It’s weird looking at a mama and daddy together; I only saw one couple in the projects, just Precious mama and daddy. Ed and Tracy do shit together and they talk to you separate too. I think it might be nice to have a mama and a daddy, even though it’s really my brother and sister-in-law. I look down at my stomach. It ain’t big, but somebody in there. They ain’t got no daddy. Just a mama. I could tell the baby daddy, but I don’t know if I want to.

You know who I wanna tell? Gail. For what, I don’t know. But I’m about to have a baby, and I wanna tell my mama. Ed drive me all the way back to Illinois where she locked up. He say he ain’t seen her in years, that when he left the projects, she got so pissed at him. He stacked up his paper, then dipped and she ain’t never forgive him for that. He was good at being a thug, I guess. Gail had Ed when she was thirteen. He was around for a lot of gang shit she set up, was her first soldier. He try to warn me that she ain’t gone be nice. That now that she locked up, she might be even meaner than before. She know she might have to serve over thirty years for all the guns and drugs they found in our house, and for masterminding the gang activity on our block. I nod and get scared.

When we get there, I think right away how ugly it is. How everything a dirty gray color or dingy white or metal. It’s loud and echoey and I can’t imagine Gail and my sisters living there. We sit at these tables and Gail come stomping over, a bear in cornrows. She sit down, look at Ed, say, “What?” She don’t even look my way. Don’t say, “Hey baby, I miss you. How you been?”

I speak up and ask her, “How you doing.” She look at me, got a fake smile on. It’s like she impressed that I can talk. “Fuck you think?” she say. We go back to our usual way, where she make me feel stupid, and I don’t say much.