Who Am I Without Him? Read online

  Oh, baby girl, Ramon says, holding me close. A thousand Hawaiian hula girls couldn’t compare to you.

  I shake my head. Feel my wavy hair dance and fall and bounce on my nose and cheeks like sweet, pretty petals from a magnolia tree. My eyes open wide. “I hate my face, Ramon.” I lean into the mirror and watch my lips curl under. “Everybody hates my face.”

  Let’s dance, he says.

  “No.”

  He whispers. In here you are the most beautiful girl in the world. The love of my life.

  My fingers find his big brown lips. They roll over his long blond dreads and stop at his hands. “In here . . .”

  He interrupts me. In here, you belong to me.

  “But I . . .”

  Ramon raises his voice. And I won’t let anybody hurt you . . . or be mean to you. Or say that word I hate.

  I look in the mirror. “Ugly,” I say.

  His voice goes low and deep. Kiss me.

  I lean over and press my lips to his.

  Again, he says, touching my beautiful hair. Holding me tight.

  I go to the stereo and turn up the music. He is telling me a funny joke and saying he will be jealous if I dance with anyone else tonight. I tell him not to worry; I’m saving all my dances for him.

  “I like that shirt on you,” I say, coming back to him.

  He looks at his chest. Points. Mango, he says, patting my nose. My favorite—

  “Color,” I say, then I remind him that mango is a fruit, not a color. He doesn’t care, he says, because in here, we make the rules.

  Mookie in Love

  IT WASN’T MY FAULT . Girls just naturally take to my cousin Mookie, even when I warn ’em not to. So it’s no wonder Shanna didn’t listen when I told her to stay clear of him. “Mookie’s spoiled,” I said. “Spoiled rotten by women old enough to know better.” But even I started feeling sorry for Mookie and Shanna after my aunt, mother, and all her nutty sisters set their minds to breaking those two up. But then Mookie shoulda known, when the Walker women want something to end, they will do anything, I mean anything, to make sure it does.

  It started ten months ago. Me and Shanna was in the kitchen eating barbecued pork rinds when my cousin Mookie walked in. He thinks he’s cool. So soon as he seen her, he pulled up a chair and took a pork rind out her hand. “Hey, cutie,” he said, looking her up and down.

  I popped him on the head. “Stop disrespecting my friend like that.”

  Shanna crossed her legs and laughed. “Who you?”

  I told Shanna she did not want to meet Mookie. “Ten girlfriends today. Ten more tomorrow,” I said, pushing the bag of rinds his way.

  My mother walked in. She opened the fridge and sat a bottle of pop in front of Mookie. “What else you want, baby?”

  Mookie looked at Shanna. “Something sweet,” he said.

  Mookie is a spoiled brat. The only boy born to our family for three generations. Whatever he wants, he gets.

  “Dinner’s gonna be ready in half an hour,” Momma said, pouring his pop into a glass. Opening the freezer and getting ice. “You staying, right?”

  I snatched his glass and drank his pop. “Go home. You be here too much.”

  “She staying?” he asked, pointing to Shanna.

  Shanna wasn’t invited. But she said she was staying. And all during dinner them two made eyes at each other. Ain’t talk to me, not once. So I had to listen to my mother and father get on my case about my last French test. I got a B minus. They put me on punishment for that.

  “Here,” Mookie said, handing Shanna’s napkin to her after it fell off her lap to the floor.

  “You gonna be my Prince Charming, huh?” she said, wiping grease off his mouth.

  Mookie had this weird look in his eyes. “I’ll be your Prince Charming, Robin Hood, Mac Daddy, Flunky, Fool. . . .”

  “Oh, cut it out!” I said.

  My mother told me to hush.

  “Don’t hate,” Shanna said, moving her chair closer to Mookie. Taking her fork, piling it with mashed potatoes and gravy and feeding him like a baby.

  My mother liked that. “Shanna. You can come by here anytime.”

  Mookie got a way with females. All he gotta do is walk into a room and they start doing stuff for him. Don’t even know the boy and they offering to wash his clothes, clean his room, buy him stuff. His last girlfriend paid his cell phone bill for three months.

