Chapter
One
GUARANTEED
PUBLIC HUMILIATION,
#2
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OF CHAPTER 1
For some
reason, the more I stared at Mr. Alvarez’s crisp, beige shirt, the more
I thought of wholegrain wafers.
My stomach gave a long growl. I quickly swept my eyes around the room and saw Rayshaun Parker, a hefty kid, look at me and then look away, bored. Good. That would have been all I needed—Rayshaun catching me growling. It seemed like he hadn’t heard my stomach. Nobody else seemed to either. Thank goodness.
Now that Rayshaun was in my head, he parked his irritating self there. Great. Mainly, that boy and I only talked to each other when we had to. You would have never known we used be best friends back in the day, in kindergarten.
See,
one time, back then, Rayshaun and I were playing House together in the
little kitchen area in our classroom. He was the daddy and I was the
mommy. Rayshaun was clobbering a baby doll’s back over his shoulder,
“burping” it. It was one of those dolls whose hair is really just
molded plastic.
He
picked that particular doll for our “daughter” because he said her
skin looked like the chocolate outside of an ice cream sandwich just like
mine. He said that since she was just a baby it didn’t matter that she
didn’t have cornrow braids or lips like me (she basically had no lips,
while I have plenty). Our “son” was always this little white doll that
looked more like Rayshaun—just without his nappy hair.
The
whole “family” thing was all Rayshaun’s idea, not mine, since he
wanted to marry me and I wasn’t sure I felt the same way about him. But
I liked to play House, though.
©Copyright M. LaVora Perry. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Floyd
Cooper.
So, there he was, pounding our poor daughter’s back, while I stood at the ironing board ironing a red and white cotton bandana—the kind farmers and gang members wear. The iron wasn’t hot or anything, of course. It didn’t even have a plug.
All of a sudden, Rayshaun stopped whopping that doll, looked straight at me, and said, “Taneesha Bey-Ross, my mother says you going to hell because you ain’t Christian.”
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