All I Want Is Everything. Daaimah S. Poole
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Название: All I Want Is Everything
Автор: Daaimah S. Poole
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780758242327
isbn:
“Oh, okay,” she said twisting her lips to the side as if she still didn’t believe me. I really did have four hundred saved for my car.
Chantel was the kind of person who wanted to be the only one who had. She liked to be the center of attention. I only hung out with her at school because she is so some-timey. We’d been cool since ninth-grade homeroom. We walked up to her four-door Chevy Celebrity. It was black with burgundy interior. It was nice. She had a peach air freshener hanging from the mirror and red and black dice. I liked it but I didn’t let her know. When she asked, I said it was okay. Chantel dropped me off in front of my job. I thanked her and walked into Newman Pharmacy. Instantly, I was depressed. I had been working there for three months and hated every moment of it. It was a family-owned pharmacy. I had the most boring job ever. Our school was in this mentoring program that partnered with businesses in the city. I wanted to work at a radio station, a dance studio, or even a law office. Something fun or interesting. But instead they put me here in a boring-ass pharmacy where the bell rings every time someone enters and old men complain about losing their prescription cards. I help grannies buy Ensure and find the cheapest diapers for new moms. Price-checking deodorant and soap powder is my specialty.
Like I said, it was boring except for every now and then I saw someone from my school. I seen this girl, Carla, from my school buying a pregnancy test. And another time this boy named Simon, who ran track at my school, bought some crab medicine. When he saw me he looked down at the box and said his sister had head lice. I knew he was lying.
The only other good thing about this job is we got three credits for a work roster, so I got out of school at one-thirty. Plus I got paid and had access to all the good magazines. I loved to look through the pages of all the glossy ones. I liked the rap magazines—they told me what was cool—and the National Enquirer tabloid types, they were funny—two-headed babies and aliens. I imagined myself one day being on the cover of a hip-hop magazine and being rich and famous.
Mr. Newman would come out from the back every once in a while and have me call people to tell them their prescriptions were ready. He was about seventy-two with a shaky hand and voice. He was always complaining that big pharmacies were stealing his customers and putting him out of business. I would act like I was listening, but really I wasn’t.
After I got off work I caught the 17 bus to City Hall then the 13 trolley home. It was cold outside and the trolley let me off four long blocks from my house. In my neighborhood, people were still outside walking around, standing on the corner in front of the Chinese takeout at seven at night. It had snowed the other day and the snow had turned to ice. I was trying not to slip while walking in the street.
I lived with my mother, two brothers, and two sisters. My sister Alanna was eighteen—we are exactly ten months apart. I’m seventeen and she is eighteen. Her birthday is in February and mine is in December. My brother John is twenty, and my baby sister—her name is Amira, but we call her Bubbles—is ten. My baby brother, Bilal, is nine. My parents divorced about five years ago. My dad keeps in contact, but not that much since he remarried and had another son. We don’t even consider that little boy, Jonathan, our brother; at least I don’t. The lady, Charlotte, already had three kids and she had a fourth by my dad.
We lived in a big two-story, four-bedroom row home in southwest Philly. My mom had her own room, me and Alanna shared a room, and Bubbles and Bilal shared a room. John got his own because he was the oldest. He was never home; he always stayed with his friend Marcus.
I walked down the street toward my house. I saw all the lights on in my house. I knew my mom was going to go off; she must not be home. Most nights I beat her home. She usually made a stop at the Pearl Lounge on Woodland Avenue and had a drink after work. She always used to drink a beer or two, but when my dad left she started drinking more. I unlocked the door and walked into the house. The warmth greeted me at the door. It was nice and cozy. I rubbed my hands together, took off my coat, and hung it up in the closet. Bubbles’s and Bilal’s book bags and schoolwork were scattered everywhere.
“It is warm in here. What do you have this heat on?” I asked. Instead of waiting for an answer, I went to check the thermostat. It was up to ninety.
Bubbles came out of the kitchen with a wet stain on her shirt and said, “I thought you were Mommy.”
“Bubbles, why y’all got this heat up this high?” I asked.
“It was real cold when we came home from school.” Bubbles was short and chunky. She was already in women’s size-six pants. She had a little gut, and her breasts were coming in.
“Next time just turn it to seventy. It is baking in here. What are you doing?” I asked as I followed her into the kitchen. I looked around. I smelled food but didn’t see any.
“We was hungry. So I was making us something to eat,” she said as she tried to clean up the mess she had made. There were crumbles of Oodles of Noodles, water, and frozen hot dogs in a bowl in the microwave. Bilal was sitting at the table there with an empty bowl in front of him, waiting to eat.
“I put it in the microwave like Lana told us. But it’s not cooking right.”
“You know you not allowed to cook when no one is here.”
“I know. Lana is here.”
“Where is Alanna?”
“Upstairs,” Bilal said.
“Lana here and she wouldn’t cook y’all anything?” I asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, she said she tired and have to study for a test,” Bilal said.
“Clean up this mess y’all made. Y’all know Mommy’s going to go off if she see this. I’ll cook y’all something.” I reached under the cabinet and grabbed a deep medium-size silver pot. I rinsed it out and then filled it with water. I let the water boil a little and added the pack of noodles and hot dogs. I told them to watch the pot as I ran up the steps to figure out why my sister couldn’t feed her brother and sister. I walked down the hall and pushed the door open. I looked in the room and there was prissy-ass Alanna with her hair pushed back with a yellow headband and wearing a yellow sweater. She was sitting on a pink comforter. Her shoes were off and her legs were crossed Indian style. She was talking on the phone while eating a Burger King Whopper. She looked at me as I entered the room, rolled her eyes, and continued with her conversation. I hated sharing a room with Alanna.
“When did you get this food?” I asked, standing over her. She took another bite of her sandwich and ignored me until I asked her again. She looked up at me and told whoever she was talking to that she was going to call them back.
“I bought it before I came in the house,” she said as she dipped a fry in ketchup off her plate.
“Really? You bought food and my little brother and sister downstairs are hungry?”
“I told Bubbles to make noodles. I have to study. They ain’t my kids.”
“You couldn’t make them anything to eat?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel like it. Mommy should have left them something to eat.”
“Oh, really? If you can’t make sure they eat, you not going to eat either, bitch,” I said as I smacked her burger out of her hand. The salt packets and ketchup splattered on СКАЧАТЬ