Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil Read online

  Shai’s jam, “If I Ever Fall in Love,” came on and MB asked me to dance. He took me by the hand, and wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. When the song ended we went back to standing to the side. We talked a few more minutes, and it was cool because we weren’t all up on each other.

  I felt special that someone had noticed me.

  The party was just about over when I heard a loud ruckus and then saw what looked like a scuffle in the back of the basement. A girl called out loudly from across the room, “Aw, shit, it ain’t a party if a fight don’t happen!”

  Folks started pushing to get out the basement. Fools were falling out the door to the yard. It was a straight-up smackdown between these two dudes. I just saw some punching and somebody on the ground. Nobody was pulling out a gun in some punk-ass move. Boys were about using they fists to show how big and bad they were and get their respect. A couple of dudes broke up the fight. So we didn’t need the police that night. It was over as fast as it had started. Funny thing is, the deejay turned the music back on and the party got jumping all over again.

  Laying in bed that night, I was still pumped up. My sister, Brittanie, was sound asleep in her bed across the room, but I was wide awake with a big smile on my face. Nette Pooh met a boy and gave him her number. Maybe he will be my real boyfriend one day. Wouldn’t that be a trip and a half? I giggled out loud at the thought but caught myself so I didn’t wake Brittanie up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FIRST TIMES AND BLUE LINES

  My mama wasn’t going to let me have any boy company come over and visit. The most I could do with a boy was talk on the phone, because I wasn’t allowed to date yet. One time a boy at school who liked me tried to stick his tongue in my mouth, and I had to check him quick.

  “Uh un. What you think you doin’?” I shouted, pushing him back with all my force. “I don’t like how that feel!”

  So as far as MB was concerned, things were going to go real slow in my book. Plus, I just wasn’t feeling him like that, yet. I was warming up to him the more we talked and just in a couple of weeks he had quickly become my friend. MB would call me nightly, right on time. When the phone rang, I’d pick up so fast a full ring hadn’t even come in.

  “Hello?” I said, out of breath, trying my best to play it cool. MB’s baritone voice made me smile instantly. He sounded so mature.

  “Nette Pooh, get off the phone!” JoJo yelled all in my ear. He always got started when it was my turn to get on the phone, and we fought like we were both teenagers.

  “Naw, you been here all day! Give me the phone!” I shouted back, grabbing the phone and storming into my room. I climbed into my bed, and the conversation was on. I didn’t have any privacy, unless Brittanie was in Mama’s room or the front room watching TV. Otherwise I’d talk low, under the covers if she was sleeping. It wasn’t like we even had important stuff to talk about. It was just the fact we were on the phone together, and he was laying down his mack action in my ear. He finally told me that MB stood for Mike Brown. I decided I’d just call him Mike.

  After what seemed like hours of talking about nothing, I’d start yawning, scared to look at the clock, knowing I’d have to be up before the crack of dawn.

  “You hang up,” I’d whisper.

  “Naw, you hang up,” he’d tease back.

  “Naw, for real, hang up.”

  We went back and forth so much sometimes I’d fall asleep. When Mama’s 5:00 a.m. shouting alarm went off, I’d find myself waking up tangled in the phone cord and with a crook in my neck from falling asleep on the phone receiver.

  • • • •

  It had been about a month and Mama got curious about who I was spending so much time talking to on the phone. so she gave permission for me to have company one afternoon. The first time Mike came over, my cousin JoJo was walking around with a bat as a joke.

  “Nigga, you know she twelve years old?” JoJo blurted out.

  “Aw man! For real?” Mike’s eyes went wide.

  “No I ain’t, Mike!” I said giving JoJo a shove. “JoJo you play too much!”

  Although, I had told Mike I was a year older than I really was when we met at Key Key’s party. Now I was just busted all around.

  “Mike, it really isn’t that much difference ’cause I’ll be fifteen in December.”

  Just then Mama came in the room and stood in front of us with her hands on her hips. Mike quickly got up and shook her hand. Mama didn’t waste no time running down the law.

