Girls Like Us Read online

“You go to my house and sit with Ola,” Izella told Walter with the authority of a parent. “She’s probably sick at her stomach, needing somebody to clean her up and rub her back. I’ll figure out what to do about the other.”

  “What are you going to do?” Walter asked, eyes still wild.

  “Just go on now.”

  Walter dutifully went on, dodging basketballs like land mines. As he turned the corner, leaving the gymnasium, Izella let herself shrink into a fifteen-year-old. While speaking to Walter, she’d been projecting herself into something older. More mature. Something with a full life of wisdom behind her. But when there was just her left, standing in the middle of the basketball court, surrounded by loose balls, she broke. No crying, never that. Izella broke in Izella’s way—the thinking way. She allowed her thoughts to disorganize and jumble into one another. She shook her head as they made the rounds through her mind like shooting stars.

  Ola’s pregnant. Oh God. Evangelist will send her away. Would she really send her away? Of course she would. She called Missippi a hussy all day long and turned her nose up to her. Sent away was probably the best thing for that child. Ola can birth it, come back, and put on her bobby socks like nothing had happened. But Izella knew that wasn’t her sister. Ola would want that baby. So, what if Evangelist let her raise it? She’d have to marry. Make the thing legal in front of God and the congregation. Ola, a wife. To Walter. Poor Walter. Shook Walter. Walter can’t hardly take care of his own self. The old Walter would’ve raised a good baby. A strong baby with a straight backbone for what’s what, but this new Walter needed quiet. New babies don’t know quiet. Even he knows he ain’t right no more.

  A baby can’t be brought into a world as messed up as this one here, Izella thought. She hadn’t known many babies in her lifetime. Hadn’t even changed a diaper that she could recall, but she knew that a baby would suffer being brought up by Ola. She was too young and dumb to be a mama. Ola dreamed in the daytime about pretty dresses and hair bows. She still avoided the cracks in the sidewalk for the chance it might break Evangelist’s back—she wouldn’t admit to it, but Izella knew it. What kind of mother could she make? A mama that drops a baby on its head, that’s what kind.

  Izella shook her thoughts away again, trying to reorganize herself into the sister with the right answer. Best thing for everybody is no baby. No baby for Evangelist to know about, no baby to send Walter into the shakes, no baby to split Ola from a girl into a mama. No baby. But how could a growing baby in a belly turn into no baby in a belly?

  Izella lifted the loaf of bread from her deep pocket. Mrs. Mac. She’ll know what to do. She fled the gym and nearly squeezed the loaf into a thousand crumbles.

  * * *

  On her way to Mrs. Mac’s house, Izella tidied up her mind. The answer was clear and obvious—baby needed to become no baby.

  When Izella turned onto Mrs. Mac’s block, she saw her sitting on her porch swing. The creaking sound echoed through the neighborhood. The high squeak gave Izella pause and stopped her in her tracks. Slow, lengthy whines emitted from the rickety chains that were barely holding Mrs. Mac’s small body. They were louder than they should’ve been, and they packed more of a punch. The sound of a porch swing was a typical thing in her neighborhood, a welcome thing. It usually reminded Izella of fresh-squeezed lemonade with ice and seeds floating inside, but this felt like warning sirens going off.

  Izella slowly opened the gate to Mrs. Mac’s yard and closed it behind her. “How did you manage to get outside, Mrs. Mac?”

  Mrs. Mac looked like a different woman than she had the day before. Hair combed, teeth washed, and day dress clean, she looked healthy and strong for her age. Izella noticed a new glow in her red-boned skin. She looked like she’d greased herself with one of the butters—shea or cocoa.

  “I ain’t felt this good in a minute, child,” Mrs. Mac said with a tinge of chipper. “Where your sister?”

  Mrs. Mac had all ten of her fingers clasped together into a pulsing bulge. She was giddy with the knowing, and her anticipation was as thick as fresh-cut bacon. Izella felt herself standing at a fork in her life. One way was right, and one wasn’t, but neither were ideal, and she couldn’t decide which was which. Izella should’ve dropped the crumpled bread at Mrs. Mac’s feet and run off. She should’ve made something up—another well visit, or a grocery store necessity, or something. But she didn’t.

