“Seventy-first Street, by the Metra?” he asked as soon as I slowed down. But the crying with this stranger had cleared my mind. In minutes, it had demolished the wall standing between me and a new courage, a new maturity, a new acceptance of the bullshit I had gotten myself into.

“Naw.” I sniffled. “Take me on back. Just take me back home. Back where you picked me up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and for fifteen minutes of stoplights never stopped so it seemed like we were on open road, neither one of us said a word.

I hadn’t planned on saying anything to him when I opened the door to get out, not even good-bye. I left the money where it was because I hadn’t earned it. But with just one of my legs out the cab, the old man grabbed my shoulder before I could ease out another.

“Take the money,” he told me. “Go on. You can have it.”

“But…”

“Naw, just go on, take it.” He nodded his head sure. He nodded with his hand on my shoulder until I turned to grab the stack, held it in my hands like it was a baby I wanted. Then like I couldn’t before, I stuffed it all down into my bra and this time not a single dollar escaped. I wasn’t sophisticated enough for a corny response, a thank-you full of sarcasm or wit. I was more grateful than he or I could have ever known, but I was also alone, scared, about to get my ass kicked by Renelle, my mama, or both. I really couldn’t think of one thing to say so I just shut the door of the cab real light and promised to say something right if I ever saw him again.

When I walked up to my stoop, that boy—with the funny white cheeks and knotty hair—was sitting on the stoop, lighting a Newport and nodding his head in between earphones. Despite my nappy hair from the fight, eyes bloodshot from the crying, my ridiculously bare arms despite November, my chest deformed from the mound of cash, I smiled at him. Instinctively, almost. I felt my own dimples pinching my cheeks, my eye creases touching. I smiled for no reason, just because—as wide as I could. He didn’t smile back as wide. Just kind of grinned a tiny bit, lopsided with one side of his mouth. I stood in front of him and we looked at each other for a couple of seconds, both waiting. Anticipating for one or the other one to say something. I don’t remember who spoke first. Didn’t matter anyway. We would be together from there on out.

THE TIME HAD come for me to intervene.

By the time I got to her—October 11, 1992—I was ready. And it was time.

Shivana.