  “Does your mama know you want her to be your girlfriend?” Before he could answer, she fired off another question, “Are you going to talk to her father? Are you going to be taking her to work or picking her up?”

  I had to hold back my laugh, because Mama was too funny breaking him down. Her attitude was, look, are you going to help me with her since you want to be her boyfriend?

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Mike followed.

  Between Mama and JoJo, I was officially embarrassed but still smiling and blushing as me and Mike made eye contact. He gave me one of those yo-mama-something-else looks.

  • • • •

  I was definitely feeling myself, and my little hormones were bubbling under about my budding relationship with Mike. I was just a freshman, so it was still all about taking things slow, even though he was an upperclassman. I had schoolwork and a job to focus on first and foremost. I had wasted no time getting a job when the school year started. My cousin Tonya was working at McDonald’s got me a hookup there. I was underage, but I rigged up my own work permit, and I got the school counselor to sign off on it. Mama didn’t know anything about it. It was on! I was able to buy myself clothes and I always let Brittanie borrow them.

  I worked until close some nights, and Mama didn’t like that part too much. She didn’t want me working any place until eleven and twelve at night. So, by the time she picked me up and got us home, she was beat and went straight to her room and closed the door. That’s when I started letting Mike sneak over.

  Mike would insist on seeing me because that was better than talking on the phone. I’d be a nervous wreck.

  “Ooh, did you hear somethin’?” I said squirming away.

  “Naw, Nette, I ain’t hear nothin’. Come here,” he said.

  “Uh-un, Mike,” I said pulling back again. “You gotta go. I don’t want my mama to wake up. She’ll kill both of us.”

  He flashed a smile and then stepped back. As I watched him run back to his car, I felt like I had just been swept off my feet.

  • • • •

  I may not have been able to have boys over, but Mama’s rule didn’t stop me from going to see him. Mike lived in Pine Lawn, an area that bordered North St. Louis city and county. Even though it was a neighborhood of houses, some that were owned by people who had been living there forever, like Mike’s parents, it also had a dangerous element. There were a lot of younger knuckleheads rolling through who would shoot, fight, rob, and there were known gang-affiliated streets. The police always had a presence over there.

  Mike would pick me up in his daddy’s clean Oldsmobile ’98. It was a big car, felt like a boat on wheels. For fun, Mike would drive fast through the narrow, hilly streets of PLO and nearby areas like Beverly Hills, Velda Village Hills. The car had bucket seats and I would grip my seat cushion tight. He wanted me to meet his parents but Mr. Brown wasn’t there and Mrs. Brown was in her room, which was so dark I couldn’t really see her. I felt like I hadn’t met her at all. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out by the car.

  Mike’s street was small but busy, with cars driving by and people outside working on their yards, kids playing ball in the street. It seemed like the whole neighborhood, and anybody coming through, was speaking, waving, or honking as they drove by. Mike was that dude on his block, repping his hood hard.

  “Whassup, MB?” A dude who looked to be the same age as Mike slow rolled by in his car.

  “ ’Sup!” Mike said, with a cool nod. “This my girl, Nette.”
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  • • • •

  One day, Mama had let Mike pick me up from work. As I was wrapping up my last order at the drive-through, I overheard my coworker out front repeating my name.

  “Nette Pooh? Who? No, don’t no Nette Pooh work here, ma’am.” My coworker was having a confused exchange with a customer out front.

  I quickly wrapped up my customer’s order and raced to the front of the store. I could see an older couple standing on the other side of the counter. The woman was dark brown–skinned, had a shoulder-length Jheri curl, wore glasses, and was somewhat matronly. The man was lighter brown–skinned, and his face was framed by a mustache, beard, and short Afro dusted with gray.

  “Well, I’m Nette Pooh, but who are y’all?”

  “Oh, we Michael’s parents,” Mrs. Brown replied.

  “Well, how you doin’ Mr. and Mrs. Brown,” I said, shifting uncomfortably.

  “Michael told us to come get you from work,” Mrs. Brown said.