  “We need this baby gone, Mrs. Mac,” Izella said, forcing every word out of her mouth individually, pretending they didn’t make up the single most important sentence she’d ever said in her life. “Can you help us get rid of it?”

  Mrs. Mac’s skin shone even more alive. “Last night,” she said with a wide smile, revealing very old teeth, “I dreamed you was coming here to ask me that there question, child. When a knowing woman dreams something like that, it means death is a long way off. It means death is gone let me see this whole thing play out till the ending of it. I got a lot of life ahead of me, child, thanks to you and your sister. You two keeping me on this side a little while longer, and for that reason, I’m gone help you get rid of that old baby.”

  Izella exhaled a sigh of resolution. She hated unfinished things. Izella was the type to sit for hours lifting stuck gum off the walkway. The type to read an awful book all the way until the end. Right or wrong, Mrs. Mac had given her an ending, and that fact had let a little anxious air out of her.

  * * *

  Izella ran home feeling a little lighter. She turned left on Westcliff, just like every other day. She found herself avoiding the cracks, just like Ola. She’d never done that before. Not once. In an instant, she decided to cut through Mrs. Stoke’s pecan-shell-littered backyard and jump Mr. Turner’s fence, careful to avoid kicking over his fermenting white-lightning jugs near the back shed.

  Izella never used the shortcut when she and Ola walked home together. Ola was edgy as a shot cat about people. Always avoiding the off chance that she might run into another soul as much as possible. A popular recluse, Ola relied heavily on her beauty. Outside their small bedroom, she showed little of her personality, not even to Evangelist. Lively and easy with Izella, but buttoned up and stuffy with most everybody else. The only other somebody Ola could be free with was Walter.

  And there he was, pacing rings around her backyard. Shaking his head back and forth and up and down and back and forth and up and up and up and screaming at the clear blue sky with a long, drawn-out “Whyyy?” Meanwhile, Ola hunched over the back porch, spitting up the faint yellow slime that comes at the tail end of the egg yolks.

  The lightness left Izella, and her legs refused to propel her body forward from Mr. Turner’s yard. Shielded by thick, unpruned rose and raspberry bushes, Izella stood motionless as if shot by a stun gun. The blue sky began to change, and all of a sudden, she smelled it. Fresh rain mixed with 100 proof.

  “Stripe of that on your tongue will make you forget about all that madness ’cross the way, young’un,” drawled Mr. Turner. He motioned a gallon glass jug of clear liquor toward her. “Gone on, chile. I ain’t seen somebody needing a capful of lightning much as you in a while.”

  “What I look like to you?” Izella snapped before she realized. “A fool? You sweating rotgut from your pores.”

  She jumped the fence as Mr. Turner called her a little bitch.

  “Walter,” Izella urged, quickly approaching. “Come inside before the whole neighborhood sees you yelling at the empty sky. Drunk old Mr. Turner already saw you. Grab up Ola and bring her to the bed.”

  Izella went ahead of them to check the bedroom. Just as she’d suspected, it was a wreck. She busied herself in a frenzy of cleaning. Stripping their yellow-crusted bed and throwing a clean cover overtop as Walter guided her wriggling sister on top of it.

  Izella stared directly into Walter’s face to calm his wild eyes. “I need you to wipe her up, you hear?” She nodded to encourage him to nod back, and then he did. “After she’s good and clean, take that brush and pick the throw up out he
r hair, you hear?” When he nodded along, she continued. “After that, put her in the blue-and-white paisley-print dress with fresh bobby socks from that top drawer.”

  Walter raised his hand like he was in school. “What’s paisley mean?” he asked.

  Izella shook her head and softened her tone, forcing patience into herself. “The only blue-and-white dress in the closet. Now, I’m going to clean up the yellow in the bathroom so Evangelist don’t see. I ain’t got but a hour before she gets back home. Can you do all that for me?”

  When Walter nodded again, Izella went to work cleaning up Ola’s mess. Like always.

  * * *

  “This house smell like Pine-Sol!” Evangelist yelled through the cracked door with glee. “You a child of God, Babygal.” She grabbed her youngest into a bear hug and hurried to the kitchen.

