Sorry

“Ma, what’s all this stuff about?” Tiffany’s sitting at the kitchen table, where I got all the information I sent away for from the International Correspondence Schools spread out.

“It’s career information.”

“What kinda career? Look like a whole lotta different ones here. They look like stamps!” And she starts laughing. But ain’t nothing funny about it to me.

“Just don’t mess it up. Where’s Trevor? I wanna know where he put my lottery ticket. The drawing’ll be on in fifteen minutes.”

“Which one of these do you like, Ma? You gotta have some idea.”

“I’m thinking about catering or learning how to be a gourmet chef. I don’t know.”

“You mean like what Auntie Paris do in California?”

“No! I would do my business different. I definitely wouldn’t do it like her. Monique! Please close that door while you practicing that flute tonight, ’cause I got a headache and can’t even hear myself think.”

“Why not? She make a lotta money.”

I hear the upstairs door slam. “Because I got ideas of my own.”

“Like what?”

“Why don’t you stop bugging me, Tiffany?”

“Ma, I just asked you a simple question. Dag.”

She’s right. But, hell, I ain’t got no answers right now. Kids is so nosy. Ask too many questions at the wrong time. But. What I ain’t told none of ’em is, I bought a book on mail-order businesses and read it cover to cover and I’m having a consultation with this lady tomorrow who’ll listen to my ideas and sign a piece of paper to make sure she don’t steal none of ’em and she’ll tell me if she think any of ’em can work. But one of my ideas is in her book, so how could I go wrong? “Okay, let me ask you a question, Miss Grown-Ass?”

“Ma, please don’t call me that.”

“Okay. You right. Sorry. What do you think you wanna be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it for one whole minute.”

“Dag, Ma. How’m I supposed to know? I’m only thirteen.”

“So what? You write that poetry all the time.”

“Yeah, but it ain’t that good.”

“It is good.”

“Yeah, but you can’t get no job being no poet, Ma.”

“Maya Angelou seem to be doing all right.”

“That’s true.”

“Then look into it. Read some books about poetry or something. That’s the only way you gon’ find out.”

“Okay, Ma!”

She still flipping through the career stamps, but now I can tell she ain’t really looking at ’em. She got exactly ten seconds to get her behind over there in that kitchen. One. Two. Thr—

“Ma, we miss Daddy and want him to come home.”

Shit. “I know y’all do, but sometimes married people have problems that kids don’t understand.”

“We do understand, and we think it’s stupid that you put Daddy out and wanna divorce him for something he did centuries ago. It’s kinda like crying over spilt milk.”

“Who the hell is we?”