  I clocked out and followed them to the car, torn between cracking up with laughter and fear. At that moment, as I rode quietly in the backseat of Mr. Brown’s gray ’98 that Mike had taken me riding in, I thought, Dang, he must really like my butt, ’cause who just sends their mama and daddy to come get a girl from work that they just met?

  I was impressed that Mike had sent his mama and daddy to get me. Mama was too. After that, she loosened up the reins a little more and agreed that he could come by some Friday nights to visit when I got off work.

  • • • •

  A few months into things, Mike had got suspended from school for fighting. So he convinced me to skip school and come over to his house and hang out because his parents were going to both be gone for the day. Their house had a warm feel. It wasn’t real fancy, and their style of furniture was kind of old-fashioned but comfortable. The house felt like two people who had been together for years, something I didn’t have with my own parents. His daddy was former military and drove trucks. His mama worked too. I mean, they were definitely not rich, but they had stability.

  He led me downstairs to his room, and we only stayed a few minutes. I was uneasy. I sat down on his bed, uncomfortably.

  “We official,” Mike said, wrapping his large arms around me. “You know my mama and I know yours,” he said. I looked around nervously, and then he leaned in and kissed me.

  Just then, we heard the front door unlocking. He quickly pushed me in the closet. I could hear Mr. Brown’s voice, and he asked Mike to take the pizza he had bought for him for lunch. I couldn’t believe that not only was I hiding in a closet at a boy’s house, but also that this boy had got suspended from school, and his daddy was talking to him just as nice and had bought him an Imo’s pizza.

  I must’ve stood in that closet for thirty minutes or so, not moving and barely breathing, because his father was chatting up a storm. Eventually, he got me out.

  “I’m never doing this again!” I said, then thought about the pizza, “And by the way Mike, you a brat. They got you straight rotten!”

  • • • •

  The April tree buds had gone from full bloom to changing colors and falling off the trees. Something must’ve been in the air, because my mama and daddy had started kind of messing around again. Daddy had been around before now, but it was his same old sketchy visits. This time it seemed like he’d stay longer. Maybe Mama was lonely, I don’t know. I was just happy to see her with him. I may have had my issues with him, but he was my daddy, absentee and all, and I was still a daddy’s girl.

  Maybe Daddy was really trying. I mean he got paid good money as a foreman for the railroad. He been working there since I was two years old. I just hoped he’d keep his promises.

  Daddy settled right in at our house. Having him, Mama, Brittanie, and me under one roof was my fantasy of a family. Looking at him and Mama sitting at the kitchen table sipping on beers, her smoking her cigarette, felt like old times. That’s all I ever wanted for my mama. Her to be with my daddy and be happy.

  • • • •

  Me and Mike were getting more serious as the weeks and months passed. But I definitely wasn’t going to share that I was considering having sex with anyone I knew. Even my mama hadn’t had a conversation with me about sex.

  I didn’t care that I had been going around the Browns for several months, anxiety would kick in each time I walked in their house, and Mike led me down into his tiny room that had been an add-on to the house.

  We would always sit on the couch in his room first. Then he’d move to his bed and try to get me to join him. Although he was trying to put his mack down and trying to make sex sound good, I simply wasn’t ready. I knew we were getting closer and closer to dangerous waters.

  I let things go a bit further each time. It became our new pattern to try once a week, but I’d chicken out every time. One day, I thought I was ready. I had on my favorite blue jean bibs and I thought I was looking cute. I sat on his twin bed and looked around nervously, and he turned me around, gently pushing me back on the bed.

  “C’mon, Nette Pooh.”

  “Naw, boy, I ain’t ready!” My eyes were rolling back in my head, and I felt hot all over under my clothes. He worked his large hands over my bra, pushing it up and cupping my breasts, while he sucked on my neck. I did not want him giving me no passion mark. My mama would kill me.

  “Aw, girl, it ain’t gonna hurt, c’mon. I love you,” he whispered, sliding his hand down my torso. He unsnapped my bibs and we started kissing. I felt myself letting go but knew we had to stop. I was terrified. There was so much friction between us I thought we were going to spark a fire.