  “Thanks, Mama,” said exhausted Izella.

  Evangelist reappeared in the doorway, the glee replaced by furrowed, concerned brows. “What’s wrong?” She must know the truth about everything.

  Izella glanced down at her cleaning shirt to see if Ola’s pregnancy was written out in big, bold letters. She felt her pockets for something to give away the whole truth. She found nothing. “What you mean?” Izella finally asked, confused and uncomfortable.

  “You never call me mama, Babygal, unless something’s real wrong,” Evangelist said before taking a seat in front of her. “Sit a minute.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Ma … I mean, Evangelist.” Izella shook her head at her own fluster and sat next to her mother. “I’m fine … I really am…”

  “You don’t look fine.” Evangelist redirected Izella to sit on the floor between her knees. “How ’bout I work some of these knots out your head and you tell me what’s what.”

  Izella knew better than to tell her no. Between parishioners coming and going and Ola’s tantrums, alone time with her mother was a rare privilege in their home. And Izella, mature as she was, always longed for alone time with her busy mother. She wasn’t about to turn that down. Pregnant sister or not.

  “Tell me about it, Babygal.”

  As the wide-toothed comb dug into her scalp, Izella let the tension go from her face and hands and lower back. Evangelist applied just the right amount of comb pressure to make it almost hurt, but not quite. Izella’s eyes rolled back a bit when her mother found a patch of dandruff and went to scratching it up. Large flakes flew and floated into her lap until her dark cleaning shorts looked whitish.

  “You got a lot of good growing dandruff, Babygal,” Evangelist said. “But you ain’t said what’s troubling you yet.”

  Izella wanted to blurt it out. It was the perfect time and place. In their calm, tiny, empty living room at Georgia dusk. Remnants of a hard rain dinging the roof and crickets screaming their white noise. Pine-Sol-soaked air and love. Pure love from a mama, filling up the shotgun house.

  Just say it, she thought. You need help figuring this out. No fifteen-year-old should have a say in such things. Don’t know enough to have a say. Tell your mama the truth, or you’ll regret it. It would take less than a few seconds to say it out loud. And besides, you didn’t do anything wrong. This is all Ola’s doing. Stupid, stupid Ola did this to herself. Why should you have to beat yourself to death trying to decide what stupid girls who go out and get pregnant by war-broke boys do with their babies? You ain’t even been kissed. What do you know? Not a damn thing, that’s what. Tell your mama. Izella opened her mouth to speak.

  “All right then,” Evangelist started. “I’ll tell you ’bout my day, and then you might feel like telling after. I took Missippi grits this morning. She’s growing like a stuffed hog, that one. Child can barely fit through the doorway to grab her grits. I feel like that baby gone wind up raised in a house of hell with all kind of sin and debauchery. And she flighty, too. Clueless gal don’t know her head from a hole in the wall. Ain’t got a bit of business having no young’un. Big as she is, I wonder if she having twins, Lord have mercy. I thank heaven every day I ain’t got to worry about that kind in my house. I work every day to make sure that ain’t what my girls are doing. I tell you what I know. That’s what you get when you ain’t got God in your home. Spare the rod, spoil the child, and that daddy ain’t never home with that poor child to give her no real discipline. And the mama been dead…”

  Izella zoned out after that. Evangelist could go on bashing Missippi for a full hour without breathing. Her mother accepted all sin as forgivable except out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Izella had seen her forgive adulterous deacons, sloppy alcoholics, even murderers, but a young girl having a baby for a boy who didn’t want her was the ultimate sin.

  And here she was with one of those girls in her own back room. If she knew, she’d die. She’d have a heart attack right there in the living room and die. Izella didn’t want her mama to die. She loved her mama just as much as she loved her sister. She couldn’t tell her, because she couldn’t kill her.

  “Where’s your sister at?” Evangelist asked after the longer-than-usual Missippi rant.

  “She sleep.”

