I dialed “0” for the operator, hoping that my mother was home. I was halfway to New York now, so nothing she could say to me would convince me to come home. It would take just as much time to get back to Chicago as it would to get to New York, so I was better off going forward and not back. Ma had nothing better to do on a Monday night after work, so I was alarmed when the operator came back and said no one was answering the phone. I hadn’t spoken to Ma in a couple of weeks, ever since I had left home. Aunt Jewel told me she was mad at me, and that was all I had needed to hear. My one letter to her had been returned because I had forgotten to put a stamp on it. I asked the operator to try again, and she returned with the same report—the telephone just rang and rang. I couldn’t talk into the answering machine without charges accumulating. Since there was no one there to accept them, the operator wouldn’t let me do that. Rasul came out of the station just as I was about to hang up. Then, I had another idea. I shooed him away when he came toward me holding sandwiches and juices in the air.

“Gimme a minute,” I said to him with my hand up. He walked back to the car to dig in. The operator was still there, impatient. I asked her to try one more number. I hoped Mrs. Murray would accept my charges so I could talk to Nakesha. Her little brother Darion was on the line once the charges were accepted.

“Darion, it’s Shivana,” I said to him.

“You in jail?” he immediately asked.

“Hell naw, I ain’t in jail!” I shouted. “But I’m far from Chicago, so that’s why I had to call collect. Nakesha there?”

“Yeah, lemme go get her.”

Darion came back to the phone a couple of seconds later.

“She said she busy.”

I sighed. That girl was the most stubborn person I had ever met.

“Look, Darion, this is important. Would you tell her to come to the phone, please?”

“Damn, I’m trying to watch cartoons!” he yelled before I heard his footsteps stomp off. After a couple minutes of waiting and fearing that Nakesha would never come to the phone, I heard crackling on the other line. She was picking up.

“Hang the phone up in there, Darion,” she said. “I said, hang the damn phone up! Dawg! I’m sick of sitting here every night with y’all getting on my nerves I just ask you to do one thing and you can’t do that you selfish little heathen don’t ask me for no more money …”

“Nakesha,” I interrupted, “it’s Shivana.”