I took my keys from the coffee table. “He’s a nice guy.”
My father took two steps after me as I headed for the front door.
“Watch out,” I said, “or he’s going to see you.”
My father froze in his place. I stood in the doorway, longer than I needed to, waiting for him to spring forward like a superhero. I tugged the hem of my keyhole shirt. I pul ed my fingers through my hair, and looked hard at myself in the oval mirror in the foyer. These were my mother’s habits before leaving the house. I tamped my lips together and used my little finger to wipe away any eyeliner that may have smeared.
“I’m leaving now,” I said to my father. “Lock the door behind you.”
“Dana,” my father said, “do not walk out of that door.”
“Bye now,” I said. I opened the door and walked through it, not closing up behind me. I was hoping to hear my father’s feet behind me, but there was no sound from the house as I walked on the cracked cement driveway where Marcus waited, in the Jetta. The backseat was crammed with what looked like four other people, but the seat beside Marcus was empty, reserved for me. I was his girl, and tonight he didn’t care who knew. I turned toward the house and made out my father’s face shadowed in the doorway. I couldn’t see his expression, but I knew he could see mine. I knew he saw the fire in my face, the chal enge in my eyes.
Save me, James. I dare you.
8
FIG LEAF
AT THE START of my junior year, without ceremony, without even a big breakup fight, Marcus gave his class ring to a girl with four names: Ruth Nicole Elizabeth Grant. She had long hair like mine but not quite as ful . Her skin was like expensive china, pale and so thin that you could see a network of lavender veins crisscrossing on her eyelids. I would know that ring anywhere — the garnet stone with the one-eighth-karat diamonds on either side. I was sitting in English when my eyes were drawn to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s already impressive adda-bead necklace, weighed down in the center with the hunk of gold that was Marcus’s ring. I was so distraught that I begged Ronalda to skip third period so that I could spend some time recuperating in the cool safety of her basement. As soon as we arrived, I surveil ed Marcus’s house through the slats over the corner window of Ronalda’s stepmother’s study.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ronalda said. “You want to go with me to Fort McPherson? There are a lot of guys over there.”
“No.”
“You’re just going to wait him out?”
“He’l explain. Love is complicated.”
“Wel ,” Ronalda said with sympathy, “here go something else my mama said. ‘You like who you like and you can’t help it.’”
The next day I found Marcus in the student parking lot. He was always there when classes let out even though he supposedly worked with his father from nine to five. I snuck away before the last bel so I could talk to him before al the kids swarmed out and underclassmen would be shaking his hand like he was the president. His middle finger looked naked without his giant ring. He once let me try it on but wouldn’t let me keep it, even though I promised never to wear it to school. He had said it was too dangerous. “Evidence,” he cal ed it. It was okay for our friends to know about us, but at school, in front of adults, he had to be more careful. It made sense at the time, but Ruth Nicole was even younger than I was. If I was jailbait, she was super-jailbait.
As I explained this to him, Marcus told me to lower my voice and calm down. Was I trying to get him arrested? He told me not to worry. Ruth Nicole’s family knew his family. He rubbed my arm and spoke so gently that everything he said sounded like love. “Why do you care so much about that ring? It don’t mean nothing.”
I knew that I was supposed to be mad and I should have broken up with him. Ronalda, quoting more of her mother’s wisdom said, “You gotta decide whether half a nigger is better than no nigger at al .”
“Don’t cal him that.”
“You got it bad,” Ronalda said.
Down in the basement, we rifled through Ronalda’s father’s desk drawer and found what looked to be a nickel bag of weed. It wasn’t the greatest quality, more seeds than anything, but we borrowed enough to rol a slender joint, which we shared in her stepmother’s office after jamming a towel under the door. Ronalda took hard pul s, trying to get buzzed quick. No one else was home, but she was paranoid that someone would walk in on us.
“If they catch me,” she said, “that’s it. They’l send me back to Indiana.”
“How can they get mad? You got it out of your father’s drawer.”
“It’s his house; he can do whatever he wants.”
“Al right,” I said, taking the smoldering wad. I put it to my mouth; it was damp from her lips. “I’l hurry up.”
She took the joint back and took a hard drag. “I’l blow you a shotgun.” I put my face next to hers and she blew the smoke right into my mouth.
“It’s not that I don’t want to go home,” Ronalda said.
“For a visit, right?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t mind going back. You know I don’t fit in here.”
“Yes you do,” I said.
“Don’t get al weird,” Ronalda said. “Al I mean is I wouldn’t mind
“It’s the same thing,” I said. “Gone is gone.”