  “That child can sleep clear through a twister in her front yard,” Evangelist said with a small laugh. “Now sweep up this dandruff. We got to cook for the Tuskegee boys. They deserve the best we can give—chicken thighs, potatoes mashed up, and I bought a big bag of rutabagas from the farmer. You feel up to fixing them? You make rutabagas better than grown women.”

  Any other day, Izella would’ve been honored. In their house, that type of responsibility meant high esteem. It meant that her mother had faith in her. Izella longed for a day that simple. But those days were gone for now, maybe forever.

  “I’ll fix them up,” Izella replied.

  “Good gal. And wake up your sister so she can help you cut. Don’t let her season them, though. ’Cause Lord have mercy.”

  * * *

  All six men wore hats and overalls. To Izella, they looked like elderly brothers—all sunburned, with thinning hair and short breath. Normal men like any other swinging by for supper. If Izella hadn’t known the truth, she would’ve thought them regular parishioners.

  Evangelist kept referring to them as “them poor men.” So Izella expected them to be pitiful. They were not pitiful. They were comical and full of life and stories. Izella’s favorite smiled wider than a river. His beard had long gone gray and his eyes, too. Mr. Melvin was his name.

  “How old you?” he asked Izella as she introduced herself. When she replied, he flew off into a story about his fifteenth birthday in Macon County, Alabama. “Sit down, boys, and I’ll tell y’all ’bout it.”

  The other five men led him to Evangelist’s favorite rocking chair in the back corner of the living room as if he was their ringleader. Slow, gray, old, and more full of life than all the people put together under that roof.

  “Careful, madam,” he started as the five left his side. “I might have to take this here chair right along home with me when I leave.”

  Evangelist laughed in a way she rarely laughed—full bellied and with pure, untouched joy. Ola, however, stood stiff and barely visible, half-hidden behind the long living room curtains.

  “Go fix these nice men big plates, gals,” Evangelist instructed her daughters.

  “Madam,” said Mr. Melvin. “Can I hold on to the fifteen-year-old for a quick bit? I promised her a story, and I hate to tell a lie. Even a little one. I promise to be quick.”

  The other five men laughed at the last statement.

  “When he says quick, ma’am,” said the youngest-looking man, in khaki corduroy overalls, “he don’t never mean quick.”

  Mr. Melvin waved him off. “Don’t listen. They just jealous of my wit. God didn’t make but one of me, ma’am.”

  The rest of them couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

  “He’s right on that.”

  “He ain’t never lying.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Evangelist smiled. “Yes, sir, Mr. Melvin. Me and my oldest can handle fixing y’
all up something to eat. And please, call me Flossie.”

  Ola and Izella reflexively caught eyes and smiled. It was the first smile Izella had seen out of her sister in days. It was fast and beautiful and full of that magnetic connection they’d had since her birth. They hadn’t heard their mother ask anyone to call her anything but Evangelist ever. It was a first, right there in that living room. Even the sisters would never have known their mother’s first name if not for the mail. And there she was, asking the charming gray man to call her that—Flossie. Definitely a first.

  The evening was sweet and simple. And by the end, even Ola joined the circle of laughter. Izella drank it up like sweet tea. Her family as it used to be. As it should always be. Feeding those who started the night as strangers and would leave as brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in Christ. Ministering through home cooking and kindness and no judgment whatsoever. Following the lead of those in need. Above all, laughter.

  Mr. Melvin lifted a hidden cloud from overtop the small house with his Macon County stories. With the exuberance of a child, he told about sharecropping in hundred-degree weather, and the Tuskegee Airmen, and, finally, his bad-blood disease, syphilis.

  He spoke about it as if he were speaking about someone else’s unfortunate situation. Izella hadn’t expected him to speak of it. Most older men she knew puffed themselves up, but never revealed their struggles out loud. She’d always been bugged by that—men being big and bad and strong, but never human. Mr. Melvin, however, showed himself to the world unfiltered, flaws and all. He was the best man she’d ever met.

  “The bad blood was a lie—y’all know that much,” he said with a small grin that never completely left his face. “They shot us up with poison, and Lord help us, we was being led to slaughter like baying sheep.”

  “Are you angry at the white folks for doing that to you?” Izella asked. Her mother slung daggers at her through her eyeballs. “Sorry.”