“I’m just trying to understand where you’re going with your life, Juanita, that’s all.”

She said, “You know what, I knew I shouldn’t have called you about this. You don’t care about anything but yourself.”

“Is that not my right as well?” I asked her. “Who says I have to come to your rescue just because I’m your older brother? What if I didn’t have it?”

“But you do have it!” she yelled through the phone at me. “And you have the right to remain selfish.”

“Yeah, and so does this ballplayer you laid up with,” I commented. I didn’t even mean to go there.

Juanita said, “You know what, you’re gonna get what you deserve one day. So just forget I even asked you for anything.”

“I never said I wouldn’t give it to you,” I told her. “But I’m not gonna give it to you without talking about it, because I can see where you’re headed. Next month it’ll be another five hundred dollars. And then…”

My sister cut me off and said, “I have never asked you for anything in a row. But if you ever needed something from me, I wouldn’t even hesitate. I wouldn’t sit there and make you…I mean, this is already a tough situation for me to do as it is.”

“And how do you think it’s gonna get better when you go ahead and have a baby? That’s all I’m saying. That’s the same thing Mom is concerned about.”

I said, “Did you ask her about this first?” I doubted if she had asked our mother for the same amount of money she was asking from me. Juanita probably only asked Mom for eight hundred or so. That thought only made me more curious about how much money my sister really needed.

“So what if I did?” she asked me.

“Okay, when we had this same conversation a couple a weeks ago, you pretty much told us that you were prepared to handle things on your own,” I reminded her.

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I did not.”

I reflected back, and I guess it was just me thinking out loud as a response to my mother’s concerns. I had given Juanita the benefit of the doubt before she had even asked for it. I guess I just assumed that she would try and take care of her situation as a grown woman who had left the house years ago.

“Okay. Well…” I wasn’t going to offer her the money myself. If she really needed it, she was going to have to ask for it again.

“So, are you gonna help me out or what?” she asked me again. I guess there was no shame to her game. She really needed the money.

“All right. I’ll send you a check.”

“Can you wire it to me tomorrow at Western Union?”

I paused. Now why does she need it…I stopped in mid-thought. There was no sense in starting a new argument about it. Either I was gonna give her the money when she needed it or not.