whoring. They always do.”
“Who always does,” she says. It is a challenge, not a question. She is daring me to say it. There is the promise of pain in her voice, and I want it. I want her to come at me with tooth and claw. It would be better to feel this tearing outside, on my skin.
“Whores,” I say. It’s low and it feels good to be low. “Whores like your mama, the whore.”
I am ready in my body for her to come at me. I want her to hit and hit me. I deserve it. I’ve said the lowest thing that can be said.
I can’t imagine a force strong enough to keep her from launching, but she finds one. Her eyes gleam like chipped onyx. She tilts her head sideways and leans in, taking five long seconds, like she’s coming in slo-mo for a kiss. She slips sideways though, putting her mouth near my ear.
“You take it back. You be so sweet and kiss my ass, because I know what you did. You snuck your mama’s poem to her boyfriend.” This is harder than fists, this hot whisper of breath brushing my ear. “I could tell. I could beat you down right now, take that footlocker. You kept that poem, and it’s proof. Then she won’t get early release. They’ll keep her ass. You’ll be here until you age out.”
Everything in me goes dark. I don’t breathe or speak. She could do it. I’ve pushed her too hard.
Her body stays close and feels coiled, ready now for me to make it physical. I am bigger, but she is so damn tough. If I lose, I have no doubt she’ll do it. She’ll take the footlocker, and she’ll screw Kai to the wall.
I lean back, so she can see my eyes. I show no fear. I know Joya. Her instinct for finding soft spots is unerring. So I can’t have any, and that’s all. I stay cool, and shake my head, wry, like she’s said something so weak it’s funny. I make my mouth curl into a little smile.
“I don’t care if my mama dies in there. I’m the one that put her into prison in the first place.”
I say it soft, but even so, it comes out powerful. The truth always sounds so very, very true. She hears it, ringing clear and loud as bell song under my words. The truth at the center is the thing that sells the lie.
“What?” she says. She even blinks. I’ve shocked her out of the advantage.
“I called the cops, dumbass,” I say. These are the words I’ve never said out loud. This is the biggest truth, the secret one, alive in the bitter depths of me. It feels so good to say it, to confess it to this girl who will not give me absolution. She will hate me for it. I’ve done a thing that she would never do. “I turned Kai in.”
She rocks back all the way onto her heels, kneeling on the bed now. “Why?”
“Because she fucked with me,” I say. I let that sit there. Joya already knows one secret that could ruin us; now I am handing her another, even worse. It is a risky strategy, and this is the part I have to sell to make her back down. I lean in close. Each word is barely more than breath. “I kept that poem to be my leverage. I’ll show it to Kai’s damn parole officer myself if she tests me.” I pause. I want to be sure Joya understands this last part. This is the part that matters. “There’s no limit to what I’ll do to somebody who fucks with me. You understand? No limit. I sent my own mama to jail because she moved me out of Asheville, and I kept that poem so I can do it again. If you start with me—what do you think I’m going to do to you?”
She stares into my eyes, uncertain, teetering on the cusp of disbelief and violence. I don’t blink. Not at all. I don’t move or waver, and then her eyelids come down, shuttering closed.
“You a stone col’ narco bitch,” she says, her grammar and inflections gone into that way she talks with other black kids. It’s the way she talks to Candace to scare her and to shut her out. She’s never talked like this at me. She opens her eyes, and she is a stranger, waving a hand between us. “We done. I don’t need your sorry ass for nuthin’ anyhow, because I’m gon’ go home.”
I sink back, too, shrugging like it makes no nevermind, but there is truth inside her blow, weighting it. All Joya really has to do to win is leave me here, and we both know it. She jerks her chin down in a single nod, and we are done with each other. She gets up off my bed and goes downstairs to wait with her bags. I am Rome, burning behind her. She doesn’t look back, and I don’t cry. The Gotmamas are char and ash, so wrecked it’s like we never were.