I hadn’t ever thought about what it must be like for Rasul. It was one thing when your daddy stopped loving you, but it had to be something much more terrible when a mama gave up on you too.

“You think about them?” I asked.

Rasul just poked his lips, took a long drag, and shook his head.

“Not no more. I let them think about me.” Then, “I think we was all accidents.”

“Not everybody,” I countered, turning to face him again.

“Shiiiit. Ninety-nine percent.”

“Well see, then it’s one percent that was like the Cosby kids.”

“Man, that’s TV,” Rasul said. “I don’t know nothing ’bout that.”

“It’s TV, but it gotta be real like that somewhere too.” I hoped for myself because I needed to, otherwise there was no point to what I was doing if ten or fifteen years from now I was still going to be jammed back between a rock and a hard place.

“Guess so,” he agreed. “Good Times was real so they put that shit on. So Cosby Show gotta be real too.”

I wondered if too much nicotine had gone to his head because that last reasoning was so stupid I couldn’t even call him on it. I only started giggling while he looked at me and asked “What?” and I ignored him as I reached across to his nightstand to pull my own square out of the pack.

MA LIGHTENED UP once she knew I had someone besides her to lean on. I came home Monday before ten and she just glared at me without saying a word. On Wednesday, Rasul stopped by, stammered “Hello Ms. Golding” when Ma opened the door with her hands on her hips, and I came in to get him like she wasn’t even there. “’Member Rasul?” was all I said. We sipped Kool-Aid and laughed in the kitchen. I totally forgot that by next summer, I could have another life to fight for besides my own. I relaxed and let it all go. Laughter was mine again. With Aunt Jewel gone, Rasul stepped in to become my refuge. And I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, stop thinking about what he had said about the ninety-nine percent.

Can I do this should I do this what Ma gonna do when she find out how I’m gonna make money what it’s gonna look like will it be a boy or girl whose hair it’s gonna have will I see my daddy in its face