  It ain’t just that Mookie is a looker, with his jet-black curls and his honey-brown eyes, high cheeks, and long baby lashes. It’s the way he was raised. The stuff women in this family taught him about how a boy treats a girl. Boys that open doors. Boys that compliment your hair and legs and smile. Boys that listen and touch your hand when they talking to you. Boys that know it ain’t money that girls really want: it’s time. And slow walks in the park, love notes, handwritten poems, and faithfulness. Boys who don’t pull on you like they own you, but kiss your lips like they made of the sweetest chocolate in the world.

  Mookie know all the secrets a girl keeps locked deep inside or stashed away in her diary. And he uses it to his advantage. I tried to tell Shanna that. She ain’t listen, and before the night was done, she was letting him walk her home. Blushing when he said he wanted to meet her momma, if that was all right.

  Before Mookie left the house, I pulled him aside. “She’s nice. Got potential in this world. You mess with her, and I’m gonna—”

  Mookie took my hand and kissed it. “Cousingirl,” he said, “that one I’m gonna treat right.”

  I almost threw up the garlic steak I ate for dinner. “What?”

  “Something ’bout her,” he said. “Something ’bout her makes a brother wanna do right.”

  I wanted to tell him that he just met her. Didn’t even know her last name or how old she was. But it was right there in his eyes like a sign over the highway: MOOKIE IN LOVE.

  The women in the family noticed it before the men. So come four Saturdays from the day them two met, all the women got together at our house to play spades. Momma figured it was time they talked about Mookie. Time to do something ’bout this girl he was with so much of the time.

  “He brought her to my house,” Aunt Lucinda said. “The boy ain’t done that since he was ten years old,” she said, laying down the king of clubs.

  I took up for Mookie, which surprised me, too. “He’s seventeen. Time he settled down, ain’t it?”

  Mookie’s mom shook her head. “No,” Aunt Lucinda said. “Not my baby. He too young to settle down.”

  “Too pretty, too,” Momma said, putting down a three of spades and winning the hand. She led with the queen of hearts.

  I was surprised at Momma, really. She was so nice to Shanna that first day at the house when she and Mookie met. Then the more she saw them two together, the meaner she got, and the more phone calls she started making to the aunts—saying there was something different ’bout this girl.

  There are fifteen women and six girls in our family on my mother’s side. All of ’em were there, including the newborn baby, Cara. It wasn’t just that these women didn’t want Mookie settling down with this girl. They didn’t want Mookie settling down with any girl. They all figured that there were so many girls who didn’t know how to be treated right by boys that Mookie ought not to be selfish by sticking to just one.

  “We taught him right,” said one of the aunts. “He the only boy I know who opens car doors.”

  “Carries your groceries and makes coffee just like you want,” said another.

  I went to the kitchen. Came back with a bowl of raspberry punch that I sat in the middle of the table. “Y’all talk like Mookie a angel. He treat girls good, but he dog some of ’em, too.”

  Everybody stopped talking and looked at me.

  “He the only boy in the family for three generations,” they all said at once.

  I kicked off my shoes.

  “Gonna make somebody a fine husband one day,” my aunt Grace said.

  “Shanna say one day h
im and her gonna get married,” I said.

  Mookie’s mother is a little thing, just five feet. But when she stood up and came after me, it seem like she was six feet tall. “Now let me tell you something, missy!” she screamed. “That boy’s too young to settle down. And when he do, I’m gonna do the picking!”

  Three aunts raised their voices at once. “We! We gonna do the picking.”

  “All of us,” said my mother. “Since we all had a hand in raising him.”

  The card party went on till midnight. We ain’t talk about the weather outside. (It was ninety-five degrees and this was just late May.) We ain’t talk about the war the country was maybe getting into. And we ain’t talk about who was going to Mookie’s graduation next month. All we talked about the whole time was Mookie and Shanna, and how to break ’em up.

  ***

  “Hey, cuz,” Mookie said, laying a juicy, wet kiss on my cheek.

  I wiped it off. “Save it for your girlfriend.”

  He went in the fridge and made hisself a sandwich. “That girl got my head spinning,” he said, turning in circles. “Done made me tear up my datebook, change my e-mail address, and get a new cell number.”

