All I Want Is Everything. Daaimah S. Poole

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СКАЧАТЬ fucking bitch, get off me,” I yelled.

      “No, you get off me,” she shouted back.

      “No, you get off me,” I said as I punched her one good time in the mouth. The kids ran up the steps.

      “I think the noodles are ready,” Bubbles said.

      “Why y’all fighting?” Bilal asked as he turned his head to the side to see who was winning.

      She finally let me go. So I let her go.

      “Stupid bitch,” I murmured.

      “Your mother,” she said.

      “Yours too!” I said as I went downstairs to feed the kids. I started straightening up the living room, and a few minutes later my brother John came in the house. He usually just came past to check his mail. He had moved in with Marcus when my mom said his girlfriend, Nitra, couldn’t spend the night.

      “Where you been at? I tried to call you at Marcus’s house. You never there,” I said.

      “I be between Nitra’s and Marcus’s. Nitra’s mom don’t really want me staying there, but Nitra don’t like it too much at Marcus’s. We trying to save up for our own place. Where Mommy at?” he asked.

      “She didn’t get in here yet?” Alanna came from upstairs and walked out the door, slamming it behind her.

      “What’s wrong with her?”

      “Nothing. We was just fighting ’cause she was sittin’ up there eating and didn’t feed the kids.”

      “Y’all need to grow up.”

      “Whatever. She started with me.”

      “Man, y’all got to cut that dumb mess out.”

      Bilal ran down the steps and screamed, “John!”

      They started play boxing.

      “Can I have your room since you’re never here?” Bilal asked.

      “No, you can’t have my room. Man, where I’m going to sleep?”

      “What about your PlayStation?”

      “You can play with it, but you got to make sure you take care of it. Okay, man,” John said as he flipped him upside down and knuckled him in the head. Bilal laughed and kept trying to fight him. He was punching him and kicking. Then he started coughing real hard and gasping for air.

      “You know you can’t play too rough with him,” I said. “Bubbles, go get his asthma medicine.” She ran up the steps, then came back down with his inhaler. We sat him down and I pumped once.

      “You need to calm down,” I scolded him. “John, you shouldn’t have got him all worked up.” As soon as I said that, Bilal jumped back up and punched John real hard in the stomach.

      John bowed over and said, “All right, you won, Bilal. You got me. I’m leaving. I’m out of here,” he said playfully.

      “Okay, see you,” I said as he walked toward the door.

      “Tell Mommy to call me.”

      “I will.”

      Bubbles and Bilal ate and cleaned the table off. I did the dishes and then began doing my math homework. Math was my worst subject. Most days I would look the answers up in the back of the book and copy off somebody else’s before class. I got Cs, and I called them good enoughs. Instead of doing my schoolwork, I wrote songs in class. I didn’t need school. All I needed to know was how to add, subtract, and read—so I could read my contracts and count my money when I become a big famous singer. My name was going to be in big, bright lights—KENDRA LIVE IN CONCERT—and it’s going to be a banner that goes across that reads SOLD OUT. People are going to be singing along with me to my songs, and I’m going to be on the Grammys accepting my awards. One day that’s going to be me. I fell asleep on the sofa with my math book on my lap. My mother came in the house around 1 a.m. smelling like someone had poured a case of beer on her. I guess she was drinking like this to get over my dad, but it didn’t seem to be working. When I was about thirteen, my dad just didn’t come home, and by the third day my mom sat us all down and said me and your dad are getting a divorce and he is moving out. I could tell then that it wasn’t my mother’s decision, even though she said it was mutual. He moved in with his sister, Joanie, after he left us. He would come and get Bubbles and Bilal sometimes to take them out. Then he met Charlotte, some young bitch at his job with three kids. My mother said she was a fat, racoon-eye, old-lookin’, yellow young girl. From the day he moved in with her he disowned us. My Aunt Joanie started calling and telling my mom what he was doing for his new woman. She was trying to warn my mom, so my mom would never go back to him, but instead she made matters worse and my mom more depressed. So things ain’t never been the same. My mom doesn’t have any family in Philly. Her family is from Arkansas; she never talks about them. All she told us was that she left home at eighteen, met and married my dad, and never looked back. We try to tell my mom to date, because she still looks good. She is thin and has beautiful mocha brown skin, and she wears her thick chin-length hair in a wrap. But she only meets people who hang out at her spot, the Pearl Lounge, and all the men there are drunk bums.

      “What you still doing up?” she asked as she took her coat off.

      “I wasn’t. I had fell asleep doing my homework,” I said.

      “The kids ate?”

      “Yes.”

      “Did they do their homework?”

      “Yeah, and I had to beat up your daughter this evening,” I said as I sat up momentarily.

      “What she do?”

      “Running her mouth and not feeding your kids.”

      “I told y’all about fighting. Where she at now?”

      “Bruce picked her up.”

      “I told her she couldn’t stay out with him on a school night. I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” she said as she started going up the steps.

      Lana’s boyfriend, Bruce, was too old for her. He was twenty-six and in the army. My mom told him to leave her alone or she was going to make trouble for him at his job, but that hadn’t stopped him, because Lana was eighteen and legally could date whomever she wanted.

      “Night, Mom.”

      “You staying down here?” she asked.

      “No. I’ll be up in a little bit. I’m going to finish my homework.” I tried a few more problems. I finally gave up. Math was dumb and I was tired.

      It was morning by the time a loud knock startled me out of my sleep. I jumped up off the sofa and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. I finally realized it was the door. It probably was Lana; she always forgot her key. I shouldn’t let her in, I thought. Lucky her, it was time to get up anyway. I peeked out the curtains to make sure it was her and I saw a man with a blue collared shirt and navy blue work pants and hat. He had a work badge hanging around his neck with a big PGW on the front СКАЧАТЬ