“No, I don’t. But it ain’t our business and it ain’t our problem: it’s Janelle’s. Now, come on and sit your butt down and let’s eat.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. And since you ain’t mad with me no more, what do I get for dessert on Sunday?”

“Me with a raspberry glaze.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I guess it don’t never hurt to try something new,” he say. And we leave it at that.

Hot Links

“What woulda happened if she’da died?” Brenda asks me.

“What you mean, ‘What woulda happened’?” I’m buttering six slices of white bread. The kids like white bread with butter on it, even though this is margarine. They don’t know the difference and they eat it every single day. Sometimes Miss Q even put salt on hers.

Brenda’s frying some hot links in a big skillet with no handle. They was half-price, ’cause the expiration date to sell ’em was today. She done already cussed me out for taking too long to get back. She said the kids was so hungry they was having conniptions waiting for me and the Sloppy Joe meat, which was why she left ’em in here for ten quick minutes to run to the corner and get something on credit. I told Brenda I didn’t thank it was such a good idea leaving them kids in here by theyself. For no amount of time. She just said Quantiana got good sense. But Miss Q ain’t but five years old. How much sense could she have? I told Brenda that this is how kids end up on the six o’clock news, but she swore up and down that this was the first and last time she ever done it. All it take is one time, don’t it?

They all huddled in the living room, waiting. That room must be at least three or four colors: one wall is lime green, another look like a very ripe tangerine, and I guess she got tired and just made the last two black. The ceiling ain’t no shade of blue I ever seen in my life. It’a hold your interest, that’s for sure. Miss Q and Hakeem is sitting on the floor with their heads sideways on the cocktail table. The baby—Sunshine—is underneath it on that dirty rug, sucking her thumb. They watching TV. But that’s all they do is watch TV.

“Who would get the house?” she’s asking me, while she take another sip off her beer, which she also musta got on credit, ’cause wasn’t none in the icebox when I left. When I put the ketchup and hamburger meat inside it there was three more loose bottles making a circle around a empty Kool-Aid jug. I guess these is her dinner. But I don’t say nothing.

Hot grease is popping everywhere, even on the front of her light-blue top, but it don’t seem like Brenda’s fazed by it. In a saucepan right next to the hot links is some cream-styled corn, bubbling. “That house ain’t worth nothing,” I say. “You should turn the fire down on that corn before it stick, baby.”