  I knew he was tired of our heavy petting, kissing, and hugging. My mind was flooded with what-ifs and what-to-dos. Was this going to be magical? Was it going to hurt? He must really love me because any boy who waited seven months to get some got to love you. I closed my eyes as tight as I could. In between his grunting and breathing, I was fighting back my tears. This wasn’t magical at all. I just wanted it to be over.

  Later that night, it was over, and I rode home in a cab because Mr. Brown had left with the car to go to work. I walked up my house steps, feeling like a bowlegged cowboy. Sex wasn’t a good feeling. It was nothing like what I’d heard. I felt embarrassed Mike wasn’t a virgin. I was. I didn’t even know how to have my next conversation with him.

  • • • •

  It was time for my period, but it never came.

  “I missed my period, April,” I said in a low voice, shaking my head.

  “Ooh, you need to take a pregnancy test.”

  “No.”

  “Girl, don’t you worry. I’mma get you one,” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. Oh my God, I was fifteen and my mama was going to kill me. The bell rang, and I had to get to class. I couldn’t be bothered with thinking about no kind of baby today.

  That night I did my best to hide my emotions from Brittanie, but the more I thought about the possibility of being pregnant, the weaker I felt. I was nauseous and dizzy, and so overwhelmed I started crying.

  “Why you cryin’, Nette Pooh?” Brittanie whispered, then started to whimper.

  “I’m OK,” I said weakly. The more I cried, the more she cried. We were so close that she even cried when I was the one getting a whuppin’.

  “Please, tell me what’s wrong,” she begged.

  “I think I’m pregnant, and I don’t know how to tell mama.”

  “Ooh, I don’t neither.”

  She put her arms around me.

  • • • •

  The next day, April rushed me between classes. “Lezley, c’mon,” she said, dragging me to the girls’ bathroom. “Here, take this,” she ordered, shoving a brown paper bag in my hands. Inside was a Clearblue Easy pregnancy test.

  “Go’on!” She folded her arms and nodded toward the nearest stall.

  I was so terrified peeing on that little stick, I almost peed all over my hand.

  “I can’t look,” I said, handing her
the pee stick.

  “Ooh, girl yes you is pregnant!” she announced.

  After several minutes, I was able to put my words together. “How tha hell I’mma tell my mama?” I asked. April sucked her teeth as if to say, “You ain’t got no choice.”

  We slowly walked to the pay phone in the commons. I put the money in, and then chickened out. “Here, you tell her!” I said handing her the phone.

  “Hi, Miss Dez, this April, Lezley’s friend.” Mama was demanding to know where I was, then April blurted out, “Lezley’s pregnant.” Them words just fell out of her mouth so easy. I couldn’t even breathe. We both put our ears to the phone to hear my mama’s response.

  Mama was silent for a long time before straight snapping, “Pregnant? I know this is April, and this better be a April Fool’s joke!” Then all I could hear was my mama hollering. I didn’t say anything. I just hung up. I was scared the rest of the day. I didn’t even want to go home, but where else was I going to go.

  When I got home from school, Mama was still going off. My head was spinning, but when she shouted, “I knew this shit was gonna happen! Well, yo’ daddy said if this ever happened, he was gonna kill Mike!” I heard that part loud and clear.

  “You gettin’ an abortion! You too young to have a baby.” Mama had put her foot down, and that was the end of the discussion.

  That night Brittanie and me were lying in our beds talking.

  “Nette Pooh, I’m so excited about the baby. I’mma be a auntie!” she said in an excited whisper, sitting up in her bed.

  “Um, I don’t think so,” I said softly. I sat up on my elbow. My eyes started welling up with tears. “Um, Mama decided I was gonna get an abortion.”

  “Naw, Nette Pooh,” she pleaded. “I can help you take care of the baby.” I knew she was going to start crying any second.

  “Brittanie, don’t cry. It’s probably for the best. I’m just too young. I ain’t got no job like that. Babies is expensive. I gotta go to school. Uh-uh, it’s for the best.” My voice was quivering.

  “I said I can help, and as soon as I’m old enough, I can get a job too,” she sniffed.