“God, you’re depressing. I don’t know why we’re friends.”
I turn into the crack house’s cracked driveway. “We’re not,” I call. “Now wait for me out here, and if you hear gunshots, call the police. They won’t come, but call them anyway.”
“I’ve got guns,” he says, flexing his arms. “I can protect you.”
I laugh. I didn’t know I had a laugh in me.
I stop laughing when Mo opens the door. I’m hit in the face with the smell of weed and cooking steak. He shoves his eight-month-old son at me. “Hold him,” he grunts. I take Mo Jr. and sit down on front step with him. I have to brush aside a bunch of cigarette butts. Mo Jr. smells like a week-old diaper. He looks up at me like I’m the most boring creature alive, before staring off into the bushes to the left of the house.
“Mo,” I say. “Little Mo.” He won’t break his gaze with the bushes. I start whistling. I’m a fairly accomplished whistler; Judah looks up from where he’s doing wheelies on the sidewalk. Little Mo turns his face to me.
“Finally,” I say. “It hurts my feelings when you don’t pay attention to me.”
I whistle him a song I’ve heard on the radio at work. He smiles a little. When Big Mo comes back to the door, he reaches down to take the baby and slips a couple baggies in my lap. I stand up and dust off my pants. Mo leans against the doorframe. “Your mom okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Same as always.”
“She used to babysit me, when I was real little.”
I keep my face blank, but I’m more than surprised. She never told me. Not that she tells me shit.
I leave the wad of twenties on the stairs.
“Bye Little Mo,” I say. But the door’s already shut. I put the baggies into my Groceries & Shit bag.
When I reach the street, Judah looks at my bag.
“Those for you?”
“Nah, my mom’s a prescription pill druggie.”
He looks relieved. “Even if they were, you’d have no right to judge, pot head.”
“Marijuana is different,” he says. He pronounces it mari-jew-wana.
“No. It’s all an addiction. Emotional, physical. You do it because you need it. It doesn’t matter if your body craves it or not. Your mind does.”
“I like you,” he says.
I’m surprised.
He walks me home. He wheels me home. Which is better, because anyone can walk you home. I don’t let him get right to the house. Everyone knows what my mom is, but you still don’t want anyone to see it first hand.
“What are you addicted to?” he asks me before I can say goodnight.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask him.
He nods his head knowingly. “Sarcasm,” he says.
I shift my Groceries & Shit bag from one arm to the other.
“Food,” I say. “Namely Honey Buns. But, if it’s processed, I’ll take it.”
No use keeping secrets in a place where everyone airs their sins. Mine is gluttony.
“I’m fat,” I tell him. And then I add, “Because I eat Honey Buns for dinner.”
“You’re not fat,” he says. I don’t stay to hear what he says next. I beeline for the front door.
A FEW DAYS AFTER I CONFESSED to Judah Grant about my Honey Bun addiction, there is a knock on the front door.
Pra pa pa pa pa
I am trying to glue the sole of my sneaker back on when I hear the knock. I’m so startled I drop the shoe and the tub of gorilla glue. I stand frozen, not sure what to do, watching the amber stuff leak onto the linoleum. No one comes to the eating house at this time of day, not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I glance up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom with my heart still raging. She won’t wake up for another few hours. My mother has severe agoraphobia, not to mention the paranoia and the prescription pill addiction. If she were awake right now, she’d be tossing little white pills in her mouth and sweating bullets. Nights she left the door open for her men, just so she wouldn’t have to hear them knock.
Ra pa pa pa. Louder this time.
I pad, barefoot, to the door, and peer through the eyehole. A cluster of humans is crowded in front of the eating house. They are all different sizes and ethnicities, packed together under the slight overhang to remove themselves from the rain. I latch the security chain before I unlock the door. Then I peer through the gap at their hodgepodge group.
“Yes?”
A man, near the front of the group, steps forward and shoves a piece of paper at my face. He’s grizzly looking, with a gray beard and a brown head of hair. I look from him to the paper. There is a little girl’s face in the center; she has pigtails and two missing front teeth. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? is written in bold, black letters along the bottom. A chill creeps up my spine.
“We are part of a search team for Nevaeh Anthony,” he tells me. “Have you seen this little girl?”
I slam the door shut and unlatch it. When I throw it open, everyone, including me, looks surprised. Seen her? Seen her? I see her every day. I saw her what…? Two days ago? Three? I take the paper from him.
“Wh-when?” I ask him. I press my palm against my forehead. I feel funny. Clammy and sick.
“Mother says she hasn’t seen her since Thursday. Got on a bus to see her gramma and never came back?”
Thursday … Thursday was the day I braided her hair.
“I saw her on Thursday,” I say. I step out of the house and pull the door shut behind me. “I’m coming with you.”
He nods at me real slow. “You have to go down to the po-lice station. Let them know what you seen,” he says. “When they done with you, we’ll be canvassing this whole area. From Wessex to Cerdic. You come find us, hear?”
I nod. I’m running down Wessex, barefoot, my fat jiggling around my body like jello, when I hear Judah call my name.
I stop, breathing hard.
“You seen her?” he calls. His brow is furrowed, and he’s pushing himself up out of his chair by his arms so he can see me.
“On Thursday,” I yell back. He nods. “Where are your shoes?”
“They broke.” I shrug.