I sat across from Mr. Brown and looked at him as he held court, his voice thick and layered like most pastors, yet mellow enough so that kids weren’t afraid of him. Gail said he could’ve been my dad, and that meant only one thing: that Mr. Brown, Stan, was once Mama’s boyfriend. I couldn’t imagine it, though. I watched him eat and talk, and I pretended to listen, but what I really tried to imagine was what he would’ve been like as my father. Was he a nice man behind closed doors? And how did having a dad at home change things? I thought about Uncle Tim and Auntie Nora, and how Mama seemed more intense and stressed than her sister. I imagined Mr. Brown as Mama’s uncle Tim and thought that maybe if he had been my father, it would’ve been okay.

Seventeen
Plans

The next morning was a Sunday, which meant I’d spend hours on the floor getting my hair done. After Mama finished, I hopped up right away and went down the porch to get Precious. I didn’t really feel like jumping rope; I just wanted to talk. We dragged out chairs and sat on the porch, facing the gate so that we could look into the playground. Sometimes, it was nice to do nothing like this, to sit, think, talk. Precious and I had a rhythm that we’d perfected over our twelve years of life, and I think that her friendship that summer helped me make it through the toughest days. I couldn’t ever sit like this with Stacia because she wasn’t a great listener and she dismissed my feelings. I rarely had time alone with Tonya, and on the few occasions that we were by ourselves, I mostly asked her questions about her very mysterious life.

When Precious and I were in kindergarten, we’d hang out on the school playground, and instead of climbing and jumping or playing rope with the other girls, sometimes, we’d just sit and look around, asking questions about life. Right around that time, when we started school at Farren, our families put their differences aside and let us have playdates, visiting each other’s apartments. After all these years, I knew her place as well as mine: every linen closet, where the good snacks were hidden in the cabinets, where to grab toilet paper if I’d finished the roll. And she could hang at my place, pulling books off the shelf and taking out the bookmark that she’d placed there, knowing that she couldn’t read Stephen King or my Sweet Valley High books at her house.

I’ll never forget, though, how the first time Precious came over to visit, Mama put her out. It was a misunderstanding. Mama thought Precious was being rude, but she was just a shy kid who went for a bowl of lemon drops without asking.