When she came back I gave her everything she needed to know and said good night. Relieved, I came from the bedroom with a smile on my face. I made a short detour to use the bathroom (which had this purple and green bird thing going on). Thank God I hadn’t had much to eat today and didn’t have to shit. I couldn’t blow up the spot on the first night. There wouldn’t be a second then. But I did need to sit for as long as it would take to do just that. Needed to clear my head. Suddenly I remembered the money—the mound in my shirt that Rasul hadn’t bothered to ask about. I pulled it out of my shirt and piled it on top of the toilet seat. I ran the water so he would think I was washing up for bed and not shitting. I got on my knees and counted it as quickly as I could. Just 227 dollars. Not nearly the five or six hundred dollars I needed to get rid of this baby. I didn’t know how much it would cost, but I knew it was more than that. I decided to divide the money stack between my two pockets, which he probably wouldn’t bother to open just in case he surprised me and was a thief. Then I lifted the toilet seat and sat my ass down.

For the first time since I had run out of Renelle’s with nowhere to go, Nakesha’s face popped into my head. The look in her eyes as her face darkened with hate for me, the snarl on her face when she called me a bitch. Ma always said pregnant women get on her nerves. She hated to be in the same room with them, because all they do is cry or laugh over the least little thing. At least I had plenty of big things to cry about so I didn’t feel too guilty about sitting on Rasul’s squeaky clean toilet with my face in both hands and tears running down my cheeks. I rocked back and forth with my pants around my ankles, thinking about my girl. My girl. My friend, my partner, the only chick in school I said more than ten words to in a given day. The one who would have had my back no matter how many bitches we had to face, then come to find out the one she would end up swinging at was me. Our bond broken by bullshit, the friendship severed by temporary insanity not to mention stupidity, I was scared I might not ever have her back. Ever.