“Thanks,” I said, and went back to the couch. I cracked my pop open and poured it into the glass, listening to the fizz and watching the bubbles burst one by one. Usually, I drank pop straight out of the can. Rasul was staring at me, I’m sure wondering why I was so fascinated with a glass of pop. I was thirsty as hell, but didn’t guzzle it down because I didn’t want him wondering about that too. I took a few ladylike sips.

“So why you drop out?” I asked him again.

“Oh. Yeah.” He leaned back into the couch and slipped his hands toward his crotch. Then he wiggled his big feet out of 1990s Air Jordan’s. All I was thinking was I’d crack this Negro upside his head with this glass if he didn’t understand I had meant what I said. But he didn’t make a move. I guess that was his way, like every man’s, of getting relaxed.

“Well, I had kind of went to a buncha different schools and my credits kept getting messed up, so I just stopped going for a while. ’Fore I moved here. But my uncle made me go back. His wife work at Olive Harvey so I just signed up for the morning classes so I could go with her. Then I work in her office for a couple of hours filing and stuff. Just to have some change in my pocket.”

“Oh,” I said, satisfied.

“I’m about to be through in December though.”

“Good for you,” I said. “I wish I could drop out and get my GED.” I finished the glass in one long gulp. That might be what I would have to do if I had this baby. I wondered how much time I had left for the abortion …

“You want some more?” he asked me.

“Naw, that’s alright.” I wasn’t trying to look too hungry. Plus I had enough home training to know not to show up at somebody’s house and be greedy.

“Where your uncle and his wife at?” I wanted to know. I couldn’t trust him all that much yet. And I didn’t want some mad Black woman coming out of the bedroom accusing me of being a “fass hussy.”

“They in Kentucky for Thanksgiving vacation,” he said. “They go down there every year to visit her people.”

“So they just leave you here all by yourself?”

“I’m nineteen,” he said. “Shit, I’m a grown man.”

“Grown men got they own house and they ain’t got to live in nobody else’s.”

“True that,” he said. “I’m working on that. I do music.”

Goddamnit, that’s what they all said. He must have seen it in my eyes because he kept on trying to explain himself.