“That chick on the second floor bipolar—she laughing in your face one minute and tryin’ to cut it up the next.”

“Your roommate Janice a dyke and she only pregnant ’cause she been raped.”

“The one with the lazy eye pregnant by her own uncle.”

“They say she got three kids already in foster care, just won’t stop having ’em.”

“Sister Clara couldn’t never have no kids so that’s why she here cleaning up after ones ain’t her own.”

But there was one tidbit I couldn’t let just pass me by. Late one night while another fifteen-year-old named Nicole and I were finishing up on dish duty, she kept staring at me in her periphery until I called her on it.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, my sudsy hands resting on my hips.

“Naw, why you ask?”

“I feel like you starin’ me down,” I answered, returning to wash before she rinsed and dried.

“I was just wondering if you knew,” she said, facing me.

“Knew what?”

“About your roommate,” she said. In the background, one of the sisters locking doors for the night announced herself with a verse of “The Old Rugged Cross.” We quickly turned back to the dishes until her voice withered to a distance in the house.

“Which roommate and what about her?” I asked as soon as I heard the voice fade out completely. Nicole chuckled.

“Damn … they ain’t even tell you,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s messed up.”

Now she just had me irritated. I couldn’t stand when somebody wanted you to beg them to taste something you didn’t even know existed until they opened their mouth.

“Tell me what, Nicole?” She sensed the exasperation in my voice. I was halfway through that first trimester, when I heard all women want to do is fall down and sleep every chance they get. I didn’t have the patience for juvenile games, and I was surprised I had to come up in here to play them.

“Tiny. Redbone … you know she got AIDS.”

My mouth dropped open. How the fuck were they going to room me with her, knowing I was pregnant, and not tell me some shit like that?

“No she don’t,” I said. “Quit lyin’!”

“I ain’t lying,” Nicole said, with her lips poked out. “That’s why don’t nobody talk to her. Why she ain’t trying to work and why she got them doctors’ appointments all the time. Ain’t you ever noticed that? Homegirl got HIV. Baby got it too. I hope you ain’t been kissin’ all on him …”

I remembered how I had had urges to pick him up, especially when Tiny quickly left him on the bed while she went to the bathroom, yet somehow the urges vanished. Must have been the Holy Spirit talking to me. What if some of its spit had leaked into my mouth?