  I tried to feel him out. “She just a girl, right? No biggie.”

  Mookie followed me onto the back porch. Started talking crazy. Telling me stuff I ain’t wanna hear.

  “It sounds stupid. But soon as I looked in her eyes, it happened.”

  “What . . . happened?”

  “You know.”

  I wanted to make him say it. To spit it out in the air. “I don’t know nothing,” I said, throwing moldy bread to the birds.

  Mookie stretched out one of his curls and twisted it around his finger. “I fell for that girl ASAP. Bam! Instantly.”

  My heart got all warm inside. “Naaah.”

  Mookie took hold of both my arms. “Cousingirl, it was like in the movies. For real, you know. That night, I went home. Got my house in order. Ditched them other chicks.”

  “For real?”

  “For real. Ain’t telling my boys nothing like this. But . . . she got me going. You know?”

  I felt sorry for Mookie. Here he was doing the right thing, finally being the boy my mother and the aunts really raised him to be, and they was gonna do their best to mess it up. Just so they could keep him to themselves.

  I watched a blue jay eat crumbs off the porch railing. “Maybe you and Shanna shouldn’t be ’round Momma and ’em so much.”

  Mookie stomped his feet when six more birds came to eat. “What?”

  Women in our family stick together. So I wasn’t gonna come right out and tell Mookie what was up. “I mean, Shanna’s probably tired of being ’round all us, anyhow. You two ate here three days last week. Then y’all went to a play with your mother, and was at Aunt Sukkie’s, Aunt Mildred’s, Marie’s, and Gionna’s house, too. Seem like the girl would want to spend time with her side, sometimes.”

  Mookie thought awhile. “Maybe. It’s just that I’m used to my side.”

  “Used to people waiting on you hand and foot. Giving you money and washing your drawers whenever you say.”

  He laughed, and I could see why Shanna fell so hard for him. Everything about him was perfect, even his cute little hands. “I ain’t never giving up my family for no girl,” he said, going back inside. “See you later. At dinner.”

  “Don’t come here. I’m telling you.”

  He pressed his face to the screen, looking like a monster from TV. “We ain’t coming here. Your family’s coming to our place tonight. Everybody is.”

  I was scared to hear that. Especially since my mother ain’t tell me nothing ’bout it. So, soon as Mookie left, I got on the phone. Called Shanna. The girl just as hardheaded as Mookie, though. She said she had to come, ’cause Mookie’s momma invited her personally. Poor thing. She ain’t know what Walker women could do when they put their mind to it.

  “How come you ain’t tell me dinner was over here?” I said to my mother just before we walked into Mookie’s house.

  She handed me the platter of smothered liver and bacon, and told my father not to forget the watermelon fruit salad in the car. Soon as he finished bringing in the rest of the food, though, they made him leave. Made all the men leave and eat in the den. And when Mookie asked why, the women all smiled. Said they had a surprise for him and Shanna.

  Nothing special happened almost the whole time we was there. People ate. People drank. People farted and watched TV. Then just before we was all ready to leave, the aunts asked to see Shanna—alone. They took her to the bedroom. Told me I better not even try to come in. Shanna looked back at me and smiled. I think she thought something nice was gonna happen to her there. It didn’t. She came out crying. When Mookie asked her what was wrong, she almost knocked his head off. “You got some girl pregnant?”

  I stared at him. He stared at the aunts and me and my cousins. “What?”

  Shanna ran out the door. My mother smiled. Her sisters almost busted out laughing. Mookie was too busy chasing Shanna to ask them why they lied on him. So I asked. Aunt Lucinda said it was for his own good. “To protect him from girls who got their own agendas.”

  “What?” I asked.

  My mother scraped chicken bones into a plastic bag. “We know the kind of girl he needs.”

  My arms started shaking. “Mookie’s almost a man. Y’all ain’t got the right—”

  Aunt Grace stood up and shut me down. “Girl! We protecting the family. Making sure the line stays pure . . . clean.”

  “What?” I said.

  Aunt Lucinda said Mookie ain’t have no business trying to date just one girl. That he needed to date around so they could see who was good enough for him.

