“Well, I guess when don’t no man want you, you gotta take what you can get,” Tasha said.

“Bad enough they pass love notes in class,” Patty-Cake continued, slurring her words while she sucked sour apple Laffy Taffys from in between her silver-glazed back teeth.

“Uh-uh!” Fred laughed. From that point forward, a dozen kids with nothing better to do followed Patrice in tormenting us. I felt like I had shrunk two inches. It wasn’t long before Nakesha and I quietly broke apart and sulked to opposite ends of the sidewalk.

“They do be passing notes, every day in math, like boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“You mean boyfriend and boyfriend,” Jeannette corrected.

“Who got gym with them bitches? Ladies, watch your ass ’cause you might catch ’em in the showers.”

“Dripping wet and naked as they please!”

It wasn’t even an original crack. He had stolen it from The Women of Brewster Place. That imbecile’s reference to a movie we had all watched over and over again fueled an uproar that the rest of the closet comics scrambled to upstage.

“Well it’s hard to get a man when you look like one,” Tasha observed. “Tavares, don’t Nakesha look like a man?”

“Why you asking me?”

“Ahhh … you don’t want to say it. Come on, Fred, don’t she look like a man?”

“Not really. Her ass too fat for that.”

“Naw … Shivana got the nice ass,” Tavares answered, and I was repulsed rather than relieved. “Nakesha booty kinda thirsty, though.”

“I’d do ’em,” Tavares wanted us to know.

“You do anything!”

“I wouldn’t do you.”

“Nigga, you wish you could.”

Patrice made sure to bring the roast back into focus: “Look, the Garbage Pail Kids ain’t hugging no more. We musta hurt they feelings.”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gone hurt you.”

I had said it before I knew I would say it, turning around with flame in my eyes. My lethargy had abruptly ended. Nakesha stood trembling a few feet ahead, frozen and embarrassed. Debating on whether or not she would jump into the fight that was inevitable, her slight inch closer to me was a bold statement of alliance. Wearing crooked-over jelly sandals and no bra, I wasn’t ready for battle myself, but enough was enough. Who did they think they were?

The whole heartless mob stopped in its tracks. Its general checked, they did not know the next move. So they fidgeted: hands shot to hips, fingers stifled giggles, necks twisted and jerked in anticipation. Patty-Cake’s forehead furrowed with disbelief and disgust.

“You better shut the fuck up and keep on walking with your girlfriend, bitch.”

My face had hardened into lockjaw. “Make me.”

“Girl, don’t play with me …,” was the only comeback Patty-Cake could muster. Caught off guard, she oddly veered toward the middle of the sidewalk as if planning to maneuver around me.

“I said make me, bitch.”