“Sir,” I heaved, “no, I ain’t alright. I’m not.” I couldn’t even tell him all the reasons why. Hell, I didn’t know. All I could do was sit in the back of that cab, wish I was five smelling Ma’s cigarette-smell jeans, wish my baby would bleed out onto this man’s nice gray leather seats. And if that couldn’t happen at least somebody would come along to help me make it happen some other way.

“I ain’t got no money, and I ain’t got nowhere to go.”

Old man didn’t answer me for a while. He just drove on and let me cry. He only spoke when my chest stopped jumping up with sobs.

“Well… it be like that sometimes,” he finally said. “Shit, I’m fifty-seven years old. If I was to tell you ’bout all the times in my life I was broke and I ain’t have nowhere to go, we liable to run out of gas and road. Fight with your boyfriend?”

“Kinda,” I managed. “Somethin’ like that.”

“Pretty gal like you don’t need nobody giving you grief. It ain’t worth it. That defeat the purpose of calling yourself in love.”

“Yeah, I’m finding that out now …”

“When you got love you always got somewhere to go. Should, at least.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He kept on driving, just turned up the radio. It wasn’t yet time for the Quiet Storm. Kool and the Gang’s “This Is Your Night” was on. That was Aunt Jewel’s jam. If I was at home, in the kitchen with them, we would all be listening to it together, maybe dancing and laughing, sliding across the sticky linoleum and pretending kitchen chairs were our partners. I wondered if Renelle had gone upstairs looking for me. There was no doubt in my mind I had a fight on my hands if I caught her in the hallway, alone. I wondered if Ma and Aunt Jewel knew now. There was no way I could go home. Is this how good people wound up homeless? I thought about my daddy’s people who lived in South Shore. Just young cousins and middle-aged aunts who were always happy to see me if I came by, but would never see me otherwise because they wouldn’t make the effort. It wasn’t that late. I could just pop up. Once opened, they wouldn’t shut a door in my face. I was family, after all.

“Can you take me to South Shore, by the Seventy-first Metra stop?”

“Yes, ma’am. I sure can. I can do that for you.”

“I ain’t got no money. Maybe my aunt might…”

“Don’t even worry. I’m off the clock anyway. This my time. It’s my pleasure.” He looked back at me. “No, my privilege.”