  “Five years from now he gonna be married,” Momma said.

  “And babies gonna be coming then.”

  Aunt Lucinda crossed her arms. “And we got the right to pick the girl who gonna give birth to the next boy in this family.”

  Me and Mookie are the oldest cousins, so there was no one left to take up for him but me.

  “But he’s just seventeen. Ain’t thinking ’bout marriage . . . or babies.”

  Aunt Lucinda said she liked Shanna. But Shanna’s side don’t produce nothing but girl babies. “Them two get married and only girls coming. No way around it.”

  They crazy, I thought.

  “That boy got our future inside him,” Aunt Hattie whispered. “So we got the right to interfere. To make sure . . .”

  I covered my ears. “I’m-a tell my father,” I said, running to the door.

  Aunt Lucinda blocked my way. “Gal . . .” she said, her fist in the air like a club.

  I looked at my mother.

  “Women raised Mookie,” Momma said. “He ours. We know best.”

  I looked at my aunt’s arm still high in the air. “You don’t own Mookie. Anyhow, he better now than before.”

  Aunt Lucinda said I was too young to understand. “He ran around with trash before. But this one . . .”

  “She nice,” Momma said.

  “She makes him crazy in the head,” Aunt Luesta said.

  “Got him to thinking that maybe she could be the one,” another aunt said.

  I opened my mouth, but I shouldn’t have. “She could. Shanna could be his wife one day. She’s nice like that.”

  They all came over to me. “She ain’t never gonna be more than she is to him right now.”

  “An ex-girlfriend,” Mookie’s mother said.

  “Some girl he thinks stole from his momma.”

  I looked at Aunt Lucinda. Asked her what she was talking about. She said it was in the plan. If Mookie makes up with Shanna tonight, she gonna tell him that they ain’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him Shanna stole off her, so they just made up a lie to Shanna ’bout him, hoping that would be the end of her.

  Aunt Lucinda smiled. “He ain’t never gonna be with no girl that do his mother wrong.”

  Mookie and Shanna made up. B
ut Aunt Lucinda was right. When she told him the lie ’bout Shanna, Mookie believed it. Called Shanna and they got to fighting. Shanna’s momma called Mookie’s momma and things got bigger and worse. When it was all done, the police was called in and a report was filed. And Mookie and Shanna was done . . . kinda. They both kept calling me, though. Talking to me ’bout the other. I couldn’t tell Mookie what I knew. Couldn’t tell Shanna how strange our family was. So for two months them two didn’t see each other. Mookie ain’t date nobody else, though. He came over to our place. Looked all pitiful. And just when he talked hisself into calling Shanna, one of the aunts got him to go someplace with her. She filled his head with all kind of stuff. And for another month, he was finished with Shanna again. Then one day, I just made up my mind. I was gonna get them back together. So I did.

  “Walk me to the store, Mookie,” I said, grabbing him by the arm.

  When we got outside, he pushed me to the left side so he could walk on the traffic side. I asked him when was the last time he saw Shanna. He ain’t answer. I told him I had a stop to make. At a friend’s. When we got there, the girl wasn’t home. I knew that from the start. But she was Shanna’s cousin, and Shanna was spending the weekend there, so I asked for her. Shanna almost died when she saw Mookie.

  “What you want?” she said, walking out the room.

  Mookie just stared at her like she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

  “You know Shanna ain’t no thief,” I told Mookie. Then I looked at Shanna. “And you know Mookie don’t cheat. Well, he used to. But never on you.”

  I could tell Mookie wanted to kiss her. That she wanted him to hold her and make everything all right.

  “Mookie, your momma’s a liar,” I said. “Mine too.” I sat on the couch. “All of ’em lying, just to keep you to themselves.”

  Mookie wasn’t listening, really. He was talking to Shanna. Saying he was sorry he ain’t believe her. Apologizing for his mother.

  Shanna was crying, saying she knew deep down inside that he would never cheat on her.

  They kissed. They kissed the way I want a boy to kiss me one day. Kissed like they loved each other for always—like nothing and nobody was ever gonna break ’em up again.