Dana hurried over to the phone booth and closed herself in. She covered her mouth while she spoke, like she was worried that maybe I could read her lips through the glass. Although it was impossible, I thought I heard my name and thought she said “Raleigh.” I know for sure that she said
“hurry up,” because she screamed it. Then she placed the phone back on its cradle, gentle, like it was made out of spun sugar, before taking a couple of chest-expanding breaths. She smiled at me, but her face was al chain-gang.
“I want to go to the party,” she said. “So I asked my mom to come and get me and take me there.”
“I thought you said she doesn’t have a car.”
“My aunt Wil ie Mae does. They’re coming together.”
“Anyway,” I said, “let’s just wait in the Lincoln.”
The clock on the dashboard shone nine fifteen. If we hadn’t had the blowout, we would be walking into the party by now, in our matching tube tops, looking like two girls who went to parties al the time, two girls with beautiful hair. Marcus would be mixing some purple punch, offering it to al the girls except Ruth Nicole Elizabeth; she would sip on a Cherry Coke the whole time. It would be the very same scene as at his Christmas party last year but without the blinking blue lights. Jamal would be sitting in the corner like he didn’t want to be there, drinking from a plastic tumbler like it was a cup of coffee. He would say hel o to me, tip the tumbler in my direction, and tel somebody that I was like a little sister to him. Right now I should be smiling a patient smile at him, saying “No thank you” to the punch, waiting while he drank, studying his face, and watching for his eyes to droop just a little.
At Christmas, Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s father sat outside in his Volvo for exactly forty-five minutes before blowing his horn in three foreign-car toots. Marcus walked her out as al the party girls watched from the windows. Her herringbone bracelet twinkled on her wrist as Marcus opened the door for her, shook her father’s hand, went back inside, and got the party started. Inside, Jamal drank eggnog until I didn’t seem like his sister anymore. “You stil on the Pil ?” Yes, yes, yes.
An hour is a long time to sit in a car, even if it is the good Lincoln. I switched on the heater to knock the chil off the air, but then we were too warm.
I opened the window and hard-bodied insects invaded the car, crawling over our bare shoulders.
“This is terrible,” Dana said. “This is a disaster.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Next year you’l be in Massachusetts going to real col ege parties and I’l be stuck here, living at home, washing hair.”
“Can you please cal your father and tel him not to come?” Dana said. “My mama is already on her way. We could both ride with her.”
I shook my head. “My dad is going to want to see about the Lincoln.”
She opened the door, stepping onto the asphalt parking lot. It was late now, nearly ten. The clerk with the home perm was busy tidying up the store and glancing at her watch. “Come on, Daddy,” I said under my breath. “Come on, Raleigh.”
Dana entered the convenience store again, speaking to the clerk, moving her hands too much. Maybe she was on drugs or something. She was like a pinbal machine — al energy, lights, and percussion. She zigzagged out of the store holding a silver key bolted to a wooden block. I watched her zip over to the pay phone, pick it up, and then place the receiver back, like she had changed her mind.
She Morse-coded the window with her fist. “I’m going to the ladies’. If your dad shows up, just go on home without me. My mama is on the way.”
“My dad won’t be here for another fifteen, twenty minutes,” I told her. “You’ve got time.”
“Okay. But just in case my mama gets here first, tel her where I am.”
“How wil I know her?”
“You can’t miss her.”
ACCORDING TO THE clock on the car radio, Dana had been in the bathroom twenty-two minutes when Daddy and Raleigh rol ed up in the limousine. They had been out in the yard pruning hedges. Wearing sweat-stained T-shirts and baggy gym shorts, they smel ed like cigarettes and green stems.
“Madame,” Uncle Raleigh said, opening my car door. I eased out, glancing over at my father, who was inspecting the damaged rim like he was deciding whether or not to give it CPR. “Chaurisse, James said you were out here with a girlfriend? Where is she?”
“She started freaking out, Uncle Raleigh. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
“What’s her name again, your friend?”
“Dana,” I said.
Raleigh made a little
Now that everything is al said and done, what’s obvious is obvious. But at the moment, it was only a little bit peculiar. “Brown-skinned, long hair.
She’s locked in the bathroom and she won’t come out.”
“Let me go help James with that tire,” Uncle Raleigh said.
He and Daddy squatted by the fender and whispered together like mobsters. While they crouched there, dressed like boys, I went to the bathroom door.
“Dana,” I said. “Dana, you okay?”
“Is my mama here?”
“No,” I said, “But my dad and my uncle are here. Come on out.”