She puts ’em back and pull her top back down. “Well, they gon’ be bigger than this in a few months.”

“You don’t need no surgery, Brenda, if that’s what this is about.”

She shakes her head back and forth. “How old is your youngest child, Cecil?”

“Thirty-five.”

“And the oldest?”

“I thank she thirty-eight. Why?”

“Well, you might wanna let ’em know that they gon’ have a brand-new little sister or brother sometime in September.”

“You playing with me, ain’t you now, Brenda?”

“Why would I joke about something like this?”

“You sitting here telling me that right this minute you got a baby growing in your belly that’s got my blood?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” she says, and walks toward me. My heart is skipping every other beat. I feel hot. I feel young. I feel blessed. Like I’m being given another chance. A baby. A real live baby. Hot damn, Cecil. Didn’t even know the old fella still had the power.

“So,” Brenda whispers in my ear and then licks my earlobe. She know this drive me crazy and I can’t hardly tolerate myself. “Do you wanna be the father of my baby?”

“I certainly do,” I say. “I certainly do.”

“Then we gon’ have to make some changes.”

“I know we do.”

“We need to move.”

“I know.”

“Someplace decent.”

“I know.”

“Where the kids can go to good schools.”

“Yeah.”

“Closer to white folks, is what I’m getting at.”

“We ain’t gotta move with no white folks for that. They can go to private school.”

“Private school?”

“They got some good Christian schools around here. It wouldn’t hurt these kids none to get closer to God and get a good education at the same time, since don’t nobody seem to go to church around here.”

“We can start doing that, too, you’ll see.”

“I thank that’s a very good idea, Brenda.”

“Okay, but I ain’t finished.”

“I’m all ears, baby. You got my undivided attention. Do my ear again, though, please?”

“I can’t be doing too much more cleaning in my condition.”

“Don’t even worry about that, Brenda.”

She makes one long stroke with her tongue on the side of my neck up to my ear, and then she blows inside it. Hot-diggety dog.

“And my car need more than a transmission.”

“We can trade that sucker in.”

Now she do her nibbling thang on my earlobe. I like this one, too. I do.

“I need to get this Curl outta my hair and get some braids, so I won’t have to be worrying about lifting my arms up over my head when I get too big to fix it.”

“Okay.”

“And you might wanna get yours trimmed some, too, Cecil. Or maybe by the summer you might see a new style you like. We ain’t got but a few pillowcases, and between the two of us, they all getting stained. And pillowcases ain’t cheap.”

“I’ll certainly look into it, Brenda.”

“Oh. Last thing,” she says, and then she kiss me on my cheek, which makes me feel all squishy, and I squirm when I feel her lips cover my mouth. She sucks on ’em like they tangerines or something, and then she gives ’em back to me, I guess. “Hakeem and Sunshine need to go to a good preschool, ’cause I can’t get no studying done with two kids in the house all day long.”